Vitalianus bowed. ‘It will be done, Domine.’
Chapter 18
A stiff, constant sea wind buffeted the pale cliffs. Pavo stood atop the crumbling ruins of the fortress-town Dionysopolis, perched on the cliff’s edge and shimmering in the morning sun. Shorn of his beard at last, his hair rapped in the breeze and the salt-tang stung his nostrils. His body felt strong again after a month of good meat, soldier bread and stout porridge. He had been sure to train, hard, every day as the legion were driven back here. Because he had known that he could not run forever… that today had to come.
He planted one foot atop the crumbled parapet, dust and rubble puffing over the ruined half of the turret and on down the sheer drop of the cliffside. After a time, some of the rubble clattered off fang-like rocks down below and the rest splashed into the foaming turquoise waters of the Pontus Euxinus. He let his gaze drift out across the sea: like a sheet of undulating turquoise silk, threaded with white peaks, fading into a dark navy abyss about a half mile out. Squadrons of gulls, cormorants and kittiwakes screeched and wheeled in the blue heavens, occasionally plunging towards the waves and the silvery shoals of fish glinting near the surface. There were no islands out there, just one smooth stone projection near where the shallows became deep sea: a worn-smooth statue of the God Dionysus – or Bacchus as he was known to many. He was as high as five men and rested at an angle, and the waters came to his waist. His torso rose, festooned with muscles, his head tilted back, bull horns pointing skywards, one arm outstretched to the heavens, dangling a cluster of grapes over his open, almost screaming, mouth. Nobody knew where the statue had come from or how it had got there. A shipwreck, some claimed. An ancient city beneath the waves, others speculated. The statue’s featureless eyes stared up at the cliffs and on into infinity. Pavo wondered what horrors the gods might witness today.
With a shiver, he turned to look south, along the cliff edge and the wind-bent grass. Less than a mile away, the horde stood, arranged in their warbands, facing inland. A sea of whetted steel, visored helms, ancient red leather armour, flowing blonde locks, topknots, beards and brightly coloured cloaks. Just over twenty thousand of them, already singing songs of battle, beating their spear hafts and sword hilts against their shields. Their riders punched the air, the steeds rearing up. Pipers and drummers played a stirring and malevolent song that raced along like a sprinter’s heartbeat. Shielded behind the Gothic battle lines was a sea of tents and wagons drawn up like stockades, amassed a pebble’s-throw from the cliff edge. The sea wind carried most of the sound of the Goths away and inland, but Pavo could still hear the other noises now and then: the crying of babies and the weeping of women.
Finally, he turned to look inland. From every direction: due west, south and north, serried blocks of imperial soldiers faced the Goths, the formation like giant silver bull horns corralling the coast. Commanders rode to and fro bawling homilies, their bright banners and plumes dancing frantically in the wind. The Western legions. Pavo eyed them, spotting the unmistakable and giant Merobaudes on the front line. Then there was the horseman who called himself emperor. Gratian was mounted, gleaming in bronze and black, positioned well back from the front ranks. Here to claim victory without coming too close to a Gothic blade.
He thought of the last six years. The struggle had been horrendous, and too many had died because of it. These things he could understand. But now – at the end of it all – that he was standing not with the legions, but hiding from them, he simply could not bear.
From the imperial centre, a menacing moan of horns rose. Many hundreds more buccinas trumpeted in reply – fast, sputtering tunes or long, neverending wails. Scores of eagle standards and majestic, vivid banners rose along the legionary bull horns, like vengeful dragons leaping from a sea of molten silver, and the air shivered with the distant roar of nearly twenty-five thousand voices. The din lasted an age, before it fell almost silent. Then, a thousand whistles blew and the banners chopped forwards. Suddenly, Dionysopolis’ rocky parapet shuddered under Pavo, as the legions began their approach.
Mithras, guide me, Pavo pled inwardly.
‘The men wait on your word,’ Sura said, stepping up beside him.
‘Who are we fighting for here, sir?’ asked Libo. ‘Who is the enemy?’
Pavo eyed both sides, seeing Winguric and Judda, malicious and utterly unashamed that they had brought it all to this cruel conclusion, riding up and down before the horde as if they were gods. He looked to the Roman bull horns, now just a quarter of a mile away, and saw the generals of Gratian. ‘The enemy is all around us,’ he said quietly.
