Before the morning was out, they departed Bononia and made for the south. Gallus marched with his rearguard century of auxiliaries along the wide dirt track. It gave him fleeting moments of respite to know that he was just a handful of miles from the border of Thracia, the land of the XI Claudia. The damp climes of the west seemed like a distant memory compared to these open, rolling plains, baking under a fierce sun. A weak, distant voice in his head tried to tell him you’re home, yet a dark, prominent hiss drowned it out every time with: watch your back.
Since the disappearance of Sorio at the hovel-town of Commercium, much time had been spent on the river. On the galleys, Gallus only had to concern himself with those on his vessel. It was on the nights when they docked that he had to have his wits about him: remaining awake, sitting opposite the entrance to his tent, sword in hand, desperate for dawn and the chance to be aboard the flotilla and on their way again. But when Gratian declared that he was ill – stricken by a chill from the river, apparently – and needed time to recuperate, the fleet had docked at Sirmium and remained there for days – ample time for the Speculatores to investigate. Gallus had watched as Dexion mixed with the various units. Questions had been asked about his missing agent. Some heads shook in denial or confusion, others nodded and fingers were pointed this way and that. Dexion had then come, inevitably, to question the auxiliary century. Gallus' blood had run cold as he slipped from sight, pretending to help mend a wagon wheel. He knew that most of his fellow-auxiliaries were well aware of Dexion’s power. A single word, nod or even a sly movement of the eyes would be enough for any of them to betray Gallus… yet not one of them did.
We have no loyalty to Sorio, one of the men - a fellow by the name of Carus who had been promoted to replace Dagr as centurion – had said to him later. If he was one of them, then he was never one of us. We’ll see you right. And so far they had, he thought, inhaling the hot, dry air.
Soon, he thought, looking once again at the column of a few thousand men snaking across the countryside before him, soon we will rendezvous with Emperor Valens. Then I can dispense with my veil. You will be outed for what you are.
They poured over a fold of land and saw before them a broad, sun swept, green-gold plain. Far to the south was the ethereal blue outline of the Haemus Mountains, but much closer on their right was a wall of high, rocky hills, hemming and overlooking the plain. On the lower slopes of these hills, about a mile ahead, was a rather rundown-looking stone fortress. Ancient but most certainly imperial. Gallus’ mind ran over the many maps of Dacia he had studied. ‘The Fort of Mars,’ he whispered, recalling the name of the place.
‘It houses a god?’ Carus cooed, marching by his side.
‘It houses nothing, by the look of it,’ Gallus replied.
The fort was ideally situated, shielded by the mountain wall on its western side and with a good seventy foot elevation on those lower slopes from which to observe any passage across the plain. Doubtless there were plentiful streams trickling down from the mountains to supply the place with water. But there were no imperial flags nor the telltale glint of armour upon the walls or broad gate towers. Indeed, the timber gates lay open too. Abandoned, like so much else in this land. As the column snaked along the dirt path and across the plain, the western mountains seemed to rise up, dominating the azure sky with their rugged peaks. The empty Fort of Mars seemed to gaze down at their right flank, the two windows on the towers like the empty eye-sockets of a skull, watching their every step, the open gate like a hungry maw.
Gallus wasn’t sure if it was the stern heat that lent an odd air to the place, but something… something kept drawing his attentions back to the fort. He heard the marching din fade and the cicada song take its place – a trilling refrain that grew and grew more and more piercing, like a warning shriek.
Suddenly, he saw something within the blackness of the fort’s gate. A trick of the heat haze or… movement? He raised a hand, slowing his auxiliaries. They obeyed, but the units ahead merely cast disdainful or confused glances back at the odd actions of their rearguard. When a faint flash of sunlight on steel glimmered from the gateway, Gallus realised with horror what was about to happen. He imagined the marching column as a giant, lumbering beast, and the force within the shadows of the fort like a colossal spear, about to be hurled at its flank.
