EMPIRE OF SHADES

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Why do none wear helm, shield or spear?’ Pavo finished for her.

  She led them up the rock-cut steps in a hurry.

  At the top, a pair of Goths clashed their spears together in a cross before them. Runa stepped back. ‘What is this?’

  Pavo saw Eriulf beyond the crossed spears. He was bound to a post, arms held high by the ropes, face blackened and swollen.

  ‘Brother?’ Runa wailed.

  ‘Turn, run!’ Eriulf croaked.

  Pavo realised then and there what had happened. He reached out to grab Runa by the shoulders and haul her back, but before he could even move, another voice snapped: ‘Seize them.’

  The crossed spears were quickly turned on their necks and moments later rough hands of others grabbed both of them, stealing away their hunting weapons and marshalling them onto the plateau.

  Raban, the iron-haired beanpole elder who had barked the command, strode before the pair. He wore red streaks on his face and a long, flowing cloak. There were four other elders adorned like Raban. Eriulf’s bodyguards had been trussed to posts like hunting catches beside their master. The majority of the Gothic soldiers and people stood in masses nearby, most bewildered by what was going on. The men of the Claudia’s First Cohort stood around the plateau’s edge, hands bound behind their backs. A crescent of some six hundred Gothic soldiers stood at each legionary’s back, fully armed, each with a red streak of dye across the bridge of their nose, each with a spear tip resting on the small of a captive Roman’s back, like a finger waiting to prod them out over the edge and into a death plummet.

  ‘What happened?’ Runa wailed to the battered Eriulf, who was too weak to reply.

  ‘It’s a coup, Runa,’ Pavo snarled under his breath. ‘They’re attempting a coup.’

  ‘The coup is complete,’ Raban purred, extending a hand towards the bound legionaries. ‘Now we need only offer sacrifice to Wodin. For the time of the worthy, the age of the Vesi… nears.’

  The other elders and the Gothic warriors holding the legionaries at spearpoint droned in unison. ‘Vesiii…’

  The noise crept over Pavo’s skin.

  ‘They killed Vitalis the diplomat. They murdered Molacus and surely Herma too,’ a familiar voice cried. Pavo spotted Sura – one side of his face black with an angry bruise – amongst the bound legionaries on the platform edge, held at spearpoint by the red-streaked, broken-nosed giant who had spoken to Pavo on the cliff edge the night Herma had disappeared. ‘They stand against everything we are here to do. They want no alliance with the empire. They keep Arimer’s head in a cave – they killed their own king!’

  Runa seemed to freeze, her eyes wide like an owl’s on hearing of her father’s fate.

  Raban gave the Gothic sentry holding Sura a signal of some sort with his eyes, and the warrior drew his spear back a fraction, ready to thrust it forward and drive Sura over the edge.

  ‘No!’ Pavo roared.

  The Goth’s spear halted. Raban’s face split in a wicked grin. ‘You would have him live another few moments? Very well. Bind the tribunus too,’ he snapped, ‘and stand him beside his friend.’

  At once, the two Goths holding Pavo wrenched rope around his wrists.

  Runa’s head flicked to Eriulf, then Raban, then to Pavo.

  Eriulf shook in fury, straining against his bonds. ‘Wodin curse you, all of you, if you do not stop this,’ he raged at the many Gothic soldiers within the crowds who stood back and watched, confused and unnerved by the red-painted sect. ‘This is your last chance, don’t you see?’ he beseeched them. ‘Kill these legionaries today and the emperor will never allow us passage into his lands. We will be stuck here, on this cursed height, surrounded by Huns, forever!’

  As the Goths barged him towards the cliff edge, Pavo saw that many of the onlookers seemed troubled, not supporting the red-streaked Raban yet too afraid to confront him.

  Raban filled his lungs and boomed far louder than Eriulf had: ‘And with the deaths of these Romans, so shall close the door to any allegiance on the field of battle. Our warriors will never become legions. The paltry armies of the Eastern Empire will quake and crumble under the boots of our blood-cousin, Fritigern. The generals of the Roman Emperor will be but bones and dust soon enough… and may the one they call Julius the Butcher be the first!’

  Driven by speartips, Pavo staggered to a halt beside Sura, just a step from the precipice, the drop stomach-churning in the stark morning light. He twisted his head back to shout towards Raban. ‘So my people in the empire suffer and die. Your people here will be slaughtered and enslaved by the Huns. That is your answer? Death and misery to all?’

