Gods & Emperors (Legionary 5)

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Still your poison tongues and retire to your seats,’ Fritigern snarled, knowing he could not retract what he had said.

  ‘I will not sit on this sham of a Council as long as you sit at its head,’ Alatheus growled in reply, then swung on his heel and strode for the acropolis gates.

  Saphrax remained for a moment to add: ‘You will regret this, you Thervingi mongrel.’

  The Roman crouched by the banks of the Tonsus, filling his water skin then sipping at the chill liquid. He ran his tongue over the sparkling, silver tooth in his upper jaw, thought over his briefing from Master Dexion and sighed. ‘Seven messengers lie dead across this countryside.’ He patted the bronze-winged crossbow on his back. ‘Four tasked by Emperor Valens to take word to Iudex Fritigern, and three from Fritigern to Valens. Seven unanswered letters. Yet still Valens craves treaty,’ he said. ‘And Fritigern too?’

  The Gothic pair before him were almost shadows in the light of the waning moon.

  Alatheus was about to reply when his horse – tethered nearby – snorted and pawed at the ground. He cast a quick look over his shoulder. Kabyle was a good quarter-mile away: the town and the stretch of plain southwest of the walls glowed like a sea of molten lava – torches innumerable.

  ‘You have not been followed,’ the Roman said. ‘I know… for I watched your every step along the groove of my crossbow.’

  Alatheus cast the Roman a sour look. ‘Treaty? It would seem so. Fritigern will not admit it to the council but that is his aim.’

  ‘Even when presented with the knowledge that Gratian’s army is still far from these lands, still he insists on keeping the horde penned at this dust-bowl of a town,’ Saphrax added.

  The Roman nodded. ‘Then he is wasting a gilt-edged opportunity, for as I explained to you, Emperor Gratian will march no further than Bononia and will certainly play no part in aiding Valens.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why,’ Alatheus said, his eyes like slits. ‘Why would one Roman Emperor betray another?’

  The Roman gawped at the question, then roared with laughter.

  Alatheus and Saphrax looked around them in fear that the hilarity might be overheard.

  The Roman held out his hands, palms upturned. ‘Two Gothic Reiks – in collusion with an imperial agent to undermine their Iudex – ask why Roman Emperors might seek to betray one another?’

  Alatheus and Saphrax shared a disgruntled look. ‘But what if this is merely a ploy to lure us to battle?’ Alatheus said, his lips thin. ‘What if the horde marches to face Valens and finds Gratian’s army not quite as idle as this one claims, but instead hurrying to fall upon our backs?’

  The Roman sighed. ‘Your scouts witnessed the preparations at Bononia. Think: how long would it take an army – mules and all – to march from there to here? Even if I was lying like a snake, even if Gratian changed his mind, his legions will not make it to this land to aid the Eastern Army… as long as the horde is swift in forcing a confrontation with Valens.’

  Alatheus and Saphrax shared another look, this time their eyes were hooded and eager.

  ‘That is the key – swiftness to battle,’ Saphrax purred.

  ‘But Fritigern’s rationale for staying put remains valid,’ Alatheus reasoned, his face wrinkling as if he had detected a bad smell. ‘The horde can only hope to engage and defeat Emperor Valens and his army if they are in the field. If the Eastern Emperor is cowering within some stoutly-walled fort or city with his armies bristling on the battlements, we lose our advantage. And our scouts in the south report that he is headed for Adrianople – no doubt to bed in there.’

  Saphrax snorted in disgust. ‘While Valens cowers in Adrianople and Fritigern trembles in Kabyle, we will have no battle. Our moment, our chance of glory will be lost.’

  ‘Then you need bait,’ the Roman said.

  Alatheus and Saphrax stared at him blankly.

  With a sigh, he continued: ‘Two bears live in two caves, each with a meagre shard of honeycomb to chew upon. A fresh deer carcass hangs from a tree in a glade between, yet neither bear moves for fear of losing their cave or what fare they possess. If one should move to claim it then the other might well react. But how do we get one of these slothful creatures to move in the first place?’

  Alatheus and Saphrax’s eyes grew hooded. ‘Take away their honey.’

  The Roman smiled, his silver tooth glinting again. ‘That is a fine place to start.’