No sooner had the realisation hit him than a caterwauling cry poured from the fort and across the plain as if an army of shades was coming for them. The column stuttered to a halt, gawping as a stream of cavalry spewed from the fort gateways. Alani, Gallus mouthed. Northern riders with blonde, flowing locks charging on tall, muscular mounts. They wore gleaming torcs on their necks and bronze scale vests, riding with no reins and instead clutching thick, lengthy lances with both hands. Some to the rear lifted nocked bows, sighting their targets as they thundered downhill towards the mid-section and head of the Roman column. There were a thousand of them, at least.
‘Ambush!’ Gallus cried as if to shock the gawping column into action – a thousand riders with the advantage of surprise could well rout a column of just a few thousand infantry.
The cry was repeated up and down the convoy, but it was woefully late. The Heruli and the Celtae turned to face the chargers just as the first storm of Alani arrows thwacked down. Men fell, screaming. The lancers then smashed into the barely-formed Heruli, driving with enough force to break into the heart of the column, tipping supply wagons there and ripping men apart with their lances as they went. The Roman archers, thinking they were shielded on the eastern side of the column, bore the brunt of it next – the Alani lancers breaking through and cutting them down like wheat before many had even had a chance to loose a single shaft. The lancers wheeled round and streamed back through the already-rent column like a hot needle, weaving through the panicked Romans, while the Alani horse archers circled nearby, showering with arrows those sections of the column that tried to reform some semblance of order.
Blood pumped in Gallus’ ears like a war drum as he beheld the destruction taking place just ahead of him. The only section the Alani had left untouched was the rearguard: Gallus’ auxiliaries and the three scout equites there deemed to be of little threat. A few hundred paces ahead, he saw the lancers wave and wheel round towards the front of the column… towards Gratian. Towards Dexion.
His eyes locked upon the speculator. Dexion’s white mare reared up as the Alani raced between him and Emperor Gratian. The boy-emperor’s face was ashen, his eyes wide with true terror as enemy steel lanced and jabbed at his Heruli guards, who fought back in a frenzy but not enough to turn back the Alani surge. The clash was balanced on a spear point: the ambush on the cusp of breaking the column utterly if the Roman force could not hit back.
‘Sir?’ the auxiliaries with Gallus pleaded. ‘What do we do?’
Let them die, the dark voice whispered. Gallus’ lips peeled back from his teeth, a savage half-grin, half-grimace.
But, with a hiss like a hot coal tossed in meltwater, another voice countered: If Gratian dies, the Western army will withdraw. Emperor Valens will be alone and outnumbered against Fritigern’s Goths, the steady voice countered. He saw in his mind’s eye big Zosimus and Quadratus, Pavo and Sura, standing together under the Claudia banner. The feral rictus faded from his face. ‘Rider, give me your horse,’ he said in a low growl, beckoning the nearest scout eques to him. The rider dismounted, handing the reins of his dappled gelding to Gallus, who was on the saddle in a flash. He drew his spatha. ‘Auxiliaries,’ he snarled, heeling the mount into a canter around them, before sweeping his blade forward, ‘with me!’
Carus and the rest of the century shot looks to one another, then hoisted their spears and shields and followed as Gallus rode up the column. The world before him shook as he lay low in the saddle. Alani arrows hummed past him, one pinging from the cheekguard of his helm, another stinging the blade of his spatha. The Alani lancers were sweeping back round like a fast-moving asp in order to gather momentum, ready to punch
through the flank of the column-head once more: several hundred of them, stained in Roman blood, breaking through the latest hastily-formed and inadequate Heruli shield wall and streaming ever closer to Gratian – it was little wonder they paid no attention to the clutch of auxiliaries racing to the scene. Gallus saw a slight break in the stream of riders, a few strides of space. He hauled the shield from his back and hurled it down into the gap so it rolled along on its edge. An Alani horse’s legs barged into the rolling shield. Its thrashing fetlocks shredded the timber piece but the impact frightened the beast, sending it stumbling. It crashed onto its side, crushing the left leg of its rider and sliding into the Roman column, hooves thrashing. The Celtae and Heruli staggered back – one poor fellow was caught by a flailing hoof and his jaw kicked clean off; his tongue lolled down over his chest, thick runnels of blood spilling down his front and his eyes looking around for help, before he collapsed. More, the thrashing Alani mount kicked out and felled the two horses immediately behind it, who crashed into heaps themselves. In moments, enemy horses were drawing up short, throwing their riders, or rearing up, their fluid, weaving charge broken. But Gallus saw that the foremost riders – unaffected by the chaos of the thrown shield – ploughed on through the column, oblivious to the fate of their comrades and driving into the Heruli surrounding Gratian. These fierce legionaries fell in droves, run through with Alani lances as the horsemen came to within two ranks of the Western Emperor.
