EMPIRE OF SHADES

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘More!’ Gratian screamed, waving the rest of his Alani over to the scene and the ballista crewmen too – shieldless, without armour and armed only with short swords and simple knives. And a heartbeat after the bolt-throwers fell silent, the sagittarii came too, turning away from the edge of the hill and the battle on the low ground then hurriedly fumbling to nock their bows, some throwing the bows down to draw their swords. But when another cluster of Goths scrambled up from the western face they were outnumbered again.

  ‘There are too many of the-’ a Roman archer cried before being cut off with a wet gurgle as a Gothic blade ripped him from face to groin. The defensive line closed up, shrinking with every death.

  ‘Domine, perhaps you should consider…’ an Alani guardsman by his side started, his words trailing off as he looked back over his shoulder in the direction of Sirmium. Already, Bishop Ambrosius was fleeing less than graciously down the hill’s northern slope, headed that way. ‘I should return to the basilica and pray for victory, Domine,’ he called back in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘Never! This day will be won, you hear me?’ Gratian cawed. ‘I am no Valens. I am no fool. I have never been beaten in battle… never!’

  Just then, a throaty scream sounded. All heads swung to the noise: a Goth had barged through the hasty defensive line, sweeping his axe to tear open the necks of two men. Dozens more poured through the gap with this one. The cur then threw his axe. It slammed down just a pace away from Gratian’s silver stallion, hammering into the table with the wine jug, smashing the table, sending the cups flying, the wine spraying and Gratian’s horse rearing up in panic. Now the axe-throwing Goth drew twin swords and set eyes upon the Western Emperor.

  Gratian’s bowels pushed sharply downwards. Suddenly, he could not move for fear, his mind awash with the image of the moor and the deathly creature coming for him. ‘Come on,’ a nearby Alani guardsman cried, grabbing the reins of the emperor’s stallion and urging Valentinian to mount his too. The guard led the mounted Gratian away at a run as the Goths stormed across the hilltop towards them. Steel sang as the remaining ballista crewmen fell, then the sagittarii, heads split with axes, some were simply barged from the hilltop, sent flailing and screaming over the eastern bluff edge. When Gratian looked back, a mizzle of blood-spray drifted through the air and settled on his top lip. His tongue stabbed out instinctively and the coppery taste turned him fully to panic. The twin-sworded lead Gothic warrior loped to within strides of him, blades trailing sparks as he hoisted them back, readying for a death strike at his back. This was it. This was the crone’s curse. This was the end of him.

  Until Gratian reached down to grab the shoulder of the Alani leading his horse, shoving him back into the oncoming Gothic warrior’s path. He heard the Alani’s strangled cries, saw the Goth scissor the twin blades closed upon the guard’s neck, heard the dull thud of the severed head bouncing to the ground.

  ‘To Sirmium,’ Gratian rasped, kicking his mount into a gallop, waving and his remaining Alani and the Heruli with him down the hill’s northern slope. As he stumbled down the broken track and the din of battle fell away to a muffled clamour, he realised the day was lost. His reputation was shattered. He was a fool like Uncle Valens. A fool! Absurdly, his first reaction was to consider sentencing himself to his own dungeons. But, he realised, if the day was lost, then so too was the oaf, Merobaudes. And Saphrax the Goth was dead – one of the two flames that had ignited the Black Horde in the first place. And Valentinian… where was the runt? Had the Goths cut him down in the chaos as they stormed the hilltop? He imagined the boy being thrown from the bluff edge and smashing like an egg. Suddenly, the defeat did not seem quite so grim. Until he saw the horse and rider speeding to catch up with him.

  ‘Domine!’ Valentinian cried, his brown curls flailing in his wake as he galloped. ‘I feared you had fallen.’

  Gratian’s eyes narrowed. ‘And I you, Stepbrother. Now let us make haste, to Sirmium.’

  Chapter 21

  ‘We’re too late,’ Libo gasped.

  The relief column slowed, five thousand pairs of eyes gazing up at the frenzy of dust that rose to stain the sky in the west. The eerie echo of battle came and went in the hot, early afternoon breeze.

  ‘No, you hear that? We’re not too late. We’re here. We’re here,’ Pavo insisted, sweat droplets shooting from him as he turned to look over the men of the relief column: panting, glistening with sweat likewise. Twenty hard days of marching, and the deathly clamour ahead was their only prize. ‘We must push on,’ he said, his words now directed at the three generals, Modares, Hormisdas and Bacurius.

