EMPIRE OF SHADES

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘The Gothic Horde,’ one young recruit whispered to the one by his side.

  ‘The horde,’ Pavo snapped onto this, causing the boy to start, ‘whose warriors know no fear, whose masses crushed the best this land had to offer. And beyond the horde wait the Huns, who strip men of their flesh like animals, who pull heads from bodies like trophies. And the many other tribes peppered around the far northlands, who never, never relent. That is what it is to be a legionary. To accept these dangers and stand strong, always.’ He pointed to Opis, holding the ruby bull standard proudly at the head of the first cohort. ‘Under that eagle, countless brave men have fought and fallen. Under that eagle, you will become a legionary.’

  He noticed one pampered veteran’s son gaze off to the goings-on at the stable section of the camp. Now another voice barked from the mists of memory. The insolent little shit – get him told! Zosimus fumed.

  ‘You will become a legionary,’ he repeated with a snarl, causing the pampered one’s head to snap back round, petrified, ‘or, by Mithras, you will die trying.’

  A trio of wagons rolled over from Thessalonica’s gates, laden with spears and shields, wooden swords, slings and bows.

  ‘I hope you’ve eaten well,’ Sura said with a menacing humour as Indus and Durio began handing out the training weapons to the cohorts, ‘because until the sun sets tonight, I’m going to work you into the dirt!’

  Armatura training got into full swing, and Pavo strolled amongst the activities. A swathe of men ran up and down the earth rampart over and over, others hurled darts and javelins into straw dummies, more sparred with shields and wooden swords, and some crawled through tunnels dug in the earth. The twenty bowmen of each century emptied their quivers into a makeshift archery range. Herenus and his hundred funditores loosed drumming volleys of lead in their slingshot drills.

  The size of the task before him became quickly apparent. Of the men running up the ramparts, those who had been with the Claudia over the winter in the Rhodope fort sped up the slope and bounded skilfully back down. The best of them even carried packs of rocks on their backs. Pulcher made good ground too. But the rest of the recent intake were feeble in body and mind. Slave boys cowered every time they fell, sure they were due to be beaten. Sons of rich veterans were clumsy and complacent. And the beggars from the slums were a hotchpotch – some still drunk or horrendously hungover – one falling onto his face on the slope and sliding back down, his tunic riding up to reveal his filthy buttocks. Sura stood at the turf rampart’s apex where the sentries patrolled, cajoling them in their ascent. He looked down towards Pavo, gave him a grey look that served as a thousand-word report, then turned back to them and screamed: ‘Up, up, up!’

  Trupo, in charge of archery practice, wrenched at his hair as another volley of shafts sailed well wide and harmlessly high of the target butts. From the tunnels, a muffled voice wailed: ‘I’m stuck!’ Centurion Cornix held a spear, shaking it, half-crouched by the tunnel entrance. ‘If you don’t get moving I’ll ram the sharp end of this in there, hard!’ The wailing stopped and a panicked scurrying noise saw a filthy slum-urchin burst from the far end of the tunnel.

  Pavo turned towards Libo’s First Cohort, busy throwing spiculae javelins – haphazardly, but taking Libo’s advice, watching his examples. The centurion turned to hand a shaft to Stichus – the lad seemed to be struggling the most. He tried to launch the javelin but it fell well short of the straw targets. Muted laughter rang out. Libo’s head snapped round to the source: the Batavian three. Awaiting their turn, they were huddled by one of the wagons. One handed Molacus a silver coin. Betting on their new comrades to fail, Pavo realised. Another missile fell short, the boy-recruit’s head and shoulders slumped and now the Batavian trio exploded with laughter as Molacus took another coin. No more observation needed, Pavo realised, this Molacus was a threat to the new legion’s cohesion. He strode towards them, lifted a hand like a whip, one finger extended. ‘You!’ he snarled.

  Molacus nudged himself away from the wagon to stand tall, hands on his hips, his two cronies standing alongside him. He was sturdy and not lacking confidence. ‘Is there a problem?’ he said breezily. ‘We are training, just waiting our turn. Though my men are already more skilled than any limitanei, I can assure you.’

  ‘Aye, there is a problem, tiro.’

  ‘Tiro?’ the Batavian chuckled derisively, glancing to his colleagues who grinned in support. ‘I am no raw recruit. I am in my thirtieth summer, and I have fought in three great battles. This is a sham.’ He cast his arms out around the ongoing training. ‘What will I learn by repeating the training I carried out years ago? I am a Batavian!’

