Gods & Emperors (Legionary 5)

by Gordon Doherty

  Gallus’ eyes narrowed.

  ‘But, Domine,’ the courtier said, confused, ‘now that Merobaudes and his… er, your Praesental Army are already well on their way to the east, you have but a few thousand soldiers to call upon. To tackle over twenty thousand Lentienses with such-’

  A single raised finger from Gratian silenced the man. ‘Merobaudes and the Praesental Army are stationed just south of Argentoratum, just a few days’ march away from the invasion.’

  ‘But… but that’s impossible. They set off from there and went east weeks ago?’ the courtier spluttered.

  ‘No, you heard that they had set off to the east weeks ago,’ Gratian smiled. ‘As did the Lentienses.’

  The courtier’s next words seemed to be stolen from Gallus’ lips.

  ‘Then what of the East, what of Thracia? Did you not advise Valens that you would arrive in relief by the new moon of July? Even if you were to set off now it would be late in that month before we reached his realm.’

  Gratian kept walking, clasping his hands behind his back. ‘Thracia and my dear Uncle Valens? He will simply have to wait… ’

  Those last words – or more precisely the tone of them – turned Gallus’ blood as cold as a winter stream. Was Gratian under some illusion that the situation in Thracia was anything less than grave? Had this boy-emperor truly been playing a game: bating the tribes across the Rhenus and provoking them into an attack at a time when the Eastern Empire was on its knees? He peeled back, well out of sight, and slumped down against the porphyry column, wiping a palm across his sweating face, his eyes darting one way then another. Which way from here? he fretted. Never again might he get as close to Dexion as he just had. And he was marooned in the heart of Gratian’s palace grounds. Surely the bodies in the dungeon would be discovered soon, and a cry of alarm couldn’t be far away. Mithras guide me, what do I do now?

  But it was the rest of the emperor’s exchange as he continued towards the throne room that provided the answer. ‘We should set off before noon,’ Gratian snapped at his entourage, ‘lest that covetous dog Merobaudes takes a notion of crushing the Lentienses invasion before I arrive and garnishing his own reputation with the victory.’

  ‘Then noon it shall be,’ Dexion replied. ‘The Heruli are mustered. Your riders and archers are being readied as we speak. A cohort of the VIII Augusta will meet us outside the city.’

  Gratian seemed unimpressed. ‘Hmm, do we not have any more… expendable types? Soldiers who can screen our march?’

  ‘There is the auxiliary cohort you commissioned,’ Dexion offered. ‘They have been recruiting in the city’s southern slums for a month – beggars, travellers and rogues. They are not due to finish until the end of the summer, but if you wish, I could send a messenger down there to bring whatever number they have together to join us. They would make fine fodder should we meet any ambush.’

  ‘Very well,’ Gratian sighed in mild disgust.

  As the throne room door slammed shut, Gallus’ thoughts tumbled. Argentoratum was south of Treverorum, right on the route back to Thracia. Surely, surely, Gratian would continue east once the Lentienses had been beaten back? He peered round the column again and stared at the throne room door, imagining Dexion within, knowing that fate might just give him another chance. He would be journeying back to the troubled east, it seemed, in the midst of his enemies.

  Chapter 5

  A hot mid-morning summer sun baked Constantinople on the tenth day of June. Outside the thick band of stone protecting the landward side of the city, the countryside had been reclaimed. It had been a masterstroke by Valens and one which had quelled the unrest amongst many of the citizens. The emperor had sent his cataphracti riders out in alae five hundred strong. They had charged into the northern hills in which the nearest Gothic warbands had been lurking, scattering them like birds. Now the folds of green and gold outside the city were carpeted with the accoutrements of a grand camp: tents, regimental banners, timber towers and packed training fields stretched for miles as the Praesental Army made their final preparations for the march that would begin the reclaiming of Thracia. After so many months of preparation and planning, dawn tomorrow would herald the advance.

