He whipped the blade around in a figure of eight, then pointed it at Pavo, stepping forward like a dancer.
Hiss, Pavo drew his spatha in full, hips swaying as he gauged the lead Speculatore’s approach. The man was as skilful as any swordsman he had ever faced, he was fresh, and moreover he was armed with a weapon that required only one slight nick.
Like a long jumper on a run-up, Vitalianus streaked forward, his blade shooting for Pavo’s waist. Pavo grabbed his spatha two-handed and held it blade down to block. The poisoned tip skated off his own sword and cut the hip of his tunic as both spun away. He and the Optio Speculatorum shot a wide-eyed look at the exposed skin – no blood. Both men paced along the cliff’s edge – the perilous drop as good as a shield protecting that flank. The now-driving rain cast Vitalianus’ dark hair up like writhing asps. He hissed like a snake, eyes wide, face mocking, then dropped like a stone to roll past Pavo’s legs, the blade licking out. Pavo leapt over the silvery swipe, landing on one foot, the other meeting the fresh air of the drop. He swayed and stooped, grabbing a tussock of grass to balance, then levered himself away from the precipice. No sooner had he swung to face the agent than he saw Vitalianus coming for him again, sword lancing for his chest. Pavo let his legs slacken and tilted back, the sword thrust scoring past his breast. But Vitalianus threw his sword hilt back as he passed, the hilt cracking into Pavo’s jaw. White sparks sped across his eyes, the thunder rumbled overhead, and the watching Speculatores and Alani laughed in appreciation. His mouth filled with coppery blood, droplets of which spilled from his lips and streaked down his chin, spotting on his tunic.
‘There you go – made him look a little more soldierly now,’ Vitalianus quipped, extending his arms to the sentries and flicking his hands up like a gladiator rousing a crowd.
Pavo knew from bitter experience that it would take a short time for the fog of such a heady blow to clear. He saw Vitalianus lining up for another attack, knew he was vulnerable, knew he had to think fast.
Vitalianus plunged towards him, and the sword struck past his shoulder, shearing the tunic seam.
Pavo roared and fell, clutching his shoulder with his sword hand, his own spatha falling from his fingers as he did so.
A cheer rose from Gratian and the watching six.
Pavo rose to his knees, eyes growing wide as he eased his hand from the shoulder wound. Blood pumped between his fingers. A deep cut. Vitalianus paced around him, the poison blade resting on his shoulder like a soldier who knows his work is done. Gratian’s eyes swelled like moons, his mouth dropping open like a child in wonder. ‘How long does it take before it starts wor-’
Pavo screamed, head shooting back, shoulder blades drawing together. ‘Mithras, what is this?’ he rasped to the foul skies. ‘It bu…burns like molten st-steel.’ Another sharp spasm and he fell to his side, legs kicking out, back arching.
Vitalianus sank to his haunches bedside Pavo. ‘You see, Tribunus, I have learned much in tracking you: the way you Eastern legionaries think, move and act.’ He let the poisoned sword slide from his shoulder, the tip hovering near Pavo’s neck – or as close as it could get to his thrashing form. ‘Now, before your true emperor, beg me… beg me for your death.’
Gratian crept a little closer, shaking with anticipatory glee. ‘Yes, Tribunus, die… begging…’
Pavo, body in turn clenching like a foetus then arching backwards, hands clawing at his face, struggled for some morsel of control. When he found it, it was sudden and firmer than any watching had expected. Like a striking cobra, he shot out a foot, kicking Vitalianus on the sword hand. With a crack of bones, the poisoned blade fell from the Speculator’s grasp, and Pavo caught it by the hilt. In a flash of lightning, Pavo rose and brought the sword streaking up across Vitalianus’ body from thigh to opposite shoulder, cutting through his black shell of armour. The Speculator glared at Pavo, then staggered back a step, staring down at the long wound in the flickering light. From the slashed armour, blood trickled. It was only skin deep… yet the blade had been almost cleaned of its poison by the blow.
‘You see, Speculatore,’ Pavo hissed, ‘In my time as a legionary, I have come to learn the way your brethren operate: the skills, the dedication, the winter-cold ruthless waste that is in each of your hearts… the unspoiled belief that you are invincible.’ He brushed at his cut shoulder as if brushing dust from a long-unworn garment, sending a light spray of his own blood at Vitalianus. ‘I cut myself with my own sword as I fell, made you believe it was you who had wounded me. It was the last mistake you’ll ever make.’
