by Scott Bury
“What’s wrong, Javor?” Austinus asked.
“Nothing. I thought I saw something. But it’s gone, now.”
Austinus looked at Javor carefully, then patted him on the shoulder and left him alone the rest of the day.
They kept going, slowly. Gradually the river widened again and the current slowed, and the crew returned to rowing. The guards’ captain, a fair-haired Goth named Alewar with a huge moustache, kept peering out at the north shore. “Never can tell when the Avars will show up,” he growled once at Javor. “This land has been infected by evil.”
Theodor joined them at the rail. “At one time, when the Empire was at its apex, this river was called the Ister,” he said, gazing at the empty fields. “It was crowded with boats and barges that traded up and down its length, and people tilled the earth on both sides. It was a rich land and a rich waterway.”
Now, it was empty. Javor hadn’t seen another vessel on the river since Drobeta. There were few farms, and those only on the south, formerly Roman side.
The river bent toward the north, and the mountains receded on both sides. “Pannonia,” the captain announced. “Keep a sharp eye out!”
Days went by in dull routine; Javor sat by the railing, thinking. The others from Constatinople delighted in the opportunity to talk yet more. Even Malleus became almost chatty. They came to towns, large ones with substantial ports. “Singidunum,” the captain said one day. “Used to be a Roman town. Now it’s in the control of the Avars.”
They docked and took on more provisions; Austinus paid the river tolls and pressured the captain not to tarry. They rowed on the same day, spending the night anchored in the middle of the river with at least three men standing watch all the time. They sailed again in the morning, rowing in the middle of the stream even though the current was strong there. Javor could see the slaves sweating in the midday heat. He felt sorry for them, but knew he shouldn’t say anything for fear of making their situation even worse. He was just glad when they could take a break.
The river’s course wound and twisted, but gradually was turning toward the north. Actually, the river’s turning more southward; we’re going upstream, so it seems like it’s turning north.
One day, they reached another substantial city. “Aquincum,” said the galley’s captain, Treon, a stocky, bald man with a bushy black beard. “We really need to rest here. My crew need to stretch their legs.”
Austinus agreed; he wanted to ask for news about the legion they were following. They put into dock and tied off.
Javor found Aquincum, a former provincial capital, almost as impressive as Constantinople itself. The port had stone piers and great jetties, and what seemed an immense number of boats and ships. The docks were jammed with people and carts and animals loading and unloading. Behind were great stone buildings, warehouses and basilicas and temples. But the guards on the walls and towers were not legionnaires; they were Goths and Avars with plate-mail armour and recurved bows. Javor couldn’t look at the Avars without feeling angry.
“Calm, my boy,” said Theodor in his soft voice. “Let’s get something good to eat and drink.” He took Javor to a tavern near the port and paid for a good meal and a cup of ale—a drink he hadn’t had since leaving home. It’s been nearly a year.
By the time they got back to the galley, Theon was reloading his slaves and his mate was supervising the loading of more food, wine and water. Austinus had also returned and called the others around him.
“The Legion passed by here four days ago. So we’re falling behind. They must be hard-pressed, and frankly I’m surprised they didn’t meet any resistance from the local troops. They must have come to some kind of understanding. But no one knows anything about the raiders that passed through here—or they won’t say, at any rate.
“In other news, the Avar Khagan, Bayan, is reportedly north of here somewhere with his army. So it’s probably a safe bet that they’re heading for him.”
It didn’t reassure Javor that his dagger was still ahead of them. But something about the way his amulet rested against his skin made him feel that they were on the right course.
That fine spring morning, as the sun warmed Javor’s face, he couldn’t believe there was anything evil around. He heard birds sing. A dragonfly buzzed past, looking for bugs to eat. I’m going back home, Javor thought, for the river had turned northward again.
Austinus wandered over to the deck and stood beside Javor, looking ahead, upriver. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” he asked eventually.
“Do you know why your religion is so much more unpopular—” Javor began.
“I think you want to say ‘less popular,’” said Austinus indulgently.
“—it’s because it’s just too complicated. I mean, compare it to Christianity. Their religion is simple: God created the world, then created Man, and Man sinned, so God sent His Son to save us. See how simple?”
Malleus wandered over. He seemed to be in a better mood than Javor had ever seen him. “Ah, yes, but Christianity is calculated to be as appealing to the broadest swath of the population as possible. Even their central mythology was appropriated from the Egyptians. Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead, died and resurrected three days later. Conquering death, he became the judge over the dead, and his righteous followers also become immortal. Horus, his son, is the god of the sky—see the connection?”
Javor’s self-assuredness evaporated. “Don’t the Christians believe the story of Jesus is true?”
“Of couse they do. But don’t you see the parallels between the Egyptian myth and the Christian one?” Malleus said.
“Both stories are attempts to explain the underlying truth of the entry of the Christos into the material universe,” Austinus said.
“See? That’s what I mean!” Javor interjected. “The Christians’ story is easy to understand. Jesus died and rose again. But your pleroma which emanated all these spirits—”
“Aeons.”
