Gods & Emperors (Legionary 5)

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Seems that the rumours are true after all,’ Sura muttered in a tone of resignation.

  Pavo ground his teeth. So it wasn’t just the imaginings of an overly-cautious Magister Officiorum that had spawned the curfew. ‘I never doubted the Goths were nearby,’ Pavo replied grimly, ‘I just didn’t think they were that close.’

  He glanced to his left and right, along the length of the walls, part-cloaked in a hazy russet cloud of dust that rose from the city streets. Each of the towers sported a pair of ballistae bolt throwers, dart-shooting scorpions or a stone-throwing onager on their flat tops. Enough? he wondered.

  He stood on his toes and craned his neck out over the parapet to look down upon the vicus: a sprawl of timber shacks, tents and makeshift markets that had grown immediately outside the city walls like barnacles clinging to the hull of a warship. With Thracia overrun by Goths, the rural folk had been driven from their farms, forced to seek shelter in whichever cities could accommodate them. The majority had fled to Adrianople, Perinthus and to here. The first few thousand were permitted entry without question, but when a few thousand became tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands, the Magister Officiorum had been forced to close the gates. This had done little to stem the tide of refugees though, and so the vicus had swollen dramatically with countless families wandering to and fro forlornly in search of food or space within a shack. Pavo felt a stab of guilt as he saw a mother wrapped in a shawl, swaddling two babies and pleading with a passing bread vendor for a loaf. The babies were screaming and the woman was nearly skeletal, but the vendor’s armed bodyguard drove them back with a menacing look. The precious grain stores in the Roman-held cities of Thracia had been dwindling all winter thanks to the lost harvest of the previous autumn – claimed by the war and the fierce cold. Bread rations within the city had been halved in recent weeks. When famine inevitably hit it would crush the poor first. Suddenly, a small crust of bread tumbled across the dirt before the mother and she snatched it up, selflessly tearing it and feeding half each to her little ones. Pavo looked around to find the source of the bread scrap.

  A cluster of off-duty comitatenses legionaries from the wall garrison were down there, drinking wine at a bench beside a makeshift tavern. They had a basket of bread between them and as they caroused and joked, crumbs and scraps flew by the wayside. They wore just their cloaks and tunics, but the one regaling them was dressed in a brown leather cuirass. His copper hair and fair-skinned features seemed to have been carved from fine, Greek marble, with an unfeasibly perfect cleft in the centre of his chin and sparkling silver eyes giving him the look of a celebrated war-hero.

  ‘Arse-breath,’ Sura muttered, recognising the comitatenses centurion. ‘Zosimus said we should stay within the walls…’

  ‘If Zosimus was here, would he?’ Pavo reasoned.

  The pair turned and descended from the walls. They emerged from the postern gate again, then followed a trade cart taking water out through the main gate, stealing outside with it in the brief spell the gates were open. They passed under the gatehouse shadow, then turned right across the packed dirt tracks of the vicus, weaving through the grubby-faced crowds, filthy tents and creaking shacks. The scent of thick woodsmoke surrounded them, barking dogs followed them and a general hubbub of bartering voices, lowing cattle and clucking chickens came and went.

  ‘Slow down, if Arse-breath sees us he’ll make a scene.’ Sura hissed, struggling to catch up with Pavo.

  ‘If Arse-breath and his cronies can drink themselves silly out here, then I don’t see why we can’t bring the Claudia out onto those fields,’ Pavo said, gesturing to the patchy grass flats just beyond the vicus. ‘We’d still be under the protection of the walls,’ he added, looking over his shoulder and up at the artillery-topped towers – the ballistae poking out like raptors’ beaks. He stalked over to the bread-seller and paid for four loaves. It was rustic, but still warm and smelled delicious. He gave one to Sura, then caught up with the wandering mother and handed her two.

  She gazed at him, a tear darting across her cheek. He bowed gently then moved on towards the crude tavern, sitting at a free bench there. ‘So let’s just spend a little time out here and see exactly how dangerous it is.’

