Legionary, page 32
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The burning shame and guilt arose within him once more, along with memories of the boy he had killed at Remorum Vale. How many more such young men would die today on the end of his sword? His hand began to tremble and his eye fluttered.
Some must kill because they are given no choice. Others choose to kill.
The words washed through him again like cool water. Frugilo’s words – possibly the only kind thing the troubling man had ever said to him. Kind words and true as well. It was Maximus who had caused this. Maximus had chosen to make war. His tremors eased.
Every piece of armour he owned was affixed firmly to his body: helm, cuirass, the white greaves and the porpax shield – the golden Mithraic sun emblazoned upon it glittering in the sunlight. Then there was the weight of his spear, sword and dagger. It felt as if he was carrying two heavy men on his back.
His eyes drifted to the left end of the Roman front. There stood Sura and the Claudians. For all the world, he wanted to be with them. Yes, the left end of a battle line was always considered to be unlucky and dangerous – indeed that was why they, “mere” pseudocomitatenses, had been put there. But never before had he faced battle without his old comrades by his side. ‘I must fight this one, alone,’ he muttered to himself.
‘You’re not alone,’ said a voice immediately to his right.
Pavo blinked, and turned to see Frugilo stepping into place beside him, his usual felt cap replaced by a tightly-strapped on battle helmet. The rippling waters cast wriggling lines of reflected light across his face.
‘I’ve got your flank,’ he added.
Maybe it was the light or the spray, but Pavo saw something in Frugilo’s face then – something that couldn’t possibly be. He blinked a few times, and the illusion vanished. ‘I’m losing my mind,’ he whispered, shaking his head.
‘Hmm?’ said Frugilo.
Pavo took a moment to find the words. ‘You’re the most secretive, odd fellow I’ve ever encountered, Frugilo – and there have been some really odd people in my life. I know absolutely nothing about you… so why does it feel like I’ve known you for years and years?’
‘Because you’re mad?’ Frugilo shrugged.
‘Tell me,’ Pavo said. ‘Just tell me something about yourself. One thing.’
Frugilo shuffled a little then, his gaze dropping to the shallows a few strides ahead. ‘Very well. I believe…’ a long silence stretched. ‘I believe in people getting what they deserve.’
The answer turned Pavo cold. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’
Frugilo did not look at him, his jaw working, teeth grinding.
‘Here comes the emperor,’ hissed Commander Stilicho. ‘Make way.’
The twelve Protectores parted into two groups of six, Pavo stepping left with one half, him and Frugilo temporarily separated. The man’s peculiar words echoed around in his head. There was some sort of dark undercurrent flowing through Frugilo. Something altogether unsettling.
‘You’d better not leave me unprotected, what with that lame leg of yours,’ a new voice muttered. ‘Keep that shield up.’
Pavo turned to see that Lucius was at his left shoulder. He looked the man up and down. ‘After we’re done here – after the battle is won – you and I should go for a footrace. Then we’ll see who’s lame.’
Lucius sneered, but could not stop it from developing into a reluctant and unexpectedly warm smile. ‘Aye, you’re on. We will live through this, and we will win,’ he said. Pavo could feel him shaking with nerves.
Out rode Theodosius, into the ford shallows until the waters splashed around his chestnut steed’s ankles. He was careful to go no further in for fear of coming within range of the immense wall of marksmen waiting on the earth rampart at the ford’s far end. His purple cape fluttered in the river breeze and his mare’s hooves splashed as he walked the beast carefully up and down the Eastern front.
This was it, Pavo realised, recognising that old spectre – the brink of battle. He felt all the usual pulses of pre-battle dread in his heart and in his belly – the desperate need to empty his bladder and bowels coupled with an intense thirst. Focus! He snarled within. He had scolded innumerable cadets for their wandering attentions at moments just like this. Focus, or this river will be your grave!
‘My legions,’ Theodosius began. As he spoke, the sun reflected from his armour. The Chi-Rho emblem blazoned on the chest threw a golden light on his face. This brought Bishop Gregory and his school of monks and priests out in a low chant. Chaplains and Christian legionaries joined in.
