Quadratus looked up with a furious expression. ‘Is that an order, sir?’
Lupicinus pursed his lips and gazed into the distance as if shrewdly thinking over the move. ‘Yes, it is. But let’s advance with one of the war heroes at the front. Yes, let’s have the drunk,’ he stabbed a finger at Pavo. ‘Now tell me, why have you been left behind while the better men of your legion are out in enemy territory, eh?’
Pavo searched for an answer. The truth was that he would have been out there too, had it not been for the recent reorganisation of the legion to repopulate the ranks after the Bosporus mission. He had been a proud member of the first cohort, first century. Then, a few months ago, Gallus had insisted that the more experienced legionaries should be seeded through the cohorts as the legion was repopulated with recruits and vexillationes from other legions. Still though, doubt stung at his chest.
‘Perhaps you are not as brave as you would have us think?’ Lupicinus cut in before he could reply. ‘Well come on then, out front, lead us across the bridge.’
Pavo’s blood iced at this. All eyes fell upon him. At least his colleagues in the front line offered their sympathy. In contrast, Lupicinus smirked at his discomfort, as did his riders and legionaries. But Pavo had known this was coming and coming soon. With so many officers killed or called out in vexillationes recently, Pavo, like Sura, was only a few steps from being thrust into leadership. And the thought made him nauseous. His one brief spell of leadership had been swift, when he had assumed control of a rag-tag bunch of legionaries – all of them even younger than him – in the Bosporus mission. But here he was faced with men all older and more grizzled than himself, all surely more qualified to lead. Mithras, he thought, surely Quadratus is the ranking infantry officer here anyway? His eyes moved to the big Gaul.
But Lupicinus spotted his hesitation and pounced upon it. ‘Ah, a coward!’ the comes spat. ‘Unable to act without the guiding hand of another, eh? Never a leader. Just like most of the dross in this so-called legion.’
Pavo bristled. He might not be a leader, but he certainly was no coward. He straightened up, readying to shout the men forward, but Lupicinus cut in.
‘Centurion Quadratus, lead us forward, show the boy how it’s done!’
Quadratus stepped to the fore, his movement disguising a shudder of rage and his face a shade of crimson. Still, the centurion managed to offer a nod of support to Pavo. But Pavo was staring straight ahead, hoping his veneer of steadfast attention would disguise the burning shame inside him. The comes’ words echoed in his head.
Never a leader.
‘Ready, advance!’ Quadratus barked.
As one, the cluster of legionaries stomped forward, the timbers of the makeshift bridge creaking and bucking under their weight, the riders trotting close behind. All eyes were on the treeline. Still it writhed and, as they got closer, it seemed to jostle and judder more violently, as if something was building to a head. But what?
Pavo was almost grateful that his shame was swept away by the nerves that usually preceded a battle or a skirmish. The soldier’s curse, they called it: swollen tongue, dry mouth and full-to-bursting bladder, not helped by the thundering torrents of the Danubius below.
Quadratus raised his sword, readying to stop the column as they reached the north bridgehead when, suddenly, the treeline fell still.
‘What the?’ Sura croaked.
‘Halt.’ Quadratus spoke his order in a muted tone, frowning.
Ready shields! Pavo screamed in his mind, ears honed for any sound of stretching bowstrings or whizzing arrows, his empty shield arm clenching. A chill wind whistled from upriver, snaking inside Pavo’s armour and clothing. He and each of the infantry glanced back to Lupicinus. The comes had managed to stealthily remain some way back from the Roman front; there he sat on his saddle, his tongue jabbing out to dampen his lips and his eyes darting nervously across the forest in front of them. Even from here, Pavo could see Lupicinus’ cuirass judder from a panicked heartbeat.
‘Orders, sir?’ Quadratus asked. ‘A member of your cavalry might want to stoke those bushes, flush ‘em out? Show them how to launch an attack? Or perhaps we should call for reinforcements from the fort?’
