EMPIRE OF SHADES

by Gordon Doherty

  Clang!

  ‘You are a walking shade,’ Gratian screeched, his diadem slanted on his head, his flawless face spoiled with bloodlust. ‘… for I know who you are!’

  Pavo stumbled backwards, moving towards the gates and the two horses waiting there. Blackness crawled in from the edges of his vision, but his eyes never left the sight of the Western Emperor.

  Clang!

  ‘Hurry, Brother,’ Sura squeezed his shoulder. ‘The Alani come.’

  And he saw the tall guards barging through the crowds towards them. Before he made it to his horse, the last of his strength slipped away and he fell to one knee.

  He felt the flagstones shudder as the Alani rushed for him… and then heard something else. Rustling iron. Just as he slipped away into blackness, he saw other silvery shapes running towards him from outside the city. An arc of twelve legionaries who fanned out between him and the Alani.

  The last thing he heard before the blackness claimed him was the zing of drawn spathae and then the voice of Opis, snarling. ‘Get back from our tribunus, you hairy bastards.’

  As the threads of reality crumbled, Pavo fell like a man plunging into the depths of a cold lake, weighted with stones. Deeper and deeper into the penetralia of the darkness he went, and the pin-prick of light high above rapidly vanished to nothing.

  And nothing reigned for some time, until he heard the distant crunch-crunch of the grey legion. The further he fell, the louder it grew… and at that moment he realised his destiny was to march with them.

  But a strong arm clasped his, halting his fall.

  ‘Not yet, Tribunus Pavo… this is not your time,’ Gallus’ voice assured him.

  ‘When I was young, I had no fun,’ a voice sang, then tapered off. ‘Ach, no, that’s not it. How does it go again?’

  Pavo’s head swam. The thick, painful blackness peeled away, piece by piece. Slowly, the light began to return.

  ‘When I was young, I had no luck,’ fingers clicked, but the song fell away again. It was Sura, he realised.

  ‘Sir, what’s this all about?’ another voice asked from nearby. Big Pulcher.

  ‘We leapt from the palace, over this spiky wall, and the spikes nearly took my testicles off,’ Sura replied. ‘And it reminded me of this damned song. Now how does it go again?’

  Pavo felt the light growing, lifting him from oblivion.

  ‘Sense, sir, it’s sense,’ Trupo cried, clicking a finger in realisation. ‘When I was young, I had no sense.’

  A moment of revelatory silence followed and then Sura started before, one, two and then many voices joined in gleefully.

  ‘When I was young, I had no sense, I ripped my balls on a rusty fence!’

  Pavo blinked open his eyes to a chorus of laughter, seeing the filthy, battle-stained men of the Claudia sitting near him, shoulders jostling, including the twelve who had come to Sirmium to rescue him and Sura from Gratian’s last few Alani. He realised he was propped against the wheel of a military wagon, back near the battle site on the plains – now a sprawling sea of tents and activity, of soldiers wandering, many in bandages, many others as corpses, being carried on stretchers by comrades. Wispy woodsmoke carried the tang of cooking meats and baking bread, and he realised it was nearly dusk.

  A familiar roar nearby drew his eye. ‘Libo?’ he gasped, seeing the one-eyed centurion, prone, legs and arms kicking weakly. Rectus and Pulcher were crouched over him in an effort to staunch the blood trickling from his gashed belly. Rectus turned to Pavo, smiling warmly. ‘Ah, Tribunus, you’re back with us?’

  A sudden resurgence from Libo drew the medicus’ attentions again. ‘Get off me you buggers,’ Libo demanded, batting their hands away. ‘If my guts want to spill into the dirt then let them – the treacherous bastards!’

  As if he had had to do so more than once before, Rectus punched the centurion hard on the chin, knocking him out cleanly. ‘It’s always easier this way, sir,’ he said, flashing a grin at Pavo then continuing to treat Libo’s wound unhindered.

  Pavo tried to laugh, only to wince instead, the fiery pain of his shoulder wound and the unnoticed and severe bruising on his flank flaring up. A young milites medicus – one of Rectus’ assistants – crouched before him, unfastening a bandage on Pavo’s wounded shoulder. A gaping, dark gash leered up at him. The lad dunked his hand into a pot of pale green paste and smoothed it into the wound like mortar. It was cool and instantly relieving. ‘Camomile paste,’ he grinned, fastening a clean bandage over the cut.