‘Across that river, stands the man who took the West for himself. And does not every crook crave his next theft? Gaul, Hispania and Britannia were not enough for him, so he marched into Italia, wresting it from Valentinian, the true successor to the long-troubled Western throne. Italia also was not enough so he sent his legions across the sea to commandeer Africa too. Africa did not sate his greed, and so here he is in Pannonia,’ he stabbed a finger earthwards, ‘caught right in the act of trying to steal this country, this Eastern country. From me! From you! Need I say aloud what will happen if we do not stop him? Need I? The East will never be safe while this, this,’ he swivelled in the saddle and stabbed a finger above and beyond the earthwork, up at Siscia’s battlements, ‘carrion hawk of a man remains at large.’
Pavo’s skin crawled as he spotted the dark, feather-cloaked figure high on Siscia’s walls.
Roused by the speech, the rest of the Eastern legions began bumping their spear hafts on the shingle at the riverside, drumming their swords against their shields, cheering their leader and jeering in the direction of Siscia. A throaty tribal barritus arose too from Faustius’ warbands and the Gothic stock amongst the Thervingi palace legion. The effect – a chorus of Christian, tribal and pagan sounds, of very old and new tangling and vibrating in the air – was haunting.
Theodosius whirled a hand around above his head like a slinger loosing a stone. ‘Attaaack! For God, for the empire!’
Nearly twenty thousand voices exploded all around Pavo. Horns keened and whistles shrieked. As one, he and the Eastern army moved into the ford waters, adopting a necessarily narrow front. The palace legions folded into place in front of Pavo and the Protectores, who likewise joined together again to move like a screen before the emperor. Pavo realised Frugilo was beside him again. He noticed the man was mouthing something, over and over.
I have him, Brother, right here. Right here by my side. And my blade is sharp…
Unnerved, Pavo tried to keep his mind on the dangers ahead. The waters filled his boots and soaked his legs, shockingly cold against the sweltering heat of the sun.
‘You alright?’ Frugilo grunted.
‘I’m ready,’ Pavo replied. ‘Ready for anything.’
‘Hmm,’ said Frugilo, his top lip flickering menacingly.
The spray and the bravado of the war chants compelled the Eastern army on to almost halfway across. Their footing was good – the men picking their way to the waist-deep section, midriver. The Scutarii cavalry elites and the Huns and the Alani walked their mounts confidently through the churn near the ford’s edges. The defenders on the earth rampart had done not a thing to slow them. For a moment it seemed like the sheer spirit of the army might propel them right onto the island banks and up the rampart.
Until the Dark Eagle’s hand shot up… and chopped down again.
The banks of archers on the rampart cocked their bows. With a reverberating thrum, the clear summer sky turned black, as a storm of arrows flew.
‘Shields!’ Stilicho cried in unison with hundreds of other commanders.
With a twist of the torso, Pavo raised his porpax screen, joining to the shields of the other Protectores like a slate in a roof, the emperor protected within. Inside that shell, the rattle of metal striking metal and wood was deafening. Outwith, screams pierced the air from every direction. Heavy splashes sounded and the white water around Pavo’s waist began to turn red.
‘Shields down, push on!’ General Arbogastes brayed.
Pavo did as ordered, seeing a few men floating in the waters, pricked with arrows. Even one soldier dead was too many, but the strike had been relatively well-weathered.
The foremost legions dipped their helmeted heads against a potential second volley and drove onwards. They broke out into a renewed battle roar, wading beyond the midsection of the ford, sensing a breakthrough. And then a cluster of the ones on the front ranks slipped or pitched over, screaming. Yet the enemy had not yet launched a second arrow strike. Pavo scanned the faltering front. ‘What’s going on?’
With his next step, he understood why: he set his booted foot down not on smooth riverbed, but on something sharp. He pulled his weight from the stride just in time, and peered into the waters to see black, jagged ridges that would have pierced his boot sole and foot. Maximus had pounded and smashed up the basalt bedrock here, turning it treacherous.
Men all around were crumpling in the waters, blood blossoming up around them from their lacerated feet, and Roman and Hun horses reared and whinnied, blood spraying from their wounded hooves. The dense front of their assault – already at a laboured pace in the river currents, now slowed to almost nothing.
