Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4)

by Gordon Doherty

  Gallus sighed, his head falling towards his chest.

  ‘So I brought old Nonus to Lake Benacus on the day they told me to. We sat upon the cliff tops, chatting in the fresh autumnal air, gazing out across the placid waters. We talked of Marcus, of his future on the estate, of Olivia’s hopes and mine for a second child. It was getting on in the afternoon when Nonus issued a weary sigh and beheld me with an odd look I had never seen before. You are supposed to leave me here, are you not? he said. I will never forget his tone – that of a disappointed Father. I tried as best I could to stammer a reply, but he was having none of it. He nodded to the cypress thickets behind us at the cliffs. Go, leave me. The thugs waiting in there will be growing impatient. I tried to explain, but words had never felt so insufficient. I knew the risks involved in speaking out against the Emperor Valentinian, Nonus said. He has reacted as I feared he might . . . and his Speculatores are seldom defied. You know I do not think ill of you for doing as they asked, don’t you? I read the fear in your eyes – it has been there all day. They threatened your family, didn’t they? That’s how they operate. The weather-beaten senator looked at me sorrowfully. ‘I forgive you. I understand. Now do not drag this out: either cast me on the rocks yourself or go, leave me here. You must know what will happen if you do not obey them? Think of your family, Gallus.’

  ‘His words struck me like a wasp’s sting. I had not even held a sword in all my life and here he was, asking me to do something as simple as walk away from him and condemn him to death. It was then that I finally managed to get my words out: I will protect them, Senator, but not at the forfeit of a good friend’s life. A snapping of twigs startled us both then. We turned to see figures emerging from the forest path leading through the cypress trees. Seven red-robed men, faces veiled. The Speculatores had come to execute the senator. One held a tensed garrotte. Nonus stood, lips trembling, backing towards the cliff edge. Be at ease, I whispered in his ear, then I lifted my fingers to my mouth and whistled.’

  ‘The shrill signal brought a pack of Umbrian bandits I had hired hurrying from behind the rock pile nearby. They fell upon the momentarily stunned Speculatores. The Speculatores fought like wolves, slaying many of their ambushers, but the Umbrians numbered nearly forty, and soon the last of the red robes had fallen.’

  ‘What have you done? Nonus beseeched me.’

  ‘Only what I had to, was all I could say in reply.’

  Dexion nodded as he listened intently, then he shuffled as Gallus fell into a lasting silence. ‘A noble choice,’ he said quietly.

  Gallus looked up at him. ‘A fool’s choice! For what did it achieve?’

  Dexion was taken aback, his eyes widening.

  ‘Nonus was right,’ Gallus hissed. ‘Weeks later, I was returning from a market trip to Mediolanum when I saw something up ahead. I slowed the cart, sure my eyes were deceiving me, even as I stared up at the broken, bloodied body of the old senator. He was fixed to the trunk of a spruce tree by the roadside by a bolt hammered through either shoulder, his stomach slit and his guts spilled down his legs. Wolves had gnawed at the entrails and at his limbs. I raced home, caring nothing for the produce and tools that fell from the cart. If they had found Nonus then surely they would have carried out their threat on my family.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dexion said, bowing his head.

  ‘It did not end there. No, they let me return home to find Olivia and Marcus. No harm had come to them; they were well – merely confused by my angst and my panicked story. We fled our home, taking to the road. The Speculatores let me live the life of a brigand for weeks, sleeping and eating on the wagon, always moving, wary of every passer-by. They let the dark parasite that is fear consume me, burrow into my mind. For those weeks I did not sleep, I barely blinked, I jolted at every noise, every movement.’ Gallus stopped, his lips trembling. ‘Finally, I became exhausted from the torment and let my guard down one night. I allowed myself to drain a skin of the venom they call wine and fall asleep instead of standing watch over Olivia and Marcus as they slept by the wagon. They found me that night. They carried out their threat, slew my beloved family and knocked me unconscious. I often wonder if the Speculatores meant to leave me alive so I could see their bodies. I had been consumed by fear for weeks, only to endure an endless plague of shame afterwards.’

  The confession was over. A long silence passed. Gallus felt the weight of his troubles absent for a few precious moments. But gradually, the tightness in his chest returned. It had changed nothing. He looked to Dexion; ‘Now, do you still have a question for me about my intentions?’