  ‘And give him some of this?’ Rectus added, throwing a drinking skin over ‘Henbane seeds,’ he extended his arms to the sides, ‘make you feel like an eagle! For a time. You lost a lot of blood, you know.’

  Pavo drank a long draught of the potion. When the young healer stood and moved on to the next injured man, Pavo saw that a group had gathered before him. Sura, head wrapped in a bandage, Opis, holding the smoke and blood-stained Claudia standard, Cornix, Trupo, Durio, Indus and Pulcher to the fore, many others clustered behind. In the background, a sombre song of victory struck up. Pavo held out a hand towards Opis, who gave him the standard. Silently, Pavo used it like a crutch to stand. It took some effort, but he held it aloft, the bull banner fluttering in the gentlest of breezes, the silver eagle catching the red light of the dipping sun.

  ‘Great men walked under this banner once before… and they are gone. Today, I watched great men carry it into battle once more. For brothers old and new,’ he finished quietly, seeing the shades of the fallen standing with the living. ‘…for the Claudia.’

  With pensive eyes and sad smiles, the men of the Claudia raised an arm each in salute. ‘For the Claudia,’ they spoke gently as one.

  Epilogue

  Come winter, after two years lodged in Thessalonica, Theodosius finally entered Constantinople, the grand capital of the East, for the first time in his reign. The adventus ceremony was an explosion of song, colours and feasting. Constantinople’s streets were awash with drifting petals which fell in an almost constant rain as Theodosius made his way along the broad, marbled and cypress-lined main way in a gilded quadriga chariot, clasping the purple labarum standard like a spear. The four white stallions drawing the wagon were festooned in gold aprons and ostrich-feather plumes.

  Near the end of the processional route, in the circular Forum of Constantine, Pavo and Sura sat on the plinth of a porphyry column topped with a bronze statue of Constantine the Great. They resembled two men on the shores of a small island, surrounded by a sea of faces, waving hands, drinking skins and cups held high. Such revelry was in a stark contrast to the ranks of sombre Christian priests who lined the edges of the rooftops, heralding the emperor with a dirge-like cantillation. By Theodosius’ side in the chariot stood Eriulf the Goth, tall, proud, the last of his blood in these parts, hair groomed and set with resin into a tall, spiked knot, wearing a Roman bronze cuirass polished to perfection. Behind the emperor’s chariot rode his generals: Modares, Saturninus and Bacurius One-hand, each of them stony-faced and staring amongst the petal storm.

  Sura took a bite of spiced lamb shank and chewed heartily. ‘I’ll take the wine, the meat and the women on offer, but by Mithras, this is a farce.’

  Pavo gazed along the main way whence Theodosius’ chariot had come. Tradition had it that a new emperor should enter his capital for the first time from the landward side, via the Golden Gate. Not this time, not while Fritigern held sway beyond the walls. The flotilla from Thessalonica had docked at the Prosphorion harbour in the middle of the night, and the emperor was hastily escorted round from there, through the city backstreets to the inside of the Golden Gate to begin the ceremony. Pavo’s eyes lifted to the capital’s land walls and the hills beyond – masked in a winter haze. Fritigern’s horde was out there, Master of Thracia still, Lord of Macedonia and parts of Dacia too, patrolling and levying taxes and grain from imperial subjects in all but the walled cities.

  The destruction of the Black Horde at Sirmium had been vital. Now a
glittering rhetoric was spreading from the West – that Gratian was organising and mobilising his forces in full and coming to these very lands, a promise broken once before, but not now, Pavo realised. For the Western Emperor had two prizes waiting on him in these parts: everlasting glory as conqueror of the now half-strength Goths… and the head of the legionary who had tried to slay him.

  Just then, a sector of the crowd started booing, some even daring to toss bread towards the approaching chariot. A knot of Lancearii surged into the crowd like a school of bronze sharks, falling upon the culprits. ‘Your taxes are theft!’ another yelled from the other side of the forum. ‘God is ashamed of your greed!’