Pavo felt new danger, saw Maximus raise his hand again and whirl it above his head, once.
This triggered a flurry of movement up on the earthwork: the archers there moved aside, and like giant iron eagles, a dozen ballistae were moved to the fore, their iron beaks poking through the palisade’s crenel gaps. He heard ropes groaning, ratchets clanking. A sudden silence… a click… a whoosh… and then devastation.
The Iberian allies took the brunt of it: sparks flew as the volley of bolts ripped through their ranks, piercing armour in the way that a pin would pass through cloth, smashing man after man. Shouting, wailing, blood. Pavo stared at the carnage, cold to his marrow at the sight of the ripped-open bodies and the wafting stink of torn bowels. He had faced enemy artillery like this only once before, and the lesson he had learned then came rushing back to him. ‘Keep moving forward! Pick your way over these crags,’ he called to the regiments in disarray. ‘We have perhaps thirty heartbeats of respite before those things can be loaded and loosed again. Push forward and we might make it to the other side before-’
His words faded as he saw something: the ballistae were shrinking from view – being dragged back from the parapet. Why? The answer rolled into view: stone-throwing onagers, already loaded and wound tight, rumbling into the spots the ballistae had been moments ago. ‘Mithras, no!’
All of the onagers bucked and spat forth in unison. The storm of rocks came pounding down upon the men stuck at midriver. The X Gemina suffered the worst of it. One onager stone blew apart the tribunus’ head in a mist of pink matter and white bone shards, then crashed through the legs of a dozen behind him as if they were sticks. Another bowled through a century, killing and breaking men.
The screams were horrendous, and the spray above the river, wafting every so often onto Pavo’s face, now turned evil – red, stinking and coppery to the taste. A catapult stone took Lucius the Protector square in the guts; he burst like a sack of offal, showering all with his innards. Theodosius’ mare reared in fright at the noise this made, almost throwing the emperor. Pavo and Frugilo instantly stepped over to cover the gap Lucius had left behind, another Protector grabbing the reins of the emperor’s horse to calm the beast.
A rock hurtled through the air, obliterating a Flavia Felix legionary ahead, ripping one arm from an Inquisitor and steaming on, straight for the Protectores.
Bang!
The thing hammered against the edge of Pavo’s porpax and Frugilo’s shield. The pair were blasted apart, thrown in different directions like toys. Pavo landed in the currents, rolling through shallow water, the basalt rock ripping his calf. He roared in agony. With a moan, he rose onto all fours. Soaking, dazed, he stood, seeing the cut was not deep, but the rock strike had destroyed one purple-painted edge of his shield. If the strike had been central, there would have been little of him left. He saw Frugilo, some distance away, groggily getting back to his feet.
Before Pavo had even had the chance to rise, a fresh storm of arrows whistled down all around him. On his knees and sheltering behind his shield, he saw the onagers being pulled back and the reloaded and ready ballistae swinging rapidly into place again – like pieces on latrunculi board being moved by the invisible hand of a god.
‘Domine, we cannot withstand another strike like this,’ Stilicho pleaded with Theodosius nearby, he and just a few other guards left around the eastern emperor now.
Reiks Faustius, one foot mired in some pit under the waters, swished his sword and shield at the incoming arrows like a man under attack from a swarm of hornets.
‘Domine, the riverbed here is nigh-on impassable,’ bellowed Promotus near the left.
‘We must draw back,’ General Arbogastes cried from the right end of the stuttering advance. ‘Camp for the night on the banks and replan for tomorrow.’
But Theodosius’ face was set in a demented rictus, eyes fixed on the dark figure of Maximus up on Siscia’s walls. ‘God will see us through,’ he growled.
An arrow hummed past the emperor’s ear, nicking the lobe and spotting his armour red. A few finger’s widths to one side and the Eastern Empire would have been in the hands of the spoiled eleven-year-old, Arcadius.
‘Sing!’ Theodosius roared, twisting to look over his shoulder and waving his hands upwards, his river-soaked hair plastered across his face.
