Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Perhaps you would like to discuss this with the tribunus of my legion?’ Pavo fixed him with a gimlet stare until the man looked away to his comrades. He heard their mutterings carried on a gentle breeze.

  ‘He’s with Tribunus Gallus?’ one voice hissed. ‘Open the bloody gates, quickly!’

  The thick, iron-studded timber gates groaned open and the pair heeled their mounts on under the shade of the fortified gateway. At once, the sedate chatter of the open countryside was gone. In its place came the frenzied babble of the city streets. The influx of refugees from the Gothic war had swollen this ward to breaking point. The broad, marble-lined Imperial Way was packed with a sea of ruddy faces, gleaming bald pates, waving arms, swishing horse manes and tails and juddering wagons. Aromas of wood smoke, sweat and dung battled in the air as the pair picked their way through these masses. They passed under the shade of a squat marble cistern, then had to wait their turn to trot around a pile of grain sacks being unloaded beside the horreum to fill its silos.

  A trader forced his way in front of Sura as he waited. ‘For you, ochre to stain your skin!’ the man yelped, holding up a clay pot.

  ‘Nah, you can’t improve upon perfection.’ Sura shrugged and rode on past the trader, rounding the grain sacks.

  ‘You can’t polish horseshit either,’ Pavo mused in his friend’s wake, cocking an eyebrow. ‘Though you certainly can talk it.’

  Sura scowled over his shoulder at Pavo as the trader melted back into the throng, roaring with laughter.

  The Imperial Way led them downhill, and the grandeur of the city was unveiled before them. Sweeping hills encrusted with marble and brick, tall and ornate palaces, red-tiled Christian domes and columns bearing statues of emperors past pointing skywards. The opulence intensified as the peninsula tapered to its tip, where the Imperial Palace sat perched high on the first hill, overlooking the Hippodrome. Workers crawled over this finery like ants, still busy harvesting gold from the finest monuments to fund the legions in the Gothic struggle.

  They cut across the Forum of the Ox and made their way to the north of the city. After passing under the shadow of the Great Aqueduct of Valens, they approached the city’s northern sea walls where a salt-tang from the Golden Horn spiced the air. Pavo looked up to the small, squat barrack compound at the end of the street, near the Neorion Harbour gate. Instantly, he and Sura halted as a barking voice from within the compound cut across the hubbub of the streets. A voice that refused to be ignored.

  Gallus.

  ‘Could scare the shit out of a bear from fifty stadia,’ Sura muttered, sitting upright, shoulders squared.

  Pavo straightened likewise, instantly sympathising with the poor legionaries in there and on the sharp end of the tirade. The Tribunus of the XI Claudia Legion was relentless. A man who ate as rarely as he slept, and seldom showed anything other than pure steel to his ranks. But a man with boundless courage.

  They came to the main gate of the barrack compound. This had been the home for Gallus and his small vexillatio of the XI Claudia for these last few weeks. Two centuries, detached from the rest of the legion and stationed here to prepare for the mission to the east. The sentry on the barrack walls wheeled a hand in the air to someone unseen, below.

  The gates creaked open and the training yard inside the compound was unveiled. One century of eighty men marched in tight formation around the square, ruby shields only inches apart, their mail vests polished and their tunics underneath bleached white with purple hems. The iron fins on their intercisa helmets bobbed like a school of sharks. Their spear tips pierced the air and their spathas swung from their scabbards in time to the march. And, as a recent measure, each man carried a composite bow strapped to his back. The aquilifer marched near the front, carrying the legion standard; a staff topped with a silver eagle, and a ruby bull banner hanging from the crossbar just underneath. This was Centurion Quadratus’ century, but today Primus Pilus Felix – Gallus’ right-hand man – led them. This short and swarthy, fork-bearded Greek showed no sign of fatigue as the drill went on. And it had been ongoing for some time, Pavo reckoned, going by the sweat lashing from some of his younger comrades’ faces. Some of them shot furtive and pleading glances to the rear compound wall. Pavo looked to the figure standing up there and knew their pleas would go unheard.

