"The Rhine, the Rhine!" exclaimed Aragaris. "Now go ahead!"
They slid down through the birches and aspen trees a hundred years old.
"Cousin, I'm drowning!" yelled Strombix. "Somebody's hauling me by the feet!"
"Where are you?"
With great difficulty Aragaris extricated him, and, swearing, took him on his shoulders. Under his feet the Sarmatian felt the stems of faggots laid down by the Romans. This causeway of faggot work led to the great road hewn not long before through the forest by the army of Severus, Julian's general. The barbarians, according to their custom, had blocked and encumbered the track with enormous trunks of trees. These trunks had to be clambered over. Sometimes rotten, moss-covered, and crumbling under foot, and sometimes hard and slippery with rain, they made the march most difficult; and it was by roads like these, always in fear of an attack, that the army of about thirteen thousand men had to move. That army every Imperial general except Severus had traitorously abandoned.
Strombix was cursing his comrade—
"I won't go a step farther, heathen! I'd rather lie down on the dead leaves and die; at least I should not see your damned visage—huh! Unbeliever! It's easy to see that you don't wear the cross! Is it a Christian's business to drag along a road like this, and what are we pushing on to? The rods of the centurion. I won't go a step farther."
Aragaris hauled him on by main force, and, when the road became more practicable, carried shoulder-high the whimsical companion who kept abusing and pummelling him all the time and shortly fell soundly asleep on those mighty pagan shoulders.
At midnight they reached the gates of the Roman camp. Everything was still. The drawbridge had long been raised. The friends had to sleep in the wood near the hinder gate, usually called the Decumanal.
At dawn the trumpet sounded. The nightingale had been singing in the misty wood; he ceased, frightened by the warlike notes. Aragaris snuffed the smell of soup and woke Strombix. They made their way into the camp and sat down near the cauldrons. In the principal tent near the Pretorian gate the Cæsar Julian was keeping watch.