‘Mithras, God of the light, eh?’ Demophilus smiled as he noticed the pink welt of skin on Pavo’s forearm.
Pavo had glanced down at it: the Mark of the Raven, issued via Zosimus’ red-hot blade in the Mithraeum near Durostorum, back before the Goths had come. ‘He’s seen us right over the years,’ Pavo had said. ‘Many of your god’s victories have been won by men with marks like this.’
Demophilus had laughed and clacked his water cup against Pavo’s.
Days later, Pavo was making his way through the ice and snowbound markets by the triumphal arch when he heard a commotion. Demophilus had emerged from the emperor’s palace hill complex, but now he was stripped of his religious robes and slippers, going barefoot and clad in a beggar’s rags instead. The Nicene Bishop, Ancholius – young, prematurely bald and fiercely ambitious – had denied him an audience with the emperor, rejected Demophilus’ offer to heal and nurse the ailing leader, and instead demanded of him that he renounce his Arian ways and swear to turn to the Nicene faction – a move that would have earned him a high status and a comfortable life. Demophilus had refused, choosing to stick to his beliefs instead. And so the poor wretch had to suffer the derision of the Nicene majority within Thessalonica. They had tossed blackened turnips and rotting fruit at the old fellow, whistling and booing him as he made his way back to his liburnian docked at the far end of the wharf. Pavo had risked their wrath by shielding the old man, and by breaking the nose of one overenthusiastic detractor who ran at Demophilus with a cudgel. As they went, the gleeful Bishop Ancholius had boasted from high atop the triumphal arch: ‘Emperor Theodosius has spoken: the Arian churches of Thessalonica and Constantinople are to be turned over to the Nicene order. Arian heretics who try to set foot inside will be met with sharpened steel.’
‘I came here as a bishop,’ Demophilus had wept, to Pavo, ‘and I leave as a beggar. But no man can take from me my faith.’
Pavo realised he was looking down at the raven mark on his arm as the memory faded. Just as Julius had harnessed most affairs of the army and the state during Theodosius’ illness, so Bishop Ancholius had seized his moment to press his own agenda of faith.
‘Here he comes,’ Sura whispered, bringing Pavo back to the present just as the priest’s chanting rose into a haunting song.
He looked up as all the gossiping voices fell silent. None had set eyes upon Theodosius since last autumn when the illness had first gotten hold of him. And what a toll it had taken: gaunt, frail and shaking, he shambled into the rotunda via the palace door, aided like a drunk man by two white-robed priests and shadowed by the dark-armoured Magister Militum Julius and two Lancearii. Those large, almond eyes that had commanded the respect of the masses at his coronation and early addresses were now glassy, gazing into infinity and shot with red veins. The thick woollen robe he wore against the early February chill seemed like a crippling burden for his weak body. The flanking priests steadied him as he stepped into the pool, the waters coming to his thighs and the dampness creeping up his heavy robe.
Pavo noticed Rectus, one arm folded across his chest, the other elbow balanced on it, fingers twiddling with his lantern jaw, eyes studying, perplexed by the emperor’s condition.
Bishop Ancholius, walked around Theodosius in the baptismal pool’s ankle-deep shallows, his gown trailing in the waters. He tossed a hand up and back every so often as he muttered sacred Christian words to consecrate the water. The two priests disrobed the emperor, revealing his lank, bony and unwell body. Pavo felt as if he was watching a cremation. The new emperor had opted for the rite that most Christians only asked for in their final days, when all other hope was gone.
‘Do you renounce all evil?’ Ancholius boomed like a general.
‘I do,’ the ailing Theodosius croaked.
‘Fever,’ Rectus muttered. ‘Definitely fever.’
‘Will you be loyal, always, to the Holy Trinity?’ Ancholius demanded.
‘With all my heart,’ Theodosius sighed weakly, his strength ebbing, gazing up into the oculus.
