A Captive of the Roman Eagles Part 26

"Comrades in arms, Alemanni! do not doubt this time that victory will be ours. You know that it is not the custom of old Hariowald to boast before acting: but this time I predict to you certain, complete, glorious, joyous victory.

"All our G.o.ds will unite to aid us to-morrow. Not least of them Loki, the flame-creator. Tents and ships will vanish in fire. The lake nymph will drag many hundreds down in her net. The terrible earth-G.o.ddess will open her mysterious bosom, on which the insolent aliens have trodden with iron feet: she will pour forth the avengers, the sons of her country, into the midst of the enemy's strongest fortress! For the Lofty One blinded the hated foe, so that they chose in our whole district the spot for their camp most fatal to them. And when they fly from the tents to the galleys, amid the terrors of the night, by the flickering glare of their burning fortifications--they will find on the lake the same destruction in fire and blood.

"If the last of the flying ships, with masts and prows half burned, pursued and harried by our swift boats, should really succeed in reaching the southern sh.o.r.e and the harbor fortress from which they sailed forth so victoriously, who knows--I will not say more--who knows whether they may not find there an unexpected doom?

"No! Silence still! Hear me to the end.

"Before I dissolve the a.s.sembly and send you all to prepare your weapons in the best way, to polish the points and blades, and to eat and drink enough,--not over much, then afterwards--do you hear--to seek sleep soon, very soon, for you will have no slumber to-morrow night--hear one thing more: you must make one resolve before this battle!

"Remember, men, how from generation to generation these Romans have sinned against our people; how again and again they have broken faith and treaty; how they will not even grant us the poor land we have wrested from the marsh and the primeval forest; how, in violation of treaties, they have pushed their fortresses farther and farther into our boundaries; how they forced thousands of our ancestors to fight naked and unarmed with wild beasts on the blood-stained sand of their arenas in the city by the Tiber, gloating, safe in their high seats, over the death-agonies of our kinsmen under the paws and rent by the teeth of roaring monsters; how they forced thousands of our young men into their cohorts and made them shed their blood, often far beyond the salt sea!

"Ha, Alemanni of the Black Forest, do you still know how they invited your King Widigab to a banquet and murdered him over the wine-cup? Have you forgotten, Alemanni of the Ebergau, who submitted to them on condition that you should live according to your own laws, how on the smallest pretext, they had your free men scourged by their lictors? Do you still recollect, Alemanni from the Breisgau, how they asked a peaceful pa.s.sage through your country, and then encamped near the sacred grove of the G.o.ddess Ostara, asked permission to visit the aged priest of eighty and his great-granddaughter, the girl of sixteen, in the grove (it was a General and one of their shaven priests, with a hundred warriors), and inquired what was your most sacred thing? And when the maiden unsuspiciously showed the sacred bronze vessels which the gracious G.o.ddess had once sent down to you on the rainbow, how they suddenly seized both, and the Christian priest, before the eyes of the unarmed people, shamefully profaned the sacred vessel; how the General slew the venerable priest and dragged the young priestess away to captivity and disgrace, and how their warriors set fire to the sacred grove?

"Do you still remember, men of the Alpgau, how, in the midst of peace, a centurion dishonored your Count's young wife by her own hearthstone, so that she hanged herself by her girdle?

"Have you forgotten how often they have bound our girls together, yes and our boys, too, like beasts of burden, by their long locks, and driven them forth to a life of disgrace from which the pure G.o.ds of Asgard turn their faces, crimson with shame and wrath?

"You have _not_ forgotten these things! I hear it! I see it! Well then, do as I advise: _Take no prisoners!_ Kill them all! Do not spare one; disdain all ransom. Let the whole army,--leaders, horse and foot,--be dedicated to Odin and to Zio. You will: I see it! Then repeat the words after me and swear:

"To thee, Odin, doomed, And to wrathful Zio, Be all who live within the camp And on the rocking galleys.

Soon will ye bathe in blood, O G.o.ds so mighty, From ankle to knee!"

Swinging their weapons in frantic excitement the gathered thousands repeated the terrible oath.

"I will dismiss the army at once; only hear one thing more--your Duke's vow. The many thousand mailed men who broke into the peaceful districts captured one single prisoner, a defenceless woman, a merry little maiden. Many of you, I think, know her."

"Bissula! The little one! The fair one! The red-elf, Suobert's child!"

So shouted hundreds of voices.

"Yes, Bissula, Suobert's daughter. Well then: whoever releases her, whoever brings her to me from the Roman camp after the battle, shall receive the Duke's whole share of the booty."

A grateful but sorrowful glance from Adalo rested upon him: the young n.o.ble no longer dared to hope.

"The circle is dissolved, the a.s.sembly is over," the old commander continued; he then turned the upright stone resting against the trunk of the tree and descended the steps.

The bands, with loud acclamations for the Duke, instantly scattered in all directions down the sides of the mountain, each division following the symbols borne in front of its own district and tribe.

Adalo was going too; but the Duke motioned to him to remain, took from his hand the stag standard and gave it to Sippilo, who bore it proudly down the Holy Mountain.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

"Stay," said Hariowald, when the heralds, last of all, had left the place of a.s.sembly, "you must know how this battle is to be fought, according to my plan and wish. For, if the Lofty One should call me up to him before the victory is won, you must complete it. Therefore you must now learn all (far more than the men in the army) that for weeks I have been preparing during sleepless nights, and have secretly accomplished in the past few days.

"Come, sit down by me; we will spread out on this stone the plan of the Roman camp, which we owe to your brave little brother.

