Gratian’s blood fizzed with anger and his stomach simultaneously turned over at the thought of fighting as his father once had – on foot, front and centre of a line of legionaries. To smash against a wall of enemy blades was the act of a fool. What kind of emperor would take such a risk? The very idea of flashing one’s neck at countless barbarian blades caused him to shudder. Worse, it stoked from the ashes of his last night’s sleep the visions of that dark, stinking creature, coming at him across the bleak moor.
‘Well, Domine?’ Merobaudes goaded.
The dark dream faded and another idea rose in its place. He broke his gaze with the big Frank, and looked over towards his stepbrother, Valentinian, saddled nearby. ‘Or perhaps the lad who bears my father’s name could forge his reputation in the clash? For too long he has been a callow and quiet boy. An embarrassment, some would say. Yet you and your fellow generals continue to support his station as an…’ he paused to laugh incredulously, ‘equal of mine?’
‘You would be surprised by how well he might fare in battle. The boy is a fine swordsman,’ Merobaudes rasped.
‘The whelp won’t even swat a fly,’ Gratian roared with amusement. A cluster of those nearby guffawed in painfully forced laughter.
Merobaudes leaned a little closer. ‘That’s because he is wise and discerning. He will make a fine ruler when… when…’
That’s it, give me the excuse, you big mutt, Gratian broiled inwardly. ‘We’ll go to Thessalonica when I’m ready and not before. Once we arrive, I’ll put the boy on the wretched left of our line. You too, perhaps. It will be a fierce clash, I expect.’
A plume of dust rose rapidly from further along the Via Militaris.
Gratian sat up a little. ‘All of our outriders reported back with you, did they not?’ he said.
Merobaudes nodded.
Now he saw who they were: the black cloaks rapping in their wake, one wearing the silver helm of a general. Vitalianus and one of his grunts. But no Tribunus Pavo? The Western Emperor gave Vitalianus a look that could cut through stone.
‘Domine,’ Vitalianus half-bowed, sliding his helm from his head and slicking his hair back with his free hand. ‘We had to cut short our mission in Constantinople.’
Gratian felt a hot, black runnel of dissatisfaction drip down his heart.
‘The legions stationed in the capital have taken to sea,’ he continued.
Gratian’s blood froze. ‘What?’
‘The skiff!’ the kneeling wretch chirped. ‘It must have reached Constantinople to raise the alarm.’
Vitalianus and Gratian both shot sour looks at the kneeling man. ‘The flotilla is heading south,’ Vitalianus confirmed. ‘Sails billowing, decks awash with legionaries. A relief army, already on its way to Thessalonica.’
Men roared and cheered as the news rippled back down the Western legions like a wave. ‘Theodosius’ army sails to intercept the Goths. The Eastern Emperor might end this war before we even reach the fray!’ one fellow cried jubilantly. Gratian made a note of his face. It would be peeled off tonight by his torturers.
He turned back to see Merobaudes’ ugly mien twitch in something supposed to be a smirk. ‘Now, Domine: to the south… with haste?’
Feathered cirrus clouds streaked the azure morning sky as ten triremes ducked and rose through the foaming, cobalt swell of the Mare Aegaeum. The eyes painted on the bows of each glared southwest, the purple and white sails bulging like the chests of giants and the ropes straining as a strong wind spirited the flotilla on its way.
Pavo crouched on the deck of the trireme known as the Fortuna, salt spray ghosting over him, the intense summer heat stolen away by the chill wind of the voyage. ‘The Goths outnumber the garrison there massively,’ he shouted over the rapping of cloaks and banners, finishing a chalk drawing on the deck’s timbers of a crescent-shaped city hugging a bay, and a series of besieging arrows pointing at the landward side of the place. The men of the Claudia’s First Cohort were crowded around the spot in a cramped circle, those in the centre kneeling, those behind standing and those behind them up on crates and on the ship’s rails to get a view of their tribunus’ advice. ‘The land walls are stout,’ he said, redrawing the semi-circle depicting the city’s defences to make it twice as thick as the other lines on the diagram, ‘but not as strong as Constantinople’s. Worse, the Goths have… somehow… managed to acquire a number of catapults,’ he stopped to look over to Rectus, who had taken the briefing in full on that afternoon the mini-fleet had set out – five days ago.
