Gods & Emperors (Legionary 5)

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘What of this secondary base?’ Victor pressed. ‘Perhaps it can be reached with less risk. If so, you know I can bring its walls down for you, Domine.’

  ‘A man can only bring down a battlement if he knows where it is,’ Valens replied waspishly. ‘My exploratores have been relentless but unsuccessful in their efforts to penetrate northern Thracia. The location of the second Gothic camp remains a mystery.’

  ‘Then what are we to do?’ Saturninus interjected. ‘The legions were glad to march from Constantinople. But we are once again still. Indecision and inactivity will sap morale faster than the sight of the Gothic army. Respectfully, Domine, surely we cannot simply sit here idly until Gratian comes with his western armies to save u-’

  ‘Indeed we cannot,’ Valens snapped, cutting the slight general off, then dipping his head with a sigh. ‘We must loosen the Gothic grip on these lands, break the roving warbands in a way that does not risk everything.’

  ‘So the riddle remains: how can we break this… this splintered horde… if we cannot march out to face them?’ Traianus argued.

  Valens chose not to respond. Instead, he turned to the tent flap. ‘Bastianus?’

  All heads turned that way in confusion. In stepped a man. Pavo’s eyes widened: it was the crazed, bald fellow with the eyepatch who had ridden in at dawn. This was Bastianus, the famed general from the west, he realised, standing tall when the man’s manic stare met his. Traianus, Victor and Saturninus cast a sour eye at the newcomer, and a fair few grumbles sounded, along with a muttered curse from Quadratus, bristling by Pavo’s left.

  ‘Nothing wrong with the size of my cock and balls despite what that bugger says,’ the big Gaul groused. ‘Caelia at the brothel even nicknamed me Longinus. Said she could hardly walk after-’ An elbow in the ribs from Zosimus was enough to silence the disgruntled centurion.

  Valens bristled at the noises of discontent. ‘Traianus remains my direct second in command as Magister Militum, Saturninus and Victor will guide my cavalry, each as a Magister Equitum. Today, Bastianus joins my consistorium as Magister Peditum, in charge of the infantry. More, he will solve the riddle of the splintered horde.’ He motioned to the map table and stepped away, offering the floor to Bastianus.

  Bastianus’ yellow-toothed grin broadened as he swaggered up before the table. For a moment, he seemed nonplussed as to what was being asked of him, his bulging eye meeting every man and holding them in mild disdain, one hand going to his crotch and adjusting himself as if he was devoid of company. ‘You’re here, eh? And you,’ he muttered to himself as if judging each fellow there with the one bulging eye. ‘Gods, not you… you smell of burnt horse.’ He lifted a wine jug and filled a deep cup to the brim, before guzzling the drink in one go. ‘Hmm, had better.’

  Finally, prompted by Valens’ awkward clearing of the throat, he seemed to realise where he was again and turned his attentions to the map table. ‘Hah!’ he exclaimed, scowling in derision as he eyed the colouring and borders that showed Thracia as solid Roman territory. He drew a cane from his belt and dug it under the nearest pin holding it to the table’s surface. With a pop, the pin flew out of the wood, lodged in the ceiling of the tent and the corner of the map rolled up. He did the same with the next pin then the last two, then batted the rolled up map off the edge of the table. Finally, without ceremony, he booted the table over on its side and stood in its place.

  ‘Much better,’ he boomed, utterly unfazed by the many wide eyes. ‘Damned maps. I never was much of a fan of these carefully etched and polished things. Always out of date by the time they’ve been drawn. Now, step back,’ he said, waving his hands at the gathered officers as if he was shooing a clowder of cats. Pavo realised then that this man’s abrupt manner that morning had been nothing out of the ordinary. Recruit, officer and emperor were subject to his low toleration of everything, it seemed.

  Bastianus crouched on his haunches, took his cane and poked a dot in the dirt of the tent floor by his right foot.

  ‘Here is where it all began: at my villa in Italy. The place where I’ve been sitting on my arse for the last three years. Drink and whores are fun for a few months, aye,’ he said, his bottom lip curling and his lone eye growing distant in recollection. Quadratus’ hostile stance eased a bit too, the big Gaul nodding in appreciation. ‘But after that, it all became stale, suffocating. No good, no good at all… a mind left to seed is quick to grow wild… become tangled in vines of dark thought,’ he said, tapping his temple, then laughing shrilly as if someone had whispered a joke in his ear. ‘And what use is talking to oneself – when you know the endings to all your own stories!’ He said then issued another burst of deafening, staccato laughter, regardless of the fact that nobody else made a sound.