  Sura stopped chewing. ‘They talk of this god as if he will save them from what lies out there.’ Now he set down his lamb and took up his wine cup, drinking a few deep draughts.

  Pavo clacked his cup to Sura’s and drank likewise. The little-watered mixture flooded his belly and soon heated his blood and soothed his mind. ‘When the Goths came, I was sure things would be put right again, back to what they once were. Now I know things will never be the same again. The world is changing. Our like,’ he flicked a finger towards a wine stall, where Rectus was bending over to pick up his wine cup from a low bench, while Libo silently mock thrust his pelvis towards Rectus’ buttocks, grinning at Opis, Cornix and Trupo, unaware that Pulcher was mock thrusting behind him in turn, ‘Mithras bless them, are a dying breed. Limitanei with no borders left to protect. Our god fades in the face of this new one.’

  ‘The old gods won’t go down without a fight,’ Sura snorted. And it was true. The people who did not feel the injury of the war tax in their purses were quick to take dislike to the emperor’s religious dogma. Riots had broken out between the imperial guards at the Church of St Sophia when a group of Arians had tried to enter. In the end the church had caught light and burnt to the ground. Now Pavo laughed once, flatly. ‘Mithras… always Mithras,’ he mused.

  But would any of it matter? Right now, he understood that he had become more like Gallus than he could ever have hoped… or feared. He thought of Gratian and his cadre of agents. His sworn enemies now as they once had been Gallus’. He drew from his purse the staring eye ring – Scapula’s – that Sura had picked up in the frantic last moments of the confrontation in Sirmium’s burning palace. That Scapula had managed to break from that sect at the last and most vital moment was wonderful and tragic at once, for while Pavo admired the man for his brave final act, he knew the likes would never happen again. Already a vanguard of Gratian’s officials and strategists had arrived in these parts. How long before the Speculatores, the living shades, would come?

  He took another draught of wine, scanning the sea of faces once more, now seeing many unknowns. Amongst the celebrating ones and the protestors, there were those whose expressions were carefully blank, those who were looking in his direction only to glance quickly away when he caught their eye, those with hoods and faces in shadow… and those unseen altogether.

  ‘I’m a marked man now, Sura, you realise that, don’t you?’

  The pair shared a moment of silence on their porphyry island.

  ‘And your fate will be mine,’ Sura said, then eyed him for a moment. ‘You don’t seem afraid?’

  Pavo glared at one dark-eyed starer until the fellow’s nerve crumbled and he looked away. ‘Why would I be? It means only that I no longer have to hunt Gratian. He will come to me.’

  Eriulf took the acclaim of those in favour of the emperor, one hand clasped to the lip of the chariot, the other raised high. He thought of that wretched plateau north of the Danube, and felt a great urge to sob for every abject blade of grass on that sparse height, every ancient pine in the forest below, every moan of the wolves who roamed that forest… to weep for his lost homeland. He thought of the many lost: his people cut down by the Huns, then those shepherded off to distant Egypt by the Romans. Those few that had remained and now lay dead. Runa…

  He gazed out across the many Roman faces. The unworthy, the elder, Raban, had preached to him. ‘They’re not all wicked,’ he whispered to the memory of the dead man. His eyes narrowed, sighting Pavo and his best man, Sura, sitting high on a column plinth. The pair’s eyes met his and they shared a soldier’s look – not quite a smile but a look of respect.

  Later that day, he sat in the villa he had been afforded on the city’s third hill. It had once belonged to a Senator by the name of Fabillus: a comfortable abode for an auxiliary Comes. The emperor valued him highly given his part in the victory over the Black Horde. There was even talk of him being drafted into Theodosius’ personal guard. Everything a man could ask for. He looked out through the open doorway across the marble wards, winter gardens and bright orchards of this, the jewel of the East, gazing to the waters of the Propontis to the south, sparkling in the deep orange of late afternoon.

  With a sigh, he turned away and entered a windowless room near the heart of the villa. It was empty apart from an oil lamp on the floor, next to a pewter vase and a small, bronze hand mirror that had belonged to the villa’s previous, vain, occupant. Shutting the door with a click, he sat cross-legged before the lamp – with all daylight gone, the weak orange flame cast black shadows on the walls. He lifted the mirror to stare at his reflection. For a time, he saw his beloved sister’s face there. And soon, he bore the brunt of the thousand scourging voices that lashed him as the memory of what he had done came back to him like a vengeful dragon.

