Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4) (12 page)

The wrinkled man fell to his knees, shaking visibly, his hands pawing helplessly in the air before him as if trying to waken himself from this nightmare. But the watching crowd were heedless of his suffering. Gallus watched as Alatheus strode around the terrified old man, swiping his sickle this way and that like a torturer.

Get on with it you whoreson,
Gallus mouthed, seeing the utter terror in the old Roman’s eyes.

But Alatheus handed the sickle to another: a bull-shouldered colossus of a man with raven-dark flowing locks scooped up into a topknot and a jutting trident beard. He was bare chested, with spiralling blue tattoos etched on his muscular torso, and a weighty battle axe was strapped to his back. ‘Reiks Farnobius, Champion of the Greuthingi, Taker of Heads, will honour Wodin tonight.’

Gallus watched as Farnobius stalked over to the cowering Roman – who scrambled back until almost in the flames. The giant Goth reached down and grasped at the Roman’s hair, then wrenched him round like a recalcitrant pet to face the fire. Like a harvester cutting wheat, he hove the sickle across the Roman’s throat. Gouts of blood leapt from the wound, lashing Farnobius and spraying onto the fire. The Roman’s head tilted back, like the lid of a chest, scraps of skin peeling away until it was attached to the body only by the vertebrae. With the heel of his boot, Farnobius kicked at the man’s back, the body twisting and coming away, toppling into the flames, the head remaining in his grip. Then he turned to the crowd and held his trophy aloft, roaring to them. They roared thunderously in reply.

‘
Far-no-bi-us! Far-no-bi-us! Far-no-bi-us!
’

Gallus saw how the moonlight danced in this Farnobius’ eyes, betraying a bestial bloodlust, his face streaked with the Roman’s blood. The giant swung round, basking in the adoration, though Gallus noticed every so often how the reiks’ face twitched, as if bothered by an invisible hornet. Then he noticed now how many of the crowd were wearing not just the robes of men preparing for a night of rest, but arms and armour, and he heard the whinnying of horses from unseen stables somewhere in the camp. And in the northern half of the camp, where the majority of Fritigern’s Thervingi seemingly resided, he saw glinting silver.
They’re mobilising?
His flesh crept and his eyes fell back to the bonfire as he realised what was happening. A sacrificial throat cutting was the marker the Goths laid down before . . . before they went to war. The next attack on the passes was imminent. And what might the coming of the Huns mean for the defenders there? His mind flashed with all manner of dark possibilities.

‘Sir,’ Zosimus said with an urgent tone. ‘They’re not finished.’

Gallus’ minds snapped back to the present as Alatheus’ next words rang out: ‘Bring the next of them!’ he cried. Duly, Farnobius and the spearmen who had dragged the two Romans to the fire stalked off towards a small tent nearby the fire to collect fresh victims.

‘We have to get back to the blockade,’ Bato insisted.

‘And what about our men down there?’ Zosimus growled, pointing towards the tent.

Gallus glanced around his men, and saw Pavo’s haunted expression, fixed on the fire.
Do not let emotion cloud your judgement,
a voice snarled inside him. For the first time in years, he ignored it.

‘There is much we do not know about this horde and their intentions,’ he said. ‘I’d wager whoever is left in that tent knows a damn sight more than we do. We must try to free them.’

The intensity of the sacrificial bonfire seemed to dull the light elsewhere in the camp, and for that, Pavo could only mouth a prayer to Mithras. The great cheer at the death of the next Roman had caught the attention of the Gothic sentries around the southern edge of the camp. They clustered together, craning to see the executions, leaving a stretch of forty strides unguarded. This allowed he, Sura, Bato and Sarrius to steal inside, faces smeared in dirt. Picking their way through the sea of tents, the mesh of guy-ropes and shadows, they made their way towards the prisoner tent. A stench of horse-sweat, dung and foul stews wafted around them.

‘Down!’ Sura hissed.