  Pavo let his voice drop into a low drawl. ‘You were a Batavian. The emperor you once served lies dead because you and your ilk chose to run from battle. By rights your head should be struck from your body, battle-coward.’

  The Batavian broadened his chest, as if expecting a challenge.

  ‘See the lad there – the one you were betting on,’ Pavo pointed to the slave boy and the mesh of scarred flesh peeking out over the frayed neck of his tunic. ‘See the welts on his back? Left there by a cruel owner’s whip. But a legionary lash is far crueller. Perhaps you will understand the youngster more if you suffer as he did?’

  The other two Batavians, true to form, had now backed away from their ‘comrade’. Molacus seemed to lose his pluck. Then, from the valetudinarium tent, Rectus emerged carrying a three-tailed lash, the ends dripping scarlet blood.

  ‘You called for the whip, sir?’ Rectus shouted across. ‘The last man you wanted flogged is still in here,’ he glanced back inside his medical tent, pulled a pained look, sucking air through his teeth then shuddering, ‘chewed right through his back and pulled out a rib.’

  Pavo, taken aback, let the offer hang in the air for a moment. Molacus shot looks at Rectus and the bloody whip. His face drained of colour and, almost imperceptibly, his head began to shake. ‘I… I… ’

  ‘Three days with half rations,’ Pavo declared to Molacus and the other two Batavians. ‘Now go and train on the rampart. Climb and descend until I tell you to stop.’

  As the three trudged away, Pavo scrutinised Rectus for a moment, then saw the big medicus wink, pointing at the gory whip and mouthing: chicken blood.

  He nodded his thanks, then turned back to the spiculae training. Freed of the mocking laughter of the Batavians, Stichus made a few truer attempts on the target, one ripping into the straw figure’s leg. Helped one recruit and made an enemy of three, Pavo mused to himself.

  ‘You didn’t trust the Batavian?’ a voice spoke behind him. ‘They are the most skilled of the intake.’

  Pavo spun on his heel. Modares was there, mounted close behind. He had seen it all. ‘Skilled at fighting. Skilled at running away. I saw what he and his regiment did at Adrianople... sir.’

  ‘And you do not trust me either,’ Modares said. This time it was not a question.

  Pavo kept his face expressionless. ‘I am a loyal soldier. You are my commander.’ A breeze coiled around them as if daring one to flinch first.

  ‘Walk with me,’ Modares said at last.

  Pavo paced alongside the Gothic general as he heeled his horse into a walk along the turf rampart base. Modares drew an apple from a small leather bag hanging at his waist. ‘The Gemina and the Claudia will form the basis of the new Thracian army.’

  ‘We are both limitanei legions, sir. You understand the place of such regiments?’

  Modares issued a bleat of laughter as he took a mouthful of fruit. ‘Border fodder for my kin, some say.’

  ‘We’ve fought your kin a hundred times or more, and beaten them too,’ Pavo replied flatly.

  ‘Hmm. But not in the most recent, most telling of times, eh?’ Modares countered, tossing the apple core down in front for the horse to scoop up.

  ‘This is winning my trust, is it?’

  Modares cast him a ludic half-smile, then rode his mount up the rampart, beckoning Pavo with him.
Up there, his gaze stretched past Mount Cissus and off towards the distant heights beyond. ‘See to the north, the Rhodope Mountains stand between us and Thracia. You know those heights well, aye?’

  Pavo eyed the tall, silvery massif. ‘Aye. We wintered in those parts.’

  ‘What happened out there?’

  Pavo thought of the winter just gone. ‘We kept the mountain routes open for relief legions that never came. We clashed with a handful of Ortwin’s roaming warbands.’ He paused. ‘We left two hundred and seventy-nine graves up there.’

  ‘Yet you were not beaten. You led the rest back here. That is why you and the Claudia will lead when we move out. The Gemina will come too.’

  Pavo shot him a puzzled look.

  ‘To face Reiks Ortwin,’ Modares rumbled. ‘To end his reign of southeast Thracia.’

  ‘Ortwin counts six thousand spears,’ Pavo spluttered. ‘The Claudia and the Gemina less than four thousand.’

  ‘Aye, we would be at a disadvantage there,’ Modares said plainly. ‘But the emperor will give me no more legions.’