  ‘No,’ Hormisdas said. ‘If battle has begun already then we should try to set eyes upon the fray – find high ground to look down upon it and consider our approach carefully.’

  The steely clash of swords suddenly sharpened then – carried on a faint, hot breeze. Modares’ eyes met Pavo’s. ‘This is no time for careful manoeuvres. We must move, at haste. To put it simply: we are dispensable… the Western Army is not.’

  ‘Well when he puts it like that…’ Bacurius chuckled darkly, his blade-tipped stump hand glinting in the sun.

  Modares eyed the sweltering heat haze in the west, then swished a hand around. ‘We advance in a wide front, at a full step. They haven’t spotted us yet, so no horns, no cries, not until I give the signal.’

  With an urgent drumming of boots, the three legions were off, an ala of Scutarii riders on each flank. Five thousand men that would turn the day, or die trying. As they drew closer, Pavo saw something take shape in the haze – a steep hill, the flats around it masked by the heat-warped air. The stifled echoes of battle became threaded with sharp, visceral cries that now seemed perilously close. As they approached, pale red dust whipped across their sweating faces, a stench of blood and ripped bowels from within the veil of the heat haze whacked them like callused knuckles. And with the next few strides, the silvery pool of haze dissipated to reveal the brutal fray around the hill’s lower slopes.

  Pavo’s eyes grew wide: what had once been a line of Roman legions was now a crushed oval, pinned and beset. A mass of Gothic spearmen and Greuthingi riders swarmed around them like a noose, some leaping up and over the fragmented wall of Roman shields to plunge into their ranks and wreak what havoc they could.

  ‘Merobaudes fights on!’ one soldier gasped, pointing to the pale golden banner rising like the arm of a drowning man from the beset Western legions.

  ‘But the Armatura horsemen are no more,’ a Scutarii rider gasped. Pavo saw the two carpets of red an arrowshot to the left and right of the hill: a mesh of cadavers – thousands of horses and men, mostly white-armoured Roman riders.

  ‘The artillery is shattered too,’ a Flavia Felix soldier panted. Pavo’s eyes narrowed on the flat hilltop. He saw ballistae lying limp or smashed, tiny forms of prone men beside them, others strewn down the hill’s steep slopes, streaked red marking the path of their fall.

  ‘What of Emperor Gratian?’ Modares said, eyes combing the carnage.

  Pavo’s heart thudded. No sign of the emperor’s purple banner. Had he fallen already? A lash of anger like a demon’s tongue struck through him. No, he was mine… he was to die on my blade!

  Just then, a pocket of the Greuthingi peeled back from the clash on the lower slopes, cantering away then wheeling back again, building up to a charge. A section of Gothic spearmen forming the noose around the western troops parted like doors, allowing their horsemen a clear run at the Roman ranks, into which they charged like steely hammers. Legionary bodies flew up like broken toys. Memories of Adrianople surfaced in Pavo’s mind, riveted there by each hard clash of swords that rang across the field. When they came to within five hundred paces of the clash, he realised the advance of the relief column was slowing, some men hesitant. Their approach had gone unnoticed so far. The remaining possibility of escape was bewitching some, it seemed.

  Modares slowed on his mount and glowered back at the relief force, disbelieving.r />
  ‘Onwards, you bastards, onwards!’ Bacurius roared with a shower of spit. But still the men slowed.

  ‘Keep moving, damn you!’ Hormisdas snarled at his men.

  ‘There are too many of them,’ one of his men croaked in reply.

  ‘What value in throwing our lives into the dust too?’ said another.

  The words tore at Pavo, who turned to face the all-but halted force. His chest rose and fell and his heart raced. ‘I was there that day, outside Adrianople,’ he shouted across at Hormisdas’ men, then swept his eyes across the Claudia and the Flavia Felix, and finally shot a look at Bacurius. ‘We were pinned, and outnumbered just like they are. We were left to die in a noose like that. Our Batavian reserve? They could have made a difference. Just a fraction of support – enough to ease the Goths’ death grip. But they fled the field, and the sweet soil of Thracia turned red with the blood of good men. Today… we are the reserve. We can make the difference. We can atone for the shame of that day.’