  ‘He’s bloody insane,’ Zosimus whispered, then cast a look at Sura. ‘He might even take your crown.’

  Sura opened his mouth to defend himself, unsure whether to be angry that his crown was about to be taken or because he had just been called insane. Bastianus continued before he could make his mind up.

  ‘So I was most grateful to be summoned to a place where I can display my talents,’ he offered a vague nod of deference to Valens, then drew a meandering line across the dirt in front of his feet to indicate his journey east, ‘and now I’m here… no thanks to my shitbag escort riders,’ the line stopped just to his left. ‘Thracia!’ he proclaimed, tapping another point in the dirt and drawing a rough outline of the diocese around it. ‘Thracia… land of the Goths!’

  A stunned silence prevailed, but nobody dared to counter the assertion.

  ‘So what in Hades does an army like this,’ Bastianus held out his arms as if to encompass the camp, ‘need me for? What can one man do to make thirty thousand stronger?’ He cast his bulging eye across them all then theatrically pulled his eyepatch proud of his face and let it snap back into place as if to punctuate the question. ‘The answer lies in organisation. Organisation and tactics that may not be familiar to – or favoured by – most of you.’

  ‘Domine,’ Traianus interrupted, ‘I implore you to reconsider my plan instead.’

  Bastianus rocked back on his haunches, smiling thinly up at Traianus in a way that one does when in foul company. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell us how you would tackle countless small bands of roving Goths. You have fought such a war before, yes? Where the enemy roams at speed like jackal packs, strikes when you least expect it then melts away before you? Tell us, will you?’

  Silence followed, spoilt only by Traianus’ teeth grating.

  ‘No? Then I will continue,’ Bastianus said, tapping his cane on the dirt map again. Pavo saw a sparkle in the man’s eye: maybe, just maybe, a sound mind lay behind that veil of lunacy.

  ‘I propose to play the Goths at their own game,’ he said, then grinned wickedly, ‘a game at which I am adept – ask the Persians, the Egyptians and the rebels in Gaul!’ He made several dots in the ground with the end of his cane, north of the spot he had earlier demarcated as ‘here’. ‘Fritigern knows we cannot force him into a pitched battle as long as his damned warbands remain dispersed. We know we cannot risk marching our entire army north while those warbands are at large – even when Emperor Gratian brings his armies to these lands to aid us it will be so.’

  Traianus scoffed. ‘Which we already know. What other wisdom do you have to share: that a horse can outrun a man?’

  Bastianus’ grin grew taut, the only sign that he had heard the gibe. ‘Give me not a half of the army, not even a quarter: I ask for just a selection of centuries from a few specialist legions. I’ll need slingers, javelin throwers, riders, archers…’ his good eye met with the Claudia four, ‘and one good, solid legion too – one whose men know this land well?’ he said, glancing to Valens, who nodded.

  Pavo felt the tide of fate changing there and then.

  ‘Give me around two thousand men in total, and I can herd these hairy bastards, compel Fritigern to bring his horde together, drive him to face us on the field as one force.’
He made a large, solid circle in the centre of the patch of dirt, representing the Gothic horde reunified. ‘What say you?’

  ‘With respect, sir, how can a few thousand from this army hope to better thirty or more roving warbands?’ Zosimus asked.

  Bastianus fixed him with that possessed stare. ‘By way of surreptitious artifice, my good man.’

  Zosimus’ blank look was reply enough.

  ‘Damned dirty tricks!’ Bastianus clarified. ‘We will be swift as deer, silent like hawks, unseen like shadows in the night. We will move with no armour – just shields, helms and spears. The Goths will never have faced such an enemy in these lands. Now, I ask again, what say you?’

  A murmur of discussion rippled around the principia. None wanted to be the first to voice approval. But the one man who mattered gave his: ‘Choose your men today, requisition what supplies you need from the wagon train this afternoon, and be ready to set out by dawn tomorrow,’ Valens said. ‘You have the remainder of June and early July to force Fritigern to bring his horde together. By the time you return,’ he paused as if he had smelt a foul odour, ‘my nephew will have arrived with his Western legions, the armies of East and West can march north and the war can be won.’

