‘I’ve only been on for an hour, sir,’ he said, confused, nodding at the nearby tripod of spears and the dripping waterskin timer hanging from it – still more than three-quarters full.
‘Don’t make me return to my tent, lad,’ Pavo said with a wry grunt. ‘Dark things wait on me behind closed eyes.’
Indus shrugged. ‘I appreciate this, sir,’ he said, hopping down from the rock and strolling back into the heart of the camp and striking up some tale about a Rhodian orgy with his young friend, Durio.
Pavo sat, using a knife to peel the skin from an apple, chewing absently on the tangy fruit as if it were ashes. He watched the southern approaches for a time: inky black. Torch-bearing followers they might spot… but shadows? His skin crawled. He peered into the darkness for an eternity. Only when the sky began to change from black to navy blue and cast the merest light on the land was he satisfied the valley to the south held no creeping enemies. His gaze turned at last from the southern approaches and to the fires. There, his men told stories of heroism from days past – each one involving the legions overcoming a non-Roman foe: Persians, Goths, Quadi, Berbers, Vandals, Huns. None spoke of the darkest and closest present enemy: an Emperor of Rome and his legions.
Guilt sank into his shoulders like fetid fangs. The men adored him and he them, but the truth remained: his feud with Gratian had endangered them all. For a moment – and not for the first time since the disaster at Adrianople – he closed his eyes and imagined himself standing before Gratian, holding a spatha. His hand shook madly, his heart thumped wildly.
Footsteps crunched behind him. From outside…
He swung round, body tensed to grapple a foe, one hand clamping onto his real spatha hilt.
‘Easy,’ Sura said, offering a placating palm. ‘I’ve been scouting the way ahead,’ he smiled.
Pavo cast him a sour look and relaxed his sword grip.
‘Tomorrow, we’ll come down from the mountains,’ Sura said, his eyes bright with hope. ‘We’ll be within a few days of the capital – a good and quick march home.’
Pavo gazed in that direction. ‘No sign of the Goths on our way ahead?’
‘I found their tracks. Hard to miss them really. They passed near here a few weeks ago and they left the range and headed directly north. Back to one of their old bases, I’d guess. They need meadows for their horses and cattle.’
‘Kabyle,’ Pavo said flatly. The abandoned Roman town on the bend of the River Tonsus had been Fritigern’s headquarters prior to his routing of the legions at Adrianople. Kabyle was easily defensible thanks to the river loop and the town’s high and fortified acropolis. More, with rich pasture in every direction there, he could regroup and strengthen his forces. ‘I hope so. If he’s in a position of strength, it will make it easier for Saturninus’ embassy to approach him. He won’t feel as threatened.’
Sura slapped a hand across Pavo’s back. ‘We’ll get to Constantinople and we’ll muster this ambassadorial party. But that’s for tomorrow. For now come down to the fires, drink a little wine to help you rest – I’ve been watching you and I know you’ve hardly slept at all.’
Pavo patted Sura’s hand. ‘I’m taking the next shift of the watch. Give my share of wine to the men. They deserve it.’
The next morning, they scrambled down the shale slopes of the last of the Rhodope heights. A wrinkle of foothills waited below, then a long, hazy lowland, veined with shallow streams and swaying, golden grass. The lower Thracian plains. A flat, straight route back to Constantinople.
Libo cackled as he beheld the heat-warped countryside, gazing at the spot on the eastern horizon where, somewhere beyond, the capital lay. ‘In the Neorion barracks, I will rustle up a fresh barrel of wine, enough for us all,’ he enthused.
‘If it’s more of the stuff you tread yourself, then there’ll be nothing fresh about it, sir,’ an anonymous voice chirped back. All rumbled with laughter, Libo’s head swivelling around to pin the culprit. Somehow, he locked onto one in the rear ranks. ‘Matho – latrine duty for you.’
They made their way through the foothills, poured onto the flatland and fell into line, dripping with sweat, swigging on their waterskins and picking up the pace like an eastwards-flying arrow. Pavo scoured the way ahead until he saw the familiar silvery stonework of the Via Militaris – the road that would take them along the peninsula to the capital at even greater speed. They moved at great haste now, boots drumming on the flagstones, men in song.
