A Captive of the Roman Eagles Part 9

Bissula looked up anxiously.

"He lay covered with skins," the other added, as they moved forward, "hidden among the rushes so that he could not be distinguished from a fallen tree. Before we could seize him--"

Bissula uttered a sigh of relief.

"He had vanished in the sedges. A Batavian archer shot an arrow after him. Hark! the Prefect is giving the signal again. Come without fear, child."

He led her by the wrist, carefully trying not to hurt her; but she often stopped, glancing back at the hut, and once also at the lake.

After a few steps they heard the neighing of a horse and soon entered an opening in the forest, where Ausonius had halted his mounted escort.

"Father Ausonius!" cried the captive joyously, struggling to release herself to rush to him.

But the Illyrian's grasp on her arm became like iron. Approaching the Prefect, who held out both arms to Bissula, he made a military salute, saying sternly: "The first encounter with the enemy! A man has escaped: a girl--this one--became my prisoner: my slave."

BOOK TWO

THE SLAVE

CHAPTER XVI.

During those days the vicinity of the Holy Mountain, where a large number of fugitives had taken refuge, was full of busy life, and from the north, the quarter not threatened by the Romans, reinforcements were constantly arriving from other provinces.

The Tribune's efforts to discover the retreat of the fugitives had been baffled hitherto; neither those in the marshes nor on Odin's Mountain had been overtaken by the spies and reconnoitring parties of the Roman General. Marshes and impenetrable primeval forests surrounded the Roman camp on the Idisenhang on every side except southward toward the lake.

In the last few days, after a tremendous thunder storm, a southwest wind had sprung up, bringing on its dripping wings pouring torrents of rain; then the forests became absolutely impa.s.sable for the heavy tread of the legions: the few fords were buried in marshes or overflowed; the tiniest rivulet became a raging river. Sulky and shivering, the intruders, princ.i.p.ally natives of the south, remained in the camp under plank roofs and leather tents, fanning day and night the flames of huge fires which, however, as all the wood was wet, diffused more smoke than warmth.

For long distances from the foot of the mountain the few and narrow openings which led to the interior of the immense forests were blocked and barricaded by felled trees. Huge oaks, ashes, and pine-trees had been felled and piled one above another more than the height of a man, strengthened by earth and turf, and held together at regular distances by enormous posts driven into the ground or by trees which had been left standing. Thus an almost insurmountable breastwork was formed, on whose summit, and in the tops of the trees towering above it, the best archers were stationed. Similar lines of defence were repeated, one behind another, wherever the locality permitted. The legions would have needed many more days than the brief time still remaining before the end of August--they always finished their short summer campaigns in Germany before the commencement of the autumn rains--to storm all these fortifications; they could scarcely find it possible to make a circuit of them, on account of the marshes. But even if they succeeded in penetrating all the barricades to the foot of the mountain, they would then be forced to begin the inexpressibly toilsome siege of this natural fortress.

All the entrances were covered by several tiers of logs; while, on the mountain itself, rising one behind another, was a whole system of "ring walls." These extremely powerful and extensive fortifications dated princ.i.p.ally from Celtic times, but had been considerably strengthened and enlarged in scope by the Alemanni during their occupation of the country for more than the past century: they had been forced to seek refuge here from the Roman troops often enough.

These walls were made of heaped up earth, turf, palisades, and so called Cyclopean walls: that is, rocks, so closely joined together without mortar or bricks, by a skilful use of their points, edges, and fissures that fire, tearing asunder, and the blows of the ram seemed equally ineffectual.

Each one of these rings, which rose in stories, like terraces, required to be stormed as a separate fortress. Each lower one was protected not only by its own garrison, but by all those above, since they were so constructed that stones, logs, spears, and arrows from all the upper walls could strike the enemy without injuring the combatants on the one beneath. Seven such defences girdled the mountain, the topmost one surrounding the summit, which concealed Odin's altar in the heart of an ash forest.

Those unable to fight, the women, children, old men, and slaves, were scattered through all the stories of the mountain fortress. The herds had been driven to the rear on the northern side, where their lowing, neighing, and bleating would be as far as possible from the enemy. The fugitives rested at night in huts built of thick green foliage, often with the skin of some animal fastened among the branches, which the Alemanni had great skill in constructing. Nor was there any lack of cellarlike subterranean pa.s.sages where stores of grain and valuables were concealed.

The fighting men garrisoned all the entrances, reconnoitred in small bands, especially at night, beyond the barricades close to the neighborhood of the Roman camp. They spent the day in feats of arms or drilling, impatiently enduring the long delay in giving battle, and grumbling at the incomprehensible procrastination of their white-haired Duke. For the latter, Adalo, and other leaders, huts of leaves had been built on the summit of the mountain with the tents of their followers scattered around them.

Before one of these huts (a stag's antlers had been cut on the central post for a house mark) on the day after Bissula's capture, a bright fire was burning late in the evening, fed with pine cones which had been protected from the wet under the stone closing the opening of a cellar. It was supplied by a man about forty years old, whose cropped hair showed that he was a slave; while the shape of his short face, his dark eyes, high cheek bones and snub nose denoted that he was not of German lineage. Suomar had bought him many years before in Vindonissa; cheap enough, for Valentinian--or the slave dealer--had brought countless captives from the Jazyge war.

In front of the fire, sheltered from the wind and smoke, old Waldrun lay on a bearskin, her feet covered with another. Adalo was kneeling beside her. Mirthfulness and wrath had vanished; deep sorrow clouded his handsome face. He gave the blind woman some wine to drink from a silver goblet. Both beaker and wine were booty wrested from the Roman.

CHAPTER XVII.

