Gods & Emperors (Legionary 5)

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘We must bring his body from the flames,’ the eager rider pleaded, sliding from his saddle and taking Fritigern’s reins as they reached the hilltop. The intense, dry heat from the fire – a good thirty paces away – prickled on his skin, made the hairs on his arms shrivel and seemed to fold and stir the dusk air before him. The blaze roared as each timber beam collapsed with a thick crack, sending up plumes of flame. ‘Send me in,’ the rider pressed. ‘I will find him and bring him or his body out. We can be the ones to ride back into our camp tonight with the emperor’s head. Then nobody will be able to dispute your authority.’

  Fritigern felt a tiredness overcome him at that moment. He beheld the roaring inferno and the black skeleton of the farmhouse in its midst, then looked down at the rider as a Father might glower upon an inadequate son. Far behind the dismounted man, the battle ridge loomed in the northern horizon. A dim blue blanket of twilight was graciously creeping up the southern slopes, veiling the stain of bodies, the buzzing flies and the legions of carrion hawks feasting upon the dead. They would have to move the wagons from the top of the ridge come the morning, before disease set in. It was a numb, dispiriting thought.

  ‘Iudex,’ one of the other riders pressed. ‘You have won a great victory today, yet you do not don a look of triumph?’

  Fritigern didn’t even turn to the man, his eyes combing the countryside instead. This day had begun with the hope of finding a place for his people within the empire. It had ended with countless deaths and the certainty that the Romans would never forget, never forgive.

  ‘I beg you, give us direction,’ the dismounted one begged, turning from Fritigern to the farmhouse, straining like a dog on a leash to be allowed to plunge into the fiery mass and claim Emperor Valens’ body. ‘Iudex!’ he said, suddenly standing taller, eyes wide, nose in the air like a hunting hound, one finger shooting out to point into the wall of flames and billowing black smoke. ‘I see movement. Someone is in there!’

  Fritigern gazed into the wall of flames. Within the chaos of orange, he saw fleeting blackness where the flames parted or swayed. For a moment, he too thought he saw something move. Something, someone. Then, over the roaring blaze he was sure he heard a hoarse cry. A cry of the legions. It was there and not there, maybe a trick of the inferno, before a colossal crunch of collapsing timber drowned it out.

  ‘Not a soul lives in there,’ Fritigern said flatly, then heeled his mount back around to walk it back down the hill.

  ‘But Iudex. The Emperor? If he burns in there then we can still get his body at least.’

  Fritigern shot the man a gimlet stare. ‘Tell me, rider: would you follow a leader who dragged his enemy’s corpse from the pyre? Would it make you proud to serve such a man?’

  The rider shrunk and said nothing.

  ‘The Roman Emperor is dead and will soon be but ashes. Let our power-hungry Greuthingi cousins tire themselves tonight in search of their elusive prize,’ he said with a desert-dry glance across the hills, the tops now cloaked in twilight, seeing Alatheus and Saphrax’s men still wheeling and galloping, calling out to one another desperately.

  As he and his three horsemen descended the hill, the blaze calmed behind them. The roaring flames became a steady, crackling fire, fading as they drew away. Then, an odd feeling passed over him: he was sure he was being watched. Calmly, he drew in his reins and looked back over his shoulder, uphill.

  The three riders stopped with him. ‘Iudex, what is it?’ one horseman said, looking up to the empty hilltop with a frown.

  Fritigern turned back to them, a wry smile on his face, then waved them on towards the ridge and the wagon stockade. ‘To camp, riders.’

  Gallus found himself in an eternal darkness. A void. Nothing. Where were the twin gateways?

  Then grey wisps of smoke coiled around him like hungry asps, shackling him, drawing him through the abyss, faster and faster. Was this the road to Tartarus? His punishment for all his years of dealing death on the battlefields? But suddenly, as if sensing danger, the smoky asps released him and scattered. He slowed and was still again… but he was not alone.

  There was something in the void. Something coming for him. One of many foes he had bested, now coming for vengeance, he wondered? He searched around the foggy ether. Nothing.

