Legionary: Viper of the North (6 page)

The boy hugged the goat’s neck, eyes wide in panic.

‘My oxen! They’re trapped in the swamp back there!’ The boy cried, pulling the goat back from Pavo by its tether. The lad’s eyes were red with tears, his topknotted blonde hair bedraggled and spattered with mud. A bout of pained lowing sounded from behind the gorse.

‘It’s okay,’ Pavo said in a soothing tone, tucking his spatha into his scabbard, his skin prickling in embarrassment.

Quadratus closed his eyes, shook his head and muttered a frustrated prayer to Mithras. ‘False alarm, sir,’ he shouted over his shoulder to Lupicinus.

Pavo looked again into the foliage, frowning as Lupicinus’ belly laughter filled the air.

‘Perhaps you’ll be capable of dealing with this situation, Pavo? You and Centurion Quadratus can round off this business.’ With that, he swept his hand above his head in a circle. ‘The rest of you, back to the fort. There is much to sort out with this sham of a legion.’

With a thunder of hooves and boots, the comes and the rest of the group were off. Pavo and Quadratus shared a dark look, then the boy tugged on the hem of Pavo’s tunic.

‘My oxen?’

Pavo nodded and tried to soften his expression. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll see you safely on your way. Show me where they are.’

The boy scampered round the gorse bush and Pavo followed. As he passed Quadratus, the big Gaulish centurion grumbled, his foul glare fixed on the departing Lupicinus.

‘If I ever whinge about Gallus again, kick my stones for me, will you?’

The figure remained in the shadows of the thick foliage, his gaze trained on the two Romans as they crossed the bridge into the empire again. With the oxen freed, the boy came to him, holding out a hand.

‘I have done as you asked, sir,’ the boy said nervously, holding out his cupped hands, screwing up his eyes at the shadows.

‘Aye, you have done well,’ the dark figure replied.

The boy gulped as the dark figure leaned forward just a fraction, so a sliver of sunlight sparkled on three bronze hoops dangling from an earlobe, then dropped a pair of coins into his hands.

The figure watched as the boy led the animals away, a dark cloud passing over his mind as he thought of his men further up the trail that would slit the youngster’s throat. But destiny required ruthlessness and a jealous guarding of knowledge, and that destiny beckoned.

Yes, he mused; the Roman borders were weaker than ever.

It was time to begin.

Chapter 2

‘No,’ Pavo growled, ‘take my hand!’ He stretched every sinew in his arm, his fingertips shaking as they hovered only inches from Father’s. The dunes all around them shimmered in the white heat of the placid but never-ending desert. The figure in front of him was barely recognisable as the powerful legionary Pavo had looked up to as a child. This man was haggard, his hair wiry and patchy, skin lined and features tired. But most horrifically, his eyes were gone and only empty, cauterised sockets remained. But he was still Father and now, stood only paces from him on the lip of this dune, he just wanted so much to embrace him once more.

‘Please, take my hand!’ Pavo cried out, but his own voice sounded distant and weak. That was when it always started. First, the sun darkened, then the dunes turned a sickly grey, and then the roaring began. Like a pride of lions at first, then like the cry of a thousand titans, the desert wind engulfed them and the still dunes were coaxed into a ferocious wall of stinging sand. Pavo struggled to resist the urge to blink as the boiling grains stung his eyeballs, but it was no use; the outline of Father grew faint in the storm. Only as he was about to fade completely, he lifted his hand towards Pavo’s. But it was too late.

‘No!’ Pavo sat bolt upright in his bunk, his skin bathed in sweat and his bedding soaked through despite the winter chill in the barrack block. He saw his breath clouding in the air before him in the faint sliver of moonlight that shone through the crack in the shutters above. All around, the exhausted men of his contubernium lay in deep slumber: Centurion Quadratus, Optio Avitus, Sura and the four recruits, Noster, Nero, Sextus and Rufus. He sighed, annoyed that the nightmare had come to him for the second time that night. Then he realised that his hand was trembling, clutching the bronze phalera. He slipped the leather strap from his neck and examined it in the moonlight. His mind drifted back to that day in Constantinople’s slave market, all those years ago, when it had first come into his possession.

Then, his thoughts crept to the years of servitude and abuse that had followed. The echoes of slaves screaming in the basement of Senator Tarquitius’ villa poisoned his mood and quickly brought the chill through the skin to his bones.

He shook his head and wiped the thoughts from his mind. Then he reached to the bedpost and untied the strip of scarlet silk Felicia had given him. He held it under his nose; it still carried the scent of her perfume. It cleared his mind of troubles, conjuring up fleeting images of her in an inviting pose that finally dissipated into blissful sleep. But only moments after he started snoring, a wail of
buccinas
filled the fort, the Roman horns sounding for morning wake up and roll-call.

