And Farnobius’ horde were only seventy paces away, Pavo realised, seeing that the Goths were almost at the staff with the rapping green ribbon, readying their ladders to assault the wall. ‘Plumbatae!’ he cried. That’s it, he thought as the three centuries rippled and hoisted their lead-weighted darts, let’s make this look real. ‘Loose!’ he cried.
The Goths thundered onwards, all attention on their shields and avoiding the imminent rain of Roman darts.
That’s it, just a little further . . .
‘Hoist the ladders!’ Vulso roared as the Roman plumbata hail thinned and he and his fellow freedmen from the mines loped onwards. His flat nose wrinkled as he squinted ahead. Just fifty or so paces to the wall. Forty . . . thirty.
‘There’s hardly any of ‘em,’ Dama, his mean-eyed comrade from the mines roared with glee as he saw the line of legionaries atop the stockade. ‘We’re goin’ to gut ‘em, take their heads . . . take their purses.’
‘And that’ll just be the start of it,’ Vulso agreed, his voice trilling as they ran. ‘Think of the riches we’ll have when we break this wa-’
Vulso’s voice seemed to be sucked from his lungs as the world under his feet fell away. He barely had time to scream before the sharpened stake in the shallow pit he had fallen into pierced his groin and burst from his ribs. It was as if his blood had turned to fire. Agony blinded him. All around he heard swiftly muted screams, the thick cracking of bone and the wet splash of bodies being torn apart and innards leaping free. He grabbed at the writhing sensation below his torn ribs, and felt what he thought was some kind of serpent speeding past him, until he realised it was a loop of stinking, steaming blue-grey intestine escaping from his belly.
The flashing white before his eyes faded just a fraction, and as blackness closed in, he saw Dama beside him, eyes rolled up into his skull, the spike he had landed upon having pierced his jaw and burst from the top of his head.
He felt a surge of pain like he had never before known and assumed it was death approaching. But it was not. Pinned here, he would suffer for some time.
Pavo gawped at the advancing Gothic line as they plummeted into the band of snow-covered lilia pits, planted just days ago across the width of the Via Militaris. One moment Farnobius’ infantry had been running forward and the next it was as if some vast, unseen butcher’s blade had swept away their legs and hauled them down. Wet punching sounds of perforated flesh, cracking ribs and cartilage, and the animal screams of broken men filled the pass, and a sudden waft of raw guts swept across the legionaries on the wall. The Gothic advance had come to a sudden and gruesome halt. Men behind the front blundered onwards, unaware, only to stumble or trample over their impaled comrades. Pavo took no delight in the awful scenes, but when he looked up and saw Farnobius, still safely mounted further back, his face twisted into a savage grimace. Come forward, you bastard!
‘Now, lad, now!’ Geridus barked, clasping his shoulders and shaking him from his thoughts.
Pavo set down his spear, snatched up the pole with the golden cloth and swished it from side to side overhead. Three sharp buccina blasts accompanied this signal. Gradually, the chaos around the band of lilia pits ebbed as a thunder filled the air. Pavo’s eyes again pinned Farnobius, revelling in the flash of confusion on the giant’s face. The thunder grew raucous and then, suddenly, from the southern valley side on the Gothic flank, twelve horseless and driverless wagons burst from the skeletal, snow-coated ash woods there and hurtled down the steep sides. Then a pack of blazing arrows shot from the woods, thwacking into the wagons and igniting their resin-soaked timbers. At once they erupted into balls of orange fury. Some wagons toppled and careened onwards, slewing wildly towards the valley floor and sending out offshoots of the blazing timbers they were packed with.
‘Back . . . back!’ Farnobius cried, his face uplit in orange as he saw that he was within the jaws of this snare. Pavo leaned from the timber wall, one fist clenched, willing the blazing wagons to crush the cur. But the giant reiks surged clear. Yet the wave of Gothic infantry snared upon and before the band of lilia pits were not so fortunate. The wagons crashed over the stricken, crushing heads and chests and setting light to those nearby. The all-white pass was suddenly a vision of wintry fire, screaming Goths running to and fro, the ladders dropped, shattered or ablaze. The ghostly, riderless wagons finally came to a halt only after the survivors of this first Gothic attack wave took flight, hurrying back up the pass to Farnobius’ side.
