Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4) (18 page)

Fritigern struggled to conceal his ire, knowing that Alatheus had judged the will of the people to perfection. ‘Then we should take what food, fodder, arms and armour can be harvested here,’ he nodded to the Roman grain sacks, mail and helms already being piled nearby, then eyed Alatheus and Saphrax.
This horde is not only yours to manipulate,
he seethed. ‘Then we should descend to the south, fall upon Thracia’s cities like Allfather Wodin’s wolves, show the Romans that we are not a people to be controlled or corralled, but a great race that is to be feared.’

Now the watching horde broke out in a tumultuous crescendo of joy and hubris, cheering their Iudex as if the idea had been Fritigern’s in the first place. Fritigern noticed Alatheus and Saphrax’s eyes grow somewhat hooded.

The giant Farnobius stalked before the horde now, hefting his axe then chopping it down into the dirt. ‘And as we march south, I shall lead the vanguard. The lands from here to the Hellespont lie open to us now. It would be an honour to lead my forces over the Roman walls,’ he gestured to the Huns and the Taifali riders who followed him, ‘and to destroy the last of Thracia’s legions . . . ’

Now Fritigern’s eyes grew hooded. So this herculean warrior considered the steppe riders to be his, and his alone?

Farnobius scooped his hands to either side and filled his lungs to continue. ‘I will-’

‘Reiks Farnobius!’ Alatheus cut in, an edge of steel to his tone. ‘The Iudex will decide how and when we advance.’

Fritigern did well to disguise a wry smile. Farnobius was a ferocious dog, and one that even the scheming Alatheus was struggling to keep under control. He stepped forward, staring Farnobius down. The colossus bowed in a reluctant show of genuflection, his dark glower showing little deference. Then came that sharp twitch of the head; a troubling sign – like the first indications of some madness within.

Fritigern turned away from Farnobius, filled his lungs and called out to his horde. ‘Now, my people, tend to your wounds and fill your bellies. Then sharpen your blades and ready yourselves to journey once more. A great bounty awaits us in the south!’

Farnobius remained where he stood, skin burning with shame as Fritigern, Alatheus and Saphrax turned their back on him, strolling off to discuss their next move. The countless eyes of the horde hung on him, no doubt mocking him like the scorned child he had been treated as.

As the crowd dispersed to pore over the wrecked remains of the Roman camp, he wrenched his axe free of the dirt and eyed the blade’s edge. It needed honing, he realised. He wiped the blood from the hilt and recalled the day he had been given this weapon. The orphaned boy-reiks, Vitheric, had bestowed it upon him as his guardian and protector. Yet he had allowed Alatheus’ poisonous tongue to convince him to betray the lad. He had helped Alatheus and Saphrax take the boy from his tent and drown him in the Danubius to claim the title as senior Reiks’ of the Greuthingi for themselves. The babbling of the River Tonsus behind him, taunting him. He closed his eyes, only to see the staring eyes of the boy in the blackness there, underwater, gawping, hands outstretched as if pleading with his protector. Then the pallid, lifeless stare of death.

Only now he realised what a mistake that had been. He glowered at the backs of Alatheus and Saphrax.
I could have drowned the boy-reiks myself and taken his place,
he thought. Guilt bit at his heart for allowing such a thought to cross his mind. He shook it off.
But then those jackals would be no master of me.

A bestial rictus grew on his face.

Aye, my only mistake was to share power.

Chapter 8

The land echoed with a
crunch-crunch-crunch
of boots as the XI Claudia hastened west
.
Seventy nine recruits had fallen in the chaos at the Great Northern Camp. Now just two centuries-worth remained, and most of those marched with their heads down, knowing they had survived only because they had fled.

At the back of the marching column, Pavo stared into the broken flagstones and scattered grit of the ever-deteriorating Via Militaris flitting past underfoot. His boots grated on his callused ankles, his pack and shield gnawed at his shoulders, and the linen focale scarf he wore around his neck had slipped, allowing his chain mail to grind against his neck. Yet he felt nothing.

Nothing.

His knuckles were white, clutching the strip of red silk, shaking. He had barely eaten in the two days since the Great Northern Camp had been overrun. The scent of pine in the air stoked a dull, gnawing hunger and the creeping fatigue of the march was quick to ally with it, but he felt no urge to tend to either.

She’s gone?

He mouthed the question again, looking up and around the furrowed clouds in the mackerel sky. Carrion hawks danced on the zephyrs above, cawing and shrieking, ignorant to his question. He glanced at the countryside around them: tracts of rippling grass and rustling groves of dark, Macedonian Pine that offered no answer; sombre grey granite monoliths that gazed back in silence. Then the fresh October wind strengthened and searched around and under his armour as if in reply.

