The Blood Road (Legionary 7): Legionary, no. 7

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘An assassin’s kill?’ he whispered to himself.

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ a voice said, right behind him.

  In that moment, a thrill of terror shot through him and he leapt up and round to face the voice. Saturninus, Magister Militum – Master of Emperor Theodosius’ palace troops – stood there. Slight and small, his features narrow and almost feminine, he was a far cry from the archetypal general of the legions. His sleek, black, shoulder-length hair was tucked behind his ears, his dark eyes carrying his earnest smile well. While Pavo was dressed unremarkably so as to go unnoticed, Saturninus was not – resplendent in a black leather breastplate dotted with silver rivets, and a fine, black sagum cloak pinned at the left shoulder. ‘Talking to myself. The Claudia lads appear to have incited a riot,’ he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder to the turmoil below – now quelling of its own accord as men scattered away into the streets. The tavern keeper staggered back and forth through the sea of smashed tables and stools, wringing his hands through his hair, while two of his attendants and a well-meaning tavern customer – a handsome fellow with dark hair flashed grey at the temples – were poking at the corpse of the slain man, discussing how to lift him.

  Saturninus’ eyebrows rose in astonishment as he peered over the roof’s edge. ‘Well let’s hope that the affair on the first hill does not end up as messy as this.’

  Pavo frowned.

  ‘You have forgotten?’

  ‘I have been distracted,’ Pavo said.

  Saturninus stretched out a hand, past the great grey, twin-level arches of the towering Valens’ Aqueduct, towards the city’s first hill and the Imperial Palace, the rising terraced gardens and halls there at the peninsula tip framed in the banded blue of the winter sky and the waters of the Bosphorus Strait.

  ‘Athanaric’s address,’ Pavo said, a wave of dread overcoming him. How could he have forgotten? The Gothic lord was to speak with Emperor Theodosius and his Sacrum Consistorium today. The purpose of the fallen king’s visit would be revealed at last. He, as Athanaric’s escort leader, had been invited to attend – a rare honour for a minor officer. He glanced down at his grubby garb – not a speck of imperial might about him, even his footwear – a pair of ragged leather slippers – letting him down. There wasn’t time to rush back to the northern edge of the city and the Neorion barracks where the Claudia were housed – where his crimson cloak, best parade tunic and good soldier boots lay.

  ‘We can go by the guard chambers at the foot of the first hill,’ Saturninus laughed. ‘They will have something for you to wear.’

  Pavo did not laugh in reply, his attentions instead lingering on the streets between here and the first hill, his hand patting for his absent swordbelt.

  ‘Ah, I forget sometimes about your… situation,’ Saturninus said quietly.

  Pavo tilted his head a little to one side in acknowledgement. The Magister Militum was the only man outwith the Claudia who knew of the price on Pavo’s head.

  ‘You think Gratian’s men are here?’ Saturninus continued, his eyes narrowing.

  Pavo glanced back into the masses in the tavern and on the streets, then sighed. ‘I sense them everywhere: in my barracks, on every street corner, in every shadow. But I have seen nothing of them since they slew some of my men up at the Danubius camp…. far, far from here.’ He shook his head. ‘I think I can manage a walk from here to the first hill,’ he said with an unconvincing laugh.

  ‘Regardless, I have two of my best men waiting down there to escort me,’ Saturninus assured him. ‘We will be safe.’

  The two tavern attendants lifted the corpse away, while the well-meaning third man who had helped accepted the tavern keeper’s gratitude. He nodded along with each word of praise, and looked the tavern keeper in the eye, but as he had been well-trained to, he focused all his attentions on the edges of his vision. Up there, the Claudia Tribunus had watched it all. Clever, he thought. He took the few coins the tavern keeper offered as reward, then turned to leave. The other eleven of his men waited in an alley nearby.

  ‘He suspects we’re here,’ Vitalianus told his charges, smoothing back his grey-flashed hair. ‘He was born in this city, so he knows its secrets well. This will not be as simple as we thought.’

  ‘I noticed him a few moments before you did,’ said a rodent-faced one. he patted the bulge in the side of his cloak. ‘I could have loosed an arrow and taken him in the throat.’