  Fritigern suffered a restless night, entangled in his light blanket, drenched with sweat. First, he dreamt of that precarious, windswept, wintry mountain ledge once again. This time, even small, careful steps sent him plummeting into the dark, icy crevasse. Three times he woke from this. Next, he dreamt of urgent voices all around him. He spun this way and that, but could see nothing, nobody, just an endless twilight across a dark, featureless land. The dream altered and the voices became clear: screeching, maddened animal calls, right behind him. He swung round and froze at the sight: a skeleton army, bone-white, had appeared from nothing, filling the land. Endless ranks marched towards him, glaring, grinning skulls, fleshless arms aloft, clutching longswords. Crunch-crunch-crunch. They spilled around him, screeching, bony hands outstretched as if to throttle him. He tried to scream but could not. Yet they did not slay him. Instead they hoisted him onto their shoulders like a prize, carrying him as their march continued, swords high. He struggled and thrashed, but their fleshless grip on his wrists and ankles held him tight, sweeping him on into the twilight infinity, towards some dark, unseen destination.

  He woke with a pounding head and stumbled out of his quarters in Kabyle’s acropolis. The early-August sun was already in the sky and he cursed himself for sleeping past dawn; the blinding light exaggerated his headache, and the thick pall of dust hanging over the town instantly clung to his skin and his tongue. He set about boiling a pan of water over the open fire, hoping a herbal brew might straighten him out, but he only got as far as lifting the pan before a set of footsteps and agitated voices at the acropolis gates caught his attention. A bare-chested guard ran over to him, his face wrinkled in foreboding.

  ‘They’re gone,’ the man said.

  Fritigern gave him a searching look. ‘Humour me, man. I have endured a night of torment and-’

  ‘The Greuthingi are gone,’ the guard clarified. ‘There was some scuffle during the night. Fighting between the Greuthingi riders and your Thervingi spearmen. A few were killed and a handful more hurt. There was much commotion after that – horsemen leaving the camp. We thought only small contingents of the Greuthingi had ridden out, perhaps to lick their wounds or to camp further away. But when dawn came, the Greuthingi stables were empty, their tents gone. The Huns and the Alani too.’

  Fritigern’s heart at once soared and fell into his boots. ‘Gone?’ he croaked, hurrying up the steps of the acropolis walls. He gazed down to the southwest, where the gathered Thervingi warbands and the Greuthingi cavalry had been camped. The warbands remained, but the vast tract of well-trampled meadow where the riders had been was empty. Just the skeletal outlines of tents and doused campfires remained. He could see the warriors and families clustering around the space and heard the low hum of their confused chatter. ‘Alatheus and Saphrax?’ he asked the guard, who had followed him up there.

  ‘Gone too.’

  He looked at the guard, seeing the sharp anguish in those eyes. ‘There is something else?’

  The guard nodded. ‘We didn’t realise straight away. We have kept the news from the others.’

  Fritigern grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘What, man. What?’

  ‘The Greuthingi rode off with the remainder of our grain – heaped upon their wagons.’

  Fritigern’s heart fell entirely to his boots now, like a black stone. He absently looked down to the silo where the remaining grain had been kept. He saw how a thick ring of Thervingi stood guard around it – thicker than usual.

  ‘So none of the people can get close enough to see inside – to see that it
is empty,’ the guard explained. ‘They left not a single sack.’

  Fritigern’s eyes darted in every direction as a maelstrom of thoughts beset him. The cavalry were gone. The grain was gone too – the stores here as well as that at Durostorum – yet some ninety thousand mouths remained. They possessed only what grain each family had and… he swung round to look at the small royal grain house on the acropolis. Enough to feed the horde for how long? Weeks? Maybe. Suddenly, he was transported to the ledge on that wintry mountain pass, teetering over the dark void.

  ‘The people: are they troubled by the Greuthingi’s departure?’ he asked numbly.

  ‘Some are confused, perhaps, though many are just pleased to be rid of them and the foul foreign riders who camp with them. Indeed, they believe this means they now have more grain to share around.’

  He moistened his lips. ‘Good. And it must stay that way. Not a soul is to hear about the empty silo, aye?’

  The guard nodded briskly. ‘Only the fifty guarding it know. I swear with my life no other will find out.’

  ‘Now, how readied are my warbands?’ he said numbly.

  ‘Iudex?’ the guard said, confused.

  ‘How prepared are they to march?’

  The guard blinked and shrugged. ‘They have been ready to do so ever since they gathered here. The people too – most live in their wagons as if they are tents, knowing that things might change at any time. The horde is ready to move, Iudex.’

