Legionary, page 13
‘Tomorrow, aye? Right now, I need to sleep.’ He jabbed a thumb towards the guest tent. ‘I’m to stay in there toni-’ his last word was drowned out as the wind roared and ripped the whole thing up again. Once more, the semi-naked officials who had been sleeping within began running to and fro, shouting, wailing and leaping as they tried to catch the flailing ropes.
‘You were saying?’ Frugilo said triumphantly.
‘Tomorrow,’ Pavo sighed.
‘Tomorrow,’ Frugilo smiled and vanished back into the gaps between the rows of tents.
With a second sigh of resignation, Pavo wheeled round and made his way back towards the Claudia camp. Pulcher had mentioned something about having a free space in there. he had also mentioned having trouble with his guts all day… so a pleasant sleep was most certainly off the cards.
A few Claudian legionaries were up and on sentry duty. They quietly saluted him as he entered the space. He crawled into Pulcher’s tent, finding that the ‘free space’ was little more than a narrow strip of ground between the two rows of four sleeping men, and Pulcher himself was alternating between saw-like snores and melodic, almost tuneful farts. Too tired to seek an alternative, he lay down. Using his good arm as a very unsatisfactory pillow, he pulled his cloak over himself as a blanket.
Despite his fatigue, sleep did not come. Everything he had seen and heard here reminded him of how delicate and fragile the system of empire was. Troubles, tensions and weaknesses everywhere. Mind spinning, body sore and cold, he was sure that sleep would not come. Then, a deeper breath, a hint of warmth taking hold, a settling of his thoughts. Peace…
The peace did not last.
The dream came in flashes: the summer meadows, Pavo marching with a legion, and then that solitary manor. Up there on the tower, the lone watcher stood.
The legionaries beside Pavo melted away and in their place the crone walked, beseeching him: ‘You created this place, Pavo. And you know who stands up there. You know what it means, and you know what you must do.’
‘None of this makes sense,’ he replied, defiant. ‘This manor means nothing.’ Yet when he tried to stop walking towards it, he could not. He felt like a salmon on a hook, drawn by the watcher’s glare, pulled towards the lonely manor. Suddenly, from nowhere… footsteps.
The young boy legionary came bounding towards him, his face set in terror.
Pavo felt a hundred icy pins prick his skin. He tried to throw up a hand to halt the lad and tried to shout words to that effect. Instead, he brought out his spatha and let loose a feral ‘Yaaa!’ as he rammed the blade between the boy’s ribs.
Shaking, horrified, Pavo glanced over what he had done. As a pair, they sank to the ground.
‘My mother is waiting for me. Can… can I go home?’ the boy asked weakly, before sagging with a death rattle.
‘No… no!’ Pavo roared, falling back from the still-warm corpse of the Roman child.
He lurched awake, sitting upright, one eye twitching and his sword hand trembling. All around him, men snored, and the stench… the stench was almost solid. This, allied with the nightmares, put him thoroughly off any attempt to return to slumber.
Groaning, he crawled out of the tent. Stepping into the cold depths of night again was highly unpleasant, but at least out here he could breathe and know that his thoughts were his own – not those wretched ones conjured by the sleeping mind.
Shivering and hugging his cloak tight, he walked through the drifts of white, clutching the precious greaves underarm. The thick snow was falling gently now, the wind having died away. A few sentries yawned here and there, and the usual sounds of muffled gurgling and scratching rose from the many tents. He came to the snow rampart running alongside the river, and crunched up to its crest, standing before the pickets there. He tilted his neck back and stared up into the sky, seeing a few patches of starlit blackness between the heavy snow clouds. He wondered then if Izodora and little Marcus were awake and watching these same stars from the balconies of Saturninus’ villa. Marcus was uncontrollable whenever it snowed. When a heavy fall landed the year before at the farm, the lad would not sleep and would not leave the windowsill. As soon as morning broke, he rushed outside to frolic and roll through the untouched white fields, laughing and squealing, until he exhausted himself… and his parents. For all the world, Pavo wished he could right now be with them. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on why he was here and what it all meant.
Splash.