  Vitalianus shook his head with a sly half-smile. ‘Then you would have killed him, and Emperor Gratian would have had you boiled alive.’

  Rodent-face dropped his gaze in shame. ‘I forgot, Optio Speculatorum. Forgive me.’

  Vitalianus held up and wagged one finger – encrusted with a gold ring bearing a staring eye emblem – and recited the mantra of their orders. ‘Find him. Seize him. Bring him to Emperor Gratian. Nothing we could do to him might match the levels of pain he will experience there.’

  ‘Find him. Seize him. Bring him to Emperor Gratian...’ they recited in a low, congruent drawl.

  Pavo harrumphed as he pulled the overly-small tunic on. It was fine enough for an audience with the emperor – the white garment emblazoned with vivid red clavii arrows on the shoulders, pointing to the waist, and matching red cuffs. The trousers were grey and made of fine wool. But by all the gods, the clothes were itchy! He clasped a handful of the tunic near the collar and held it up to his nose, sniffing. Year-old sweat and a smell he could only describe as ‘brothel’. ‘The last guard who wore this… what exactly was he doing: Rolling in bed with a flea-ridden whore?’

  The palace guardsman who had let them into the changing area shrugged, his expression hard to judge behind the riveted iron helm and noseguard he wore. ‘Clarus? Well, he was… he was… actually, it’s best you don’t know what he was doing. Suffice to say he’s still bedridden and using the cream the medicus gave him. he applies it three times a day to the worst of the sores. Anyway, the main thing is you don’t look like a beggar anymore.’

  Pavo shot the man a semi-sour look and sat on a stool to pull on and lace a pair of boots. They stank of goat’s cheese, but he didn’t bother raising the matter. Standing, swooshing on a pale cloak and stepping out of the stony chamber and into the noon light, he and Saturninus then strode a short way along the foot of the palace complex’s ornate walls, vaulted and tiled along their tops – with no battlements. They trod uphill to the towering arch of the Chalke Gate – the stonework clad in bronze plates etched with scenes of battle and gods. They passed inside, under the watchful gaze of the gatehouse sentries, to enter the green and groomed gardens, dotted with statues of emperors past, gurgling marble fountains and marble reliefs set into the walls. The path to the Chalke hall wound past beds of honey-gold winter mimosa and pink cyclamen, spicing the air with a delicate fragrance. There were orchards of cherry and apple trees too – islands of bucolic serenity in the heart of this great marble city. They came to the Chalke Hall itself – one of the many palace buildings studding the first hill. The wide, blue-veined marble steps were lined either side with golden-scaled, stern-faced Lancearii guardsmen. The central section of the stairs was littered with men of high stations clutching helms underarm, sumptuous cloaks draped down their backs, standing as if they were posing for sculptors while slaves moved amongst them bringing them wine, water and delicious-smelling charred flatbread.

  Bacurius One-hand, Magister Militum of the Army of the Orient and Master of the Palace Cavalry, dominated the space he stood in, glaring at all and sundry, his stump-arm resting across his chest as if the phantom hand was clutching the edge of his brown cloak. His scalp shone through his short brown scrub of hair and his baleful face was streaked with three thick, pink scar welts, as if a lion had raked its claws across his skin, leaving his top lip pulled back a little to reveal his teeth like a man in permanent mid-growl – a look that did the work of a thousand threats. Every so often a low rumble escaped his cage of teeth, just in case anyone was unsure. Bacurius had been shamed
in the defeat at Adrianople but had fought like Mars in the Battle of Sirmium and won back his honour. None dared question him anymore, though Pavo was certain the man tormented himself still, inside. The nightmarish general caught Pavo’s eye and gave a nod, which Pavo returned.

  Bishop Ancholius was not old, but he was afflicted with a stoop and premature baldness – though Pavo felt a distinct unease in the man’s presence, the white, holy robes evoking memories of his brush with the long-dead Bishop Evagrius.

  Then there was Modares, dripping with gleaming ringmail, his helm and white plume held underarm and his long amber hair tied in a tail, his moustache neatly waxed and groomed, his sunken cheeks and heavy brow giving him a permanent look of an angry corpse. He made to take a swig of wine from his cup, then realised it was empty, his face crumpling further in annoyance.