  ‘What is this?’ he said into the darkness. ‘Who’s there?’

  As the silence intensified, he felt something he had long ago shunned creep across him: fear. The presence was drawing closer… ever closer. When he knew the unseen aura was almost upon him, he braced, as if for battle.

  Suddenly, a warmth touched him and he felt something at last: a hand… a warm hand clasping his, fingers interlacing. Then another, tiny pair of hands clasped there too.

  ‘Daddy?’ Marcus said, vanquishing fear forever.

  ‘Come with us, my dear,’ Olivia whispered sweetly in his ear, ‘your journey is over.’

  Epilogue

  Gratian looked out from the walls of the Fort of Mars, an early autumn breeze rippling his purple cloak and his blonde locks. His vast army had formed a semi-permanent fortified camp outside the walls of the fortress and life here had been pleasant enough for the last few months. Sweeping hills and forests stretched off to the south, melting into the blue-grey outline of the distant Haemus Mountains. It was from there that his messenger had come. Dexion, one of his finest agents, was dead, as was the young Hosidius. It would save him the trouble of offing those two along with every other man who had been privy to the dalliance with the Greuthingi. But that news was just an insignificant distraction.

  ‘Dear Uncle Valens led his armies to battle and lost. Two in every three men of the Eastern Army lie cold and still, mere fodder for the carrion crows, and Valens lies somewhere amongst them,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Such a waste,’ he added with a sparkle in his eyes that defied his sombre expression. ‘The Gothic War rages on, they hold Thracia. Now it falls to me to vanquish them properly,’ he said, practicing for the session with his chronicler later today. ‘To me, as senior emperor of all Rome’s dominions. East and West.’

  He looked down to where his western legions were being marshalled and drilled by a campidoctor. Watching over them was Merobaudes, the tall, dark, drawn and scarred general – stubborn and ambitious in equal measure – whom he had surely brought to heel at last. You’ll enjoy power only that I see fit to give you, my dog. He caught sight of the mass of silvery riders and blocks of fresh legionaries marching in from the north. The Pannonian Army, and at their head, Theodosius, whom Gratian had summoned here just a few weeks ago. The man was perfect to lead this additional force in the effort to crush the Goths and retake Thracia in his name: a good soldier but meek, humble and grateful for his political station – indeed, after Gratian had ordered the slipshod decapitation of the man’s father, Theodosius had responded by merely retreating from military and political life so as not to cause any affront to the emperor or risk his own neck.

  ‘The pieces are falling into place,’ he said contentedly to himself.

  ‘Like bones into a grave,’ a croaky voice replied, right beside him.

  Startled, Gratian swung to the wispy, white-haired form by his side, looking out from the fort with him. A shrivelled old hag, he realised, seeing her puckered features and milky, sightless eyes. Only now he noticed that all of the wall guard were absent.

  ‘You do not need guards to protect you from an old woman, surely, mighty Gratian?’ she said.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, vowing silently to have the sentries who let her in flogged to the bone.

  ‘A weary traveller. That is all.’ She chuckled feebly. ‘Yet my journey is far from over.’

  ‘A traveller, eh?’ he said, relaxing a little. ‘If you’ve travelled these lands then you’ll have heard much of the recent news?’

  ‘Ah, yes. I am in the company of the conqueror-to-be, Emperor Gratian, am I not?’

  Gratian bridled at her sarcastic tone. ‘Be wary, hag. I could end your journey her
e if I wished.’

  ‘Oh I know, I know. I’ve watched just what you have done in the past. Equally, I’ve seen what is to come.’

  A chill breeze passed over Gratian then, and he gathered his cloak around himself. It was as if her words had brought the sudden draught. She turned her milky eyes upon him, her expression utterly sober.

  ‘You know of my future?’ he snorted. ‘Then perhaps I should hire you to regale me with it so I can enjoy hearing of my many years of glory to come.’ He laughed at this, quickly falling silent when he saw the crone’s features knitting like one who does not know how to break bad news. His mind raced. ‘I will have glory, you cannot convince me otherwise.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said flatly.

