Gods & Emperors (Legionary 5)

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Well timed,’ Zosimus rasped, his face a mask of red.

  ‘Sir, did I hear rightly?’ Pavo gasped. ‘Dexion: is he… ’

  Zosimus lashed out with his sword then shot him a sideways, wild-bull look, the whites of his eyes stark against his blood-coated everything else. ‘He’s gone.’

  Pavo felt those words like a dull blow underneath his armour. It knocked the breath from him, kicked the fight from his heart. For a fleeting moment, he cared little for anything else. He barely noticed his shield slipping lower and lower… until Zosimus clasped his shield arm and hoisted it up again. ‘Gone – fled,’ Zosimus flicked his head backwards, down the slope.

  Pavo was sure he had misheard. ‘Where did he fall?’

  Zosimus tightened his grip on Pavo’s shield arm and the pair braced against another Gothic surge. ‘He didn’t fall. He ran. He left us, abandoned us.’

  Pavo snatched a glance over his shoulder, but saw only the compressed, snarling bank of legionaries behind them, pressing forward again as the momentum swung back in the Romans’ favour. ‘No,’ he whispered.

  Suddenly, a red-haired warrior barged through the shield wall, between Zosimus and him, bringing his sword down for Zosimus’ neck. Pavo saw that the big centurion – blocking the spear thrust of another – could not defend himself. He leapt up and tried to block the red-haired one’s strike, but could only divert it. The blade missed Zosimus’ neck and instead raked down his shoulder and shield arm, slicing through his chain mail and into his flesh. With the roar of an abruptly wakened bear, Zosimus’ shield fell and he staggered back. Instantly, Rectus ran the red-haired one through while Pavo, Libo and the others on the front line closed their shields over the gap.

  ‘Move aside!’ Zosimus snarled, pushing to re-join the front.

  Pavo saw the big man’s arm was wet with blood and hanging limp. ‘Not a chance, sir. You can’t hold a shield, you’ve got to fall back, have a medicus see to you,’ he cried over his shoulder.

  Zosimus’ face puckered in apoplexy. ‘Fall back? You bloody well fall back, I’m not going anywh-’ he stopped with a grunt as a Gothic arrow punched into his already torn shoulder. ‘Bastards!’ he screamed as he fell to one knee and clutched the shaft. ‘You have the First Cohort now too,’ he rasped at Pavo. ‘Keep them tight, keep them together,’ he said, dropping back as the Roman line forged on towards the lip of the ridge. ‘Bring them back in one piece or I’ll kick your arse.’

  ‘I’ll lead them as you would, sir,’ Pavo cried, then chopped his spatha forward like a banner. ‘Did you hear that?’ he cried along the Claudia front. ‘For Zosimus, for the Claudia… for the Empire!’

  Zosimus’ breath came and went in rasps, his strength sapping as the blood poured from his torn shoulder and arm. The rear ranks of the Roman infantry spilled past his kneeling form and suddenly he was alone, surrounded by the bodies of the fallen. He looked up, seeing that the right was almost claimed by Bacurius and his lot. And the wall of legionaries in the Roman centre were pressing against the Gothic lines and almost at the lip of the ridge and the wagons. A wall of soldiers, a wall of noise… and that infernal wall of grey smoke.

  He looked downhill, past the carpet of dead, littered with arrows and bent blades. There at the foot of the slope, the handful of medici watched on, their mules and crates nearby. He rose, his vision swimming, and hobbled downhill towards them, the din of the fray lessening only slightly as he drew away from it. ‘Come on you big bastard, it’s not fatal. A bandage and maybe a gulp of wine and back into the fray!’ he chuckled weakly to himself, ignoring the coldness spreading over his fingertips and toes. He loped over to the nearest medicus, who wordlessly peeled Zosimus’ tunic down from the wounded shoulder. The slight, curly-haired man’s eyes widened and he gulped. Nervous at being so close to the battle, Zosimus told himself, kneeling on one knee to let the man treat the wound with a clean rag doused with acetum.

  ‘My comrade, Quadratus, he’s not here, you see,’ he said. Just speaking was an effort. ‘The big arsehole usually has my flank and me his. When I catch up with him, I’m going to boot his ba-’

  ‘Sir,’ the medicus had stopped dabbing at the wound, ‘perhaps you should lie down and-’

  Zosimus silenced him with a hard stare. ‘Bandage it,’ he snarled.

