0009AD - Three Eagles

[Calder]

Three Eagles – 9 AD

Kalkriese Heights, Saltus Teutoburgiensis, Germania

"Keep digging! We need the wall at least two paces high and the ditch in front of it as deep." There was an upsurge of grumbling from the horde of men digging in the north slope of the Kalkriese Height, grubbing the dirt out of the trench and throwing it up to make the wall above them. It was already more than seven hundred paces long and growing by the hour. Behind it more men were dragging logs from the endless forests, cutting them to manageable lengths and splitting them lengthwise. The timbers were then hoisted up to form an angled frame on top of the wall, raked back to protect the people behind it from the descending Roman pilums and the arrows from their auxiliaries.

"Digging is not work for warriors!" Hermann stopped for a moment and stretched to ease the kinks out of his back. "Digging is for slaves."

"Which is why soldiers win and warriors lose, Hermann. The spade is brother to the sword." Arminius was standing on top of the wall measuring distances and movements with his eye. The length of this wall was critical. Behind him, his archer-bodyguards stood watchfully. Always watchfully. Hermann wasnt going to chance their displeasure. Not after last night.

Meeting Hall, Previous Night
Arminius had been explaining what was going to happen and why. How the Romans would see the wall and assume that it meant the Germans planned to fight from behind the defenses. How their legions would march into the narrows so they could face the wall head-on and get into formation. Then they would attack. Only the Germans would spring the ambush first and catch the Romans right in the middle of changing their formation. One of the minor tribal leaders present had been jeering, telling his companions how Arminius could forget his plans and how he, Wolff, would lead the wild charge down the hill. Then he'd got up, and yelled across the room.

"Arminius, you speak of plans and tactics. All talk. Let us see what sort of warrior you really are. We fight here, man to man." Arminius had just stared at him, raised an eyebrow and made a dismissive gesture with his right hand. Wolff stared at him, waiting for the first move, then more fixedly. Blood started coming from his nose and mouth and he sank to his knees, before measuring his length on the floor, dead. Everybody had missed the sounds of the arrows in the hubbub of the meeting hall but nobody could miss the three sticking in Wolff's back. So close together their points seemed to be touching. Hermann had no doubt that those points were in Wolffs heart. Hed never seen bows like these, longer than the German ones and curved so they had a reverse bend when unstrung. Their power was much greater than either the German or Roman bows and they had a pull to match. Which made it even more remarkable that two of Arminiuss archer-bodyguards were women.

"I must thank our late friend here for making my point so well." Arminius was pacing backwards and forwards in the silence of the hall, the hostile silence that had fallen when the people had realized that Wolff had been so contemptuously shot down. Arminius pointed at one of the other chieftains. "You. You look like a truly great warrior. What is your name?"

"Segimer." The man spoke guardedly, he wasnt certain that being called a great warrior by a man who had others shot in the back was a compliment.

"Segimer, as a great warrior who has won many fights, who was the greatest warrior you have ever known?"

Segimer thought for a second. "Franz of the Chauci. A great warrior indeed."

"He's dead isnt he?" Segimer nodded. "Killed by the Romans?" Segimer nodded again. "Let me guess. He died on the Roman shield-wall, fighting one Roman soldier when another stuck him from the side?"

Segimer nodded again, suddenly the point Arminius was driving at began to form in his mind. Arminius paused for a second. "Listen, every man in this room is a better warrior than the best Roman soldier could ever dream of being. In fact, every woman in this room is a better warrior than the best Roman Soldier." There was a peel of yelping and shrill war cries. Some of the German women fought alongside their men, some didn’t, but they all knew a compliment when they heard one. "If one of you fights one Roman, then the Roman is a dead man. But the Romans are soldiers not warriors, they fight as teams, covering and protecting each other. If a hundred of you fight a hundred Romans, then it is you who are the dead men. How many times have you fought the Romans? Have you ever won?"

The room was still silent but it was a different silence. Some of it was embarrassment at being reminded of old defeats, but more was of interest in seeing what this strange Arminius was planning. "Look at my archers. Wolff died because we fight as a team. See how they are positioned so they cover me but also cover each other? That's teamwork. We all depend on the others. It doesn’t matter how good any one of us is individually, to take us on, you must take on the whole team. Listen, mark this well. In any battle, soldiers will always beat warriors."

"Then, if the Romans are soldiers and we are warriors, the day is lost before we start." Segimer spoke tentatively, afraid that his words would bring abuse upon him.

