Legionary, page 36
Just then, the Primani legion – one of Maximus’ finest – burst from an alley, surged into the flank of the flooding Eastern soldiers, hacking many down. A group of them led by a tall blue-plumed officer spotted Pavo and Sura and charged for them.
Pavo and Sura raised their blades, each swiping to parry away the assault. Pavo shoved one back with his shield, then brought the bottom edge of it down, hard, to break the ankle of another, before sliding his sword between the ribs of a third. But there were too many. The blue-plumed officer hacked on and on, murderously, slashing Pavo’s cheek and nearly tearing his throat.
Then came a familiar cry: ‘Claudia… attack!’ roared Libo, leading the ruby-shielded legion into the city. He, Pulcher and Darik bounded at the head of the legion. Betto, holding the ruby bull banner level like a giant lance, burst forth and slammed the eagle tip into the Primani officer’s face, sending a shower of blood and teeth everywhere, knocking his blue-plumed helm off. The rest of the Claudians swarmed over the others. In moments, the Primani were on the retreat.
‘You did it,’ Pulcher said with a hysterical laugh, handing Pavo’s ridge helmet to him. ‘You only bloody did it!’
‘Aye,’ Pavo said as he buckled on his helm. Yet he still felt somewhat like a man who had cheated death. Once more, he glanced up at the spot on the warehouse roof where the catapult stood.
‘Man the walls, repair the gate bridge,’ howled one of the Eastern officers. The orders were echoed, and around one quarter of the invading forces now broke away to consolidate their hold on this part of the city’s defences. These walls and the earth rampart would now safely rebuff any dawn approach of Marcellinus.
Meanwhile, the rest of the campaign army forged on through the city, driving towards its western end in an effort to bring it all under Eastern control and to seize Maximus the tyrant.
Pavo and Sura fell into place with the Claudians, joining the press through the city.
‘Sura, that catapult strike,’ Pavo said as they moved.
‘Aye. By rights we should both be dead. Did you see where it came from?’
‘The warehouse roof.’
‘A guard?’ said Sura. ‘Isn’t it more common just to raise the alarm?’
‘I don’t think it was a guard. I think… I think it was someone from our own camp.’
‘What? In here? Impossible. We were a two-man mission.’
Pavo shook his head. ‘I think we were followed in by another. Someone was hanging from the base of the wagon behind us. ‘That was the scraping noise we heard in the warehouse. The same person who nearly took my head off and finished us before we could lower the gates.’
‘Who in our camp would do tha…’ Sura’s face visibly paled, even in the low light. ‘Peregrinus?’
Pavo felt sick to his core. ‘It had to have been him.’
Just then, a squadron of Secundani legionaries spilled out from an alley mouth in an attempt to block the Eastern advance through the city. Pavo threw up his sword to parry the attack of one. Sparks flew, before he reversed his blade into the man’s belly. Blood sprayed through the night, and the attempted resistance was wiped out. The Easterners moved on like wildfire, seizing ward after ward. The Western forces, unprepared for this, began to capitulate.
That was when Pavo spotted the dark, feather-cloaked silhouette speeding along the city battlements, outrunning the capitulation, headed for the western gates.
Emperor Theodosius, riding alongside Commander Stilicho, saw it too. The emperor jolted tall in his saddle, pointing. ‘Bring me Maximus,’ he roared. ‘Bring me the Dark Eagle!’
This brought his Eastern legions out in a chaotic new crescendo of battle cries. The tide was unstoppable. A moment later and Western horns pealed in their dozens.
‘The city has fallen. Retreat!’ their commanders wailed. ‘Withdraw!’
A shaft of starlight appeared at the city’s western end as the narrow postern gates there parted. A silvery mass flooded out through them – Maximus’ best legions, spilling across the western timber bridge, escaping the river island. With them was Maximus himself, mounted, his cape shivering in a flurry of feathers.
General Arbogastes appeared now, riding to the fore, saddled on a giant white gelding, face streaked with blood. ‘Forwaaard,’ he blared. ‘Don’t let them escape!’