‘Put your shoulder to your shields!’ Gallus bellowed, leading his auxiliaries in the enemy horsemen’s’ wake, into the fissure in the column’s flank. In there, he saw Dexion leading the Celtae in an attempt to counter charge, but he had rallied too few men to achieve this. A handful of the Alani riders simply turned, jabbing their lances out to drive the counter attack back. The Celtae legionaries held their own, but one lance ripped past Dexion’s black breastplate, scoring his shoulder, sending a spurt of blood through the air and breaking the strap on his leather armour, which fell, dangling by the buckle on the other shoulder. Dexion’s white mare backed away, whinnying in panic, and the speculator dropped his sword.
A battle raged in Gallus’ heart, every bit as fierce as the one before him. Dexion, the murderer of Olivia and Marcus, was defenceless. In the fog of battle, who would know which blade had struck down whom? He hoisted his sword, ready to throw it, ready to burst the cur’s unshielded black heart. But a screeching cry split the air and halted him. He turned to the source: Gratian bore a red scratch across his cheek, blood dripping from the arrow which had screamed past, inches from his eye. The Alani driving at him had just one thin ring of Heruli to cut down and the Western Emperor was theirs.
Gallus saw the Claudia standard in his mind’s eye once again. He swung his raised sword round and waved it towards the rear of the riders driving at Gratian. ‘At them,’ he screamed, ‘spear their mounts’ bellies… ’ he gritted his teeth, bracing for the next poisonous words, ‘save your emperor!’
With a visceral cry, the auxiliaries surged onto the rear of the Alani cavalry and Dexion’s Celtae joined them. Spears jabbed up and out, flesh was torn open and the wet splatter and stench of spilled horse guts was soon rife. Gallus drove his gelding into the fray, cutting through the tightly packed Alani riders, slicing the hand from one and hacking down through the thigh of another, only narrowly avoiding the lance of one foe. ‘Break, you bastards, break!’ he snarled as a hot, stinking spray of gristle and blood slapped across his bearded jaw. At last he saw the riders’ faces change: the hubris of their ambush and expectation of victory and the prize of the western emperor’s head dissipated and was replaced by a twisted realisation that the tide had turned. The Alani broke from the Roman column with not a grain of the grace and confidence with which they had engaged it, men hung from their horses’ necks, armour torn, lances broken or lost, skin and blonde hair stained now with their own blood. They scattered in every direction – barely three hundred left of the thousand who had ambushed the Roman column.
The din and fervour of battle drained in a few breaths, and Gallus suddenly found himself at the heart of a circle of Romans. Mounted, he could not have been any more prominent. Before him on his right was the panting, shocked Emperor Gratian, mounted and surrounded by corpses, steam rising from the cooling bodies and flies buzzing around them already. On his left was Dexion, cupping a hand to his shoulder wound, flexing the arm. Just a scratch, it seemed. Gallus dipped his head, making to slip from his mount and fade back into the obscurity of the auxiliary century.
As he dismounted, some of the men began cheering the victory, but they fell silent when Gratian had one of his Heruli batter spear against shield in demand for quiet. ‘Where are the forward scouts? The ones I sent out this morning?’ Gratian said, only just disguising the boyish tremor in his voice. Nobody replied. Eyes looked everywhere but at the emperor. Gallus cast a glance up the lower slopes of the mountains to the fort. Your scouts – or their corpses at least – are no doubt in there.
‘Find them, bring them to me. I will have the veins picked from their skin for this,’ Gratian yelped.
As Gallus waded back through the crowd, he heard muted cheering and the thud of backs being slapped. His auxiliaries, he realised, were taking the acclaim of the Heruli, the Celtae, and the rest. The lowest rung of the emperor’s force had saved the day.
