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

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Together!’ Pavo cried, stooping to pick up a discarded shield and tearing his spatha free of his swordbelt. In an instant, he felt Sura’s shoulder press to his left, Libo’s to his right, Pulcher and Trupo in behind. Clack went their shields as they formed a wall of ruby, gold and black. Opis held the silver eagle high, the frayed and faded ruby bull banner almost horizontal in the wind, like a lone tree on a storm-battered island.

  As the Goths raced in, Pavo stared at the boil-faced one coming at him, a sword in each hand, a look of utter conviction in his eyes. He dug his feet into the ground in the instant before they crashed against his shield. Bang! It was not enough. The sheer weight of numbers drove them back. Men slid and fell. Trupo cried out for his century to remain steady, only for a longsword to cut deep into his neck. He fell, and Pavo roared as if the killing strike had torn him too. Then an axe struck down across his shoulder, tearing mail and tunic, cutting into his flesh. He gasped. It was a grim blow. Behind him, he heard the cries of his rear-rankers. ‘The cliff edge – we’re being pushed towards it.’ A moment later, a trilling cry split the air as one Claudian went over, then a handful more.

  ‘No,’ Pavo cried, swinging his shield out as if opening a door, running the boil-faced one through, then striking the flank of another. ‘This is not how it was supposed to be,’ he rasped, spittle and blood flying from his lips. ‘We were supposed to be allies,’ he screamed at the Goths as he slew another of them. The Goths directly facing him seemed unnerved by his diatribe and zeal, some even hesitant to attack him, white-faced.

  ‘Drive them to their deaths!’ Winguric bellowed, riding to and fro behind the warbands.

  Their leader’s words stoked their courage, and they surged forth once more. Staggering, Pavo heard more men fall to their doom behind him. The small island of Claudia men were now pressed almost flat to the edge. He swung to Sura, to tell his oldest friend to stand firm, only to see a spear punch against Sura’s shield. Sura’s face blanched, mouth wide, arms swinging, heels teetering over the edge.

  No, Pavo mouthed, his heart crashing, his sword falling and his hand shooting out towards Sura… and clutching thin air. The sight was like a sizzling brand: Sura, eyes lost, plunging over the edge. Gone. Time slowed to a trickle as Pavo cried out in vain. Down below, bodies hung in strips on the jagged rocks or bobbed, face-down in the waves that foamed and spurted at the base of the cliffs. He felt his heart break in two, turning away from the drop before his oldest friend joined those broken men. In that moment it was as if a god had scooped a great hand inside him and hollowed him out.

  An axe clanged against his helm, sending him back another step towards the drop. Here it was again: that moment – scorched into his soul at the fields of Adrianople – that unmistakeable moment, when a battle became a slaughter. He swung back towards the Goths, knowing he only had one more step behind him before he too would fall, possessing only his shield in order to parry and block with his good shoulder – the sword arm growing numb and hot with blood. Reiks Judda faced him now, his toadlike face twisted in a malicious grin as he hid behind his shield and shoulder-charged again and again. The chaos of Gothic riders and warbands pressing hard on the Roman centre just an arrowshot away was the same – the Western legions on the cusp of capitulation. Merobaudes and Arbogastes fought like demons in there, both soaked with blood, refusing to yield. Gratian’s screeching sailed above it all, and the massed vultures circling above cast the scene in a strange half-light.

  ‘Forget about the ones over there,’ Judda chuckled, pushing Pavo back even further. ‘Think instead of the drop that awaits. You will smash like an egg down there, Tribunus.’

  Pavo felt his heels edge out over the void. He bowed his head, ready to make peace with the Ferryman, his eyes sliding shut. Just before they closed, he spotted a blazon of colour.

  Around the cliff headland in the south, a billowing mass of warships slid into view. Purple and white sails, golden eagles, the clarion call of buccinae.

  ‘The fleet!’ Libo, a sodden mess of blood, rasped by his side. ‘The Classis Moesica!’

  ‘Mithras,’ Pavo stammered, seeing the boats and then the cliff-path leading from the tiny bay in the south and up onto these heights: flooded with silver and bright shields and banners. The Hiberii and the Nervii palace legions, the X Gemina, already disembarked and surging up towards the cliff top under the direction of a mounted General Modares. Bacurius One-hand and a wing of one thousand Scutarii picking their way up too in a thunder of hooves and rising dust. Eriulf and his Thraciana Auxiliaries. The Lancearii – Theodosius’ finest… led by… ‘Saturninus.’