Arminius shook his head. "Not so. We have two options, the first one is that you must learn to fight as soldiers. We don't have time for that, It would take five years at least. So we go with the other option. If we can't fight as soldiers, we must make the Romans fight as warriors. Take away their teamwork, break their formations before they start. Just pray that it rains as well. Then it is one German versus one Roman. And that fight we win."

Kalkriese Heights, Saltus Teutoburgiensis, Germania

"Arminius, how did you know they would march through here?" Segimer was curious, beside him, Hermann drifted closer to listen to the answer and learn how this stranger pulled off his miracles. He had his cloak over his head, shielding him from the rain that was pouring down. Below them, the Roman column was struggling in the mud, the wagons and mules bogging down with the women and children and their servants fighting to keep them moving - and every delay splitting the column into more scattered groups.

"Varus doesn’t have any choice, he's heading west for home, running out of time and supplies. This hill is the start of a long range that runs south for days of travel. He could go through it but he'd have to cross many deep brooks and rivers and some pretty bad forests. If he goes north, the marsh stretches for many days in width and goes north for a great distance. Between the great marsh and the hills is this pass, a thousand paces wide. He has to go through it. Here, at its narrowest, its less than two hundred paces, side to side. Bowshot range. He's had a rough ride already, he wants to get home by the fastest possible route. There are women and children down there as well, he wants to get them home. He wants to get to the Ems River where the Roman Fleet can resupply him and this is the shortest route. So here we waited and here he is. This rain is a godsend."

Arminius looked down at the column again. In theory, it was the standard Roman formation. Up front were archers and auxiliaries, acting as scouts followed by the XVIIth Legion, it looked like it had been ground down now to around 5000 men, supported by 120 cavalry. Then came the pioneers, who were responsible for building a camp at the end of the day. Then came the critical part, the first part of the train: the general and his bodyguard, some 240 cavalry, his baggage and the staff officers. Then, behind them, the cavalry of the XVIII and XIX legions and the second part of the train, the mules with the artillery. Finally, behind them, were the staff officers and the eagles of all three legions followed by the two remaining two legions themselves, their baggage with mixed group of troops forming the rear guard. Theory was one thing, reality was another. The rain, the mud, the narrows, all had conspired against the men below, destroying their regular order, mixing them in a chaotic mass with the wagons and the unarmed. However, one point remained untouched. Varus and his 240 bodyguards were in the middle of the column, with no other combatants within easy reach. Take him out, and command control would fall apart. Now, he was in the center of the narrows, the long ambush stretching in front and behind him.

Arminius nodded to his archers. Their unofficial leader, a woman with a glorious mane of black curling hair, drew her bow then dipped the point of a fire-arrow into the flame that was carefully guarded for the purpose. Then, six fire-arrows arched into the sky, making a signal clearly visible even through the driving rain. They were followed by a flock of javelins, hurled by the men behind the wall on the hill. On the receiving end, the thunder of the javelins striking down on the wagons and men seemed, for a brief moment to drown out the rain. For the first time, the Romans in the valley saw the wall that topped the hill and the threat that was based there.

Looking down, Arminius saw the Roman infantry behaving like the hardened professionals they were. They were the finest heavy infantry in the world and no first blow was going to destroy or demoralize them. Especially that the cloud of javelins thrown at them hadn't been that effective. They’d brought down some men for certain and caused chaos amongst the civilians in the baggage train but the legionaries were unfazed. Arminius saw them extracting from the pandemonium. He could almost read the minds of their commanders, they might have missed the wall in the mist and rain before but now they saw it and guessed what it was. The base of an ambush. And everybody knew what to do with an ambush, you attack it and force the jaws apart. Below, the legionaries were falling into their attack formations, much more slowly than usual due to the tumult that surrounded them but surely none the less.

Which was just what Arminius wanted them to do. As they formed he nodded to the black-haired woman again and six more fire-arrows arched upwards. This was the charge that the traditionalists of the German tribes had wanted, a screaming, hell-for-leather charge towards the enemy with the greatest honor to the first there. Stupidity was a human characteristic, Arminius thought, and a good strategist used all human characteristics. The Germans were charging down hill, on relatively dry ground, towards the legionaries wallowing in the mud. As Arminius watched he saw the new threat being recognized and the Roman officers issuing orders to shift from attack to defense formations. Order, counter-order, disorder thought Arminius contentedly as he saw the Romans try to make the change in time. If any infantry in the world could do it, it was the ones below but even they just didn't have time before the German wave hit them. Every time before, when the Germans charged, they had hit the formed, solid shield-wall of the legions and broken on it. They'd surged and stormed against it and been cut down by it. But now, there was no shield wall, instead a confused mass of Romans and Germans fighting in a wild, undisciplined melee. The Roman cavalrymen were being dragged form their horses and cut down, little knots of legionaries were forming in an attempt to survive. It was too late and they were too few, one by one the little knots of red collapsed under the German frenzy.

