The Summer Sword Read online

  Ulrich – Ubii Guard. Another Ulrich is a companion of Hraban

  Vaettir – Germanic nature spirits.

  Vago - king of the Vangiones, foe to Marcomanni and the Quadi. Leader of I Vangiorum, a Roman Auxilia unit. Father of Shayla, Koun, Vannius, and Hunfrid.

  Vala – Legatus of XVIII

  Vangiones – a Germani tribe serving Rome.

  Vannius – a Vangione noble, son of Vago, brother to Shayla, Koun, and Hunfrid. Also, a king of a tribe of Hermanduri.

  Varnis – Sigambri Germani noble.

  Varus - Publius Quinctilius Varus, supporter of Augustus, took over Germania from Saturninus. Did not understand how to treat the Germani, and Armin took ample advantage of Varus's shortcomings, causing the destruction of three legions.

  Veleda – the girl Hraban must find for Tear and Odo.

  Visurgis River – Weser River.

  Volones – a Parthian agent

  Wandal – Hraban's ham-fisted, slow-witted friend. Son of Euric.

  Woden – also known as Odin, the leader of the Aesir gods, one of the creators of men and the world.

  Woden's Gift – spawn of Draupnir, Woden's ring, the influential ancient ring of Hraban's family.

  Wulf – a vitka from village of Hraban. One of the few who are trying to stop the prophecy that will end the world. Hraban's former tutor, foe to Maroboodus.

  Wyrd – fate in Germanic mythology.

  Yggdrasill – the world tree, where the nine worlds hang from. Source of all life.

  Zahar – see Tear.

  PROLOGUE (ATUACTA TUNGORUM, A.D. 42)

  The horse is bucking and kicking its hooves in the air as the Eubrones ride past, their armor jingling, mud flying. They laugh as they go, and I struggle to control the horse. It is no small feat for an old bastard like me. When I manage it, I turn it to look after you as you ride on your way for the east.

  They stretch to south and west, the Roman roads from Atuacta Tungorum, and you can ride the south one all the way to Massalia and Gallia Narbonesis and from there, to the edges of the known world, and even further. You can ride east and find Rhenus River, and beyond, you can take lesser roads deep into Germania, and eventually, if you are lucky, your horse will be grazing on the eternal steppes beyond the far reaches of the horizon.

  You are riding east.

  You wish to see the werhmen, the old warriors of your father, Arminius, those few who still survive. You wish to see the hof of your kind, the ancient hall of Sigimer, and his many villages in the gau that was once the greatest of the Cherusci lands. You wish to meet the ancient women and men who still remember the summer when we finally turned Germanicus back from the lands of Germania. They will tell you of the Summer Sword, the sword of hope, and they might mean both your father Armin, or the sword he held high after he took it from Varus.

  The free Germania. That is the road for you.

  It is free in name alone, of course. It was saved by Armin, and then by others, but much of it heeds Rome for its own good. Ampsivarii bow to Claudius. Matticati are no more. Cherusci ask for Roman counsel in its affairs. Bructeri and Marsi barely exist, and Chauci are little better than slaves. Frisii are slaves. Marcomanni, Quadi, Hermanduri? All free, but still chained to Roman trade and interests. So many tribes fell and rose again. Sigambri, they suffered for decades before Maelo’s kin finally gave up. One family after another, they were taken, or they allied with Rome, surrendering their honor, their old ways, and joining those of their enemies.

  Beyond Albis, the wilder tribes, milling masses of hundreds of thousands, remain truly free.

  The land between Rhenus and Visurgis and Albis is the Germania Rome knows and where great wars were fought.

  There, Rome claimed victory in many a battle.

  And still, that is where Rome was also stopped. Every summer they came, and every summer they were stopped by Armin and his adelings.

  Never did a Roman army stay permanently in the woods of Luppia Valley, or under the boughs of the Black Forest, or in the heights of the Chatti hills. There are no Roman castra east of Rhenus or north east of Agri Decumantes. Ahenobarbus, Tiberius, Drusus, Germanicus, so many others burned the lands from one end to the other.