The medicus, perched on the ship’s rail, balancing on his walking cane, nodded. ‘Roman engineers, apparently. Captured and offered the choice of building thirty onagers or having their balls cooked over a fire, most probably.’
The men of the cohort erupted in a jagged, fearful babble. ‘Onagers? The Goths have thirty stone-throwers? This is a black day,’ one wailed.
‘But here’s the thing,’ Pavo continued, drawing a second semi-circle between the city wall and the besieging arrows, ‘a turf rampart rings the city. An outer wall of sorts. It was built after the Adrianople defeat – to shelter the legions retreating from that disaster,’ he explained, addressing the more recent recruits who had only joined the legion since the Claudia’s encampment at Thessalonica the previous year. ‘It’s high and it has a palisade. We can only hope the Thessalonica garrison has held onto it, for the catapults will not break a turf wall – it is too soft and will absorb the blunt impact of onager rocks. But it is not sheer like stone walls, and it is soft, easy to climb… and Fritigern has the numbers to throw men at it. If the Goths seize that turf rampart and open its gates to allow their artillery through, those stone-throwers will roll inside and crack open the city walls.’
‘It has been five days since the messenger skiff came to Constantinople and five days before that since those fishermen left Thessalonica,’ croaked one legionary. ‘Ten days. The city cannot have held out all this time. The garrison there is small.’
‘Painfully small,’ Pavo agreed. ‘The Flavia Felix alone hold the place. They lost entire centuries at the Battle of Sirmium. Centuries which have yet to be replaced. They number less than seven hundred.’
‘Slaves and workers, traders and tavern-keepers have all taken up what weapons they can to aid the defence,’ Rectus added.
Another legionary added: ‘But the Classis Moesica is there. Many good ships. Marines too.’
Pavo looked to Rectus, whose face lengthened. ‘Skeleton crews, unfortunately. A few hundred marines and no more – and all of them are already at the earth wall, along with the oarsmen. That’s why the fleet remains trapped in the city harbour, because its crews are needed on the ramparts. Aye, the fleet might escape, but it would leave the city defences short and Thessalonica and its grain silos would fall.’
‘But if the defences fall anyway, then the city goes and the silos and the fleet with it,’ said one legionary.
‘The fleet is what Fritigern wants – to escape the approach of the Western legions,’ said another.
‘He will raze the city and kill everyone in his way to get to those ships,’ Centurion Pulcher agreed. ‘Without those boats, the grain shipments will slow to a trickle… the packed wards of Constantinople will know famine within a week. If the capital’s defenders are too weak to stand on the battlements then the Goths might turn upon it next. Thessalonica in ashes while the capital and the other few coastal holdings left in imperial hands are toppled by famine? It cannot happen, can it?’ Pulcher said, his big, evil face paling.
‘The fleet will not fall into Gothic hands,’ Pavo said firmly.
Many iron-helmed heads turned like those of gulls, looking southwest in the direction in which the relief flotilla was headed. A haze hung over the sea there. Throats bulged and a few audible gulps sounded. Pavo rose, walking through the parting circle of his men. He stepped up to the fore of the trireme. The vessel bucked over a high wave, instantly soaking him in freezing brine, but he cared not a bit. The sheer
weight of what was happening in Thessalonica had stolen all thought of his own welfare away. Even his usually acute sea-sickness seemed to be absent.
He came to the Fortuna’s prow and the pole that jutted from the vessel’s front like a guiding finger. A bare-chested trierarchus sat on the pole with one leg crossed for balance, the free leg dangling like a loose rope.
‘How long?’ Pavo asked, grabbing the rail for balance as the ship and the others in the flotilla tilted, tacking round a mountainous arm of headland.