At once, all four crouched or lay in the shadow of the nearest tent. A pair of scale-clad Thervingi sentries strolled past them, their necks stretched and their eyes straining to see the bonfire as the screams of the next victim rang out. Pavo felt his gut turn over at the cries.
What if that was my brother?
They stole across to a lengthy wagon – within sight of the prison tent – and crouched.

‘Look,’ Pavo hissed, pointing to the flap of the prison tent. Two men stood guard there.

‘Huns,’ Sura growled. One had a misshapen skull, elongated at the crown with lank dark hair hanging like curtains from his oversized forehead. He was tearing at something with his teeth. The moonlight flashed over it: a raw cut of red meat, blood staining his foul teeth and dribbling down his chin. The other swigged at some milky substance from a skin. The stench of their food was even fouler than the reek of their filthy-looking hides.

‘Raw horse meat and fermented mare’s milk,’ Pavo whispered. ‘Makes a mouthful of year-old hard tack sound delicious.’

‘How do we do this?’ Bato asked behind them, failing to keep the tremor of fear from his voice. ‘The tent’s well-guarded. They’ll see us coming at them.’

Pavo’s eyes darted. ‘Yes, they will. So you give yourselves up.’

Bato gawped in horror at the suggestion. ‘Sir?’

Octar the Hun dug at his teeth with a dirty fingernail. The sinew of meat was bothersome to say the least. ‘Damned horse should have been tender,’ he chuckled to his fellow sentry, ‘I rode her with great care, after all.’

But his kinsman did not reply, instead levelling his spear, gawping into the darkness beside a nearby wagon. Octar frowned, then beheld the two dirt-encrusted shapes emerging from the shadows there. In a heartbeat, he had his bow from his back, drawn taut, the arrowhead trained on the rightmost Roman’s chest. But the pair were weaponless and had their hands raised in supplication.

Octar glanced inside the prison tent, sure none of those inside had escaped, then back to the pair. ‘Who are you? What are you doi-’ his words ended with a gasp as a white-hot pain shot through his back and tore through to his front. He glanced down to see the tip of a Roman spatha jutting from his breastbone. A moment later, it was ripped away. A heartbeat after that, he toppled to the ground and in the blackness that enshrouded him he searched for Tengri, the Sky God of the Steppe.

Pavo shook the worst of the blood from his blade and hurriedly sheathed it, Sura doing the same after despatching the other Hun. Bato and Sarrius gawped, faces dotted with Hun bloodspray.

‘Take up your swords again,’ he hissed to them. ‘Stand watch and if anyone approaches, anyone at all, whistle.’ With that, he nodded to Sura and the pair ducked inside the tent, dragging the Hun corpses with them.

As soon as they entered, a wailing broke out from the shadows inside: ‘I can smell blood,’ one high-pitched voice trilled. Pavo strained to see anything in the utter darkness – anything other than silhouetted shapes scurrying to the rear of the tent.

‘We’re Roman,’ he hissed. ‘Keep the noise down or we’re all dead.’

The wailing stopped abruptly. Gasps of astonishment replaced them, quickly followed by a flurry of questions. Pavo ignored the questions, spoken with the refined accents of ambassadors. As his eyes began to adjust, he counted six shapes: five cowering at the rear of the tent, and another sitting, tied to the centre pole. This one was silent. The rest returned to their wailing.

‘Shut up!’ Sura growled.

When they did, they heard only the nearby babble of the fireside crowd, and something else. The faint, broken noise of dry, panicked lips trying to whistle.
Bato.
A moment later, he and Sarrius tumbled inside, their faces agape. ‘They’re coming!’

Pavo and Sura gawped at each other’s silhouettes. ‘Bollocks!’ they hissed in unison.

‘Stay back,’ Pavo whispered to the ambassadors, now petrified into silence. He and Sura levelled their swords and took up position just inside the tent entrance.

‘They’ll burn the tent and all of us in it,’ a voice spoke.

Pavo flicked a sour glance round, then realised it was the one tied to the tent pole. ‘Then what else can we do?’