Then, a pockmark in the heat. Something there. The pockmark slipped back to reveal silver. The most outlying stockades, bookended by rocky and impassable hills. An iron collar, protecting the neck of the peninsula. The Claudia men erupted in a raucous cheer.
Pavo heard laughter pour from his lips. But it faded when he saw the men serried along the closest stockades. He threw out a hand to halt Pulcher and Libo, both about to break forward at pace.
‘Sir?’ Pulcher gasped.
‘Something’s not right,’ Pavo replied in a croak.
‘What do you mean, it’s the lads of the Hiberi and the Nervii, the palace legions,’ Pulcher started then stopped, staring at the two most prominent banners: ‘Why do they bristle? Why do their archers nock their bows?’
The two legions flanked the road. A single rider watched from the centre, standing on the flagstones. Vitalianus: black, like a smoke stain, but crowned with a silver helm and in the guise of a general. He had ridden here along the Via Egnatia, apparently. The two legions began jostling, waving, cheering. Then the sultry breeze dropped and Pavo heard more clearly. Not cheering…jeering.
‘Deserter scum!’ one voice pierced the air.
‘Cowards! Set down that eagle from your craven hands!’
Pavo sensed all of his men gawp at one another.
‘The Legion of Shame!’ another screamed.
Sura stumbled over beside Pavo. ‘He told them we…’
‘He told them the truth. A truth,’ Pavo said flatly. ‘We deserted the camp.’
‘We surely need only to explain,’ Indus started.
‘Have you seen how deserters are treated, lad?’ Rectus interrupted. ‘They’ll slaughter us before you can even open your mouth. We can’t get through to the city. We can’t go home.’
‘Then where? Where can we go?’ Sura whispered.
Pavo glanced over the wall of angry legionaries and the Optio Speculatorum. He slid a hand inside his leather purse and pulled out the largest disc in there, then gazed down at it, turning it over.
Pax. The word flashed every time it caught the sun. They couldn’t get to Constantinople. They couldn’t reach Saturninus. But young Valentinian’s token had to make it into Fritigern’s possession, before Gratian and his army of ‘saviours’ could fall upon the horde and the land was soaked in tides of blood once again. While peace still had a chance.
He looked north – into the heart of Thracia. The razed dustbowl of the war. The fallen land. He thought of the blood road from the dream, and realised he was now staring at it in its true guise.
‘Men of the Claudia,’ he said, turning to face his legion. ‘Two paths lie before us: one leads north. It is a grim quest, but one that I must undertake. By going north, I will confirm that I am, indeed, a deserter. None of you deserve this shame. This is all my doing. I sought to harm the Emperor of the West and now he seeks to destroy me and you all along with me.’
The men nearest him gazed at him and the disc in his hand as if he had just spoken an ancient and sacred rite. They had known nothing but war for the last five years. For the youngest of the Claudia lads – some just fifteen – it had dominated a large stretch of their childhoods and the entirety of their short adult lives.
‘The other path will take you on along this easterly road and to those waiting legions. That is the path you must take. Tell them I tricked you into marching away from Thessalonica. Spit when you say my name and Gratian may spare you. Curse me as a rogue tribunus. Gratian has plans to rename the legion to the XI Gratian
a. When he does, you will cheer for him. I ask each of you,’ he said, eyeing them all, ‘to do this for yourselves and for your families. I will trek north, alone, and do what I can to get this token into the hands of the Gothic Iudex. For I know… I know, that he will receive me and at the very least, consider it.’
‘You won’t be alone,’ Sura said, stepping over beside him. ‘No amount of spitting on your name will save my skin. Mithras knows, I was lucky enough not to be hooked out of the parade crowd at Thessalonica.’
‘Sir, it can’t end like this,’ Libo whispered.
‘It must,’ Pavo replied. ‘And there is no time to dispute the matter.’
All heads turned to look down the road, seeing the Western legions creeping forward, like the outstretched arms of a brawler spoiling to get started.
