Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire

by Gordon Doherty

  Gallus smoothed at his chin with a thumb and forefinger. ‘Yet the eastern defences are sturdy, are they not? The fortifications along the Strata Diocletiana are legendary,’ he suggested, drawing a finger along the line on the map that ran from Armenia in the north down past Palmyra in the south. He had heard many tales of the proud network of stone forts that studded that desert road. ‘Surely – limitanei or otherwise – these legions here could bed in and man our strongholds should Shapur choose to invade?’

  Valens pulled a wry smile. ‘The Strata Diocletiana has fallen into grievous disrepair. There are scarcely enough legionaries to garrison those forts, let alone funds to repair them. If Shapur turns his armies upon them, they will fall.’

  Gallus frowned. Suddenly, the memory of the ballistae lining Antioch’s mountaintop eastern walls took on an air of desperation – like some final bastion. ‘And the Persians, what forces can they muster against us?’

  Valens’ gaze grew distant. ‘Including the Armenian garrison, nearly one hundred thousand warriors. Perhaps a third are paighan – peasant infantry, many of them chained and forced to march. But the heart of the Persian army, over half, are Savaran.’

  ‘The Savaran?’ Gallus asked. ‘The Persian cavalry?’

  Valens’ brow knitted in a frown. ‘Cavalry? Aye, perhaps you could call them that. Though the empire over I have yet to see riders so fierce.’

  ‘Emperor?’ Gallus asked, agitated by the sense of unease creeping back into his gut.

  ‘The detail we can come to later on,’ Valens waved a hand as if swatting a mayfly, ‘but you should be aware that the Sassanid rulers have changed the Persian way of war. In these last decades, they have shed the last vestiges of the old Parthian dynasty. They have fine forts, broad roads – they even model their borders on our limites. Their standing armies are as well-drilled as any legion.’ He stopped, screwing up his eyes and pinching the top of his nose as if fending off a headache. ‘Suffice to say they are a formidable foe.’

  Gallus smoothed the tip of his chin. ‘Perhaps their unity – or lack of it – might be exploited? If Shapur has his enemies as you say,’ he offered.

  ‘A salient question, Tribunus, and one I have exhausted in these last months.’ Valens’ eyes sparkled keenly. ‘Unity is a multi-faceted concept. To a man, the Persians fight under the banner of their Zoroastrian god, Ahura Mazda, and unanimously rail against anything they see as the work of his antithesis, Ahriman. After that, internecine rivalries and power struggles muddy Persian politics so wickedly that few have a clear picture of how things truly stand. The spahbads who answer to Shapur control vast wings of the Savaran. They are like kings themselves, fiercely proud of their satrapies and their ancient and noble houses. And then there are the Zoroastrian Magi who walk before the armies, carrying torches that blaze with the Sacred Fire, a symbol of their faith. These men are mystical, powerful figures who control the hearts of people, armies and kings alike.’

  ‘It sounds like we could stoke some trouble that might keep them occupied?’ Gallus persisted.

  Valens’ lips played with a smile. ‘Again, you echo my thoughts of recent times. Indeed, I have tried. Last year I sent a party of riders into The Satrapy of Elam in an attempt to bribe the spahbad and his army.’

  ‘Did the riders return?’ Gallus asked, sure he knew the answer already.

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes. Their heads were delivered to a fort on the Strata Diocletiana, mouths stuffed with Roman coins,’ as Valens said this, his gaze faltered. ‘The Persians will not turn upon one another for a few bags of Roman gold . . . and our coffers are all but empty in any case,’ he said dryly. ‘Subterfuge of any other kind – stoking up rivalries, instigating blood-feuds, that kind of thing – takes time, Gallus. And I fear time is running out. This year, next year at the latest, the Persian armies will fall upon these lands.’

  ‘Very well,’ Gallus nodded, his gut twisting further. ‘So if invasion is inevitable, and our fortifications cannot withstand such an assault, then why have you called us east, Emperor? Surely my vexillatio can offer little to change this?’

  Valens shook his head slowly. ‘On the contrary, Tribunus. I know that you and your hardy men can.’ He clapped his hands and a pair of slaves hurried in with a jug of watered wine and a plate of fresh bread, figs and cheese. ‘Fill your belly and I will explain.’

