Legionary, page 35
‘…it’s not as if there’s anyone new left in Mediolanum for her to fuck anyway, and-’
‘Right!’ Buca roared, launching himself on his wagon companion. ‘You little shit. I’ll rip your balls off for that!’
Voices rose in complaint from the wagons halted behind them. ‘What’s the hold up? Move! We’ve been on the road all day!’
Buca shoved Nasica, hard. ‘We’ll settle this later,’ he murmured, then jumped down onto the track. The wheel was fine. The rock had been a small one, and he kicked it to the side of the track.
One of the horses nickered and pawed at the ground a little. ‘What’s wrong girl?’ he frowned, looking around her hooves. Nothing there now. ‘Bloody rodents,’ he guessed, then climbed back aboard the wagon.
While the two drivers argued, Pavo slid from his hiding spot in the bushes, edged down onto the track as quietly as he could then rolled under the halted wagon. The rock had done enough to stop the vehicle. Now for the tricky bit. He reached up and looped his shield over a pole running the length of the wagon’s undercarriage. The well-weathered porpax sleeve served as a perfect means of purchase. Straining, he lifted his legs up too, looping them into place to hang from the vehicle’s underside – just like that lump of stubborn mud on the greave that had given him the idea. A moment later, and Sura rolled under too. Pavo looked back, seeing his friend clambering into place nearer the back of the pole.
‘Here we go,’ Sura whispered.
From above, the whip lashed and the wagon jolted. The two on the driver’s bench continued to bicker away. Pavo bent at the neck to peer the length of his body and see ahead as best he could. The walls of Siscia and… the drawbridge, descending again.
‘Stay quiet,’ he whispered, looking back towards Sura. ‘We’re almost there.’
As he said this, he froze. Beyond Sura and the rear of this wagon’s underside, he caught a glimpse of the following vehicle. It was the same as this one, with two drivers on the bench and provisions heaped on its back. But… was there… something hanging underneath that vehicle too? No, it couldn’t be. He blinked a few times to clear his eyes, but by then the bend in the track meant he couldn’t see the following wagon at all.
Their own vehicle juddered as it rattled across the timbers of the drawbridge, coming under the shadowy mandible of the Eagle Gate.
Pavo held his breath as they slowed to a halt there. He heard the flat tones of the gate guards as they challenged the two drivers. He watched as the boots of one sentry paced along by the side of the vehicle, slowly, deliberately. A whoosh of canvas sounded from the rear of the wagon. ‘Aye, one hundred sacks of wheat and ten of dried meat,’ the sentry confirmed. ‘Just like their tablet claims.’ He was walking away again when a commander halted him in his tracks. ‘Check underneath, see they’re not smuggling anything.’
Pavo shot a look back at Sura, both turning white with alarm.
The sentry stepped back alongside the wagon, and his knees bent as he began to crouch. One hand rested on the ground as he dipped lower… then:
‘Hold on,’ Buca the wagon driver suddenly spluttered. ‘How did you know we have a blue mirror in our bedroom, Nasica? You’ve been fucking Livia, haven’t you? You ratbag!’
A few stammers in reply were muted by the thwack of a heavy punch. At once, the crouching sentry stood up again, he and all the other pairs of feet nearby rushing to the front of the vehicle to part the fighting men. Shouting became barked demands for order from the gate commander: ‘Get this wagon into the warehouse before I have you both flogged!’
Pavo puffed in relief as the wagon jolted and rolled inside Siscia, the others following behind.
The wagon convoy jostled on the rutted flagstones, then rolled under a roofed area where the wagon crews’ voices echoed around. The air in here was musty and stale, the place dimly lit by a few torches. A warehouse, Pavo guessed. The wagon rose as the driving pair alighted, then shook and dipped again as warehouse workers hopped on board and off, unloading the supplies. Pavo’s arms and hips quivered with fatigue as he held on to the pole underneath for what felt like an age. Finally, the workers dispersed, the torchlight was extinguished and there was darkness and silence. He let go and landed on his back on the warehouse floor with a thud.
Sura slapped down too, wheezing. The pair lay there for a moment, rubbing their shoulders and thighs, groaning. Pavo rolled onto his belly and wormed his way out from under the vehicle.