  His eyes narrowed and the chill breeze came again. ‘And I will have many years of it… yes?’

  As she hesitated, mulling over her reply, Gratian noticed something from the corner of his eye: Merobaudes on the parade ground, looking up at him, his hooded eyes steely, his lips taut. Then, he turned to look at the head of the incoming Pannonian army. For just a fleeting moment, he caught sight of Theodosius’ burning glower, fixed upon him, before the general looked away.

  ‘Oh yes,’ the crone said at last, tilting her head to one side as if trying to judge a scant portion of food optimistically, ‘you will have… years.’

  It was a bleak, grey, early September morning when Fritigern and his Gothic horde marched upon Constantinople. His armies, now swollen to fifty thousand strong, poured from the hills and rumbled towards the narrow tip of the peninsula upon which the great city was perched. They spread out to form a dense line across the narrowing land like an ironclad, spiny garrotte, pulling tighter as they rumbled closer and closer to the imperial capital. When they drew to within a mile of the land walls, he gave the order to halt. Silence reigned as he eyed the thick, sturdy walls and towers, the formidable gatehouses and the array of flags and helms and spears on the battlements. At last, he cast his head back and laughed aloud into the air. It was a booming, baritone laugh that pealed all the way across the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.

  ‘Why do you laugh, Iudex?’ Alatheus said through clenched teeth, the appellation clearly sticking in the Greuthingi Reiks’ throat.

  ‘Because it has never been clearer than it is now,’ he said, turning to Alatheus and Saphrax, by his side. ‘This city will not fall, not to any army of men and horses.’

  Saphrax shuffled in his saddle in indignation. ‘I say our riders can take that section,’ he spat, shooting a hand towards the stretch of walls where the defences dipped a little, following the depression of the Lycus valley.

  ‘And as we agreed, I will not stop you from trying,’ Fritigern said flatly.

  Alatheus and Saphrax looked to one another, then signalled to the huge pack of Greuthingi with them. Six thousand of these horsemen broke forward from the noose, carrying with them ladders and weapons. As they came to within a quarter mile of the walls, they broke into a gallop, blonde locks thrashing in their wake as they howled their war cries. ‘Those battlements are the weakest part and our men will storm the battlements there and form a bridgehead!’ Alatheus enthused as he watched.

  ‘The weakest part? One loose scale plate on a vest is no weakness when it is attacked with a wooden staff,’ Fritigern replied. ‘Did you not learn this when we tried to besiege Adrianople?’

  ‘You grow jealous at the prospect of our horsemen being the ones to seize the city,’ Alatheus said, a chill smile spreading across his face.

  Fritigern gazed straight ahead. ‘I grow tired of watching men die needlessly.’

  Just then, a chorus of thick twangs sounded from the distant walls. All heads in the Gothic line rose, armour rippling, to see the pack of riders suddenly riven by the great bolts spat from the devices on the Roman towers, men and horses sent tumbling backwards like toys. An instant later and a cloud of arrows shot from the bows of many hundreds of sagitarii clustered on the battlements and plunged into the pack of riders, felling many more. But the foremost riders reached the base of the walls and the ladders were hurried forward.

  ‘They’re almost there,’ Alatheus purred, caring little for the fallen and coveting the impending storming of the walls.

  ‘Are they,’ Fritigern asked without inflection.

  As if in reply, the gates nearest the beset section of walls swung open. From within, a tight wedge of iron-encased cavalry burst out. Cataphracti from the Persian front, men and horses masked and bound in steel. They wheeled round and charged along the outside of the walls, racing straight for the flank of the Greuthingi. The Gothic horsemen, now halted and midway through hoisting their ladders and shielding themselves from the sagittarii hail, stood no chance. The cataphracti ploughed through them, throwing them back like water droplets scattered by a boot landing in a puddle. The war cries were replaced by screams as they were slaughtered and in heartbeats, the brave assault turned into a massed retreat, riders bolting with arrows in their backs, men who had lost their horses fleeing on foot, panicked and riderless mounts charging in all directions.

