Legionary: Viper of the North (Legionary 2)

by Doherty, Gordon

  There was a mixed grumble, and he shared a nervous glance with Sura.

  Sura’s eyes darted around him for a moment, then he drew his spatha and battered the hilt into his shield boss. ‘For the empire!’ He cried. With that, some of the fifty cheered. Others remained silent, looking around uncertainly.

  Crito shook his head with a wry grin; a grin that said the veteran was still unconvinced.

  Pavo filled his lungs, squaring his jaw.

  ‘Form up, ready to move out!

  Paulus woke, saddle sore from his short journey on Zosimus’ mount the previous day. The babble of the Gothic populace drifted through the shutters and into his room in the stallhouse attic, rousing his mind from sleep. He stretched his legs and groaned as the chill of the winter morning slipped inside his blanket. Then, cracking open his eyelids, he realised it was not morning – it was nearer noon. He sighed and made to sit up. Then a hand wrapped across his mouth and pushed him prone, and another clamped across his chest.

  Panic welled in his heart as at once his eyes darted; two bearded Goths stood over him. He writhed under their grip, twisting towards his spatha – within arm’s reach – but they pinned his arms with their knees, their weight simply too great.

  ‘Your Mithras will not save you now,’ one of them hissed, then pressed something cold against Paulus’ throat.

  Then the Goth ripped his hand back. Paulus felt an odd burning on his neck, seeing a dark-red spray of liquid pump up into the air. At once his skin was hot and his insides cool. Then a black veil fell across his vision.

  Gallus had fallen into a fitful sleep as soon as he had returned to his room and removed his helmet and vest. Despite the shutter in his room lying open to the bitter chill and the brightening sun, he had remained, neither awake nor asleep, calling out her name as he always did.

  ‘Olivia?’ He could see her, stood at the end of his bed. She was smiling, cradling the tiny form of a baby in her arms. He sat up, a pained smile stretching across his face as he reached out with one hand towards her. ‘You’re here?’ Olivia shook her head and her smile faded, then a single tear escaped one eye and stained her cheek.

  Gallus shuffled forward towards her, reaching out to stroke the babe’s fine hair. But the apparition disappeared before him, like a morning mist. His eyes focused on the reality: a crimson heap that was his cloak, and the tiny, carved idol of Mithras that lay on top of it. He remembered that day, only weeks after she and little Marcus had burnt on the pyre, when he had said his prayers to the war deity, begging to be thrown into conflict, to lose himself in the defence of his empire.

  He sensed self-pity writhing in his chest. In disgust, he leapt up from the bed, grimacing, pulling the iron shutters in his mind closed over his moment of weakness. He strode over to the jug of water and splashed a cupped handful of the icy contents over his face and pushed his fingers through his peak of hair, steeling himself for the day ahead. He poured himself a cup of water and moved to the shutters; outside, the town was still cloaked in a thick layer of snow and the centre of the citadel had been set up as a market, abuzz with activity. Then he realised it was not morning, but midday. He scolded himself for sleeping so late, but was distracted when he saw a party of Gothic spearmen pushing through the square. Then he saw another. Coming this way? He wondered with a frown. ‘Let your mind rest for one bloody moment,’ he chided himself with a shake of the head and a weary chuckle.

  He reached to the table for a date, when a muffled gasp sounded from across the corridor. Like a cat, he spun to the door, eyes wide, swiping his swordbelt from the back of the nearby chair. Then footsteps rattled on the floorboards and ended when his door juddered from a shoulder-charge.

  Gallus ripped his spatha from his scabbard and braced.

  The door burst open and Felix tumbled in, eyes wide and chest heaving, shaking his head as if lost for words. He was carrying a sword dripping with blood, jabbing a finger back through the door.

  ‘Speak!’ Gallus hissed in agitation.

  Felix gulped in a breath. ‘Assassins, sir! They’ve killed Paulus – slit his throat. I’ve slain the pair that did it, but they nearly had me as well!’

  Gallus’ mind raced. ‘You’re sure you killed all of the assassins?’ He asked, pulling on his woollen trousers, leather boots and mail vest.