When the Claudians reached those western gates, A detachment of Maximus’ men had formed a screen, blocking the gateway and fighting to protect the Dark Eagle’s retreat across the bridge. Pavo and the Claudians could not get near the front lines. But Pavo could see swords milling and blood spurting as the Western soldiers resisted the Eastern press. Brave, loyal legionaries, he thought, willing to stand and fight until they heard Maximus call to have them fall back too and join the retreat.
Instead Maximus, now safe on the far side of the river, gave some hand signal to his engineers. With a groan of ropes and a thwack of axes, the timbers of the western bridge wavered and collapsed into the angry white rapids of the Savus.
Realising they had been forsaken, the defenders who had screened his retreat wailed and cried out. ‘He cut the bridge. He has abandoned us. He has left us to die!’
A moment later and they began throwing down their weapons and begging for mercy.
The Eastern legions, lost in a fury of revenge for the brutality they had endured at the ford earlier in the day, were deaf to this and showed no mercy. Heads were cleaved, pleas for clemency were met with sword edges and men who tossed down their weapons in submission were slain regardless. Pavo saw all this in horror, neither he nor any of the Claudians joining in the frenzy.
‘Stop,’ he cried. Memories of the dream roared through his mind, flashed before his eyes. The needlessly slain boy legionary. The crone’s sad old face.
‘Stop!’ he cried again, pushing his way through the ranks and wrestling a soldier away from a cowering, surrendered man.
‘The battle is over,’ Sura snarled.
It took Commander Stilicho to bring the slaughter to a halt. ‘Enough,’ he roared, riding through to the scene, kicking men away from their cringing opponents. ‘Enough!’
Gradually, realisation dawned that Maximus was gone, and these men were but frightened, abandoned soldiers. With much gasping for breath and many wails and groans from the wounded, the killing ended. The captured Western troops knelt, and the Flavia Felix and X Gemina legions held them like that, at spearpoint.
Meanwhile, the commanders of the Eastern Army moved out through the western gates and to the shredded edge of the cut bridge.
Emperor Theodosius guided his bloodied mare to the brink, flanked by his two generals, Arbogastes and Promotus. They stared across the river to its western side. There, Maximus and his remnant army were fading into the north, the black eagle banner shrinking with distance. Reiks Faustius arrived to watch this also. Bishop Gregory joined them too, babbling in prayer.
Pavo arrived with Stilicho to witness it too.
‘Twice in one day, your designs have saved us,’ Stilicho said quietly to Pavo.
But Pavo barely noticed the words of praise. His mind was still pounding with memories of the catapult blast that had nearly killed him. Nearly. He prized off his helm, and raked fingers through his hair – matted to his scalp – as if still in disbelief that the catapult stone had not turned his head into red mist. ‘Just… only just.’
‘Pavo? Is something wrong?’ Stilicho said, eyes narrowing.
Deaf to Stilicho’s question, Pavo looked around.
Where was Frugilo?
He moved to the nearest turret and fought through his exhaustion to climb the stairs. Up at the top he cast his eyes across the city – glowing a shade of dark red in the first glimpses of dawn. So many faces, bloodied and pale, so many corpses too.
But no Frugilo. There had been no sign of him as the army had stormed the city. That could only mean one thing. He had been elsewhere tonight.
Beyond the city in the dawn’s direction, Marcellinus and his forces had arrived at the ford. But seeing that the city had fallen – and to a chorus of howls and jeers from the Easterners now fully in command of the river island – they slowly began to peel away. They moved north, upriver – the same direction as Maximus and his force.
Siscia had been taken, but two sizeable armies had escaped.
The Dark Eagle remained at large.
And so did Peregrinus.
‘The war was not over yet, eh?’ said a familiar voice.
Pavo turned to see Frugilo, having appeared from nowhere to stand beside him on the parapets, but not looking at him. His eyes were watching it all, his face expressionless.
