Pavo shot his oldest friend – a man with dubious sanity – a look, and saw the manic sparkle in his primus pilus’ eyes.
‘But damn the orders,’ Sura hissed. ‘If we wait, those bastards will take the wharf. If we wait, we and the others may not even be able to land.’
Reassured, Pavo filled his lungs. ‘Claudia!’ he roared. A deep rattle of iron sounded behind him. Many booted feet were planted on the ship’s rail like his as the Fortuna sped onwards. The galley shuddered as it ground onto the shingle. The sea wind dropped like a stone, a fierce heat descending in its place. ‘At them!’
Chapter 7
Pavo splashed down into the knee-high waters, his body juddering with the impact, the salt-tang mixing with the sweat and dust odours of the city. Opis landed next to him, the legion standard gripped two-handed. Sura, Pulcher, Libo, all of them leapt down. With a tumult of roars, churning water, clanking of armour and shields, they came together in a hasty line facing the oncoming Gothic band, Opis hoisting the standard high so the ruby bull banner caught the scorching hot breeze. The sand threw up the glare of the sun as the Goths slowed for a moment, stunned… then they exploded in a battle-scream, surging for the Claudia cohort in a mass of swishing, high battle-knots, chests encased in mail, scale and dark red leather, bristling with longswords, spears, axes and bows.
‘Shields, shields!’ Pavo demanded, meeting the bloodshot eyes of the warband’s reiks, the man’s face pocked with plague scars and his beard encrusted with Roman blood as he made directly for Pavo.
Clack went the Claudia’s red shields, held tight and overlapping. Pavo braced both legs for the impact. At the last moment, he opened his shield like a door, inviting a killing blow to his gut. The reiks’ face lit up and he stabbed his longsword forward for the easy kill. Pavo waited until the blade tip was a hand’s width from his breast, then jerked his shield closed again, batting the sword strike wide, then lunging forward and bringing his spear down over the rim of the shield and into the over-eager reiks’ collarbone, deep into his chest. The man died in disbelief, sinking to his knees, his beard now drenched in his own blood. Pavo pulled his spear free with a horrible sucking noise and with a mass of barely-identifiable bloody tissue snagged on it, the mess raining blood and body fluids down on him and the men around him. A longsword clanged against his helm, almost knocking him out cold. He staggered, a shower of light flashing through his head and an intense ringing in his ears. For a moment, there was chaos: colossal pressure from the warband, pushing, stabbing, sand puffing up, blood-mizzle wafting over them. A Gothic spear streaked across his shield, ripping out the throat of a young recruit to his left, before an axeman brought his ferocious and heavy weapon cutting down through the lad’s spasming body, splitting his skull to the neck. As the recruit fell, the two men behind him were taken by surprise and run through with spears. Goths poured into the chink in the shield wall. Men swayed and stumbled, many falling, the order of battle disintegrating. Pavo blocked the strike of one foe before him and felt the whoosh of another’s longsword – behind him!
He shot a look over his shoulder to see Sura and Libo locked in battle with a half dozen Goths. The line was irretrievable. Disaster loomed. ‘Break!’ he rasped, slicing the hand from one attacker, then booting another back – the man crashing through and knocking over a knot of others. He looked up to the two wharf towers and the twenty or so archers on the flat roofs of each, already showering a thin but welcome hail of arrows on their attackers. ‘Get to the towers.’
He swung round, bringing his elbow cracking into the jaw of a Goth coming for Libo’s exposed flank, then hurling his spear like a javelin into the breast of another, before booting a cloud of sand up to blind a pair who were running towards him. Numb, he drew his spatha, saw flashes of battles past and of the lost brothers who had fallen in them… and he fought like a lion, blocking and cutting as they backstepped towards the meagre protection of the towers. Chunks of his shield were hewn off, and it seemed like an eternity before he felt the solid flagstones of the wharf under his boots. He glanced back, seeing the tower and the thick wooden door leading inside. It would be frantic, but maybe his men could squeeze in there and on the stairs within, take shelter until more boats landed? The other triremes were closing on the shore now, but the officers aboard were only just shouting orders and organising their men. He saw Rectus, standing with his walking cane at the prow of the beached Fortuna, roaring at the other nine boats like a campidoctor with a bad case of toothache.