"Tell me everything once more, Zercho," he said earnestly, "until Waldrun has recovered and can add what you did not see. I have not yet clearly understood the one thing upon which all depends."

The bondman was now crouching beside the fire, trying to keep the smoke from the white-haired woman with the wolf-skin he wore for a cloak. It did not annoy her at all, but it helped him to avert his eyes from the youth's searching gaze.

"It happened in this way, handsome neighbor. Directly after you leaped down the slope in anger,--I saw it from the stable,--the little red sprite ordered me to bury the master's coins (alas, there are very few of them!) and the bra.s.s vessels and broken-handled jug which he obtained three winters ago at Brigantium. I had already driven the cow, the sheep, and the goats into the alder thicket.

"The next day I was to take the young mistress and her grandmother into the marshes to Suomar, the master. But alas, the hot and cold cat, which invisibly shakes the body like a mouse, often springs upon the good old mistress. So it was the next day. The sufferer could hardly stir her aged limbs from the couch; her strength was as feeble as a dying torch; I almost had to carry her. But I could do this only on solid ground: in the forest marshes I should have sunk with my burden--strong bones weigh heavily. So, in the forest, the blind woman was obliged to walk by herself, leaning on her staff and guided by the little elf, while I jumped from stone to stone in advance, seeking the best path. But just before we reached the hay hut, the grandmother fell; she could no longer stand or walk. We carried her in. You know the entrance to the old cave is just beside the left corner post. Down below there it was safe, warm, and for her no darker than above. We spent the rest of the day and the night in it. Bissula, in spite of every warnings would not leave the old woman and go on with me.

"She had brought some milk in a goat-skin, and rye bread. I watched outside near the hut. In the gray dawn I stole back westward toward the edge of the forest to watch for the helmeted Romans. Soon I saw a small band of mounted men dash straight to Suomar's dwelling. I had hidden our old log boat and the oars among the thickest rushes and meant to row it through the marsh as near the hut as possible, carry the sick woman to it, and then try to take my two mistresses to Suomar by way of the lake. But when I reached the sh.o.r.e I saw several ships--their lofty prows and triangular sails marked them as Roman galleys--moving from Arbor on the opposite side toward our sh.o.r.e. They would soon be very near. The way by the water was barred; but at the right, from the west, I already heard the trampling of horses through the marshes and meadows close beside me.

"Two men with arrows and long bows in their right hands dashed by, not a spear's length distant. I crouched among the rushes, nay in the swamp to my lips; but in doing so I startled the great egret that always fishes there. As, screaming loudly--silly bird--he soared upward over the rushes, he attracted the attention of the riders to himself and, unluckily, to me too. They saw my head. A bow whirred, an arrow whizzed through my otter cap and grazed my head. The wound wasn't deep; Zercho's skull is hard, Suomar often says so, and this time, it was a good thing. I now swam out into the lake, diving like a duck as long as I could hold my breath.

"When I was forced to rise, the men had disappeared. Cautiously as the fox stealing after the mouse, I crept on all fours through the thickest rushes nearer to the land, in the direction of the hut, but making a wide circuit. Then I saw two Romans in glittering armor step into the clearing in the forest: one was leading the young mistress by the arm--"

Adalo heard this for the second time, but he again sighed deeply.

"A horse neighed behind us, and on it sat the clever old man who a few winters ago read to the little one in Arbor from many, many parchments, oh, such a long, horribly long time--while I was obliged to wait to row her back across the lake."

"Are you perfectly sure," asked Adalo, seizing the bondman by the shoulder and forcing him to turn his averted face, "that this horseman was the old Roman?"

"Well, he isn't so very old," replied the Sarmatian evasively, "though he has grown somewhat grayer since that summer."

"Answer," cried Adalo angrily. "Can you swear that the rider was Ausonius?"

"Ausonius! Yes, yes, that is what she always called him. Father Ausonius. And that's what she cried out yesterday when she saw him: 'Father Ausonius!' she shrieked."

He broke off abruptly and began to rub his head (the wound suddenly seemed to pain him) muttering meanwhile in his Sarmatian dialect, which Adalo did not understand.

"So it was really he," sighed Adalo. "And I must thank the G.o.ds for having led her to him."

"Freya will reward you for it," said the blind woman suddenly, raising herself on her left arm and groping with her right hand in the direction of the voice until she reached the youth's head and stroked his long locks. "The dwellers in Asgard will repay you for such thoughts."

"Must I not cherish them, Mother? Oh, if you could only sit up again!"

"Your drink, the Romans' drink, cheers the weary soul."

"Ausonius will protect her from the others. But," Adalo went on angrily, "who will defend her from Ausonius? She was tenderly attached to him."

"As a child to its father."

"Be it so--at that time. But now the maiden will owe him grat.i.tude for everything, even the highest boon."

During this conversation Zercho had repeatedly looked thoughtfully at both; now he scratched himself behind the ear and was about to make some remark, but changed his mind and remained silent.

"Against my warning," said the old woman, continuing the bondman's story, "the child had glided away from my side out of the cellar into the hut. She grew tired of waiting in the dark hole for Zercho's return. Suddenly I heard a man's heavy step above me; then a shriek from the little one, which made me tremble. But by the time I had groped my way to the stone slab and lifted it, all was still. I vainly called her name. Soon Zercho came with the news that he had seen her led away captive. We sorrowfully waited for the darkness. My fever had left me; I could walk slowly, but faithful Zercho sought our cow and found her among the tall reeds in the swamp, lifted me upon her and, by a wide circuit through the forest, brought me here."

"For I had seen Italian galleys between the forest hut and Suomar in the eastern marshes," remarked the Sarmatian. "The enemy was reconnoitring there, so I tried to reach the mountain, as my mistress preferred."