Read Online Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem - Free Book Online Page B

the mountains and out of the flat plains of Italia. Gaul was next door to the island from which many of them had come, and to be in Gaul, any part of it, was to be near home. But for me it was the land I had to defend, and upon the help of whose inhabitants I must rely if I was to fulfil the orders of a grey-faced man, now in Ticinium, collecting troops for his war against Radagaisus.
    Once, I stopped a man to ask him a question about the distance to the next village, for even the milestones had been allowed to collapse onto the ground; the local officials were apparently too incompetent or lazy to attend to their duties. This man had blue eyes and fair hair and spoke Latin vilely. I learned that he was a Frank whose family had been allowed to settle west of the Rhenus and who had come south seeking work. I asked him, being curious, why he had not stayed in his own land.
    He shrugged his shoulders. “We are a restless people, highborn. We like to move and to see new places.”
    “But why come to our lands?” I asked in exasperation.
    He shrugged again. “You are Rome,” he said, simply. “We all know that the Romani are rich.” He wrinkled his nose. “That is what we thought,” he said, gutturally. “But we come and we find we must work as before. I do not see that you can be rich if you have to work.”
    “You could go home,” I suggested.
    “I should have to work there. It would be the same.” He looked at me expectantly. “Perhaps if I go on far enough I shall find those Romani who are so rich that they do not have to work.”
    “Perhaps,” I said, and rode on.
    Further on I met a great column of men marching purposefully towards us. They carried staves but no other weapons and had the look of servants, not free men. When my cavalry surrounded them they did not seem put out, but stood their ground and waited quietly till I came to them.
    “And where are you going?” I asked. “You are slaves, aren’t you? Look at that man, decurion. He has the brand mark on his heel.”
    One of them bowed and held out a roll of parchment. “If you please, excellency, your excellency is correct. But this order will explain.”
    “Explain what, man?”
    “We come from Remi, excellency. We were told by the curator of the city that the noble emperor, Honorius, has need of men for the army. If we go to Italia to take up arms we shall receive money and, when the war is over, our freedom.”
    I read the paper and passed it to Quintus who did not say a word. Now I understood Stilicho’s agitation that last night in my tent. Things must be desperate indeed for Honorius to make an offer that had never been made before by any emperor of Rome in all its history, save only Marcus Aurelius.
    I smiled, and my cavalry sheathed their swords as though at a command.
    “And what will you do when you have gained your freedom?”
    “I shall buy a small farm, excellency, and if it prospers then I shall be able to afford slaves to work it instead of my family.”
    I turned to watch them pass. As I did so I wondered how many of them would survive to enjoy the freedom of which they dreamed and which they, who had never known it, believed to be so wonderful.
    A fortnight later we reached our destination and, leaving my legion to make camp outside the walls, I rode through the south gate into a city that was bigger and grander than any I had ever seen. I have often wondered since how it compared with Rome. The south and north gates, known familiarly to all legionaries as Romulus and Remus, were staggering in their size; over a hundred feet high as near as I could judge; their twin arches containing gates that three men, standing on each other’s shoulders, could not have seen over. Built of massive white sandstone blocks they were monuments that would endure for ever to the patience, industry and technical skill of the military engineers who had made them. Each had three upper floors around a square with a courtyard between the gates, and