  You will go home and judge the land for yourself. You are Armin’s son, and it is your right. Italicus, the son of Flavus, is there, as the Cherusci requested a ruler of the old blood, and they have none left. Beware of Italicus, Thumelicus. He shall give you no quarter, should you reveal yourself. He shall brook no challenger to the rulership. At the same time, endure and seek out your answers.

  Your father, Thumelicus, endured.

  Despite his losses to Rome, the early failures, his Roman wars, and what Segestes did to him, what Germanicus did, he endured.

  He was a hero, and then later, when the tribes finally found a common cause, a king. A king made by tears.

  You remind me of him.

  I watch you ride, your hair free, your sword bloodied by war, and your body seasoned by suffering. You are your father’s son. You have found freedom agreeable, life desirable, and now, you need to see the land you missed.

  You will be disappointed.

  You will not enjoy it, the old land.

  And yet, my duty is done. My oath has been kept. I gave that oath with many others as Armin claimed his place, the bitter place of a king, bereft of a queen, terribly hurt by Segestes, his uncle.

  It is your turn. You are alive, you are free, and you shall find my daughter, Lif, and tell her my tale. You carry my codex, the story of my deeds and mistakes, and she shall hear you, if she yet lives.

  You promised. Finally, you promised, when we made it out of Albion and survived Claudius’s final attempt to find us. That we escaped him is a miracle. That we evaded his patrols, his Batavi speculatores, and escaped the slaughter of the villages and the conquest of Albion is a gift we must not waste. We were free, and with any luck, Claudius would seek us with Caratacus, somewhere in the north.

  I watch you disappear into the woods, cantering wildly on your horse.

  My codex is gone. I shall not see you again.

  And now, I have scrolls.

  The story is not done.

  While we travel, I shall tell the rest of it. From here, we shall travel north to the Frisii, and there, we shall take our road northeast to the lands of the Chauci, through the land of the Saxons, and perhaps, in the end, to the lands of the Goths. That is where I shall go. I shall find the home I never knew.

  Like you, Thumelicus.

  I will go and find the land where my father, Maroboodus, and grandfather, Hulderic, once lived and fled from as fugitives. I will see the hall of Bero, the Bone-Hall, the town of Marka, the great island of the Boat-Lord in Gothonia, the Hogholm, and I shall settle there in honor.

  I might have family there.

  Perhaps I can still raise a new family, something that has been ever denied me. No matter my age, I might still try that.

  I shake my head. I look your way.

  Hadewig, you poor man.

  You would not ride away so happy, so full of joy, if you knew what had happened during the years after we killed Varus. In the codex, you miss much of the story.

  In it, you will not see the story of Hraban joining Tiberius.

  You will not read of the plan that led Adalwulf and me to the path of pain. It was a path where we helped your father fight and ultimately to kill Germanicus. Nor is there any mention of the plan to kill him after and how it was all for Tiberius, who promised us and our families eternal safety and wealth. You will not know how we suffered for it, in body, and mind. There will be no mention in the codex how many people we betrayed to survive and to succeed. Nay, in there, you shall only see a tale of us joining your father for his dream.

  I thought of telling you the full truth. It would have been liberating, one would think. Decades of lies should be spat out at some point.

  I decided some truths are best written only for yourself.

  Should
I have filled the codex with that tale, you would not keep your oaths to me, and you would not go and seek out Lif, great Veleda’s follower.

  I turned my horse and pulled at my pack animal. We rode away. Luigsech and her son, Seisyll, followed me, happy to be on the road.

  We shall ride together, and in the evenings, I shall write. I have grown accustomed to it. I shall tell the dark tale in the darkest hours of the day. I shall speak of the dark time when we worked for Rome, Adalwulf and I, both, in a treacherous duty to kill Germanicus for Tiberius. I shall speak of the death of Armin and the capture of Thusnelda. I will spin a tale of men who tried to capture me for Germanicus, and how my father Maroboodus, enraged by Gunhild’s escape, tried to decide if he would support Germanicus or Tiberius or, indeed, be the king of all in place of Armin. I shall write of the time when I had lost my wife to Ulrich’s arrow, a deed commanded by Germanicus, and I shall tell you of the time when Gunda, the star of the north, taught me to live again.