  ‘Then why – why risk a confrontation at all?’

  ‘Because the emperor also needs a victory,’ Modares said in a low rumble so only Pavo would hear. ‘You heard how the people swayed between vitriol and applause at the amphitheatre. Victory sways opinion like a strong wind bends wheat. And this is the only chance of one – now, before Fritigern mobilises the horde entire from the winter camp. We cannot hope to score a triumph against that fifty-thousand strong multitude.’

  Pavo stoked over the notion, his mind flashing with images of Ortwin’s band surging through the snow that day he and Sura had been holed up in a cave. Six thousand burly and now battle-hardened brutes. He glanced over his legion – a stark contrast of inexperience and disorder.

  ‘You do not believe your legion is capable?’ Modares said, his tone provocative.

  Pavo let a silence pass, and the fiery reply he wanted to give cooled with it. ‘My legion will be capable, given time. And Ortwin? He can be outsmarted.’ The reiks had been in ‘control’ of the old Claudia fort by Durostorum last year when Pavo, Sura and General Bastianus had infiltrated the place, stealing the Gothic royal treasure and putting flame to their stolen grain.

  ‘He is a dour-headed but vicious bastard,’ Modares spat into the earth.

  Pavo noticed Modares’ knuckles whitening on his reins. ‘You have some feud with Ortwin?’

  Modares laughed through gritted teeth. ‘I am of Athanaric’s line, so Ortwin detests me… so much so that he saw fit to hang my parents.’ His face was like steel in the sun. ‘It is Ortwin’s favourite way of killing captives. He made me watch as they hauled at the rope. He roared with effort as he pulled down on their thrashing legs.’

  Pavo averted his gaze. ‘I did not wish to stoke your troubles, sir.’

  Modares said nothing, squeezed his horse’s flank with one knee, turning the mare and guiding her away from the rampart towards the interior of the crescent camp. ‘Train your men well, Tribunus. Oh, and you spoke of needing time? Well, you have until the end of March. Any longer, and the horde will rise into life again, and Ortwin will go unpunished.’

  Pavo stifled his response: A month? He swung on his heel to look over the training rabble – one archer had just loosed an arrow vertically, causing the rest to scatter, squealing, as it sped back down towards them. Mithras, I cannot do this.

  Yet it was Gallus who answered in the echoes of his mind:

  You can, and you must.

  Molacus waited until Pavo’s back was turned then stopped running, coming to a halt at the apex of the rampart. Gasping, his eyes like coals, he gazed down at the tribunus and the Gothic Magister Militum. ‘We’re moving out? Out into the fallen countryside where the Goths roam?’

  ‘End of March,’ said one of his two cronies, brave and loyal once more now that there was no threat. ‘I heard them talking as they passed.’

  ‘Then we can pick our moment,’ Molacus replied, now flicking his eyes across each of his lackeys. ‘We were happy in the southern towns over the autumn and winter, were we not? In the Greek harbours, rutting with whores and drinking wine – until they rounded us up.’

  ‘They… they could have had us executed for our desertion,’ one dared to offer his view.

  Molacus’ head snapped round to the speaker. ‘So you are grateful… for this?’ he cast a disparaging hand around the turf-walled camp. ‘And we were never deserters. We were just shrewd: only a fool would have plunged into the slaughter at Adrianople. The battle was lost by then. And this mess here? This struggle is already doomed.’ He tapped his temple with a finger. ‘So are we going to suffer this humiliation like sheep, or be shrewd once more?’

  He leaned inwards and the other two did the same. ‘We train well, we do as they say, we become anonymous like the rest. Then, when we’re out there… we break free – and this time for good!’

  The two were fired by his words and whispered solemn oaths of agreement.

  Molacus returned his gaze to Pavo, back still turned. And before we slip away into the wilderness, I’ll take my knife across your throat, you limitanei beggar!

  It was a dream laced with fire, thick with screaming, rife with the coppery stink of blood and burning flesh. A boy named Kaeso watched as the hooded ones stoked his mother into the furnace as if she were firewood. He stared as his father was opened like a fish before him. At the last, he trembled as the hooded one with the staring eye ring linked a garrotte around his young brother’s neck, ready to yank it tight…

  ‘The choice is yours, Kaeso,’ the hooded leader hissed. ‘What would you have us do?’