  ‘To defy the Roman way, at all costs… all costs,’ Raban hissed in reply, ‘…is the way of the Vesi.’

  ‘Vesiii…’ the red-streaked elders and soldiers replied in sibilant unison.

  ‘Now,’ Raban growled. ‘It is time to give Wodin this feast of Roman blood.’

  The spear tips on each legionary back prodded and poked, each Roman edged forward, boots scraping in futile resistance until their toes poked over the edge. A small shard of rock crumbled away under Pavo’s boot and spun through the air for what seemed like an eternity, before whacking into one of the stepping stones bridging the swamp below, breaking into myriad pieces, each of which plopped into the foul morass. One more nudge and that would be the fate of the First Cohort.

  ‘On my word,’ Raban boomed.

  Pavo’s head spun, a cold stone of finality settling in his stomach.

  ‘Toss me into the swamp then, you baaastards!’ Libo snarled over his shoulder to his captors with a shower of glutinous spit. ‘You see if I don’t climb back up here and rip your balls off.’

  Opis spoke in a low growl. ‘Die I might, but ten thousand brothers will avenge me, you will see.’

  Raban roared with laughter. ‘Your brothers will meet you in your foul Hades, Roman. Soon there will be little room to move in those fiery halls. Now… throw them to th-’

  Sudden silence.

  Pavo edged his head to one side to see what had happened. Raban’s face was locked in mid-sentence. An inhuman, third arm had stretched up and around from behind the elder to rest a steel dagger against his throat.

  Scapula’s head emerged by Raban’s shoulder. A thousand gasps rang out.

  Pavo met the speculator’s eyes. Cold, hard, as always.

  ‘Ah, so we have reached an impasse,’ Raban chuckled tightly. ‘Perhaps we can negotiate… your life, agent, and the spoils of the dead men’s purses. A woman from my line, perha-’

  The man’s last word died as a strangled scream as Scapula drew the blade backwards, sinking deep into Raban’s throat as easily as it might carve into cheese. Blood sheeted from the wound, soaking the elder’s cloak. His face drained of colour – turning storm-grey in stark contrast to the red streaks. His legs wobbled and he crashed to the ground, clutching at the clouds of pink foam that whistled from the gaping cut. With a few kicks of his legs, he was still. The four other elders backed away, their hubris gone. Scapula leapt across to the posts like the shadow of a scudding cloud, slitting the ropes that held Eriulf and then his guards. At once the reiks turned to the reticent warriors amongst the onlooking masses. ‘Take up your arms. Don’t let this happen!’

  At last, they were swayed into action, grabbing weapons and taking up clubs and stakes. Runa too grabbed a spear from a nearby pile. ‘Seize the elders!’

  A flurry of movement ensued, the four elders backing towards the arc of their loyal, red-streaked soldiers holding the bound legionaries at the cliff edge. Pavo felt the spear point on the small of his back vanish, and sensed the Goth holding him there turn his weapon away to face the approach of Eriulf and his followers.

  Eriulf and his soldiers now came towards them in a mass, his face torn with fury, brow dipped, teeth in a rictus.

  ‘Reiks Eriulf, I,’ one bald elder pleaded, falling to his knees.

  Eriulf struck his head from his shoulders with one sweep of
his longsword.

  Another pig-eyed elder backed away then berated the Goths with the red-streaked faces. ‘Protect us!’ he wailed. But those spearmen saw that their coup had failed. Some tossed their spears to the ground and knelt in search of mercy. A few rushed the oncoming mass only to be butchered in a frenzy of iron. The pig-eyed elder gawped as he saw the day was lost, then turned to face the precipice and the drop, eyes wide as he contemplated an end of his own choosing.

  Pavo saw the cur mouthing some prayer to Wodin in his final moments.

  ‘Get a move on,’ Sura snapped, backing away from the edge and booting the elder in the buttocks, sending him flailing, screaming. He plummeted like a ball of lead, plunging into the fetid swamp below.

  Pavo staggered far back from the edge, a loyal Gothic warrior slitting his bonds, then doubled over, panting. ‘By all the gods I thought… I thought we were done for.’

