EMPIRE OF SHADES

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Did I give the order for a scouting party to set out? Did I?’ he snarled, looking up, still on his knees. He didn’t often remember the faces or names of the grunt warriors who served him, but this Goth, outlined by the dawn-bruised sky, was familiar: long, amber locks and a drooping moustache. Bare chested too – the fool had obviously missed out on the plunder of Roman armour after the great victory at Adrianople. The rider walked his horse across the stream, towards Ortwin.

  ‘Are you deaf, rider, I said-’

  Ortwin’s face fell agape as the rider lifted his longsword, then swatted it casually down across the top of Ortwin’s head. He flinched, feeling a dull sensation across his crown, a spark of white light filling his every sense for a moment. The flat of the blade had cracked against his skull, he reckoned. This scout would die for striking him.

  ‘What are you doing, you fool!’ he tried to say. But all he heard was some nonsensical, blurred noise, like a stunned animal might make. Even stranger, he noticed what looked like a plate rolling on its edge on the banks of the stream in decreasing circles nearby, pinkish on one side and with tufts of fair hair on the other. Long, braided fair hair, just like his. And what was this sudden, warm rain that was streaking his face? Confused, Ortwin looked down into the stream, saw his reflection and stared: the top of his head was gone. A churned mass of brain bulged from the exposed section like a half-burst boil, blood rivulets lining his face.

  ‘That was for my Mother and Father,’ the strange rider said as he cantered past Ortwin and on into the camp.

  Ortwin shuffled clumsily round on his knees, swaying. Now he realised who the stranger was. ‘M… Modares? Where are you going?’ He tried to say in that tortured animal groan. ‘Bring me the top of my skull.’

  But Modares did not heed his pleas, nor did the crouching, speeding legionaries who came across the stream in the horseman’s wake, bearing a strange white banner adorned with a running blue hound. Ortwin’s vision began to fade away, and the last thing he saw was the strangest sight, coming from the far side of the green: a shimmer of a silver eagle rising above the crescent knoll, ablaze in the dawn sun, a ruby bull banner rippling proudly from the crossbar underneath.

  As he crumpled into the stream, he felt his lungs filling with blood and water, and with his last sensation, heard the blare of a Roman horn from the knoll, the panicked cries of his abruptly-roused men, and what was left of his brains sucking and splashing out into the gentle current.

  Atop the knoll, Pavo glowered down into the green, seeing the enemy, seeing the charred body on the dead fire, the corpse hanging from the tree, the shamed cadaver of a Roman woman on the grass, the bodies of others draped on and below the nearby and broken walls of Castra Rubra, the Red Fort.

  Gothic warriors rose with strangled cries, snatching up their weapons, some befuddled and unsure where they had left their spears and shields the evening before. Others shouted in the sharp Gothic tongue, heads switching in search of their leader, and soon all were squinting, shielding their eyes, quailing at the apparition on the hillside.

  ‘Sagittarii, loose!’ Trupo howled. Thrum… whoosh!

  A storm of missiles spat forth from the rear ranks of each century – the legionaries there carrying bows – and dipped like striking hawks to plunge down into the massing Goths. A chorus of hard and wet thuds sounded as the shafts hammered home. Goths sunk to their knees. One, mid-warcry, was taken in the throat, the cry ending with a bubbling cascade of blood that soaked his long, hazel beard.

  Just then, the Goths realised that the hillside legion was but one threat, many now spotting Modares and the Gemina legion sweeping across the stream and coming for their rear.

  Pavo raised and chopped a hand downhill, his eyes bulging. ‘For-waaard!’ The Claudia surged down the knoll, the rattle of iron and shields pealing across the pleasant stream vale like an unexpected morning storm.

  ‘Together,’ Sura roared. ‘Stay in line!’

  ‘Plumbatae,’ Libo shrieked as they closed to within forty paces, ‘loose!’

  With now well-practiced arms, the legionaries slowed their advance just enough to pluck one of three darts clipped to the rear of their shields, hoist and hurl them. Like a brood of iron raptors, the darts wreaked havoc amongst the massing but as yet unprepared bank of Goths at the foot of the hill. Men spun, chests impaled, faces torn open, shoulders smashed. A colossus of a warrior was felled by one dart aimed true and thrown well. Pavo glanced to his side to see young Stichus, gurning at the effort, his eyes alive with shame and shock at what he had just done – surely his first ever kill.

