More silence. There were just a dozen steps left now – the flagstones of the stairwell’s lower floor beckoned, then the odd smoky light of the doorway, the garden and then… Gratian.
‘I said you had gone home to your family. I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth.’
‘And where is the lad now?’ Scapula said at last.
‘Dead,’ Pavo replied flatly, seeing the ever-marching grey army in his mind’s eye. ‘Lying cold and still on the battlefield south of this place. He gave his life for us. He was one of us. Always will be. Brothers, not brethren,’ he spat.
Pavo waited on the knife to pull tighter to his throat or for some barbed response, but there was none. Instead, he felt something land on the nape of his neck: a single droplet of warmth. It rolled inside the collar of his tunic and down his back. Confused, he continued. ‘Stichus and many others in the Claudia died today believing that you… were a good man. Our saviour in the north… one of us. But I know what you really are, Scapula.’
Silence. A deep breath and then: ‘Do you?’ Scapula said, his voice thick as they descended on to the stairwell floor.
Pavo frowned, and Scapula tightened the grip around his neck. The knife split skin and a single rivulet of blood escaped.
‘Let me tell you about the boy named Kaeso,’ Scapula said just before they stepped out into the gardens, his breath wet in Pavo’s ear. ‘The Speculatores seized his family and murdered his parents while he was made to watch. Next, they took his young brother and put a wire around his neck, readied to off him.’
‘I’ve heard the story already,’ Pavo spat, recalling the overheard conversation between Stichus and Scapula at Nicopolis, ‘and I remember how it ends. You and your brethren strangled the lad’s brother?’ Pavo grunted. ‘Spare me your yarns – they do not frighten me.’
‘Oh, but they should, Tribunus… for the end of the tale is more chilling than you could possibly imagine. You see, while the young brother was looped in the strangulation cord, the hooded ones gave Kaeso a choice. A poisonous choice. One that stained his heart forever.’ With that, he barged Pavo forward and into the gardens.
Gratian’s eyes glinted like crystals as Pavo and Scapula approached. The Western Emperor held Valentinian before him, his knife to the boy’s neck like Scapula’s to Pavo’s.
Gratian eyed Pavo up and down. ‘And this is?’
Pavo’s heart hammered, the heat of the all-too-close blaze behind Gratian stinging his sweat-slick skin. It was over. Soon he would face the torment Gallus had suffered in Treverorum’s dungeons.
‘An eastern legionary, Master,’ Scapula hissed, the inferno within the palace crackling and roaring as if in applause. ‘A Thracian.’
Gratian’s eyes began to glint. ‘Thracian you say?’ He reached out and snapped the thong holding a small leather signaculum pouch around Pavo’s neck. He worked the lead tag within the pouch free with a thumb and studied it. After a moment, his face lifted horribly in a predatory smile. ‘Numerius… Vitellius… Pavo. Of the XI Claudia.’
Pavo said nothing.
‘It is you,’ Gratian whispered like a treasure-hunter beholding a chest of gold. ‘The one Scapula identified during his time in the East. The one who tried to strike me down with a dart.’ He barked with laughter that sailed up through the enclosed gardens, rising with the roiling smoke. ‘I had planned to despatch a group to apprehend and bring you west once this affair with the Black Horde was over. Instead,’ he pulled the most incredulous expression, ‘you came to me? You are a fool, aren’t you? Just like Gallus!’
Pavo stared, unblinking. ‘You are the fool, false emperor.’
Gratian’s eyes widened, top lip twitching. ‘What did you say?’
‘There was no defeat today. Ask yourself why a Thracian soldier stands here in Sirmium. After you fled, the legions from the East arrived and turned the battle. The day was hard won.
Gratian cricked his neck one way and then the other. ‘Is it so?’ he asked Scapula.
Scapula nodded once.
‘Very well. My reputation will soar after all,’ Gratian snorted in triumph.
‘Why would it?’ Pavo snapped. ‘You played no part in the victory.’
Gratian’s eyes swung to pin Pavo. After a moment, he laughed unconvincingly. ‘Yet the chronicles will speak of this day as mine.’
Pavo squared his shoulders and tilted his head back a fraction to peer down his nose at the Western Emperor. ‘But it will not change the truth: you fled like a child.’