  ‘Certain!’ Felix panted. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there are twenty or so Goths coming this way, and I’ve got a terrible feeling they’re coming to finish the job.’ He glanced outside; sure enough, the party of Gothic Warriors were filing around the side of the stallhouse, towards the door. ‘Quick, wake Salvian and Tarquitius!’

  Felix darted across the corridor, and Salvian opened his door before Felix got there. The ambassador’s face was pale and his eyes were shadowed under a frown. ‘Trouble, Tribunus?’ He called across the corridor to Gallus.

  ‘There will be if we’re not fast.’ He darted a glance to the chest in the corner, then to the shutters; below, horse traders and thriving market stalls filled the space. ‘Quick, come in here,’ he called to the ambassador. Then he opened the chest and lifted out a pair of wide, cherry-red, lozenge-patterned trousers and slid them over his legs, cursing his fumbling fingers, before pulling a red, hooded cloak around his shoulders. ‘Ambassador,’ he hissed, ‘find some Gothic garments, we’re going outside!’

  Salvian frowned, then saw the Tribunus eyeing the drop from the shutters to the ground below. ‘Ah, right, I’m with you,’ the ambassador whispered, pulling on a set of dark grey, rough woollen trousers and a brown hooded cloak. Felix did likewise. Then Senator Tarquitius came waddling in, his face whiter than the snow outside, his eyes distant. Gallus frowned at his odd demeanour, then shoved a rugged hemp cloak into the Senator’s arms.

  Gallus rested one foot on the window ledge, sheathing his spatha and tucking two plumbatae inside his belt. Then he hissed to the three in the room. ‘There; that hay cart – wait till it passes below! Then we jump . . . and be ready to duck and hide – the square is crawling with Gothic spearmen.’

  Just then, a floorboard in the corridor creaked, and Gallus knew what was coming next. He and Felix spun to face the doorway, spathas drawn. ‘Jump, now!’ Gallus roared to Salvian and Tarquitius.

  Salvian turned and leapt, slipping down the thick coating of snow on the thatchwork then landing silently on the hay cart. Gallus elbowed at the blubbery mass of Tarquitius, but the Senator took to squealing and clawing at the edge of the shutters like a stubborn cat. ‘Will you just bloody jump!’ He roared, then kicked out, forcing the senator through the window at last.

  Then Gallus and Felix turned back to the doorway just as a clutch of towering warriors spilled into the room with a guttural roar, swords and spears levelled for the kill. Sensing the lead Goth lunge for him, the tribunus swiped his spatha round just in time, the Goth’s longsword nicking his cloak and the mail underneath. Gallus grabbed the man’s forearm and butted into his nose, the dull crack of facial bones crumbling as a testament to the ever-handy tactic. The lead Goth fell away, groaning, only to be replaced by three more, coming at Gallus like a pack of wolves. He parried their first strike, stumbling backwards, then swiped at the next, inadvertently taking the Goth’s fingers clean off with the blow. But three more pushed in to take the stricken man’s place.

  ‘Sir, there are too many of them!’ Felix cried as he stumbled back from a flurry of spearpoints.

  Gallus growled, hacking at one spear, then shuffled back to the window. ‘Go!’ He barked.

  Felix leapt from the room, then Gallus climbed into the window frame and booted out at the Goths who rushed for him. Then he let himself fall backwards. He slid down the snowy thatch in silence and then was weightless for a heartbeat, before he landed on something soft – but it wasn’t hay. Then, a pig-like squeal from under him split the air. Gallus writhed round and clamped a hand over the senator’s mouth.

  ‘Another noise from you and . . . ’ Gallus started.

  ‘Sir
, come on,’ Felix hissed from the back edge of the cart.

  Gallus vaulted from the hay cart and on to the packed snow on the square, then glanced around; in the fervent bartering and shouting, nobody had noticed them, yet. But, above them, the rest of the Gothic spearmen leaned from the open shutters, baying and calling across the square.

  ‘Where do we go?’ Tarquitius warbled as he slid ungraciously from the cart and onto the ground.