He turned from the parapet and looked down into the interior of the small fort-town. It was no bigger than a marching camp and the walls – like this tower – were in a sorry state of ruination. His men – less than four hundred of them – gazed up at him, eyes weary but resolute. After so many months in hiding and shame, they held their tarnished shields, broken and hastily-mended armour and dented, scarred helms. He sought out the right words as he lifted his helm and tying it on at the chin, drawing his spatha and holding it up like a standard. ‘No man here deserves to perish on the end of a Gothic sword, and certainly none to the blade of a legionary. We are caught on the fiery horns of injustice.’ He lifted a plumbata dart and struck it with venom across a piece of the parapet, sending a spray of sparks into the air. ‘Use that fire,’ he snarled, his arms shaking with anger as he tossed the dart away. ‘Fight like lions, my brothers, and Mithras and all the gods will walk with us!’
The band below burst into a throaty and zealous roar, drumming their spears on their shields, punching the air, saluting fervently.
‘The imperial left is almost upon us,’ Pulcher cried, ending the moment.
Pavo stared north, seeing the imperial forces drawing in along the edge of the cliffs. The I Noricorum legion. Enough to slaughter or seize the Claudian ‘deserters’ as they saw fit.
Before he could even bring words of order to his lips, Sura slapped a hand on his shoulder and spun him to look south: Reiks Judda and three warbands had broken from the main Gothic body, and were speeding towards the ruins from that direction, waving and cajoling them on to meet the Noricorum advance – the fort dead in the middle of the opposing and approaching forces. His head switched this way and that until, with a stark clank, a thrown Gothic axe whacked against and rebounded from the edge of the parapet. Staggering back, he saw the tribesman who had thrown it and the others surging ahead of him. ‘Romans are in the fort already, but the walls are broken,’ he roared. ‘Storm the place.’
Like a tide, the Gothic warbands threw themselves at the tumbledown walls, pouring for the biggest V-shaped gap and vaulting over the sections that only stood at half their original height. Pavo, Sura, Libo and Pulcher dropped down from the tower, landing amongst the pressed-up ranks of the Claudia in the fort interior.
‘Where there is no wall, there are our shields!’ Pavo roared, barging through to take a place on the front line, thrusting his shield up and into the face of a Goth who leapt through the V-shaped breach. The Goth jolted and staggered back through the gap, his face a bloody mess. But a dozen more spilled inside, pushed by the weight of thousands more behind them. The longswords swung, axes chomped on shields, slingshot and arrows whacked down. Up on the rooftop behind the defensive line, Indus and a score of men knelt, shooting arrows back at the Goths, but it was like answering a thunderstorm with a cough. The sheer numbers of the Goths told. Pavo felt his shoulder grinding in its socket and his boots scraping over the fort’s flagstones as the enemy flooded inside. Goths leapt and speared down like fishermen. Claudians jerked and fell in swathes.
‘We can’t hold them,’ Sura panted by his side, his face wet with the blood of others. ‘We’re going to bre-’
‘The Noricorum are coming for our backs…’ Indus howled from the rooftop as he nocked another arrow to his bow, shooting looks over his shoulder. ‘…and Vitalianus rides at their head.’
Pavo
’s gut flooded with icy water. He risked a look backwards to see the dark apparition at the head of Noricorum legion, spearing towards a missing section of the northern wall. A handful of black-cloaked ones rode with him. Indus and his men loosed arrows down at the Speculator, but the missiles bounced from him, his silvery helm and beetle-black leather armour under his cloak too tough for the tips to penetrate.
‘Men at the rear, turn and face the threat from behind,’ Pavo yelled, glancing back.
They did not have the numbers, but they did so anyway, the rear ranks pivoting and showing their shields to Vitalianus and his riders as they spilled inside the fort too. Pavo – still looking over his shoulder – met Vitalianus’ gaze just as the wedge of riders hammered home. It was like the kick of a wild horse, booting the breath from Pavo, sending him surging against the Goths in front of him, inadvertently trampling a few. The Claudia line bent out of shape, crushed on both sides by Goth and Roman. The Roman charge proved strongest and in moments Pavo found himself being squeezed through the southern wall’s V-gap, spilling out onto the open grass of the clifftop and into the sea of attacking Goths. All around him, men of the Claudia were driven like this too, like a squeezed boil bursting with pus.