  Bacurius’ scar-raked face curled into a prideful grimace, and Pavo was sure he saw tears spilling down the man’s cheeks.

  ‘Feel the sun on your skin – the light of Mithras, the light of your Christ-God, and know it can be so. If we ever want to draw Western support to tackle Fritigern, if we ever want Thracia, Macedonia and Dacia – our homes – to know peace again, the Black Horde must be beaten.’ Growls of support broke out here and there now. ‘So grasp your spear, clutch your shield and fill your lungs.’ He bashed a hand on his chest. ‘For the brothers, fathers, sons and cousins who fell to these curs at Adrianople… ’ he glanced to Modares for permission.

  The Magister Militum nodded once, his face set. ‘Make the earth shake.’

  Pavo filled his lungs and cried with all he had: ‘…for the Empire!’

  ‘For the Empire!’ the ranks exploded, the doubters roaring out too, infused with fresh courage. The Claudia and the Flavia Felix battered their spears against their shields, roaring. Hormisdas’ Egyptians erupted in a strange, visceral song of battle and the Scutarii riders roared in zeal, holding their spears and banners aloft. As a clarion wail of many buccinae sent the relief force surging forward again at a sprint, Pavo saw in his mind’s eye, Gallus, Quadratus and Zosimus, running with them. For you, he mouthed.

  Now Gothic heads turned, eyes wide and mouths agape at the sudden din from behind them as the eastern relief force charged for their backs. ‘Face them!’ one Gothic noble screamed to the rearmost soldiers of the noose.

  Pavo’s vision juddered and the distance to the fray shrank as they rushed, vaulting over and dodging round the bodies strewn on the flat ground, the dust more soaked in red as they approached the heart of the melee. He recognised one stocky corpse crowned with just a few twisted ribbons of flesh where there should have been a head. It clutched a black spear standard. Saphrax? He wondered. But the loss of one of their leading reiks mattered little, it seemed – for the Goths were fighting on like bears.

  ‘Break the noose,’ Modares yelled.

  ‘Spiculae… loose,’ Eriulf bawled as he and his auxiliaries slowed to launch a volley of javelins. The shafts spat over the heads of the relief infantry and thumped into the Goths. Only a handful struck men down, but it slowed the Goths’ hasty attempts at forming a rearguard nonetheless.

  ‘Plumbatae,’ Hormisdas called for the legionary dart hail. Four thousand lead-weighted missiles slashed forth, whacking down a swathe of spearmen. ‘Again,’ he bellowed. A second volley wreaked havoc amongst a wing of the Greuthingi riders – most still pinned in the fray and easy targets for missiles. And then, when the relief infantry were but ten paces away, Modares cried: ‘Cuneus.’

  The buccinae blared and, within paces, each cohort of the legions fell into a fang-like wedge formation, the Scutarii riders doing likewise, one ala on each flank.

  ‘Together!’ Pavo roared, taking his place at the point of one fang. Sura and Libo pressed shoulder-to shoulder in the fang’s wider second rank behind him, spears levelled and held firm. Opis hoisted the silver eagle, the ruby bull banner catching the afternoon sunlight, battle dust scudding across it.

  ‘Come on then you hairy fuc-’ Libo screamed at the last moment, before the Roman cuneus fangs gnashed into the disorganised Gothic rearguard. Pavo drove into a pair of them, knocking them to the ground and forging on, knowing his comrades in the ranks behind would finish the job for him. He butted out with his shield to break the nose of another, who spasmed where he stood before Sura’s spear jabbed up into the man’s heart. He shouldered the next foe away, before another’s longsword streaked down his back, cutting through his mail vest and scoring his flesh. He heard his own deep, throaty scream as if it came from another, the rest of his body heedless to the pain as he brought his spear round to drive it through the belly of his attacker. The shaft snapped, such was the ferocity of the strike. He wrenched away the shredded haft and clubbed one Goth across the side of the head with it, knocking the man out cold, before tearing his spatha from his scabbard and lashing it across the chest of another.

