For long distances from the foot of the mountain the few and narrow openings which led to the interior of the immense forests were blocked and barricaded by felled trees. Huge oaks, ashes, and pine-trees had been felled and piled one above another more than the height of a man, strengthened by earth and turf, and held together at regular distances by enormous posts driven into the ground or by trees which had been left standing. Thus an almost insurmountable breastwork was formed, on whose summit, and in the tops of the trees towering above it, the best archers were stationed. Similar lines of defence were repeated, one behind another, wherever the locality permitted. The legions would have needed many more days than the brief time still remaining before the end of August--they always finished their short summer campaigns in Germany before the commencement of the autumn rains--to storm all these fortifications; they could scarcely find it possible to make a circuit of them, on account of the marshes. But even if they succeeded in penetrating all the barricades to the foot of the mountain, they would then be forced to begin the inexpressibly toilsome siege of this natural fortress.
All the entrances were covered by several tiers of logs; while, on the mountain itself, rising one behind another, was a whole system of "ring walls." These extremely powerful and extensive fortifications dated principally from Celtic times, but had been considerably strengthened and enlarged in scope by the Alemanni during their occupation of the country for more than the past century: they had been forced to seek refuge here from the Roman troops often enough.
These walls were made of heaped up earth, turf, palisades, and so called Cyclopean walls: that is, rocks, so closely joined together without mortar or bricks, by a skilful use of their points, edges, and fissures that fire, tearing asunder, and the blows of the ram seemed equally ineffectual.
Each one of these rings, which rose in stories, like terraces, required to be stormed as a separate fortress. Each lower one was protected not only by its own garrison, but by all those above, since they were so constructed that stones, logs, spears, and arrows from all the upper walls could strike the enemy without injuring the combatants on the one beneath. Seven such defences girdled the mountain, the topmost one surrounding the summit, which concealed Odin's altar in the heart of an ash forest.
Those unable to fight, the women, children, old men, and slaves, were scattered through all the stories of the mountain fortress. The herds had been driven to the rear on the northern side, where their lowing, neighing, and bleating would be as far as possible from the enemy. The fugitives rested at night in huts built of thick green foliage, often with the skin of some animal fastened among the branches, which the Alemanni had great skill in constructing. Nor was there any lack of cellarlike subterranean passages where stores of grain and valuables were concealed.
The fighting men garrisoned all the entrances, reconnoitred in small bands, especially at night, beyond the barricades close to the neighborhood of the Roman camp. They spent the day in feats of arms or drilling, impatiently enduring the long delay in giving battle, and grumbling at the incomprehensible procrastination of their white-haired Duke. For the latter, Adalo, and other leaders, huts of leaves had been built on the summit of the mountain with the tents of their followers scattered around them.
Before one of these huts (a stag's antlers had been cut on the central post for a house mark) on the day after Bissula's capture, a bright fire was burning late in the evening, fed with pine cones which had been protected from the wet under the stone closing the opening of a cellar. It was supplied by a man about forty years old, whose cropped hair showed that he was a slave; while the shape of his short face, his dark eyes, high cheek bones and snub nose denoted that he was not of German lineage. Suomar had bought him many years before in Vindonissa; cheap enough, for Valentinian--or the slave dealer--had brought countless captives from the Jazyge war.
In front of the fire, sheltered from the wind and smoke, old Waldrun lay on a bearskin, her feet covered with another. Adalo was kneeling beside her. Mirthfulness and wrath had vanished; deep sorrow clouded his handsome face. He gave the blind woman some wine to drink from a silver goblet. Both beaker and wine were booty wrested from the Roman.
CHAPTER XVII.
"Tell me everything once more, Zercho," he said earnestly, "until Waldrun has recovered and can add what you did not see. I have not yet clearly understood the one thing upon which all depends."