  Dexion shook his head. But Gallus knew he was not finished. ‘But had you not stood for your beliefs, Nonus the Senator would have died and his blood would have been on your hands. Yes, your wife and boy might have gone unharmed. But would Olivia have been able to look you in the eye? Would little Marcus shy away from your touch? Would you not have known equal shame whenever you caught sight of your own reflection?’

  ‘Is that supposed to offer me comfort, Primus Pilus?’ Gallus asked, squinting at Dexion.

  Dexion shook his head. ‘Not at all, sir. It is just that . . . sometimes the only thing that can truly destroy a man is himself. Blackness in the mind can suffocate the spirit and ruin a man more than any blade. Sometimes it needs another to show him the folly of letting the blackness win. I just want you to know that I see nothing but nobility in the choice you made.’

  Gallus felt his flinty demeanour fall away at these words. ‘And you are the first to have heard of it. I always thought that if I was ever to share this tale, then it would have been with your brother. I see a lot of my younger self in him, and I think he more than any other understands me. But . . . ’ he sighed, glancing around the cell, thinking of all that separated him from Pavo and the rest of the XI Claudia: thick stone walls, hundreds of miles and imminent execution, ‘ . . . it seems that it is not to be.’

  Silence reigned once more. What more could a man do in his final moments than contemplate his past. Yet I was supposed to face it, he thought bitterly. The Speculatores would never be brought to justice. Olivia and Marcus would go unavenged.

  He picked up a handful of grit from the floor, crumbling it between his fingers. Something hit him then: a smell, an earthy scent that seemed to have tumbled from his memories of the crop fields in the Po Valley. He held his fingers up, seeing that it was not grit but wheat kernels with flakes of chaff falling away. Old fare, he realised, so dry it was surely harvested years ago. A flash of realisation shot through him. He stood, his mind at once alert, his eyes combing the darkness. Then he sunk to all-fours, moving around the floor, running his fingers across the cold stone.

  ‘Sir?’ Dexion said from the blackness.

  ‘Move!’ Gallus hissed, shooing Dexion from where he sat.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘I knew it!’ Gallus growled, finding more wheat then standing, moving around the walls and running his fingers along the mortar. ‘This room was once used to store grain.’

  He sensed Dexion’s confusion. ‘Grain must be kept dry. The only way to do that is . . . ’

  ‘Ventilation,’ Dexion whispered urgently, realising at last. He squatted by Gallus, touching at the section of wall – a square, rough and pitted unlike the smooth blocks of stone around it.

  ‘It’s been filled with rubble and mortar, but it’s loose enough to come away,’ he said, grunting as he tugged at a piece in the corner to pull away a tiny fragment of the mortar.

  ‘But we have no tools, nothing to dig with?’ Dexion sighed. ‘And these fort walls must be several feet thick.’

  Gallus cast him as hard a glare as he could manage – hoping it would cut through the blackness. ‘Then we use our hands!’

  On and on they went. The roar of the Danubius outside did well to disguise the scraping and the tumble of small boulders of rubble from the vent. As pieces of sharp-edged debris came free, they used this to dig and scrape. On and on they went until Ga
llus fell back from the vent, panting, his tunic slick with sweat and layered with clumps of dust. An hour had passed, he was sure, and still they had tunnelled only a half-foot into the vent. Worse, his fear that it might narrow towards the outside seemed to be materialising – if the wall was as thick as they thought then the outer opening of the vent would have narrowed to be too small for them to slide through. He moved back to the vent as Dexion fell away in exhaustion this time. Taking up a piece of slate, Gallus hacked and chipped at the loose mortar. The slate snapped and so he took up the two shards, scraping, gouging, his lean frame working like a machine. Soon the slate was gone, ground to pieces, and still he pulled and gouged at the mortar with his bare fingers, heedless of the nails ripped clear of their beds or the blood running down his forearms. By his side, Dexion worked doggedly too.

  ‘We can do this!’ Gallus snarled. ‘There may be a foot to go but we can do this!’

  ‘But, sir,’ Dexion said, stepping back from the vent.

  Gallus glanced round to see his primus pilus gazing up at the barred opening near the chamber ceiling. The silvery-black of the foggy night had lifted. Now, nascent daylight hovered out there, spilling into the cell and bathing it in a charnel grey. Over the rush of the river, they heard jagged laughter and babbling outside and up above.

