The Blood Road (Legionary 7): Legionary, no. 7

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Fancy a walk?’ a voice called from the doorway leading into the turret.

  He turned to see Sura, dressed likewise.

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sura replied, ‘or so they tell me. No, Saturninus sent a message: asked you to meet with him.’

  ‘What? Why?’ Pavo shouted over the lashing rain.

  Sura came closer. ‘I’m guessing it’s something important… and secret – given that the messenger asked you to meet him up on the far side of the third hill, by the Great Aqueduct.’

  Pavo turned to look westwards across the city, staring at the great grey, stacked arches of the water bridge. ‘During the worst rainstorm of the year, Saturninus decides to call a meeting… up there?’ As if to add a dash of bonus absurdity, the nearly black afternoon sky rumbled and crackled and spat down a jagged finger of lightning somewhere near the city walls.

  ‘He said it was to do with what you talked about above the tavern,’ Sura shrugged, ‘the day I ate a bollock and spewed it back up again.’

  Pavo’s eyes narrowed: Saturninus had news about the Speculatores? It was he who had warned him once before – urged him to run from Thessalonica when they had come there looking for him.

  ‘Fetch my-’ he started, before Sura thrust a spatha hilt into his hand.

  ‘I guessed what this meeting might be about,’ Sura grinned.

  He flashed his friend a grin, before tucking the blade out of sight under his paenula.

  The pair left the barrack compound and strode along the avenue, past the tumbled remains of the old Severan Wall where hundreds of refugees clustered under an ancient, ruined vault to shelter from the rain. They went on and up the slopes of the third hill, their heads bowed to the driving rain. They passed shops and open-fronted taverns – packed with merry faces enjoying the heat and dry insides – and took a side street through a sprawling suburb of villas – a different world to the stinking, packed, crumbling and many-storeyed insulae of the southern wards like that in which Pavo had been born. They came to the top of the hill, and the wind and rain at these high, exposed parts grew wretched. There were no signs of life – just rich men’s estates separated by deserted, well-kept streets. No shelters or poor men here: the starving refugees had no doubt learned their lesson after a number of run-ins with the hired muscle of the rich who didn’t want their like staining the air up here. A stone’s throw distant, the hill dropped away and the grey channel of the Great Aqueduct stretched off over the valley to meet the top of the fourth hill, about a half-mile west. At its mid-point, the mighty water bridge was supported by arches standing atop arches, as high as twenty men. In the rain-soaked valley far below, there were just a few people scurrying between taverns and homes.

  ‘Where is he?’ Pavo shouted as lightning shuddered down with a peal of thunder.

  ‘Saturninus’ messenger said here,’ Sura moaned. ‘Magister Militum or not, I’ll boot his bollocks for this.’

  ‘What exactly did he say?’ Pavo pressed.

  ‘To meet him at the aqueduct, where no eyes might see the two of you together,’ Sura recounted.

  Pavo shielded his eyes from the rain and swept his head around. The houses and gardens up here sported many balconies and windows, some with the gentle glow of lamps and fires within. He couldn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean they weren’t being watched. He twisted round to see a place that Saturninus might have meant – a nook or a shelter somewhere. Nothing at all on the hilltop… and then he looked west, along the aqueduct. Out there, about halfway, was a small stone outbuilding. Windowless, distant, probably for storing tools for easy repair of the stonework on the upper parts of the water bridge. He sighed. Then sighed again.

  ‘Eh? What… no, you don’t think he meant-’ Sura began.

  ‘I think we both know that’s exactly what he meant,’ Pavo drawled. He eyed the forks of lightning stabbing down every so often across the city, and realised that only a fool would step out onto the exposed water channel while carrying iron. With a third sigh, he reached under his paenula, took the spatha and stowed it in a hedge. ‘How’s your head for heights?’ he asked Sura, who likewise hid his sword.

  The pair eyed the aqueduct top: the water channel was six strides wide. Sloshing, angry looking currents sloshed and splashed along it, stirred into a fervour by the rain as it ran towards them. Either side, a narrow stone wall, a foot’s-width wide, hemmed in the waters. Hardy workmen probably walked along these kerbs – on good, dry days. Today, the kerbs were not just wet but gleaming. The quarter-mile walk to the outbuilding seemed more like a march to Persia.