  The Goths surged back, snarling, bearded spearmen driving at the relief force. Pavo’s sword arm swung like an independent creature, slitting the guts of one finely armoured Greuthingi rider then whacking the muzzle of another’s horse, sending the beast into a panic, rearing up and throwing its rider. He saw Modares ploughing through the fray on horseback swinging on his saddle, cutting out at his one-time kith. That he had ever doubted the man seemed laughable now. And he heard Eriulf too, roaring for another volley of javelins even while the last swarm of them was still airborne, whizzing from behind, over his head and down into the Gothic swell. Hormisdas fought like a lion also, kicking his mount ever-deeper into the crush when he could, as a Comes, opt to hang back. And most prominent of all was Bacurius One-hand, chopping out from the saddle with his sword and his blade-adorned stump, his scar-raked face twisted. ‘Take me back there,’ the tormented general screamed as he fought, ‘take me back to that day. To that moment. Let me confront my shame. Let me face judgement.’ His pleas were louder even than the cries of torn, fallen riders. The clash at Adrianople, it seemed, had claimed many victims, both living and dead.

  When a towering Goth slashed the neck of a Scutarii rider near Pavo, hot, stinking blood coated him, and he felt the ground underneath slip and slide, slick with the fluids of dead men and sharp with the jagged edges of broken bones. Death rictuses grinned up at him, faces part torn away or cleaved, and the savage din of battle filled his head. All around him was a forest of snarling faces, tall spears dripping with ribbons of flesh and swinging swords. For that moment, he could only see, hear, smell and taste death. And then he sensed a Gothic axe chopping down for his head, and knew he couldn’t react in time. It was young Stichus who lurched forward, streaked in blood, face set like stone – the antithesis of the callow youth Pavo had feared for just last year. And the lad skidded into place just in time, throwing his shield up to catch the blow before running the axeman through.

  But the very act of saving Pavo had exposed Stichus’ flank. A flame-haired Gothic spearman, then a trio of others plunged their lances down gleefully into his ribs. The boy sank to his knees.

  ‘No!’ Pavo croaked.

  Stichus’ greying face twisted towards him at the last, their eyes meeting. His lips moved, on the edge of death, words meant for Pavo, carried on the winds of battle. I’m not afraid. Fight on. Mithras is with me.

  And he was gone. All senses left Pavo as he threw himself at Stichus’ killers. His blade flashed, his arm growing numb, his face granite-hard as one by one they fell until only the flame-haired one remained. The foe speared out, but Pavo batted the lance away. The fellow then drew out an axe and leapt, red hair flowing behind him like a roaring torch. Pavo lashed his sword across the foe’s wrists and lopped the fellow’s two hands cleanly off. Pavo threw down his spatha like a dart into the dust and caught the spinning axe – severed hands still attached – as the Goth glanced at each of his
bleeding wrist stumps then gawped at Pavo. Both were for a moment bemused, before Pavo hammered the axe into the man’s forehead. The warrior’s eyes rolled in his head, blood and slivers of white-grey matter pulsing from his nostrils and mouth. Pavo plucked his sword from the dust again and he, Pulcher and Sura led the other Claudia men in a press against the Gothic noose, determined to cut through to the Western legions.

  ‘They’re breaking… they’re breaking!’ Sura cried hoarsely by his side as some of the enemy tossed down their swords and ran, only a few ranks of them remaining between the Claudia and the encircled Western legions.

  But a voice boomed over the fray: ‘Wodin watches. He thirsts for Roman blood. Do not let this rabble from the East steal your glory. Destroy them!’ The cry seemed to fortify the Goths, who surged back at the relief force, reinforcing the near-shorn section of the noose.

  ‘Alatheus,’ Sura croaked.

  Pavo peered through the battle dust to see the tall, slender and silver-haired reiks mounted on a white stallion. He rode in the midst of a thick wedge of over a thousand Greuthingi riders who had peeled away from the far side of the noose and were now sweeping around its outer edge like a hunting hawk towards Pavo and the eastern relief force.

  Pavo switched his head from the gnashing spearmen facing him to the arrowhead of angry riders coming for their rear. The ground shuddered underfoot and the oncoming riders lay low in their saddles, spears levelled, eyes cruel.

  ‘Turn… Turn!’ Pavo screamed. But within a heartbeat, the Greuthingi plunged into the Roman ranks. Pavo spun on the spot as a Gothic stallion barged past him, the rider’s spear a breath away from tearing out his throat. Dust rose in thick waves as enemy riders flooded past him, swarming amongst the eastern legions in a din of hooves. One spear tore away his shield. Many more lanced down Claudia men, hacked the tops from skulls of helmetless men and trampled over the unprepared Scutarii riders.