The Wald Read Free Page B

celebration.  The villagers’ carts were loaded with goods.  The villagers’ horses pulled th ose same carts. Men sat atop the goods and carts and horses, happy to be relieved of the long walk to the next attack.  The warriors rested and carried on with jokes and song.
    “You there!” he shouted at the nearest man who did not hear him above all the noise.
    Berengar marched up behind the man and smacked his leg with the flat of his sword, smearing wet blood all over the man’s trousers.  “You there, I said!”
    The man and his friends looked down at Berengar, eyes wide.  Their chattering stopped.
    “Now listen to me,” the boy pointed and waved his small sword.  “You men get a cart and a horse and move it to the other side of those houses.  Load up the sacks of wheat from a small storehouse back there.  Gundahar will help.”
    The Sugambrians stood still a moment before guffawing simultaneously.
    “You heard the man!” shouted a familiar voice behind him.  “Get off your asses, pack up that wheat, and prepare to leave!”  Without any hesitation, the men’s initial mirth fled, replaced by the respect due a nobleman.  They scurried away to do Adalbern’s bidding.
    “Well, well, my young man,” said his father, smiling broadly as he dropped one knee into the wet earth while staring at his blood-soaked son.  “It looks like you’ve learned a thing or two about battle today.”
    And he had.
    . . .
    And he did.
    Over the next three weeks his army sacked town after town.  Berengar did not have the opportunity to bloody his sword in any of those other battles, but he observed, he listened, he learned.
    After looting those villages it was an altogether different, brief encounter that would set the stage for all that was to come, in Berengar’s life and beyond.  The boy’s army accidentally fell across the lead elements of Rome’s Fifth Legion, commanded by a General Lollius.
    Given the trouble Berengar was causing in the region, the Romans were searching for him and his men.  The legionary scouts had missed them, but the full army had stumbled on the booty-laden tribesmen.  During a fleeting skirmish, Adalbern’s now-mounted force cut down one hundred Roman soldiers, including their standard bearer.  It was a rapid, stunning victory over the professional Roman soldiers.  When the old Sugambrian saw that a sea of enemy men dressed in full battle regalia approached the battlefield from the main highway, he wisely called a retreat after losing only a handful of his own warriors.
    Berengar had watched the scene unfold, obeying his father as he sat on his nag on a nearby hillside.  When he saw the eagle standard of Rome fall to the ground the temptation was too great and he kicked his horse in her belly.  She began at first a trot, then with further encouragement, rolled into a full gallop.  Berengar was moving toward the Romans while his father and men were fleeing.
    It all happened very quickly.  His horse’s hooves plunged down atop the scattered dead or dying enemy bodies.  Berengar grabbed a fistful of the animal’s mane while simultaneously lurching back on her reins.  Before she came to a complete stop Berengar had leapt atop the standard bearer’s back.  The man’s face was buried in the dirt.  Blood came from a wound under his hide-covered helmet.  Berengar drew his small, flat sword and hacked at the pole upon which sat the eagle.  His horse had the sense to whinny, knowing danger drew closer.  The boy didn’t stop his chopping.
    Just as the pole broke and Berengar snatched the eagle, stuffing it into a sack he carried with him, the old nag reared, making a frightful sound.  He turned just in time to leap out of the beast’s way as she toppled over onto her back, two Roman javelins jutting from her neck.  Berengar’s eyes locked on the approaching mass of men and metal.  At such close range they did not look like the women Gundahar and his father had said they would.