  Valens poured a goblet of wine and added three parts water, then swirled the concoction, gazing at the surface. ‘Fourteen years ago, an emperor died on the edge of a Persian blade.’

  ‘Julian,’ Gallus nodded, folding a piece of bread around a chunk of cheese and chewing upon it. He washed the mouthful down with water, forgoing wine as always. ‘I remember his reign. I was a young lad at the time. The Apostate, they called him – he had little time for Christian meekness.’ He said this with the beginnings of a dry chuckle, then remembered that Valens was a staunch Arian Christian and thought better of it.

  Valens beheld him with a solemn gaze; ‘Then you will know of the man who succeeded him.’

  ‘Jovian,’ Gallus affirmed. ‘I remember little of his reign, other than that it was short. Very short. He was dead within a year, was he not?’

  ‘Jovian was a sot, Tribunus,’ Valens said, the stark words echoing around the chamber. ‘He stumbled into power and then swiftly drowned himself in wine, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. They say he died of accidental poisoning, but I heard the truth – he was found, soaked in his own vomit, surrounded by wineskins. Yet it was not wine that killed him. It was fear – a fear that he could escape only in a drunken haze. It takes a brave man to bear the burden of empire on his shoulders. The deaths of countless thousands haunting your dreams. The staring eyes of the living.’

  Valens’ tone was clipped, yet his eyes betrayed a hint of glassiness. Gallus wondered if this was pity for poor Jovian, or for himself.

  ‘But on the day he acceded to the purple – the day after Julian had been slain, when the Roman army were pinned like wounded deer to the banks of the Tigris by the Savaran lances – Jovian found himself forced to concede a humiliating peace with Shapur. He gave away almost everything the empire had worked so hard to gain. Centuries of struggle, oceans of legionary blood, gone in a heartbeat.’ Valens leant forward, the lamplight dancing in his eyes. ‘But there is a chance, just a sliver of chance, that Jovian negotiated one thing in Rome’s favour that day. Something that, all these years later, could be the saviour of the east.’

  Gallus’ spine tingled. The oil lamp on the edge of the table flickered as a cool night breeze tumbled in through the window like the breath of a shade.

  ‘Shapur is a ferocious adversary, but a noble one. It is thought that somehow Jovian convinced the shahanshah to agree to a lasting truce. That the lands west of the Euphrates were forever to remain unburdened by the Persian yoke.’

  Gallus’ eyes widened. ‘That’s everything . . . Antioch, Beroea, Damascus, the Strata Diocletiana.’

  ‘Now you are beginning to understand, Tribunus?’ Valens’ earnest smile returned. ‘A perpetual peace. The border kingdoms – Armenia, Iberia and the hordes of Saracen nomads in the Syrian Desert – would support such a treaty. They would stand with us against any Persian invasion.’

  ‘Then we must present this treaty . . . ’

  Valens held up a hand, fingers splayed. ‘Five copies of the treaty were prepared. Five scrolls. Two were given to Jovian and his retinue, three remained with Shapur. But in the flight across the Tigris, the Roman copies were lost. Indeed, much was lost; some soldiers took to wading into the river in their armour and drowned in their haste. Many arrived back in their homelands starved and dressed in filthy rags like beggars.’

  Gallus nodded. ‘Then the Persian copies?’

  Valens shook his head solemnly. ‘Over the years, they too have vanished. The copy held in Ctesiphon was destroyed when rioters ransacked the library. The copy in Susa, too, was lost in a great fire that ravaged the city. The third copy
was sent to the Satrapy of Persis. But the camel rider disappeared on his journey there.’

  ‘Disappeared?’ Gallus’ nose wrinkled in suspicion.

  Valens held out his palms, at a loss for an answer. ‘Slain, lost, consumed by the sands. I don’t know. But he vanished and the scroll with him.’

  ‘If all of the scrolls are lost, then this is a false hope, surely?’ Gallus leant back with a frustrated sigh.

  ‘Indeed, but something has come to light in recent months, Tribunus.’ Valens countered. ‘The last scroll – the one sent to the Satrapy of Persis – may still exist.’

  ‘So where is it?’ Gallus asked.