  ‘It’s dawn . . . ’ Dexion said, his tone flat, resigned.

  Gallus glowered to the sliver of daylight beyond the bars, then to Dexion, then to the tunnel.

  Birgir flitted down the steps to the stony corridor where Clothar’s prisoners were held, his horn vest clicking as the plates rose and settled with every stride. The place reeked of decay – mainly because of the corpses that languished in the chambers here. He held his breath, then beckoned his two bleary-eyed comrades with him towards the cell at the end.

  They stopped by a cell halfway along, peering through the small grate on the doorway. Inside, the bald noble that had dined with Clothar and the Romans the previous evening lay in the corner, clutching his knees to his chest. The king had thrown the other noble to his hounds, watching with glee as the man had been torn apart. This morning, one of the hounds had been running around with the cur’s red-haired scalp clutched in its jaws. ‘We will bring you bread soon,’ he called through the grate. ‘You will be plump and hale for the dogs tonight.’ He watched long enough to see the noble curl up into a tighter ball and heard the man’s gentle weeping, then laughed and waved his two comrades on to the end of the corridor and the cell there.

  ‘Get back, Roman filth!’ he spat, pushing his face to the grate on this door. ‘Back against the wall!’ His eyes scoured the room in search of them. Once, twice. Nothing? Then his gaze snapped onto the odd, dark shape on the cell’s left-hand wall. A hole . . . a tunnel?

  ‘The bastards have escaped!’ he snarled, his fingers fumbling with the keys, his mind racing with what tortures King Clothar might subject him to for losing these prisoners on his watch. In a blur, he thrust the key in the lock and barged the door open, his two men bundling into the room with him. He hurried over to the narrow hole and climbed in, but stopped, seeing that it only went a few feet into the thick walls. It led nowhere. His spinning thoughts came to a halt upon hearing the strangled half-cries behind him, and the wet rip of steel across flesh. He ducked back from the tunnel and spun round to see his two comrades lying dead on the floor, and the wolfish Roman – who must have been hidden, pressed flat against the wall by the door – rushing for him, stolen axe hefted. He felt only a dull thud and then blackness as the axe blade chopped down on his crown, splicing his head in two.

  ‘Be silent and swift!’ Gallus whispered as he and Dexion stalked through the prison corridor, heads twisting this way and that. He stopped by the door of the cell holding the whimpering man, then pushed the keys lifted from Birgir’s corpse under the door and moved on. They flitted up the winding stone steps and into the open square at the heart of the fort, which was streaked with mist and edged with colonnade. They ducked behind a set of barrels within the shadow of the colonnade, peeking between the gaps. A pair of Quadi were milling by a brazier, cooking a spitted hare over the flames. The main gate was just beyond them. Three of Clothar’s hounds – fierce, black mastiffs – lay asleep nearby, enjoying the heat.

  ‘They’re on watch, just like the men on the westerly road. They will not move,’ Dexion cursed.

  ‘No, they will move,’ Gallus growled, picking up a piece of loose mortar from the flagstones, then hoisting it, ready to throw. Just as he did this, one of the hounds roused. Its eyes were sleepy but its ears had pricked up and its head was turning towards the barrels. Gallus hurled the piece of mortar, watching as it arced across the square, then landed on the brazier, nudging one jutting piece of glowing red-gold kindling. The men never noticed, but the dog did, its head switching to the brazier. The kindling snapped and toppled onto the dog’s rump. The hound’s howl brought Gallus and Dexion’s hands to their ears and shook the fort, and in moments the other dogs had woken. The first dog leapt upon the nearest of the two sentries – its supposed attacker, then the others attacked the second.

  From the walls above, Gallus heard dark laughter from the merciless Quadi sentries up there, no doubt enjoying this impromptu bout of dogs feasting on men. ‘Come on,’ he beckoned Dexion with him. They skirted round the edges of the square, staying in the shade of the colonnade, the fort’s open gate only paces away. They came past the doorway to Clothar’s feasting hall, saw the two leather bags which held their armour and snatched them up, then hurried on and down the darkened slope that ran through the gatehouse and outside into the wet sand and thick mist. Through the fog, they could see the Danubius’ rushing waters but nothing of Singidunum on the southerly banks.