  ‘Well, as you know,’ replied Sura at last, setting one foot on the leftmost verge and stepping out over the at-first small drop, ‘when I was a youngster in Adrianople, I had many talents.’

  Pavo smiled wryly, and followed his friend, walking the kerb on the right edge to stay level with him. Out they went, the small drop on his right becoming bigger with every few steps – now the full height of the top tier of arches.

  ‘Tightrope-walking was one of them,’ Sura continued. ‘The Mountain Goat of Adrianople, they used to call me,’ he chuckled. ‘Balance like no other. Could run along the city parapet at the speed of a sprinter,’ he added, just as one foot slithered forward and he flailed, emitting a high-pitched yelp before righting himself with a cough that was probably supposed to disguise the yelp. ‘Anyway, it all ended rather sourly when I tried to impress a girl at the end of one roof-walking show: I leapt from my balcony to hers. I landed on the balustrade, crotch-first. She had to apply a pain-relieving paste to my gusset area afterwards. The paste smelt like cabbage and my tackle was bruised and numb. Really killed any chance of, well, you know.’

  The tale had distracted Pavo – long enough to see them out onto the highest stretch of the aqueduct. Here, the water in the channel foamed and crashed against the kerb, soaking their already-sodden boots, which squelched and sucked with every pace. The sky was a furious mix of almost night-black cloud and flickering white veins of lightning. Even the innocent outhouse now looked like a tomb in the eerie glow. Pavo could only shoot quick glances at it, his mind and heart consumed by the stark drop to his right: the full twin-arch height of the aqueduct. He had walked under the arches at the base many times, and looked up at these heights, often hearing the moan of the wind as it soughed through the higher tiers. Even that had been enough to turn him giddy. Now, the sight down below of the tavern in which the Claudia men regularly drank was enough to make him retch – it was the size of his hand from here. He knew that looking down was the worst thing a man could do at a height like this, but he felt a need to see his feet on the wet stonework – to know that he wasn’t about to take a stray step off the edge. All he could think about was finding a spot of this kerb wide enough that he could stop, crouch, lie down even – to feel the stability of the stone, to know that he would not fall. The lashing water in the channel leapt up and slapped his leg, the tiny morsel of force like a violent shove. His steps became rigid, numb, unreal. When he stepped on one block, the damned thing listed outwards – only by a finger’s width, but enough to send cold rats of fear scampering through his body. He swung out an arm to balance and carefully picked his way off that treacherous block, a foamy rivulet of water escaping from the crumbled lines of mortar.

  ‘Saturninus is a bastard,’ Sura whimpered off to Pavo’s left.

  ‘Agreed,’ Pavo said in a clipped, dry-mouthed response.

  ‘We’re here,’ Sura said.

  Neck stiff from looking down, Pavo willed himself to look ahead. The well-weathered outbuilding stood before them, straddling the channel. Now Pavo felt a lump of sympathy for the thing – an eternal prisoner, chained to this lonely height, condemned to endure every rain, hail and snowstorm without complaint. A wide flagstone acted as a bridge between his kerb and Sura’s, giving access to the timber door. A coil of rope hung on a hook next to the door. Pavo and Sura shared a look, then both stepped onto the flagstone from eith
er kerbside.

  Sura grabbed and shook the handle, and the chain securing it jangled. ‘The damned thing’s locked,’ he spluttered, rain rolling down his face. ‘What in Hades is Saturninus playing a-’

  Pavo did not hear the rest of his sentence, for a shadow rose up from the outhouse roof. A man lying rising from a crouch. A rat-faced stranger. A jagged thorn of lightning scored the sky somewhere behind the stranger as he leapt from the rooftop with a shrill cry, the daggers in each fist held overhand like the fangs of a hunting lion. Pavo felt all his instincts go to war: those that willed him not to fall freezing his muscles, those that wished him not to die on this man’s blades spurring him to leap away. The latter instincts won. He threw himself backwards into the water channel. For a moment, the world went black as the freezing water, carried from the hills north of the Golden Horn, flooded his nose, mouth and ears. Bubbles rushed over him and the water roared as he rolled over in the slow but strong current. He felt a hand grab his collar and wrench him to the surface. Another man – with a face like a crushed pear and the shoulders of an ox – had him. He saw – on the flagstone bridge before the outhouse – Sura and Rat-face grappling with one another in a frantic fight for life, before the ox-shouldered one’s ham-like fist smashed Pavo square in the nose. His head reeled back, cracking against the leftmost kerbside then falling underwater once more. When the brute hauled him up again, he tasted blood in his throat, and saw the giant raising his mighty fist again. ‘You should have thrown yourself from the side when you had the chance, Tribunus Pavo. For when you next waken, you will be in chains… Optio Speculatorum Vitalianus will lead you like a dog to the feet of Emperor Gratian.’