His thoughts were torn back to the present when, simultaneously, a Gothic spear tore open his mail shirt on the left flank, cutting through iron, tunic and skin, and another ripped through his tunic hem, the flashing steel and wood passing uncomfortably close to his groin. He scored the chest of one spearman then slit the belly of a second. The foe fell in stages, clutching in futility at the exodus of blue-grey, steaming intestines that leapt from the wound. Before that one had even descended past kneeling, three more Goths leapt over the man, swords and spears drawn back to butcher Pavo. Until the bull-like Centurion Pulcher shoulder-charged one of the three from the side, then despatched the felled foe before he could react. Pavo plunged his sword into the side of a towering blonde warrior, then thrust his head forward to butt the last of the attacking trio – the fin of his intercisa cleaving the man’s forehead. The fellow seemed undaunted by this mortal wound for a time, uttering a ‘raar’ and swishing his sword back for a strike, before his injury caught up with him and his eyes drifted independently and a train of drool spilled from his lips, quickly followed by a thick, black gout of blood from the grievous head wound.
Pavo felt something hard bash against his back. The tower! He threw up his shield to meet a thrown Gothic lance and several more Claudia men did likewise, forming a bastion of shields, protecting this anchor point at the foot of the tower. Missiles clattered onto the shields and the mass of Goths pushed and swarmed at the fragile blockade, swords and axes chomping down on the rims. Pavo slipped within the meagre and precarious shelter of bodies. Sura was already at the tower door, just three paces to his left, shaking the handle madly, Libo booting at the timbers.
‘By the sweat of Mithras’ balls. Why are we not inside yet?’
‘It’s locked. It’s bloody locked!’ Libo roared.
‘We were ordered to lock it and not open it for any reason until the Flavia Felix Tribunus ordered us to do so,’ a pathetic voice shouted down from the archer platform at the top.
Pavo stared up at the cross-eyed ‘marksman’. ‘What?’ he snarled, clutching his cut-open side, warm with blood. ‘Where is the Flavia commander now?’
‘Er, well his head is lying over there in the dust,’ Cross-eyes bleated. ‘The Goths shot it back in from the catapults after they captured him three days ago.’
Pavo opened his mouth to emit the obvious reply in a fiery rage, when a Gothic push sent the pinned shell of Claudia men staggering, crushing them against the base of the tower. The cries of falling Claudia men rang out from the rapidly buckling shield shell.
‘Open. The. Fucking. Door,’ brayed Opis, pointing the legion’s silver eagle up at the archers like an accusing finger with a shaking, musclebound arm.
‘We, we lost the key,’ Cross-eyes moaned. ‘We were throwing it to each other to keep ourselves amused. There was no action here, you see – not until today. Then I threw it too far and it landed in the drink,’ he pointed to the harbour waters. ‘Funny thing is, there is a spare, back in my house in the attic room where I play dice. It’s a nice room when the sun gets to it, but most days it’s a bit-’ his rather less-than-urgent rambling ended when a thrown Gothic axe whumped into his face, sticking there, forehead to chin. He pirouetted and flopped, backwards, over the tower parapet, his lower legs snagging on something and suspending him there like a drape. His tunic floated down to hang at armpit height, the entire relief force treated to the sight of the idiot’s scab and spot-ridden midriff and genitals.
A spear clacked
from the stonework of the tower, just beside Libo’s head, showering all by the door in dust and sparks. ‘The trick is to understand the locking mechanism,’ Sura began. ‘Back in Adrianople, they called me-’
Crunch! A colossal, silvery shape hurtled between Sura and Libo, and the door shredded inwards. Pulcher rolled where he had landed within, then stood, rubbing his shoulder, grinning. ‘They called you a man who owes Pulcher a cauldron of wine,’ he finished Sura’s story for him.
‘Inside!’ Pavo blared, shoving and shepherding his men through the door. Like a sink draining, the battered shell of Claudia men withdrew into the cramped floor of the tower, those first in backing up the stone stairs that crept up in flights towards the top. Pavo, Sura, Pulcher and Opis formed a mini-front, blockading the doorway as the Goths poured for it. Sura’s shield disintegrated first, but a legionary in the rank behind passed his to the primus pilus as a replacement. Through the legs of the front rank, Libo organised a knot of others to jab their spears through the legs of the front-liners, smashing and ripping at Gothic shins and thighs.