It was like a scourge of sorrow, an unseen shade drawing a rake across his heart, utter solitude despite the hundreds of men who marched just ahead of him.

Just then, a chorus of weak whimpers broke out over the winds. Pavo glanced up, seeing one of the young recruits hobbling, but doing his best to stay in step with his comrades. A clear thought leaked out of his despair: to go and help the lad, or berate him? He chose to do neither, instead returning to his introspection. The
clank-clank
of his spatha, a lethal weapon that could have been used to defend her, seemed to be mocking him.

She needed me. I wasn’t there.

He felt a wave of sorrow come again, then braced, determined not to succumb to it. He had shed not a single tear since her death.
You don’t deserve to grieve,
he thought.
You deserve only shame.

A series of yelps sounded, wrenching him from his melancholy. He glanced up the column, marching four abreast. Some thirteen ranks ahead, a hobbling recruit had stumbled out of line, red-faced and gasping for breath, wincing when he put weight on his right ankle. Sura, marching just behind Centurion Zosimus mid-column, jogged back to hoist the injured legionary to his feet and marched with him for a few paces to get him back in his stride, before falling back to the rear of the line to march alongside Pavo.

‘Pavo, these lads have been thrown into the flames here. They’ve not even had basic training,’ Sura said, flicking a finger over the rearmost of the two centuries the recruits had been hastily formed into. Pavo’s mind flashed with memories of the gruesome training he and Sura had endured on first enlisting with the XI Claudia. Four months of loaded marches – twenty miles in five hours and forty in twelve, through boggy and hilly ground, and carrying ridiculous iron weights and bags of sand added to their packs to compound their misery. They had endured this and emerged as hardy recruits, callused and expectant of the rigours of a march. These lads, it seemed, had been drawn straight from their homes. Indeed, it was only now that Pavo noticed how many of them had dark bloodstains seeping through the lacing on their boots – their ankles doubtless rubbed free of skin.

‘I heard them talking last night,’ Sura whispered. ‘They don’t believe in themselves. One of them even dismissed himself as a coward for not standing firm at the Great Northern Camp.’

‘In the end, nobody stood firm,’ Pavo muttered. ‘Not I nor you nor anyone else – veterans or recruits. We all fled. That is why the camp now lies as a broken ruin. The only Romans who remain there are corpses,’ he said, almost choking on this last word.

‘I heard them saying they thought they had let us down,’ Sura added, flicking his eyes towards Gallus, Dexion, Quadratus and Zosimus and then to Pavo.

‘They let nobody down,’ Pavo shook his head. ‘Their empire failed them. Put them at the front of a battle line with a spear and expected them to know what to do? It is no wonder they are broken.’

‘They’re not broken,’ Sura cut in swiftly.

Pavo looked up, snapped from his malaise by his friend’s urgent tone.

‘They need you to encourage them and train them,’ Sura continued. ‘They need you to inspire them . . . sir.’

Pavo conjured something like a smile to his face. The effort was akin to drawing a stuck wagon from a morass. ‘I know things are getting bad when you start calling me sir,’ he replied.

Heartened by this, Sura clasped a hand to Pavo’s shoulder. ‘We keep going, we do our duty at this pass, then when Gratian’s armies are with us we’ll march against the Goths. We’ll find that bastard Farnobius and we’ll give him what he deserves.’

‘We?’ Pavo said.

‘Me, you, him,’ He flicked a finger forward to the front of the column. There, Dexion marched by Gallus’ side, head hung low. ‘He’s even worse than you: angry like a bear with a thorn in its bollocks.’ From here, Pavo noticed how Dexion wore a dark scowl whenever he switched his head left or right. It had been the same in the past nights, when he and his brother had sat together, both quiet and lost in memory.

‘But you said we. You as well?’

‘She was like a sister to me, Pavo,’ Sura replied. It was one of those rare moments when his friend’s impish veneer faded. ‘You might not have wept for her . . . yet. But I have.’

Pavo nodded, straightening his marching stance, tucking his focale in under his mail shirt and taking in a lungful of air. ‘Back to the front of the century, Tesserarius,’ he said stiffly, with a faint smile of acknowledgement.

Sura returned the tepid look with a welcome, relieved smile. ‘Aye . . . that’s more like it.’

As Sura jogged forward to the front of the century to march in step with Zosimus, Pavo again eyed the ragged line that the recruits had fallen into: men swaying from side to side, some marching a good few arm-lengths proud of the rest of the column, and one using his spear butt as a cane. He heard in his mind the echoing rebukes of leaders past – many now but shades – then clacked his optio’s staff on the flagstones. ‘Come on you bloody laggards!’ he bellowed. ‘Get in line, stay in step!’

