Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4)

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘I wonder who?’ Sura scowled.

  ‘There’s something else though. Something’s missing.’ Pavo glanced over the hinges, the iron strapping and skirt. ‘There’s no handle?’ He crouched to peer through the keyhole and the hole where the handle should have been, seeing nothing but darkness . . . and the faintest glimmer of something. Gold?

  ‘No handle? Nonsense!’ Sura scoffed, nudging him aside. ‘I used to be known as the finest locksmith in Adrianople, you see,’ he said, crouching, hands resting on his knees as he winked through the hole adroitly.

  ‘Sura, I’ve been there, I’ve picked locks. That one is no simple latch,’ Pavo sighed.

  But Sura ignored him. ‘Thing was, most of the time I was hired by folk wanting to get in to other people’s property,’ he looked up, flicking his eyebrows up as if in admission of ill-behaviour. ‘I gave it up when I was caught and they tried to ram the keys up my-’

  ‘Quiet,’ Pavo hissed.

  Sura frowned, midway through a gesture of looping one thumb and forefinger together and forcing the other forefinger through it. Then his face paled as he heard it too.

  Scratch-scratch.

  ‘It’s coming from inside,’ Sura whispered, leaping back from the bolstered doorway. ‘How?’

  ‘There must be someone inside,’ Pavo realised. ‘They must have taken shelter in there and locked themselves inside.’

  ‘But who would have the keys?’ Sura replied.

  Both shared a look of realisation. ‘Dux Vergilius?’

  Pavo crept forward again, ready to call out to whomever was behind the door, when Sura slapped a hand across his chest. He followed his friend’s frozen stare. Up the well of steps, orange torchlight danced. Shadows jostled on the walls.

  The legion? Pavo mouthed, hearing a dull babble in the villa up above.

  Sura cupped a hand to his ear, then shook his head, his face falling. Goths, he mouthed in reply. A heartbeat later and the babble grew louder, the torchlight brighter and the shadows larger, stretching out and down into the cellar along with the thrum of descending footsteps.

  Pavo’s heart hammered on his ribs.

  They both looked for somewhere to hide, then their eyes simultaneously locked onto the pile of dried hides.

  Gaufrid the Goth scratched roughly at his crotch and swigged the last of the wineskin he had picked up from the villa’s larder, then belched loudly as he descended into the cellar. The eight men who shared his plan followed closely behind. He beheld the bulwark of a door that had defied him and the men of his warband so obstinately over this last week, still grinning back at him, unsullied apart from the few scrapes he and his comrades had subjected it to. He tossed the wineskin to the floor and snarled, drawing the axe he had picked up from an abandoned forester’s cabin and hacking at it once more. Splinters of wood flew in every direction, but the door held firm and he only stopped when he became breathless.

  ‘Damned Romans and their barriers,’ he panted.

  ‘There is little point in blunting another weapon on it,’ a comrade remarked.

  Gaufrid swept his collar-length fair locks up into a knot and tied them above his head. ‘Then what are we to do; let the greedy bastard who leads this warband continue to take the spoils of our efforts, or break this door down and take whatever treasure lies behind it for ourselves?’

  ‘If there is gold in there and we find a way in, do you think he’ll let us waddle back up the stairs and keep whatever we take?’ the other countered.

  Gaufrid’s eyes darted as he thought things over. ‘Perhaps we could come back alone in a few days?’

  ‘There is no time. We are to eat here then march for central Thracia and be reunited with Iudex Fritigern.’

  Gaufrid issued a deep, throaty sigh, then swung away from the door. ‘So be it,’ he snarled, then violently chopped the axe down into the centre of the piled hides where it wedged upon something, before waving the others with him from the cellar.

  As the door clunked shut at the top of the stony staircase, Pavo fell back from the inside of the stronghold keyhole and gasped for the deep breaths he had longed to take while the Goths had been down here.

  Sura chuckled by his side, flicking a long, bent nail over in his hand, his grin barely visible in the trickle of gloom that fell into the locked chamber via the keyhole. ‘Master locksmith, I told you. And you doubted me?’ he said.