  ‘Now we’re talking,’ Sura grinned as he sat astride the tavern bench, flicking a finger to catch the maid’s attention, then holding up two and mouthing wine. As soon as he had done so, he looked askance to the other bench as a chorus of laughter erupted at the climax of the handsome centurion’s latest yarn. The centurion paused before starting his next tale to shoot a cold stare at Sura, recognising him and Pavo. ‘Gah – here we go,’ Sura muttered.

  ‘Ignore him,’ Pavo said, tearing at the warm bread and chewing absently, eyeing the expanse of green beyond the vicus again, imagining what just a few sessions of training and marching there might do for the Claudia ranks. The land was empty except for a few brave trading wagons and a turma of thirty or so cloaked scout equites on the horizon, approaching the gate at a canter. ‘We can train here. But how do we convince the Magister Officiorum?’

  ‘By kissing his arse?’ Sura shrugged. ‘Or maybe by letting him kiss our arses? Seems the type.’

  A clunk stirred them from their musings as two jugs of wine were placed between them. For just a fleeting moment, the sight of the maid’s delicate hand stirred a lost memory that stung Pavo’s heart. His eyes traced up her bare arms and over her delicate neck, part-veiled by coils of dark hair. She was pretty, with full lips and a sultry look. She looked nothing like Felicia, but there was something about her: it was something to do with the smile – a smile that set her eyes alight with that same bright, fiery beauty he had seen in Felicia. For a moment, he forgot where he was and why. But he noticed Sura grinning at him and looked away in shame.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ Sura said softly as the maid walked away.

  Pavo looked up, caught his friend’s eye, then turned away, fearing that the lump in his throat might spill over.

  ‘What, half a year?’ Sura added.

  Six months and five days, Pavo thought.

  ‘She’d have been sure to tell you to move on, to do what men do. Mithras knows, she wasn’t shy about… ’ Sura started then thought better of continuing.

  Pavo nodded, pretending to sweep a fly from his eye. He glanced at the maid again. She caught his eye again then looked away coquettishly, and he remembered just how long it had been since he had felt any sort of stirring. ‘She’d tell me to grow a pair,’ he replied with a chuckle, then shook his head and slapped a hand on the table. ‘Anyway, you’ve been doing enough rutting for two,’ he added with a grin.

  ‘Ah, true,’ Sura said, sitting back a little and cracking his knuckles. ‘Heartbreaker of Adrianople, they once called me. Stealing from bedroom to bedroom across the city, night after night. Some say the women of my home city still speak in awe about the length of my-’

  ‘Preposterous stories?’ Pavo said, deadpan.

  Sura gasped in affront, then wagged a finger, seeing the glint in Pavo’s eye. ‘You’ll see. We’ll head to Adrianople one day soon. Then you’ll see… ’

  Pavo grinned then took a swig of his wine. It was cool and tart and washed the bread down nicely.

  Sura did likewise, sweeping a trace of foam from his lips then turning to the countryside once more. ‘Anyway, you’re right, we could have the lads out here training tomorrow if we can get this curfew cancelled, or at least relaxed.’

  ‘Take your legionaries out there – are you mad?’ a refined and booming voice cut the air between them like a sharpened axe, coming with a reek of stale drink.

  Pavo and Sura swung round to see the comitatenses centurion grinning at them with one eyebrow arched – as if appraising a substandard jester. ‘Mad? No, but we might be if we have to spend another month inside those walls. You should know that soldiers billeted in cramped cities is a recipe for trouble.’

  ‘Trouble?’ the centurion snorted. ‘One of our lads tried to
ride west the other day,’ he pointed in the rough direction of the Via Egnatia – the great road that began at the city’s southernmost gate. ‘Got just over that hill before a pack of Goths sprung from the gorse by the roadside. Showered him with arrows and it was only the shield on his back that saved him as he fled back here.’

  While the centurion’s comrades gasped and cooed at the tale, Pavo chose to remain unmoved – or at least to give that impression, another of the tricks he had picked up from Tribunus Gallus. ‘I’ve heard much chatter about the dangers that lie in the hills. That’s why I’m here today, to see for myself.’