Gratian’s smile melted into a grimace of sorts. ‘You cannot goad me into giving you a quick death, Legionary. For I want to show you nightmares. Living nightmares. Your demise will be slow and excruciating,’ he nodded enthusiastically, jabbing his dagger towards Pavo like a finger. ‘And it will begin even on the voyage back to Treverorum. A pair of my torturers are here, and they have a deck on my hexareme equipped with many, many implements. And when you reach Treverorum, you will be taken down into the cellars. While I parade through the streets in triumph, you can spend as long as you please recovering… in the Dark Well.’
Pavo refused to flinch from the young emperor’s icy stare and the two remained locked like that for an excruciating moment. It was the weak whimper of a boy that broke the impasse.
Gratian glanced down at Valentinian, still held to him by his free arm. ‘But first I must finish off other matters,’ Gratian said, returning the dagger edge to the boy’s throat. ‘Now, Stepbrother, where was I? Ah, yes, the Goths who spilled into the city were, sadly, the end of you,’ he said, his eyes wide and his head rocking from side to side with each word as if mocking his own story. He pulled Valentinian tighter to him, tipping the boy’s chin up to expose his neck fully. The lad’s eyes and Pavo’s met at the last.
‘Give my best to our Father, Stepbrother, in whichever corner of Tartarus he lurks,’ Gratian said calmly, arm tensing, ready to draw the blade along Valentinian’s neck. Likewise, Scapula held Pavo tight to his knife-edge, allowing him not a scintilla of leeway.
Pavo clenched his eyes shut, not wanting to see the boy’s murder. But in the blackness, he heard a strained whisper in his ear: ‘You spoke of choice, Tribunus, said I was afraid of the very notion? For too long, aye, but not today,’ Scapula hissed. ‘Today, the choice… is… mine.’
He opened his eyes just as, with a violent shove, Scapula threw him to one side. Falling by the pool, he saw in a blur the speculator’s arm sweeping out, striking down on Gratian’s hand, knocking the emperor’s blade to the ground. Gratian roared, backing away, Valentinian standing between the two, stunned. ‘Speculator?’ Gratian screeched, his face agape, clutching his struck arm: ‘Guards!’ he roared up to the two Alani on the mezzanine.
Quick as a striking snake, Scapula flicked his right hand, palm flat, aimed towards the leftmost Alani up there. What looked like a tiny bolt of lightning shot from somewhere under his cuff. The sliver of sharpened iron flew up to plunge under the chin of the Alani, who grunted, then swayed as blood sheeted from his ruined artery before toppling over the mezzanine balustrade to crunch onto the grass head first with a thick crack of vertebrae. But before that guard had even been struck, Scapula swung to the right, ready to flick another such weapon up at the guard there. But there was no need: taking advantage of that last guard’s moment of fright, Sura swung his knee, hard, into the fellow’s groin, then headbutted him, even harder, on the bridge of the nose. The man crumpled in a heap.
Now Pavo rose, seeing Scapula and Gratian facing one another.
‘What are you doing, you fool?’ Gratian rasped at his agent.
‘The battle was won, as the easterner said. And… Merobaudes remains very much alive,’ Scapula said. ‘I stayed at the battle long enough to see that it was so.’
Valentinian’s face almost burst with relief.
Gratian’s face turned as pale as the ash flakes floating down around them.
‘And so it would be foolish to harm the boy,’ Scapula continued. ‘But t
hat is not why I struck the blade from your hand. I chose to do so. And during the fray to the south, I had a chance to off Merobaudes. I chose not to. The first true choices I have made since I was a boy.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Gratian spat.
‘It happened during your father’s reign. The Speculatores murdered my parents. They were ready to kill my young brother too. They gave me a choice: serve them, become a speculator, and my brother would live. I chose to accept their offer. I felt great relief when the hooded ones took the garrotte from his neck, and I gladly learned their ways. Yet if only I had known that my poor brother would be afforded only a life of eternal torment in your palace cellars, I would have strangled him myself, there and then. Indeed, with every tale I hear of those dungeons, my dreams of murdering my young brother – still caged down there to this day – grow bolder, more frenzied.’ He yanked his hands to the sides as if tightening an invisible garrotte.
‘Scapula?’ Gratian gasped, taking a step backwards.
