‘Sir,’ one of his men asked anxiously. ‘Perhaps if the fighting is concentrated round at the turf wall gatehouse, then we should send our reserves there too?’
Eriulf eyed the man. Randulf was his name. A Gothic soldier. A man who had entered the service of the empire years before him. He looked over the rest: more than half were of the same stock. The rest were outcasts, foreigners and strangers.
‘Sir?’ Randulf repeated.
But Eriulf’s eyes flicked up, over and beyond the man, out into the countryside. There, stealing round from the gatehouse fray, came a fresh pair of warbands, moving swiftly and hugging the foot of the earth wall’s outer slope, shields overhead to endure a rain of Roman missiles.
‘They’re coming for the breach. Be ready!’ the centurion up on the rampart called to his thirty and down to Eriulf and the Thraciana men.
‘Our men are needed here, Randulf,’ Eriulf said calmly to the man before him.
Randulf’s head flicked round to see the fresh wave of attack, then twisted back to Eriulf, eyes wide. ‘Two warbands! Comes, we should call the eighty forward to add weight to our line.’
Eriulf shook his head slowly. ‘No. The reserves will be needed elsewhere,’ he said sombrely, clicking his fingers once.
‘Sir?’ Randulf asked, confused, watching as the simple signal sent the eighty reserves stealing silently up the bastion’s inner steps of packed earth behind the Roman centurion and his thirty. He watched, heard the wet tears of knives slitting throats, the muffled cries of men dying in shock, watched the bodies up there crumple and the corpse of the Flavia Felix centurion rolling lifelessly down to rest by Eriulf’s feet, a blade in the base of his skull.
Randulf’s eyes rolled up from the body to Eriulf. ‘I understand. It... it is time?’
‘The moment is here,’ Eriulf nodded.
The reserves and the men braced in the gap with Randulf muttered and whispered, plucking their spears from the sand to open the breach, repeating the words. ‘It is time.’
Along the broad cypress-lined way the legions went in a great silvery mass, then they cut through tight lanes and alleys in a riot of echoing hobnailed boots, under the shade of awnings and swirling around carts and barrels. Sweet wafts of baking bread came from the homes every so often, tempered by the strengthening odour of slit bellies and coppery blood the closer they drew to the city’s land walls. The wide eyes of the populace – each and every one of them holed-up in their homes – watched the Eastern Army climb the wards of the gently cascading city. One mother held her curly-haired boy tight, the lad cheering the legions on. ‘Salvation!’ he cried, the lamb in his arms bleating in agreement.
Pavo met the lad’s eye and prayed the youngster was correct.
They spilled from one tight alley to see the sun-bleached land walls. The main gates were open, and a man in a military tunic and boots stood on the roof of a guardhouse just inside the walls, one shattered arm dripping with blood, the other milling, waving them on.
‘Thank the gods! The earth bastion is close to collapse. We have moments…moments!’ he wailed.
There was an instant of strange echo as they passed through the gate arch and then they poured into the world of chaos beyond. The arc of ground which had served as a rudimentary camp and sanctuary after the Adrianople disaster was strewn with the bodies of dead men lying in awkward heaps and the laid-out forms of the groaning injured, wrapped in white and soaked in red. The ‘command centre’, which was no more than a few dozen grubby tents, was all but flattened, some tents having been set ablaze by the flames of Gothic arrows, others crushed by the onager stones which cleared the turf rampart. That high, crescent-shaped bastion shuddered and shook as the catapults continued to bombard it from outside. Then dirt exploded into the air and handfuls of the precious few defenders up on the walkway flew backwards, some screaming, others in pieces. The palisade on the wall walk up there was riddled with holes where the catapult bombardment had shredded the wooden stakes, and in these spots, legionaries and badly-equipped citizens were locked in a struggle with Goths. The narrow gates were in a sorry state, pocked with shredded craters and sagging – but still they remained barred, although one locking bar as large as a ship’s mast lay broken on the ground, a new one having been hastily thrown into place. Another replacement waited nearby should it be needed.
‘Lancearii, brace before the gates,’ Theodosius cried, and his golden legion spread out in a line as if to contain the monster that was kicking the tall timber gate in. ‘General Bacurius, be ready on our flanks. General Modares, take your men to the battlements.’