  Optio Speculatorum? Pavo thought. The master of Gratian’s agents. Here to snare him and condemn him to a slow and horrible death.

  The mighty fist drew back a little more, garnering enough power for a punch that would floor a Titan. Pavo felt another instinct flash like the lightning, and he thrust out a leg to the side of the aqueduct. The heel of his boot crunched, hard, on the unsound stone on the far kerbside that had listed under his stride. With a grumble, the block toppled free of the aqueduct-side, and the waters surged towards the gap. The brute holding Pavo fell, and his punch was never thrown. He flailed, then fell to his knees as the force of the current swept him away, his scream masked by a roar of thunder as he sped out into the void. Pavo enjoyed a heartbeat of relief, before realising that he too was being sucked towards the breach. He reached out to feel only cold, carrying water. His fingertips brushed off the stone of the channel floor – silky smooth, not a hint of purchase. His legs kicked out into the void and then every part of him flowed free of the aqueduct top. His lungs filled, building towards a scream like that of the brute’s. Suddenly, his body jolted. A rib cracked and he heard the stark rip of leather. The paenula hem had caught on the rough edge of the broken stonework. It swung him from the aqueduct edge like a bob on a string, left, right, splashing under the escaping water each time. He stared at the gloomy death-drop below his kicking feet, then glanced up… to see the garment that had saved him, and the threads holding it together spinning crazily free of their seams. It would not hold for long. He stretched out as it swung him one last time. His fingertips scrabbled at the kerbstone next to the breach. Purchase for a trice… and then it was gone.

  Riiiiip., the paenula tore in two, Pavo saw his death below him as he fell once more, hands still clawing for the kerbstone. And then a face appeared above him, half-lit by the storm, and grabbed his wrist. With a grunt and gasp, Eriulf hauled him up and onto the stony edge of the aqueduct. He fell to his knees, panting, vomiting water. He looked up and saw Sura on the cusp of death too, Rat-face sitting astride him on the slab bridge, the pair struggling for control of one of the attacker’s two daggers. Rat-face was winning the battle, lowering the tip towards Sura’s windpipe.

  ‘No!’ Pavo cried, rising to lurch a step forward, only to fall to one knee, clutching his broken rib.

  But, like a cat, Eriulf leapt the breadth of the water channel and sped towards the struggle. Without a word or a moment’s hesitation he grabbed Rat-face by the hair and wrenched him off of Sura. With a flurry of hands he pulled the loop of rope on the outbuilding’s wall free of the hook and swirled it round the man’s neck, pulling it tight then booting the man from the edge. Rat-face rasped some final oath before the rope snapped tight, a crack of snapping bone echoing through the heights and the sound of frantic gurgling coming from the drop. Pavo, Sura and Eriulf watched the rope shudder and scrape on the edge of the kerb. After a few moments, the rope fell still.

  Sura rose, touching his neck as if disbelieving it had not been torn open.

  Pavo rose, gingerly now, clutching his side, hobbling over to the flagstone bridge.

  Eriulf eyed them both. ‘I saw you come up here. I thought that only madmen would go out in this storm… and fools onto this height. Who were they?’ he said, flicking his head at the rope and then back towards the broken section of aqueduct.

  ‘Speculatores,’ Pavo said quietly as thunder rumbled nearby. ‘And there are more than two of them,’ he added, thinking of the dark-haired man with the silver-flashed temples. It had been no coincidence that he had spotted that one so often in these last weeks. He was their leader, Pavo realised – the Optio Speculatorum, Vitalianus.