‘We have moments with which to get a head start. Use them!’ the voice replied. ‘Cut me loose!’

Pavo squinted at this silhouette and weighed the risk. He could make out just a black leather breastplate. A military man? His heart thundered. Then the crunch of approaching footsteps outside cast all thoughts aside. He felt for the rope binding the man by the chest, then fed the tip of his spatha under the bonds and yanked his blade back. The ropes fell free and the shadowy figure stood.

‘Give me a blade!’ he hissed.

Pavo hesitated for a moment, then tossed him a dagger from the belt of one of the dead Huns. The figure ran for the five others cowering at the rear of the tent then, with a blur of swiping arms, a sharp tearing sound filled the tent. At once a fissure of semi-gloom and patchy torchlight from outside pierced the near-blackness inside.

‘Come on,’ the military man whispered urgently.

As Pavo ushered each of the ambassadors through the tear and outside, he heard the guttural chatter and the crunch-crunch of the Gothic footsteps coming to the tent flap. He glanced over his shoulder to see that their approaching shadows were dancing on the canvas, illuminated by the firelight. They grew and grew like giants, and Pavo saw the swinging tail of hair and bulky outline of one that was unmistakable.
Farnobius.

‘Move!’ he hissed to the last ambassador, a waddling fellow who struggled to climb from the rip at the rear of the tent. Sura swung a boot into his rear and helped him on his way then leapt out next, followed by Pavo and the soldier in the dark breastplate.

They scurried forward, darting from shadow to shadow the way they had come in, Pavo and Sura leading. Pavo heard his snatched breaths and his drumming heartbeat and little else. The Gothic sentries up ahead stood facing outwards, backs turned. He reaffirmed his grip on his spatha then glanced to Sura, who nodded, and each paced towards the sentry nearest. Suddenly, behind them, the air shook with a thunderous cry. Pavo swung to see the giant Farnobius climbing from the tear in the tent, his inky eyes sweeping round, then locking onto Pavo.

‘Stop them!’ Farnobius bellowed. ‘Take their heads!’

The two nearest sentries swung round, faces wrinkled in confusion for a moment before they saw the Roman group and brought their spear tips to bear then rushed forward.

Pavo leapt back as the first sentry’s spear thrust towards his neck. He grabbed the shaft of the weapon and wrenched the guard forward, hammering his spatha up and into the Goth’s gut. Hot blood erupted over his sword hand, then sprayed through the night when he wrenched it free and swung round to block the chopping longsword of the next Goth. This one was nimble and swift. Pavo jinked back from the flurry of blows that followed, glancing over his shoulder to see three more Goths rushing to the melee. They cut down one of the ambassadors like wheat, then hefted their swords to strike at his back. He felt the absence of his shield keenly, and knew he could not fight all four of them and win.

With an eerie whirring sound, Sura’s spatha spun through the blackness and punched one onrushing Goth through the throat, then the Roman in the dark breastplate leapt to barge another to the ground, knocking him unconscious, before slashing at the hamstrings of the last. Pavo swung his attentions fully on the Goth before him, parrying his next strike, then swinging out with a right hook that caught the warrior by surprise, catching him sweetly on the jaw and sending him spinning to the earth.

‘Run!’ he cried to the group, waving the three surviving ambassadors to the short stretch of flatland and the scree slope onto the mountain path.

‘Pavo!’ Sura yelled.

Pavo knew that tone, and instinctively leapt from where he stood. A gleaming axe smacked down into the dust where he had been, and the ground shuddered as Farnobius rushed for him, swiping up the axe from the ground then hefting it back to strike again. Pavo threw up his sword to block, but his shoulders shuddered in their sockets as the blades clashed and he was thrown back by the force of the blow. The Gothic Reiks’ sweeping axe blade then battered Sura back likewise and nicked Sarrius’ neck too. The V Macedonica legionary turned to run, but managed only a few steps before a fountain of dark blood burst from the torn artery, and he slumped to the ground, clutching at the foaming wound.