Pavo felt the tension ebb and his clenched fist fell limp. His head lolled in failure.
‘It was a fine ruse, lad – an anvil of spikes and a hammer of blazing wagons – one I would have been proud to think of myself,’ Geridus shook him by the shoulders, ‘and we lost only a handful of men. Now get your head up. The day is but young.’
But when Pavo did look up, he noticed the fleeing wave of Goths. Some carried Gothic spears. A few had Gothic features, but the vast majority were darker-skinned. Men of Greece and Macedonia. ‘They’re our men,’ he realised.
‘Brigands, thieves, no doubt,’ Geridus dismissed them with a swipe of his hand. ‘After a pretty coin or two.’
But Pavo saw how the untouched, unused four thousand or so with Farnobius behind the mess of the burning wagons were true warriors. The Germanic Taifali with their tall, powerful mounts and their dark-blue howling wolf shields. The dense pack of Gothic spearmen and the pocket of vicious Huns. ‘We’ve thinned his weakest men and no more.’
‘No, we’ve repelled them,’ Sura interrupted now, ‘look.’
Pavo and all others atop the stockade peered into the driving snow. Just as they had emerged from the snow, now they faded into grey again. Farnobius was waving them back. Away from the pass?
Farnobius’ chest rose and fell as swathes of the beggars he had taken from the mines – taken from the mines, armed and fed – washed past him, clutching wounds, staggering, coming to a halt at the side of his horde. He longed for one of the survivors to dare to flee on past the horde and away from the valley, vowing that he would ride any such down and split their skull.
A frozen waste, aflame and soaked with blood, Vitheric’s weak voice asked, was this the prize you sought when you pressed your hands to my throat and held me under the waters of the Danubius?
He realised his hands were trembling and his head jerked violently.
‘What now, Reiks Farnobius?’ Egil asked, eyeing him gingerly. ‘We could still return to Trimontium. It is unlikely the Romans have taken any measures of control since we left.’
Farnobius’ eyes snapped round on Egil. He wondered if this diffident noble secretly sneered at him behind those steady words. Egil and Humbert had beseeched him to remain in Trimontium over the winter. But they were wrong. Victory had to be taken here today, at any cost. He glowered over the incongruous vision of the pass before him: the heat haze above the black and blazing wagons, the swirling, thick blizzard around it and the brown timber wall beyond that filled the defile and barred the route west. Just a thin band of iron fin-topped helms watched on from that stockade, part hidden behind bright, ruby-red shields.
You have the numbers, but they have the high ground, Vitheric said. So how might a pack of wolves bring down an eagle?
Farnobius’ eyes darted, wondering if any others could hear the dead boy’s voice as clearly as he could. But all around him gazed back at him either blankly or with looks of concern. How might a pack of wolves seek to bring down an eagle? Was the shade of Vitheric toying with him? Farnobius’ chest rose and fell rapidly as panic began to set in. Then it came to him. He looked to Egil and Humbert with a creeping smile.
‘Sometimes, to defeat an eagle, you must shake it from its lofty perch.’
As Egil and Humbert shared a confused glance, Farnobius turned away from them and looked over his horde, seeking out the few who would bring him victory.
Over an hour had passed since the Goths’ retreat back up the pass. The flames of the wagons had now died, leaving a blac
k scar across the snow before the timber stockade. The legionaries remained in position atop the battlements, teeth chattering in the cold, eyes fixed on the ghostly shadows of the storm. Zosimus, Quadratus Geridus, Pavo and Sura had gathered at the middle of the battlements.
‘They’re finished, surely,’ Quadratus insisted, pointing down into the pass where the Goths’ broken and burnt ladders lay near the band of lilia pits. ‘They’re not coming over this wall now.’
‘How can you be sure?’ Pavo countered.
‘Perhaps they’re simply fashioning new ladders?’ Sura mused.
‘No,’ Zosimus said with distrusting eyes, ‘they’re up to something. They want us to wait here, watching the east, freezing, guessing.’
‘It is safest to adopt a position of distrust,’ Geridus agreed. ‘We should stay vigilant.’