Lupicinus scowled at Quadratus’ thinly disguised swipe. ‘Two infantry, advance and scout,’ he replied abruptly.
Quadratus nodded, then made to shout for Avitus to come with him.
But Pavo, still feeling the shame of his reluctance only moments ago, widened his eyes and nodded to the big Gaul.
Quadratus cocked an eyebrow. ‘Fair enough then. Pavo, you’re with me.’
They stalked off the bridge then across the wide dirt path that hemmed the northern bank of the river. Then Quadratus made a forking gesture with two fingers, each pointing round a side of the thicket.
Pavo nodded, buried his fears and set his eyes on the undergrowth. He held his spatha before him, ready to cut through the gorse bush or any Goth that might try to spring upon him.
‘Wait, what’s that?’ Quadratus whispered from a few feet away.
Pavo squinted through into the gorse and saw nothing but a tangle of leaves and branches. Then his skin froze as he saw the outline of . . . something, something in the shade and foliage. It looked like a figure, crouching in the shadows. He blinked, sure it was a trick of the light, but sure enough, there was someone there. A man, a huge man.
Pavo filled his lungs to roar, when a shape burst from the gorse, butting into his chest. The wind was gone from his lungs and he tumbled back, instinctively lashing out at the figure. Then, bleating filled the air and his spatha blade stopped only inches from the neck of a panicked goat. A little Gothic boy in a blue tunic ran out after it.
The boy hugged the goat’s neck, eyes wide in panic.
‘My oxen! They’re trapped in the swamp back there!’ The boy cried, pulling the goat back from Pavo by its tether. The lad’s eyes were red with tears, his topknotted blonde hair bedraggled and spattered with mud. A bout of pained lowing sounded from behind the gorse.
‘It’s okay,’ Pavo said in a soothing tone, tucking his spatha into his scabbard, his skin prickling in embarrassment.
Quadratus closed his eyes, shook his head and muttered a frustrated prayer to Mithras. ‘False alarm, sir,’ he shouted over his shoulder to Lupicinus.
Pavo looked again into the foliage, frowning as Lupicinus’ belly laughter filled the air.
‘Perhaps you’ll be capable of dealing with this situation, Pavo? You and Centurion Quadratus can round off this business.’ With that, he swept his hand above his head in a circle. ‘The rest of you, back to the fort. There is much to sort out with this sham of a legion.’
With a thunder of hooves and boots, the comes and the rest of the group were off. Pavo and Quadratus shared a dark look, then the boy tugged on the hem of Pavo’s tunic.
‘My oxen?’
Pavo nodded and tried to soften his expression. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll see you safely on your way. Show me where they are.’
The boy scampered round the gorse bush and Pavo followed. As he passed Quadratus, the big Gaulish centurion grumbled, his foul glare fixed on the departing Lupicinus.
‘If I ever whinge about Gallus again, kick my stones for me, will you?’
The figure remained in the shadows of the thick foliage, his gaze trained on the two Romans as they crossed the bridge into the empire again. With the oxen freed, the boy came to him, holding out a hand.
‘I have done as you asked, sir,’ the boy said nervously, holding out his cupped hands, screwing up his eyes at the shadows.
‘Aye, you have done well,’ the dark figure replied.
The boy gulped as the dark figure leaned forward just a fraction, so a sliver of sunlight sparkled on three bronze hoops dangling from an earlobe, then dropped a pair of coins into his hands.
The figure watched as the boy led the animals away, a dark cloud passing over his mind as he thought of his men further up the trail that would slit the young
ster’s throat. But destiny required ruthlessness and a jealous guarding of knowledge, and that destiny beckoned.
Yes, he mused; the Roman borders were weaker than ever.
It was time to begin.