Ancholius let a pregnant pause pass. A negotiator’s trick, Pavo realised – a moment to let the supplicant fear he is to be denied, and to highlight just how much power the other holds. ‘And so it shall be,’ he cupped a hand around Theodosius’ naked back and put the other on his forehead, then, with the help of the other two, eased him back into the deeper section of the pool. Once, twice and thrice, they submerged him. When he arose, his soaking hair slicked back to accentuate his skeletal face, two more helpers brought over a pot of myrrh, then daubed the precious sweet oil upon his breast. The two priests helped the emperor to stagger from the pool, before they and the Bishop placed their hands on Theodosius’ chest and chanted a low, sullen verse. ‘Your name will be written on the Lord’s scrolls, your sins are no more,’ Ancholius finished, the other two priests bringing a fresh white robe from a chest and draping it over the emperor. Shaking, Theodosius walked forth from the baptistery and into the daylight where the masses waited. The soldiers threw up their hands in salute, the people cried out in joy, trumpeters blaring out songs of triumph.
As the crowd within the rotunda drained outside, the Claudia men remained where they were. Sura rested an elbow on Pavo’s shoulder, staring at the backs of those departing, hearing the explosions of joy outside. ‘The last I heard, Fritigern’s half of the horde was poised here in Macedonia, near the high town of Scupi. The scouts said they train every day, stockpiling weapons and planning their route of approach to these parts. Meanwhile we’re all in here, watching a man getting his balls washed?’
‘Those scout reports are weeks old, and winter grows gentle,’ Libo agreed. ‘Spring is not far off. Who’s to say Fritigern is not already on the move?’
Pavo saw Julius outside, taking the acclaim of the crowds along with the other high-rankers. The Butcher of Chalcedon had prepared little over the winter by way of strategy. Pavo, Modares and Saturninus had spent several evenings planning how they might take the initiative: to send a small naval force around the Greek peninsula, come around on Fritigern’s rear, harass the horde and slow their progress towards the Thessalonica region; to block the passes around Scupi; or to put torch to the crop fields of those lands to prevent Fritigern reaping the early harvest for himself. But when they tried to put these ideas to Julius, they were rejected out of hand. The Butcher, it seemed, cared only for a brutish, head-on confrontation with the horde.
‘Anyway,’ Libo cooed. ‘I say bring the hairy bastards on. I’m sick of waiting. We’ve got fifteen thousand good legionaries – and the five thousand from Eriulf’s lot, they’re all but ready now; I saw them training today, all mail, spathas and plumbatae. Five legions as well-drilled as any.’
Means nothing to some, Pavo grumbled inwardly. For all Julius ignored pressing matters, he was fastidious in his demands for reports on the Gothic shore camp – men running to and from his officium once an hour merely to impart that there was nothing suspicious going on whatsoever. Every night the grim-faced Magister Militum continued to perch on Thessalonica’s southwestern corner tower, glowering down upon the Gothic shore camp. Once every week throughout December, January and February Pavo had asked the man’s clerks for a meeting, to petition for a little piece of the rare free space within Thessalonica to be given to Eriulf’s people. Every time Julius had refused him even an audience.
Day by day, he had seen the bright hope on the faces of Eriulf’s people ebb away as they realised their dreams of true homes in the green-gold lands of the empire were dreams and no more. All the while, Julius remained deaf to their dismay, locked away in the city palace or lurking silent and alone atop the wall towers. The man’s mind would not be changed and few could even get close enough to him to try.
But then an idea scurried into Pavo’s thoughts. It was the kind of idea he would have expected from Sura. But the more he thought about it, the stronger it took root.
In the dead of night, Julius stood upon the snow-capped tower at the western end of
Thessalonica’s land walls, hands clasped behind his back, a biting wind furrowing his cloak, the pale moonlight gleaming on his beetle-like black helm. He saw nothing but the mists of memory, and a cruel image of two girls floating face-down in an impluvium. The image shook and shuddered as it faded away and reality replaced it: the sight of the frozen Gothic shore camp below the tower. In a low drawl, he cursed at every one of the few cloak-swaddled Goths moving wearily from their tents and huts to the latrine pits and water troughs down there.
‘I see you, I smell your treachery,’ he muttered. ‘Give me the chance. Just show me a hint of perfidy, and I will send my legions amongst your tents to spear you while you sleep.’