  ‘Then move it must.’

  The guard’s eyes widened. ‘To where?’

  Fritigern gazed southeast. ‘To the closest place we can find grain. Nike, the Roman waystation, holds enough to supply and resupply an imperial army. It is our only hope.’

  The guard’s eyes darted. ‘But that would take us past Adrianople, Iudex, dangerously close to Valens and his army. Without our cavalry we-’

  Fritigern’s raised hand cut him off. ‘Spread the word across the town and the camp outside. We set off today.’ He closed his eyes and heard the guard’s footsteps fading, then heard the first shouts of elation as the news spread.

  ‘To war!’ they cried.

  He barely noticed more guards rushing around him. One draped a blue woollen cloak over his shoulders and another placed his carved, plumed battle helm on his head. He took his longsword from one, holding it up to check the edge was still keen, then took his spear and shield from another. When he closed his eyes, the skeleton army of his nightmare waited on him in the blackness there, marching towards him with a crunch-crunch-crunch, ready to sweep him up on their bony shoulders. Realisation settled upon him: the future was no longer his to guide.

  A gentle hand on his shoulder stirred him from his trance. He opened his eyes and saw a bald, gaunt man beside him. One of his priests – Arian, like Valens.

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Iudex?’ he said, his voice frail.

  Fritigern sensed the fraying threads of one last hope dangling before him.

  Agilo gawped down from the rocky cliff across the river from Kabyle. First, a low hum shook the warm, early afternoon air, growing into a rhapsodic crescendo of feral cries.

  ‘To war!’

  Spears and swords were thrust aloft like a silvery wave, all across the town and the camp hugging its western walls. Next, war horns blared and the ground shuddered as the horde rumbled into life, wagons lumbering forward, oxen lowing, goats bleating, dogs barking and warbands marching, singing and chanting. An immense cloud of dust rose, almost filling the plain. They very slowly spilled from the town like a pride of lions finished with a carcass, leaving a stony skeleton, churned earth, bare pasture and buzzing flies. They moved south along the Tonsus valley on both banks – two rivers of steel flanking the churning waterway.

  South. Towards Adrianople.

  Agilo backed away from the cliff’s edge, his red foxskin cap clasped in his hands, his eyes wide. Emperor Valens had tasked him with scouting Fritigern’s forces for signs of movement. Here, now, there was absolutely no doubt the horde was on the move.

  ‘My horse,’ he stammered, clicking his fingers behind him and grasping at thin air.

  ‘Sir?’ Hosidius, replied. The freckle-faced and scrawny junior explorator waited just a few paces back from the cliff’s edge.

  ‘It’s happening: they’re on the move,’ Agilo hissed. ‘The Goths are marching south!’ He made to scramble towards the pair’s horses but something made him halt. There was something about the Gothic movements, something was… missing? He returned to the cliff’s edge and crouched, beckoning young Hosidius up beside him. The pair observed the Gothic exodus.

  ‘What’s wrong, sir?’ Hosidius whispered.

  ‘Something isn’t right,’ Agilo replied, eyeing the horde as it filed into the river valley. He mouthed what he could see in their number: wagons, oxen, Thervingi spearmen and chosen archers…

  ‘They’re all infantry. Not a single cavalryman amongst them – barring a few scouts,’ Hosidius said, then gasped: ‘The Greuthingi aren’t with them!’

  ‘Not with them, nor anywhere nearby,’ Agilo agreed. ‘Nor are the Huns… or the Alani,’ he added, squinting to take in as much detail as possible. ‘They were here yesterday,’ he said, looking to the patch of ground west of the town where the cavalry had been camped the previous day. ‘Ten thousand riders can’t just vanish?’

  Hosidius reflected Agilo’s troubled look. ‘I’ve heard many rumours of strife within the horde. Could it be that their alliance has finally crumbled?’

  Agilo considered such a possibility. Emperor Valens’ army could face Fritigern’s infantry at no disadvantage in numbers. Indeed, the Roman cavalry – the mighty Scholae Palatinae – would surely turn the tables in imperial favour. ‘Let us pray that it has. Lad, pray to your god, to mine, to the Arians and the Nicenes,’ he enthused, clutching Hosidius by the shoulders. He turned back, surveying the scene again.

  ‘Sir, should we not make haste back to Emperor Valens?’ Hosidius asked. ‘The sooner he knows of this, the more advantage he can draw from it.’

