The Romans would take the wagon camp. They would take the camp. The
Cimbri would be slaves.
Eodan lurched through nightmare across the Raudian plain. The hurt
wailed at him. The gathering crows flew up as he passed and then
settled down again. A riderless horse rushed past; he groped for its
reins, but it was many yards away. The horizon seemed to shrink until
it lay about him like bonds; then it stretched until he was the only
thing that was; he heard the fever-hum of the world's brain under his
feet.
When he neared the camp, miles beyond the battle, he had to rest for a
while. His legs would carry him no more. He had some thought that there
would be horses about; he and Hwicca and Othrik could get away. Oh,
the wide cool Jutland moors! He remembered how the first snow fell in
winter.
He saw the beaten Cimbri, such as lived, pouring into the camp. He got
up again and stumbled among them. The Romans were already over the
earthworks, briskly, like men who round up cattle.
Eodan went among them somehow. He saw the Cimbrian women stand in black
clothes on their wagons, spears and swords in hand, screaming. They
struck at their husbands and fathers and sons and brothers--"Coward!
Whelp! You fled, you fled--" They strangled their own children, threw
them under the wheels or the feet of the milling kine. Eodan passed a
woman he knew who had hanged herself from the pole of a wagon, and her
children were tied dangling at her heels.
Men who had thrown away their weapons, and saw the Romans gather in
their folk, took what rope they could find. There were no trees here;
they must tie themselves to the horns of the oxen, or by the neck to a
steer's legs, to die.
The Romans worked hard, prodding prisoners into groups, stunning,
binding. They took some sixty thousand alive.
Eodan paid small heed. It was happening elsewhere. He was a pair of
feet and a pair of eyes, searching for Hwicca ... no more.
He found her at last. She stood beside the wagon that had been her
household. She held Othrik to her breast and a knife in her hand. Eodan
slipped, fell, picked himself up, fell again, crawled on hands and
knees toward her. She did not see him. Her eyes were too wild. He had
no voice left to call.
"Othrik," said Hwicca. Her words wavered. He could barely hear them
above the noise. "Good Othrik." The hand with the dagger stroked across
his fine pale-gold hair as he slept in the curve of her arm. "Be not
afraid, Othrik," she said. "It is well. All is well."
A Roman squad came from beyond the god-cars. "There's a beauty!" Eodan
heard one of them shout. "Get her!"
Hwicca sucked in a gasp. She laid the knife at her son's throat. The
blade fell out of her fingers. Two of the Romans ran toward her. She
looked at them at they neared. She picked up the baby by his ankles and
dashed his head against the wagon boards.
"Othrik," she said numbly, and let the thing drop to earth.
The Romans--they were both young, hardly more than boys--stopped and
gaped. One of them took a backward step. Hwicca went down on her knees
and fumbled blindly after the dagger. "I am coming, I am coming," she
called. "Wait for me, Othrik. You are too little to go down hellroad
alone. I will come hold your hand."
The Roman squad was kicking some of Eodan's thralls toward the main
slave group. Their officer looked over his shoulder at the two boys
he had sent after Hwicca. "Snatch her up or she'll kill herself!" he
barked. "You can't peddle dead meat!"
They broke into a run again. Hwicca's hand touched the dagger.
Flavius the slave sprang from behind the baggage cart. He put his foot
on the knife. Hwicca stared like a clubbed animal up into his face. He
smiled. "No," he said.
Eodan hitched himself forward another yard. She had not seen him, even
yet. The two legionaries reached her, pulled her erect and hustled her
off. Flavius went after them. Presently another Roman detachment came
by and found Eodan.