Gods & Emperors (Legionary 5)

by Gordon Doherty

  No orders were given. Every man had been well-drilled as to what was to happen. Instead, Bastianus silently flicked a hand towards the western end of the valley. Pavo looked to Zosimus and Quadratus, offering them a firm nod. ‘Be seeing you two soon?’

  ‘If Mithras wills it,’ Zosimus said with a dry half-grin.

  Agilo peeled away along the valley floor like a cat with Bastianus close behind. Pavo led his Second Cohort in their wake, leaving the rest of the legion and the various missile troops behind. They moved in near silence. When they emerged from the western end of the valley, they saw what looked like a huge, shadowy, winding serpent on the move, a quarter mile to the south: the dark, winding waters of the River Hebrus, tumbling endlessly eastwards. They made good time across the dry grassland to come to the river’s northern bank, then followed the course of the waterway, westwards and upriver along its grassy hinterland, just a gentle crunch-crunch betraying their presence in the darkness. Owls hooted as if awoken by their passage, and crickets chirped rhythmically, as if dictating the step of the march.

  Pavo drew closer to Bastianus. ‘How far, sir?’ he whispered.

  ‘See that kink in the river up ahead?’ Bastianus replied, his lone eye trained there.

  Pavo peered into the night, eyeing the S-shaped meander, a half-mile beyond. There was the faintest orange glow on the northern riverbank. Campfires. The glow spread across a fair chunk of the land there. Two thousand horsemen, he thought. Two thousand mounted spears.

  Bastianus seemed to hear his thoughts. ‘Without their horses, they’ll be no match for us. We get inside the perimeter, scatter the horses then hammer the riders,’ he said. ‘Now drop back, pick six of your men, six you can trust,’ he added. ‘We’re going in first.’

  Pavo nodded and fell back. His first thought was to find Sura. He peered through the darkness, knowing his optio would be at the back of the first century.

  ‘Sura, you’re with me.’

  Pavo tapped Trupo and Cornix on the shoulder as he passed them, plus three others who were of the same calibre – Melus, Herma and Opis. ‘To the front,’ he whispered. The seven returned to Bastianus’ position just as the Magister Peditum brought the cohort to a halt before a fallen ash trunk a quarter mile from the glow up ahead. Now they could make out some detail: the Gothic camp was laid out in a huge semi-circle, the flat side hugging the water’s edge.

  ‘We’re ready,’ Pavo said. But Bastianus said nothing. Pavo noticed the troubled look in the man’s bulging, lone eye. ‘Sir?’

  ‘They’ve got a strong watch. Stronger than I thought,’ he muttered so only Pavo heard. ‘Look.’

  Pavo peered into the darkness until his eyes allowed him to see what Bastianus had seen: a myriad of torches at the camp’s perimeter. The blur of orange told of a double or triple watch.

  ‘There’s no way they could have wind of our plans,’ Agilo cut in, seeing it too.

  ‘No,’ Bastianus said with a dry laugh and a glance to the night sky, ‘but they’ll have heard about us, no doubt. Vigilant bastards.’

  ‘We haven’t engaged yet. There’s still time to retreat,’ Agilo suggested.

  ‘Damn, no. The men’s morale would be dashed. Doubt is a dread beast that can crush an army… ’ his words trailed off and he looked up. As if a sadistic god was listening, the restless clouds above had parted, casting a shaft of bright moonlight down on the stretch of ground between the camp and the legionaries, the fringes of the light touching the ash trunk, illuminating Bastianus’ craggy and sweat-bathed face. ‘Down!’ he spat. At once, the cohort dropped to their knees and bellies in the grass, the fallen ash their only veil. Pavo, Agilo and Bastianus dropped to sit, backs to the trunk.

  ‘Cah!’ Bastianus groaned, palming at his face. ‘We’re pinned here!’

  ‘Not for long,’ Pavo suggested, looking up. ‘The clouds are restless.’ He thought of something then, something someone had told him. ‘Time is like a turning sword: in one breath its tip hovers at your belly, the next its hilt lands in your palm.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Bastianus mused, casting a sour and impatient look at the moon. ‘But there are only so many hours of darkness to work with.’ He gestured to Agilo, who rose and crept to the end of the ash trunk, carefully edging his head round to peer out at the Gothic camp.

  ‘Like a turning sword,’ Bastianus chuckled. ‘Where did that line come from? You’re too young for the sagely maxims.’

  Pavo smiled wryly. ‘Tribunus Gallus. He had us hide in an eyrie for four days once, just waiting for the chance passage of a Hun scout who would have discovered the Claudia’s position had he got through. Miserable, it was. Freezing rain then snow. At one point I thought my balls had turned blue and fallen off.’ He arched one eyebrow. ‘We stopped the Hun scout though – skidded down from the eyrie and leapt on him as he rode through. Knocked him out with a punch that broke a knuckle… luckily I couldn’t feel my hands.’

