Gods & Emperors (Legionary 5)

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Retreat!’ the lead rider called in a jagged Gothic twang. He broke off from loading his horse with sacks of bronze goods found on the back of a hastily abandoned trader’s cart to heel his steed away from the vicus. The rest of his men sped away with him, leaving behind the few injured and dead comrades.

  An instant later and the orchestrated stretching of bowstrings sounded. Panting, Pavo and Sura looked up to see a serried line of haphazardly mustered archers on the parapet – no more than twenty of them though, but enough to let the Goths know their precious moments of surprise were over. The arrows sailed overhead in pursuit of the fleeing riders, landing harmlessly in their wake.

  Pavo watched, transfixed, as the retreating Goths shrank and became but a small dust cloud in the hilly northwest. Even when they were gone, his chest still rose and fell, his body still gripped by the tension of battle. The Magister Officiorum had been right: training the legion out here was simply not an option until the raiding bands of Goths could be driven back. He looked across the vicus, seeing terrified people rushing to and fro, many at the gates begging to be let inside, others on their knees and wailing over the slain. Then he saw the mother he had given bread to. She lay still, robes stained red, her babes wailing in the dirt by her side. He looked up at the parapet. The archers had now set down their bows to squabble and argue with the other few sentries up there about why they had been so slow to respond. If it hadn’t been for the vigilant ballista crews…

  And that was just a tiny party of raiding Goths. What of the horde Fritigern might bring to bear on this city? He looked out over the empty pasture and hills and imagined it crowded with Gothic steel. All of a sudden, the two month wait for Emperor Valens and his Praesental Army felt like years.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the ashen faces of the comitatenses men around him who had lost their centurion and very nearly their own lives too. He stalked over to crouch on one knee by the bloodied form of the fallen officer. The man lay on his back and his pale, chiselled features were now tinged with blue. His breath came in weak rasps and his silvery irises were shrinking as his pupils dilated, but they traced Pavo’s face, as if realising something at last.

  ‘I can see it now…’ he whispered. ‘You are not brethren. You are truly his blood, his brother, aren’t you?’

  Pavo leaned a little closer, confused.

  ‘I found this last week… on the corpse of a man,’ the centurion rasped, a trembling hand reaching inside his cuirass then weakly pressing something into Pavo’s palm. ‘A man… who was a comrade… of Dexion’s.’ The centurion grasped the collar of Pavo’s tunic and shook it feebly. ‘Do you understand?’ he said, his teeth stained with bubbling blood. ‘Brethren…’

  A frisson of chill and warmth shot through Pavo. ‘What?’ he whispered almost soundlessly.

  But the centurion’s next breath was rattling, his body relaxed and his lifeless eyes gazed skywards. Pavo stared through the man, those last words swirling but failing to fall into place in any way that made sense.

  ‘He saved us. Not such a bad fellow after all,’ Sura said as he crouched beside Pavo.

  Pavo blinked, snapped from his trance. ‘Aye,’ he agreed. The man had died a hero’s death and he vowed to make sure that fact would not be lost. He let his gaze drift to the northwest once more, his thoughts skipping like a flat stone across the surface of a lake. Images of that foul dream, the stark reality of the Goths and then the one echoing question that had been haunting him for months:

  Gallus, Dexion, where are you?

  He looked warily into his palm. The centurion had given him a small square of yellowing, folded-up paper. Was this the answer? He stepped away from the others and unfolded it. It bore a striking emblem of a staring eye, and a single line of text.

  Narco holds the truth…

  Chapter 2

  A smoky haze surrounded Gallus in every direction, tendrils of grey that came and went like ethereal asps. He felt no burden of armour, no sting of battle-wounds. Indeed it was as if he was absent from his body and merely a coil of smoke himself. ‘Where am I?’ he whispered into the void.

  Utter silence.

  He peered into the wispy grey, realising that he was now drifting forward through it, towards something. But what? Up ahead, he saw two dimly-lit apertures emerge through the mist: through one he saw noonday sunlight upon a green meadow, heard the chatter of nature and almost tasted the sweet air; through the other, he saw a cavern uplit by an angry, red glow and heard the weak moans of tortured souls within. His question was answered. This was the path to one of two places: the paradise of Elysium, or the eternal torment of Tartarus.