  The sight sent a surge of strength through him. He shoved back at Judda. Judda flailed then rushed him. Pavo dropped to one knee and thrust up with his shield. Judda barged against the shield with all his weight, Pavo heaved to tilt it, pitching the reiks over him and into the drop. The man’s screams lasted an eternity, ending only with a wet bursting sound of his body smashing on the jagged rocks.

  Already, Saturninus and the Lancearii were at the top of the steep path. They spilled over onto the cliff top, into the gap between the horde’s wagon camp and the rear of the Gothic infantry centre. The horns keened again, and the golden Lancearii spread out into a wide front, stepping towards the Gothic rear, drawing the first of their javelins, Saturninus on horseback, walking calmly and steadily at one end of the line. The rearmost Gothic spearmen assaulting Gratian’s centre twisted to look back in horror. Then, seeing just this lone legion of one thousand men, many of them broke away to rush for the Lancearii. The javelins felled swathes of them. A moment later, the Hiberi, Nervii and Gemina poured up from the cliff path to fan out behind the Lancearii, and Bacurius One-hand and his horsemen spilled up last, splitting into two wings, protecting both flanks. Now the rearmost Gothic infantry backed away in fright.

  Judda’s Goths out here on the right backed away from the beset Claudians too, their reiks dead and knowing that they were about to be cut off from the main Gothic body.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Winguric wailed as they flooded past him. ‘Get back, finish them!’

  Pavo felt the weight of battle slip away and found himself facing Winguric. For a moment, both stared.

  ‘Every man who has fallen today might have lived, you wretched bastard,’ Pavo drawled. ‘I held the key to peace in my hands. Fritigern could have saved every soul here from this slaughter.’

  ‘Yet I am King of the Goths,’ Winguric grinned, ‘and victory is still in my grasp. A fair price to pay, I’d say.’

  Pavo plucked up a dropped spear and hurled it at the reiks. The lance flew true, but Winguric ducked and wheeled away towards the main fray.

  ‘Where is… the primus pilus?’ Pulcher panted, looking for Sura amongst the trickle of Claudian survivors.

  Pavo’s heart broke all over again. His pinched silence answered the question.

  ‘What now, sir?’ Libo gasped.

  Pavo turned his tear-filled eyes towards the Eastern legions – driving into the Gothic infantry. The Gothic riders at Gratian’s rear saw this and broke away in an attempt to swing around the flanks and pincer the reinforcements. At once, the deadly vice-crush on the Western centre was lifted. More, General Bacurius and his Scutarii riders were like eagles, swooping to intercept the Gothic cavalry, thundering against the last of the horde riders before they could save their horde infantry.

  The tide of battle was turning, again. Pavo looked around each of his comrades – shaped like men but dressed in gore.

  ‘Claudia…’ he rasped, picking up his dropped sword and pointing it towards the fray, towards Gratian. ‘Forward!’

  Noon stretched into early evening, and the cliffs at Dionysopolis – carpeted that morning in green meadow – lay strewn with bodies of legionary and Goth alike. The corpses of broken men dangled from the cliff’s edge, and the pale stone bluff face was veined with rivulets of running blood. Crows and vultures feasted on the dead here. Yet still, the battle raged on, havi
ng drifted away from the precipice and a few hundred strides inland. Now it was the Roman forces who ringed the remaining Gothic warbands. Saturninus, Bacurius, Modares and Eriulf roamed the edges of the fray, cajoling their Eastern regiments and delving into the weak spots to fight like front-rankers, while Merobaudes and Arbogastes seemed to be engaged in a fiery contest to direct their respective Western regiments. Winguric, in the Gothic centre, raged and demanded more from his warriors. Legionaries fell in droves and so too did Goths.

  Pavo fought like a demon, numb, heedless of the slaughter, eyes fixed on Gratian, safely shielded amidst the Western legions’ rear lines. His heart crashed like a war drum. He clutched a plumbata like a javelin, knowing the range was good. The Western Emperor’s shell of armour would not stop a well-aimed dart. He began to lift the missile… when Gratian vanished from sight, toppling from his saddle. A great wail rose from the western legions.