  Listen.

  BOOK 1: THE HERO’S RAVEN

  “If you are to be of use to Armin, then you must marry. Armin needs allies, and marriages are a way to make sure they stay allies. Children, even more so.”

  Hraban to Segimundus

  CHAPTER 1

  (Near Castra Alisio, River Luppia, June, A.D. 12)

  We sat on a wet log, not far from Castra Alisio.

  The castra was, once again, occupied by Rome.

  Adalwulf was cursing. “To imagine it had been empty, and none destroyed it.”

  I nodded. “They burned it, but the walls remained. It is all because of Segestes.”

  “Everything is because of the fat bastard,” he agreed. “I wish we had gone back and found him after the last day. We failed in that.”

  I agreed but said nothing. I had been in no shape to go find anyone then.

  I had lost Cassia. My hand went to the arrow in my belt. The yellow-feathered, accursed thing had claimed her life.

  I looked at the remains of the siege, and Cherusci and Bructeri rushing to abandon it. While Rome had been driven out after the loss of poor fool Varus and his doomed legions—driven out from every homestead, town, village, gau, and Castra east of the Rhenus, save for former land of the Marcomanni, now called Agri Decumantes in the south—the campaign of Tiberius the year past, and the one this year had brought Rome back some measure of success.

  Alisio was the crown on Luppia River, the thorn in our hearts.

  Where Tiberius had marched his legions up and down Luppia, to the lands of the Bructeri and Marsi, and had restored the river Luppia itself to his control, we were now finally trying to take it back again. The attempts were halfhearted. Sad, even.

  It was high time something happened, though.

  The two years had been mostly bloodless. That we had not crossed the river after the death of Varus had been a terrible mistake. There would have been rebellions in Gaul had we dared. There had been only one legion to oppose us in Xanten.

  Madness.

  That we had failed to challenge Tiberius as he crossed the river year after?

  Disaster.

  Now it was too late. The rabble living in the hills of eternal Rome spoke of the great victories of Tiberius and of his ferocious legates in the north, especially of Caecina, who was trying to find the lost eagles of the XVII, XVIII, and XIX legions.

  They spoke of defeated barbarian tribes and of revenge taken on those who had dared to treacherously attack Roman power, her honor.

  Lies had great power.

  Nothing had been revenged.

  Nothing had been achieved.

  And Rome believed in all those lies, and even our people, approached in secret by Rome, believed Armin had failed.

  He was a hero. He had won a war. What else was needed, they all wondered. Why does not Armin go back to his hof, and live in glory?

  He wanted to unite all the nations against Rome.

  The nations didn’t understand that goal. They didn’t understand why Armin demanded more of them. They listened, they sent him men, but little unity could be found in Armin’s hall when they met.

  The war had been won. He was a hero.

  I had been tasked by Tiberius to help Armin defeat and kill Germanicus, but I had doubts about Armin.

  Roman lies worked on me too.

  And yet, the hero had led a great coalition. He had beaten the enemy and achieved the impossible. No Germani army had beaten a Roman one in an open battle, and that would be required at some point, but Armin had done the next best thing and assassinated thirty thousand enemies in the swamps and hills north of Bructeri lands, not that far from the log we sat on.

  Great glories had been granted the Germani who loved our hero, Armin.

  Armin had distributed the eagles to the Bructeri, the Marsi, and he kept one for himself. He had stored some of the lesser standards in his holds and given many of the cohort and century ones to his allies.

  The allies would prefer to sit on their hands. Armin remained influential, but he was no king and had to beg for simplest of actions against Rome. The trouble was that he didn’t even rule the Cherusci. Sigimer was dead. Inguiomerus ignored him.

  And the greatest problem was Segestes.

  He had survived the attack by his son Segimundus and by us.

  “They are coming,” Adalwulf grunted, and I rubbed my face, collecting my thoughts.

