Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire (18 page)

Pavo released his tight grip on the phalera and allowed himself to breathe again. He glanced back over the dark-red mess that stained the plain. Camels and men lay tangled, jutting white bone and spilled guts adding to the glistening crimson film that coated everything. The stench of blood and open bowels was rife in the baking sun and a cloud of flies buzzed eagerly over this feast while a venue of vultures screeched overhead. Amongst the carnage, the surviving legionaries stood, panting in disbelief, some retching into the gore. Carbo stood with them, his spatha bloodied and his chest heaving. Gallus stood nearby, his face plastered in blood and taut with fury. More than half of the column had been slain, he realised. He saw the gawping, lifeless faces of many from his century and from Quadratus’ – many he had considered good friends. A hardness gripped his heart at this – a hardness he saw reflected in Sura’s stony gaze at the scene. They called this the soldier’s skin. It was welcome at times like this.

‘Who are they, sir?’ Habitus muttered, eyeing the approaching five hundred.

Pavo frowned. ‘I don’t know, but keep your shield up.’

‘There is no need,’ a voice spoke. Carbo stood a few feet away, cleaning his spatha with a rag. The man’s well-weathered features were clad in the filth of battle.

‘Sir?’ Pavo hesitated, glancing to the riders, hearing their chatter and the whinnying of their mounts as they came closer.

‘The Maratocupreni have made their choice,’ Carbo said. ‘If they wanted to side with the camel raiders, you would be dead by now. We all would.’ He sheathed his blade then flicked out a finger and jabbed it to the ground. ‘Lower your shields and sheathe your weapons.’

Pavo saw the blood-spattered Gallus approaching, gathering the legionaries together. He had taken the lead from Carbo and was ordering them to lower their weapons likewise.

‘You’d better be right about this,’ Gallus said, casting a frosty look at Carbo, then eyeing the mysterious riders.

Pavo watched as the rider with the long, swishing plume rode to the fore, the rest following in a loose pack. They slowed to a trot then came to a halt a few strides from Gallus and Carbo. Their skin was swarthy, they sported narrow, fine features, and almost all of them were clean-shaven. They wore smears of kohl on each cheek, just under the eyes. They eyed the filthy Roman banners with narrowed eyes. The lead rider’s face was cast in shade from the helm.

‘Tribunus Gallus of Legio XI Claudia Pia Fidelis,’ Gallus saluted. ‘Your intervention was timely.’ His tone was terse, almost suspicious.

‘Ah! Typically warm Roman gratitude,’ the lead rider laughed mirthlessly.

This one was slender and small, Pavo realised, noticing the narrow shoulders upon which the composite bow hung. And there was something else. The voice was husky but light.

Then the lead rider removed the helm, revealing the dusky and delicate face of a young woman. Her almond-shaped eyes dominated her face, her neat nose and pursed lips. The whipping, swishing plume was in fact sleek, dark locks scooped up in a tight topknot, the tail draped down her back.

‘Izodora of the Maratocupreni,’ she introduced herself.

The smears of kohl on her cheeks gave her a fearsome glare. Fearsome yet comely, Pavo mused. Then her gaze snapped onto him. Instantly, he looked away, embarrassed.

‘You chose to loose upon the desert raiders and not us. Why?’ Gallus continued.

‘They were desert raiders, yes, but they were not here for mere brigandage. I have clashed with them before – they spill blood for Persian coin. I chose to loose upon them because they were the aggressors,’ then her gaze hardened, ‘or at least that is how it seemed. You and your men seem to have strayed far from the Roman borders and into the desert. Perhaps I should have chosen differently?’ She sat tall on her saddle and cast Gallus a glare that almost matched that of the tribunus. ‘So, where
are
you headed, Tribunus Gallus?’

Gallus did well not to hesitate. ‘We were on patrol when our camel escort deserted us,’ he nodded through the thick pack of buzzing flies to the slain dromedarii amongst the desert raiders. ‘Then they gathered this band and tried to slay us. We have been without fresh water for days.’