Pavo noticed the timber walkway shudder ever so slightly. He frowned, seeing that not a man on the parapet had moved. He was about to dismiss it when he saw a build-up of snow slip from one of the sharpened palisade tips. But there was certainly no thaw underway. Then he felt the shudder again. Suddenly, he remembered Saturninus’ words on that frantic day when the Great Northern Camp had been overrun: The Shipka Pass has fallen. The Hun horsemen came around the impassable mountains and sliced into our rear! His eyes widened as he turned to look over his shoulder, down behind the timber wall where the Roman spears and quivers were stocked. His eyes traced further up the pass and locked onto a swirling current of snow.
‘Turn!’ he cried.
The others with him started at the cry. Pavo heard only their babbling replies as he saw the dark horsemen emerge from the snow and race for the rear of the Roman wall. Nearly one hundred Huns bore feral snarls on their faces and whirled looped ropes like slings above their heads.
Geridus swung round and gasped at the sight of them. ‘What the – how . . . no cavalry can ride around this pass! It cannot be!’
‘These are no ordinary horsemen, sir,’ Pavo cried. ‘They can ride rugged hill trails like no othe-’
His words were cut off as the lassos licked out, leaping up to the wall, wrenching unsuspecting legionaries down by the neck. Panic erupted as many of them thought thousands were bearing down on their rear.
‘Slingers!’ Pavo bellowed to Herenus and his men. Only now they saw what was happening, and loaded their slings with fumbling hands. ‘Sagittarii!’ he echoed to the archers.
But the Huns were at work. Now they looped their ropes around the buttressing beams and up and over the sharpened picket tips. Like a colony of ants at work, they wheeled away, using the strength of their ponies to set the timbers to groaning, bending, then, with a sickening shredding noise, the stockade shifted violently under Pavo’s feet. A heartbeat later, the whole thing moaned, then sagged back, the picket-stakes that were hauled back dragging others with them. Legionaries half-climbed, half-fell down the ladders. Many were thrown down by the violent lurches of the structure. Pavo slid and scrabbled as those with him slipped away. Suddenly, he was falling. A moment later and with an almighty crash, he found himself buried in snow. For a nightmarish moment, he could not dig himself free, but when he did, he saw the nightmare was truly upon him: the wall had fallen. It lay broken, men scattered behind it, while the Huns raced back off into the grey at the western end of the valley – though many of those hardy steppe riders lay writhing in the snow, peppered with belated Roman arrows and slingshot.
‘Up, up!’ Zosimus screamed, helping legionaries from where they had fallen, haranguing those not rising fast enough.
Pavo helped Cornix to his feet then swung to the rumbling from the eastern end of the valley. Beyond the ruin of the wall, the lilia pits and the blackened wagons, the grey, ethereal mass of Farnobius’ horde had returned. It was darkening, coming forward. Racing forward.
‘Retreat to the fort!’ Geridus cried, wincing as he hobbled on his weary legs, one ankle seemingly injured.
Slowly at first, then quickened by the sight of the onrushing horde, the legionaries rushed to the scree path, the sagittarii hurrying down from the southern shoulder of the pass to join them. Pavo was near the back of the crowd. He glanced over his shoulder as he readied to step onto the scree path. Farnobius’ Goths came at a charge, leaping over the lilia pits, scrambling over the collapsed wall. And the giant reiks came too now, waving his Taifali cavalry with him at a gallop. He glanced up at the steep and difficult path up to the fort plateau, then back to the horde, ever closer.
‘We don’t have time,’ he cried.
‘What?’ Sura gasped, turning with him to see the reality. Now the Goths were swinging round to face the northern valley side, forming a narrow front and readying to drive up the scree path in pursuit.
‘Go, go!’ Zosimus urged the legionaries further up the path, then leapt back down beside the pair. A moment later, Quadratus was with them too. ‘Not one of these whoresons gets through us, aye?’ the big Gaul said.
‘Aye,’ they growled in reply. A handful of legionaries followed suit and added to this line – enough to blockade the narrow uphill path and add a thin second rank. Squashing together and forming a shield wall, they backed up the path slowly, feet crunching in the gritty snow, presenting their spears downwards to the foremost Goths – Screaming tribesmen with bloodshot eyes and the wet redness at the back of their throats glinting.
‘Brace!’ Pavo yelled.