  ‘Anywhere but here, and let’s do it fast!’ Gallus spat.

  Then Salvian’s eyes locked onto a line of market stalls, laden with clothing. ‘This way. We can change clothes again and they’ll lose us in the crowd. Come on!’

  The four barged forward, the crowd parting reluctantly, jostling, shoving and cursing their efforts. But Gallus could see the glinting eyes and speartips of two pockets of Gothic spearmen surging through the crowd towards them like a school of sharks.

  ‘Duck, so they can’t see us,’ the tribunus urged the three behind him. He reached out and swiped a dyed blue woollen cloak from the nearest stall, and a tent-like red one that would do for the senator. Then he set his sights on a dark and narrow alley up ahead, splitting the horreum and a two-storeyed workshop.

  ‘Yes, we should slip in there,’ Salvian nodded beside him. ‘If they pass us, then the stables are by the other side of the horreum.’

  Gallus nodded. ‘Then let’s do it.’

  They scurried through the crowd as the pursuing spearmen craned and jostled. Finally, they slipped into the shadows of the ally, where the air was thick with the stench of stale urine and faeces. Tarquitius was a shade of crimson, his skin bathed in sweat from the brief exercise and his chest heaved, a hoarse groaning coming with each breath.

  ‘Shut up, you fool!’ Gallus hissed, as he heard the urgent clatter of Gothic boots approaching. He fixed his eyes on the end of the alleyway, breath bated.

  ‘We are in the shadows, Tribunus,’ Salvian whispered. ‘They will not see us.’

  The Gothic spearmen clattered past the mouth of the alley, surging on through the market.

  ‘Now, to the stables!’ Salvian whispered as the three around him exhaled in relief.

  The four pushed through the tight end of the alleyway – Tarquitius having more difficulty than the others. They emerged into a quiet backstreet of the citadel; one side was lined with a stable complex, and their mounts were in the nearest stall.

  A young, emaciated Gothic boy stood nervously, holding a grooming comb.

  ‘You are not Thervingi?’ The lad said, his voice unsteady.

  Salvian crouched, holding the boy’s shoulder, fixing him with a friendly gaze. ‘You would do anything to protect your family, wouldn’t you?’ Salvian said, pressing a pair of bronze folles into the boy’s palm. ‘This will see your table heaped with food for a week at least, I would have thought?’

  The boy nodded, gawping at the coins.

  ‘All we want is to leave this place with our lives,’ Salvian continued. ‘Raise the alarm if you must, if it’ll save you from punishment, but give us until the sun starts to drop from its zenith, at least?’

  The boy nodded shyly, then glanced up at the noon sky.

  With that, the four mounted their steeds, darting nervous glances each way down the empty street.

  ‘So now we just have to make it through the streets of Dardarus, then out of the gates unseen?’ Gallus asked dryly.

  ‘Fear not, Tribunus, we are merely Gothic traders, passing through,’ Salvian issued one of his trademark half-mouthed grins, then pulled up the hood of his cloak. ‘If the thousands of Goths between here and the gates are to believe that, then you must too.’

  Gallus flicked up an eyebrow and wondered if the ambassador could sell candles to the blind. He, Felix and Tarquitius raised their hoods also – the senator still wearing an expression of a startled cat. Whatever nightmares that reprobate suffered last night, they were undoubtedly deserved, he mused dryly.

  Then he steeled himself for what was to come and touched a hand to his spatha hilt under his cloak. To the gates, then. And if the Goths challenge us, he affirmed, then Mithras help the bastards!

  Chapter 9

  Pavo’s legs had numbed long before dawn. Now, past noon, the snow was thigh-deep in places and all around them was a wall of white. His face ached from the roaring, relentless blizzard that seemed to be pushing them back, willing them to stay out of Athanaric’s lands.

  ‘We have to shelter,’ Sura chattered.