  ‘Ah, a brave one are you?’ the man chuckled then looked him and Sura up and down. ‘That’d be a rare thing for a limitaneus.’ His cronies hooted with laughter at this. ‘Anyway, I thought I told you before: my lads are posted to this section of the wall. Your lot aren’t welcome here, off duty or not. You lot are-’

  Pavo shot to his feet, resting both hands on the table to lean in the centurion’s direction. ‘My lot are the XI Claudia. We were there in the north to face the Huns. We were there on the banks of the Danubius when the Goths flooded across the great river and into the empire. We were there in the bloody mire at Ad Salices. We stood at the Succi Pass in the dead of winter and held it in the face of five thousand Goths. Where were you?’ he said this with a steady tone, devoid of inflection. But by all the gods it felt good, like an itch scratched hard.

  The centurion’s handsome face lengthened, his pluck evaporating. He dropped his gaze and searched the earth between them as he looked for his next words. ‘You were the ones who stood against Reiks Farnobius?’ he said, his eyes widening. ‘Aye… well… well your next drinks are on me,’ he added, quietly returning to his group who continued their own, now more muted, conversation.

  Sura offered Pavo a hint of a grin as he sat once more. ‘You remind me of someone,’ he said. ‘Steel in every word, a gaze that’d put frost on a hot meal.’

  Pavo looked up and to the hilly horizon again, thinking of the distant west.

  ‘Gah!’ Sura cursed himself. ‘I didn’t mean to remind you of them.’

  ‘Gallus and Dexion will be back,’ Pavo declared, his lips taut as he stabbed a finger to the surface of the bench. ‘Mithras knows where they are now, but they will be back… ’ He fell silent, noticing Sura’s eyes flicking between him and something beyond his shoulder. The refined voice sounded again, just behind him. ‘Erm… sir.’

  Pavo turned to see that the centurion had shuffled over from his own bench, now as deferential as could be. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You were talking of Dexion? Hostus Vitellius Dexion?’

  Pavo saw the look in the man’s eyes. There was no hint of mockery now, just a glimmer of watchfulness. Intrigue, recognition… fear? ‘I was. You know him?’

  The man’s lips wriggled in discomfort as if not sure what to say next. ‘I know of him. Before I say any more, what is he to you?’ the centurion asked, appraising Pavo’s features.

  ‘He is my brother. He and my Tribunus rode west at the Succi Pass in order to… ’ Pavo’s words trailed off as the centurion’s eyes darted this way and that. ‘Something I said upsets you?’

  ‘Brethren, aye?’ the centurion said, suddenly guarded in his stance and tone, backing away.

  ‘And proud of it,’ Pavo scowled. ‘What of him?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ he muttered, refusing to meet Pavo’s eye.

  But Pavo stood up. ‘Come on, say what you have to say; you’ve not been shy so far.’

  ‘Pavo,’ Sura cut in, his voice terse, clasping a hand to Pavo’s shoulder to pull him back.

  Pavo cast off Sura’s hand. ‘No. This cur has something to say about my brother. Well, come on then, say it!’

  ‘Pavo!’ Sura cried, grabbing and this time swinging him round without decorum, pointing, then hissing: ‘Look!’

  In a blur, his eyes swept across the vicus then locked onto the empty land immediately beyond. The turma of cantering horsemen were rumbling towards the gatehouse. Under their hoods and cloaks, he saw slivers of mail shirt, glinting in the sun. Scouts returning from reconnaissance. He was about to curse Sura for his interruption but then he sensed it too. Something wasn’t quite right. He eyed the shadows underneath their hoods. Nothing unusual in a rider shading his eyes from the sun. But why did each of them ride with one hand ever-so close to their sword hilt? And this drew Pavo’s eye to the weapons. Something definitely wasn’t right. He felt the muscles in his limbs tense – the soldier’s instinct.

  ‘The swords!’ Sura whispered, an accusatory finger pointing at the foremost rider’s blade – longer than a spatha. Each one had a distinctive hilt: bound in leather or engraved with odd markings. And the fraction of iron blade visible betrayed that unmistakeable silvery lustre of…

  Pavo’s stomach dropped to his boots. Longswords. Gothic longswords.