All was still. The warehouse was a jumble of crates, heaped sacks and racks of tools and weapons and the row of parked wagons. One end of the building lay open to the night, facing the inner side of the Eagle Gate. Silvery pairs of Western legionaries strode past every so often, combing the pomerium – the street that ran along the base of the walls and the gatehouse. Sura bellied out next to him and both looked up, seeing the starry night sky and the silhouettes of the dense watch on Siscia’s eastern battlements. Hundreds of legionaries paced to and fro on that high walkway. The artillery stations up there were manned, the weapons trained in the direction of the dirt rampart and the ford, ready to unleash death upon Theodosius’ battered forces from one side when the reinforcement legions of Marcellinus arrived and began driving at them from the other.
The slightest sound startled Pavo then. A scrape. He shot an accusing look at Sura. For fuck’s sake be quiet! he mouthed.
Sura scowled and held out open palms of innocence. Pavo’s senses heightened then. He realised the noise hadn’t come from Sura’s direction, but from somewhere else. Somewhere behind the two. Here, inside the warehouse. His skin crawled as he regarded the deep shadows behind and around them. Maybe they were not alone? With a yowl, a black and white cat came scampering out from the warehouse depths, skidding around a corner to bolt on down the street.
‘Pavo,’ Sura hissed in the barest of noises. He was pointing to the sky. The slightest change of colour up there – from inky black to dark blue – meant one thing: dawn was coming. Not a moment to lose.
The pair scuttled to the warehouse’s open side, each pressing their back to one of the wooden posts supporting the roof on that side. Both looked directly across the street, at the small dark arched doorway beside the sealed Eagle Gate.
‘That’s it,’ Sura hissed, ‘the winch room.’
Pavo nodded rapidly, waving a hand down for silence.
Both knew the pattern of heavily fortified imperial cities well. Inside there would be the chains that controlled the drawbridge. He stared at the gate and the walls, his mind’s eye seeing through them, thinking of the earth rampart outside… and the arrayed Eastern soldiery ready and waiting just behind it. Stilicho had been uncertain about this ploy. Yet in the absence of all other ideas and the precious few hours they had in which to do something, he had agreed to put it to the emperor. Theodosius had approved the plan, but not before giving Pavo a look that clearly indicated that if it was to go wrong then he would be the scapegoat – the fool that would be blamed for the failure of the campaign.
Just as he was about to risk stepping out from the hiding spot, low voices rose from the end of the street. A pair of ground patrol sentries was coming. He stepped back, hugging the shadows, watching them. They were muttering in conversation as they went, halting only for a moment beside the winch room doorway.
‘All quiet?’ one ground patrol man called into the room.
‘Aye. Bored,’ replied a voice from inside.
The patrol pair laughed and moved on again, drawing towards Pavo and Sura’s hiding spot.
Pavo pressed himself to the post and held his breath, until they had passed. He then began to count, inwardly, watching the end of the street from where the patrol had appeared. One, two, three, four… five. Another patrol pair rounded that corner, combing the street again. Like the previous pairing, these two also called into the small dark doorway before carrying on past Pavo and Sura.
The pair watched as the latest sentry patrol turned the corner and walked out of view.
Ready? Both mouthed in unison, knowing they only had a count of five to move before the next sentries appeared. Ready! Both mouthed again, then rushed across the street and bundled into the winch house.
Inside, two Western legionaries were busy playing knucklebones. They looked up, grumpy and weary, as if expecting comrades had come to relieve them of their duty. Their faces fell. Pavo saw at that moment that thing he had been trying to put from his mind: they were two young Romans. They were not Maximus, yet they were bound to him and to do his bidding.
‘I’m sorry,’ he rasped, then brought his sword hilt crashing down on the side of one’s face, knocking him out cold. When the other rose in shock and went for his weapon – an axe – Sura dealt him a right hook that sent the soldier spinning backwards and crashing against the wall. He slumped there, unconscious.
‘Right, let’s do this,’ Pavo said, breathing hard.
‘Er, Pavo…’ Sura said.
Pavo looked up. Sura was wearing “that” face – the one he always donned when one of his preposterous stories had been debunked. ‘Where is the winch?’