  Gallus was perched there like a bird of prey, watching in silence, his ruby cloak wrapped around his tall, lean frame. The plume of his intercisa danced in the sea breeze. The rim and cheek guards of his helm hugged his gaunt, starved-wolf expression. Rumours had spread that Gallus was ill at ease with this mission and with the enforced separation from the remainder of his legion – the few other tattered centuries of the XI Claudia still stationed out in the makeshift Thracian Limes. Indeed, Gallus’ mood often seemed aligned to that of a bear with a hangover who had just trodden upon a rusty nail. The tribunus’ ice-blue eyes scrutinised every movement of the marching men, just waiting to bark them into line should they dare stray an inch from their positions.

  As he and Sura dismounted, Pavo noticed Gallus’ glare flick across to them. They tensed instinctively.

  Then a heavy pair of hands slapped onto their shoulders from behind. ‘Finished pussying about on horseback, have you?’ a gruff voice spoke.

  Pavo’s heart lurched and Sura yelped beside him. He spun to see Centurion Zosimus, his immediate superior and leader of the other century of the vexillatio. The oak-limbed and granite-faced giant wore a mischievous grin under his shattered nose, and his stubbled anvil jaw and shaven scalp were bathed in sweat.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ the pair replied.

  ‘At ease,’ the big Thracian said, picking some strand of meat from his teeth. Then he frowned, his gaze shifting to the bloodstain on Pavo’s tunic. ‘What happened out there?’

  ‘It’s nothing, the bleeding has stopped,’ Pavo replied. ‘A Gothic scouting party had broken through the temporary limes and they were riding south-east of Adrianople.’

  ‘South-east of the city?’ Zosimus’ eyes widened and his skin paled.

  Pavo bit his tongue in censure, remembering that Zosimus’ wife and young daughter were still in Adrianople. ‘They were just looking for easy pillage sir. Only nine of them – little more than brigands. They were harassing a group of farming wagons but we headed them off. Adrianople itself is still untroubled – we met with a turma of equites from the V Macedonica out there, and their decurion assured me that the city is now well bolstered and garrisoned should the Goths turn on its walls.’

  ‘Aye, well, get your wound seen to in any case,’ Zosimus flicked a finger to the flat-roofed building in the corner of the compound, ‘Gallus has insisted that all such things are checked and cleaned up before we set sail tomorrow. I’m bunking near you and I don’t want bloody maggots crawling about when I’m trying to sleep.’ The big Thracian scratched at his jaw, then clicked his fingers as they made to turn away. ‘Oh, and get straight back out here when you’ve been seen to – Gallus wants to inspect our century this afternoon. We might only be limitanei – as the smart-arses in this city are quick enough to remind us – but he doesn’t want us stumbling out to the east like some rabble of militia.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Pavo nodded stiffly.

  The pair led their mounts to the stable and tethered them there, feeding each a clump of hay by the water trough. From there, they strolled over to the valetudinarium. Inside this medical building was a single, large room with a broad bench running along one wall, strewn with pots, scalpels, forceps and bloodstained linen bandages. Five of the six beds were empty. The sixth bed in the far corner bore the sweat-streaked, hulking figure of Centurion Quadratus, dressed only in a loincloth. A woman stood over him, back turned, tending to his injured ankle. The big Gaul roared in agony as the amber-haired nurse twisted his foot round in its full range of motion.

  ‘Oh stifle your yelping – I thought you were supposed to be a fearless centurion?’ the woman chided him casually.

  ‘In the name of
Mithras – give me more wine!’ Quadratus roared, grappling at the ends of his blonde moustache to distract himself from the pain. His eyes fell upon Pavo. ‘I know you said she was dangerous in bed, but this is bloody torture!’

  At once, the woman stopped what she was doing, stood upright, then spun to face Pavo. Her amber locks swished round in her wake and her usually milky skin was flushed with anger. She rested her hands on her hips and at that moment her sapphire gaze seemed even more fearsome than Gallus’.

  ‘Felicia, I only said that when they had plied me with wine . . . ’ he started

  ‘And anyway,’ Sura butted in in an attempt to help, ‘it’s a compliment, sort of . . . ’

  This only seemed to ignite Felicia’s fury further. Without shifting her gaze from the pair, she reached down and wrenched at Quadratus’ ankle once more, eliciting another hoarse cry from the centurion.

  Pavo and Sura flinched as if feeling the pain first-hand.

  Felicia then strode purposefully over to Pavo. But her anger faded when she saw the blood on his tunic. ‘What on earth have you done to yourself out there?’ She hiked the garment up to examine his ribs. ‘Scouting, you said – how many scouts end up nearly gutted on a Gothic longsword.’