  With that, Valens strode from the tent. The murmur of interest returned, each officer sharing their hopes and doubts. Pavo, Zosimus, Quadratus and Sura looked at one another blankly.

  ‘Did I just hear that right?’ Quadratus said at last. ‘Is that mad bastard taking charge of the Claudia in some-’

  ‘Quadratus!’ Pavo hissed through his teeth, seeing Bastianus approaching behind the big Gaul.

  But Quadratus continued. ‘-in some half-baked foray into enemy territory?’

  A hand slammed down on Quadratus’ shoulder as if in reply. ‘Ah, my new charges!’ Bastianus grinned at each of them. ‘Fancy a wander into the Goth-ridden north?’

  Pavo felt that familiar tussle of ice and fire in his belly. More, his eyes caught on Bastianus’ dirt map and he thought of the paper in his purse, of the waystation at Narco... out there in the Gothic-occupied countryside.

  He returned Bastianus’ grin with a slightly less maniacal one of his own.

  Chapter 8

  A humid, damp mid-June air swirled around the forest trail as Gratian’s forces from Treverorum – three thousand strong – marched at haste, bathed in a mesh of watery sunshine and shade cast down from the canopy of sycamore and hornbeam. Deer and birds scattered in fright at the sight of the approaching iron column. First the Heruli legion crunched past, then a unit of archers and three turmae of equites. Sandwiched in between these riders and the scale-clad rearguard cohort of the VIII Augusta legion was Gratian’s retinue. Here, Dexion rode a white mare alongside the Western Emperor on a silver stallion. He had shed his black speculator robes and once again donned his military garb: a white-plumed helm, a baked black leather cuirass and the gem-hilted blade by his side.

  ‘The clearing north of Argentoratum lies just ahead, Domine,’ Dexion said, flicking a finger to the oval of sunlight between the trees some half a mile ahead. ‘If our scouts’ observations were accurate, then our foe is headed there. And Merobaudes should have moved into position by now, waiting for your signal.’

  Gratian’s expression was one of pure equanimity, but his reply was acerbic. ‘Waiting, yes, that would be best for him. He is a tempestuous one, and I hope for his sake he is not tempted to crush this Lentienses invasion and take the glory for himself.’ He examined his fingernails as if discussing the mundane. ‘For I’d have his guts drawn from his belly if he did. He thinks of himself as a kingmaker and potential emperor. He is nothing but my pet hound.’

  Dexion imagined the big, gruff Frankish general taking the acclaim of the army and pictured his master’s displeasure. ‘All will play out as we have planned, Master,’ he said. He eyed the thinning of the trees ahead, and an idea formed. He glanced over the auxiliaries that Gratian had insisted on mustering in his haste. They were the dregs of the army. Pacified Franks, Quadi and Saxons marching alongside criminals and beggars scraped from the streets of the Gallic provinces who could find no place within the legions. They were denied the relative luxury of marching on the track and instead had to scuttle like animals through the undergrowth. Ostensibly, they would spot any signs of enemy activity or potential ambush early; in reality, they marched on the flank to absorb any such ambuscade – their lives worth little and their number easy to replace, unlike Gratian’s legions.

  ‘I suggest we send the more… easily replaceable troops up to the treeline first.’

  Gratian considered the idea for a moment then nodded.

  Dexion bowed curtly then heeled his mare away from the emperor’s side, off over the damp bracken to the right of the track and into the tangled roots and foliage of the woods. His nose wrinkled as he eyed – and smelt – the auxiliaries: some wore soft leather tunics and woollen trousers, with their wild hair and beards unkempt like the barbarians and vagrants they were, and only a few wore mail or helms or anything resembling Roman armour. They carried axes, clubs and spears. Their ‘march’ was more like the loping surge of a wandering rabble. They were the antithesis of the well-ordered legions.

  ‘Ahead,’ he barked at them. They looked up, their filthy, gurning faces uncomprehending. Dagr, the big, spike-haired auxiliary centurion shrugged.

  ‘Scout the glade ahead!’ Dexion roared, waving his hands towards the treeline as if to shoo them. ‘If the tribesmen are there, send a signal,’ he made a mock bird noise by cupping his hands to his lips. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dagr replied gruffly and grudgingly. A moment later, a few grunts in the Frankish, Quadi and Saxon tongues relayed the order. As the group forged further forward, Dexion kicked his mare’s left flank in order to return to the column, but his horse refused to turn, rearing up instead with a panicked whinny.