‘My name is Kaeso,’ Scapula raged, drawing down his hood, removing his staring-eye ring from his finger and tossing it to the ground. ‘And I choose for young Valentinian to live. I choose to shun the brethren… and help my newfound brothers instead,’ he looked to Pavo.
Pavo’s heart swelled in his chest, a spark of hope giving his shaking, weakening limbs fresh strength. ‘The chains are broken, you are free,’ Pavo said, stepping closer to Scapula’s side with a soldierly nod.
With a thud, Sura leapt down from the mezzanine and into the gardens, to join the two. The three faced Gratian, the boy, Valentinian, still stranded between them. Thick smoke now billowed from the palace behind the emperor, tongues of orange flame lashing out into the gardens.
Gratian’s eyes bulged as he saw he could not back any further towards the blaze. ‘You know what will happen, don’t you, Scapula? On hearing of your disobedience, my torturers will bring out their worst devices. The dungeons of Treverorum will reek of your brother’s guts, and he will live on for weeks to watch the rats feast upon them,’ he shrieked, taking step by step backwards.
‘And then he will die at last and be free,’ Scapula said calmly. ‘And even before then, the dungeons might be closed, Master, should a righteous emperor take the Western purple,’ his eyes shifted slightly to regard young Valentinian.
Gratian’s face contorted in rage and terror. ‘Guards!’ he screamed. His hands clawed at his sides, weaponless, his eyes shot in every direction, nothing but blazing halls behind him, the baleful three facing him. Valentinian remained stuck in the space between them.
‘Come, Stepbrother. It seems that Merobaudes lives, and so I will spare you,’ Gratian yapped, beckoning the boy like a master summoning a dog.
‘No,’ Pavo held out a hand to Valentinian. ‘Come with us. You will be safe with us.’
The boy’s tear-streaked face answered before he spoke. ‘I… I can’t,’ he said, backing away. ‘My mother will be in danger.’
‘Quite,’ Gratian agreed. ‘If you take a single stride towards them, I will send my troops into Mediolanum again, just like that night after Father died. Lady Justina will be stripped of her skin.’
The lad’s face crumpled in fear and he stepped towards Gratian, the man who had moments ago been about to cut open his throat.
Boots drummed from the right. All eyes shot that way. A tangle of shadows burst from the doorway there, spilling out into the gardens. Six towering Alani. Gratian’s face came alive with glee.
‘Slaughter them,’ he rasped, scooping an arm around Valentinian and backing away.
Pavo, Sura and Scapula back-stepped now, eyes sweeping the six brutes. Only Sura held a sword.
‘Mithras, give us a chance,’ Pavo hissed, picking up a small statuette like a cudgel in his good hand.
With a gruff roar, the six Alani lunged forward. Like a cricket, Scapula leapt from the path of the foremost and shot out his left hand, the hidden iron sliver in there speeding into the eye of the attacker, who fell like a stone. Pavo swung his statuette to bat away the tall spear of another, then hurled the heavy carving into the chest of the next, who sank to his knees, stunned and winded. Sura swung his sword out frantically, beheading the spear of one and scoring the arm of another. Scapula felled one with his dagger – a sharp plunge into the back of the neck causing the man to fall like a puppet whose strings had been cut, his face still contorting and very much alive atop his now-useless heap of a body.
The three remaining Alani came on at them again, and Pavo felt the edges of a doorway scrape dully against his numb, blood-soaked arm as they were forced back inside the palace into a tall, ornately frescoed hall in the lower floor. Smoke clouded near the vaulted ceiling, stung their eyes and pricked inside their throats. Coughing, retching, they backed away. The Alani lunged and Pavo, one-armed, could only stagger clumsily to avoid the strike. Sura’s sword spun away as another guardsman swept it from his grasp. Now only Scapula was armed. They scrambled backwards up the stairs, Scapula panting: ‘I should have been brave enough to choose sooner, before I gave him your name.’
Pavo, coughing from the dark smoke, shook his head. ‘I would still have been here today. He would still have known who I was, what I thought of him. You chose today, and that is what matters.’
At the top of the stairs, they came into the feasting chamber with the long table, now black with stinging smoke. Scapula, Pavo and Sura clambered over the table, plates, vases and jugs clattering and scattering as they did so. The three Alani stalked around the table, teeth bared like wolves. Then, more footsteps. Two more of Gratian’s rugged guards poured in.