  Bastianus glanced sidelong at him. ‘Gallus, aye? I’ve heard your lot talking about him. The Iron Tribunus, they call him. What’s his story? Did he fall in battle?’

  Pavo almost laughed dryly at the question. What’s his story? Now there was a tangled and slippery rope. ‘He and our primus pilus, Dexion… my brother, rode west last winter to take word to Emperor Gratian’s court. The Cursus Publicus was in a mess, you see, and somebody had to warn Gratian about the fall of the mountain passes and the Goths’ seizure of Thracia.’

  Bastianus’ gaze, flicking up to the still fully-visible moon every so often, now fell to Pavo and stayed there. ‘This pair travelled… to Gratian’s court?’

  ‘They did,’ Pavo replied.

  Bastianus’ brow knitted and his manic eye was masked in shade for a moment.

  The silence that followed reminded Pavo of something. ‘That look on your face, I’ve seen it once before. Old Comes Geridus at the Succi Pass wore that same expression when I asked him about Gallus and Dexion’s chances of making it there and back.’ His eyes grew distant for a moment as he recalled the old man’s words. ‘Put your faith not in emperors, but in your gods and comrades,’ he said to me. The memory sent a shiver up his spine, despite the balmy night air.

  ‘Old Geridus?’ Bastianus chirped. ‘Now he was a wily bastard.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  Bastianus flashed a pithy grin. ‘He and I endured years – too many years – close to the Western Court.’

  ‘So what did he mean by it?’

  Another silence followed, then Bastianus sucked in a breath as if having resolved on a diplomatic answer. ‘One of the reasons I came east was to serve Valens – a leader who retains my respect. The West is becoming a tangled nest of spies and informants. The boy-emperor and his agents… how can I put it,’ his words trailed off as he shook his head and looked Pavo in the eye with that earnest glint which replaced the madness every now and then. ‘What are we and our comrades, but pawns of Gods and Emperors?’

  The phrase seemed to usher the cold breath of watching shades over Pavo, and the pair beheld each other for a moment.

  ‘Sir!’ Agilo said suddenly, causing them both to start.

  ‘By the gods, man-’ Bastianus gasped, but when he saw the urgent look on Agilo’s face, his head shot up like a curious hare, poking just up over the fallen ash. Pavo and Sura peeked over too. The moonlight – a bane just moments ago – had now shifted away to shine on the Gothic camp, illuminating the many milling men, tents, torches and campfires. The watch was thick indeed – a sentry every ten paces on the curved landward edge of the camp. But Agilo was gesturing to the riverside edge of the camp – watched by just a few warriors, strolling to and fro along the water’s edge where the current lapped at a steep earthen banking. Pavo also noticed that the middle of this section of river was turbulent and choppy, with swirling whirlpools and foaming rapids, glittering like silver treasure in the moonlight.

  ‘They assume they will not be attacked from that side, that no enemy can cross the river,’ Pavo whi
spered.

  ‘Nobody but a fool would try,’ Sura added, a grin growing on his face. ‘But we can wade up the shallows on this side. And that banking will hide us if we stay low and quiet.’

  ‘Yes we can,’ Bastianus chuckled. ‘You see that copse?’ he pointed to a tangled cluster of beech trees on the section of the banking running alongside the camp, just a few paces from the pen of Gothic war horses. ‘That’s our bridgehead. We work our way through the shallows to it. From there, we can get to their horses and scatter them. Then… ’ he patted the buccina tied to his belt and nodded back to the waiting Second Cohort.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Sura whispered.

  Bastianus shot a finger in the air. ‘Just one more thing.’ He rummaged at his belt and untied a small sack of something, then pulled out a clod of earthy matter, gestured to Sura and dropped it in his palm.

  ‘What the?’ Pavo recoiled. The stench hit them all at the same time. ‘Dung?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Bastianus cackled, ‘the Gothic horses will get jittery if they smell men approaching, but they’ll relax if they smell that. And more to the point,’ he said, taking a handful for himself and wiping it over his face gleefully, lifting his eyepatch to smear some around the edges of the gnarled cavity underneath, ‘that damned fickle moonlight and the torches in there might be the death of us and our pale faces. Go on,’ he urged Sura to do likewise.

  Sura looked around for support. Finding none, he muttered some curse about the dung smelling like Quadratus, then accepted the order as one might accept the lash of hail or the sting of a wasp, smearing it over his face too. Trupo, who had been chuckling quietly at Sura, then fell silent when Sura handed the dung to him. Sulking and dung-smeared, Trupo then handed it on and it came at last to Pavo, who held his breath and wiped the filth across his face.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Bastianus cackled.

  Just then, the troubled sky cast cloud across the moon and stole its light entirely. Now the river, the camp and the ground leading up to it were veiled in night once more.

  ‘The sword has turned,’ Bastianus grinned wryly at Pavo. ‘Are we ready?