  ‘Slowly,’ Dexion whispered, stopping Gallus from running too far from the shadow of the gateway, pointing up to the guards on the quadriburgium’s four protruding watchtowers. ‘Stay close to the walls until we come round to the boat,’ he motioned, pressing his back to the wall and edging round to the western side.

  They rounded one of the towers and beheld the grim white elm trees with the riven cadaver still dangling from the tops. Gallus peered into the shroud of mist beyond until he saw the outline of the fishing vessel at the waterline, then clasped a hand to Dexion’s shoulder. ‘On my word . . . ’

  But another voice cried out; ‘archers!’

  Gallus and Dexion’s heads shot up – from the tower above, Clothar glowered down on them, his wan skull face reddening with ire. A moment later, a cluster of Quadi archers bent over the wall tops, nocking arrows to their bows.

  ‘Run!’ Gallus bundled Dexion forward.

  Arrows thumped down, quivering in the sand and in the bark of the elm trees. One skimmed Dexion’s neck, sending up a spray of blood. Another tore past Gallus’ thigh. He hobbled on, sure the next arrow would take him, but the hail had stopped, the mist had obscured them from the archers’ sights. Grunting, he and Dexion shoved at the fishing boat. After what felt like an eternity, the craft moved freely in the water. Dexion threw and oar into Gallus’ outstretched hand as if agreeing a tacit plan, then both men leapt into the craft and hauled at the oars, willing the water back, fighting against the current of the great river, desperate for the shore to slip into the mist. The quadriburgium began to fade and was gone, then the elm trees began to grey, then . . . then Clothar loped into view on the sandy shore. ‘Stop them!’ he cried, waving to some unseen warriors behind him.

  Gallus dropped his oar and stood.

  ‘Sir, what are you doing?’ Dexion gasped.

  Gallus ignored him, hoisted the axe stolen from Birgir and hurled it. It flew true and pierced Clothar’s breast, ruining his heart and pinning him to the trunk of the nearest elm. ‘I can’t live with that bastard breathing the same air as me,’ Gallus said, shooting Dexion a wild look, then sitting to take up his oar once more.

  As they slipped into the mist and further upriver, they saw the hounds racing out to the shore, then g
nashing and tearing at Clothar’s twitching and bloodied corpse.

  Next, they heard a war horn wailing. From the shore, jagged shouts rang out and bells rang from the direction of Singidunum’s dock. A splash of oars just beyond the curtain of mist sounded, followed by another and another, coming after them.

  Gallus dropped and hoisted his oar again, then fixed Dexion with an iron look. ‘Row, Primus Pilus . . . row!’

  Reeds crackled and snapped and their boots splashed in the shallows as they hauled the fishing craft up onto the southern banks of the river. Gallus’ arms were numb and almost powerless. His breath came and went in rasps and the blood pounded in his ears. Hours of frantic rowing upriver had brought them two miles, maybe three, Gallus hoped, west of Quadi-held Singidunum.

  ‘Out of sight . . . a little more,’ he gasped as they hove the ship into the gorse bushes. They hadn’t seen or heard their pursuers for the last hour. Had they given up? Surely two Romans were of little consequence?

  Dexion groaned then dropped the colossal weight, staggering back, his face wet with fog and perspiration, leaves and grime clinging to his skin. He swiped the moisture from his chestnut brown locks and rested his hands on his knees, squinting downriver from whence they had come. The mist was burning off now, the cloak of grey lifting.

  ‘First, we should find the westerly road,’ Gallus panted, scouring the foliage of the riverbank and looking beyond at the mesh of pine and birch forest. ‘Once we’re upon it, we can gauge whether . . . ’ his words faded as Dexion’s panting halted. He shot a glance at his primus pilus, saw how Dexion’s hawk-like features were tensed, eyes wide, then looked downriver with him.

  Nothing. Then . . . shadows. Next, the gentlest lapping of oars over the thunderous river torrents.

  He saw the shadows take shape: a Quadi warrior, lifting a horn to his lips, his savage features unveiled just as he emptied his lungs into the war horn. The terrible wail shook Gallus’ heart. Another two vessels flanked this one. Thirty or so men, a nest of spears, bows and eager faces.