  As he drifted closer to the two gateways, he thought of all his deeds in life and wondered which fate he had earned. Shameful memories lashed him zealously, eager to answer, and he wondered if that alone was not worse than dwelling in Tartarus. An agonised howl from within the red gateway dispelled any such notion. And now, realising he was drifting towards that grim entrance, he gazed towards it, ready to accept his fate.

  ‘Gallus?’ a soft voice spoke through the ether. It was enough to slow his progression to the netherworld. Two figures had appeared in the other gateway, standing on the edge of the meadow, gazing out into the mist. The two who meant everything to him. ‘Gallus, are you there?’ Olivia repeated. By her side and holding her hand was little Marcus, calling out again and again: ‘Father? Father?’ Their eyes were wide and their faces wrinkled with worry. They seemed unable to discern him in the drifting smoke, looking right through him at times.

  ‘I’m here,’ he called to them, but his voice was feeble. ‘I’m here!’

  But at last Olivia’s eyes brightened, she cupped a hand to her ear and her face widened in unbridled joy. She scooped up Marcus and pointed. ‘Father!’ Marcus yelped in delight.

  His will to be with them edged him ever so slightly in the direction of the bright gateway to Elysium. But the pull from the fiery entrance to Tartarus grew stronger in response. Thus, he found himself shackled in this hazy limbo, midway between the two doors. Indeed, he heard a distant clanking of chains as he struggled. ‘But it is time?’ he pleaded into the ether to whichever gods watched over this strange realm, then to Olivia: ‘Surely my journey is over?’

  Olivia’s smile faded. She answered by shaking her head, a tear escaping and darting down her cheek. ‘Your journey is not over yet, my beloved.’ She said, cradling and kissing Marcus’ head. As she said this Gallus heard the odd clanking of chains grow louder, felt himself being hauled back along the smoky path he had travelled. The two gateways began to shrink. His wife and boy fading behind the grey veil.

  ‘No,’ he cried, trying to reach out to them. But his whole being jarred and that distant din of chains grew louder and louder.

  ‘No!’ he bellowed with every scrap of air in his lungs. The grey smoke was gone and all around him was utter blackness. Suddenly, he felt the weight of his body once more, pulling on the cold iron wrist cuffs that suspended him. His cry echoed, cold and lost, off unseen stone walls before fading to nothing. His head throbbed fiercely and acute thirst and hunger stabbed at him. He kicked out weakly with his legs, feeling no ground underfoot and hearing the heavy chains joining his ankles jangle. The motion sent white-hot talons of fire through every fibre of his being. Had Tartarus claimed him after all?

  ‘Lower him,’ a voice spoke. A familiar voice and one that brought reality rushing back to him. This was not Tartarus; this was worse. With a dull rattle of chains rapidly passing through rings, he dropped like a stone. His descent ended abruptly with a jarring impact as he crumpled onto some solid flagstoned surface and collapsed onto his back. Rough hands lifted him into a sitting position, propping him like that from behind. Then one of the hands reached round and burrowed at his eye in the blackness, prizing his swollen eyelids apart. He was too weak to react, his arms still numb. Suddenly, there was blinding light.

  He tried to press his eyes shut again but the grubby fingers held
them open. It seemed like an eternity before his eyes acclimatised and his surroundings became apparent. The blinding light ebbed and he realised it was no more than the dull glow of twilight from some tiny grating high above on the torture chamber ceiling, through which a fine mizzle of rain descended. The grey walls of this vaulted hall were dank and coated in slime and algae and the musty stink fought for supremacy with another, far fouler stench of decaying flesh. For a moment there was near-silence, with just the rhythmic drop-drop of water from a crack above the stone staircase that led up to the world above. He noticed the swaying chains attached to the ceiling from which he had been suspended by his wrists, then looked over his battered body: it was laced with cuts, pitted with scars and spoiled with dark bruises. He was a lean man normally, but now the skin was stretched across his ribs, and every inch of it was coated in a filth of sweat and grime. The loincloth he wore was no more than a rag, stained with blood and urine. He lifted a shaking hand to touch his gaunt features, his wrist shackles clanking and those chaining his ankles grating on the floor as he did so. He felt the swelling where his nose had been broken and the matted blood in the mess of a dark, silver-speckled beard that had grown during his imprisonment and the similar filth caked in his unkempt, overgrown grey-streaked locks.