  Suddenly, the babble around the vicus was blown apart by the simultaneous screeching of thirty such blades being torn from scabbards and the whinnying of horses as the riders broke apart, shooting in every direction across the vicus, swords aloft. The hoods toppled back and the sunlight revealed the pale-skinned Goths – riders of the Greuthingi – their blonde locks tied in tight topknots, swishing in their wake. Clad in the plundered garb of Roman equites, they wheeled and raced around the ramshackle vicus, cutting down fleeing men, screaming women and terrified children. Tables were kicked over, shacks toppled, tents crumpled and bodies fell as steel rasped across flesh. Purses and what precious few valuables the vicus’ inhabitants had were snatched up.

  A pack of seven raced for the tavern area. Pavo stumbled back, still in shock, as did Sura, the handsome centurion and his four men – all of them backing away and nearly falling over one of the benches, wine cups dropped in alarm. Pavo clasped his hand to his absent sword-belt and cursed then shot a glance up at the walls. Up there he heard the men on the parapet shouting in confusion, only just becoming aware of the disguised raid. The onrushing horsemen hefted their blades, the foremost of them screaming some foreign curse, his thick beard already dashed with blood as he came for Pavo.

  ‘Lift the bench!’ he bellowed. In a flurry of movement, the cluster of legionaries hoisted the aged timber bench like a broad shield and braced behind it, just as the lead rider’s sword struck down. The bench shuddered, the legionaries’ shoulders jarred and splinters flew across Pavo and the men with him. The rider wheeled away, those with him similarly swinging past to attack the makeshift shield. Another few blows and a kick from one horse and the bench shattered. Pavo threw the weight down and scooped up a stool, leaping at the rearmost Gothic rider of the group wheeling away. He brought the stool crashing onto the warrior’s back, unsaddling him and sending him hurtling to the ground where he remained in a screaming heap, clutching at a horrifically broken shoulder – a shard of white bone jutting from his skin. Pavo made to snatch up the man’s sword, but backed away as the rest of the riders swung back round towards the clutch of unprepared and now unshielded legionaries.

  ‘Get inside the walls!’ the comitatenses centurion cried hoarsely, catching a spatha belt thrown down by one sentry up on the walls and drawing the blade, pointing with his free hand to the gate which was swinging shut.

  ‘Never,’ Pavo snarled, then called up to the walls. ‘More swords!’ he yelled up at the wall tops, but up there he saw only bobbing heads and hands extended, still disorganised and pointing in confusion.

  ‘Do something!’ Sura thundered, looking to the parapet and then to the oncoming Goths in turn.

  ‘It’s too late, there’s nothing you can do. Get inside!’ the centurion rasped, butting Pavo back with his fists then turning to ram his spatha up and into the belly of the first of the oncoming Gothic riders. The strike was true and hard, tearing up and under the mail shirt and ruining the Goth’s innards, which came forth in a dark-red torrent. The next rider ended the centurion’s fight with a casual blow, tearing his blade across th
e man’s chest and sending him spinning then crumpling like a dropped sail. The riders thundered on towards the remaining legionaries. Pavo and the rest backed off until they were just twenty paces or so from the base of the walls.

  Pavo felt his heartbeat slow. The whole world around him slowed with it. He saw the twisted features of the horsemen who would kill him, saw the glinting tips of their spears and swords. His legs tensed as he readied to throw himself at the first rider. It would be the death of him, but the cur on the saddle would suffer too. He sensed Sura prepared likewise by his side. The pair unleashed an animal howl and tensed to leap… when a dark streak lanced down from overhead. The rider’s charge was abruptly ended as a ballista bolt tore through him like a finger of some wrathful god, piercing his skull and driving through his body and that of his horse, pinning the pair together and the blood-smeared iron tip coming to a rest in the earth, propping the shuddering animal and utterly dead rider there in a grotesque parody of life.

  Pavo and Sura gawped up to see the ballistae on the tower nearest but one, cocked over to its limit, pointing along the run outside of the walls, the crew manning it cheering at their marksmanship. The other ballistae on the same tower loosed likewise.

  Twang, whoosh!

  This time the bolt came at a flatter angle, tearing one rider from his horse and sending him tumbling over and over, bowling another mount from its stride. The Gothic few slowed, eyes looking up in terror.