Vitalianus’ eyes darted over Pavo’s face, then his handsome mien drained of blood, and he seemed to age a decade on the spot, a rising terror welling in his eyes and his mouth stretching open like a chasm. ‘Ah… ah-ah… argh!’ he shrieked, hands clamping over the long torso wound like a man trying to fasten a shirt in great haste. His head jerked one way and then the other and he sank to his knees, panting. His next sound was an animal howl as he fell onto his back, hands clawing at his wound, fingers squelching as he searched within, widening and ripping the cut now like a man trying to tear his shirt off. Pavo realised just how weak his own impression of the poison had been upon seeing it for real now. Vitalianus’ screams mixed in with the whistling wind and the drilling rain as he kicked himself across the ground, thrashed and convulsed, wrenching at his hair, digging his fingers into his eyes until blood streaked down his cheeks. ‘Make it end. One of you, make it end!’ he wept.
Gratian, having risen from his haunches, now backed away. He looked to the four watching Speculatores and the two Alani. ‘Forget about him,’ he snapped. ‘Bring me the tribunus’ head.’
Pavo fell into a warrior’s pose again, seeing the six-pronged death sentence coming for him. Thunder pealed directly overhead and lightning flashed as the six rose to action. But in that stark white light, other shapes arose, behind the two Speculatores atop each wagon. Silhouettes, leaping up in the rain. The two Speculatores jerked forwards, bursts of blood coming from their chests and puffing from their hooded faces. They crumpled with wet slaps up there, and their dark killers pounced down into the cage of wagons and tents. Four men, dressed in simple tunics and boots and armed with spears. No armour or markings. Romans? Goths? Then Pavo saw how each sported a shaven head and a hard, distant look in their eyes. ‘For God… for the Empire!’ they snarled. Theodosius’ Inquisitors. The emperor had not forsaken him entirely. Or perhaps this was purely Saturninus doing? He remembered the Magister Militum’s pledge.
Know that whatever happens, however invincible Gratian seems, Pavo, you have allies.
They leapt and attacked like gladiators, locking the two Alani and remaining two Speculatores in combat. Pavo and Gratian found themselves face to face by the cliff’s edge. ‘Speculatores!’ he roared over the cage of tents and wagons, his head twitching like a gull’s. ‘I need more men! Heruli! Tribunus Lanzo!’
Nothing.
‘So we come to it, at last,’ Pavo rumbled. ‘No agents and no armies to do your bidding. You and your blade, me and mine.’
Gratian’s lips twitched as he drew his jewelled spatha. ‘I’ll have you know I’m a champion swordsman,’ he said, his silky voice now ragged.
‘Then your head will be some prize,’ Pavo said calmly.
Gratian seemed entranced for a moment, staring at Pavo, soaked, dark, spatha hanging by his side. ‘You?’ he whispered. ‘You are the moor-creature from my dreams?’
Pavo’s eyes narrowed, confused. ‘I am from your blackest nightmares, you bastard,’ he growled then lunged forth.
Gratian’s claims of deft skill with the blade were true – for once. He expertly blocked and parried Pavo’s rage-fuelled attack, expending little energy in doing so. In riposte, he spun from Pavo’s final strike and cut down across his back, scoring tunic and flesh. The tunic now hung in ribbons, blood pattering from Pavo in runnels.
‘No,’ Gratian said, his smooth voice returning, ‘it’s not you, is it? You ar
e weak and lacking skill, not what I thought you were.’
‘Nor are you what I or any other Roman believed you were,’ Pavo snarled. ‘You are no leader, no emperor. Your God right now kindles a bed of fire in which you will lie for eternity.’
Gratian’s cheek twitched now as they circled. Nearby, Vitalianus had managed to crawl across the clifftop on his belly – shrieking and shuddering all the way – to a small and sharp boulder near the edge. Frantically, the Optio Speculatorum grabbed the sides of the boulder, stared at it, then smashed his forehead down upon it, moaning like an animal as his skull cracked and his handsome face began to cave in. Crack, crunch, crack, on and on he went, pulverising his head in an effort to die and escape the fire poison.