  The medicus licked his lips and followed the order, tying on a length of white linen tightly. Zosimus’ vision was spotting over now. He hoped the wound wouldn’t stop him from lifting little Rufina tonight, after the battle was won, or from making love to Lupia for that matter. Aye, don’t want to lose too much blood! He allowed himself a moment of weakness, looking south, back in the direction of Adrianople, his home. For a moment, he saw in the dancing heat haze visions of his wife and daughter by the hearth, waiting for him. Then he noticed something else, something real: a lone figure out there, running. The white-plumed helm, the black armour. Dexion.

  With a grunt, he shoved the medicus away, stood tall and clambered onto one of the mules, cupping his half-bandaged arm under the armpit of the other.

  ‘Sir,’ one of the healers protested.

  But Zosimus was off, heeling the undersized and somewhat panicked beast into a trot. His head was swimming now and he could think of little other than resting – but only after he had arrested the coward who had deserted the Claudia. The noise of the battle fell away as he rode Dexion down with ease, then slid from the back of the mule.

  ‘The battle’s… that… way,’ Zosimus slurred, the blood having soaked through his bandage, pattering on the parched ground. The cicada song was shrill and uncomfortable, and he realised he was swaying.

  Dexion backed away from him, hands raised in supplication. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t understand what?’ Zosimus spat. ‘That my comrade, Centurion Quadratus, goes missing in the hours after he told me he was going to confront you,’ he stabbed a finger at Dexion’s gem-hilted blade, ‘about that.’ He stepped towards Dexion. ‘I’ve known big Quadratus for years, and it took a lot for me to doubt his theory. But you know what – I did… because I wanted to. I wanted to believe you were everything Gallus thought you were when he made you his primus pilus.’ He stopped, his vision black for a few heartbeats. He wiped at his eyes and this brought the blinding sunlight back. ‘But then you run from battle. There is no way I can convince myself that you’re anything other than a coward… at best.’

  Dexion’s tawny-gold eyes darted north to the battle, then covetously to the south.

  ‘Don’t even… think about it,’ Zosimus said, flexing his good hand on his spatha hilt. But even those fingers were now growing numb.

  Dexion nodded and held his hands a little higher. ‘Quadratus came to me last night. He accused me of things I can barely bring myself to repeat. He was angry. He… tried to attack me. Yet he was drunk and I was swift, I dodged the dagger he thrust at me and battered him on the back of the head. I meant to knock him out but I must have hit him too hard. Now I knew the effect this would have had on the men on a morning such as this, so I kept it quiet – had a few men from the city garrison deal with his body.’

  Zosimus’ heart clenched. ‘You killed… him? You killed my… friend, my comrade, my brother.’ He slowly drew his spatha and Dexion backed away as he brought the gleaming blade up to hover between them. ‘And Gallus?’

  Dexion shook his head. ‘I’ll explain, as I tried to with Quadratus,’ he tapped his gem-hilted sword. ‘This, this was all a big mistake.’

  ‘I’ll be having that,’ Zosimus snarled, clumsily hooking the sword’s handle with his own blade, drawing it from Dexion’s scabbard then tossing it into the dirt nearby. The effort all but sapped his draining strength. ‘And you’ll be answering… for all… you’ve done,’ he wheezed through tight, cold lips. He heard his words as if spoken by another, and now more than ever longed to sink to his knees or lie down and rest, close his eyes.

  ‘I’ll answer every question you have,’ Dexion said, hand
s still raised.

  Zosimus noticed how he kept glancing back to the battle and saw his tongue dart out again and again. He looked too, and saw that the vast, Roman line was in the ascendency once more. Victory is near? he wondered. ‘Why… were you running?’ he asked. ‘I’ve seen you… stand and fight against far blacker… odds than this.’

  There it was again, the tongue darting out, the eyes hanging on the battle line. No, not the battle line, Zosimus realised, the wall of smoke. A stark chill sped across Zosimus’ already cooling and paling skin as he gazed at the billowing stain above the battle. ‘It was you who gave the nod for that signal arrow. The arrow the Goths heard. The arrow that caused them to light those fires?’ Suddenly he felt terrible fear for the Roman lines and for all in these lands. Lupia, Rufina, he mouthed. ‘What… have you done?’ he snarled, turning back to Dexion. ‘What have you-’

  He fell silent, seeing that the black-garbed primus pilus had stepped over and was now nose-to-nose with him, noticing that the man’s hands were no longer raised, feeling the dull sensation of something raking inside his breast. He staggered back, bemused by the dagger hilt embedded in his chest.