‘Watch my balls!’ Pulcher reprimanded Libo, prone between his legs.
‘Ball, singular,’ Libo corrected him, his good eye rolling up. The attackers tossed a few hand axes in over the heads of the tiny front line guarding the door, but they could do no more.
‘Bring the black vase!’ demanded a Goth – draped in stolen Roman scale and wearing a leather helm studded with green gems – to some of his warriors at the rear.
Pavo and Sura shared a look of confusion. ‘The bla-’
The mutual question went unfinished as a smoke-stained clay urn was passed over the many heads of the Goths. A rag hung from its narrow mouth, flickering with an orange flame. Pavo caught the acrid scent of resin in his nostrils. Instantly, he imagined the cramped interior of the tower for what it would be if that pot smashed in here – a blazing pyre. An oak-limbed Goth took the flickering pot and drew it back, his muscled, bare torso rippling, one eye narrowing as he aimed for the gap in the doorway above the legionaries’ heads.
Pavo felt his body flood with a chill, a certainty of death. At just that moment, a plumbata dart whizzed through the air from somewhere off to the side and punched through the clay urn. A clatter of breaking clay rang out, and the Goth and scores more around him were showered in the black, glutinous resin. A moment passed where Pavo’s eyes met those of the would-be fire-thrower, before the man and many more vanished in a molten whoosh, an orange wall of fierce heat that sent Pavo and those at his shoulders staggering, sent even the multitudes of Goths clamouring near the burning ones back too. The men ablaze flailed like living torches, screaming. One rushed in a fire-blind panic for the tower doorway, only for Pulcher to reverse his spear and prod the man away with the butt.
Before any sense of understanding could settle, another shower of weighted legionary darts rained down on the Gothic mass from somewhere nearby. They plunged into necks and burst heads, snapped arms and legs and ruined hundreds of men. An instant later an iron wave of legionaries crashed into them from the direction of the shore. The Claudia Second and Third Cohorts and the Gemina legion – landed at last. They milled and hacked and rolled over the top of the closest Goths, driving the rest towards the sea walls.
‘Outside, come on, help them,’ Pavo bawled, leading an exodus from the wharf tower. The Claudia First Cohort joined the attack, barging the panicked Gothic warbands back with their shields, lancing at those who tried to fight back.
‘Fair winds that brought us here. A little too fair for you and the Fortuna!’ Eriulf said through clenched teeth, squeezing up to fight beside Pavo. His small band of Thraciana Auxiliaries buzzed and swarmed around the edges of the push, their job to loose light javelins on the enemy infantry.
The sight of the man steeled Pavo. ‘But damn, it is good to see you.’
‘They’re flooding inside the city!’ an officer cried.
Pavo and Eriulf looked up, seeing the backtracking Goths indeed spilling through the open gates on the sea walls. The legions piled in after them, surging along the wide, cypress-lined triumphal avenue before emerging onto the city agora – a huge square with a white-marble odeum at the northern end.
At just that moment, the Goths erupted in frantic shouts, seeing the curved seating of the odeum for what it was – a dead end and a corral. Groups peeled left, towards the uphill warren of markets and slums, and more to the right, back onto the triumphal avenue. If they spread out and vanished into the streets, Pavo realised, they would be impossible to finish off and they could sally from hiding places to hamper the defence at the turf wall.
Hooves thundered in answer to his fears. General Bacurius led fifty horsemen at a charge, holding aloft the draco standard himself, the bronze, fanged head moaning and the bright red cloth tail swirling in the wind of his ride. Affixed to the end of his stump arm was a semispatha blade which he held aloft like a steely finger. Like a shepherd and his dogs, they herded the Goths on the left back towards the odeum. The other fifty of the general’s horsemen speared into those on the right, mowing dozens down and chasing the rest back towards the marble theatre too. The Goths reached the lower steps of the odeum, tripping and stumbling as they tried to backstep up, wailing when they saw the high, blank curved wall of marble at the top. No way out. Goths fell in droves, their blood running down the white steps. This clash is over, Pavo snarled within as blood splashed under his boots, yield!