  ‘Whoa!’ he yelled, struggling to control the beast. Only as it settled did he notice the auxiliary who had been in his mount’s way. This fellow wore a grubby, grey robe and a badly-crafted ridge helm with broad cheek-pieces, a nose-guard and a jutting brow that shaded his face.

  ‘I apologise, sir,’ the man muttered hoarsely, backing away.

  A flare of anger stole through Dexion’s veins. His top lip curled and his hand rose to strike the wretch, but he stopped, closing his eyes tight and cursing himself for letting emotion break free of that dank prison within him. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the fellow had run off to join his band. ‘If the fool is as clumsy in battle he will die anyway,’ he muttered.

  As he walked his mount back to Gratian’s side, an odd sensation passed over him: like he was being watched. He looked back to the auxiliaries, but saw just their vague forms, part-cloaked in shade or veiled by undergrowth.

  Gallus cast a furtive look over his shoulder, just as Dexion turned his head to look back also. He was sure the speculator’s eyes met his, but it seemed that the shadows had saved him.

  ‘You’ll never know how close you were, you whoreson,’ he whispered, clutching his wrist – still stinging from the strike of the horse’s flailing hoof that had knocked the knife from his hand. An arm’s reach was as close as he had come in this last week of marching south from Treverorum, and he realised that he might never get so close again.

  ‘You, wolf-eyes!’ a voice startled him. He swung to see Dagr, the centurion with his hair limed into spikes, gesticulating at him. This man and the rest of the century had been thrown together hastily as Gratian had hurried his army to this place. It was only that haste that had allowed Gallus to steal from the palace grounds and slip into the ranks at the market square mustering. ‘You did not hear? Wide!’

  Gallus took up his spear and battered shield – along with his helm, these were his only armaments – then hurried to fan out like the rest of the auxiliaries. As he ran, a wave of perspiration trickled down his back, the saltiness stinging his as yet unhealed torture wounds. His limbs still ached, covered in bruises that ha
d grown black, and the burns on his skin still stung like fire. That Gratian’s army had left Treverorum before word could spread of his escape from the dungeon was a slim blessing.

  ‘Left,’ Dagr demanded, pointing to the leftmost spot in the rough line the auxiliaries had formed.

  Gallus took up his place and crept towards the treeline. They emerged from the trees into the western edge of a broad circular clearing, carpeted with tall grass and stretching a good mile. The trees were like a wall around the space, apart from the southern edge, where steep, bare hills rose. They crouched, using the grass like a veil. A fine, warm mizzle drifted across his face and a rich scent of warm, damp earth and grass swam around him. He looked up to see the sky was an odd mixture of bulging, angry grey cloud and watery sunshine, breaking through in bright shafts that illuminated the rain and dotted the heavens with vivid halos and bands of colour. All was silent for a heartbeat. Then he heard the distant, muffled refrain of one man’s caterwauling cry, a moment of silence, then a wall of many thousands of ferocious, baritone replies. He felt the ground shudder with each repetition, the noise and the tremor growing too.

  ‘Lentienses,’ Dagr whispered, stretching his neck up to look over the tall grass, his eyes narrowing and his tongue darting out to dampen his lips.

  Gallus followed his gaze, trained on the clearing’s northern treeline. There, emerging from the shadows, came a swarm of men. Hundreds poured into the clearing, then thousands. Within moments they covered the northern and western parts of the expansive glade entirely. He had not given much thought to the clash with this tribe, all his focus instead on Dexion. But he was here, and this battle had to be fought. Grudgingly, he accepted the swell of emotion that washed over him as he made a rough count of the enemy. Eighteen thousand – the bulk of the raiding horde – almost all of them infantry. Most were bare-chested and their hair was streaked bright red with some kind of dye. Gallus recognised the viciously barbed javelins they pumped aloft with every repetition of the fierce cry: the ango, dread of the legions. Many others wore leather straps on their chests with several small, curved francisca axes tied there: another lethal weapon. He pinpointed the source of the rallying cries: a man on horseback wearing a gilded helmet, an iron-plate vest and a bear pelt on his shoulders.