"It has been of the greatest service to me. I told you yesterday how the men of the districts were to attack the four sides and gates of the camp at the same time."

"Yes: but you did not say where you would fight with your bands, and where I was to go."

"I? I shall take the shortest way--from beneath."

"No! No! Leave it to me. It is the--most dangerous one."

"Yes, yes," cried the old man, laughing. "And you have no suspicion how dangerous it is. Know then: the ascent cannot be made, as we hoped, first of all and unexpectedly, taking them by surprise; it cannot be made until after the foe, alarmed by the a.s.sault on the northern wall, stands ready in full armor."

"Then it will be impossible! But why?"

"Because, as I first learned night before last, the Romans, in digging out the northern ditch, filled up the extreme northern end of the subterranean pa.s.sage; or else the earth has fallen in, from the jarring. When I entered this pa.s.sage from the forest outside of the camp--"

"What? you yourself?"

"Yes, I myself; night before last. I advanced only a few steps before I found a heap of earth which had fallen from above, and I was obliged to return. But I stole, on the surface of the earth, so near the ditch that I could look into it from a tree. The whole ditch--it is now dry again--was brightly lighted by their camp fires. Then I saw that the earth-G.o.ddess of our land had blinded the strangers' eyes. They perceived nothing suspicious in the large boulder that bars the continuation of the pa.s.sage from the ditch into their camp, and they did not roll it away. True, it has not been moved from the spot for decades; for the secret, bequeathed from generation to generation, is known to but two men of the race who bear the emblem of the stag's antlers, and there is rarely an occasion which demands its use. So they did not perceive that the rock had been rolled there by human hands, and they planted one of their banners on the turf which covers it. They have no suspicion of the pa.s.sage. For look! The plan of the camp shows it; close beside the Nerthus pine, above the altar stones of the Idise, they have pitched a tent filled with provisions and weapons. You see, here!"

"Yes, indeed. The tent is placed exactly over the mouth of the pa.s.sage.

But outside there, in the northern ditch, numerous sentinels are posted--Thracian spearmen alternating with Batavians."

"Yes, that's just it. They must be driven away before I can roll the rock aside and make my way up."

"That will cost blood; it will also require time. The Thracians, and especially the Batavians, are their very best troops. Alas, if it happen to be the turn of the Batavians. They are not inferior to us in heroic courage."

"No matter! They must fall before the badger can enter the old burrow."

"And then--after the battle has summoned all our foes to arms--then you will? Let me go in your place!"

"Obey! You will find work enough at the southern gate, the lake gate.

When we have stormed the camp, the whole flood of those who still remain alive will pour to the ships through the southern gate. They must not be allowed to reach the lake in close order, to turn the tide of battle against us there at the last. You will meet them as they burst through the southern gate, and drive them back into the burning camp, or scatter them. They must not be allowed to reach the lake from the camp as reinforcements to the defenders of the galleys, but to increase their alarm. This is your task: Saturninus, if he live, will make it hard enough for you."

"So my post will be at the southern gate?"

"Yes; and to it I have sent, if by any means she can reach it--Bissula!"

"Thanks!"

"Do not thank me! For I forbid you to fight for the girl; you must fight solely for victory. Yet have no anxiety. If she is still alive, she will be rescued. I have relieved Zercho and Sippilo from every other duty, and given them only one charge--to find and protect the young girl. But you I need for higher work. I fear one man only in the whole army," he added in a lower tone--"Saturninus. He is like the old leaders they had in their better days, the days of which my grandfather and father told me with horror, when it was almost impossible for the most heroic courage to defeat a Roman army. Who knows whether Ebarbold will strike him down? We must let the King have the first chance; he has the prior claim: but if the Roman should be the one who survives and I do not reach and kill him after the King's fall, before you (I shall make every effort to do it), do you, son of Adalger, provide that Saturninus shall not lead his army in closed ranks down to the lake: detain him as long as you can stand."

"As long as I can! But I wondered when you set the fisherman his task.

If the Roman galleys cross the lake here, how can you know whether he will be able to reach them from the sh.o.r.e? They will anchor, not come to the land. How is Fiskulf to get from the storming of the Roman camp here?"

"He will not share the a.s.sault," replied Hariowald, laughing, as he stroked his beard complacently. "And he will not go by land to the galley, but by the lake."

"Swimming?"

"No, rowing. Know what no one has yet learned; for crowds are garrulous. Besides the most distant Alemanni districts, I have secretly won as allies the Hermunduri, who drink the water of the Main, and induced them to send us reinforcements for this war. You supposed that the boats in the two forest-covered swamps on the east and west of the Idisenhang were filled solely with people unable to bear arms, after I had brought most of the men here? No, my friend! The boats, almost three hundred, in the two marshes are not empty of men. The women and children are to be put ash.o.r.e to-night; more than two thousand Alemanni and Hermunduri will leap into the boats. From left and right, from east and west, they will float in the stillness and darkness of the night against the high-decked galleys, and as soon as the first torch is hurled into the Roman camp on the Idisenhang, our boats will attack the Roman ships from the open lake and from left and right. Aha, do you think our fishing boats will be like nutsh.e.l.ls against those giants?

Probably: but have you never seen a flock of brave little swallows put a sparrow hawk to flight? Our skiffs are small, it is true; but more than two hundred against sixty. And the pitch and resin of the pine-trees in the forests by the lake, blazing in a thousand f.a.ggots of dry twigs, will burn merrily in the linen sails and the rigging of the triremes."