Now the air rustled and horns blew, right behind Pavo. He twisted to see an apparition: in the baking heat, General Modares, mounted and leading the thousand Lancearii on at a run, his face agape in a war cry, and Emperor Theodosius, clad in white steel helm and vest, his silver leather pteruges and his gold-lined cloak flowing in his wake. The Inquisitors ringed the emperor, one carrying the golden Chi-Rho topped labarum standard, the rest clutching their spears two-handed as they built up to a run and Theodosius into a canter, drawing his war-sword. The Roman force threw a colossal barritus of a cry towards the pinned Goths, and the sound trebled in the odeum’s confines. The shout alone was what won the day. The clatter of swords being tossed down filled the air, followed by begging pleas. The horde warriors who had moments ago been cursing Pavo and taunting him with oaths to take his heart were now on their knees. A few were butchered like this before Theodosius’ voice ended it. ‘Enough!’
A strange semi-silence ensued, with the din of the fray at the city’s shore district falling away, but the all-surrounding tumult of the battle for the earth wall still present and if anything, more rabid than before – warped and muffled by the many streets between here and there.
‘General Modares,’ Theodosius cried, ‘you have the Gemina. Bind and watch these prisoners, then take the legion to the coastal end of the turf rampart. Defend the tidal weak spot there.’
Modares’ arm was already in the air in salute, his mouth half-open to rally the Gemina cohorts, when Eriulf shouted instead. ‘The Gemina are too numerous to waste there, Domine. That breach at the shore can be plugged by a few hundred men, and these prisoners – once their wrists are shackled – need only be watched by a score of soldiers. Let me and my auxiliaries do these things. Use the Gemina numbers where they are needed, on the main assault upon the turf wall.’
Theodosius and Modares glared at Eriulf for a moment. Pavo admired his bravery in contradicting the emperor’s words in front of the army at such a heated moment. But he also saw sense in the Comes’ idea, and so did Theodosius. ‘So it shall be. Gemina, Claudia, Lancearii – come through the streets with me. We will exit the city’s main land gate and flood up onto the earth battlements. Take on water as we go, but waste no time. Forwards, for God and for the Empire!’
Pavo threw up a salute at Eriulf, then changed it into a heartfelt gesture of brothers, beating his fist against his heart as they parted. With that, he turned to face the city wards, his most callused veterans leading the Claudia with him, each already sodden red… yet the battle had only just begu
n.
‘Lancearii, march, full step!’ the Lancearii Tribunus bellowed.
‘Gemina, with me!’ Modares bawled, his horse rearing and setting into the city at a trot.
‘Claudia, onwards!’ Pavo cried.
‘Into line,’ Eriulf screamed as the trailing ones of his few hundred ran across the sands of the bay to fill the gap at the shore. A handful stayed back to guard the surrendered horde warriors – holding them at spearpoint near the wharf.
‘But damn, it is good to see fresh men here,’ cried a Flavia Felix centurion from the top of the rampart’s end. The man was caked in red and speckled with sand that had stuck to the dried blood. His plume was solid with battle gore too, in a style almost like Eriulf’s pine resin spiked topknot. There were less than thirty men with the centurion, to watch nearly five hundred paces worth of the turf wall. ‘All others have been called round to the bastion gates,’ the centurion explained. Indeed, there were no other defenders nearby, and it seemed that Fritigern had condensed his siege, bringing the horde together at the mid-section of the turf bastion, near the timber gatehouse. From there, sounds of battle raged, and the deep, worrying crunch of a ram shredding wood sounded like a sickening heartbeat.
‘Well we are here to do as we must,’ Eriulf called back up to the man. ‘Battles can be won in many ways.’
The centurion laughed, turning away with a salute.
Eriulf’s Thraciana Auxiliaries planted their spears and javelins in the sand gap like a palisade and drew their swords. The few hundred were easily more than enough. One hundred would have been sufficient, he realised. More, the tide was stable and, being mid-afternoon, it would be coming in again soon to close this breach. He ordered one hundred to stand, five ranks deep, in the gap, and the other eighty to wait in reserve. The heat of the day was at its fiercest and the white sand blinding, a dry breeze casting a shower of the stuff into their faces.
The Blood Road (Legionary 7): Legionary, no. 7 Page 14