  Sura crouched by him. ‘The speculator saved us.’

  Pavo looked up, seeing Eriulf clasp a hand to Scapula’s shoulder then draw him into an embrace. ‘I knew my father had come to harm,’ he said, turning to Pavo, ‘I just didn’t know how. But I knew… I knew there was a canker amongst us,’ he spat on the ground in the direction of the surrendered coup warriors. ‘The elder five were quiet and respectful. I never would have thought Raban had it in him to lead a revolt like this.’

  ‘You are sure Raban was their leader?’ Scapula hissed.

  Eriulf looked at the elder’s corpse, uncertain, his powerful aura slipping momentarily.

  ‘He was. It is over,’ Eriulf replied at last, assured again. ‘The canker has been cut out. The rest of my people will make amends for this, Tribunus. I assure you.’

  An instant later, Runa joined them. ‘Brother!’ she cried as she hugged Eriulf. Then she turned to Pavo, hugging him with even more passion and only halting from pressing her lips to his when she realised just how many were watching.

  Sura switched his head to her as she departed to speak with her people, then back to Pavo. ‘Hold on. Last night I thought you were in trouble. But no, you two were…’ he made a loop with one finger and thumb then furiously pumped the forefinger of the other hand through it. ‘I waited up all night in a bloody storm because you were…’ more finger thrusting.

  Scapula drifted over, silently.

  ‘Your timing was impeccable, Scapula,’ Pavo said. ‘But your actions were brash. The red-streaked lot might have set upon you just as easily as they backed away in shock.’

  Scapula tilted his head up just enough to let the sunlight half-illuminate one opal eye. ‘No, Tribunus. I usually find that assassinating a leader renders his followers ineffectual. I’m sure you would agree, wouldn’t you?’

  His searching eye rooted deep under Pavo’s skin.

  He knows, Pavo realised, thinking again of the plumbata. The tension that followed felt like an everlasting scream… until a real one cut through the air.

  ‘The fire signal!’ one Goth roared.

  Pavo looked all around, then saw that most eyes stared north. Out there, far away – perhaps four miles – a tiny speck of orange rose and then fell. Instantly, the populace atop the plateau broke into panic, wailing.

  Pavo saw Runa and lashed out a hand to catch her by the arm. ‘What is it?’

  Her face was pale as moonlight. ‘The village by the high lake in the north: it is inhabited by close kith. Well-walled with stone and stakes. We have a pact: to send up a fire arrow if they come.’

  ‘They?’ Pavo said, knowing the answer.

  ‘The Hunnic host,’ she keened. ‘The thunder in the soil was real. We have to leave this place.’

  ‘The river is swollen, Runa. To leave now would put your people in grave danger.’

  ‘Pavo, I saw what they did to a meadow village last summer. They made a mountain of heads. To stay means certain death… or a life as a Hun’s thrall,’ she whimpered.

  Pavo’s skin crept more at the prospect of the latter than the former. ‘How long?’ he said, eyes on the now falling fire arrow. As the blazing arrow vanished, another, thicker and fuller glow rose, a snaking column of black smoke rising with it.

  ‘The village has fallen,’ an old fellow wailed.

  ‘They will burn the village and torture the captives,’ Runa said. ‘Then they will ride to these parts. We have days at best.’

  Chapter 12

  Chaos reigned for the next two days. First, there was a day of panicked preparation. The following morning, the Goths of Arimer – twenty-four thousand souls – fled from their plateau stronghold like ants spilling from a nest. They trickled down the steep stone stairs then picked their way across the treacherous swamp, the legionaries cutting down trees to bridge the morass and allow them to move in more than single file. Without wagons, they carried or dragged all they owned. The small herd of livestock slipped and skidded, bleating, lowing and braying in panic. Children screamed in terror, unsure of what was going on, blind old men whimpered, gawping around sightlessly as young men carried them on their backs. Pavo, knee-deep in filth at the outside edge of the bog, hauled a woman and her children to safety just as the bog tried to suck them under. Sura, face covered in sludge, bawled at Opis and Stichus as they heaved a makeshift raft of supplies across the mire using ropes.

  Pavo shot looks over his shoulder, to the north. Silent and still, but for how long? And when he looked over the exodus he thought of the route to the Danubius: the Claudia had covered the distance from there to here in a day, but this lot would take twice as long. Too long. He saw the summer sky stained with a smudge of black in the north: the fires there had grown wild – the sacking of the place was now surely complete.