‘You set out with a camel escort?’ she cocked an eyebrow. ‘Those beasts are usually only needed when a man seeks to cross a desert.’ She looked to the east as she said this. ‘Romans crossing the desert have only ever led to one thing. War.’

Pavo noticed that her knuckles whitened on her bow. The next few moments passed like an eternity and Pavo felt his breath grow faster and faster. Only the buzzing of the flies nearby and the screeching of the vultures could be heard. Finally, she seemed to relax a little, releasing the grip on her bow. She snapped her fingers and the riders nearest brought forward a clutch of water skins, handing them to the panting legionaries.

‘Come with us,’ she beckoned. ‘In my settlement you can see to your wounded. And you can tell me more about your . . . patrol.’

They followed Izodora and the Maratocupreni until sunset, when they came to a rift in the land like a giant axe-wound in the dusty plain, as broad as a street at this end and widening near the centre. Pavo could only imagine what monstrous tremor in the earth had created such a fissure. While most of the legionary column made to march onwards past this crevasse, Izodora stopped, raising a hand to slow her riders. At this, the legionaries stopped too. She pushed two fingers into the corners of her mouth and emitted a shrill whistle. Silence hung in the air for but a moment, then a faint whistling sounded in reply from within the crevasse. Frowns were shared all round as Izodora led her riders to the end of the crevasse, starting on down a painfully narrow dirt slope that led into its depths.

Izodora halted on seeing Gallus and the legionaries hesitate. ‘You think this is some kind of trap?’ she fired back with a look an incredulous look. ‘You realise that I could have slain you all back there,’ she said with a flick of the head back in the direction of the camel raider skirmish. ‘With your attitude, you make me think that perhaps I should have. Stay out here if you will. I can feed and water the horses twice over instead. At least they would show some gratitude.’

For once, it seemed the iron tribunus was cowed. The acerbic words of this rider had him searching for a reply in vain. Wordlessly, he waved the legionaries on in Izodora’s wake. They marched in single file over a hundred feet down and onto the soft, dusty floor of this tight, sheer-sided valley, hidden from the plain above. It was less than a mile long. The walls were dotted with dark recesses, some at ground level, others ten, twenty or thirty feet up, with rough staircases hewn into the rock leading to them. Pavo instantly shared Gallus’ fears – imagining a cluster of spear-wielding bandits tucked away in those recesses. When Izodora suddenly clapped her hands, they froze, braced. The noise echoed through the space and seemed to stoke some movement in these alcoves. Figures emerged, a few hundred at least. Pavo’s heart quickened. Until he saw that they were only children, mothers, elderly men and women and a few younger men walking on crutches. They were joined by a playful herd of goats – the kids tumbling and bleating as the mother goats led them to the far end of the valley. There, a thick carpet of grass had sprung up around a part of the rock face that sparkled and seemed to move.

‘A spring!’ Sura croaked in delight, recognising the flowing water. Slumbering near this mini-oasis was a small herd of camels.

In moments, the Maratocupreni had kindled fires and were baking bread and bringing water to the men of the column and to their own warriors. They also brought out bowls of water, salves and bandages to tend to the wounded legionaries. Before darkness had fallen, Maratocupreni and Roman alike sat around the fires, filling their bellies and slaking their thirsts.

Pavo spiked a piece of flatbread on a wooden skewer and held it over the flames to toast. Having downed his armour and boots, he felt cooler and lighter. But the aches and pains of the march were quick to come to the fore. His feet were aching, swollen and dotted with raw patches where his boots had rubbed through several layers of skin. His shoulders felt crooked from the uneven weight in his pack, and his neck was red-raw from the sun and the chafing of his chain mail. He crunched into the charred bread and supped at his cool water. A good night’s sleep would help his body heal. Surely he was tired enough to stave off the nightmares tonight.