Pavo scowled. ‘What do you mean where is the…’ his words tapered away as he looked around the small guard room. There was no winch, no chains. ‘What the…’
Sura strode towards a stout, iron-strapped door to the rear of the small room, shoving at it. Locked tight. He pressed his faced to the small grating near head height and peered in. ‘In there,’ he rumbled. ‘The winch is in there.’
Pavo strode over and looked through the grating for himself. There it was: the winch. Around it was wound a huge iron chain that stretched up to a hole in the ceiling, no doubt leading to some other set of cogs and wheels that adjoined the chain to the drawbridge’s raised end. His mind reeled and his eyes dropped to the lock in the door. ‘Keys… where are the keys?’
‘One of these two must have them,’ Sura said, instantly dropping to his haunches by one and searching the man’s belt and pouch. ‘Nothing.’
Pavo was approaching the second, when the man stirred, his eyes swelling in fright. The first thing he did was to snatch something from around his neck and toss it across the flagstones.
Pavo and Sura’s heads turned, watching the keys skip and skate across the guard house floor… then disappear through the gap at the bottom of the locked winch room door.
‘Fuck!’ they uttered in unison.
They stared at the guard, who then promptly passed out again.
Pavo rose and approached the winch room door, pressing and shoving at it. It might as well have been made of stone. Sura tried reaching in through the gap at the door’s base with his fingers to retrieve the keys, but again to no avail. Pavo stepped back, wringing his fingers through his hair, hearing the muttering of the next sentry pairing coming along the street.
He stepped into the threshold, back pressed against the stonework: the sentries were a stone’s throw away and closing. They would cry out in alarm, and all of the Dark Eagle’s legionaries here in Siscia would be upon them. The campaign would end in disaster.
Peregrinus climbed up the ladder, through the open hatch in the ceiling. He stepped out and across the warehouse roof, careful to stay in the shadows and watchful of obstacles that might trip him. A loose piece of stone on the warehouse floor had almost betrayed him moments ago when he had detached himself from the underside of the second wagon. The damned cat had thankfully covered for him.
He came to the catapult installation – one of many mounted on the roofs of the city’s buildings. A shrewd inner line of defence should the outer walls be overrun – an unlikely event, as things stood. Unlikely, but certainly not impossible. This device like the others lay unmanned right now, and that was just perfect.
He heard the muted whispers below of Pavo and Sura, and smiled thinly. Their plan was desperate. If it succeeded, then Siscia would fall and the Dark Eagle’s position of strength would be reversed.
He carefully loaded a stone into the device, then turned the torsion handle just a few times. This would not need much power, not at such close range. He then hunkered down beside the thing, waiting, watching…
There! Like rats in the night, Pavo and Sura bolted across the street. They vanished into the winch house. He turned his ear to the doorway there, hearing the muffled sounds of a struggle. Then, silence…
No sound of breaking chains. The Eagle gate drawbridge remained up and sealed.
He watched the doorway like a carrion hawk.
Pavo appeared there, leaning out, looking anxiously down the street, spotting the next approaching patrol.
Peregrinus grinned, moving one hand towards the catapult… and pulling the hook free from the end of the restraining rope.
Pavo snatched another look down the street. The guards were but thirty strides away. Yet he felt the strangest chill. He was being watched. Someone else had spotted him already, he was sure. He swept his gaze across the rest of the city’s dark interior, then jerked back to one spot directly opposite, on the warehouse roof. Was that…
Whoosh!
He jolted in pure instinct as something hurtled past him, skirting his face by a mere finger’s-width. Sucking in a breath of shock, he whirled on his heel to see the giant projectile miss Sura by the merest of margins too… before it slammed into the back of the guard room.
Shaking, ears ringing, eyes stinging from the dust thrown up by the strike, he saw Sura, opposite. His friend’s eyes were wide with shock. Deafened, he could only lip-read what Sura said: What just happened?
Devoid of answers, Pavo risked a look back up at the roof. Nobody there now, just the quivering, spent catapult.
‘Pavo,’ he heard Sura hissing, his hearing returning. ‘Pavo!’