  The soldier’s skin is hard won, Pavo thought.

  ‘Again,’ Pavo growled across the front line of dart-throwers. He saw a spark of fiery belief in Stichus’ eyes. Another volley sent scores of Goths to their knees. The third barrage was thrown underhand, the missiles rising up to hammer into the jaws and necks of Ortwin’s men, the tip of one bursting clear of a warrior’s head. But as the legions rushed to a mere thirty strides from clashing iron, the Goths found purchase at last. ‘We outnumber them,’ one Goth roared. A clatter of their round, wooden shields sounded as they formed a defensive pack, and a groan of stretching sinew and a chorus of twanging self-bows from within the pack saw the feared chosen archers send a reply to the Romans.

  ‘Shields up!’ Cornix cried in unison with Trupo and Libo – these three well-versed in the damage the expert enemy archers could wreak at this short range.

  Pavo shot a look to his sides. Some shields rose, others not enough. He saw Stichus’ shield not high enough and reached over, across Sura, to wrench it up.

  Whack! The Gothic arrows drove into his men. Hundreds of the shafts quivered in shield fronts, but hundreds more plunged into flesh. Men’s legs shot out in front of them as if they had run into an invisible metal bar, punched back such was the force of the missiles. Screams were cast up and a blood mist streaked into the air as veterans and recent recruits fell. Two arrows quivered right at the top of Stichus’ shield, where a heartbeat earlier they would have plunged into his neck and face. The lad gawped at Pavo, but Pavo’s attentions had returned to the closing gap between the legions and the Goths: the Claudia and the Gemina were set to hammer into opposite sides of the enemy formation in perfect time.

  His vision juddered as they came to within ten paces… five… two…

  ‘For the empire!’ Pavo roared with all he had as the two legions whacked into the Gothic mass with a cascading boom of meeting shields, a rasp of honed spear tips ripping across skin and chewing through chain mail and leather and the crack of bones surrendering to the sword strikes. A hot, black jet of blood – of unknown source – spouted across Pavo’s face from his right, soaking him and Sura. A spear thrust between the pair’s shields, scavenging like a bird’s bill in search of a worm.

  Sura shot wide eyes at the lance as it tore at his tunic sleeve, taking a wedge of skin and flesh with it. With a growl, he pulled out his spatha, chopped the end of the spear off, grabbed it and stabbed the holder through the eye with it. The Roman downhill charge had given them the upper hand, and the Goths were being driven back across the green into Modares and the ranks of the Gemina. Pavo felt droplets of blood quiver on his mail. He sensed his spear arm shudder and shoot forward each time the lance met armour or bone before bursting on through to wreck his foe’s body. But the momentum was gone now – the struggle had reached that awful balance, where no side could win, where mutual slaughter was the only outcome. Legionaries disappeared beside him in puffs of blood, limbs dangling, bodies cleaved. Goths fell away with strangled cries. The pleasant green became a mire of red and pink – organs slipping and sliding from opened bellies, shards of bone jutting like broken tree roots. He saw recruits he had worked so hard to train in these last months cry their last, giving everything. Even the Batavian lot were fighting with all they had, but one of Molacus’ kith was struck down in a frenzy of Gothic longswords. He heard within a deep, unbroken wailing as his men – his men
– died under his watch. At that moment, he sensed a shift of momentum, and heard the piercing wail of the Gemina buccina from the far side of the fray.

  Modares surged into the Gothic pack, his mare bucking, kicking, biting and turning. his hair swept around him like a counterweight to his scything longsword, the blade slicing necks and raised sword hands. Goths fell away like rodents from a sudden bright light, leaving a bulbous gap in their midst. The Gemina legionaries rushing in Modares’ wake spilled into the breach he had created.

  Pavo saw the weak section of the Gothic pack like a glinting silver key in a murky tarn.

  ‘Break them!’ he thundered, surging forward from the knoll-side to meet the point of Modares’ assault.