Arminius knew that somewhere in that mess, Publius Quintilius Varus was dying, probably hacked apart without his killers knowing who he was. He knew something else as well, the Roman center was being cut to pieces because they’d been unable to form readily anywhere in a body, and being fewer at every point than their assailants, they'd suffered greatly and could offer no effective resistance. The Roman column was cut in half, its command structure destroyed but the three legions that were its backbone were still fighting units, mauled and disabled perhaps but still there. Of course, the Germans had their reserves as well.

"We should help them." Segimer pointed at the swirling sea of combat that was the Roman center. Either side of it, the Roman legions were disengaging and sorting themselves out prior to wading into the battle. The XVIII and XIX legions were having a hard time of it, they were too close and were being drawn into the maelstrom piecemeal. To the west though, the XVIIth legion and its cavalry and auxiliaries had reached a point of the narrows out of reach of the German javelins and archers and was reorganizing. Arminius recognized a fellow spirit as its commander. The man was resisting the temptation to get drawn in and taking the time to get properly organized first. The right decision, but it took a hard, hard heart to watch your comrades die in the meantime.

"No Segimer. We wait until the Romans are tied down in the fighting there, then our second wave hits them in the flank." Arminius grinned nastily, "you might also reflect on the fact that the warriors dying down there are the ones that don’t respect your, and Hermann's, authority.

It didn't take long for the Romans to get themselves together. Without a unified command, in the middle of the chaos of a massive ambush and without any form of communications, an effective battle-plan was emerging. At the end of the Roman column, the remnants of the XVIIIth legion and the bulk of the XIXth had formed up and were driving forward, sweeping along the path of the column, taking the Germans in the flank and driving them west, onto the prepared defenses of the XVIIth Legion. Arminius was awed by the demonstration of sheer fighting ability being staged below. He’d told the German tribal leaders that he’d create a battle where it was German warrior versus Roman soldier one-on-one and that was a battle the Germans would win. The second part of the statement had been a lie. The Germans couldn’t recognize it as such because they didn't really understand what an Army was, but they were about to learn. Left as it was, the two halves of the Roman Army would rejoin, crushing the Germans between them. If the Germans had fought the way they usually did, all their men in one wild screaming charge, that would have ended it, no more Germans. But, now, they hadn't. At least half the German force, the ones Arminius had picked out as the most reliable, the best disciplined, were still waiting behind the wall.

That had been another reason for the wall, not just to act as a base, as bait, as a decoy, but to hide the numbers behind it. One advantage of the Germans wild charges was it made counting numbers very hard. As the eastern Roman force engaged the swirling mass in what had been the Roman center, six fire arrows arched skywards for the third time that day. Again, there was a German charge down the hill, leaving the wall defended only by the women. If everything went sour, they would be a base for their men to rally on and, Arminius thought, that would buy time for he and his party to make an escape. But, this time, it wouldn’t happen. Two legions were caught in the flanks and rear and dissolved into the swirling chaos that had consumed their center. That left the western force isolated in their end of the narrows. Again, Arminius silently applauded their commander, it would have been very easy to swing forward to rescue the remains of Varus's force but that risked another flank attack from the hill that had already disgorged two. The commander of the XVIIth held his ground.

Even as he watched, in the failing light of evening, Arminius saw the fires from their position. The XVIIth legion was burning their wagons and baggage train prior to staging a break-out for the Ems River. They'd built a fort and that would hold them for the night. The next morning, they’d fight their way out through the heavy downpour and the violent wind that was already building up. The foul weather was preventing them from going forward or even standing their ground. Nor would they be able to handle their bows or their javelins with any success, while their uniforms, shields and armor would be thoroughly soaked. Harried all around and forced to fight every step of the way the XVII Legion would fall apart in hours.