  Pavo chuckled. There had been a time when he wouldn’t have dared laugh in the presence of this man, let alone at him, but times had changed. Modares was a good man. A friend, even.

  Modares spotted Pavo and made a face when he realised he was a source of amusement. ‘I wouldn’t be the one laughing if I were you,’ he said, ‘isn’t that Clarus’ tunic and trousers?’

  A few guards and officers sidestepped away from Pavo on hearing this. Pavo sighed.

  He noticed then a fellow tending to the pear orchard off to one side of the Chalke steps. He recognised the man but couldn’t think from where. The man’s dark hair hung in coils on his forehead as he worked. He stopped for a moment to sweep the locks back, revealing grey flashes at the temples. His eyes met Pavo’s, and he smiled amiably. Pavo smiled back faintly: who is that?

  ‘Tribunus!’ A hand clapped down on his shoulder from behind. He swivelled on his heel in what was almost a battle-poise. There stood Comes Eriulf, his sharp, fox-like face twisting with a smile. Built like an athlete and tall as a turret, he wore his golden hair in a knot at the crown, stiffened and held in place with pine resin just as he had done in his days north of the Danubius as a Gothic tribesman. With a steel cuirass over a white tunic and Roman boots, it was as if someone had transplanted a Goth’s head onto a Roman officer’s body. Without a further thought, he and Pavo embraced. It was an embrace the likes of which he had only ever shared with his closest – Sura, Father, Felicia. Never Gallus, but that was not the legendary tribunus’ way. And another… Runa, Eriulf’s sister.

  As they parted from their embrace both men saw in each other’s eyes their shared heartache for the girl: Eriulf for his sister, Pavo for his lover. She had been as close to him as Felicia before her… and it had ended for her in the same way – on the end of a blade. But Runa’s death had been so much bleaker. Amongst the Goths brought into the empire from Eriulf’s tribal homelands, she had been the ringleader of the shadowy group known as the ‘Vesi’, and she had died during an attempt to slay Emperor Theodosius. Eriulf was her brother and her killer, slaying her before she could strike Theodosius, unaware of her identity until the deed was done. It was a strange bond Pavo and Eriulf now had – bridged on Runa’s memory – but one Pavo treasured. He prayed once more, inwardly, as often he did, that he would never have to impart the one remaining secret that Runa had kept from her brother – that she had slain their father, Arimer. He shook the thought from his head and looked Eriulf up and down, then glanced over to Modares, now berating a slave for not topping up his wine cup promptly enough. These two Goths had only a few years ago been the enemies of the empire, and now they were leaders of what army it still had.

  ‘We haven’t spoken since the triumph after Sirmium,’ Eriulf continued. ‘You should have sought me out before now. I am an officer now, like you – Comes of the Thraciana Auxiliaries.’ He shook his head in mock-disdain. ‘Damned Goths, the lot of them,’ he winked and rumbled in low, confident laughter. ‘I have a villa on the third hill. I have wine. Lots of wine. We could pickle our minds and talk of the past,’ he laughed again, shaking Pavo.

  ‘I…’ Pavo started. I do not want to be near those I love. Not now, not while they are here, searching for me. ‘The mission to the river took a lot of planning and we barely had a moment before we left. And since we returned,’ he shook his head and blew air through his lips.

  ‘Back you came again, with another unruly Goth in tow,’ Eriulf said with a steely-edged grin. He lowered his voice. ‘Do you know why he is here?’

  Pavo shook his head. ‘No. Nor does anyone, it seems.’

  ‘I have heard simpering fools in this palace ward bleating about him “finding God”,’ said Modares, shooting a cold look at Bishop Ancholius, ‘and coming here to make peace and set aside his arms forever. But unless my uncle has taken a blow to the head, then I’d wager that there is something in this for him other than a pat on the head from a bishop.’

  ‘I saw them last night,’ said Saturninus quietly. ‘The emperor and Athanaric. They stood together in the lamplight, moving wooden pieces across a map.’

  ‘That is not the conversation of a man who has come to submit to God,’ said Eriulf.