  ‘Keep your voice down. If they come down here again then they’ll have your balls and mine on a plate, door or no door,’ Pavo hissed, hiding his admiration that, for once, one of his friend’s outlandish boasts had actually proved well-founded. With the sense of urgent danger ebbing, he suddenly realised that they were inside this mysterious chamber but surrounded by total blackness beyond the tiny chink of light at the keyhole. They had no idea who, or what, was in here with them. He felt around on the floor with his foot, disturbing some loose, shale-like pile of something just a stride into the darkness.

  ‘Mithras! I think we’re good for wine and ale money for the next while,’ Sura whispered, scraping up a handful of the loose material. ‘Gold solidi, piles and piles of them.’

  ‘What the?’ Pavo gasped, picking up handful after handful

  ‘Seems like Dux Vergilius left behind a fair bit of his fortune,’ Sura remarked.

  Pavo shook his head. ‘Hold on – the noise, remember?’

  Sura’s silence was telling. Pavo felt a chill from within the unseen depths of the treasure chamber. His skin prickled and he was sure he saw shapes moving in the blackness. He stooped by the keyhole and tried to reflect the fading twilight from the surface of a coin, but it was useless. And they dared not open the door for fear of the Goths upstairs hearing.

  ‘Find something,’ he said. He and Sura picked their way over the piled coins, feeling the walls as they went. All was cold and hard. Then Pavo felt something different. Something warm, writhing. He leapt back and the thing leapt from his hands. ‘Mithras!’ he yelped.

  ‘What?’ Sura gasped. ‘Wait a moment, I . . . ’

  Three grating noises sounded from the far side of the chamber, and at once, an orangey pool of light sparked to life, revealing Sura, holding a lamp he had found in one hand and his flint hook in the other. The orangey bubble grew into a rich yellow, revealing the cat-sized rat that Pavo had fondled moments ago, now at the door.

  Scratch-scratch.

  Pavo made to sigh in relief, then saw the look of horror on Sura’s face, his gaze fixed on Pavo’s feet. Pavo looked down, then staggered back. The blue-grey corpse of a man lay there on the piled coins. Dead for only a day, he guessed. His eyes and cheeks had been chewed away by the rat, but enough of the veined flesh remained along with the unkempt, white hair for Pavo to recognise him.

  ‘Vergilius?’ Sura stammered, stepping over cautiously. ‘He must have been too afraid to leave. He must have starved in here.’

  Pavo eyed the filthy, urine-soaked robe the dux wore. Then he noticed the gold coins clutched in the man’s palms, lined with teethmarks, and saw the chipped edges of the teeth in the gawping mouth. ‘Aye, it would seem so, thought not for want of trying.’

  Chapter 11

  It was a clear, crisp mid-morning, and the men of the XI Claudia milled around the grounds of the now-deserted villa. Pavo stoked the campfire outside the villa then took his pot of porridge and ate immediately, welcoming the fierce heat. The tense wait through the night had left him ravenous. His meal finished, he took a long pull on his skin of soured wine and sighed deeply. The Goths had left for the east that morning at dawn just as the angry Gothic warrior and his comrades had discussed. Pavo and Sura had unlocked and left the treasure vault only when they heard the voices of the XI Claudia, and in particular those of Gallus and Dexion, demanding that the estate be searched for their comrades.

  ‘I was sure you were dead,’ Dexion said, his face still fixed with a giddy smile, his meal untouched as he beheld Pavo. Then he shot Gallus an apologetic look. ‘Though I should have had
more faith, I suppose.’

  ‘Nah,’ Quadratus cut in, stopping only to belch through flapping lips. ‘These two have a knack for avoiding the edge of a blade.’

  ‘And that one,’ Zosimus added, scratching roughly at his scalp with his porridge-caked spoon then jabbing it towards Sura who was pouring cups of the harvested wine for everyone, ‘is a bloody lunatic, which somehow seems to help.’

  Sura took this as a compliment and flashed a grin. ‘Helped each of us take a healthy purse of gold,’ he reasoned, patting his own takings from Vergilius’ strong-room.

  ‘So it seems that our mission to Trajan’s Gate will be a quiet one?’ Dexion added, clasping his hands and nodding as if envisioning the journey ahead.

  ‘If what we heard was right, then perhaps it will be. As long as Fritigern chooses to concentrate his horde in central Thracia,’ Pavo shrugged.