It was the most innocuous noise – akin to a fish-eating bird plunging into the waters in search of a catch. A normal sound in the summer. But in these months and at this hour… when the river was bobbing with a flotsam of ice chunks?
He peeled his eyes open and stared, blinked, and stared again, through the silently falling snow: movement on the river. What was it? Yet he saw it only for a moment, before a gust of wind screened it all in white. Stricken with unease, he burst into a limping run to the nearest sentry tower and hurried up the timber steps.
‘Sir?’ said the confused sentry pair up there in unison, backs turned on the river while they held their hands over the heat of a brazier.
Pavo, ignoring them, pressed against the tower platform’s wooden palisade and leaned out, eyes screwing up as he tried to see more. The winds calmed again, and now he saw it clearly.
One of the sentries – with sharper eyes – saw it too. ‘By the Gods,’ he said, dropping his drinking skin.
‘Is that…’ croaked the other.
Pavo stared at the sight: hundreds upon hundreds of boats. Gothic boats. Moving in a broad front across the river, like a row of fangs, coming to gnash on these southern banks.
‘The horde attacks!’ another sentry on a nearby tower howled. In a heartbeat, the cry was repeated hundreds of times all up and down the Roman camp, and a breath later, the air was filled with the clatter and commotion of tens of thousands of men erupting from sleep and scrambling for weapons. Horns blared, whistles blew, torches roared to life.
Pavo stared as the vast front of approaching crafts reached midriver. Not ships of war, he realised, but those hastily-crafted cogs, rafts and flat-keeled tubs, all jam-packed with Goths. He saw mighty old Odotheus on one, his stag-horn helmet eerie in the weak starlight, the bear fur on his shoulders dusted with snow, his royal guard troop aboard with him.
This was a disaster, he realised. He had read the situation all wrong. The Gothic horde leader had always intended to hurt the empire and to spring an attack like this. His advice to the emperor had been utterly wrong – General Promotus had been right all along in calling for a Roman strike.
Head swimming, he backed away from the watchtower edge, stumbled down the first flight of timber steps, thinking of what he must do: take up arms and get to the emperor’s side. For that was his job now: to protect Theodosius from these bloodthirsty killers…
He halted halfway down the tower stairs, hearing something that changed it all. On board one of the rafts, a baby screamed. Pavo turned to look out at the approaching flotilla once more. In the torchlight cast by the suddenly awakened Roman camp, the true nature of the Gothic naval movement was revealed.
Mothers huddled in groups, carrying babies and young children. Infirm old couples stood with the aid of sticks, their legs unsteady on the makeshift vessels. Some rafts had corrals in which sheep and goats cowered. There were many bands of warriors too, but beside some were their parents, wives and young, all looking with wide eyes through the falling snow towards the Romans.
‘This is no attack,’ Pavo said in barely a whisper. Sensing the hurried to and fro of men behind him all across the Roman camp, hearing the clank of weapons being readied, he repeated it in an officer’s roar: ‘They come in peace. Stand down!’
His voice echoed across the heads of the two field legions and of the Claudia – all of whom were in a state of semi-preparedness, tugging on boots, pulling on tunics and helping each other buckle on armour. They heard, and they hesitated.
‘They come in peace, look,’ he shouted again, gesturing towards the foremost rafts of mothers and young. Odotheus, as terrifying as he looked, brandished not his silver spear but a staff. The Gothic warriors too had no weapons to hand. Sura and Darik, faces pale with the anticipation of battle, were barely able to believe it. Libo, face still bruised and bloated like a stamped upon pear, tossed his helmet down, and began to laugh giddily.
The Gothic flotilla neared the Roman shallows, and began throwing out ropes towards mooring posts there. The mothers now pointed to the banks, reassuring their frightened children with kisses and warm words. In that moment, Pavo felt the claws of terror that sink into the skin in the moments before battle – the hand that wrings the moisture from one’s mouth and squeezes the bladder and the belly – retract.
And then the night burst with a flourish of flame.
Blazing bolts and arrows exploded from a spot on the Roman banks, and soared across the skies. Pavo looked up, following their path, all the coldness and horror returning… as the fiery barrage plunged down upon the Gothic crafts. Their screams rose as horrifically as the flames. The boat of mothers and children was engulfed in a roaring beard of flame. The elders toppled from their raft as it overbalanced. An entire ship of warriors went up like a giant torch. Animals brayed in panic as they slid into the currents.