  Trumpets cut through the air and all on the Chalke Hall’s steps and the garden ground before it turned to see a herald, beckoning all inside. ‘Emperor Theodosius will receive you now.’

  Inside the great hall, incense smoke hung like ribbons, lending a mystical haze to the scene of skipping fawns on the tessellated floor and the montage of griffins and satyrs painted on the high arched ceiling. Silver chandeliers hung from those heights, candles blinking and guttering in the gentle breeze that drifted through the grand chamber. A vast table dominated the floorspace, festooned with a bounteous feast: roast hare, pheasant, shellfish, berries, yoghurt, bread and cheese, enough wine to drown a titan and honey cakes in high piles – more food than the rich men who would gather in here could possibly need and enough to feed hundreds of the hungry in the city streets. The officers and generals took their places, Pavo sitting beside Eriulf, Saturninus, Modares and Bacurius. The shuffling and coughing faded, and then the Lancearii hauled open the double doors at one end of the hall. Emperor Theodosius entered first, wearing a pale golden robe and his diadem, studded with emerald, pearl and sapphire, the gems sparkling like his wide almond eyes, calm and imperious. The emperor of ice and fire, some called him, so contrasting were his moods. Today, it seemed, the ice held sway. Certainly, he did not see fit to acknowledge the presence of his audience. Beside him came Athanaric, dressed in a green robe and a leather circlet holding back his hair. His wart-ridden, sagging face remained impassive as he drew his gaze across all at the table.

  Pavo sank his teeth into a pheasant leg. After the trek to the river and back, eating hard tack and Libo’s questionable hare stews – rumour was he classed rats as ‘short-eared hares’ – and even since returning to the city, he had not enjoyed fare as fine as this. He threw down a cup of well-watered wine, but even that thin mixture warmed his blood and helped him to relax a fraction. Thoughts of the Speculatores and of Gratian faded blessedly.

  When the meal was finished, Emperor Theodosius stood, still aloof and calm. All fell silent. ‘A fresh hope has arisen in these troubled times. While our legions are… improving and… growing,’ he said, somehow managing to keep a straight face, ‘we have known for some time that if we are to play our part in ending the threat of Fritigern’s horde in these lands, if we are not simply to sit by and wait for our Western brothers to solve this crisis, then we must make alliances and build bridges. Athanaric, Lord of the Carpates, offers just such a proposition.’ He gestured towards the Gothic lord, then sat.

  Athanaric clutched the table edge and rose with a look of triumph. Pavo saw that the flame of ambition was most definitely still burning in there. He lifted a horn from his belt. It was an odd thing. A ram’s horn fashioned for use in battle, to blow low, moaning notes of war. Yet it had been sealed at one end where the trumpeter would blow. ‘The northlands are a sepulchre: the woods and meadows strewn with the skeletons of my kind, riddled with Hun arrows. Even the Carpates heights are no longe
r safe,’ he said, tilting his head as if to evoke pity. ‘Here too in imperial lands, Romans lie unburied, and Fritigern rides rampant across your soil… like the King of Thracia and Macedonia.’

  Pavo leaned forward, his skin creeping. He looked sideways to Saturninus, who rubbed at his bare forearms as if feeling a chill.

  A murmur arose around the hall.

  ‘Who does he bloody well think he is?’ said one officer.

  ‘Filthy Goth,’ another rumbled. Modares, sitting near him, shot him one look that was enough to hush him.

  ‘Silence!’ Bishop Ancholius snarled, slamming a palm down onto the table, his stoop miraculously vanishing as he sat tall like a viper uncoiling. ‘Your emperor, God’s representative, has willed this. And so you will listen.’

  Modares sat back with a low rumble of unease, eyeing Athanaric with a hard look. ‘You tell us of yesterday and today, Uncle. Speak plainly, of the future, of your reason for being here.’

  Athanaric stared at his nephew with a wintry look, then lifted the horn like an exhibit. ‘With this horn, I can summon nearly seven thousand men across the river. With this horn, I can nearly double the forces stationed in these parts. With this horn, I can offer you Romans a chance to win back your own lands for yourselves.’