“—which themselves emanated yet more generations of Aeons, lower and lower, until you get this Demiurge, which is not good, and which created the world and the people and the animals in it, and then more and more and lower and lower emanations until you get to Archons—well, you see how much more confusing it is?”
“Yes, Javor, it is more complex, but the universe is not necessarily simple, is it?” said Austinus.
“Can you blame people for wanting it to be simple? For most people, it’s hard enough just getting enough food to eat and making sure your children aren’t freezing in the winter.”
“Yes, it’s understandable. But the simplest explanation you have doesn’t answer all the questions we have. That’s why we are Gnostics—we are seekers of knowledge. For that is the true way to salvation. Javor, are you happy to live in ignorance?”
“What do you know?” Javor asked, sudden fire in his voice. “You talk about these ‘emanations’ and ‘aeons’—but have you ever seen one? How can you know about the pleroma—have you seen it?
“I never believed in monsters or dragons or spirits. I thought they were stories told to scare children so they would eat their cabbage or go to bed early. But then I saw one. I saw how it killed my parents. I killed it. And I saw a dragon. I saw it kill men in armour, the best men I have ever seen. And I killed it.
“So I believe in dragons and monsters now. But as for your ‘sophia’ and ‘pleroma,’ sorry. Aeons, too. And the Christians and their wonderful, friendly and all-loving god—well, if you see the first sign of that, let me know.”
Javor watched the hawks circle. He noticed that there seemed to be a lot of hawks circling somewhere upstream of them. Curious, he watched the big birds. Every so often, as the galley slowly made its way upstream, more birds would join the circling flock.
“Austinus?” Javor asked, watching the wheeling birds. “Hawks and vultures don’t travel in flocks, do they?”
“What?”
Theodor joined them by the boat’s rail. “Never. They’re g
athering because there’s a lot for them to eat on the ground.”
Javor noticed a grey cloud, low on the trees, rising from a spot just around the river’s bend. “There’s a fire on the bank,” he said.
Horror came into view as the galley slowly made its way upriver. Javor impatiently waited for more of the far bank to come into view; but soon he wished that he couldn’t see.
The ground on the northern bank was blackened, the trees blasted and withered for a mile around. Smoke rose from hundreds of burned logs and other things that Javor didn’t want to name. Among that was the legion. Men’s bodies were strewn and stacked, shattered, torn—parts of bodies, twisted limbs and grinning heads. Dead horses sprawled among them, limbs broken, bellies slashed or heads crushed.
The smell was unbelievable. Javor and Austinus leaned over the rail and vomited into the river. The oarsmen had stopped rowing and most of them were throwing up, too. The boat began to drift on the current.
Finally, Javor raised his eyes again. “There!” he called, pointing to a spot on the bank.
A tiny group huddled on the shore. The survivors.
“Row!” the captain screamed, and the oars dipped haphazardly into the water, knocking into each other. “Row!” The galley shuddered as it started to resist the current again. Gradually, the crew got their rhythm back and the boat made its way to the survivors.
There were no more than a dozen, out of a thousand men. None of them was unwounded. When the galley reached the shore, Austinus and Theodor leaped over the rail. Javor clumsily toppled over, fell headfirst into the water and came up sputtering. He struggled to shore, pulling his cloak out of the mud.
“Who’s in charge here?” Austinus demanded, in Latin.
A Legionnaire used a stick to help himself climb to his feet and limped closer. “I suppose I’m the ranking officer left,” he rasped. He was young, covered in blood from head to foot. He had removed his helmet and his cropped hair was caked with blood and grime. His armour was dented and dashed open in places, and a fresh scar ran across his neck. One arm hung uselessly at his side, and the other hand desperately gripped the long stick he used to help him walk. He touched the top end of the stick to his head as a half-hearted salute. “Volusus Salustus. Are you the party that was following us?”
“Yes, Centurion. Is this all that’s left of the Legion?”
Salustus looked around and nodded. “Aye.”
Beside Salustus, only two of the dozen survivors could stand. One young man wept as he bent over another who lay prone in the ash and mud; he was bleeding from the mouth as well as several wounds on his body. Another man with blood all the way up his arms was slowly winding a strip of cloth around the stump of his friend’s leg. Two others sat in the mud, staring down; still another stared up at the sky, oblivious to everything around him.
“What happened?” Austinus demanded. Javor had trouble understanding much of what followed—Latin was, after all, his third language.
“We were trapped,” Salustus said. He looked around for something to sit down on, and finding nothing, squatted in the mud. “We were following the trail of the barbarians who attacked the capital and stole the imperial hostage, Ingund. They weren’t hard to follow—they left a trail a mile wide of food they stole from farms and inns, plus they left a lot of garbage behind. We took boats up the river from Drobeta. Then, a mile or so back,” he waved vaguely downstream, “we saw a group of refugees. We pulled to shore, and they told us that they came from a village not far away. We should have known it was a lie! There have been no settlements this close to the river since Attila’s time!
“But they told us a group of raiders had come upon them, slain a bunch, stolen their food and headed upriver on horseback. From their description, we knew it was our quarry. So we disembarked and started marching.
“It was almost nightfall when they attacked. Hundreds of them, some on horse, and they went through us like wolves among lambs. You see what happened.”