‘Those scouts were nearly the death of me,’ Gratian continued, his voice growing tighter and more high-pitched. ‘And my famous Heruli – where was your supposed bravery today?’
Gallus cast a half-look back over his shoulder, seeing the eighty or more slain Heruli around the feet of the emperor’s horse. They had fought their all and many had given their lives into the bargain, only to be shamed by their master’s words. He turned away again, dipping his head, when the emperor’s next words stilled him and turned his blood to ice.
‘You, auxiliary centurion,’ Gratian called out, a contrived edge of affability in his tone. ‘Your men saved me. Thanks be to God that I was not wasteful with your lives at Rauberg!’ he said, lifting and kissing a Chi-Rho amulet on his neck chain.
The absurdity of that comment washed over Gallus, for he knew what was coming next.
‘Come, stand before me,’ Gratian insisted.
Gallus remained, back turned, staring into the ether before him.
‘Did you take a blow to the head, soldier?’ Dexion snorted. ‘Your emperor has bid you before him.’
‘Do as he says,’ a nearby Herul whispered, half in fear of Gallus’ fate, half in threat.
Gallus closed his eyes. I’m sorry, he mouthed to Olivia and Marcus, there in the blackness behind his eyelids. Vengeance has slipped from my grasp, but at least Thracia will be saved. He turned, head still dipped, then walked back towards Gratian and Dexion, before looking up. The blazing sunlight bathed his battered, bearded face, and he looked Gratian in the eye before bowing reluctantly. Gratian stared at him, uncomprehending at first.
‘You?’ Gratian said, his eyes swelling, his mouth wide, lips trembling in an odd mix of astonishment and glee, the Chi-Rho amulet falling from his palm to swing by his breast.
From the corner of his eye, Gallus sensed Dexion suddenly sitting upright on his saddle like a hound on the scent. ‘Put him in chains,’ Dexion said, eyeing Gallus with that cold, soulless look. ‘Put him in chains. Thick, heavy chains.’
I’m sorry, Gallus mouthed again.
By nightfall the following day, a speckling of stars and a waning moon cast the Fort of Mars and the towering mountain slopes in a ghostly grey. Owls hooted and crickets chirped as Emperor Gratian’s Heruli stood guard on the decrepit fort’s battlements. Within the fort grounds, Gratian sat upon a plinth, supping a cup of wine and peering at an Alani warrior staked out before him on the fort floor. Steam still rose from the angry red patch of skin on the man’s chest, which rose and fell rapidly, while the man’s eyes hung on the water boiling in a cauldron over a fire nearby.
With a dull clink, the cauld
ron was lifted by a pair of Heruli and carried over to the steppe warrior. The man gasped for mercy in his own tongue, then in Latin and then in a garbled half-tongue that dissolved into a tortured wail as the cauldron was tipped over him with a savage hiss. This time, the boiling liquid was ruinous, and strips of skin and flesh slid from his chest revealing dark holes and ribs in places, while that skin which remained bubbled and blistered like that of a pig roasting on a spit.
Inside the half-ruined stable at the fort’s western wall, Gallus heard the man’s screams until they died to nothing – unconsciousness the only mercy the warrior would be granted until they threw cold water over him again to bring him to. He looked around the stable, his fingers absently ruffling the hay-covered floor, the shackles on his ankles clinking as his hand brushed against them.
One by one Gratian had ordered the captured Alani to be dragged outside. The wretch being tortured now was the last of them. He was to be next to die. He gazed into infinity, numb.
It took a shout from the walls to stir him. He looked to the stable doorway, past the Herul standing guard there. There was activity on the parapet, above the gatehouse in particular. He touched a hand to the hay floor. The ground tremored, horns blared somewhere outside the fort. An approaching army?
‘Ah, Merobaudes and the main infantry column have arrived,’ a voice said calmly.
Gallus started as a dark figure entered the doorway. Dexion. He sat a little taller, for a moment forgetting his predicament. ‘Merobaudes?’ If the rest of the Western Praesental Army was here, then Valens’ army could be reinforced. Thracia could be saved. He would not live past tonight, but his brothers in the Claudia might.
Gods & Emperors (Legionary 5) Page 27