Chapter 26
20th August 388 AD
The Plains of Poetovio
The golden plain was a picture of pastoral tranquillity. The Julian Alpes lined the south, with long, low ridges tapering from the range and onto the flats like splayed fingers. In the distant north the city of Poetovio shimmered in the sun. Peace and silence reigned.
Suddenly, the earth began to quiver.
A thunder of hooves and boots.
Sweeping north-westwards around the Alpes foothills came an army, some nine thousand strong, riding under a black eagle banner.
Maximus moved at its head, mounted on a dark stallion, ringed by his Moorish bodyguards, and with elite Armatura and Gentiles riders moving as thousand-strong flanking screens. In their wake marched four crack legions. Two lesser legions had been sacrificed so he could escape Siscia. Not ideal, he mused, but merely a dent in his overall military strength.
‘General Marcellinus has arrived at the rendezvous already, Majesty,’ said the commander of the Gentiles, riding alongside him, extending a finger to point ahead.
Maximus looked that way, through the warping heat haze. Around two miles to the northwest, a lake glimmered. Around the shores stood many hundreds of goatskin tents, with the banners of the legions of Hispania standing tall, billowing gently in the hot breeze. The Frankish standards too. Twelve thousand more men. A fine army, unspoiled and eager.
‘Ah, Brother, you were always a faster rider than I,’ Maximus said, buoyed by the sight.
His troops saw the array of allied troops too and began to murmur confidently.
‘It is better than that, Domine,’ said the Gentiles commander, rising in the saddle, shading his eyes so he could see further ahead. ‘There is also movement on the horizon, due west.’
Maximus clenched a fist and swung it through the air in triumph. ‘Dragathius!’ he laughed through a cage of teeth.
‘The Bull of Britannia has returned,’ the soldiers whispered in awe.
Maximus watched the distant smudge of movement as it rumbled towards the lake. He had sent word to the giant cavalry commander – urging him to return from Rome at speed and to come to the rendezvous. This would give him another four thousand riders. When the three forces joined and combined, he would be at the head of twenty five thousand spears. Just in time to wheel them around and swallow up Theodosius and the pursuing Easterners. They had followed him here like fish chasing a sparkling lure. His rival had no option: too proud to back down and with too much of his eastern people’s taxes sunk into the campaign to return home with anything but victory.
‘And so it will happen here,’ Maximus said, his eyes gazing across the golden grass. He had never intended to lose Siscia, but he had planned for the eventuality carefully. This plain, he knew, would make a perfect killing ground.
As he surveyed it all again, the heat haze did that thing it so often did in this dog-hot month, and newly revealed something on the golden expanse – something closer than the lake or the mountains: a small estate of green gardens and a marble manor. The look of the place – out in the middle of nowhere – made him smile with bemusement. So quiet, so calm. And what a magnificent tower rising from the manor’s centre.
He tugged on his reins a little as the army passed, letting his eyes linger on the manor. His bones ached from the six days of rapid marching and riding, and he could not help but think about the luxury and soft beds inside. ‘When it is done, I will requisition that place.’
‘It belongs to one of the senatorial families, Domine,’ said the Gentiles commander. ‘The Anicii. They sank much of their wealth into the land and the construction of the estate.’
‘I will requisition the place,’ Maximus repeated, ‘and I will have a tomb built for Theodosius in those gardens. A fine tomb, certainly, but one that leaves no passer by unaware of how much of a fool he was. He thinks that taking Siscia – one of my thousand cities – makes him a hero?’
The Gentiles commander shuffled in discomfort.
‘Something to say?’ Maximus asked.
‘It… it was actually some low soldier who wrecked the earth rampart defences and who sabotaged the drawbridge,’ said the horse commander.
Maximus eyed the fellow sideways. ‘You say that as if it was the same man who did both.’
‘It was, Domine.’ The man replied. ‘A trooper who was present at both events says he saw who did it. He swears blind it was the one who came to these lands before to…’ he stopped and shook his head, laughing quietly to himself.
‘Go on.’
‘It is ridiculous, Domine. He says it was the same Eastern soldier who killed Gratian.’
Maximus’ confidence – like a shell of steel until now – developed the very slightest of cracks.