  Pavo and Sura drained their cups of ale and munched the last pieces of roast goat from the spit they had shared as they walked amongst the bustle. They strode through the thin strip of land between the vicus running along the outside of the city wall and the camp’s edge. Pavo wiped sweat from his freshly cropped hair and shielded his eyes from the sunlight: so many faces, and most of them full of hope, or fixed in bitter determination. To his right, off-duty soldiers cackled and told tall tales as they supped ale and wine in the vicus, while on his right, the clack-clack of wooden swords and the thock-thock of arrows piercing wooden butts inside the camp told of an army eager to prove its worth. Pavo looked up to the city walls and saw, atop the nearest gatehouse, a figure flanked by two white-robed guards, watching over the proceedings. Emperor Valens, he realised. But not the hunched, defeated man from that day in the Hippodrome just over a week ago, nor the panicked man who had beheld the great tidal wave all those years ago. Today, he stood proud, shoulders broad in his white-steel armour. He had worked hard since the riot upon his arrival. Not only in reclaiming the lands outside the city, but also in slashing taxes to ease the hardship the city populace had endured in recent times. He had seen to it that shipments of grain were carefully escorted into the harbours from Egypt, Crete and Cyprus, appeasing fears of famine in the capital – temporarily at least. Getting the precious grain safely to the inland towns and cities that remained in imperial hands would be another challenge, however, but he had tasked his best men with organising a wagon convoy to address this. He had also repealed the long-standing edicts that favoured the Arian Christian temples within the city and promoting freedom of worship. And he had been as good as his word to the armies: re-enlisting the city’s veterans to form new regiments, and instigating a fresh drive of conscription to bring the younger men of Constantinople into the ranks to swell the campaign force further.

  They wandered past a cluster of off-duty legionaries enjoying some wine in the shade.

  ‘When we reach the grounds of Melanthias… that’s where it begins!’ one merry soldier avowed, wagging a finger to his comrades like a sagely tutor. ‘Then, we are in the field – where a legionary should be!’ Most of the legionaries raised their cups and skins and basked them together with a gruff growl of concurrence.

  Pavo had heard talk of Melanthias everywhere. Valens’ imperial manor – a few days’ march east of Constantinople – was to be the base of operations. He had only ever passed the fine, walled estate before, seeing old warhorses put out to stud and new steeds bred to replace them in the fine pasturelands there. Now, the common soldier would call those fields home – for a short time at least.

  ‘No,’ another soldier shook his head like a scholarly father, despite the wild look of inebriation in his eyes, ‘the new moon of July, when Gratian arrives at Melanthias and doubles the size of our army… then it begins!’ Another grunt of agreement and clacking of drinking vessels.

  Pavo felt their hubris tug at his heart. He imagined Gallus and Dexion returning to these lands as part of Gratian’s army. Let it be so, he thought. Once again, he touched a hand to his purse and the leaf of paper in there. Narco holds the truth, he mouthed. What did he hope might be at that remote outpost? Most waystations were but isolated shacks, housing fresh horses for message relay and maybe a small tavern to allow riders to rest and eat. And this one, like all others had surely been abandoned since the Goths had seized control of the countryside.

  They turned into the camp and set off through the sea of tents until they spotted the area demarcated with the familiar ruby banners of the XI Claudia. The cramped barracks in the city was their home no more. Pavo eyed the standards with pride. The legion’s bull emblem was depicted in many ways: rampant, charging or sometimes just head on.

  ‘Sir,’ a vo
ice called out in salutation.

  He looked up to see Rectus saluting as they approached. The lantern-jawed centurion and Libo, his optio, were standing watch with six legionaries from their century. They came to an area of well-trodden grass where a collection of skelf-like young men were standing in a line. Each looked nervously to the head of the queue where Zosimus held sway, seated before a small wooden table. Trupo, acting as aquilifer, stood next to the table in his mail shirt and helm, holding the legion’s eagle standard. Zosimus wore a felt cap on his head from which sweat darted over the backs and sides of his freshly shorn scalp and a fierce expression on his face that seemed contrived purely to terrorise the young men in the line. ‘Next!’ he bellowed.

  ‘Ah, recruits, at last?’ Sura remarked.

  ‘Just when we thought we had been left off the list,’ Pavo agreed, stopping to observe. Most of the recalled veterans had been assigned to the prestigious units of Valens’ Praesental Army or to the more senior comitatenses legions. It had looked like the emergency conscription of young men from within the city might bypass the Claudia too, with lines like this being directed to the other legions first. Today, however, it seemed like the Claudia were at last getting their turn, and there were enough lads in the queue to populate the last few undermanned centuries.