  ‘As always,’ Dexion whispered, peering down his nose as Zosimus fell to his knees, ‘I have done my master’s bidding. Without feeling, and without fail.’

  Zosimus, the bull of the XI Claudia, collapsed to the ground, his final thoughts with his brothers on the ridge and his beloved in Adrianople.

  Gallus sped through the scorched, dry valley, his eyes combing the horizon, ever-fixed on the dust cloud that always seemed to be just another valley ahead. He heard nothing, nothing but the drum of his mount’s hooves, his heart and the rush of hot air past his ears. This was the last of the hills – it had to be, he prayed, for he had forded the Tonsus River the best part of an hour ago and the flat lands around Adrianople must surely be close. The horse sped up the slope and then halted as Gallus yanked on the reins, transfixed by the green-gold plains stretching out before him. At once he spotted the silver city of Adrianople, glimmering on the horizon far to the south, but his gaze hung on the metropolis for just an instant, his attention being torn northwards, to the dust cloud he had been using like a beacon. But it had changed: now it was a coiling, grey wall of smoke, spilling into the sky just a mile to the north of his position and part-masking the blistering sun. He followed the tendrils down to their source: two orange blazes on either end of a broad, flat-topped ridge, edged with Gothic wagons. The southern slopes of this ridge glistened like running water in the sunlight. He squinted, seeing the flashes of coloured banners there, hearing the faint sounds that confirmed it all: the war horns, the guttural screams of dying men and the pained whinnying of horses. Thousands upon thousands of men clashing iron. The Gothic Horde and the Army of the East were entangled like great warring stags.

  ‘By the gods, no,’ he whispered into the ether. Instinctively, he heeled the horse into a gallop once more, heedless of the froth at her mouth or lathered sweat on her skin. The beast did not resist, riding down the hill and then pelting across the sweltering plains towards the beset ridge. ‘It is too late,’ he realised as he sped towards the conflict, seeing the battle for what it was: two evenly-matched walls of infantry, the Goths holding the lip of the ridge and the legions of the East striving uphill against them, the two sides stealing then conceding a few paces of ground as they shoved against one another. The right wing of Roman cavalry seemed to be on the verge of breaking the Gothic left, but the left wing of Roman riders were not faring so well. What can I do? What use is my news about Gratian when battle has already commenced?

  Stand with them, a voice answered in his head. At once he understood the meaning. The Claudia were somewhere within that seething mass of flesh, blood and iron on the ridge slope. Protect them, the voice said again, and instantly, he knew that with Dexion amongst them, guiding them, their fate was bleak.

  ‘If the Goths do not cut you down, you bas-’ he fell silent, all his thoughts crumbling away as he saw something else to the north: a vast herd of riders, pouring south from the Tonsus valley like a plague towards the rear of the ridge, the wall of smoke veiling the dust plume of their approach. Gallus felt a cold, heavy stone settle in his stomach as he realised what was about to happen. ‘Mithras, no.’

  Stand with them, the voice repeated.

  ‘Get your shoulders behind your shields and push!’ Pavo screamed along the Claudia front.

  ‘Give them not a pace – not a pace!’ Sura yelled, pressed to Pavo’s left shoulder.

  Yet the Goths cried out too, pushing back even harder and soon, legionary boots were slipping in the mire of blood-soaked dust, ceding pace after pace of ground. Rasping, half-choruses of defiance sounded from the exhausted, thirsty and baking Roman ranks, half-blinded by the stinging smoke. Pavo gave every scrap of strength in his rapidly numbing limbs to hold the Goths back, but it was not enough and the legionary front cracked. Pavo fell to one knee while his Claudia comrades were driven back either side of him.

  Suddenly, he found himself isolated, two Goths lunging for him on either side. His heart slowed to a fierce crash. He raised his spatha towards the Goth on the right, hoisting his shield to protect his back from the other one as best he could. He saw his foe’s eyes sparkle, spit flying from the snarling mouth. In his mind’s eye, he saw the faces of the many lost he was surely about to join.

  Stand with me now, he mouthed, Bracing as the rightmost foe leapt for him.