  ‘The emperor is dead!’ they cried.

  The Goths took heart from this. Some even burst free of the imperial noose and spilled along the backs of the legions, rupturing the order of battle once again. Like two giant eels exhausted from wrestling, the two greatly-diminished forces broke apart, the Goths now inland and facing the sea, the entire Roman force with their backs to the cliffs. Men panted, retched and groaned, all wet with blood and filth. Saturninus grabbed Gratian’s banner, assuming control of the Roman right, Merobaudes guiding the left.

  Now it was the Goths’ turn to lament. Pavo saw how they stretched their necks, looking over the Eastern legions and back towards the cliff’s edge. He risked a glance back, seeing a knot of the Western Armatura riders circling there, bows nocked, eyeing the clustered Gothic families – alone and unprotected at the wagons by the cliff side.

  'Stay your bows,’ Merobaudes roared at them, livid. ‘The battle lies here. Warrior against warrior.’

  The two sides wriggled and readied, preparing to come together again.

  ‘This is it, Iudex-slayer,’ one Goth spat, directing the words at Pavo. ‘You and all of your like will die here today!’

  ‘Come at me and I will part your head from your body,’ Pavo cried back, stabbing his spatha like an angry finger towards the man. ‘But first you should hear the truth ‘Did you know that we brought an offer of peace to Reiks Fritigern, months ago?’

  The Goth and those nearby blanched. Murmurs spread along the enemy lines.

  ‘He lies,’ Reiks Winguric’s face scrunched up in hatred. ‘He killed Fritigern, and here, now, we can slay him and the rest of the legions – make this land our home as Fritigern wanted it to be. Fight on. Draw your bows, raise your spears and axes.’

  ‘Plumbatae!’ Saturninus cried. With a shush of iron, the men of the legions unclipped the weighted darts from behind their shields, lifting them high, ready to throw. Pavo raised a hand, ready to chop it down as soon as he heard the order to throw, sickened by it all. The Goths drew hand axes and spears and raised them too, ready to hurl. At this range, these missiles would kill, instantly… and then the battle would resume in full. Pavo saw Merobaudes and Saturninus’ lips twitch, ready to give the order to loose. He saw Winguric’s mouth peel open too, saw every single death that had happened in these last six years rush before his eyes like a flood of crimson. No more… no more, he pled. A piece of his heart turned grey and died at that moment, as he realised this day would not end until nearly every man on the cliffs lay dead. His heart wept as Winguric’s cry poured out first. ‘Atta-’

  It ended as Winguric jerked and shuddered, then a Gothic spear tip wormed out of his chest with a sputtering jet of blood. A dire echo of Fritigern’s demise. Winguric stared in confusion at the spear tip, then slid forward and from it, falling from his horse. A dark, trident-bearded Goth held the bloody spear. Pavo stared at the man, knowing he had seen this one before. It came to him like a clap of thunder: in Kabyle’s cells, he had been the one staring at Pavo and Sura, watching them like a vulture.

  ‘Stop,’ said the killer, climbing onto Winguric’s horse then throwing the spear down into the earth like a dart. ‘In the name of God… stop!’

  The silence screamed as many thousands of weapons hovered, held high above a sea of confused faces.

  ‘It was Winguric who slew Fritigern,’ the trident-bearded one boomed. ‘Right on the cusp of agreeing to peace talks… Winguric murdered him. I saw it with my own eyes,’ he held up a small shiny coin. Pavo blinked a few times before realising what the thing was: Valentinian’s Pax token. When Winguric had tossed it away up on Kabyle’s acropolis, Pavo had assumed it was gone forever and the hopes it carried with it.

  ‘Winguric killed our Iudex?’ The Gothic faces grew even paler, some shaking their heads in disbelief, others whispering oaths and prayers. ‘Peace was offered?’

  Saturninus and Pavo shared a look along the Roman lines.

  ‘Stand your men down and our legions will lower their weapons too,’ Saturninus shouted at the trident-bearded one, seizing on the moment.