‘Turn, fight off the black riders,’ Pavo urged more of his men to the rear, all the while fending off a storm of Gothic spear thrusts and sword strikes from ahead.
An axe bit into the top of his shield and hauled it down. Behind stared a bloody-faced Goth – his beard running with black blood. ‘What is this?’ the Goth spat. ‘You fight against your own legions?’
The question went unanswered – as the bulk of the I Noricorum swept around the landward side of the fort and plunged into the flank of Judda’s three warbands. Once more, Pavo was lifted from his feet, carried in a crush of bodies, arms pinned to his side, pushed towards the cliffs. Straining to breathe, he saw that the rest of the bull horn of legions had now smashed together with the main body of the horde. All along the clifftop was a seething mass of bodies, a song of screaming and iron, swaying banners, flashing silver and spurts of crimson. A stench of sweat, blood and bowels puffed over the whole affair every so often, and in the sky above, vultures and carrion hawks gathered in thick clouds, shrieking in delight, driving the seabirds away. The rearmost men of Judda’s warbands were driven right onto the cliff’s edge. With another Noricorum surge, some tribesmen fell from the precipice, crying out helplessly. Pavo looked back to see them vanish, rank by disordered rank. The Claudia too were being driven back with Judda’s lot as if they were hordesmen too. And now he saw the cliff’s edge drawing closer – just thirty or so paces away, and the press of the Noricorum was relentless.
‘Drive the wretched Claudians into the void. But don’t let him fall,’ Vitalianus called across the din of the fray. ‘Take him alive.’
The Goth pressed up against Pavo’s shield wheezed, spraying blood from his dripping beard across Pavo’s face. ‘Your men attacked those riders, and now their leader wants to save you?’
Pavo hissed back through a rictus. ‘He wants me captive so his emperor can have me peeled alive.’
The Goth stared at him, eyes wide, disbelieving what he had just heard. ‘When I was a boy they said your empire was made of steel and thunder. United, invincible.’
Pavo felt a hot tear of blood streak down his cheek. ‘My father told me the same when I was a lad.’
A javelin thrown by one of Vitalianus’ riders plunged down into the Goth’s shoulder and sank deep. The man died where he stood, his face draining of colour and his eyes gazing through Pavo, the corpse unable to fall to the ground so tight was the crush.
‘Pavo!’ Sura cried.
Pavo twisted to see Vitalianus, rearing on his horse, his cowl-hood flaring in the coastal wind, his handsome face spoiled by a bloodlust-grin as he snapped his fingers and steered three black riders towards Pavo. They cut through the Gothic mass like knives through melting fat. Two had loops of rope hanging from the end of their spears. Nooses – like that which a herder might use to rope a stray animal around the neck. The spears licked out, one rope noose trailing over his face and just failing to take hold. He could do nothing, pinned in the press. The second one dragged over him from behind… and drew tight. He heard bones in his neck crick and grind, his throat constricted, the half-breath in his lungs trapped and stale already. Then the rider held his spear two-handed and yanked, bracing against his horned saddle, tugging Pavo from the crowd like a fish. Drawn up like this, he felt his shield hand draw free of the crush. He dropped the shield and clawed at the rope, but it had chewed deep into his skin and he could find no edge of purchase. His sword hand came free at last, and he swung it behind his head in an effort to cut the rope. But another noose-spear batted his hand and the sword fell. Sura grabbed at his legs, Pulcher too.
‘No!’ Pavo croaked back at them, seeing the danger this put them in – leaving themselves unguarded with so many Gothic warriors clustered around them. He kicked free of their hands and slid over the top of the warring masses, dragged by the Speculator, spears and swords nicking and tearing at his armour. He saw his comrades vanish somewhere back there in the fray, saw blackness close in from the edges of his vision as unconsciousness opened its jaws around him.
‘The right,’ a distant cry sounded from the main body of the horde. ‘Riders of the horde, support the right!’
In the last spots of vision, he saw Winguric over there, bawling. A heartbeat later, he and the last riders of the horde peeled away from the fray in the centre and came round towards Dionysopolis like a shiver of sharks, cloaks billowing, riders dipping in the saddle, their iron helms ablaze in the midday light, forming a wedge and arrowing right into the flank of Vitalianus and the Noricorum.