  A weak-chinned young man shuffled up to the table, looked gingerly up at the motionless banner. Pavo could see the lump in his throat as he gulped.

  ‘Don’t look at the bloody banner,’ Zosimus roared, ‘look at me.’

  The lad trembled and stammered some garbled response, pointing at himself and then back to the city.

  Zosimus’ expression of ire faded and he nodded in a placatory manner as he listened. ‘Oh, I see, I see. Very well, that’s alright then. You’re a merchant’s boy and he’ll need you to help run the business.’ He cocked his ear towards the boy to hear more of his mumbling tale. ‘And you have very delicate skin? Yes, a spatha hilt would give you blisters,’ he said in an understanding, avuncular tone.

  A moment of silence followed, then Zosimus shot up from his chair to stand to his full height, his bull-shoulders almost blocking out the sun and his anvil jaw jutting as his teeth ground. ‘If the Goths are not driven back,’ he said in a steady, low voice, ‘then the next time your father tries to take his wares outside of this city, him and his bloody business will be dust. Dust!’ He shoved a leaf of paper across the table to the lad then jabbed a finger into it. ‘Now make your mark,’ he said, handing him a reed pen. ‘Unless it’ll give you blisters?’

  The boy, wide eyed, took the pen with a quivering hand and marked the conscription paper hurriedly.

  ‘That way for your kit,’ Zosimus grunted, sending the boy scuttling towards a large tent.

  The next lad moved up. This one was a short, stocky, confident type, barely seventeen, with his prematurely bald head clean-shaven. Zosimus pushed the paper out to him and proffered the reed pen. The boy waved a hand dismissively. ‘Sorry, not me.’

  Zosimus’ eyebrows shot up in astonishment. ‘Are you deaf? I don’t give a camel’s balls about your family business, your feet not being marcher’s feet, or you being on a bloody promise next week. Sign!’ He stabbed his index finger at the paper.

  The stocky lad did not even flinch, waving his hand again. ‘I told you, not me. Look at me, I’m five feet tall – too short for the legions.’

  Zosimus’ lips bent into a thin smile. ‘Yes, you are a short-arse, but this is the Claudia. That law doesn’t apply to the limitanei anymore… you bloody idiot. Now, sign!’

  Yet still the lad was adamant but beginning to panic. He twisted back to some friend of his in the queue, who gestured hastily to his hand. The stocky lad gulped, then in a flash, pressed his right hand to the table, splayed his fingers, drew out a small knife and stabbed down into the root of his thumb, driving the blade down until the digit fell to the ground. His scream was shrill and drew every eye nearby.

  Pavo groaned.

  ‘Ooft!’ Sura shuddered. ‘He’s going to regret that.’

  Zosimus stood and waved placatory hands to everyone. ‘Nothing to see here, we’ve just got another murcus to deal with.’

  Pavo winced as the stocky lad clutched at his thumbless hand, now coated in blood. The young man still clearly believed that by mutilating his sword hand he would be excused from conscription. Murci, as they had long been known, were indeed once excused in this way. Not anymore.

  ‘Sign,’ Zosimus said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘B… but my thumb?’ the lad gasped, all composure now utterly gone.

  ‘You can cut off your cock for all I care, won’t stop you from service. Sign, then over there to the special tent.’

  The lad at last took the reed pen and signed as best he could with his left hand, then trudged, crestfallen, to an awning beside the supply tent, where a bunch of sour-faced lads holding similarly injured or mutilated hands stood. A centurion of the sagittarii paced around them, appraising his new archers with a menacing grin – they could still shoot a bow with no thumb on their draw hand.

  Pavo sidled over to Zosimus. How’re we looking, sir – enough men from this lot to give us a full complement?’