“But you are a Legion of Rome!” exclaimed Austinus.
Salustus closed his eyes in pain. “We were. We were proud. We were mighty. Hail Rome!” He drew a shuddering, painful breath. “But we were not fighting against men. We were fighting demons from Hell, commanded by the Devil himself.” He opened his eyes again and Javor could see the pain, the fear and the terrified honesty in them. Valgus had looked like that when he had spoken about the dragon. “They came toward us as men, but as the sun went down, they—they changed. They transformed into monsters,” he whispered. “Demons. Goblins. I don’t know what they were, but they were not human!
“Some were huge, with scaly hides. They literally ripped men apart, limb from limb! Some were small with horns and sharp fangs like daggers. Some were like masses of snakes with a hundred hands and heads. They sucked the blood out of men’s bodies where they stood. They laughed as they cut us down.
“But the worst of all came later. Once they had killed half the Legion, the monsters withdrew into the blackest night I have ever seen. What was left of us, the Legate ordered into testudo formations, impregnable.
“Then it came. We couldn’t see it. It was dark in a dark night, but huge and terrible. It came silently, then tore through the company and killed Legionnaires by the score! Men barely had time to scream before they died, and then it moved on to the next testudo and ripped it apart. And the next, and the next. One thousand men dead, helplessly, in a matter of hours.
“Some of the Legionnaires tried to run. They broke ranks, but the rest of us could hear the other monsters fall on them with terrible laughter. We heard our brothers torn apart, drained, eaten, crushed.” Tears were running down Salustus’ face.
The crew got the survivors onto the galley. Malleus and Theodor tried to bind their wounds and make them as comfortable as possible.
“We’re not going another foot upriver,” growled Theon, the galley captain.
“But we commissioned you, we paid you—” said Malleus.
“We agreed to take you to the Legion, and we did,” said the captain. “And this is what’s left of it. There’s nothing that’s going to convince me to go any farther.”
“We’re not going, either,” said Alewar, the Goth captain. “We’re not going up against anything that killed a thousand Legionnaires.”
“Wait,” Theodor asked. “What happened to General Priscus?”
Salustus laughed grimly. “He left us at Drobeta. He sent us along, said he had to attend to some business, and took off with his personal bodyguard. I guess he had no desire to fight an unbeatable foe.”
The next morning, Javor watched the galley sail away, back downriver. The crew had a much easier time going back to Rome, with both the wind and the current behind them. Aboard were the crew, the slaves, the small company of Goths and the ten survivors of the cohort of Legionnaires—two had died of their wounds through the night.
Standing on the bank were Javor, Austinus, Theodor and Malleus. Javor honestly wished he were going back with the Legionnaires. At the moment, he didn’t feel as anxious to retrieve his dagger. For the first time in his life, it occurred to Javor that he may not survive this adventure.
Chapter 30: Barbarians and monsters
“Do you really think we’re going to find your dagger, or the dragon, by following the company of soldiers who rescued the princess Ingund?” Brother Theodor asked Javor. They were walking upriver on the old Roman road along the western bank of the Danuvius.
“Well, I had a feeling…my amulet seems to think that we are heading toward the dagger,” Javor said, not entirely sure how much of that was true. But something was urging him northward, and it wasn’t just his desire for Danisa. “But you’re right, it does seem like an unlikely chance.”
“Now is awfully late to bring that point up,” Malleus snarled behind him. He had been in a foul mood all day and kept tugging on the straps of his pack where they dug into his shoulders.
Summer was almost on them. The sun shone hot and the air car
ried scents of flowers and growth. The young leaves on the trees were still light green and flowers danced in the breeze. To their right, they could sometimes hear the swirl and might of the river, and all around were the sounds of birds and crickets.
But there were no people. In the two days since they had watched the galley row back downriver, they hadn’t seen a settlement, farm or even a lone person. Not a cow or a pig. There were deer from time to time, and once Theodor pointed out a fox darting across the old road.
One phrase repeated in Javor’s mind: What is the connection? Danisa, the Gothic-Sklavenic raiders, the dragon, his dagger. What is the connection?
The road itself was a marvel to Javor: straight and almost flat, except for a slight incline from the high point in the middle, down on each side to allow rain to run off it. The light-coloured, almost perfectly square stones fit together so tightly, there was not a blade of grass growing between them.
“This land was recently part of the Empire,” Austinus explained. “But over the past two centuries, successive waves of invasion and almost constant warfare have depleted its population. Once, the Vandals attempted to settle here, but they were driven out by the Goths, who were themselves driven out by the Huns. And now, the Avars have nearly destroyed anything that was left.”
“Oh, that’s an oversimplification,” Brother Theodor argued.
Javor was amazed at these Greeks’ ability to argue even when they were walking into danger, carrying heavy packs and sweating under the late spring sun.
Brother Theodor was even more curious: no matter the heat, he kept his hood on his head. “To protect me from the sun,” he said. Javor tried it, but removed his hood when his head got too hot.
Austinus and Theodor walked side by side, arguing happily about the activities and blame of various barbarians. Javor fell into step beside Malleus, but didn’t try to talk to him—he was apparently still angry.