  ‘That, we do not know, Tribunus,’ Valens sighed and clapped his hands, ‘but this man may be able to help in that respect.’ The slaves led a man of some forty years into the campaign room. He was tall, with knotted limbs and sun-burnished skin. His grey-streaked, fair hair dangled to his chin, straw-like and bleached by the sun, while his thick beard was pure white. His haggard features and crooked shoulders told of a hard life while the fine tunic he wore spoke of a recent change in fortunes. A Christian Chi-Rho hung on a strap around his neck. Valens continued; ‘It is a miracle that Centurion Carbo even stands before us. He was captured by Shapur’s armies at the sack of Bezabde. He spent many years in the Dalaki salt mines.’

  ‘Dalaki?’ Gallus frowned.

  Valens nodded. ‘Right in the heart of the Satrapy of Persis.’

  Gallus beheld Carbo. Carbo met his gaze, then swiftly averted his eyes.

  Nervous, or something to hide? Gallus thought. He batted the idea away and listened as Valens spoke.

  ‘Speak, Centurion,’ Valens prompted him.

  Carbo shuffled and stood proud. ‘In my time in the mines I met many rogues, criminals and prisoners of war. There was one Persian – a man sentenced to spend his life underground at the salt face. I slept nearby him in the days before he asphyxiated from the lung disease of the mines. He spoke much with his last breaths. He cursed himself incessantly, whispering of his folly in ever laying hands on some scroll. A scroll that bore the mark of Jovian and Shapur.’

  Gallus sat forward, interest piqued.

  ‘This rogue, he had a final lucid moment. He claimed that he and his band of brigands were the ones who had seized the scroll, ambushing the desert messenger. One by one, his band were captured, tortured and slain. All except him. He hid high in the Zagros Mountains for months, living off carrion left behind by vultures, sleeping in caves. All the while clutching the scroll, his only possession. He had stolen it in hope of selling it for riches, but instead, it brought him only poverty and misery. Finally, maddened by heat, hunger and isolation, he came down from the mountains and stole into Bishapur in search of food. Coinless, he snatched a loaf of bread from a baker’s stall then hid in a shaded alley to devour every last crumb. As he made his way through the streets to leave the city, he said sentries seemed to follow him like shadows, their eyes darting and furtive whenever he met their gaze. Then, when he came to the city gate, a sentry barred his way, and another two rushed him from behind. He panicked, sure they recognised him as the scroll thief. He said he had never run as far or as fast in his life from those who pursued him. All through the city he fled, through palaces, temples, squares and gardens. But they caught him in the end, and in the end they suspected nothing of the scroll. It was the stolen loaf of bread that saw him sentenced to the mines.’

  Carbo finished and silence hung in the chamber.

  Gallus cocked an eyebrow, looking to Valens and Carbo in turn, expecting more. ‘And the scroll? Where is it?’

  Valens sighed; ‘In the mountains, perhaps, in one of the caves this wretch hid. In Bishapur, even. Or maybe deep in the mines.’

  Carbo shrugged. ‘The man did not go as far as to tell me.’

  Gallus slumped back with a sigh, clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘This is tenuous indeed. How much faith can we place in the words of some filthy and maddened beggar at the foot of a mine?’ he asked. And you; how much faith can we put in a man who has spent many years in deepest Persia? he thought.

  Carbo held out his hands. ‘All I can tell you is that he said this with his dying breaths. Why would a man lie with his last words?’

  Now Carbo seemed to hold Gallus’ gaze earnestly. Gallus’ eyes narrowed, unable to judge this character.

  ‘It is a thread, Tribunus.’ Valens said, pinching his thumb and forefinger together. ‘The finest of threads. But we must grasp at it. We must seek out the scroll.’

  Realisation dawned on Gallus. He sat upright and met Emperor Valens’ unblinking gaze. ‘You summoned us here to send us into Persia?’

  ‘I would not have brought you here if I had any doubts as to your suitability,’ Valens replied firmly. He clapped his hands again.

  This time a short, stocky man in his late twenties was shown into the room. He could have been described politely as swarthy, but the truth was he was filthy and unshaven. He wore a frayed tunic and a dark-brown, Phrygian cap, with jet-black, oily locks dangling from the rim. Overall he had the look of an unwashed Mithras, Gallus thought, his nose wrinkling.

  ‘Yabet is half Greek, half Iberian. He will guide you into southern Persia and the Satrapy of Persis.’