  Sura made eyes at Pavo then motioned to the doorway. ‘Felicia, I’m fine. I’ll leave you two to talk.’

  With Sura gone and Quadratus harrumphing in the far corner, they were alone.

  ‘You seem tense,’ Pavo offered, slipping his hands around her waist.

  She batted his advances away and insisted on prodding at his wound. ‘I spent the morning tearing an arrow head from a boy’s lung,’ she said tersely, lifting his tunic to his shoulders then soaking a pad of linen with acetum and dabbing it across the wound to clear it of blood and dirt. ‘I don’t have time to relax. Now take that filthy tunic off,’ she grumbled, helping him remove the garment so he stood in only boots and loincloth.

  Pavo searched for the right words as she hurriedly wrapped a length of bandage around his lean torso. Felicia had been through so much in these last few years. She had lost everyone. Everyone except Pavo. Now he was to leave her behind.

  ‘If we don’t speak honestly now, Felicia, then . . . ’ his words trailed off and he changed his tack, looping his arms around her once more. When she tried to resist and brush him off again, he gripped her tightly, until he felt her heart beat against his breast. ‘Tonight is our last night together. By noon tomorrow, I will be at sea, headed east. And I will be gone for some time.’

  I might never return, like Father, a voice added from the dark recesses of his mind.

  At last, Felicia’s façade crumbled. ‘Don’t you know that my every thought rests on that?’ she said, her voice cracking. A sob escaped as she buried her head in Pavo’s chest. ‘I’ve heard what the Persian frontier is like. I . . . ’ her voice cracked.

  Pavo held a palm to her face and stroked away a tear with his thumb.

  Felicia met his gaze. ‘Do you even know why you have been summoned there?’

  Pavo could offer nothing. All anyone of the XI Claudia vexillatio knew was that they had to make their way east, to the city of Antioch. There, Emperor Valens would disclose to them the details of this sortie that had so far remained shrouded in mystery. ‘Felicia, I don’t know, even Gallus doesn’t know, but . . . ’ he said, barely realising that he was toying with the outline of the phalera as he spoke.

  ‘But you have to go, regardless?’ she finished. ‘Even if there was no mission, you would have to go east, wouldn’t you?’ She traced a finger over the medallion too now.

  Legio II Parthica the inscription read. Father’s legion. Since the day the old crone had pressed the piece into Pavo’s hand, it had given him strength. Strength to survive after news came to him of Father’s slaying in the sacking of the eastern city of Bezabde. Strength to carry on through the years of slavery that followed. Strength to seize his chance of freedom and serve in the legions. Then, just weeks ago, that had all changed with word brought from the Persian frontier. It seemed that some of the Parthica had survived the fall of Bezabde, being taken captive and sent to toil in the treacherous Persian salt mines.

  Even without horse, coin or water, I would travel east alone to find out what happened to you. If Mithras wills it, I will find you or your bones out there, Father, the voice in his mind answered with alarming clarity. He looked down as a tear of his own splashed onto Felicia’s fingers, then nodded in silence.

  They each looked up, seeing each other through their sorrowful blur, then Pavo pressed his lips to Felicia’s, tasting her salty tears. Their embrace was lasting and they clung to one another, her warmth like a salve to his tired body. It took a gruff grunt from the corner of the room to end their moment, somewhat abruptly.

  ‘When you two come up for air, can I get some wine over here?’ Quadratus moaned. ‘I need something to numb the bloody pain.’

  At this, Felicia’s face split with a wide and toothy grin and she wiped the tears from her eyes. The sight warmed Pavo’s heart. Felicia squeezed his hand then slipped away to tend to Quadratus. Pavo gazed after her, until Gallus’ barking from the walls snapped him from his trance. He looked to the doorway and out into the training yard. The iron tribunus was now descending the stairs to berate his men further. Pavo stepped outside, readying to help Zosimus in gathering the century. He heard the lapping of waves from over the sea walls and saw the masts of the two triremes that would carry them towards the rising sun. A shiver danced across his skin and he answered the dark whispers in his mind.

  To the east, then.