Pavo felt the blood drain from his body. His head swung to the source of the fiery barrage, some way upriver on the Roman banks. There stood the squadrons of artillery – ballistae, onagers and scorpions – that had launched the devastating volley.
‘Attack!’ came a cry from that area. Like a school of great river monsters, the Roman fleet lurched from its moorings, oars whirling, water lashing, towards the devastation. Perched like a hero on the prow of the giant hexareme flagship was General Promotus, his golden cape fluttering behind him, his puce face fixed with a smouldering, heroic expression.
‘It is as I suspected – the Goths come to storm our camp in the depths of night! Attack!’ Promotus howled again with a swish of one arm, bringing the river fleet sharply downriver under power of current and oar: scores of galleys, packed with armed and fully-readied palace troops.
How, Pavo thought, how could they have been armed and ready to launch so suddenly – before even the rest of the legions had managed to reach the riverside snow ramparts?
These boats sliced along the river like knives towards the flank of the Gothic crossing. The hexareme rammed through one of the largest Gothic rafts, halving it as if it were tallow, and sending the hundreds of warriors and civilians on board into the deathly-cold currents. Arms flailed, Gothic voices shrieked for help, fire and snow rained down. The rest of the imperial galleys spread out like vultures descending upon a scene of death, spearing at drowning Goths.
The tribal crafts that had dodged the firestorm were not to be spared. Palace legionaries threw corvus poles down from their decks, the barbed ends piercing and gripping the decks of the Gothic boats and holding them there. With quivering plumes and flailing capes the palace elites then spilled over the rails and swamped onto the pinned crafts. Swords flashed in the pale light, blood sprayed and death screams rang out.
Now the Gothic warriors reacted, tearing free their sheathed swords, nocking arrows to bows and bringing spears and slings to bear. Suddenly, the air was alive with whizzing arrows and slingstones and tribal roars as the warbands swarmed back against their attackers, gaining control of the corvus hooks and using them to storm the Roman decks. Now legionaries howled in death. Sounds of pain and anger and hatred shook the river country.
Pavo felt himself stumbling down the rest of the watchtower steps and into the snow, lost.
‘Pavo, what in Hades is this?’ Sura cried from where he and the Claudians stood.
Before he could conjure any sort of answer that made sense, Frugilo arrived like a spirit, towing the sled of possessions they had brought with them. ‘We must get to the emperor’s side. A Gothic boat has landed at the banks near his tent.’ He ripped open one leather bag and pulled a ringmail shirt over Pavo’s head, then thrust his helm and scabbard into his hands.
Pavo dropped to one knee to fasten on his white greaves. When he stood, Frugilo fumbled with that large leather bag that had been on their sled, and presented from it a shield. Pavo eyed the thing – dark purple, emblazoned with a silver Mithraic sun – as if it were poisonous. His left shoulder flared with pain just to look at it. This was the ‘porpax’ – the thing that Frugilo insisted would allow him to bear weight on that bad shoulder again.
‘Come on, come on: just as I showed you.’ He gestured to the iron ‘sleeve’ fixed to the inside of the shield, padded with wool. It was an adaptation of an ancient device that the Greeks had long ago used to make man and shield one.
Frugilo took the weight of the shield while Pavo slid his bad arm into the porpax sleeve, his fingers feeling their way along to the open end where the traditional rope handle was. Frugilo then took the strapping hanging from the shoulder end of the porpax and buckled it together around Pavo’s torso. Pavo swayed for a moment… but then found his balance. There was little pain in his bad shoulder. The weight of the armour was taxing, but the burden of it all – particularly the shield – was spread evenly across his upper body.
‘Now, come!’ Frugilo bawled.
Pavo scooped on his fin-topped helm, no time to fasten the straps, and followed the campidoctor in a loping run. He halted only long enough to glance back towards Sura and the Claudians, and wheel an arm overhead, beckoning them too. Yet the swirling snow and thickening smoke obscured his signal.
‘We’re on our own. Move!’ Frugilo demanded.