  Gallus’ mind spun. He glanced at the campaign map and the most direct route into Persia; Mesopotamia. The area between the Euphrates and the Tigris was shaded a light green to indicate the fertile earth that distinguished the ancient land. ‘Across the two great rivers? Those lands are thick with Persian forts and settlements, are they not? Like the Roman limites, didn’t you say?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Valens replied, ‘so you are to take a far lonelier route.’ He traced his finger from Antioch, dragging it south-east, across the stretch of map that skirted Mesopotamia and was shaded in unbroken yellow. ‘The Syrian Desert is treacherous, but Yabet will see you all the way across it.’ His finger stopped near the tip of the Persian Gulf. ‘Once at the Gulf, you are to stow your armour and anything that identifies you as legionaries, then buy a berth on some trade ferry – something that will take you across the water. On the far shore is the Satrapy of Persis. Once you have infiltrated that land, your ingenuity will be the key. Comb the towns and cities, buy what information you can from the rogues that litter the Persian alleyways, leave no stone unturned. Greek-speakers are common in those parts. Find this scroll, Tribunus, and save your empire.’

  Gallus worked hard to suppress his urge to challenge this epic proposal.

  ‘Your vexillatio will be complemented by a century from the city garrison. The men of the XVI Flavia Firma are good soldiers, Tribunus. And they’ll be led by a good man. A brave man eager to march into enemy lands.’

  Gallus followed Valens’ extended finger and saw that it pointed to Carbo.

  His eyes narrowed and his mood grew darker.

  Chapter 4

  Pavo drained his wine cup then thumped it down on the scarred oak bench. He gazed round the dimly-lit, red-brick tavern with a contented sigh as he felt his troubles washing away. There was a distinct fuzziness behind his eyes and the banter of the thirty or so Claudia legionaries around him melted into a soothing babble. Now when he touched a finger to the phalera on his chest, he felt a keen sense of optimism. Had Father once been in this city? Had he maybe drunk with his comrades in this very tavern – at this very bench?

  He chuckled at the powers of the drink as he poured himself another measure from the jug then reached out for the water to dilute it, halting only when he remembered they were drinking it neat and there was no water jug. They had only been here for an hour at most. After dropping their packs and armour at the city barracks by the eastern gate, they had set off in search of refreshment. Led by Zosimus, Quadratus and Felix, they had wandered through the streets, still busy despite the late hour. They passed through the Forum of Valentinian, lined with merchant stalls. Next, they had wondered past an open-fronted basilica, packed with Christian worshippers chanting along to the
promptings of a priest. Only when they reached the agora near the south of the city, they had found what they were looking for; a stirring pole and vine leaves resting by an open doorway – the symbol of wine and ale known the empire over.

  But inside it was very different from the chaotic – often perilous – drinking pits that he had grown used to on the Danubian frontier. There, the taverns were always packed with jabbering legionaries, locals and a mixture of Goths and travelling traders. There, a legionary was almost guaranteed a black eye or a thundering hangover as a memento of his night out. Here, there were only a few locals dotted around the other benches, most sipping watered wine and chatting quietly, some eating mutton and vegetable stew. The bench commandeered by the XI Claudia was in stark contrast: at the far end, Zosimus and Quadratus seemed keen to make this place a little more like home, exchanging insults in between frequent mouthfuls of ale. It was obviously strong, like the wine, given Zosimus’ ruddy features and Quadratus’ giddy grin.

  ‘Aye, and on the first day I joined up, Zosimus here was supposed to show me how to use the bow drill to light a campfire.’ Quadratus spliced his words with laughter, his blonde moustache jostling. ‘He was all wrinkled and serious looking, as if he was some kind of survival expert . . . then the bloody fool goes and sends a shower of sparks over himself – a moment later and the hem of his tunic’s on fire!’ Quadratus doubled over at this, roaring, and the rest of the bench erupted in laughter too. ‘Nearly burnt his bloody cock off!’

  Zosimus’ complexion reddened, his anvil jaw straining as he fired angry glances around the table. ‘Aye, well, it’d be wrong of me to tell these lads here of the time you once farted a whole contubernium out of the barrack blocks at Durostorum, eh?’ He met the eyes of the others around the bench and jabbed a finger at the big Gaulish centurion. ‘Had three portions of bean and root stew and apparently he was at it all night. The other seven lads in there with him couldn’t take it any more, they came stumbling out, retching and choking. One of the poor sods ended up having nightmares for weeks afterwards!’