Pavo stepped back, unpinning and handing his ruby cloak to Libo. ‘Fare well, Brothers. I will never forget you. Mithras be with you all.’ He met the eyes of each man one last time – every one of them stunned, lost – then turned away to speed north. A single tear gathered in one eye, escaping the well within his calloused heart, and he saw Sura blinking to fend off grief too. They kept low as they went, knowing the heat haze and the distance would obscure their departure from the Claudia. Vitalianus would find merely a penitent and confused Claudia legion, gossiping and cursing about their rogue tribunus and primus pilus who had used them in order to desert. For Pavo and Sura, a lonely trek north lay ahead.
So the scrape of a boot, close behind, caused both to jolt.
‘We’ve got a mile on them,’ Libo said matter-of-factly, ‘and we’re lightly burdened. They don’t have cavalry. They won’t catch us.’
Pavo glanced back, mouth bending to curse Libo for his foolishness, only to see the rest of the Claudia, to a man, moving fast and low with him.
‘You talk of peace, sir?’ said Opis, a step or two behind Sura. ‘I will walk through fire to make it so.’
‘I’ve lost everything in this war,’ said Rectus, swaying on his pony. ‘The only thing I can do to honour the fallen, is to bring it to a close.’
‘Lead the way, Tribunus,’ said Pulcher. ‘I’m a soldier, and my job is to fight. If it’s peace we’re fighting for, then I’ll fight like a demon for it.’
‘What better for a rogue tribunus, than a rogue legion for him to lead,’ Cornix cackled. ‘And, with respect, sir, you’re deluded if you think any one of us would let that pretty-boy Emperor of the West piss all over this legion and sully its name. The Gratiana? No… we are the Claudia. Now. Always.’
‘Your fate will be ours,’ agreed Trupo.
Each of the six hundred following rumbled in a low, earnest oath of their own.
Pavo sped north, his eyes stinging, his heart overflowing with pride.
Chapter 11
Autumn came, and the skies over Kabyle turned grey and bruised. A cold wind snapped and skirled around the city acropolis, combing through the black ferns and green shrubs on the slopes. Royal Guardsmen strolled the high ashlar battlements, their dark blue, richly-embroidered cloaks trailing behind them as they went. Fritigern stood at the highest point, one foot up on the parapet, resting much of his weight on his walking cane. The wind sighed, casting dried leaves along the walkway. Such cold weather brought with it a bite that chewed right through to his bones – old battle wounds aching acutely when in summer they were fine. Mornings too, were something of a challenge, rising from his bed was more like a tussle with an invisible opponent than a spring into a new day. With a shaking hand – the incessant tremor that was like a constant companion these days – he drew his axe from his belt and stared at the tired, hoary stranger who gazed back. He recalled the time in his youth when he had teased a Gothic warrior – who was secretly a hero to him – for entering his twentieth year. You are older than the trees! he had jested. Now here he was, his fiftieth summer departed, wishing with all his heart that he could be the young man he had mocked. Not just for the gift of renewed youth, but for the chance to do it all again. To choose differently. To not be here at this moment in time, with the fates of his people on his shoulders, and only one path left along which to guide them.
He gazed down upon the Gothic many – spread out around the warren of houses in the lower town, having taken the abandoned Roman homes as their own or setting up shacks and awnings around the basilica, the forum and the market wards. Many thousands more camped outside the squat but thick lower-town walls, sheltered within the bend of the River Tonsus. The last time he had stood here was on the eve of battle, before his horde had routed the Army of the East and slain Emperor Valens at Adrianople. One face in every two that had been there was now gone: the warriors dead thanks to the myopic leadership of Alatheus and Saphrax, the families scattered or sold into slavery by their Roman captors.
For a moment, he thought of the endless woods and untamed hills north of the River Danubius. Home. Had he not led his people from those ancestral lands and to this place, the Huns would have overrun them. Now, he wondered if that would have been as bleak as this. Perhaps the Huns would have subjugated them? Perhaps some would have been enslaved but others might have been allowed to live decent lives? Maybe… and then he remembered the heads; the vile mountains of heads that the Huns made in the centre of the Gothic villages they razed.