  A strange silence fell over the whole scene then. Nobody dared to act first, until Pavo, staring at the Goths before him, tears pouring down his cheeks, lowered his hand. ‘Claudia, stand down.’

  The Claudians lowered their darts with a tense release of breath. A few moments later, the men around Winguric followed suit. Within a few heartbeats a steady rattle of spears rang out, hafts rattling on the ground – almost every warrior in the horde and every legionary.

  From the Roman left, Merobaudes boomed in a slow and solemn tone: ‘The day is done. The battle is over…’

  Pavo let his arms drop by his sides. His sword slid from his hand and speared into the blood-wet dirt.

  Chapter 19

  On the third morning of October, the sun shone brightly again, bathing the cliffs at Dionysopolis in a gentle heat. The battle dead had been cleared, and the pyres burned steadily inland, grey smoke rising through the blue skies like the pillars of some colossal temple. A rainstorm the day before had washed the meadows of the worst stains of death. Sweet air from the north and the salty winds of the sea almost robbed the cliffs of the stench of decay. Almost.

  The Gothic wagons remained where they had been, by the precipice, with the women and children anxiously tending to the horde warriors. Nearly ten thousand of those warriors remained, every so often glancing over at the vast legionary camp set up near the ruins of Dionysopolis. Wives wept for their fallen husbands, one woman singing a plaintive song as she sat, cross-legged behind her husband’s oiled corpse, combing his hair lovingly, one last time before he was committed to the earth. An older Gothic woman walked amongst the wives, telling them to watch the small square of white Roman tents, set up between the two camps. ‘That is where our fate will be decided,’ she said to each.

  Pavo stood inside the largest tent, alongside a small gallery of officers at one end. The air was cool and perfumed from the incense cones burning on copper sconces. He was washed, his overgrown hair still damp and swept back, hanging to the nape of his neck. He wore a clean tunic – the first filth-free garment he had enjoyed in over a year – and new, soft leather boots. These small comforts meant nothing.

  Great sobs crashed and rose in his chest, dammed in there by the soldier’s skin. Brother, I should have saved you, he thought for the thousandth time, seeing Sura’s fall all over again, and flashes of the many other Claudians who had died. He looked up and across the large rectangular oak table that dominated the centre of the tent. This would be the battlefield today, and the generals around it would make swords of words, yet the prize on offer was not glory or victory, but sweet, golden accord. Was it all worth it? he mused. The war is over – so long as these talks go well. And Gratian is… he frowned, glancing through the open landward side of the tent, off to the west in the direction of Marcianople. The Western Emperor had been taken there to be seen by his healers, for he was merely wounded and had not died as the cries during battle had first suggested. These talks would almost certainly not be happening were the
cur here. Had he not been carried from the battle, the two armies would doubtless have smashed each other into dust.

  Generals Saturninus, Modares and Bacurius sat on one side of the table. Facing them was an old reiks named Ingolf and the trident-bearded one who had slain Winguric. Reiks Fravitta was his name: yes, he had a menacing, hunter’s look, but his actions suggested he was noble, or at least shrewd. The Western generals, Merobaudes, Arbogastes and Richomeres – a man Pavo had not seen since the Battle of Adrianople – stood at the far end of the table, merely observing. For this peace would be struck between the Eastern Empire and the Goths. The West would have no stake in it – indeed they owed the Eastern relief force their lives. Theodosius remained back in Constantinople, but his golden Lancearii sentries lined the tent, polished and majestic.

  ‘There are warbands roaming in Thracia, still,’ Reiks Ingolf said, sitting tall, folding his arms, his chin poking out in defiance. ‘Some will call upon more men from across the river. There are tribes still there, you know, fending off the Huns. Tens of thousands more. This war could roll on as long as we want it to. Forever,’ he goaded.

  ‘But we are under truce. You understand this?’ Saturninus said, chapping the table.

  ‘I gave no such order,’ Ingolf croaked.

  ‘No, because you hold no station to give such an order,’ Fravitta hissed. He stared Ingolf down. After the battle had halted, Saturninus had called on the Gothic warriors to nominate a representative. Fravitta had been their chosen man.

  Saturninus pinched the top of his nose between thumb and forefinger. ‘Emperor Theodosius bestowed upon me the power to do as I saw fit here. To ensure victory, first and foremost.’