He turned to look at his friend once again, and then at the thing Sura was staring at: the broken space where the locked door had been, and the sight laid bare beyond: the winch.
‘Mithras’ arse, what was that racket?’ a voice muttered from some way down the street. ‘The winch house? Quick, let’s go check.’
Pavo and Sura looked at one another for but a heartbeat, then both, eyes like plates, turned their attentions upon the winch. Sura lunged towards it as if to grapple with it, hands searching the space either side. ‘Where’s the crank handle?’ He raked his hands backwards through his hair, transfixed on the bolts where the handle would normally be attached. ‘They keep it somewhere else. Of course they do.’ He looked to Pavo. ‘Without the handle, we’re finished.’
Pavo’s mind whirred. His head snapped round to the axe lying beside one of the unconscious guards. ‘Brute force, then?’ he said, pointing towards the weapon.
‘Do it,’ Sura nodded hurriedly.
Pavo rushed to the spot where the axe lay then tried and – inexplicably – failed to pick it up three times before managing it successfully on the fourth attempt.
The patter of guard footsteps grew close, their starlit shadows bouncing and stretching in the room’s doorway.
‘Fuckfuckfuck! Hurry,’ Sura gasped.
Pavo took one step back, then ran at the winch, bringing the axe overhead and swooshing it down upon the chain.
Clang!
Sparks flew.
The chain split with a sound like a tolling bell. The stonework of the room shivered and Pavo and Sura both clutched their ears. With a fierce whir, the winch cogwheel started spinning and became a blur as the chain shot rapidly upwards, the severed end lashing like a serpent’s tail as it vanished up through the ceiling hole. Somewhere outside, an almighty whoosh of something falling from a great height sounded, and then a great crash of timbers hammering against earth.
A strange moment of silence ensued. Stunned shouts then began to break out from the battlements above. ‘The drawbridge is down! Who gave the order?’
Pavo and Sura dared to edge outside the winch house. The patrol soldiers who had been coming for them were halted in the street, gawping at the mighty Eagle Gate – laid open, the drawbridge lowered – and with the chain shattered it would be staying that way for a short time at least.
A rumble rose from outside the city, coming from the direction of the earth rampart…
The patrol pair now spotted Pavo and Sura, and realised what had happened. The nearest’s face twisted into a murderous scowl. ‘Eastern saboteurs in the city! Kill them!’ Seven more enemy troops spilled from a barrack block nearby, and the combined nine rushed for the two infiltrators.
Pavo and Sura pressed together, shoulder to shoulder, holding up all they had – just a sword and a shield each – with exhausted arms.
Meanwhile, the rumble outside now grew deafening, nearer…
‘Die!’ the lead patrolman screamed, leaping for them.
At that moment, a dense wing of elite Scutarii riders surged in through the Eagle Gate. The patrol troops coming for Pavo and Sura vanished under their hooves in a blur of crimson. Pavo and Sura pressed their backs to the stonework of the walls to get out of the path of the charge. The Huns then thundered in next with a chorus of eerie-sounding cries: Whoop! Whoa! Then came the blonde-maned Alani, lances glimmering in the low light. Together, these elite Eastern and allied horsemen flooded into Siscia’s streets and alleys.
Behind the riders came another din: of many boots rattling on the drawbridge timbers. Moments later the Lancearii and the Flavia Felix legions surged inside too, with a deafening war cry. They fanned out, each storming a gate turret, and then more and more Eastern legions spilled in – the Hiberi, the Nervii, the X Gemina, Eriulf’s Thervingi. Next came the Goths of Reiks Faustius, who leapt upon the Western troops like wolves, spears flashing and axes milling. On and on the army of Theodosius spilled inside in a rage.
Up above, the Western defenders on the city walls – caught cold and panicking – hurled down frantic volleys of javelins and a few of the stone and bolt throwers up there managed to loose. But within moments, the Lancearii and Flavia Felix had won the gate turret stairwells, and forced their way out onto the battlements. Screams erupted from up there as Maximus’ legionaries fell, wounded, plunging down to burst on the street. The last of the night air over Siscia rang as swords clashed, sparks flew and death shouts and battle oaths echoed up and down the streets and lanes.