The pair pounded on towards the imperial compound. There, they staggered to a halt: the other ten Protectores were at the riverside, agonisingly close to the emperor’s pavilion but tangled in combat and unable to reach it. Worse, the purple dyed hides of the pavilion were ablaze – having caught light thanks to embers blown from the river battle. The whole entrance side of the tent was a wall of red and orange, crackling and raging. Beyond the screen of flames, Pavo saw the tall, long-haired silhouettes of tribesmen within the tent, locked in battle with the emperor’s Inquisitors. The twelve holy guards were now just four, and they were outnumbered, and being driven back towards that small veiled area of Theodosius’ bedchamber.
A breath of dense, black smoke puffed from the burning edge of the tent, driving Pavo and Frugilo back, coughing and blinking.
‘Round here,’ Pavo gasped, hurrying round to the good half of the pavilion. Here, he drew his spatha – in anger for the first time in more than three years – and swished it down in a series of chops, slicing through the purple leather, carving open a new way inside. He and Frugilo looked at one another, then leapt in. The Inquisitors were now just two. Four Goths turned to confront Pavo and Frugilo with nightmarish snarls, their faces stained with smoke and sweat and spotted with Roman blood.
Pavo thought of what he had seen on the river, and understood the rage of these men. But now, he knew, was not the time for mediation. The broadest of the Goths flew for him. Pavo threw up his spatha in a block – an instinctive reaction – and the longsword crashed against it, sending sparks flying between the pair. The shock of the impact rattled through Pavo’s body as if he had been hit by a bull. Another Goth, small and spry, scurried around Pavo, trying to strike at his back. Pavo only just whirled round on the heel of his good leg to block with his sword too.
‘Use your shield!’ Frugilo wailed from nearby, himself locked in a dance of combat with the other two Goths.
He understood the logic, yet three years of crippling pain had retrained his mind, told him never to put the left arm under strain. Now he had no choice – for the broad Goth brought his longsword round on that side in a chop aimed at his neck, and Pavo was caught flat-footed. More, the spry one was rushing towards his other flank. He braced and raised the shield arm, his face twisting in a grimace.
Clang! the broad Goth’s sword whacked against the shield boss, which reverberated like a warning bell, it and the porpax absorbing the impact. The stocky foe flailed backwards, repulsed by the stoutness of the shield. Free from attack on that side, Pavo then flicked his spatha up and caught it overhand, driving it down into the shoulder of the spry one. The man fell limp, sinking to his knees. Pavo twisted the blade and began to slide it free, bringing a hiss of air and a jet of dark blood that soaked his face and spattered over his white cloak and greaves. The taste and the smell of it was like walking into an old nightmare. And then the sword became stuck.
Worse, the stocky Goth was on his feet again, and barrelling towards Pavo. Pavo let go of his stuck spatha handle, then snatched a ceremonial spear from its place on one of the tent poles and hurled it hard. The tip hammered into the Goth’s chest and threw him onto his back once more, this time for good. He wrenched his spatha free properly then swung round to help Frugilo. But no need. Diagonal stripes of enemy blood painted Frugilo’s face as he sliced the head from the last of the pair he had been fighting. The head bounced across the tent, coming to a rest near the struggle by the emperor’s bedchamber.
Pavo gawped – for there now was Theodosius, in his nightshirt and purple buskins, brandishing a sword and a spear alongside the last two of his Inquisitors, fighting the last few Goths. He had never seen the emperor in combat. He was deft in his movement, dodging an enemy axe swing then slicing open the attacker’s belly. The Goth gurgled in shock and pain, clutching at his intestines as they spilled free.
Another Inquisitor fell, spasming, an axe embedded in the vertex of his skull. Now it was down to three Goths surrounding the Eastern Emperor and his last guard.
Pavo lurched forward. One Goth swung to face him, but Pavo sank onto his good knee, ducking the man’s spear thrust, then sweeping his spatha across the man’s legs. The Goth fell, roaring in pain.
‘Yes, yes… goood,’ Frugilo roared like a bear, then launched himself into the remaining pair, stabbing one in the chest and shouldering the other to the ground. The struggle there was brief, and ended with a stark snap as Frugilo wrapped an arm around and broke the last Goth’s neck.