  ‘Spec-ulato-res,’ Eriulf mouthed. Some words he still had difficulty in pronouncing in Greek. ‘Like Scapula?’

  ‘I doubt there has ever been a man like Scapula,’ Pavo drawled, thinking of that hero who had turned against his wretched brethren at the last, ‘Speculator or otherwise. But Speculatores they were. There is bad blood between the Western Emperor and me. A black vein that runs back through my time in the legions and that of my predecessor, Gallus.’

  ‘A vendetta?’ Eriulf said. His voice was low, his eyes glassy, staring into the storm.

  ‘Of sorts. He wants me dead and I want him to answer for his crimes.’

  Eriulf laughed once – a humourless bark. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Saturninus was never here,’ Sura said, spitting blood from a split lip and scattering Pavo’s thoughts.

  ‘But they knew I would answer a false summons from him,’ Pavo agreed. ‘They saw me with him at the Palace Hill the day Athanaric was poisoned.’ He remembered the lead Speculator pruning trees in the orchard, his amiable smile.

  ‘What I don’t understand is why they made such a hash of it?’ Eriulf remarked.

  Pavo and Sura looked up at the towering Comes, askance.

  ‘I mean, why the drama of luring you up here, and why the fist-fight in the water with the big one? Surely if they wanted you dead they could have offed you in a dark alley with a sword.’

  Pavo’s lips twitched with a dry half-smile. ‘They want me alive. Gratian has a fondness for dealing with his enemies, and it is not slow. Assassination is not his way.’

  ‘Then the streets are no longer safe. The Neorion barracks will become your fortress,’ Sura said. ‘The best Claudia men know of your enemies. They will guard the walls like lions. You should remain inside from now on. Only venture out when you have a clear and genuine summons.’

  The thought itself made Pavo feel claustrophobic. ‘There are no plans that I am aware of, no events I should attend.’

  ‘The Emperor’s Address in May,’ Sura said almost apologetically.

  Pavo bit his lip. Sura was right: there was to be a mass gathering of the people at the Hippodrome. There, Theodosius would announce the outcomes of the ecumenical council – the latest fiery proclamations that seemed to flare from the mouths of the Christian clergy ever-more frequently these days. The perfect place for abductors to bag their man. Every officer in Theodosius’ army would be expected. He simply could not excuse himself from attending.

  ‘I’ll be by your side. So will all the Claudia lads,’ Sura reassured him.

  Eriulf spat in disgust. ‘Well as long as I’m nearby, they will not get to you. I love you like a broth
er, Tribunus,’ he said, then looked away quickly. ‘Dark things may happen between great powers, but bonds like ours transcend such matters, aye?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Pavo.

  He, Sura and Eriulf picked their way off of the aqueduct, the storm raging around them and the silhouetted body of Rat-face swinging gently in the gale.

  The one hundred Scutarii riders pelted around in small groups of ten. They shot off across the short grass of the Thracian plain to different parts of the horizon, their crimson horsehair plumes and dark cloaks trailing like flowing tails and their draco standards moaning in the wind of the ride. One by one they slowed and turned, converging back upon the centre of the vast flatland.

  Dignus the white-robed envoy sat astride his silver mare as he watched his cavalry escort return to him. They looked magnificent, their beetle-black armour glinting in the spring heat. They were killing machines, no doubt, but the red feathers strung to the shafts of their spears – near the blade – meant that they were messengers today.

  ‘Nothing,’ the first decurion to return shouted.

  Dignus wrung the fingers of one hand across his scalp, scraping the coils of hair grown long at one side across his bald pate. Why was it that the most straightforward of tasks always resulted in complications? Take the opening offer of peace talks to Fritigern, he thought, weighing the bag he carried, laden with the scroll and a box of gems, and return. You do not need to engage in talks, the scroll details the proposal in full.

  He dismounted and lumbered over the patches of ash and pit-holes in the ground. The grass was pressed flat in a giant circle – as big as a city. Fritigern’s great camp had been here. To the knowledge of everyone in Constantinople, they still were here. He eyed a discarded Gothic garment – a pair of old blue trousers emblazoned with golden lozenges. Near it lay a small wooden dog – a child’s toy. Here and there such things were scattered. The Goths had left in haste, it seemed.