He sighed, turning his eyes to the south and the green plains in that direction. Billowing rain misted in the distance there, the grass wet with it, the scent of damp earth carrying on the breeze. No, Thracia is our new home. Upon these green fields we will lay eternal claim to these lands, or we will die in our efforts. His scouts’ reports came back to him: beyond the southern horizon, the Emperor of the West had stationed his legions in a great arc of camps, bedded in for the winter, poised and preparing for the spring – when the early wheat could be collected for rations, the grass good for fodder, and the roads dried out for marching. Come the warm season they would push north like gods dragging a barbed iron net. The whispers and promises of peace were all gone now. Emissaries, senators, diplomats – it was now time for all such to stand back. What lay ahead would be the province of generals and warriors. He thought of Tribunus Pavo – another who had spoken empty words of hope. Perhaps when my armies and yours clash, we will strike swords. Maybe I will see it in your eyes at the last: did you ever truly believe in the peace you talked of? Or were you just another fraud?
He heard voices rise, down in the market ward. Winguric and Judda stood on top of heaped grain sacks, bleating to a gathered crowd – most of them warriors. Winguric beat his chest as he spoke and young men – men of twenty summers, ancient oaks! – roared and shook with hubris.
‘In this town we prepared for battle once before, and we crushed the Romans outside Adrianople,’ Winguric boomed. ‘Is it not an omen from God himself that we return here. Where before we crushed the Eastern Army under our boots – this time it is the legions of the West who roll under our heels. We can bolster this city and let the Romans break their heads upon the defences, then send our horsemen out to fall upon their backs. Victory is not only a must… it is a certainty.’
Fritigern might have laughed had his loathing for the pair not been so strong. The one gift of his fifty summers was the wisdom it had bestowed upon him. Wisdom had once seemed like some golden, intangible thing – a thing that grew in old men’s white beards, perhaps. Now he realised it was simple: wisdom was nothing other than the stacked memories of failures and mistakes that steered a man in his future choices. And one thing he knew for certain was that there was no such thing as a certainty. Every victory to his name had been hard fought, and fiercely planned. This one – the triumph that would win Thracia forever for his people, would be a challenge indeed. Winguric and Judda presumed that they could amass here, await the legions and simply defeat them when they advanced in the spring. Fritigern smelt folly, knowing the legions would bring artillery to this city and break down its defences given time. Let them boast and brag, he thought, for the final say was
not theirs.
His brow dipped as he surveyed the southern horizon. ‘The legions must not strut north and pen us here like sheep,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Our forces are as strong as theirs. Thus, we must spread our wings.’ He straightened up for a moment, not needing his cane. The blue hawk banner affixed in the acropolis’ parapet caught the wind just then, the blazon of the bird on it billowing proudly.
‘This is our land, and they will have to fight like dogs to approach this, my capital. Where they present talon, they will be met with talon. Fang with fang. Steel with steel.’
Snow settled on Pavo’s bare head, the February cold biting at his ears and nostrils. The sky was white, the ground too, and the snow on the twin hills flanking the grey ribbon of the River Tonsus appeared to be unspoiled apart from a pair of robins hopping to and fro. He settled a little more in his snowy hide.
‘By Mithras, Libo was right. This might be our way north?’ Sura said with a slight chattering of the teeth, lying prone next to Pavo.
The answer Pavo wanted to give rose to his lips, but he caught it there, eyeing the twin hills again. Since the flight from Thessalonica, then all through autumn and now in these last, bitter weeks of winter, they had lived as fugitives, hiding from roving Gothic and Roman patrols, caught between the lines of the two great armies like an olive in a press. In the south, Gratian’s legions had made a main camp near the base of the Rhodope Mountains, and various smaller camps manned by lone legions or cohorts, spread out in an arc like a scythe blade, poised to slice north once winter was past. In the north, it was almost a reflection of the Roman position: every vale was guarded by a camped warband, every plain watched by roving Gothic riders, every hill or patch of high ground held by scouts and topped by a timber tower.
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