  In just a few hours they would be at the strategic corridor that linked the Eastern and Western Empires. While the Goths seemed set to make some permanent camp in the heart of Thracia, a good hundred miles to the east, the XI Claudia would merely have to reinforce Geridus’ garrison at Trajan’s Gate until Gratian’s forces arrived. Pavo imagined the Western Emperor’s great army preparing to move eastwards like a colossal silver creature, and Emperor Valens’ Eastern Praesental Army on the Persian frontier likewise readying to board fleets of triremes and to march across Anatolia to come to Thracia. Soon, surely, the Gothic War would be over.

  ‘By spring, these lands might be at peace again,’ Dexion said quietly, as if reading his thoughts.

  Pavo allowed himself to consider the prospect, until a stiff breeze picked up, and he saw scudding grey clouds on the eastern horizon, coming west. He noticed Gallus standing, eyes darting distrustfully to east and west, his plume and cloak lifting and whipping in the wind. ‘If a peaceful spring comes, then I will welcome it. Until then, I’ll keep my spatha and shield close to hand.’

  Reiks Farnobius lay flat in his saddle and heeled his silver stallion onwards into a gallop, leaping over the toppled wagons and through black smoke and licking flames. Screams rang out all around him, but fewer and fewer with every passing heartbeat, every hissing Hun arrow, and every driving Gothic spear. He flexed his arm and held his axe out like a harvester’s scythe, eyes trained on the fleeing Roman auxiliary before him, feeling the howling wind rush over his bronze-winged helm. The Roman sped forward like a startled hare, shooting glances back over his shoulder as Farnobius closed in. The auxiliary threw down his battered iron helm in the vain hope that it would aid his escape. Farnobius grinned at this. ‘And now my blade will not be dulled,’ he growled as he swept the axe into the back of the auxiliary’s skull. A chunk of the man’s head came away, leaving a gaping, pinkish-grey segment like a once-bitten apple. Blood sprayed from the man’s ruined head and he fell flat on his face like a discarded child’s toy. All around lay similarly ruined, mail-shirted corpses and imperial mounts, dead in the bloody mire of broken wagons.

  Farnobius reined his mount in, bringing the beast rearing up. All around him, his Taifali and Goths cried out in victory. As if not to be outdone, his small contingent of Huns cheered even louder.

  ‘Far-no-bi-us! Far-no-bi-us! Far-no-bi-us!’

  He walked his mount round to face them, picking his way over the shattered remains of the Roman supply train that had dared to cross these plains between walled settlements and now lay as a black and crimson stain on the flatlands. He dug the edge of his axe down into the pile of spilled barley and wheat grain and flicked it up. ‘Food for our bellies and not the Romans!’ he roared as the grain rained down again. Though in his heart, he heard the echoing voice of the long-dead boy-reiks, Vitheric. In a lilting, harmless tone, it said: do you recall the last meal of barley stew we shared – on the evening before you murdered me? With a snarl, he shook his head then flipped open the lid of a chest with his weapon and knocked it on its side. Coins poured onto the dirt. ‘Your money, not theirs!’ he cried again. But Vitheric’s earnest voice was quick to respond: much of it debased and worthless, only a few of them gold.

  A polyglot refrain erupted as his men fell upon the toppled wagons. Some raked through bloodied earth and shoved cleaved limbs aside to get every last coin and to fill their pockets with as much grain as they could carry. They did not yet see that the pickings from these few wagon trains was indeed sparse – too sparse.

  Yet never had he felt more alive. Twenty six years of living in Alatheus and Saphrax’s shadow, a shadow blown away by his courageous break from Fritigern’s camp, two days ago. He cast his gaze over his army. Just over four thousand men – Egil and Humbert’s two thousand spearmen and his two thousand Taifali riders along with just over a hundred Huns. More, they were well-fed and encouraged men, not like the wretches who hesitated back in Fritigern’s camp.

  But they will grow hungry for more gold soon enough, the dead child’s voice reiterated.

  ‘Gold,’ he muttered to himself, his lips barely moving. ‘Always gold,’ he affirmed, his thoughts turning to tales he had heard of the Romans’ source of the precious metal, ‘and I shall give them gold.’ He wheeled his stallion round and addressed his army. ‘Tomorrow, we will ride south. There, I promise you plunder as never before!’