  ‘Why do they resist? We have broken these lands,’ Saphrax snarled. ‘We have broken their empire!’

  Fritigern noticed a lone cataphractus charging after the fleeing Goths while the rest had returned inside Constantinople via the gate. This iron rider caught up with one Greuthingi, cupped an arm around the man’s waist and hauled him onto his own saddle, kicking and thrashing like a trapped deer. A refrain of confusion broke out as the eastern rider charged on towards the Gothic ranks. The horseman came to a halt just a hundred paces from the Gothic line. Not a single chosen archer raised his bow, such was their confusion at this one’s bravery. The cataphractus hauled back the chin of the captured Gothic rider, then drew out a dagger and tore it across the man’s neck, bringing forth sheets of dark blood. Next, like a man slaking his thirst, he tore off his iron mask to reveal his dark skinned face, then dipped his head to press his lips to the wound and suck upon the haemorrhaging blood, before letting the limp corpse slide to the ground then sitting tall again, his face stained red. He raised his sword high in the sky and let loose a blood-curdling shriek that pierced the armour of every watching Goth. As he turned and rode back towards Constantinople at a canter, the line of iron legionaries atop Constantinople’s walls erupted in a sonorous, reverberating cry of defiance that seemed to be amplified by the hills outside the city and shook every soul in the Gothic line. Standards, still torn and stained from the battle at the ridge outside Adrianople, were pumped in the air.

  ‘The empire is not broken,’ Fritigern said, eyeing Alatheus and Saphrax, ‘the war is far from over.’

  A month later, a wagon drew to a halt by the side of a scree-strewn valley below the craggy heights of the Rhodope Mountains in southern Thracia. The driver snapped: ‘Out, out, out!’

  A stream of twelve young men poured from the back of the wagon, before the two equites escorting the vehicle barked them into a rough line. ‘Recruits, march!’ one bellowed, leading them along the dirt track through the valley.

  Durio, a fiery-haired, rangy seventeen year-old recruit from Perinthus, gawped as he walked at the back of the line, taking in the towering mountains ahead, coated in russet, green and gold forest and the highest of them capped in snow – dazzling like a white flame. Dead leaves swirled around his feet in the cool autumnal breeze as he walked. He drew his rough hemp robe a little tighter, every tale of what had happened in these lands coming back to him. In the city he had been protected by the walls and the garrison, but out here it was different. Thracia’s countryside – plains, hills and mountains – was no longer Roman land occupied by the Goths. It was the land of the Goths. ‘And a land of shades,’ he muttered to himself, fear rising in his belly.

  ‘Relax,’ the dark-skinned young recruit next to him said. ‘Indus,’ he introduced himself with an assured smile. ‘From Rhodes. No Goth will get close to us before we reach this fort.’ He twirled a hand in the air, win
king, tongue poking out as he made the action of a slinger loosing a shot. ‘Could take out a sheep’s eye from half a mile away,’ he said confidently, patting the sling hanging from his belt.

  Durio nodded, not at all convinced, especially when a handful of dust and scree toppled down the valleyside nearby and turned his blood briefly to ice. This fort had better be nearby, he prayed. Emperor Gratian had put his commander, Theodosius, in charge of the effort to recover Thracia. Theodosius had based himself at the Greek port city of Thessalonica and put into action a plan that would see the scant remaining imperial forces of these parts attempt to claw back vital scraps of land – coastal regions that would allow them to dock reinforcement fleets or routes that would link East and West for further provisions and forces. One part of that plan had seen a fort established on the lower slopes of these mountains, a fort that would shield the southern coast of Thracia and allow Roman galleys to move along it safely. A fort that desperately needed new recruits.

  As they approached the end of the valley he saw it, perched on a promontory the shape of a spear-head, standing proud of the valley, four times the height of a man. The timber fort had been thrown up hastily and sported just palisade walls – giving the promontory the look of a crocodile’s lower jaw – lined with a walkway and watchtowers. As they marched up the rugged incline towards the fort, the wooden gates swung open.