The crackling of the embers echoed endlessly between the sheer cliff walls, the flames casting dancing shadows up the rock faces. He felt his eyelids drooping, sighed and glanced across the many faces illuminated in orange seated nearby. Felix, Quadratus and Zosimus bore dark rings under their eyes from dehydration as they sipped endlessly from their skins. They only became animated when Quadratus prised off his boots, sniffed at one, then held it up to Zosimus’ face with a devious grin. Zosimus’ retching lasted almost as long as Felix’s laughter.

A few fires away, Carbo, Baptista and the Flavia Firma men seemed equally drawn. Given their fatigue, the men of the XI Claudia and the XVI Flavia Firma had spoken little since the battle with the camel raiders, but every man had fought for every other in that clash, and the animosity seemed to have faded. Baptista looked up at that moment, catching Pavo’s eye. The man’s lips grew thin and his nose wrinkled, then he gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Grudging respect at last?
Pavo wondered, nodding in reply.

The Maratocupreni warriors soon set down their armour and weapons and came to eat. They sat amongst the Romans in silence or quietly chattered amongst themselves, their charcoal locks hanging long and loose. They seemed a modest and affable people, very much in contrast to their battlefield demeanour. And the five hundred or so of them that had ridden to the rescue of the Roman column seemed to be the sum of their army. Bar the families and the few archers who had been left behind to guard the crevasse, this was all there was of the Maratocupreni. Pavo combed his memories – he was sure he had read of them before, but the detail remained elusive.

He heard a dull chatter from one of the recesses high up on the crevasse wall. The orange flame of a campfire danced there, and Pavo recognised the tones of Izodora, along with the jagged and clearly angered words of a pair of Maratocupreni elders. He saw Izodora stand, utter some clipped parting message, then turn away from the fire to descend the stairs to the valley floor.
That will have been a wintry conversation no doubt
, he mused with a hint of a grin as he watched her descend.

‘She’s pretty,’ Sura mused by his side, ‘but I bet she’d turn your cock to ice.’

Pavo was torn from his thoughts by this erudite observation. But indeed she was striking in her appearance, her almond eyes sharper than a blade. And her vixen-like, nimble hips moved gracefully. Like a strip of silk in the breeze. At that moment, he thought of the strip of red silk in his belt. Of Felicia. Guilt needled at his heart.

‘You’re thinking about it, you dirty bugger!’ Sura gawped in mock-disgust.

‘No, I was just . . . ’ he shook his head clear of the thought.

‘Ach, not to worry,’ Sura shrugged and picked a morsel of bread from his teeth with a splinter of wood. ‘Felicia’s probably been at it every night back in Constantinople.’

Pavo bit back a riposte, then stood. ‘Right, I’m washing and then I’m calling it a night,’ he nodded to the area by the fires where some of the goatskin contubernia tents had been set up. He picked his way through the campfires and over to the green end of the valley and the spring. There, the moon had risen to dominate the narrow window of night sky above. The scent of the grass and the feel of it brushing on his feet momentarily allowed him to imagine he was in another land – far from the arid dust. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the cooling mizzle and fecund plains of Thracia. He cupped his hands under a jagged outcrop of rock and collected water from the trickling spring, then lashed it across his face and the dark stubble on his scalp. It soothed and calmed him, washing the last traces of dust from his skin. He gazed up at the moon and wondered if, somewhere out there, the moon gazed down upon Father. ‘Even if only to reclaim your bones, Father, I will find you.’

Sorrow stung behind his eyes and he turned away to go back to the tents. But he was stopped in his tracks. Izodora stood there, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight.

‘Forgive me, I assumed I could wash here?’ he stammered.

‘You did. You can,’ she replied dryly. ‘I’m just waiting on you to finish.’

Pavo looked over her shoulder to see that Habitus had found some last reserves of energy to play with a pair of Maratocupreni children. The little girl clasped one hand and the boy the other, while the beanpole legionary spun on the spot, lifting them and whirling them around. Their laughter was pleasant to his ear. ‘I don’t know what my tribunus said to you, but every one of these men is grateful for your coming to our rescue today. Had the camel raiders not cut us down, then thirst would have finished us.’