Chapter 2
‘No,’ Pavo growled, ‘take my hand!’ He stretched every sinew in his arm, his fingertips shaking as they hovered only inches from Father’s. The dunes all around them shimmered in the white heat of the placid but never-ending desert. The figure in front of him was barely recognisable as the powerful legionary Pavo had looked up to as a child. This man was haggard, his hair wiry and patchy, skin lined and features tired. But most horrifically, his eyes were gone and only empty, cauterised sockets remained. But he was still Father and now, stood only paces from him on the lip of this dune, he just wanted so much to embrace him once more.
‘Please, take my hand!’ Pavo cried out, but his own voice sounded distant and weak. That was when it always started. First, the sun darkened, then the dunes turned a sickly grey, and then the roaring began. Like a pride of lions at first, then like the cry of a thousand titans, the desert wind engulfed them and the still dunes were coaxed into a ferocious wall of stinging sand. Pavo struggled to resist the urge to blink as the boiling grains stung his eyeballs, but it was no use; the outline of Father grew faint in the storm. Only as he was about to fade completely, he lifted his hand towards Pavo’s. But it was too late.
‘No!’ Pavo sat bolt upright in his bunk, his skin bathed in sweat and his bedding soaked through despite the winter chill in the barrack block. He saw his breath clouding in the air before him in the faint sliver of moonlight that shone through the crack in the shutters above. All around, the exhausted men of his contubernium lay in deep slumber: Centurion Quadratus, Optio Avitus, Sura and the four recruits, Noster, Nero, Sextus and Rufus. He sighed, annoyed that the nightmare had come to him for the second time that night. Then he realised that his hand was trembling, clutching the bronze phalera. He slipped the leather strap from his neck and examined it in the moonlight. His mind drifted back to that day in Constantinople’s slave market, all those years ago, when it had first come into his possession.
Then, his thoughts crept to the years of servitude and abuse that had followed. The echoes of slaves screaming in the basement of Senator Tarquitius’ villa poisoned his mood and quickly brought the chill through the skin to his bones.
He shook his head and wiped the thoughts from his mind. Then he reached to the bedpost and untied the strip of scarlet silk Felicia had given him. He held it under his nose; it still carried the scent of her perfume. It cleared his mind of troubles, conjuring up fleeting images of her in an inviting pose that finally dissipated into blissful sleep. But only moments after he started snoring, a wail of buccinas filled the fort, the Roman horns sounding for morning wake up and roll-call.
Pavo’s eyes shot open, the whites bloodshot. He groaned and sat up.
‘Bloody Mithras, keep the noise down,’ Avitus groaned from the bunk opposite. Then he looked down to Quadratus on the bunk below. ‘Mind you, it’s less of a din than your farting,’ he cackled. Then, when Quadratus poked his head from his bunk and shot him a serious glare, he added, grudgingly, ‘ . . . sir.’
‘Hold on,’ Sura croaked from the bunk above Pavo. Sitting up, shivering, still clasping his blanket around him, he nudged open the shutter next to his bunk. ‘It’s not even dawn – what’s going on?’
Pavo looked up to his friend, frowning, then the pair’s faces fell into a weary realisation.
‘Lupicinus!’ They groaned in harmony.
The sky was still jet-black and the torches around the inner fortress walls guttered and crackled. Pavo felt as if he was in some lucid nightmare; frozen, belly rumbling, tired beyond belief. Still in better shape than some of the recruits, he mused dryly, hearing their teeth chatter and them stamping their boots to stay warm. Behind the legionaries, the handful of auxiliaries were lined up, and a sorry sight they were: one in three had a helmet and even less possessed a shield. To the rear, the turma of equites and less-than-impressed foederati had mustered also. Then, Lupicinus’ two centuries of comitatenses legionaries filed into place in armour that contrasted starkly with their limitanei counterparts. Pavo stifled a snort; so the disturbingly small total of the ‘reinforced’ XI Claudia – less than five hundred men – had been mustered in the dead of night by the regal arsehole that was Comes Lupicinus. Now, the blend of incredulity and rage on the faces of the front line veterans demanded an explanation.