  The dream vanished to the sound of his own grunting. He sprung from his bed roll next to the black wagon to land in a crouch on his haunches. His hands shook in the darkness, tightening that dream-garrotte viciously, as if to take off the head, his hood sliding to one side, almost revealing his maddened face, teeth clenched and grinding. ‘Kill him… kill him!’ he repeated in a spittle-flecked hiss.

  ‘Brethren?’ another of the hooded ones whispered, waking.

  He let his hands fall slack as the dream faded. He waved the other’s attentions away, then scowled at the woken and petrified wagon driver. To settle his anger, he lifted from his bag the bent legionary dart, and the small metal fabrica-stamp mould they had acquired in Constantinople today. He held the mould to the lead weight, the two pieces clunking together perfectly. Only a handful of regiments had been equipped from that arms house and survived Adrianople. He looked to the south, where Emperor Theodosius had based himself at Thessalonica, where those few surviving legions had gathered.

  I am a shadow, I move like a breath of wind, I strike unseen, he mouthed, over and over.

  For the next two weeks, the Claudia trained hard in the grounds of the turf camp. On the first day of the third week, they were awarded the trappings of true recruits, Sura first issuing each man with signaculum – a leather necklace and pouch bearing two small lead discs with the legion’s name on one side and their own name on the reverse. The next day a batch of military tunics arrived, off-white, long-sleeved, some with faint purple cuffs or collars. Boots came soon after – essential to harden their feet and introduce them to the joys of marching. That afternoon, a train of carts rumbled out from Thessalonica’s fabrica, heaped with freshly-crafted leather belts, iron swords, spears and oval shields, blank and awaiting paint. Helms and iron vests, still in short supply, remained elusive. Libo and Opis set up a table to issue the equipment to the queuing men.

  ‘A spatha?’ one tall lad cooed, beguiled by the blade as he held it flat to catch the sunlight. ‘A gift from the emperor,’ he said with pride.

  ‘Kind of,’ Libo sniffed. ‘A gift that’ll cost you three hundred folles. Emperor’s decree. You might have heard a few voices grumbling about it?’

  ‘Eh, but… but I don’t have that kind of money,’ the recruit stammered.

  ‘No, so I’ll deduct it from y
our pay,’ Libo smiled, before crouching over the table to make a mark on a wax tablet. ‘Libo giveth, Libo taketh away.’

  Big Pulcher, next in line, laughed hard as the recruit staggered off, delighted with his kit and troubled by his sudden burden of debt. The tall lad swung round to cast one more question back to Libo: ‘But, sir, when do we get pai-’

  ‘Into line!’ Libo jabbed a finger to keep the recruit moving.

  Nearby, Rectus served another line of men, getting each to sit on a stool before going at their matted, unruly hair with barbers’ scissors. Each staggered away, some bald, some with patchy tufts but each slightly less unkempt than before.

  That afternoon Pavo was quick to have them sit down in their contubernia and paint their shields. He sent round pots of red, gold and black paint, so each shield would scream out the colours of the legion. He also released a ration of soldier wine to allow each man a cup as they worked in the now pleasant spring heat. It was an age-old exercise that brought soldiers together. Libo, standing by Pavo’s side as he watched them painting, sighed dreamily: ‘Ah, I remember the afternoon I did this,’ he tapped his ruby-red shield, still etched with the crude and irate-looking phallus he had painted that day at the Succi Pass. ‘Looks just like the real thing,’ he added, patting his crotch.

  The next morning, Pavo stood in helm, mail and cloak, tapping one foot, glaring at the camp sundial. The shadow declared it was halfway through the second hour. His blood boiled. Almost half an hour later than he had ordered them to be ready, the Claudia’s three cohorts were only now forming up in the gentle heat. Bare-headed but wrapped in military garb, bearing weapons and shields, they almost looked like they belonged. Some of them glanced in confusion at the nearby island of Gemina tents – silent and deserted. Pavo looked over the scroll the camp scout had given him this morning: the countryside had been deemed safe for today. He looked up and considered what he had set out for them. ‘Now you have weapons and shields, our training will be more realistic. Later today, you will face a battle-situation against the Gemina,’ he nodded to the empty Gemina tents. Many eyes widened and Adam’s Apples sank and rose in deep gulps, confused. ‘But first, we learn the art of marching.’ He made eyes at Opis, who hoisted the standard, then Herma, the First Cohort’s buccinator, lifted his brass horn to his lips and blew a wailing, stirring tune.