He drew on the reins once again. The army slowed a little with him. ‘By noon we will be at the lake,’ he called to his men, ‘and we will meet our other forces there. My brother is there already. Dragathius nears. When united we will be three mighty talons – we will have greater numbers, and we are well-fed and supplied. Victory, then, becomes a certainty.’
The men rumbled in unison.
‘Their legions will be cut down; their emperor will kneel before me and lose his head. His campaign war treasures will be mine… and each of you will have your share.’
Greedy, anticipatory cries exploded now.
‘Domine,’ An Armatura horseman shouted. ‘What is that?’
All heads swished to two of those finger-like ridges tapering from the Julian Alpes, just ahead and to their left. Between the ridges, a reflected light glowed, dancing and shimmering on the slopes. A dense bank of legionaries came thundering into view along that valley, armour shimmering, eagles and Christian banners held high. The Army of the East.
Maximus’ mouth opened and closed again, lost for words.
‘They’ve gotten ahead of us,’ the Gentiles commander croaked. ‘They must have found a track through the foothills.’
Maximus watched as the legions of the East flooded out into the mid-section of the plain like a great arm stretching in an attempt to bar their way to the lake. His neck began to burn and his cheeks flushed.
‘They’re trying to block our way,’ roared the silver-saddled Armatura commander.
‘We have to get to the lake first.’ Maximus finally cried. ‘Move… move! And blow the horns, alert my brother.’
The plain shook once again as Maximus’ force broke into a dash towards the lake and their horns keened. A heartbeat later horns pealed in reply from Marcellinus’ lake camp, and the troops there scrambled to their feet, grabbing their weapons. He quickly realised the Eastern legions – even coming at a run – would be too slow. They would fail to block him from joining his brother and Dragathius… ‘and then they will be stuck here in the middle of the plain,’ he said with a venomous growl.
And so it seemed… until the Eastern legions parted. Through the broad corridor at their centre burst a dense bank of horsemen, riding at full-pelt.
Maximus jolted at the sight: Theodosius, galloping at the head of his Scutarii palace riders, flanked by a wing of equites and a wing of Gothic horsemen on one side, and by Huns and Alani on the other. All flying like a spear towards his army’s left flank.
‘Faster!’ Maximus screamed. With a storm of shouts and jangling armour and whinnying, the Western cavalry tried to spur their horses on, to race clear of the flanking strike. Yet he realised the attackers were too swift, that the ambush had been sprung perfectly. There was only one option now. ‘Come round!’ he snarled. ‘Meet their charge!’
The dense wing of horsemen wheeled to the left in an attempt to charge the ambush head-on.
The distance between the two forces vanished. One mile, five hundred strides, one hundred…
Only now did he notice the small shower of guard riders speeding like pilotfish near Theodosius. Men wearing pieces of white-painted steel. His eyes snagged on one, near the fore, white cloak flailing in his wake, white greaves on his legs.
‘Pavo?’ he gasped. ‘Pavo!’ he snarled, ripping his sword free.
The wind screamed in Pavo’s ears as he lay flat in the saddle, a lance in the hand of his good arm, the porpax shield hugging the other. This was it, their one chance to crush Maximus. With just less than four thousand horse, they had to pin the Dark Eagle here long enough to allow the Eastern legions to catch up, and then bring him to surrender, or death, all before the close-by and onrushing army of Marcellinus could come to his relief.
‘Death to the East!’ cried Maximus’ men, hoisting their black eagle banners.
‘For God! For Mithras! For the empire!’ roared the riders of the East.
In those last moments before the sides met, Pavo looked left, at the rider by his side. Frugilo, face set against the wind, eyes like slits. Is it you? he screamed again, inwardly.
Apparently sensing Pavo’s gaze upon him, Frugilo’s top lip bent. ‘Eyes front!’ the Protector snarled.
He was right, Pavo realised. There would be a time for recriminations, for truth. Right now there was only the steel and thunder of battle, and if he was to live, then he had to give all of his attentions to this moment.