  A shuffling sound behind him reminded him he was not alone. He turned his head to see the warped features of the man with the grubby hands who was propping him up. The fellow had a mean eye and half a nose – teeth marks still evident where the rest had been bitten off leaving a dark, snout-like hole.

  ‘Eyes forward!’ the man grunted.

  ‘You’ve been told before; Lurco doesn’t like people staring at his deformity,’ the first voice spoke again from somewhere in the shadows at the side of the hall.

  Gallus braced, his eyes darting. Now the drip-drop of water was accompanied by steady footsteps. A dark form moved into view before him, wearing a night-black cloak over a dark grey robe, with a fine spatha sporting a green-gemmed hilt hanging from his belt. This one’s face was expressionless, like a cold, impassive veil.

  ‘An affront to Lurco is an affront to me, you see. The emperor’s chosen Speculatores share a bond of trust,’ Dexion said. He did so without the relish of a torturer – the words were spoken in a steady, calm voice. Polite, almost. He crouched before Gallus, while Lurco took hold of the chains to hold them taut like a master in charge of a hound. ‘A bond of kin. Stronger than any such tie in your legion, Tribunus. Some call us Agentes in Rebus. We consider each within our number as brethren. We live to honour the Brotherhood.’

  Gallus stared into Dexion’s tawny gold eyes – the pupils like bottomless pits of betrayal. Yet there was a hiatus in which he almost mistook the man for Pavo. Apart from the broader face, early age lines near his eyes and the short, chestnut hair, he looked so much like his younger brother… yet never had two siblings contrasted so wickedly. Once, not so long ago, Gallus had taken this man into the XI Claudia as his primus pilus, his second in command. Dexion had proved himself in every way, fighting alongside the men of the legion like a lion, sharing his brother’s courage and spirit. Or so it had seemed.

  His heart grew cold as he recalled the grim moment, just after he and Dexion had arrived here at the city of Augusta Treverorum in the Western Province of Belgica Prima. They had been escorted to the palace court of the Western Emperor to pass on news of the Gothic War in Thracia. Gallus had been glad to do so, even putting on hold his ulterior motive: to seek out Emperor Gratian’s agents, the ones who had slain Olivia and Marcus. Little had he known that throughout the whole, fraught journey west, the man he sought had been right by his side. Dexion the primus pilus had entered Emperor Gratian’s throne room ostensibly to give word of the Gothic War. While Gallus waited outside, he had not seen the speculatores circling behind him, and barely felt the blow to the head they delivered. When Gallus had next come to, he was down here, in irons, faced with some grim apparition of his former second-in-command. Such treachery would have been insult enough, but the dark truths that Dexion had then revealed while Gallus hung in chains had been akin to having his heart torn out.

  ‘Brotherhood, honour? You killed my wife… and my boy,’ he said absently, staring through Dexion. ‘You slew Felicia, your brother’s woman.’

  For just a moment, Gallus was sure the mention of Pavo brought a wrinkle to Dexion’s brow. It was one of the few flickers of emotion he had seen in the man’s face since his incarceration. ‘I do as I am bid,’ Dexion said. Something had crept into his voice that Gallus recognized as disquiet, or its close cousin. His unease faded almost instantly though as he donned that blank, soulless look once more, all expression draining from his features. ‘I kill as my master commands and I do not question it nor let it trouble me. Feelings are but weaknesses.’ He gazed into Gallus’ eyes. ‘Is that not the maxim of the soldier too: to kill and not to dwell upon it? To distrust emotion and keep an iron self-discipline? We are not so different, Tribunus.’

  Gallus’ eyes pinned Dexion. The cur was genuinely interested in debating the matter. ‘Do you sleep well in the palace above?’ he said.

  Dexion cocked his head to one side. ‘I have little trouble in sleeping. My deeds are the deeds of the Speculatores. I do not comprehend guilt – if that’s what you are alluding to. You should understand: I do all of this only to please my master and to honour my brethren.’

  Gallus realised that this was probably the most earnest thing Dexion had ever told him. Behind those golden eyes lay madness. He realised that now. How could a sane man justify such deeds? ‘I was not questioning your conscience,’ he said, ‘I was merely doubting your wisdom.’

  Dexion did not flinch, frown or even scoff, so Gallus pressed on: ‘Would a wise man choose to sleep in a place where, only floors below, his bitterest enemy lurked?’