  Zosimus squinted up at him, a droplet of sweat dangling from the end of his nose. ‘There or thereabouts,’ he said, judging the twenty or so lads remaining in the recruitment column. ‘And they’ve got their rations,’ he added, tapping the table where a haircloth sack lay, drawn down to show an example of the provisions. There was a flask of olive oil for cooking, several strips of salt mutton, three cakes of hard tack dashed with a little salt to keep a marching man thirsty – just thirsty enough to remind them to drink – and a bag of wheat grain to make more hard tack or bread, a round of smoked cheese and a small skin of soured wine. This, each man would march with and could survive on for three or more days.

  ‘So we’re ready?’ Sura asked, looking to the western hills.

  ‘Time to end this at last,’ another voice added. They turned to see Quadratus wandering over to join them. The big Gaulish centurion’s blonde mane was slick with sweat and his tunic coated in dust from a battle drill with the Claudia’s Third Cohort. He was carrying a wooden sword, and slung this across his shoulder as he looked to the western horizon too.

  Pavo met Sura’s eyes and his friend said exactly what he was thinking. ‘Still feels wrong – The Tribunus and the Primus Pilus not being here.’

  ‘Aye,’ the three replied in unison.

  ‘Whatever happens out there – they’ll be with us,’ Quadratus added.

  ‘Always,’ Pavo agreed.

  Chapter 6

  Fritigern stood alone atop Kabyle’s acropolis battlements, resting one foot upon the low parapet. A warm, gentle wind sighed around him, rippling his blue cloak and lifting his long, tousled hair and beard – fiery red streaked with iron grey – as he carved slices from an apple and squinted at the bright noonday sun, enjoying the heat on his lined features. The pastel-blue sky was streaked with a few wispy white clouds. A vulture soared up there on the hot winds, scouring the grasslands for discarded prey. Round and round it banked and circled. He watched it for some time, wondering what it must be like to have no other concern than locating your next meal.

  ‘I’d trade you everything, everything I have, for your wings,’ he said with a wry smile.

  His gaze fell from the skies and swept around the land: a carpet of green pasture and forest, basking in the noonday heat. The glistening blue vein of the River Tonsus tumbled across the land from the west, then wrapped like a protective arm around three sides of the lower town before flowing on to the south. The squat lower town walls enclosed a sprawl of houses, a market, a small basilica and an agora. And then there was this fine acropolis: a rugged hill dotted with black ferns and green shrubs, the well-walled summit housing a fine villa, an arms store, a small Christian shrine and a far more ancient relief of the Goddess Cybele carved into a shard of jutting bedrock. The Romans had built a fine se
ttlement, but now the streets were thronged with the folk of the Gothic Alliance, and the walls manned by tall, fair warriors.

  He gazed to the south. In this direction lay a jumbled range of low, green hills and a tight valley through which the Tonsus flowed on towards the flatlands around Adrianople. Out there lies our future, he mused, for what is there to the north? He twisted to look that way: the horizon there was rugged, with the Haemus Mountains jutting like hazy, silvery fangs in the undulating heat haze. Beyond the mountains and over the Danubius, his people’s ancient homeland had been ransacked by the Huns. Families and armies had been driven south, herded like cattle.

  And how quickly some forget, he thought, lifting an apple slice to his lips and crunching through it forcefully as he looked down into the lower town to see the cluster of squat, yellow-skinned ‘allied’ riders who laughed and joked in their abrupt and jagged tongue, guzzling fermented mare’s milk and spitting. Yet the Huns had been the cause of this, all of this, he mused, seeing one of them mount his sturdy, small pony and ride it in circles to illustrate some tale to his fellows and some Goths too, who whooped with laughter. Before the Huns came, the Goths had a home in the lands north of the river. More, they had an understanding – albeit an at times fraught one – with the Roman Emperor. Now, they had nothing to call their own. Invaders, the Romans called them. A horde, others said – putting them on the same level as the Huns.

  ‘Iudex?’ a voice spoke beside him. Instantly, any ease that remained within him evaporated and his broad shoulders tensed. He cast a sidelong look at the pair who had approached him, unnoticed.

  ‘The Council of Reiks are pressing for another gathering,’ said Reiks Alatheus, tall and lithe with narrow features, long, straight, white hair and dark black eyebrows. He wore bleached linen robes – the garb of a simple man… yet never had Fritigern encountered such a serpentine mind. ‘They wish to discuss uniting the horde.’