‘Horsemen, take your positions,’ Bacurius snarled, his white mare rearing up.
‘Gemina, to the left, Claudia, the right,’ Modares snarled.
Pavo swept a hand overhead to reinforce the order. ‘With me!’ Libo, Cornix and Trupo echoed the order to the First, Second and Third Cohorts. With a deep intake of breath, the Claudia raced up the turf slope, just to the right of the timber gates. Pavo felt the blood on his flank from the earlier wound bubbling and snaking in rivulets down his thigh. His sword arm was trembling from fatigue already and his body weak with hunger – not since morning on the boat had they enjoyed a meal of porridge and honey. They came to the top of the bastion at an angle, targeting a spot where a reiks with a visored helm was clearing the top of the defences for himself, swinging around his head a great sword that caught the sun in a blinding flash with every revolution. His fellow warriors were spry and eager, fighting around him to strike down the smattering of Flavia Felix men, a knot of sparsely-equipped but well-trained marines and the citizen militia. Pavo threw everything into the last few leaps up the rampart, knowing the Claudia would be enough, surely, to drive this cur back and seal up the broken section of palisade. But as he crested the rampart, bodies of Flavia men tumbling past him in the opposite direction, he saw the outer face of the turf defence. It was crawling with Goths. Not just select warbands as he had witnessed from the Fortuna, but everything Fritigern had. Some twenty thousand screaming Gothic killers, clambering inexorably for the palisade, like ants amassing on a dropped pot of honey. The sight grabbed him like a giant hand. They simply had to dam the breach before those masses reached the top. Along with the catapults, Fritigern himself remained out on the hazy country plain, his blue hawk banner fluttering in the searing, warping heat. A ring of his Royal Guardsmen surrounded him, and two vast wings of Gothic riders – maybe five thousand in total.
You wanted peace. Why this? Pavo mouthed.
A whooshing of steel brought him back to his senses. He ducked just as the visored reiks’ great sword chopped through the space his head had been moments ago. He rolled back on his haunches, tilting to one side as the reiks brought the sword chopping down, missing him by a finger’s-width. All around him, the Claudia men clashed with the reiks’ warriors. Steel smashed against steel, blood sprayed and the tight walkway became crammed with fighting men. Pavo caught the reiks’ next strike with his shield, which halved. The two pieces fell away like blossoms in a breeze, robbing him of protection. He snatched at one of the palisade stakes, ripping it free of the turf and holding it across his chest as a makeshift shield of sorts.
‘I’ll cut you open from skull to groin, Roman,’ Visor-reiks snarled, bringing his blade down, cutting through the stake like a butcher’s cleaver through a ham.
Pavo gawped at the two halves of wood, then tossed them away and brought his sword up to block, but another of the reiks’ men grabbed his arms from behind.
‘Hold him,’ Visor-reiks growled. The man behind Pavo did as he was bid, his arms like shackles as they bent Pavo’s sword arm up his back and held his other wrist tight. Visor-reiks tore Pavo’s helm from his head and tossed it away. ‘I will core his head like an apple,’ he raged, grabbing the back of Pavo’s head and forcing it down towards a palisade stake.
Pavo roared uselessly, his every sinew straining, his ebbing strength rendering his efforts feeble, as Visor-reiks gui
ded his head down until his left eye was but a finger’s-width from the stake’s rough but sharply-hewn tip. A storm of thoughts raced through his head. He saw Sura and his best men fighting like wolves nearby – none able to come to his aid.
Just then, a deep buck and groan of timber sounded from out in the countryside. Pavo twisted his head a fraction – just enough to look up at Visor-reiks. The man’s rictus – the eyes caged in the two holes of his steel visor – was gleeful, his shoulders tensing to shove down, hard, and destroy Pavo’s head… when a blur of darkness and a whoosh like a wind of the gods sped up and whacked into the back of Visor-reiks’ head. The bastard’s eyes burst through the two holes in the visor and the head entire collapsed with an explosion of blood. A welcome, rogue catapult strike. Sensing the one behind holding him freezing with shock, he swept his head up and back, the rear of his skull crunching into the shackler’s nose, hot blood spurting down the back of his neck. He swung and booted the dazed Goth in the belly, sending him flailing backwards onto the stake Pavo had been about to die upon, the sharpened wood bursting from his chest and blood lurching in a bubbling foam from the wound.