The Gothic charge seemed heedless of the slight high ground the Romans enjoyed and slammed into the narrow front. The battering of colliding shields rang out along with the wild song of sparring iron. Pavo felt the breath leap from his lungs as a great weight surged onto his shield – a stocky Goth had clambered up and over it. Pavo thrust his spear up, tearing the foe’s belly and enduring a shower of guts as a reward, then lifted his shield arm just in time to block two well-aimed spear thrusts. What followed was a blur of thrusting spears and Gothic longswords clanging against Legionary spathas and helms as they defended like lions, stepping back up the scree path. Pavo’s limbs grew numb and his breath came in rasps as he parried a Gothic blade then lanced another opponent through the ribs. He lost sight of their progress up the path, knowing only that to blink or look over his shoulder would be fatal. All he heard from the plateau behind and above was some odd grinding noise – like metal and wood working together. In the corner of his eye, he saw only comrades falling – the men in the second rank rushing to take their place. Then came a moment when he sensed the strength leave him. His next parry was weak, and the Gothic blade battered from his helm and another scored across the bridge of his nose and cheek. He felt Sura and Zosimus by his side stagger and stumble too. Moments later, he felt the ground even out underfoot and realised they had stumbled up and onto the fort plateau. They were just paces from the fort gates and respite, but without the narrowness of the path to protect their flanks, their narrow front buckled and Goths swarmed to envelop them. Pavo saw Farnobius riding up the path, face alight with glee, axe raised. He heard that odd metallic-wooden clunking noise once more – this time growing into a titanic groan, as if rushing for him – then a cry sounded from behind them.
‘Down!’ a burring voice cried.
He swung to the shout, then saw a colossal shape rushing for him: like a great eagle’s claws – open and razor-sharp, every steely talon as tall as a man. Instinctively, he ducked under this nightmarish apparition, his comrades doing likewise. But the Goths all around them, blinded in their quest for blood, were not so swift. With a swoosh that split the blizzard, the talons ripped through the nearest of them. Blood showered Pavo as his mind raced to understand what was happening while more Goths staggered back in fear of the awful talons. Every hair on Pavo’s neck stood rigid as he looked up from where he was crouched and saw a vast horizontal timber beam, swinging out from the fort’s southern gate tower. From it dangled thick ropes and on the end of these, the vicious claws. Up on the gate tower he saw the outline of Geridus, framed by a streak of lightning and hurling curse
s into the storm as he and a handful of his men operated this merciless device, swinging the claw arm to and fro over the scattering Goths. Then, when the claw was hovering over a tight pack of Goths, the ropes slackened. The claw plunged down upon them and at once, like a tendon, the ropes snapped taut, lashing the four talons together.
Four men were caught in the device’s grasp. One was snared right on the ends of the talons and run through in four different directions. The claw was lifted up and a soup of this Goth’s bowels, blood and bladder sprayed down on the others nearby.
Pavo gawped at this: so this was the Comes’ ethereal friend – a merciless war-machine? He barely felt the hands that hoisted him and the others back from the devastation, hauling him inside the fort. Only when the fort gate was slammed shut did the spell break.
Farnobius backed his stallion away from the ferocious claw as it swung to and fro. The device had cut down mere handfuls of his men, but the sight of it was enough to drive his men back. Not one of his warriors had even approached the fort gate because of it. He licked his lips, judging the flight of the claw, eyeing the ropes. ‘Have the men bring the Roman ladders up from their toppled timber wall.’
‘Reiks?’ Egil said, his voice laced with fear and his eyes tracing the claw’s path.
‘Do as I say. And you can stay down there – this place is only fit for warriors,’ Farnobius growled as he drew his axe from his back, then walked his stallion forward onto the plateau.
Ever forward, invincible king, Vitheric’s voice urged him. Nobody can slay you.
Moments passed and Pavo remained sitting where he had slumped inside the fort. He wondered if the chaos outside the closed fort gates was real. In here, he could only hear dull roars of the storm and foreign voices outside. In here he was sheltered from the stinging blizzard, a strong warmth came over his skin as feeling began to return. Then he saw the staggering, gasping, momentarily lost men of his century around him, dotted around the inside of the fort. He saw Zosimus and Quadratus rise, and rose with them, knowing there was to be no respite. ‘On your feet!’ he bellowed.
Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4) Page 34