Behind Gratian, one of the two Speculatores’ heads bounced past, tongue extended in a cut-short death cry, the empty hood billowing on the swaying body, which crashed to one side like a felled tree. At the same time, an Inquisitor slumped to his knees, a gaping cut across his belly through which his guts escaped in fits and starts.
Gratian feinted left, Pavo jerked to avoid the false move and Gratian laughed. ‘You mocked me for exiting the battle sharply, yet it is I who is stronger for it today.’
‘The crowned crow who cries about his victory before it has arrived,’ Pavo snapped back, but the words came in wet rasps as blood continued to trickle from his wounds. He had seen men die in battle from such light cuts that went untended for too long.
Gratian swirled his sword one handed then lunged again, the tip aimed for Pavo’s thigh. It sliced the flesh. Pavo rocked to one side, sending a heavy blow into Gratian’s exposed flank. It would have been a killing strike, were it not for the solid shell of bronze the emperor wore. ‘It will be your head next time,’ he spat.
Gratian laughed. ‘You are finished, Tribunus,’ he said, just as another Inquisitor fell, speared from shoulder through to his back by one of the Alani. The last two of Theodosius’ men pushed up, back to back to take on Gratian’s three. From a short way away, Pavo heard a wet splash and saw Vitalianus’ body jolt one last time, as his head – a mess of dark, blood-wet hair – disintegrated like a punctured waterskin, a pinkish flotsam of brains and fluids stealing over the boulder like a jellyfish. ‘Another man will rise to lead my Speculatores,’ Gratian said, ‘and I will continue as the venerated and senior emperor. Your death will mean nothing. You will be forgotten.’
An Alani warrior fell, screaming, his leg chopped off at the shin. Now it was two on two, but the last Speculator was swift to run another of Theodosius’ picked men through the groin.
The momentary distraction was enough to allow Gratian to strike. He lashed his sword left, right and then straight forward like a lizard’s tongue. Pavo parried, each block weaker than the last. Each sending him a step or two towards the cliff edge.
‘Can you feel the blood draining from your limbs? How tired and weak you must be,’ Gratian said as he took a step back, gearing up for another attack. Pavo felt the crunch of wet scree at his heels again, at the now-dark precipice. He flashed a look over his shoulder, seeing the white of the foaming peaks and spray far below and not much else. When he turned back, Gratian’s sword was arcing round for him, lightning-fast. With a clang, the blade struck against the torque, the golden ring saving Pavo’s life. But his strength was gone, he realised, his sword-hand trembling with fatigue and cold from blood loss. Against his every crumb of will and desire, his legs buckled and he fell to his knees, head swaying. Gratian squared up to come at him once more. ‘Time to cleave your skull, Tribunus,’ he thundered, coming at Pavo, sword held two-handed overhead. A luxury he could afford, seeing Pavo had no strength left to defend himself.
Pavo looked up as the emperor’s sword chopped down for the vertex of his unprotected skull. Lightning shuddered, and Pavo whispered a final oath of sorrow and regret. He barely saw the hulking form of the last Inquisitor surging over, blood-soaked like him. The giant, shaven-headed Inquisitor’s meaty leg struck out and kicked Pavo in the chest, knocking the wind from him, booting him out over the void.
As he fell, the wind and rain roared around him. He saw his arms and legs outstretched in futility towards the vanishing cliff edge, saw the Inquisitor’s body cleaved in the space where Pavo’s head had been a moment ago. The man had tried to save him, condemning himself to death in the process, and affording Pavo just the few extra heartbeats of this fall as reward. Gratian stepped over to stare down at Pavo’s plunge. But Pavo saw nothing of the Western Emperor and none of this wretched cliff anymore. Instead, he saw himself at the end of the blood road, his scourged hand sweeping away the dust from that final tombstone… saw his own name etched there. He understood now, and the realisation cast him into the lost past. He saw himself sitting around a campfire with the legends of the Claudia, clacking together cups of wine, sharpening swords and singing songs of home. In the background, where the firelight faded to black, Gallus stood like an iron eagle, staring through the mists of time, through the ether of imagination, right at Pavo, like a father to a lost son.
And with a roar of water upon rocks, there was blackness.