  Dexion cocked his head to one side, then lifted a section of Gallus’ ankle shackles as if to demonstrate. ‘You languish down here, trussed in wrought iron. My brethren guard these chambers and the palace grounds above are lined with Emperor Gratian’s loyal Heruli: one thousand legionary spears. A wise man can see that you are no threat. For three months you have dwelt in this gloom,’ he said, dropping the handful of chains. ‘Why should I fear you?’ he added calmly.

  Gallus did not flinch, merely looking up at Dexion as the echo faded. ‘For my wife, for my boy. For Felicia. You will pay with your life,’ he said in a low burr.

  Dexion held Gallus’ fierce look with that empty, unfeeling one of his own. There was just a faint twitch. One twitch that seemed to bring the left corner of his eye and the left side of his mouth closer. ‘Feelings crippled you, brought you to this place,’ Dexion replied, gazing through Gallus as if he was an irredeemable son. ‘Perhaps if you were younger and less resistant I could have helped you. I might have been able to teach you how to quash your emotions, how to forget about your slain family.’

  Gallus felt a surge of vigour from somewhere deep within. Despite his numb and tortured body, he shot up with a start, the chains slipping through Lurco’s grip for a moment until they were hauled taut again when Gallus was inches from Dexion’s face, teeth gritted, nostrils flared. ‘Sleep with one eye open and a dagger in your hand, Speculator…’ he growled.

  Dexion stood and calmly wiped away the blood-flecked spittle that landed on his lip. ‘Futile anger,’ he said quietly as Lurco yanked the chains, hauling Gallus back and forcing him onto his knees.

  ‘Shall I raise him to the ceiling again?’ Lurco asked.

  ‘No,’ Dexion called, turning to stride for the staircase, ‘take him to his cell. Let him languish alone with his thoughts. That will be torture enough for him.’

  Lurco whistled and two more speculatores came running in to help unshackle Gallus. The half-nosed man grinned as he unbolted the chains. ‘And then tomorrow, we will do this all over again… ’

  The pealing echo of the iron gate closing took an age to fade. The cells, a further floor down in this netherw
orld below the palace, enjoyed absolutely no daylight. Three recesses fronted by bars were dug into the wet, cold bedrock – one on each wall of the low-ceilinged space with the door leading up to the vaulted torture chamber on the fourth wall. A single sconce crackled and guttered feebly by the doorway and provided a weak bubble of orange light that allowed Gallus to make out bones in the cell opposite, while the other one appeared to be empty.

  When the distant chatter of the speculatores who had brought him down here faded, there was almost total silence. He glanced around the cramped cell: a filthy bundle of rags in the corner for a bed, a wooden bowl filled with barley porridge lay beside it, untouched, along with a cup of brackish water and a waste bucket. Shackles on his wrists and a short length of chain fixed him to the wall – long enough only to allow him to sit down. The silence welled around him as he gazed at his lot, growing and growing into a deafening howl. In the darkest moments of the past there had always been a modicum of hope. In the northern Kingdom of Bosporus and at Ad Salices in Thracia he had his legion with him. Deep in the heart of Persia, incarcerated in the baking sun, he had the troubled centurion Carbo with him – a voice, and a source of support. Here, he was lost. Shackles, iron bars, thick rock, well-trained speculatores and several floors stood between him and daylight, let alone hope.

  He glanced across the cell floor, seeing the semi-circle in the dirt that marked the extent his chains would allow him to move – just a few paces from the wall. Just beyond it lay a shard of flint. It looked no bigger than his thumbnail, but it was sharp, by the looks of it. After every torture session, he had struggled and strained to reach it, stretching his every sinew, his wrist shackles and short chains giving him no chance of reaching it with his hands and, when he stretched out his legs, his toes clawing infuriatingly just a half-foot shy. Today, he felt no urge to renew his efforts. Instead, he contemplated what he might use the piece for. To assault one of the guards then make some bullish attempt to tackle the other three posted in these chambers? Perhaps. Fanciful but perhaps. Then he touched one hand to his neck, feeling the blood there throbbing through his jugular. One thrust, and it could all end here, now. He could bring himself to the twin gateways once more, he could forge a path to Olivia and Marcus. But when he closed his eyes, he saw his wife shaking her head in protest, saw the faces of long-dead comrades making it clear he was unwelcome, saw the image of the precious few veterans of his beloved legion who would be relying on him to return to them. In any case the choice was not his to make: the flint shard was out of reach and that was not about to change.