  The men erupted in a cheer at this, the Huns wheeling their mounts in celebration and throwing praise to Tengri, their sky god. The Taifali and Goths chanted to Wodin and the plain reverberated to the baritone chorus.

  He swept his axe overhead, bringing it down to point them south. Like a brood of raptors, they swirled round to ride and march in his wake.

  Having left the ruined villa and marched all day, the XI Claudia stopped at dusk and made camp on a defensible rocky plateau just a half-day’s march from Trajan’s Gate. Pavo volunteered for sentry duty at the plateau-edge and immediately wished he had not, for his eyelids grew heavy and his thoughts spiralled off towards sleep. He bit his lower lip to stave off the fatigue, but it was not enough. A moment later, his head nodded forward and his mind swam in an ocean of dreams. Then, from nowhere, one image rushed at him like a shark rising from the inky depths: the shadowy figure watching him in the slave market. This time it was not a mere sliver of blackness; it had grown and now it writhed. The eyes pierced through time and the ethereal matter of dreams and pinned Pavo. Barely a heartbeat after nodding off, he was awake. Wide awake. Why had this dream not let him be? And each time the dream recurred, the dark figure appeared more ominous, the black shade swirling into being from glowering eyes and a chill smile. The coolness of the night seemed to multiply with these thoughts. Pavo shook his head and forced a quiet chuckle to himself as if to make fun of the dream . . . when something moved, right behind him.

  He swung to see a tall, dark shadow, looming over him.

  ‘Mithras!’ he gasped, his spatha half drawn when a shaft of moonlight revealed Gallus’ gaunt features. He slid his spatha back into its scabbard. ‘Bless Luna for her light else I might not have stopped, sir.’

  ‘Aye, you were trained well, Optio. One of the last of our kind,’ Gallus said, his breath clouding in the chill.

  Pavo noticed the melancholy in the tribunus’ eyes and saw how he waited there. This was no passing check on his sentries. He wondered if, like those few, fleeting moments in the past, Gallus wanted to speak to him. Not as a legionary, but as a man. Yet broaching this possibility with Gallus was like finding a missing link in a mail vest. So he stuck to protocol. ‘Nothing’s moved out there, sir,’ he said dutifully. ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘I know, I’ve been watching,’ he replied. ‘Sleep and I are at loggerheads tonight, it would seem.’

  And most nights, Pavo thought. Gallus was a taciturn man outside his duties as a tribunus, but few who had served in the legion had missed his plaintive night-cries for his dead family. He wondered if that was to be his own fate; to mourn Felicia and Father and all those others for eternity.

  ‘In any case, duty sometimes blunts the sharp edge of a m
an’s troubles,’ Gallus said, then looked briefly unsure of himself. ‘And perhaps . . . talking too.’

  Pavo’s senses sharpened. The tribunus’ steely carapace was coming down.

  ‘News of Felicia’s death saddened me,’ Gallus continued. ‘I have been close enough to Dexion in these last days to see how much it has hurt him, so I can only wonder at the depth of your grief.’

  Pavo frowned, then it all became clear: the tribunus was not seeking a sympathetic ear, no, Gallus had come to console him. He shook his head stiffly. ‘In battle, you come to expect loss, and what happened at the Great North-’ he stopped as grief surged from his breast. It seemed to rake across his heart and tighten his throat as he saw the image of her body again. He fought it back, the dark voice in his head hissing once more. You do not deserve to grieve.

  ‘I just wanted you to know that I . . . I understand.’ Gallus seemed to have difficulty saying these words. ‘You did not deserve such a blow, lad. Not after all that happened in Persia.’

  Pavo dropped and shook his head, his gaze searching the dirt around his feet. ‘I have lived one vision a thousand times in these last few days, sir. If I had just reached her sooner, before Farnobius . . . she would be with me now. I failed her, just as I failed to save Father.’ He halted, determined not to succumb to the stinging tears gathering behind his eyes.

  ‘That Fritigern’s horde, Farnobius and all, fell upon the Great Northern Camp was not your doing,’ Gallus countered abruptly. ‘You did all you could to stop that happening. You marched into the Shipka Pass and right into the heart of the Gothic camp to save the embassy. Then, when the pass fell and the Goths came to the Tonsus, you were one of the few who took to the river’s edge, took the blows of the Gothic blades and stood firm for as long as you could. Had you not, then many more would have died.’