The Wald Read Online Free

He was proud that he did not wet himself as he stood planted in place.
    A javelin, hurled from an angry soldier bent on killing Berengar, rammed into the standard bearer’s back a mere half-step away.  The boy turned and ran toward his people.  The eagle very quickly seemed extraordinarily heavy as it bounced in the sack, pulling at his neck with every step.
    He began to cry, but kept running.  His eyesight was cloudy from sweat and tears.  With one hand he wiped them clear and was horrified.  The field before him was empty.  His people, his army had fled, leaving him on his own.
    After running just ten more steps, Berengar padded to a halt and turned again – this time to face his enemy.  They came.  They marched in tight discipline, bearing down closer and closer with each of his pounding heartbeats.  But it wasn’t his heart that thundered in his chest.  It was the sound of nearly five thousand men with their ten thousand feet hammering the earth.  But then Berengar realized there was another thumping that was even closer than the Roman killing machine.  He spun to see his father reaching a giant paw down to grab him.  Like a wolf carries her pups, Adalbern seized the scruff of the boy’s neck and hauled him up in front of his lap.
    Their horse ran with such force, they pulverized the ground.  All of the Sugambrians churned and bruised the grasses of Gaul that day as they fled ahead to the fatherland.  The Roman Fifth was obedient to their regulations and was not out for a fight that day.  They did not pursue which was fortunate for Adalbern and Berengar.
    By the end of their time in Gaul, the Sugambrian raiding force that had crossed the Rhenus heading west with two horses and a mess of hungry men, returned over the river toward their densely forested fatherland with over one hundred horses and enough provisions to feed their people through two winters.  Upon their return home, all the villages celebrated a set of clear victories.  They thanked the gods for bringing them badly needed supplies.  The people lauded Adalbern for his leadership and wisdom.  They cheered Berengar again and again as the heavy eagle of the mighty Roman Empire was passed around the evening fires.  He was a hero.  He symbolized their freedom from foreign rule.
    And this great victory of sustenance for the Sugambrians, for Adalbern and Berengar, was the beginning of their end.

CHAPTER 1
    13 B.C.
     
    Septimus was impatient.   He had already been in Oppidum Ubiorum for a month, travelling from Augusta Vindelicorum garrison to join his new legion.  Since arriving, he’d trained his men every day to drive away boredom, theirs and his.  But word traveled that a massive campaign was in the making and he couldn’t wait to be a part of it.
    S ixteen years earlier, just as Caesar Augustus brushed aside his last rival to the empire, Septimus had volunteered for the army.  He was a citizen of Rome and was gladly welcomed to fill the ranks of one of the regular twenty-eight legions the emperor sent into the field.  Over the years Septimus had proven to be capable in leadership, bravery, and even administration and so after several campaigns was promoted to principalis, commanding the eight men in his contubernium.
    But one month ago he’ d been promoted again, to centurion.  He had taken the news quietly as it was read to him from the papyrus page by one of the completely uninterested tribunes of his last legion, but after returning to the leather tent he shared with the other men, Septimus laughed aloud, slapping his knee.  After surviving the life of a basic foot soldier in the army of Augustus with its sometimes rancid food supplies and the occasional lashes ordered at the whim of a camp prefect, not to mention the missiles of Rome’s enemies, he’d achieved his dream.
    Now, however, he waited in near despair along with another one hundred twenty other centurions to hear Drusus speak his orders.  They stood in columns