  Chapter 2

  The following morning at dawn the XI Claudia set out on their voyage to Antioch. With a crew of well-fed remiges manning the oars, the two triremes cut through the calm, turquoise waters of the Propontus, startling thick, silvery shoals of fish and weaving between myriad verdant islands. The one hundred and sixty legionaries of the XI Claudia wandered the decks of this miniature fleet – Gallus, Felix, Centurion Zosimus and his century on the lead vessel and Centurion Quadratus and his men on the other. Unburdened of armour and packs, they were in good spirits. On the flagship, they helped with the rigging, jibed with the overly officious beneficiarius’ insistence on supply crates being stacked at perfect right angles, and played dice on the deck in the pleasant early summer sunshine.

  At this stage, Pavo could only laugh at the memory of his previous sea voyage – for some reason he had spent that journey doubled over the lip of the vessel, hurling up bile, but this time his stomach was calm like the still waters. But, when the fleet passed through the Hellespont and entered the waters of the Mare Aegaeum, he remembered exactly why that was. A wind picked up and the waves grew choppy. In moments, Pavo felt as if his gut was on fire and his head spun as if he had drunk too much ale. He staggered across deck to the prow, then doubled over to reacquaint himself with the olives, bread and watered wine he had consumed at the outset of the voyage. His vomiting session roused a chorus of cheering from his comrades, supportively orchestrated by Zosimus and Sura. They were swiftly silenced, however, when a sudden, sharp gust cast some orangey, bilious spray back over their faces.

  Tired and nauseous, Pavo found sleep easy to come by. A stiff northerly wind helped them on past the islands of Chios and Samos and into the southern stretches of the Aegaeum. He woke on the fifth day of their journey as they stopped at the well-fortified port of Rhodos to take on fresh water and rations. Just stepping onto solid land instantly refreshed him. They visited one of the many dockside taverns, but only had time to fill their bellies with a thick and hearty lamb stew and a few jugs of the famed local wine. Quadratus was particularly disgusted at having to leave again so soon – just as a curvaceous local woman was growing merry enough to succumb to his charms. Meanwhile, Gallus had spent the whole time ashore quarrelling with the portmaster about something.

  They set off again, turning east to sail into the Mare Internum and along the coast of southern Anatolia. Pavo took up a
spot at the stern, resting his back against the lip of the vessel, awaiting the return of the vile nausea.

  He pulled a strip of scarlet silk from his belt and held it under his nose. Felicia had scented the piece with a rose perfume. He closed his eyes and imagined nuzzling into her neck, just as he had done on that last night. Gallus had given him leave from the barracks. So, in their tenement room by the Saturninus Gate, he and Felicia had eaten a meal of figs and pheasant, washed down with a jug of rich red wine. They had made love until exhaustion put an end to their endeavours. Then he had slept without nightmares. The visions that had haunted his nights for years rarely let him be; images of Father stood alone on a sea of sand dunes, his empty, staring eye sockets, his hands outstretched, then the sandstorm that always rose and consumed them both. Tears welled in Pavo’s eyes.

  At that moment, a wave rolled under the ship, shaking Pavo back to the present. He braced for the sickness to return. But it did not. He frowned, patting his belly.

  ‘Found your sea legs at last?’ Felix asked, strolling across the deck.

  ‘I pray to Mithras I have,’ Pavo chuckled.

  ‘Well the next test will be to see how we cope in the heat of Syria.’ Felix eyed the horizon and stroked at his forked beard as he said this. ‘This sortie might be little more than policing Antioch or something. They have trouble with partisan urban cohorts in the eastern cities, I hear. We might rarely have to step out of the shade . . . but I doubt it.’

  ‘Do you have anything to go on, sir?’

  ‘About the mission? Not a thing. Not a bloody thing.’ His expression was stern and his gaze had drifted to Gallus, standing near the prow, silent and staring, his plume and cloak fluttering in the breeze. While the rest of the legionaries wore only tunics and boots, Gallus was – as always – encased in armour. ‘I fear the tribunus knows more than he is letting on. He’s protecting us.’ Felix looked to Pavo with the driest of grins. ‘And Gallus rarely shies from scaring the shit out of us. So whatever it is, it will not be pretty.’ Felix took a long pull on his skin of soured wine and issued a brisk sigh. ‘And things are going askew already,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Keep this from the ranks, but we were expecting to meet an escort galley in Rhodos – men sent from Antioch by Emperor Valens to guide us through the pirate-ridden waters ahead and safely to the east.’