Eagle's Honour by Rosemary Sutcliff Read Free Book Online Page B

up ahead, that Calgacus was waiting for us among the wooded gullies of the lower slopes, the whole Caledonian war-host with him.

    Agricola halted the Legions, and gave orders for the usual war camp to be pitched.
    The great square was measured out, and the banks and stockades thrown up; the General’s pavilion set up in the midst of all, with the tents of the Legates on either side, and the Eagles of the four Legions ranged in front. The camp fires, one to each fifty men, were built in long straight rows, and the horse-lines and baggage park pegged out in position; the guards were posted and a meal of hard bannock and sour wine issued to all of us, and we settled in for the night.
    But the nights are short in the north at that time of year, and it was morning soon enough, and Caledonians and Romans alike stirring for battle.
    Tacitus, Agricola’s son-in-law, who wrote a history of that campaign later, sets down a fine fiery dawn-of-battle speech for Calgacus. I learned it almost by heart, in after years, for it’s a good speech though not over polite to us Romans.

    Something like this, it went: ‘My brothers, – this I bid you to remember when the war horns sound: there is nothing beyond us but the sea; and even on the sea the galleys of the Red Crests prowl like wolf packs. Therefore there can be no retreat for us, we conquer or we die. And we shall conquer! The Roman victories came not by their strength but by our weakness, and our weakness was that we were many Tribes divided among ourselves. Now we stand together as one People, and we are strong! They are fewer in number than we, they are strangers under strange skies; the mountains and the forests are enemies to them and friends to us…. My brothers, we have this choice: victory at whatever cost, and freedom, or the Roman yoke upon our necks, our women enslaved, our young men carried off to serve the Romans at the other end of the world! We have heard of the Roman Peace, but in truth, they make a desolation and call it Peace! Keep that in your hearts as you rush into battle!’
    Aye, a good rabble-rousing speech. – Though come to think of it, I wonder how Tacitus knew what he said, or if he said anything like that at all.
    I do know what Agricola said, for I heard him,when he harangued us, standing on a tub of arrowheads.
    ‘Comrades,’ says he, ‘we have fought through more than one campaign together. I think that you have been content with your General; I know that I have been well enough satisfied with my soldiers.’ (I thought about the Eagle and the egg!) ‘We have pushed on further than all other of our armies, and here we stand in the farthest part of Britain, where never any man carried the Eagles before. But though the land is strange to us, the men we fight today are the same as those we fought and routed and forced back in earlier time. They ran then, and they’ll run again; it is because they are so good at running that they have lasted so long. So now, lads – one good sharp heave for the glory of old Mother Rome, and the thing is done!’
    And we cheered him until our cheering echoed back from the dark woods and the mountain corries.
    Well then, our battle line was drawn up, the lightly armed foot-soldiers of the auxiliary cohorts in the centre, the cavalry on the wings, and the heavy troops of the Legions drawn up behind, along the line of last night’s banks and ditches. The Ninth was held in reserve, and wedidn’t think much of that, but it’s a job somebody has to do.

    That was my first full-pitched battle, and I’ll not be forgetting it in a hurry. I’ll not be forgetting the great wave of the Caledonian chariot charge thundering down upon our battle line; and the way our line swayed and bulged a bit, but held firm, and the charge broke, like a wave breaking on rocks, and curled back on itself. Our lads charged forward after them; and it was then that Calgacus sent in a second charge, sweeping down from the hills and circling wide