  ‘We can’t,’ Pavo glanced around; he could see only a few feet in each direction, and still they hadn’t sighted the Carpates. Only the occasional groaning of the recruits that broke through the whistling storm told him the rear of the column was still there. He once again tried to orient himself, ever-fearful that they could unwittingly stumble right onto one of Athanaric’s hillforts, citadels or camps. Or even into the path of the Gothic Iudex’s horsemen, who would delight in an easy kill such as this.

  ‘The men are exhausted, we need to find a place to stop,’ Sura tried again.

  Pavo shook his head, pulling his snow-coated cloak tighter. ‘If we stop, we freeze.’

  ‘Pavo,’ Sura said, gripping his forearm. ‘I know you want to lead us back to the river and the empire. I know you’re afraid you will fail them. But if we don’t seek out shelter . . . ’

  Pavo turned to him with his lips curled in a snarl, then his face fell as he saw his friend’s blue-tinged features and snow-coated eyebrows. At that moment, the blizzard changed direction. In the brief lull, he saw his column, shivering, chattering, stumbling like drunk men, minds numbed with the cold, their armour and cloaks almost all white with the clinging snow. He cursed himself for letting it get this bad.

  ‘Stop,’ he barked over the gale, then he caught sight of a pile of rocks thirty paces or so to their right. ‘We shelter from the winds behind those rocks and then we eat.’

  But Sura shook his head and held up a hand, holding a finger of his other hand to his lips, eyes wide.

  Pavo frowned at this latest contradiction. ‘What now?’

  ‘That is no mere rock pile,’ Sura said, leaning in to speak into Pavo’s ear.

  Pavo turned to the rock pile and the breath stilled in his lungs; the blizzard changed direction once again and, like a huge white curtain being drawn back, the might of the Carpates was revealed, the rock pile lying at the base of the great mountains. And there, right where Sura’s gaze was trained, was a craggy corridor that led through the mountains. On either side, a pair of armoured Goths stood like inhuman sentinels on the face of the rock, tucked into nooks to shelter from the storm, shivering in their cloaks.

  ‘The road to Dardarus!’ Pavo whispered, his words carried away by the storm.

  He turned to Sura, nodding towards the fifty. ‘Get them against the rock face. We cannot be sighted!’

  The gates of Dardarus swung closed. Gallus, Felix and Salvian cantered through the snow and across the great plain alongside a cart laden with flax and an old man leading a line of donkeys. The crop fields they passed by were deserted, unworkable under the thick blanket of snow. The sky had clouded over, grey and bulging in places. A dark portent of a fresh snowstorm if ever there was one.

  They had circled for what felt like an eternity near the gates, waiting on an opportunity to slip out with another party. Gallus had been sure he felt eyes watching them suspiciously when they finally tagged onto the trail of the flax cart. Now outside he wanted with all his heart to heel his mount into a gallop.

  He looked ahead, to the opening of the rocky pass that would lead them away from Athanaric’s heartland. ‘This cart is headed for the farms. When we reach the mouth of the pass, we will be alone, and we will be challenged,’ he whispered to Salvian, nodding to the two spear-wielding sentries posted halfway up the rock face, guarding this end of the pass.

  Salvian’s eyes were already upon the pair. ‘It’s all about perception, Tribunus. Those sentries will see a group of Gothic riders approachi
ng, nothing more.’

  Gallus shook his head. ‘Our garb will count for little as soon as they bark at us in their jagged tongue. I speak their language but I sound as Roman as they come; same with Felix.’ Then he turned to Tarquitius. ‘Senator?’

  Tarquitius’ face was blue, his eyelids and nose coated in frost. ‘He . . . he is a shade . . . ‘ Tarquitius mumbled repeatedly.

  Gallus frowned and looked to Salvian.

  Salvian cocked an eyebrow then issued that now familiar half-smile of his. ‘It seems that my mentor is compromised. It is down to me to guide us home.’

  They trotted through the snow, knee deep to their mounts in places, and the sky was almost black over the pass. Then the gaze of the two sentries fell upon them and the nearest one barked down a challenge.

  Salvian calmly lowered his hood, taking care to ruffle his hair as he did so, pushing his locks out of the neat Roman style he wore them in. When Salvian replied, his accent was in perfect harmony with the sentry’s.