The Wald by Jason Born

force.  He was neither stupid nor foolish though, knowing the importance of supply logistics to his bride.  The young centurion understood and even approved of the decision Drusus had made, but it did not make watching his men fall to the quickly moving enemy any more palatable.
    For two nights and two days the Germans had harried his cohort.  Sometimes a number of the small detachment of scouts that had been left with the rear guard would disappear, never to return.  It was a hazard of those men’s job that they accepted, but for the retreating cohort to so rapidly lose its eyes and ears to the wald was disconcerting to the officers and men.  The scouts who yet survived were proving wholly ineffective at describing what the remnant of the legion faced.
    Small bands of Sugambrians would turn up at the side of the small path Septimus and his men used.  The attackers would all be mounted on horses with no saddles.  Only some of them sat on a blanket.  Most of the time they would keep a safe distance from the Roman army, preferring to launch missiles into the tightly packed ranks.  Other times, however, the tribesmen would gallop directly into the nearest line of marching soldiers.  Some of the legionaries would be trampled under the horses’ hooves; others might be hacked down with a sword stolen from a dead Roman further back on the trail.
    Then as soon as the centurion organized his men into a defendable position, the attackers were gone, flowing back into their precious wilderness.  Each time this occurred , the entire cohort was stopped and prepared for a full battle that never came.  The repetition and slow bloodletting was exhausting to the men and their leaders.  They felt helpless.  They felt they did not act so much as a rear guard as serve as fresh targets for the frolicking natives.
    . . .
    What excellent fortune.  The Roman dogs had chosen to withdraw, so Berengar and his small band of horsemen had had their way with the rear guard of the legion for two days.  It was dusk of what would likely be the last night of raids – his successful raids on what was supposedly the most powerful army in the world.  By tomorrow the soldiers would be too close to reinforcements to mount any more of their lightning attacks.
    What a lesson for Berengar to learn.  The boy had seen his people defeated and retreating, only to rise and strike repeated blows to their enemy.  The boy saw how important supply and organization were to the Romans.  He saw that their mighty force could be badly bloodied with the lightning tactics better suited to his own people.  Maybe the boy would remember these lessons after his father died and fire took Adalbern’s spirit into the clouds and his bones were burnt to dust on a pyre in one of the wald’s many glens.
    Each time they had struck the marching army, Adalbern had chosen to allow a myriad of village chiefs to run at more or less their own discretion.  Such a tactic removed the necessity of command and made for smaller, rather than larger, mistakes should one man make a poor decision.  For the coming attack, however, Adalbern gathered up all two hundred of his horsemen into a wide, sweeping valley between the fleeing cohort and the river.  It had only taken fifteen brave men to attack the rear guard earlier that day and delay the cohort long enough for Berengar’s main cavalry force – it was his army again – to get into place.
    This would be the last attack and it would be bold, demonstrating to the Roman commander that the tribes would not follow the way of the Gaul.  They would not become domes ticated pets of the emperor.  Berengar could already hear the slow approach of the legion as it made its way around the last ridge into that valley.
    The waiting riders sat atop horses that could sense their owners’ welling anticipation of the coming attack.  The beasts shook their great heads, ears erect, aware of the approaching menace, and pawed at the ground with