  ‘I fear that already they come for us,’ one of Eriulf’s bodyguards said in a low voice, hoping only Pavo would hear. But others did and a fresh chorus of dismay followed. Now people tried to run, tripping and falling into the forests roots. One fellow turned his ankle and another got into an ill-timed brawl with a young lad who had barged past him.

  ‘This is chaos,’ Sura gasped.

  Pavo bit the inside of his lip until he tasted blood. ‘Libo, take two centuries ahead. Set up a rope guide across the river. Fell trees and make a few raft ferries if you can. If… when the rest of us reach the banks, we cannot afford to be delayed there.’

  ‘It will be done, sir,’ Libo barked, then screamed at the first and second centuries of the cohort.

  As the two centuries sped away, Pavo turned to Eriulf. ‘There is not enough time to get your people to the river like this. Tell them to leave everything behind,’ he flicked a finger at those dragging heavy leather bags or towing goods on timber and hide frames. ‘The oxen, sheep and mules too – they must be left behind or they will slow us down too much.’

  Eriulf’s face creased in protest. ‘Tribunus, already they carry only that which is vital to them – heirlooms, precious relics of ancestors and keepsakes from…’ his eyes widened as a distant, eerie moan of an ibex horn sounded. The Huns were on the move. ‘Aye,’ he croaked, then turned away to plead with his people, but already they were tossing down possessions, cutting free animals. Fuelled by fear, the mass of Goths forged southwards, into the woods.

  The remaining three centuries of the Claudia’s First Cohort and five hundred of Eriulf’s best warriors formed a rearguard, eyes flicking back at every snapping twig or shuddering branch behind them. Pavo spotted Runa, nearby at the back of the column. When he caught her eye, he flicked his head towards the front. ‘Eriulf and I have the stragglers covered. Go to the front, lead your people.’

  She gave him a fiery look like she had done so often in the early days of their time together, but she soon saw the wisdom in his suggestion, and jogged ahead. The column shambled southwards like this until the light began to fade. Pavo saw people stumble and fall from exhaustion and trip on roots and potholes thanks to the dimness of dusk.

  ‘We can’t march through the night,’ Sura impressed upon him. ‘We could, but they can’t
.’

  ‘But these woods – they’re too thick to make a proper camp,’ Pavo said.

  ‘Then we do without,’ Sura surmised. ‘Shits upon everything we’ve ever known, and I realise that. But what else are we to do?’

  Pavo scoured the darkening woods, regarding the north with great suspicion. ‘We can erect a wall of stakes – three ranks deep – to block the track and face the north. And see what things the Goths still have. Confiscate any metal objects and bend them into caltrops of sorts. Anything that might slow the Huns down.’

  Pavo slept not a moment that night. He sat on a moss-coated log between the front and second rank of stakes, eyeing the northern blackness moodily, sipping on tepid and well-watered soldier wine.

  ‘You should sleep, sir. I have the watch covered,’ young Stichus said by his side, gesturing along the wall of stakes at the other twenty on watch.

  ‘I know you do,’ Pavo replied without looking round at him. ‘And so do the others.’

  Stichus twisted round to look back into the camp: sixty, seventy or more legionaries stood or sat by their tents, watching, waiting, honing swords and spears, putting sleep to one side. More, Eriulf and a knot of his Goths stood awake and alert too.

  As they glared at the darkness, Pavo heard a faint howling of a distant wolf. When the noise subsided, he heard the gentle hewing of wood. He twisted to see Scapula, sitting on a rock nearby, eyes affixed on a thick cherry twig as he carved off the bark, sculpting and shaping the pale wood that remained. He thought of the night before they had come over here, spent at Novae Fortress. That chilling dream of the goose and the wolf shown to him by the crone played out in his mind once more. You’ve kept me alive more than once, Speculator. But I am no fool, I know what you are.

  Before the sun penetrated the thick forest, the sleeping rose, each hungry mouth taking in a light breakfast of cheese, bread and chill brook water. Swiftly, they were off again, stumbling through the woods in a slipshod column marshalled by a wall of Gothic warriors on either side, and a rearguard of legionaries and Goths commanded by Pavo and Eriulf.