  Agilo shook his head, perching on the cliff’s edge. ‘Hold on, I just feel that there is more to see here. We can spare an hour.’

  ‘Sir,’ Hosidius pressed, ‘I think we should be going now.’

  Agilo ignored the boy’s persistence, his eyes searching like an eagle’s as he tucked his foxskin cap back on. He noticed the faint markings in the dust northwest of Kabyle – cavalry tracks. The departure route of the Greuthingi, most probably. He noticed with a keen eye how the trail led northwest for a while, then bent into the hills. ‘Just where are you headed?’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘Sir, I must insist… ’ Hosidius whined.

  Agilo waved a quietening hand. ‘Lad, come up here, tell me I am not losing my mind.’

  Hosidius moved up beside him, kneeling on one knee.

  ‘See the horse trail?’ Agilo clasped a hand to the lad’s shoulder ‘Does it look to you as if-’ A dull blow to his back barged him forwards and ended his words. It was as if the gods had torn the ground away from under him. One moment he was perched on the cliff’s edge, the next, he was lurching over it. He hung in the air for a heartbeat, seeing the cracked, rocky earth far, far below, his stomach clenching in anticipation of the plummet that would dash him on that ground. Animal instinct kicked in and he lashed out with his arms, clawing for the cliff’s edge. One palm thwacked into the stony edge and his fingers gripped with every modicum of strength he could muster, his other arm and his legs flailing.

  ‘Hosidius, help, take my hand!’ he gasped.

  Nothing. The Goths who had sneaked up and shoved him must have slain the lad too. He felt his fingertips burning, trembling as his grip slipped.

  Suddenly, a hand shot out and clasped his wrist.

  ‘Hosidius – by the Gods I thought you had been killed,’ he panted as the young rider held him firmly. ‘Pull me up,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry sir,’ Hosidius said with an apologetic smile, th
e sunlight glinting on his silver tooth as he snatched Agilo’s foxskin cap and took it for himself. ‘Had you left when I asked I wouldn’t have had to do this, but you stayed too long – saw too much. Now, I would kill you cleanly with my crossbow and bury you too, but I don’t have the time. I have to hurry to take the news to Emperor Valens.’ He shrugged apologetically: ‘Well, a version of the news anyway, as Master Dexion asked of me.’

  Hosidius retracted his hand and the lifesaving grip was gone. Agilo fell like a stone, seeing the boy-rider shrink up there, feeling the rush of wind, knowing his riding days were over.

  Chapter 17

  Under a bright, waxing moon, Gallus sped down the scree-strewn hillside, clutching the grey gelding’s sweat-lathered neck, the wind of the ride roaring in his ears. The gelding rasped as it went, and Gallus knew the creature had run its last for now. As it galloped onto the flat ground at the foot of the hill, he sat up, tugging on its reins. ‘Easy,’ he said in a soothing voice, drawing it to a gradual halt.

  A deathly silence descended then, interrupted only by the occasional croaking cricket. A sigh escaped his lips: the relentless thudding of chasing hooves that had dogged him all the way from the Fort of Mars was absent. He slid from the saddle and led the horse towards the bole of a spreading oak. It was an ancient tree, and offered a canopy of unspoiled blackness that would disguise them from watching eyes. He tethered the mount to a branch, stroked its muzzle then uncorked his last water skin, pouring half into the wooden bowl that he had found within the haircloth sack and setting it on the ground for the beast to gulp at. He swigged at the rest himself, pacing back and forth around the tree, looking in every direction.

  Where are you, you bastard? Have I shaken you off at last?

  The cool, silent night offered no answers.

  This stretch of land was no place for a rider to be, and his pursuer would know that well. The mean-eyed speculator, Scaevola, who had been trailing him ever since he had escaped from the Fort of Mars a fortnight ago had been unremitting. No matter how swiftly Gallus rode, he could never bring the horizon between himself and Scaevola. More, the agent had drawn close – too close – more than once, each time just long enough to herd Gallus away from the imperial highway. The Via Militaris would take him directly to Adrianople, where Emperor Valens and his army were supposed to be heading, but the speculator had driven him into these cursed hills, where his mount struggled to traverse the long stretches of rockfall or steep valleys. Some days it was all he could do to circle back in an attempt to shake off his shadow, but to no avail. With this cur in dogged pursuit, he would never make it back to Emperor Valens and the XI Claudia.