Crash! Iron sang. Sky and earth changed places, dirt and blood flew, hooves thrashing, men spinning through the air, horses screaming, blades ripping flesh… and… breath. Sweet, cool breath.
Pavo fell in the tangle of side-struck Roman cavalry. The two thousand Gothic riders thundered through and over them and on into the Noricorum legion. It was a slaughter. Legionaries fell in their hundreds. As the Gothic riders stormed over Pavo, he curled into a ball, the forest of hooves striking earth all around him, spears stabbing down at the fallen. When it passed, he scrambled onto his hands and knees, feeling the hot, stinking guts of a felled horse squirt through his fingers, hearing one halved Roman rider crying for his mother before erupting in a final spasm of vomited blood.
He lurched to his feet, grabbing the halved man’s sword and turning in a tight circle: The crush had eased. There were huge tracts of space all around him, the bloodied corpses of Gothic spearmen and Claudians strewn across the grass, living men standing like islands, bewildered and breathless. The struggle here had swung: he saw Vitalianus speeding away from the fray, cloak wet with blood. The last riders of the horde gave chase, putting the entire Noricorum legion to flight, men panicking and tossing down their shields. The horde riders then sped through the huge gap this left in the northern end of the Roman bull horns, speeding out into the open countryside before wheeling round towards the backs of the imperial centre – locked in combat with the Gothic centre. Gratian’s finest: the Celtae, the Petulantes, the Heruli, turned like a field of sunflowers at dawn, faces agape at the death racing for their backs, hubris suddenly vanishing.
Pavo, watching this from the spot near Dionysopolis, backed away through the sea of stunned Gothic spearmen around him, to the nearest Claudia men. The Goths panting around them too seemed stunned. Men held their weapons and watched those closest, but all were exhausted and none seemed willing to resume the fight. They coughed, spat, panted, vomited and stared at one another. The odd hiatus continued as all watched the horde riders blaze into the rear of the imperial centre like an axe through rotten wood. Legionaries vanished, trampled or sliced down, bloodspray and chunks of armour leaping up like myriad thrown coins. The horsemen fell in droves too as they pressed towards the imperial banners, towar
ds Gratian.
‘They know this is the end,’ Sura whispered beside Pavo, watching as one rider threw himself from the saddle and at the Alani ringing Gratian. The man was butchered in mid-air by a thrust of more than a dozen spears. ‘They know that either the horde or the empire must die today.’
Pavo watched, rubbing the rope-burnt ring around his neck as the rest of the Gothic riders piled towards the Western Emperor. He saw Gratian swing on his horse to face the threat. Even at this distance, the jerky and uncontrolled movement betrayed his fear. Pavo’s lips twitched, his jaw working, swiping every blow for the Goths nearest the emperor, while at the same time weeping inside that it had come to this.
But the Alani and the Heruli dug in, and the cavalry surge dissipated on their spears, the fight dissolving into a milling frenzy of combat, some Gothic riders leaping down to fight on foot. Then, from the midst of the Gothic riders, Winguric fell back and rose in his saddle to yell over the fray and cajole the Gothic infantry centre on the far side. ‘Push, crush them!’ He pressed his hands together as if squashing an invisible fruit, then raised a war horn and emptied his lungs into it, the low, ominous wail spurring the many thousands of spearmen into a renewed assault. More, it seemed to spark the stunned warbands here around the Claudians out of their mesmerised gazes. They turned to stare at the few hundred battered Claudia men – still bemused by the fact they had been fighting against the Noricorum legion.
Their indecision came to an abrupt end, when Iudex Winguric thundered over on horseback to join Judda, sword drawn in one hand, carrying Fritigern’s spear and blue hawk banner in the other. ‘What are you waiting for? That is the Claudia. It was their tribunus and his primus pilus who murdered Iudex Fritigern at Kabyle. Kill them!’
The words were like whips of fire across Pavo and Sura. Both stared, open-mouthed at the wicked lie. But there could be no denial – not now, for the Goths exploded in an animal cry and their faces twisted with hatred. They piled towards the Claudia, more than three of them for every man with a ruby shield.
The Blood Road (Legionary 7): Legionary, no. 7 Page 30