It didn't quite work out like that. The XVIIth broke out of its camp in the middle of the night and had a vital few hours lead by the time the German pursuit started. That day the cavalry component of the XVIIth broke away and made a run for the Rhine and safety. They didn't get far, they and their horses were shot down by archers within a few miles. For the Germans, more lightly equipped and armed than the Romans, moved faster and by the evening of the second day, the XVIIth was surrounded again. They broke out, plunging into the woods, where they defended themselves against the German tribes that surrounded them. For the first time, the XVIIth took a real battering suffering heavier losses than in the great ambush at the Kalkriese Heights. By now, Arminius had regrouped his forces and was taking advantage of other German tribes that had wavered before but now wished to scavenge on the retreating Romans.

On the third day, the remnants of the XVIIth reached a road a former governor of Germania, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, had constructed between Ems and Lippe. Although this narrow road passed through vast swamps, it was at least a road the legionaries knew. It was too late, the XVIIth was falling apart. Many common soldiers killed themselves, many surrendered, others tried to escape. Four days after the Great Ambush, the last part of Varus's Army collapsed.

Kalkriese Narrows, Saltus Teutoburgiensis, Germania

"What are you going to do now?" Arminius looked down from his horse at Hermann and Segimer.

"Cross the Rhine and raid?" Segimer replied tentatively. Over the last few days he’d learned that the obvious answer to a question was usually wrong.

"If you do that, what will the Romans do?" Arminiuss voice had dropped into the casual tone he used when teaching people.

"They'll scrape up whatever troops they can and counter-attack, destroying everything in their path. Oh." Segimer slapped his thigh. "But if we stay this side of the Rhine and do nothing, they’ll spend time bringing up new legions and training new troops. By that time it’ll be winter and the campaigning season will be over. And we’ll have got our harvest in."

"VERY good. And by next year, the sting of this defeat will be fading. Instead of destroying everything, we, or rather you, can cut a deal. We've make copies of the three captured eagles and you can ceremoniously return two of them and the captives. Well, give one to the Chauci, they won't give it up of course and the Romans will take their revenge on them. The best sort of war is always one waged between your two worst enemies. The Romans won't come east of the Rhine after that. They'll claim the territory and perhaps do raids, but their expansion east has stopped here. The three real eagles are mine as we agreed."

"Arminius. We have another gift for you. We captured these, you want one?" These were some women from the Roman column. Arminius was about to refuse when the black-haired woman who rode beside him spoke quietly "Arminius, I think the one at the end is one of us."

Arminius nodded and pointed to the woman his companion had indicated. She was fair-haired, blue-eyed. Segimer laughed. "Good choice Arminius, shell complement the black and red-haired ones ni....." His voice trailed off as he saw the eyes of the women in Arminius's bodyguard.

Arminiuss companion rode over and dropped off her horse. "My name is Lillith, whats yours?"

"Inanna your ladyship. Is the General your husband?"

Lillith laughed. "No, just a friend, a good one. As we will all be good friends to you. I think we have much to talk about and a long journey to do it on."

Hermann walked over to where Arminiuss party was preparing to leave. "You have taught us much Arminius and I thank you. Segimer and I have united the tribes around here now and we can stand against the Romans. Perhaps one day we will even have an army like them. Travel safely Arminius and thank you, Wa..." Hermann stopped himself, he had been about to use the honorific Warlord. It wasn't appropriate, Arminius had taught them much more than just how to make war. He taught them how to make sure the peace was kept. There was only one honorific that was suitable, even though nobody had heard it used for generations. Now, it was time to use it again. "Travel safely Arminius, and thank you, Seer."

[Calder]

"Arminius. We have another gift for you. We captured these, you want one?" These were some women from the Roman column. Arminius was about to refuse when the black-haired woman who rode beside him spoke quietly "Arminius, I think the one at the end is one of us."

Arminius nodded and pointed to the woman his companion had indicated. She was fair-haired, blue-eyed. Segimer laughed. "Good choice Arminius, she'll complement the black and red-haired ones ni....." His voice trailed off as he saw the eyes of the women in Arminius's bodyguard.

Arminiuss companion rode over and dropped off her horse. "My name is Lillith, what's yours?"

"Inanna your ladyship. Is the General your husband?"

Lillith laughed. "No, just a friend, a good one. As we will all be good friends to you. I think we have much to talk about and a long journey to do it on."

Hmm, I don't know who Inanna is, does anybody else know?

Maybe this is a different origin story for Achillea or Igrat that later got dropped?