As the recruits winced and drew closer together, he nodded in satisfaction, then felt something hot stinging his cheek. He reached up, touched the lone tear and gazed at the moisture on his finger.

I’ll never forget you, Felicia.

Then he recalled the giant Farnobius, standing over her corpse, the memory of that bestial laugh penetrating to his marrow.

And I will not stop until I have avenged you.

They marched on for the rest of that day, slowing only late in the afternoon when they came within sight of Trimontium on the southern edge of the Via Militaris. The compact Roman city was unmistakeable due to the three rounded granite hills that it was built on and around. And the settlement was wrapped in a double ring of walls with tall, rounded towers jutting from the corners. A perfect fortification, Gallus thought – were it not for the sparse garrison on the battlements. Just twelve men, he counted along the circumference of the lengthy parapet. As they approached, he saw that the two above the northern gatehouse wore the garb not of legionaries or auxiliaries, but of some private retinue: brown leather jerkins and conical helms with cavalry swords on their belts. ‘Who goes there?’ one called out, neglecting to ask for a watchword and confirming their non-legionary status.

Once inside, they saw a picture of normal civilian life. Bakers carried baskets of bread, women carried babies and chatted with friends, children played with balls and threw sticks for barking dogs. It was only the sight of an armoured column of soldiers that disrupted this. It had been some time since this town had known a true garrison, Gallus realised. No doubt the cohort or centuries stationed here had been summoned to the Great Northern Camp earlier in the year – and Mithras only knew where they were, dead or alive, now.

The Governor, a handsome fellow by the name of Urbicus with dark hair streaked gray at the temples, offered the men billet, food and use of the baths. His demeanour was warm and he insisted they enjoy bowls of hot broth and bread before sitting down to discussions. It was the constant wringing of his fingers that told Gallus the demeanour was but a veneer. Shortly after the XI Claudia had eaten, he and Urbicus talked in his offices.

‘The Great Northern Camp has fallen?’ he said, standing to face the fire, his usually busy hands clasped behind his back and at rest for once.

‘The camp and the passes are no more. Saturninus and what forces remain are retreating to the cities of southern and eastern Thracia while the Goths roam across central Thracia at will,’ Gallus replied. He noticed Urbicus’ hands wring together once again as he said this.

‘And your brief?’ the Governor asked.

‘We are headed west, to Trajan’s Gate.’

Urbicus remained silent for a moment, just a few snatched breaths sounding. Then he swung round, his face ashen. ‘Stay, Tribunus. Garrison my city.’

Gallus cocked one eyebrow. Had this fellow mistaken the broken youths of the XI Claudia as veterans who might defend his city walls?

‘Your men can enjoy warm beds, ample food and the safety of our walls here. A savage Thracian winter approaches. At Trajan’s Gate you will find only a windswept valley and bleak defences. That and . . . the Coward of Ad Salices,’ he spat this moniker like a mouthful of phlegm.

‘Surely you mean Comes Geridus,’ Gallus frowned, ‘Master of the Passes?’

Urbicus snorted at the moniker. ‘Geridus is a craven old man. He will offer you nothing.’

Gallus was taken aback by the man’s vehemence. ‘You and he have a long history, it seems?’

Urbicus’ obstinance faltered. ‘I . . . well, no, but . . . ’

‘You have met him, I presume?’ Gallus persisted.

‘I have heard of him all I need to know,’ Urbicus insisted, his lips growing taut.

‘You judge a man by the words of others?’ Gallus said, cocking his head to one side and weighing the man’s suggestion: stay and suffer a stubborn and blinkered governor here, or march on and endure perhaps yet another Barzimeres at Trajan’s Gate? It did not matter, he realised; the Gate was his legion’s destination. His brief from Saturninus commanded so. Destiny demanded it. ‘We will be leaving in the morning, Governor.’

The next day, Gallus rose before dawn. As he dressed, a bracing chill searched around the empty barrack blocks to which they had been assigned. He warmed his hands at a small brazier by the door and saw the light coating of frost on the flagstones outside: winter was imminent, it seemed, just as the odd skies of the last day or so had foretold. The two centuries of the XI Claudia woke, ate a swift breakfast of bread and bacon fat, then formed for roll-call in the dawn light. When they marched for the city gates, they found Urbicus waiting there. Gallus eyed him then raised a hand for the legion to halt. He noted with a keen eye how the twelve men on the battlements had gathered here. More, a group of citizens had gathered to watch – mostly men.