  The reason why the Cherusci and Bructeri had abandoned the siege was clear indeed.

  We watched a legion marching below, filled with auxilia cohorts from Gaul, and there, too, were Tungri, Ubii, and even some Hispanian troops, their spears swinging as they marched and guarded the legion’s flanks. They walked through the light drizzle on the banks of Luppia, watched their enemies rushing away, and they cheered, like the troops inside Alisio cheered and mocked our fleeing people. Another bloodless siege. The legion wagons and supply slaves were pulling mules laden with simple loot, but the standards looked forlorn and almost…tired as they hung from the cross poles.

  “Which legion?” I grunted.

  He shrugged. “The same. XX Valeria Victrix. Half filled with scum and bastards.”

  I nodded.

  After the death of Varus, Augustus had panicked.

  Not soon after Rome had survived the Pannonian War—which had eaten gold and lives for long years; the loss of three full legions and plenty of auxilia had left a huge hole in the Roman military roster.

  The gold to fill that hole could be extracted by taxes. The troops themselves were the problem.

  The solution had been conscription.

  It had not been popular.

  Not since early Republic had there been a conscription, and every fifth man in Rome itself, and tenth outside it, had been called to standards under a threat of expulsion from citizenship of the state.

  It would have been thought to be an opportunity to serve one’s nation in a time of crisis. The old Romans would have pushed away their ploughs, kissed their wives and children goodbye, and gone to serve.

  The new Romans were loath to be removed from their cups of wine, and they missed their free bread and entertainment supplied by those who sought out their votes for elections.

  Rome was no longer what it had once been.

  Victory and luxury had made its men lazy and women unwilling to give their sons away to barbarian swords for the common good.

  It was the new Rome Augustus was building, and the quality of the new legions was terrible, at least in some cases.

  Below, the XX was half filled with proper soldiers and half filled with once discharged and disgruntled veterans and city scum. They were trained, but unruly and rebellious.

  There were three other legions in the area and four south in Moganticum. In Luppia valley, there were near twenty thousand such men under Tiberius and plenty more gathering and waiting for Armin to fight.

  “Tiberius is a patient general,” Adalwulf grunted. “It does not please Augustus, this timidity. Tiberius is as
slow here as he was in Pannonia.”

  “He won Pannonia,” I said. “Augustus would do well to remember that. Patient generals tend to live long.”

  “Aye.” He grinned, and he saw I was not smiling and had not for the past two years.

  He was my only friend. We were tied by common shame.

  He and I had made a terrible pact. We had tied ourselves into it to find our families safety and a position in Rome. So long we pursued revenge. We fought for honor. Such pursuits ate our loved ones, one by one. So we joined the greedy, the evil, the mad, and played their games. Tiberius would be our master. He would give us all we wanted at the end of a bloody quest. It would be a position to leave us safe and wealthy, and our children would be respected and rich.

  There was nothing more important than the family. Not even honor or oaths.

  It takes honorable man a long time to learn this. Conscience dies slowly.

  Safety for our boys came at a great price.

  We had to infiltrate, betray, and kill people who trusted us. It cost us our soul. Adalwulf wasn’t sleeping well. Gisil, his wife was sad. Only our boys flourished, but their fathers were damned souls.

  I was in no better place. I saw dead Cassia even when I was awake, standing across a gray river, never smiling. I felt dead inside.

  He looked gloomy, and the berserking wolf warrior spoke sternly. “My woman is feeding your boy. A man, Hraban. He is a man. He should marry soon.”

  I said nothing. We had had the discussion too often lately.

  Or, rather, he had spoken, and I had not.

  Gervas was a man. When we had saved him from Julia, he had been five.

  Now? He was what? Eighteen?

  I was old. He was a man.

  “Gisil loves him well,” he added. “She is happy to see him eat in our table, and I have him training with my men. I don’t mind him spending much of his time with my Wulf and the men. But did you know he wants to join my band?”

  I had not known.

  We had a common hall with Gervas, near Adalwulf’s, but I was rarely there, and I had not spoken much with him, other than greetings.