  But the man did not make it. Either side of Pavo, the silvery legionary wall surged forward once more with a visceral cheer, reclaiming the lost ground. The two coming for Pavo were run through on legionary spears, and the sheer hubris of this counter charge sent the other Goths staggering back in fright.

  All Pavo could hear from the reinvigorated Claudia forging uphill past him was the same cry, echoing: ‘He’s here!’

  ‘What?’ Pavo gasped, seeing Cornix rush past nearby.

  Cornix’s face was fixed in a manic grin. ‘By the gods – it’s him. He has cheated Hades!’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘What? Who?’ Pavo shouted as they drove the Goths back, but the fighting drowned out any reply.

  A hand slapped on his shoulder. ‘Pavo, look,’ Sura said, hauling him back from the thick of the fighting for a moment, then pointing down the slope. What he saw was like a burst of cool wind. There, racing up through the rear ranks, rode a gaunt, wolf-like horseman with winter-blue eyes and grey-streaked hair, his face set in an animal snarl and his sword held high by a long, sinewy arm.

  Pavo gawped, uncomprehending. Gallus.

  As he locked eyes with the approaching, mail-shirted apparition, he heard the cries from the ranks of the Claudia and their limitanei brothers, the V Macedonica, all of whom surged forward in renewed belief.

  ‘It is Gallus of the Claudia!’

  ‘The Iron Tribunus has crossed the Styx and vanquished the Ferryman. He has returned to take us to victory!’

  ‘Sura, how can this be? Are we… dead?’ Pavo gasped, absently patting his torso as if expecting to find a mortal wound there.

  ‘One day, friend, but not yet,’ Sura replied, hugging him with one arm.

  Gallus forged through the ranks to the pair, then slid from the saddle. Pavo saw the mesh of scars and the faint, fading bruises dappling the tribunus’ face. He looked many years older than when he had left the legion just the previous winter. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Pavo?’ Gallus said, seemingly racked with the same measure of disbelief. Then, noticing Pavo’s new rank, added: ‘Centurion Pavo?’

  Decorum cast aside, the pair locked forearms.

  Pavo felt a blanketing warmth, an odd sense of comfort and wellbeing despite the chaos of battle only feet away. It was something he had felt only once before: when reunited with Father in the Persian realm. ‘We, I thought you were dead. The Quadi struck you down? How is this possible? I never thought I would set eyes upon you again, sir.’

  ‘Nor I you,’ Gall
us replied, clasping a firm hand to Pavo’s shoulder. He looked to the Claudia’s silver eagle standard with the ruby bull banner draped from its crossbar, ‘nor that blessed emblem.’ His eyes shot this way and that along the swelling, bucking line of battle, just a few paces uphill. ‘The story is long and tangled. Where are the others?’

  Pavo shook his head. ‘Quadratus disappeared, Zosimus has fallen back injured and Dexion… he… he fled.’ The words stuck in Pavo’s throat like a lump of gristle.

  ‘That is no surprise,’ Gallus growled.

  ‘Sir?’ Pavo said.

  ‘We have no time to talk. The army must disengage and withdraw,’ he seized the banner from the bemused aquilifer and raised it, swiping it backwards fiercely again and again. Standing tall, Gallus’ eyes were trained on the emperor’s swishing purple plume, where he was aiding the effort of the Nervii and the Fortenses regiments further right along the Roman lines. The lone Claudia banner did little to catch the eye of the emperor or the many legions locked in battle. ‘Withdraw!’ Gallus cried. A few heads turned, hearing the call.

  ‘Why, sir?’ Sura cried. ‘We’re making good ground now, and we might just seize this ridge if we-’

  ‘Prompt the buccinators, sound the horns,’ Gallus snapped, cutting him off. ‘The army must draw back or… ’

  Pavo did not hear the rest of Gallus’ words. Instead, he felt his eyes drawn to the extreme Roman right, where Bacurius and his riders were on the cusp of claiming victory on that flank. The grey wall of smoke swirled and churned by the right end of the wagon stockade as if the hand of a god had stirred it. At the same time, the ground underfoot shuddered like an earth tremor, and Pavo could only liken it to that moment he had stood in the shallows of the Propontis, as a boy, when the great wave came rushing for Constantinople. The frenzy of battle seemed to halt for that briefest of moments, many thousands of eyes, Roman and Gothic, twisting to the swirling smoke.