Taking their cue, Bishop Gregory and his clergy – watching from the safety of the eastern banks – rose to new volumes of chanting. Some wailed and raised their hands to the sky.
When the enemy sent the next ballista storm across the ford, one bolt hit the water, flat, and leapt up again, given an extra hundred strides of range by this. It flew all the way to the opposite banks and punched into the clergymen, tearing through their robes with ease and turning their plainsong to screams. At this, Bishop Gregory flailed away into the foothills.
The next volley halted entire regiments behind their shields, most men now sinking to their knees in the waters to endure the constant barrage. The Hiberi and the Nervii had no choice but to abandon their attempts at making headway across the ford to fall back and around the emperor in the mid-section of the rapids. A bolt skimmed the shoulder of Theodosius’ war steed, sending the beast rearing in new panic. Wails of dismay rose all around as the troops saw their emperor, unhorsed, plunging into the freezing waters.
Pavo and the other Protectores hurried to help him from the waters and to his feet. Enraged and drenched, Theodosius cast a look up at Maximus on Siscia’s walls, then roared: ‘Withdraw!’
‘Withdraw!’ Arbogastes roared.
‘Retreat!’ cried General Promotus.
Horns wailed as, finally, the legions began to backstep across the ford.
‘Thank Mithras,’ Pavo whispered. No sooner had the words left his lips than something moved at the corner of one eye. Something huge.
He twisted to look downriver. There, two Western quinqueremes bearing blood red sails emblazoned with black eagles glided gently into view. Their sides were crammed with ballistae and smaller scorpions. Pavo knew before he turned to look upriver that he would find the same there – another two giant ships, rolling towards the ford from that side.
The ships glided up to the end of the ford where Gregory’s slaughtered monks lay, and let their keels grind onto the shingle there, the two flotillas meeting and halting there like giant gates closing, blocking that end of the ford too, barring the retreat, pinning the Eastern army midriver.
Panic erupted as the Eastern soldiery realised they had walked into the jaws of a deadly trap.
‘Rush them,’ cried the Scutarii cavalry commander to his riders. ‘We can force our way through and back onto those banks!’. With a swish of his sword, he led the horsemen in a surge towards the ships… and then with a bucking of timbers and ropes that sounded like summer thunder, the artillery at the rails of those four boats loosed as one. The officer’s horse was torn from under him, and he vanished into the swell in a foam of red. A whole host of horsemen went down in the same way. The rest reined in their steeds, eyes wide with terror.
Another blast of horns and now General Arbogastes began waving the legions back to the ford’s midpoint, calling off the retreat. The Eastern Army now pressed into a great disordered mass there, trapped on the treacherous, uneven basalt and with missiles raining upon them from either bank.
Pavo, coming under a hail of arrows, staggered to take shelter behind a large, fin-shaped piece of basalt that jutted from the waters. Bolts and stones whacked and pinged off of the black rock as he crouched behind it. He edged around it, trying to put the rock between him and whichever direction the latest rain of missiles was coming from. Through all the chaos he saw flailing, shuddering forms of dying comrades.
Splashing sounded, then a shoulder bashed against Pavo’s.
‘This is a fucking nightmare!’ Sura rasped, his face striped diagonally with blood. The small pocket of Claudia legionaries with him all bore the same frenetic looks as they hunkered down behind the scant shelter of the basalt fin.
Betto clutched the eagle standard firmly, while Verax the medicus frantically tried to bandage a vicious-looking tear to his bicep. ‘We haven’t even laid a sword on them yet and our flanks have collapsed.’
‘How long have we been out here?’ Pulcher raged, glancing up at the sun. ‘An hour at least – taking an almighty kicking.’
‘Get used to it. We’re trapped,’ Libo snarled.
‘First the emperor wouldn’t withdraw, now he can’t,’ Pavo panted, seeing Theodosius fighting off the many helping and pleading hands of his solders as he tried to mount his mare and take the reins once more. ‘God, save us!’ the emperor screamed. The legionaries around him switched their shields this way and that in terror, confused.
‘And he’s gone fucking mad,’ Pulcher spat. ‘Or madder.’