A scrape sounded behind him. He swung to the noise, but saw that the circular tower top was deserted. Perhaps it was the boot of one of the three sentries he had posted to block access to this platform, he concluded. He stepped forward towards the city-facing parapet, seeing the handful of torches and lamps still glowing across the white-cloaked marble wards, and the ribbons of moonlight stretching across the gently lapping sea beyond the wharf district. Just as he came to a halt at the parapet, a hand clasped the edge of the crenel next to him, nudging snow from it. He staggered back as, with a grunt and a gasp, a figure levered itself up and thudded down onto the tower top.
With a zing, Julius drew his sword. ‘Death to you,’ he hissed, seeing the Goth there, coming towards him.
But the figure moved into the moonlight, and he saw that it was a Roman in a winter soldier tunic and woollen trousers.
‘Sometimes our eyes let us see what we want to see,’ the soldier said.
Julius’ nose wrinkled, ‘what are you doing up here? Who are you?’
‘Tribunus Pavo, of the XI Claudia.’
‘You, the one who has been pestering my clerks like a locust?’
‘And you, the one who has been denying my every request.’
Julius noted that the tribunus was not armed. ‘Well, if you’ve climbed this tower, you’ve won my attention. So, don’t waste time, what do you want?’
They took to strolling round the wide tower top. Pavo told him of the mission to the plateau, of the Claudia’s time there and of the battle against the Huns. ‘They fought for us, against their elders – the kind you would rightly mistrust – and against the Huns – the blight of all. Respectfully, Magister Militum, they may be Goths, but they are not our enemy.’
Julius said nothing for a time, then finally: ‘You judge me for what I did at Chalcedon.’
Pavo’s ears pricked up. He weighed his next words carefully: ‘Quite simply, I do not understand why you did what you did at Chalcedon. The Goths there were serving the empire in good faith – as legionaries. I knew one of them. Colias was his name. It was me who convinced him to accept terms and go there.’
‘I remember Colias. You are right: he was no enemy of mine,’ Julius sighed. ‘And by slaying him I made sure it stayed that way.’
‘Sometimes an enemy only exists when a man seeks him,’ Pavo said coldly. ‘By slaying Colias and his men you earned the hatred of almost every other Goth across the empire and barbaricum – tribal rivalries for once set aside.’
‘Fine words, Tribunus. But hear this,’ Julius halted by the country-facing edge of the parapet, gazing down at the Gothic shore camp. ‘I had a trio of foederati in my retinue for a time, three summers ago. They lived with me, rode with me, and not once did I doubt them. Their leader, a shaven-headed goliath by the name of Eadric, was the one I entrusted to guard my daughters. My wife died many years ago, you see, and those girls were everything to me…’
Pavo closed his eyes, guessing what was to come.
‘When word of Fritigern’s revolt, of Thracia’s demise, spread, Eadric turned on the edge of a blade,’ Julius said, his voice cracking. ‘He raped my daughters before drowning them in the impluvium. He and his cadre thought to off me too when I returned home that evening, but they did not reckon with the fire that roars in a man’s heart when he sees a sight such as… such as… ’ his words faltered.
Pavo thought of the days leading up to Fritigern’s revolt. It was a mirror-image of Julius’ tale of woe: some Roman soldiers had subjected the starving Goths in the refugee camp by Durostorum to the foulest abuses, beatings and rape amongst them. Fritigern’s rebellion quickly followed, engulfing Thracia and sparking the Gothic War. And word of it spread across wider Roman lands like wildfire, details of the indignities that had caused it too, triggering vengeful miniature-risings like the one Julius had just described. Perhaps Eadric had heard news of relatives hurt or killed in the refugee camp? It was a sickening thought, every foul blow of the war blindly building upon the last. But this reasoning could never be put to a man who had lost his daughters in such a horrific manner, Pavo realised. ‘Eadric is dead now, I presume?’ he said quietly.
‘And so are his men,’ Julius burred. ‘I had my dogs chew up what remained of them when I was done.’
Pavo let a silence pass, until Julius’ sharp breathing calmed. ‘Then let his bones and those of Colias rest in the dust. Think not of more vengeance, sir; think of the future. When Fritigern’s Goths were housed in a vast refugee camp near Durostorum, we failed them and failed ourselves too. This time it can be different.’ He pointed down into the shore camp. ‘Give Eriulf’s new legions their place in our turf camp and their families homes in the city. We need these Goths, we need them to be part of the cause, to believe in the empire. Without them, Fritigern’s horde will overrun the paltry Army of the East and the towns and cities will be left unprotected. Many families will be at the mercy of his warriors,’ he pressed, trying to appeal to Julius’ insecurities.