‘Thank you, Mithras,’ he whispered, kissing his bloody finger and pointing quickly skywards, then braced, seeing a half-dozen hands clamp at the gap-tooth section of palisade. Before he could even call for more men, the hands had become full Goths, leaping up and onto the walkway. They surged up and over, here and at the other gaps. The weight of numbers was simply overwhelming. Pavo cut and thrust to fend off the first few, then dodged a spear jab and leapt over a swish at his hamstrings from a Goth just scrambling onto the walkway. He saw Libo entangled with two more, and in a storm of fists and blades, the three went tumbling down the inside of the rampart and into the crescent of Roman-held ground. There, the two Goths battering Libo were despatched quickly by the nearest Lancearii.
Crunch! went the gates, and this time they buckled inwards violently.
Too much, a voice screamed in Pavo’s head as he saw more and more spilling up and onto the earth walkway. Too many.
Crunch!
Now Sura fell away, clutching his shoulder and rolling downhill. Big Pulcher and a knot of younger recruits held on manfully, until the big man was struck over the head with a Gothic club and fell, unconscious, rolling to the ground within. One by one the best Claudia men fell. Over on the parapet abutting the left side of the gate, he saw Modares and his Gemina charges being driven down the steep interior slope, Goths leaping at them like dogs as they went.
Crunch! Snap! the gates bulged inwards, the second locking bar exploding in a storm of splinters.
A Gothic sword speared through the air for Pavo’s chest. Men were pressed up next to him either side, foe and friend. Nowhere to go, he could only let himself fall backwards. ‘No!’ he cried as he felt himself tumbling down the dirt slope, head and feet changing places in a frantic roll, gore-wet earth and grass flying up in his wake.
He came to a halt on the flat ground by the wounded, and instantly leapt up, taking a step towards the climb again. But hands clasped on his shoulders, pulling him back. ‘No, the bastion is gone,’ Sura growled. Opis and Libo stood just behind Sura, holding the unconscious Pulcher by one arm each. Pavo gawped back at his men, then looked up the slope once more. He saw it too now: most of the Gemina and Claudia men had been beaten back down here or slain up there. A thousand or more dead Romans lay strewn on the inner slope or dangling like weeds on the palisade stakes. Only a smattering of a few dozen defenders remained up there, locked in combat up on the dirt walkway. In moments, they would be dead. In moments, the dam would be breached.
‘Lancearii First Cohort, climb the hill and join the fray!’ Emperor Theodosius cried. The golden legion jerked into action, their tribunus snapping at them to be ready.
‘No! Domine, you must understand,’ Modares cried over to the emperor. ‘The entire horde is behind this push. We need to pull back.’
‘But damn, I did not come here to retreat!’ Bacurius snapped, shaking with eagerness, his horse snorting and pawing on the spot.
‘There will be no retreat,’ Theodosius roared. ‘Not while the gates still hold.’
At just that moment, the men hurrying to the nearly-ruined gates with the third bracing bar vanished as the gates exploded open and the Gothic rammers surged inside. With them came many thousands of spearmen and a colossal roar of triumph, and from some way out on the plain, Fritigern’s two huge cavalry wings burst into movement too. Like flanking forces, the warriors up on the turf walkway either side of the ruined gates now streamed down. The dirt wall had well and truly fallen. The horde was inside.
The Lancearii First Cohort, tensed to take a lunge forward for the slope, now took an instinctive and shocked backwards step. Theodosius’ face slackened at once, turning bone-white with horror. Pavo saw his lips move in silence: God, what is this dark vision you put before me?
‘Form a line,’ Modares screamed, riding to and fro across the rapidly diminishing space between the mismatched forces: less than four thousand disordered legionaries against nearly twenty five thousand rampant Goths. ‘Retreat! Backstep, in time… to the inner gates!’