Epilogue
The fisherman leaned from the edge of his skiff, holding a chisel to the hull of his tub of a boat and hammering the palm of his free hand against the hilt. Plop, went another barnacle into the now-calm sea. Dawn cast a pale pink light across the gentle surface as his crewmates hauled at nets. The brine-soaked ropes were teeming with grey turbot and gleaming bluefish. A handsome catch that would fetch a good price at the coastal markets, the fisherman mused.
‘Throw it back, all of it,’ a low voice demanded.
The fisherman swung round to the hooded figure standing near the prow. ‘Again? Come on, we’ve been out here for hours and we’ve not found what you’re looking for.’
‘And you’ll stay out here until we do,’ the figure said, his dark cloak seeming to swallow up even the light of the rising sun.
They pulled in another two hauls and threw both back. When the third came in, the crew snatched in breaths of shock, seeing the loose, pale arm that flopped free of the net. ‘Another body from the battle,’ the fisherman shouted up to the dark one. The hooded stranger sank to his haunches like a carrion crow. ‘Let me see the face.’
The fisherman waded through the stinking catch of flipping, panicked fish, pulling and pushing them out of the way. Gradually, the body was unveiled. Black-haired, staring with water-ruined eyes, face bloated with brine. A black, narrow sword wound in his chest spoke of his death in the recent battle. They had found scores of such corpses.
‘It’s not him. Continue.’
The fisherman was minded to complain again, but he sensed a great anger in the dark one, and so he said nothing.
Dawn rose in full like a freshly-fed fire. The cliffs at Dionysopolis gleamed. Up there, the parley tents gleamed white like teeth, the banners floating in the gentle breeze. The fisherman was about to give the order to turn the boat back for another sweep, when he saw the forlorn statue of Dionysus, and a faint, pale corpse washed up against it, half resting on a water-worn shelf near the god’s waist.
The dark one saw it too, leaping down from the prow and creeping along the skiff’s rail. The boat drew in. The crew hooked the body with poles and dragged it aboard. It fell like a wet sponge. The dead man had the look of eagles, with a sharp aquiline nose and black hair hanging in damp knots. A ruined and bloodied tunic dangled from his bruised body… and then he groaned.
The dark one leapt down from the rail like a wolf.
Pavo felt a coldness within, surging up, up…
He sat bolt upright and vomited icy brine in torrents. In those same moments, he opened his eyes, aching in the sudden light, blinded to all except the black shape surging across this rocking, stinking boat towards him. Coming for him like an arrow! His entire body jolted in fright, but could do no more.
The dark figure fell into a crouch before him and drew down his hood.
‘Mithr
as walks with us,’ Sura said, seizing Pavo in a brother’s embrace. Pavo heard his friend weeping gently. For a moment, he wondered if this cold, fishy, swaying place was Elysium. Then, an all-too worldly quack of a fisherman breaking wind and his downwind crewmates cursing about the stench confirmed he was in fact at sea on the Pontus Euxinus.
‘Sura? How?’
‘They found me like this too,’ Sura explained.
‘They?’
‘The marines on one of the Classis Moesica galleys roped me in. One man in two who fell from those cliffs died on the rocks like a dropped egg, and most of the others drowned,’ he whispered, ‘but we were chosen to live for a reason.’
‘I spent two days unconscious at a small shore cove where they are treating the wounded. On the day of the talks I climbed the cliff path towards the camps. I found Saturninus up there, just as the thunderstorm began. He was frantic, telling me that Gratian had ridden into camp unexpectedly, and had made directly for the cliff’s edge where you were. He sent Theodosius’ Inquisitors into that trap to save you, and when it seemed you had fallen, he listened to me when I pleaded with him to let me search for you in the waters just in case. We’ve searched all night.’
Pavo twisted where he sat, glaring up at the cliffs. ‘Gratian thinks I’m dead?’
‘Last night, before I paid the men on this skiff, I watched him drinking wine and crowing about your death in camp.’
Pavo’s thoughts spun like a falling sycamore seed. ‘Then I am a shade?’
‘In a way,’ Sura mused.
‘Then we can return to land, steal through the camp to Gratian’s tent and-’ he winced as he tried to rise, a dozen cuts and bruises screaming in protest.
The Blood Road (Legionary 7): Legionary, no. 7 Page 33