‘Before noon,’ the captain cried back over his shoulder. ‘Poseidon is with us,’ he grinned, pointing a finger up at the groaning sails. As soon as he had said this he automatically glanced across the wide front of the ten-vessel fleet towards Theodosius’ flagship – no grander than any other vessel apart from the golden Chi-Rho emblazoned on the purple and white sail. Word of the emperor’s rapidly growing aggression towards non-Nicenes had spread like a plague. The golden-garbed Lancearii – and the Inquisitors, no doubt – filled the flagship and two more boats. The emperor himself was nowhere to be seen – no doubt sheltering in one of the few covered spots on the galley – but General Modares stood, like Pavo, at the prow of one, his long hair soaked and his gaze fixed on the way ahead. Pavo saw the clustered shields and helms of the men on board the other boats. Two more packed with the ruby shields of his Claudia men – the Second and Third Cohorts. Three more boats held the thousand-strong X Gemina legion, their shields the colour of the sea and their silver scaled vests like a netful of fish. Aboard a final craft sailed Comes Eriulf and his few hundred Thraciana Auxiliaries – javelin marksmen and slingers, many of them Goths like him – along with General Bacurius and a hastily organised one hundred of his Scutarii riders, their horses wearing bags on their heads to spare them the sight of the thrashing waves. It was a hastily-organised force altogether, numbering just under four thousand men. In theory it might be enough to hold a besieged city against more than five times that number. Two palace legions – the Hiberi and the Nervii – remained in Constantinople to guard the capital – just over two thousand soldiers in total under the command of Saturninus.
‘If this relief fails…’ said Sura, coming up next to him. He said no more. He did not need to. The supposed recovery of Thracia was underpinned by the strategy of Gratian’s Western Army falling upon the horde from one side and the Eastern legions assaulting them from the other. Twin, if unbalanced, pincers. If the bulk of the already few Eastern legions perished in this breakneck attempt to save Thessalonica, the balance of the empire’s fate would tilt sharply in favour of the Goths.
A hand clamped onto Pavo’s shoulder. ‘Do you see it?’
Pavo swung back to the prow. The trierarchus’ eyes were wide and unblinking, rivulets of sea spray running down his nose, dripping from the top lip of a manic rictus. Pavo looked along his sinewy arm and saw nothing but mist and haze… and then the haze melted away.
Now he saw the bay of Thessalonica and the twin mountains rising like giants either side. The waters in the bay were shallower and turquoise, calm and sparkling, the sun-bleached city perched on the shore like a natural amphitheatre. For an instant, the place looked entirely untroubled, as if the reports of a siege had been wrong. He saw the beatific palace hill and all its orchards, the natural staircase of travertine wards and warren-like markets, the magnificent, domed rotunda, the great white triumphal arch and the aqueduct picking its way down from Mount Cissus into the city, the swaying palms, and many other marvels he remembered well from his time here. A terrible thought struck him for a moment. What if the assault on the city had been a false report, a deliberately false report. A ruse! What if The Goths were right now actually far north from here and readying to fall upon thinly-defended Constantinople?
His fears were blown away and ignited at once when a fiery streak with a black smoky tail sped low across the sky. The fireball exploded against the faintly-green ring of turf corralling the city on the landward side. Now he saw the mass of ant-like men fighting on those slopes. His eyes picked out the bright banners atop the turf bastion, the flashing of iron, his ears picking up the plaintive wails of Roman horns and the gentle, almost dreamlike chorus of shouting masses and the coming and going of battle.
‘The fight continues. The city still stands,’ Pavo boomed. He heard cries like this rise from the other ships of the relief fleet. ‘The earthen wall too. Thessalonica can be saved.’
The men on the galley exploded in a chorus of shouts, jerking and jostling in eagerness to reach the shores. Pavo planted a foot on the Fortuna’s prow and gazed like an eagle at the city harbour. The Classis Moesica sat motionless on the glassy, pale waters within the three-sided square of a stone walkway jutting from the bay at the centre point of the city. Thirty escort triremes, myriad smaller liburnians holding the precious grain and three huge hexaremes. Dozens of ballistae were mounted on rails and platforms of this trio of mighty vessels, but such strength was agonisingly redundant in this land clash – a jungle of marble and streets standing between the boats and the fray – and the powerful bolt throwers rested, their iron beaks dipped like sleeping raptors.
