He sat up again, looking at their backs. For a little while he could not move. He could only watch them as they broke his people. There was a tuba being sounded. Was it in his head, or did it blow victory for Marius? His wrist was numb. Blood dripped slowly from a forearm gashed across. At least he lived, he thought. The dead around him were thick. Never had he seen so many dead. And the wounded groaned until he sickened of their anguish. He sat there for a while longer. The field grew black with flies. The sun got low, a huge blood-colored shield seen through dust. The Romans took the field, gathered themselves together and quick-marched after the fleeing. Eodan struggled for wakefulness. He kept slipping back into night; it was like trying to climb out of a watery pit. There was something he must remember.... Was it his father? No, surely Boierik was dead; he would not outlive this day. He would fall on his own double-headed spear if he must. His mother had died two years ago, now let her ghost thank the earth Powers for that. And Hwicca-- It came to him. He reeled to his feet. "Hwicca," he croaked. "Othrik." The Romans would take the wagon camp. They would take the camp. The Cimbri would be slaves. Eodan lurched through nightmare across the Raudian plain. The hurt wailed at him. The gathering crows flew up as he passed and then settled down again. A riderless horse rushed past; he groped for its reins, but it was many yards away. The horizon seemed to shrink until it lay about him like bonds; then it stretched until he was the only thing that was; he heard the fever-hum of the world's brain under his feet. When he neared the camp, miles beyond the battle, he had to rest for a while. His legs would carry him no more. He had some thought that there would be horses about; he and Hwicca and Othrik could get away. Oh, the wide cool Jutland moors! He remembered how the first snow fell in winter. He saw the beaten Cimbri, such as lived, pouring into the camp. He got up again and stumbled among them. The Romans were already over the earthworks, briskly, like men who round up cattle. Eodan went among them somehow. He saw the Cimbrian women stand in black clothes on their wagons, spears and swords in hand, screaming. They struck at their husbands and fathers and sons and brothers--"Coward! Whelp! You fled, you fled--" They strangled their own children, threw them under the wheels or the feet of the milling kine. Eodan passed a woman he knew who had hanged herself from the pole of a wagon, and her children were tied dangling at her heels. Men who had thrown away their weapons, and saw the Romans gather in their folk, took what rope they could find. There were no trees here; they must tie themselves to the horns of the oxen, or by the neck to a steer's legs, to die. The Romans worked hard, prodding prisoners into groups, stunning, binding. They took some sixty thousand alive.