  ‘I was wrong,’ he whispered, ‘and I know that now.’

  He dipped his fingers into the pewter vase and drew them across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, the blood-red stripe glistening on his skin.

  ‘The flame of the Wodin-chosen will never die,’ he said in a low drone as he gazed into the mirror, seeing Runa there, mouthing the next words back to him. ‘And when the time is right, the Vesi will rise…’

  The End

  Author’s Note

  As a writer, picking up the pieces after the Battle of Adrianople was not easy. One can only imagine how it must have been for the people who lived and fought through that defeat and survived to see the awful aftermath. Their world – Thracia and the heart of the Eastern Empire – was broken. In an era when men looked solely to their gods for guidance, it must have seemed like the ultimate rebuke from those ancient deities; the beginning of the end, even. Of course, the empire did not fall immediately after Adrianople but, as this book and the rest of the series will show, that battle was a catalyst for the eventual collapse of most of Rome’s territories.

  As usual, I’ll now outline the parts of this volume where I’ve stayed true to the history or where I’ve veered away from it to benefit the storyline. The first thing I should say on this front is that – perhaps understandably given the chaos of the period – the historical sources are maddeningly thin and often contradictory. The chronicle of our ‘accurate and faithful guide’, Ammianus Marcellinus, ended after the Battle of Adrianople and to carry on we are forced to rely on less thorough sources such as Eunapius, Themistius and Zosimus. As such, I’ve introduced plenty of speculative elements which hopefully tie together the scant facts.

  We can be sure that, for the latter half of 378 and early 379 AD, Fritigern’s victorious horde held sway in Thracia. Only high-walled cities such as Adrianople, Constantinople and Perinthus, remained in imperial hands, thanks to Fritigern’s lack of siege warfare skills. But with the legions of the Eastern Empire smashed and the few survivors scattered, the Gothic Iudex ruled the countryside, putting a halt to imperial communications, supply convoys and any attempt at military consolidation. In any case, with the imperial throne in Constantinople lying empty, and the majority of the eastern generals dead or missing, there was a distinct lack of leadership to spur any kind of revival or resistance. That changed when Theodosius, Magister Militum of Gratian’s Pannonian Army, was raised to fill the empty throne.

  After being crowned by Gratian at Sirmium on 19th January 379 AD, Theodosius made haste f
or Thessalonica – nestled in the relative safe-haven that was the Diocese of Macedonia – and set about reviving the shattered Eastern Army. Fragments of the legions were hiding in Thracian towns or in highland regions – hence my depiction of the XI Claudia trying desperately to hold onto the frozen Rhodope heights – and the new emperor summoned them to his base of operations. A huge turf wall was erected around Thessalonica to protect the city should the Goths advance south, and to house the summoned army. But as the tattered remainder of the legions came in to this giant turf-camp, it would have quickly become apparent to Theodosius just how few had survived the Adrianople disaster, and it seems he acted upon this stark truth quickly. Starting in 379 AD, he issued a series of decrees to allow the depleted ranks to be filled and for obliterated legions to be reformed. Retired veterans were obliged to return to duty, as were their sons – attempts at bribery to escape service would now be dealt with severely. Indeed, noblemen were required to supply their slaves to the army, and refusal would result in said noblemen being burnt at the stake! Even peasants, beggars and deserters were swept up in an effort to plug the manpower shortage.

  Starting at the same time as this mass-recruitment, and continuing over the next few years, Theodosius raised five new generals to command the fresh troops. The sources do not list these generals by name, but the four I have depicted as being appointed in 379 AD can be inferred as likely candidates given their role in subsequent chronicles: we have Saturninus and Bacurius, survivors of Adrianople, Modares the Goth (and nephew of Athanaric), and Julius – infamous for butchering legionaries of Gothic stock in late 378 AD. I have depicted these four as taking up the role of ‘Magistri Militum’, however, the titles of this batch of new generals differ depending on which source you read (this was an era when the new title ‘Magister Utriusque Militiae’ began to emerge).