Pavo’s eyes shot open, the whites bloodshot. He groaned and sat up.

‘Bloody Mithras, keep the noise down,’ Avitus groaned from the bunk opposite. Then he looked down to Quadratus on the bunk below. ‘Mind you, it’s less of a din than your farting,’ he cackled. Then, when Quadratus poked his head from his bunk and shot him a serious glare, he added, grudgingly, ‘ . . . sir.’

‘Hold on,’ Sura croaked from the bunk above Pavo. Sitting up, shivering, still clasping his blanket around him, he nudged open the shutter next to his bunk. ‘It’s not even dawn – what’s going on?’

Pavo looked up to his friend, frowning, then the pair’s faces fell into a weary realisation.

‘Lupicinus!’ They groaned in harmony.

The sky was still jet-black and the torches around the inner fortress walls guttered and crackled. Pavo felt as if he was in some lucid nightmare; frozen, belly rumbling, tired beyond belief.
Still in better shape than some of the recruits
, he mused dryly, hearing their teeth chatter and them stamping their boots to stay warm. Behind the legionaries, the handful of auxiliaries were lined up, and a sorry sight they were: one in three had a helmet and even less possessed a shield. To the rear, the turma of equites and less-than-impressed foederati had mustered also. Then, Lupicinus’ two centuries of comitatenses legionaries filed into place in armour that contrasted starkly with their limitanei counterparts. Pavo stifled a snort; so the disturbingly small total of the ‘reinforced’ XI Claudia – less than five hundred men – had been mustered in the dead of night by the regal arsehole that was Comes Lupicinus. Now, the blend of incredulity and rage on the faces of the front line veterans demanded an explanation.

‘By Mithras, I’ve got work to do,’ Lupicinus snorted, striding across the face of the front rank in his pristine dress-armour, his back rigid, ‘but I’ll make a legion out of you yet!’

His riders, mounted only paces away, glowered down their noses at the assembled legionaries, smirks touching their lips at their leader’s wit. In their midst stood a filthy, bedraggled and panting Gothic villager. His hair was hanging loose and was matted with sweat and grime, his bare chest glistened with sweat and his lozenge-patterned trousers were torn and filthy.

‘Now, the sharper minds amongst you may have realised that dawn is not yet upon us.’ He paused, sweeping his gaze across the ranks as if to add weight to his words. ‘But I have roused you for a good reason. While you were sleeping, another incident erupted in Fritigern’s lands – in Istrita, a small village near the Carpates and the border with Athanaric’s territory.’

A collective groan from the ranks was stifled by Lupicinus’ glare.

‘A fifty will be sent to the scene . . . ’

‘Permission to speak, sir!’ Quadratus barked before the comes could finish.

Lupicinus glared at the centurion. ‘Oh, this better be good, Centurion.’

‘Including your two centuries, there are less than five hundred men left within these four walls. The remainder of the legion is scattered like chaff over the wrong side of the Danubius. Nobody knows what has become of those vexillationes, sir.’

The skin on Pavo’s neck rippled as he heard the big centurion’s words, almost reflecting his own thoughts. Thinking like a leader – it gave him a brief glow of warmth.

‘Now,’ Quadratus continued, ‘should something happen here, should the Goths launch a full-scale attack on the bridge then the few hundred here could just about hold them off long enough to give us some thinking time. But if we continue to send out vexillationes . . . ’

‘That’s quite enough, Centurion,’ Lupicinus barked over the Gaul.

‘But, sir, before Tribunus Gallus left on his mission, he left advisory orders that the vexillationes were to be reined in, to be brought under control – even at the risk of angering Fritigern. Surely you see sense in . . . ’

‘I see sense in a centurion showing obedience to his superior!’ Lupicinus snapped, grappling his cane and raising it to strike, hovering just inches from Quadratus’ face.

In his peripheral vision, Pavo saw Quadratus’ lips trembling, not in fear, but in barely checked rage.
This could get ugly
, he feared.

But, mercifully, Lupicinus lowered his cane and reset his features to his usual haughty look, peering at Quadratus down his nose. ‘Perhaps this kind of cowardly outlook is only to be expected from you . . .
limitanei!
’ He spat the last word like a bad grape.

‘So perhaps I should excuse Centurion Quadratus from this vexillatio?’ Lupicinus mused, then a smug grin spread over his features. ‘Maybe a pseudo command is in order. Yes, I seem to remember one of the more junior infantrymen who considered himself a hero.’