Pavo and Sura shot looks to the open shutters through which they had entered the palace.
The lead Alani’s head shot up like that of a watch hound. ‘Don’t let them escape,’ he growled.
At once, the other Alani flooded around the table, some leaping up onto it, chairs spinning and falling in their wake, blocking the trio’s way to the open shutters. They formed a semi-circle around the three.
‘To the end!’ Pavo cried, taking up a wooden stool in his good hand like a shield of sorts as his back pressed against the chamber wall.
‘For the Claudia!’ Sura seethed through gritted teeth.
‘For my brothers,’ Scapula snarled, his voice thick with emotion.
Like a cornered cat, the speculator lashed out at one Alani, his arm like a lizard’s tongue, slitting the guard’s throat before kicking over a smaller table into the path of another pair then lunging to his right to thwack the spear from a third’s hand with his forearm. A tiny gap opened in the Alani corral – a route to the shutters.
‘Go!’ he screamed, swinging his head towards Pavo and Sura, the opal eyes ablaze, the hood half-masking his mouth.
‘I cannot. He lives!’ Pavo rasped, swatting out with the stool at the Alani nearest Scapula.
‘Today is not the day you will find justice, Tribunus,’ Scapula snapped, ducking one Alani’s jabbed spear and kicking hard at the shin of another, which collapsed with a thick crack. ‘All you can do is live… live for the day when you shall.’
‘We will not leave you, you ugly, creepy, glorious whoreson,’ Sura cried.
‘But damn, we will not… Kaeso,’ Pavo agreed throwing the stool with what strength he had left.
‘Stichus gave his life to save you,’ Scapula snarled, ‘And so, now, shall I.’
With that, the speculator leapt forward, into the arc of Alani. He spun, thrashing, arms licking out, black robe whirling like a battle standard, his dagger scoring and slashing at Gratian’s men. But in just a few heartbeats, it was over, as a flurry of spears and swords plunged into him. The speculator sank to his knees, blood lurching from his lips. Shaking, the opal eyes dimming, he turned to Pavo and Sura. Go, brothers, he mouthed before the life left him.
Pavo looked to Sura, both realising the man had drawn the arc of Alani to him, fully breaking the corral. Without a further thought, both lunged towards the ope
n shutters. Spears whistled past them both, plunging into the plasterwork and clattering against the stone floor. Pavo planted one foot on the windowsill, then leapt with what little strength he had left, Sura springing alongside him. The pair cried out as they soared over the small balcony, arms flailing and legs cycling. They sailed over the iron-spiked wall, still draped with the ruined mess of the impaled Herul, Sura emitting a shriek as the tip of one spike ripped through the hem of his tunic between his legs. Only when they flailed beyond that barrier, Pavo recalled the blazing Goth who had made this same leap in hope of landing in the open cistern… only to instead crunch onto the hard stone below. He gawped down below to see that very fellow, still in a broken, smoking heap, still twitching… before he and Sura plunged into the cool depths of the cistern pool.
Underwater, he heard the thudding of his heart, felt the bubbles rushing up across his skin, the burning of his shallow breath, before he rose, gasping. He clasped out, half-blinded, with his good hand. Sura caught it and wrenched him onto the cistern-side. ‘Be quick,’ Sura rasped, guiding him along the stony edge of the cistern as more spears smacked down from the window in their wake. Sura leapt down onto the forum floor, then turned to look up and help Pavo. Pavo hesitated to judge his jump carefully, knowing his lame arm would not halt a bad fall. Just as he made to leap, a voice froze him.
‘I know who you are, legionary,’ Gratian shrieked, leaning from the window, his now spearless guards clustered around him.
Pavo half-leapt, half fell, Sura catching him. Sura supported him as the pair backed away across the forum. And now, the warning bell for the vigiles finally tolled.
Clang!
Now people were emerging from their homes, realising the Goths who had infiltrated the city had been beaten, but setting eyes upon the conflagration that had engulfed the palace and threatened to spread across the city. They screamed and cried out. The vigiles came in disorganised packs, carrying buckets in both hands, criss-crossing the square, blocking the small knot of Alani who tried to follow Pavo and Sura.
EMPIRE OF SHADES Page 38