Needing no repetition of the order, every Roman soldier present drew close, clacking shields together and back-stepping rapidly towards the city gates as the flood-tide of the Goths came for them, slowing just enough to judge their approach – like wolves pacing in towards a wounded deer. Pavo, shieldless, took up a position on the left edge of the line – the most unlucky position for a soldier – and held his sword up like a banner, coordinating the backstep of the others. He heard those nearest him whisper prayers and croak oaths of love to their families. Gothic chosen archers amassed in their hundreds on the inner earthen slopes and loosed thick volleys of arrows. The shield wall did its job, the rattle of arrows thwacking into wood ringing out, two shafts zinging from Pavo’s helm and one whacking against his mail shirt and winding him. Hundreds more archers appeared atop the earth wall, and clusters of slingers too, the air buzzing with their whirling slings in moments. He felt his stomach churn and his heart crash against his ribs. A smattering of Flavia Felix men behind him panicked, turned their backs on the rapidly closing Goths and sprinted for the gates in a loose, chaotic scramble. ‘Get back in line. Stand with your comrades!’ he roared over his shoulder at them as the sling and arrow hail whacked down. The gap behind him felt like a hole in his armour. ‘Retreat with courage and poise and the enemy will doubt their chances. Run like mutts and you will be slain like mutts,’ he berated them. As if to illustrate his point, a knot of Gothic riders broke forward, arrowed towards the solid shield-front of the retreat then swerved away, streaking instead through the far easier target of the panicking ones, cutting down on their backs, slicing off their heads.
He felt his exhausted legs stumble and quiver as they went, seeing the ground between them and Fritigern’s army shrink to a stone’s throw – the mass of enemy a violent mix of faces bent in battle-lust, swishing blonde hair and weapons held high. The urge to turn and run for the gates grew like a great hunger, but he knew unity was their only hope now. It all sent bleak images of the Scupi Ridge defeat scampering through his mind: Fritigern’s nous and might had won that terrible night and he had a firm upper hand here, too. Other memories came back from that night too: of Runa, treacherous, sweet Runa, dead in a weeping Eriulf’s arms.
‘Bastards!’ Libo roared near Pavo’s left, almost stealing the burning ball of injustice from Pavo’s throat, the one-eyed centurion and Opis still carting the now coming-to Pulcher.
‘Trupo’s bleeding badly,’ Cornix growled, an arm hooked around his panting, blood and sweat-streaked comrade. ‘He needs to see a medicus.’
‘Once we’re inside the city, Rectus will staunch the wound,’ Pavo reassured the rangey centurion and his injured friend. He shot a look over his shoulder: the city’s land gates were almost hovering over them. The turf outer bastion might have fallen but the city walls would give th
em a good period of respite. Fritigern’s stone-throwers would surely be brought up to batter down these gates and ravage the walls, but it would take days. Days in which the men could be fed, watered, bandaged and encouraged, in which reinforcements might be sought or a ruse planned. Three backsteps, two, one. The shade of the archway on their skin was like a sweet, sweet salve. All at once, many hundreds of filthy, battle-stained men sighed in great relief, their tightly-gripped shields slipping from their shaking, enervated hands and dunting to the ground, some even sinking to their knees such was their exhaustion. Bacurius and his riders, screening the retreat, entered last, shields on their backs as a frenzied hail of slingshot and arrows smacked and battered down on them, the scar-faced general berating himself and the gods with a foul-mouthed tirade, disgusted to be running from the enemy.
‘Close the gates!’ Modares bawled as soon as Bacurius was through, cupping his hands to his mouth to shout up to the gatehouse’s two flanking towers.
Pavo glanced to the foremost pursuing Goths, now a mere twenty paces away. The gatekeepers would have to be quick.
‘Where are the gate minders?’ Indus croaked.
‘Where is the locking bar for the gates?’ Sura added.
Pavo squinted up to the gatehouse. Nothing. Silence. Then he saw an arm, draped from a window of the guardhouse up there: limp, blood dripping silently from the index finger. The droplet fell and Pavo watched it, his head tilting down until it splashed on the flagstones before him. A terrible chill – in defiance of the still powerful afternoon heat – overcame him.
‘Pick up your shields. Keep in line. This is not over,’ he roared. The gate aperture could be defended, even without lockable gates – just as they had held the doorway into the wharf tower. But even that hope was stolen away, as the foremost Goths burst in through the shadow of the gate arch. The choke point was already lost.
The Blood Road (Legionary 7): Legionary, no. 7 Page 15