The Dutch by Richard E. Schultz Page A

could be seen in the distance.
    That same night, an old heavily bearded and unkempt man, accompanied by his pretty teenage granddaughter approached the Roman position in a canoe. He asked for a parley with the commander. The old man’s name was Flocenwal, a Shaman from the original tribe that claimed to have settled the Droger Land at the time of creation. His tribe was in constant warfare over the past few decades, first fighting the traditional Frisian enemies, then the Roman invaders, and more recently decimated by their fellow Ingvaones. These “brothers” had come to the Droger Land as refuges of the earlier Roman conquest seeking asylum. They soon became brigands, eventually turning on their hosts and killing the tribe’s few remaining young men.
    The Shaman claimed it had been his gods who sent the great wave earlier in the campaign. Flocenwal prophesied to the general that the Spirits of the Droger Land would allow his conquest and grant him and his heirs the power to rule the land for eternity, if the general granted mercy to the surviving members of the Flocenwal clan, and more importantly, if the general pledged wise stewardship over the blessed place. With a bit less spirituality, Flocenwal promptly informed the general that his army was nearing two secret pathways beneath the water, worn hard over the centuries by the feet of his clan and their pack animals as they gathered salt from small deposits in the marsh. Each narrow path would bear the weight of a man or a horse and would lead to the mainland’s dry ground near, but out of sight of, where the tribesmen planned to oppose the causeway’s final connection to the Droger Land. Claudius Abraham Weir committed only to sparing the lives of Flocenwal’s clan in exchange for the information.
    It had taken nearly six months for the waterlogged, weary and mean-spirited Roman army to finally draw within arrow range of the enemy occupied Droger Land. A relatively short distance away, on the shoreline, stood a marauding, painted mob of brigands. There were thousands of them brandishing weapons and screaming obscenities across the last strip of marshlands that separated the two armies. The Ingvaones and their allies clearly outnumbered the Romans. The general knew, by the huge numbers and the variety of colors used to paint their bodies, that the brigands were reinforced by other tribesmen who felt some grievance toward Rome. On a hilly dune directly behind the rabble a giant blazing bonfire was set where it could be seen by the Romans. One by one, a dozen helpless and bound Roman comrades, captured during the night-time raids, were flung into the blazing fire and burned to death to the delight of the frenzied mob. Claudius Abraham Weir and his army could only watch helplessly. He ordered the prisoners who dredged the canal brought to the end of the causeway and had each one decapitated. A hundred severed heads were catapulted into the howling mob, while the general gave his commanders their final instructions for the next morning’s assault.
    Immediately after sundown, the Romans laid narrow strips of weighted planks under the water, connecting the causeway to the paths that Flocenwal had disclosed. The general’s Germanic cavalry of two hundred, armed with bows and their trademark swords, were the first to reach dry ground and make their way undiscovered to the top of the sandy hill behind the tribesmen. One veteran cohort of infantry from the Tenth Legion used the other path to secure another foothold, also undetected and out of sight of the assembled brigands. Just before dawn the Roman engineers finished work on a pontoon bridge made from the captured canoes. They had almost made the final connection to the mainland when they were forced to fall back under a hail of missiles from the Ingvaones.
    Suddenly, the rear ranks of the Ingvaones began to wither and fall from a barrage of arrows from the top of the hill. Hundreds died before