The Fortuna cut like a knife towards the city’s eastern edge, and from here Pavo could see one end of the turf wall in profile – and the chaos on the outer slopes and the half-ring of death serried on the countryside beyond. Fritigern’s horde stood in thick masses – each a warband under the command of some minor reiks. Every few moments, the low moan of a Gothic horn would send multiple warbands forwards. They sped towards the rampart then lunged at the sloping front, clawing their way up past torn, bent bodies of their kin and of fallen imperial soldiers alike. The Roman defenders at the top – so few, Pavo realised, seeing less than half of the numbers they had hoped for – protected only by a stake palisade, threw javelins, rocks and even pieces of smashed up flagstones and monuments from the city down at the attackers. Goths fell away and tumbled or slid back down the slope, smearing the turf and earth with glistening innards. Legionaries were speared by the attackers and hooked out on the ends of Gothic spears in showers of blood. Pavo struck every sword blow for his distant and beset comrades. Sura whispered curses and oaths of encouragement by his side. At last, the attacking Gothic warbands peeled back, like a breaker gurgling back from a beach, to rejoin the blockade crescent. No sooner had they re-joined the masses, then the Gothic horns groaned again. This time, more warbands spilled forward, but towards different sections of the rampart, and a thick crack and shudder of ropes and wood split the air as a dozen fiery masses streaked up from the Gothic catapults to plunge against the sections not being assaulted by the warbands. Some of the blazing rocks thudded deep into the turf bastion, about halfway up, roaring away there without having caused any real damage before fizzling out into a plume of smoke. But two were well-aimed. The first ploughed through the palisade. Burning shreds of timber, earth and men flew up like water in a pond disturbed by a skimmed pebble as it bounced from the high turf walkway, then on downhill, plunging into the smoke-stained sea of legionary tents and madly-rushing messengers and commanders in the space between the earth bastion and the city walls. The second rock whacked square against the turf wall’s thick timber gates – a deliberately narrow opening. The gates shuddered with a stark crack and bent inwards. Men up on the timber walkway straddling the gates rushed to tip buckets of water down on the burning rock before the gates could catch light. The orb fizzled out, but not before two of the firefighters were shot with Gothic arrows, toppling out silently to crunch onto the ground. The gates remained intact, but a few more such strikes might change that. The enemy horns moaned once more and the warbands pulled back, only for more to roll forwards and assault the newly-broken section of palisade. Worse, Pavo saw a team of Goths straining and pacing forward with great difficulty, hauling a giant and freshly-hewn ram towards the gates.
‘He’s picking the place apart,’ Pavo whispered. ‘They will break the turf wall before the day is out.’
�
�He may not even need to,’ said Sura, ‘look!’
Pavo followed his friend’s outstretched finger, seeing a meadow of long grass outside the eastern end of the turf wall. The stalks swayed and jerked. Something was cutting through the grass towards the point where the defences met the white-sand bay. Pavo stared: the tide was retreating and the waters had drawn a dozen or so strides shy of the rampart’s end. A way in. The defenders up on the bastion were engaged with or watching the main Gothic lines and seemed not to notice this strange movement. Then, a thousand-strong warband rose from the grass and slipped by the bastion end unseen, wet sand and the foam of lapping waves flicking up in their wake.
Those leading the stealthy warband pointed and motioned further along the city shoreline. To the wharf…
‘The fleet,’ Pavo rasped.
Just a few pale-walled square towers stood on the wharf as a means of defence. Up there he saw small knots of archers. They didn’t stand a chance. Even worse, the gates in the low sea walls lay ajar. This warband would have the choice of taking the fleet or slipping inside the city to loot and pillage or to fall upon the defenders on the landward side from the rear.
Pavo shot a look left and right. Their trireme had found a narrow channel of wind and had cut a stadia ahead of the others. The prow was slicing towards the shore between the wharf and the marauding warband. Five hundred men of the Claudia First Cohort. Twice that number of Goths. He tensed his body like a sprinter seeing the glittering silver and green stones through the rapidly thinning shallows. To act or to wait? He glanced at the trierarchus, lips balancing both choices.
‘We should wait. The orders were for a unified landing,’ Sura said, reading his thoughts.
The Blood Road (Legionary 7): Legionary, no. 7 Page 13