Julius rested his back against the parapet now, nodding once, saying nothing, then nodding again as if in some inner dialogue. At last, he looked up at Pavo. ‘Perhaps you are right, Tribunus. The Army of the East is the priority. Five thousand spirited and determined soldiers might just be the difference. We will… find a way to make things work,’ he said, pushing away from the battlement and trudging over to the stairwell.
Pavo wanted to smile, but could not. There was something about the man’s tone that did not carry the sentiment of the words.
Within the near-darkness of one Gothic tent, they sat in a circle. A small coterie, united in their convictions, each face indiscernible, uplit by the faintest touch of a candle’s light. They passed a pewter pot between them, each dipping two fingers into the viscous, glistening paint it held before streaking it across their cheeks. A fork-bearded one dipped two fingers in the pot, then hesitated.
‘The Romans… if they suspect anything then-’
‘Nobody suspects,’ another man – no more than a pair of bloodshot eyes in the meagre light – cut him off, ‘nobody apart from the madman, the butcher, the shadow who watches us night after night – Julius!’
‘But that day of the coup at the plateau,’ Fork-beard contested, ‘there was much theatre involved. Do you think the Claudia legionaries believed it all?’
‘The theatre had to be employed, lest the coup fail. And fail the coup did… but not the cause. As for the Claudia legionaries? That day, they saw what they wanted to see: the core of resistance cut from our tribe. But the true leader of our cause was there throughout it all in the guise of good faith,’ Red-eyes gestured to the silent figure by his side with a half-bow, ‘and remains to lead us still. So while Raban and the elders are now but dust, the cause lives on.’
Red-eyes fell silent for a moment, a faint grunt of contentment sounding as Fork-beard acquiesced and smeared a line of red paint on each cheek as ceremony demanded.
‘We could not prevent the herding of our tribe into imperial lands,’ Red-eyes continued. ‘And now we find ourselves chained like dogs to the edge of this marble city with its soft fineries. Most of our kin are blind to the shame of this, are happy to train and become part of the empire’s iron ranks. But we are not blind. The cause can take on a new direction – right by the pulsing heart of
the empire. Today the Roman Emperor was washed in the waters of his false god. Tonight, we ask Wodin to hear us: soon, soon, his chosen few will rise… the worthy will fall upon the madman Julius for his crimes against our kinsfolk, and upon the purple-cloaked man who calls himself our emperor. Yes, the time of the Vesi will come.’
And the rest droned: ‘The time of the Vesi will come…’
‘Now,’ the red-eyed one concluded, directing his words to Fork-beard with the newly painted cheeks, ‘A horse has been tethered a short way inland, in the shadow of a cherry stand. Steal from this place and to it – and be sure to stay shy of Julius’ watching eyes. Then ride west… towards Scupi.’
Fork-beard took a scroll from Red-eyes then rose, bowing to the rest, before ducking out of the tent.
A month passed and spring came. News of Emperor Theodosius’ recovery spread and heralds cried across the rooftops of a great announcement that was to be made on the Ides of March at Thessalonica’s horse arena. More, scouts reported that Fritigern and the horde still lingered near Scupi in northern Macedonia – reassuringly far from these parts. There was much to celebrate, and celebrate the populace did, the streets thick with gossip and revelry.
Yet still, the shore camp remained the home of Eriulf’s Goths. Pavo trudged round the outside of the turf rampart towards it, well-used now to the contrast in moods between the city and the Goths’ meagre home. Yet when he came to the sea of tents, spirits seemed high – as if infected by the mood of the city. Libo sat with the Gothic lady he had fallen for at the plateau, and whose hair braid he had refused to comb out or wash – or perhaps it just served as a handy excuse for not washing. Rectus was chatting with a group of elderly men, who roared at some story he told them. The atmosphere was a pleasant surprise – it seemed some news had spread that had cheered them.
EMPIRE OF SHADES Page 25