‘By Mithras, I’ve got work to do,’ Lupicinus snorted, striding across the face of the front rank in his pristine dress-armour, his back rigid, ‘but I’ll make a legion out of you yet!’
His riders, mounted only paces away, glowered down their noses at the assembled legionaries, smirks touching their lips at their leader’s wit. In their midst stood a filthy, bedraggled and panting Gothic villager. His hair was hanging loose and was matted with sweat and grime, his bare chest glistened with sweat and his lozenge-patterned trousers were torn and filthy.
‘Now, the sharper minds amongst you may have realised that dawn is not yet upon us.’ He paused, sweeping his gaze across the ranks as if to add weight to his words. ‘But I have roused you for a good reason. While you were sleeping, another incident erupted in Fritigern’s lands – in Istrita, a small village near the Carpates and the border with Athanaric’s territory.’
A collective groan from the ranks was stifled by Lupicinus’ glare.
‘A fifty will be sent to the scene . . . ’
‘Permission to speak, sir!’ Quadratus barked before the comes could finish.
Lupicinus glared at the centurion. ‘Oh, this better be good, Centurion.’
‘Including your two centuries, there are less than five hundred men left within these four walls. The remainder of the legion is scattered like chaff over the wrong side of the Danubius. Nobody knows what has become of those vexillationes, sir.’
The skin on Pavo’s neck rippled as he heard the big centurion’s words, almost reflecting his own thoughts. Thinking like a leader – it gave him a brief glow of warmth.
‘Now,’ Quadratus continued, ‘should something happen here, should the Goths launch a full-scale attack on the bridge then the few hundred here could just about hold them off long enough to give us some thinking time. But if we continue to send out vexillationes . . . ’
‘That’s quite enough, Centurion,’ Lupicinus barked over the Gaul.
‘But, sir, before Tribunus Gallus left on his mission, he left advisory orders that the vexillationes were to be reined in, to be brought under control – even at the risk of angering Fritigern. Surely you see sense in . . . ’
‘I see sense in a centurion showing obedience to his superior!’ Lupicinus snapped, grappling his cane and raising it to strike, hovering just inches from Quadratus’ face.
In his peripheral vision, Pavo saw Quadratus’ lips trembling, not in fear, but in barely checked rage. This could get ugly, he feared.
But, mercifully, Lupicinus lowered his cane and reset his features to his usual haughty look, peering at Quadratus down his nose. ‘Perhaps this kind of cowardly outlook is only to be expected from you . . . limitanei!’ He spat the last word like a bad grape.
‘So perhaps I should excuse Centurion Quadratus from this vexillatio?’ Lupicinus mused, then a smug grin spread over his features. ‘Maybe a pseudo command is in order. Yes, I seem to remember one of the more junior infantrymen who considered himself a hero.’
Pavo’s weary mind suddenly focused and his guts turned over as he saw Lupicinus’ gaze sweep along the front rank. Sure enough, it came to rest on him.
‘Legionary Pavo,’ he said gleefully. ‘You will lead the fifty.’ The comes flicked his finger to the four nearest contubernia of comitatenses and another two from the native Claudia recruits. ‘I’ll leave it to you to choose your second-in-command. I want you formed up with full marching equipment and rations for two weeks by the time th
e sun touches the horizon.’ With that, Lupicinus turned to the rest of the legion and barked orders to begin double sentry duty.
Pavo’s blood felt like icewater in his veins. He looked to the pink tinge on the horizon, then he turned to the forty eight formed up before him. The recruits looked petrified and the veterans of Lupicinus’ centuries scowled at him in distaste. The breath seemed shallow in his lungs and his tongue bloated like bread. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, glancing to the comes. Lupicinus smirked at his hesitation. Pavo closed his eyes and thought of Gallus; what would the iron tribunus say to rally his men on a frozen morning, when a treacherous march into foreign lands waited on them?
Legionary: Viper of the North (Legionary 2) Page 4