  Sura, Libo, Pulcher, Opis, Herma and young Stichus came with him in a seven-man mini-front, many more swelling in behind upon seeing the Claudia’s standard jostling above Opis. The effect was like pincers lancing a boil. The dense, fierce Gothic mass crumbled, first splitting into two halves, then disintegrating into packs and individuals – scores of whom were hewn down in moments. The din faded and the crush of battle too.

  Full sunlight spilled across the vale a moment later, shedding a cruel light on the reality. The Goths were beaten. The pockets still standing now tossed down their weapons, others splashed across the stream in terror. Pavo saw the young lads of the Claudia: Stichus and others, eyes wide as they took in what they had just done. In contrast, big Pulcher stared coldly through it all, his soldier’s skin like a callus. And then he saw the many gaps. Boys who had fought for the first time today… and the last. In his mind, he heard the sickening sound once more: crunch-crunch-crunch, as the grey army of the dream soldiered past him. In their ranks alongside the old heroes, he saw the fallen lads from today, gazing back at him, expressionless. Only then Pavo realised his sword hand was shaking ever so slightly. Sura’s hand clasped into his shoulder, and the shaking stopped.

  ‘You trained them well,’ his friend said quietly. ‘Think of the living, not the dead. So many survived this thanks to you. A moon ago they would have been dead to a man.’

  Modares rode amongst the legions as they corralled the surrendered Goths, his bare chest bright with red streaks, his sword heavy with strips of sinew and flesh.

  Pavo wondered what was going through the general’s mind as he looked upon the dead – Goths, regardless of their hatred for Athanaric. Modares halted his horse and spat on the ground by the corpse of one, then raised his longsword in a victory salute, before letting out a blood-curdling shriek to honour Wodin.

  The cry set many of the legionaries on edge, and so Pavo gestured to Opis. The aquilifer’s handsome features were as stained with battle as the banner, but he hoisted it with gusto, the Gemina standard-bearer doing likewise. ‘The Goths are far from beaten, and the horde remains at large. But on this morning each of you,’ Pavo swore, ‘has given Thracia a precious breath of freedom… given the East a grain of hope.’

  As one, fuelled by battle-hubris and confusion about it all, the twin legions exploded in a chorus of guttural cheering, cries to Mithras and some in low song to the Christ-God.

  As the men set down their shields, taking a moment to drink from their skins before awaiting their next order, Modares walked over to Pavo, his mare nickering, hide shining with blood. ‘Fine words,’ he said, ‘though I thought my cry covered all of that… and was more succinct.’

  Pavo looked up at the general, brow creased. Modares stared blankly at him for a time, before his lips and the lines in his age-worn face rippled up like a wave and he erupted with a wry laugh.

  ‘What now, sir? We are done, are we not? Ortwin’s band is beaten. Emperor Theodosius has his victory. Imperial grain convoys can travel from the coastal cities and help those few inland who hold out against the Goths. Fresh garrisons can be supplied to the broken towns before Fritigern mobilises from his winter camp.’

  Sura, Libo, Durio, Indus and more gathered round the exchange, awaiting Modares’ answer. Pavo remembered well his first taste of battle. And the sense that, once it was over, nothing in the world would be sweeter than the sight of home – be that only a draughty barracks or the Thessalonica turf camp.

  ‘Back to Thessalonica, I would say,’ Modares replied. A murmur of excitement turned into an elated babble, but Modares was not finished. ‘But then I fear it is not for me to say.’

  ‘Sir?’ Pavo said. He noticed Modares was staring past him, up the crescent knoll.

  Pavo squinted as he turned to look back up the hillside. Up there was a lone silhouette, rising over the brow like a black sun. ‘I’d say this fellow will be the one to tell us where we go next. After all, he has been following us all the way from Thessalonica.’

  Pavo and Sura shared a look then stared up at the dark figure on the hillside. Ever so slowly, it moved. A languid but clear clip-clop of hooves sounded, and a horseman descended into the semi-shade of the vale. A cloaked, black-hooded rider. One of the men who had arrived in the Thessalonica turf camp on the dark wagon.

  Pavo’s heart hammered on his ribs.

  Pavo stood on the low, crumbled battlements of Castra Rubra, eyes closed, face tilted skywards, basking in the light of a day as bright and pleasant as any he could remember. A mild breeze touched his skin and cooled his scalp – his hair and tunic still wet after bathing in the stream. Then he heard the buzzing flies and the screeching of the carrion hawks who wrenched and snapped tendrils of meat from the fallen. His eyes peeled open reluctantly, looking across the red-brown stain on the grass by the brook. Legionaries worked amongst the carnage, digging graves and carrying away bodies. The job was done. Already one of the exploratores was speeding back towards Thessalonica to spread word of the victory. But triumph was far from Pavo’s thoughts.

  He turned away from Castra Rubra’s parapet and eyed the interior of the walled settlement. A coop of chickens clucked and pecked, oblivious to all that had gone on nearby. A dog whimpered in the doorway of a barn with a hay loft, nervously eyeing Pavo and the other few legionaries on the walls, searching out its dead master. An old stone villa lay at the far end of the settlement, part-bathed in the shade of a hillock topped with a stand of overhanging pomegranate trees. Modares and this shadow-faced stranger from the west had gone inside a short while ago. As he stared at the villa’s doorway, Pavo felt an intense and shrill noise in his ears, growing into a pained, everlasting shriek.

  ‘Sir, sir… sir?’ a voice spoke.

  The imagined shriek vanished, and Pavo looked down towards the sentry calling up to him from the settlement grounds. ‘The Magister Militum asks that you attend his discussion.’

  Pavo nodded once and the fellow returned to his post. He felt his blood chill and his mouth drain of moisture, as if about to enter battle again. He almost considered going to the tent area by the settlement’s walls to take up his mail vest – still lying uncleaned in a stinking bloody heap with his helm and weapons. He steeled himself and stepped down the short flight of stairs from the battlements, his stride clumsy, and cut across the small, bush-hemmed yard. When he entered the shadowy atrium of the villa, he could hear the dull murmur of Modares’ voice. The Goth was angry.

  ‘But damn, you will not!’ the Magister Militum barked, slamming what sounded like a fist onto a table top.

  Silence followed. Just the slow plink-plonk of moisture droplets landing in the green, algae-thick waters of the tiled impluvium.

  Then another voice spoke. A thick, low voice edged with whisper, like pitch slopping from the edges of an urn. ‘Your emperors have spoken, General.’

  Pavo edged round the tablinum doorway: dust motes hung in the air of the dark-walled study. Two figures sat around a dried-out old table: Modares, face alight with anger. Facing him, back turned to Pavo, was the black cloaked one. The speculator.

  Upon arriving in those moments after battle, the cur had announced himself as an imperial messenger. Pavo might have laughed, had his eyes not been fixed on the face under the hood, whose shade betr
ayed only a grey jaw, a cruel mouth and a bony Adam’s Apple. The hood was down now, revealing short, dark hair flashed grey at the temples and flecked with strands of white around the back and sides. And the man’s aged fingers drummed lightly and slowly on the tabletop, one finger bearing the staring eye ring that washed away all doubt.

  The speculator twisted round. His face was oily and gaunt, his cheeks sunken and the skin under his eyes was bruise-dark – as if he had never slept a moment in his entire life… but the eyes themselves were sharp: sharp like one well-rested, mind well-honed. His pale lips parted and lifted in a welcoming smile that was at odds with those eyes. He cradled the chair’s back with one arm, lifting a thumb to his mouth, resting the nail between his parted top and bottom teeth like a mine prop. His look was judging, there was no doubt about that. ‘Ah, Tribunus Pavo of the XI Claudia,’ the man said.

  Now Pavo’s blood slowed like ice floe in a winter river. He was sure a flash of panic crossed his face. How did the man know his name? ‘Hmm,’ Pavo confirmed in feigned disinterest.

  The fellow’s lips twitched at one side, a movement that transformed the smile into a smirk. ‘Oh, I assume so anyway,’ he said, flicking his head to Modares and then back to Pavo. ‘We were waiting on a… a Tribunus Pavo, were we not?’ The man then gestured to the chair by his side. ‘Sit, please.’

  Pavo walked over slowly, taking the chair, but dragging it round to sit at an unoccupied side of the table. ‘What news does our…. rider friend bring us?’ he said, trying with all his will not to burden the words ‘rider’ or ‘friend’ with any sarcasm.

  ‘Scapula here brings word from Emperors Gratian and Theodosius,’ Modares said.

  ‘Orders,’ the man corrected Modares.