  ‘Ready,’ the small group replied in unison.

  Bastianus’ eye shrunk to a slit as he rose and climbed over the fallen tree trunk. Pavo, Agilo, Sura, Trupo, Cornix, Melus, Herma and Opis followed him, while the rest of the Second Cohort remained concealed behind the toppled tree.

  Moments later, they crept into the shallows, wading forward quietly. Agilo and Bastianus led the way, with Pavo and Sura close behind and the others bringing up the rear. The water felt icy-cold on Pavo’s shins and thighs and in stark contrast to the balmy night air. The hiss of the rapids disguised the splashing as they moved, but the current in the shallows grew stronger the further they went and the sucking mud on the riverbed seemed determined to hamper their progress. When they drew up to the edge of the Gothic camp, they ducked to keep the earthy banking between them and the eyes of the riverside sentries and moved just a pace every few breaths. Pavo’s feet seemed to sink ever deeper into the mud with every step, the water growing deeper, coming up to his chest to make the going even more difficult. Indeed, the current was now pulling at his legs. One sudden surge nearly knocked his feet from under him and he snatched at a loose root in the banking just before the water could haul him from the bank and out into the deeper sections… out into full view. Then, as if to warn the Gothic guards, a dull clap of thunder pealed across the angry sky. The monstrous sound chilled Pavo even more than the water.

  But he saw Bastianus and Agilo up ahead. They had made it to the beech copse and were crawling up the banking there, secreting themselves within the mesh of branches. He pressed on to join them, when an unwelcome sound pinned him. Footsteps then breathing, right above him. Glancing up, he saw a pair of bearded warriors on the edge of the banking, towering over him, gazing out over the river, oblivious to his presence only feet below. Just a few shoots of grass and ferns part-veiled him from them. The breath halted in his lungs and suddenly the muddy torrents swirling around his ankles felt like clawing hands, eager to prize him out from under his scant veil. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sura, Trupo, Cornix, Melus, Opis and Herma, backs pressed flat against the muddy incline to stay hidden. Pavo tried to edge away from the spot, when the swirling cloud parted to cast down a bony finger of moonlight, right upon him. He froze, swore silently then mouthed a prayer of thanks to Bastianus for the dung. Above, the two warriors began chatting and Pavo knew he was pinned here. As they talked, he caught fragments of their conversation. He knew enough of the Gothic tongue to piece it together.

  ‘…the Thervingi warbands who have fled back to Kabyle?’ he spat. ‘Water–for-guts! Yet they’ll doubtless be first in line to take the grain handouts – especially with their beloved Fritigern running that place. But we’ll get our share – by Wodin’s Sacred Grove we will,’ one said testily.

  ‘Maybe not from Kabyle. But we’ll ride to the river fort if we have to,’ another Goth agreed. ‘They say the silo there is overflowing with plundered grain. And it’s packed with other treasures. You see the helm and vest our leader parades in?’ Pavo saw them both turn to look back into the camp. ‘Roman armour. He found it in that very same place last winter when he helped set up the permanent camp there.’

  ‘But it is many days’ ride to the north. When next will we be riding that way?’

  Pavo’s skin tingled. A second Gothic stronghold? A fort laden with vital grain and more? He realised they were talking about the elusive secondary Gothic camp. Many days ride to the north, by a river? He turned his head to hear more, eager to catch one word, one clue that would narrow it down just a fraction.

  But suddenly the torrents strengthened, stealing his foothold on the riverbed, hauling him out into the deep water. Cold panic shot through him. He slung out a hand at another loose root protruding from the earth and grasped it firmly. The panic ebbed as the tendril held good… but only for a heartbeat: with a chorus of snapping and cracking, the root tore free of the banking. Out he was dragged, towards the rapids.

  ‘Oh shi-’ he hissed, then felt something heavy crash down upon his head. An instant later and he was under the surface, water shooting up his nose, bubbles, reeds, algae and murk all around him and the quarter-breath in his lungs demanding to be refreshed already. Panic set in and he thrashed instinctively for the surface. Only when two hands grasped at his biceps and shook him did he make sense of it all: Sura, a few inches away, gazed at him wide-eyed through the swirling water where he too was crouched, his head like Pavo’s just a foot under the surface, his left hand clasped around a cluster of eelgrass, anchoring the pair against the pull of the rapids. His friend pressed one finger to his lips before jabbing it upwards.

  Pavo twisted his head towards the bank and froze. Looking up from his fish-eye view, he saw the rippling shapes of the two Goths, edging down a less-steep section of the banking to the waterline. He heard their dull, warbling voices vibrating through the water.

  ‘What was that noise?’ one asked, eyes combing the dark surface of the water.

  ‘Eels no doubt,’ the other replied. ‘Taste good if they’re cooked long enough.’

  ‘Go on,’ the first said, pointing at what must have been a swirl of bubbles above Pavo and Sura, ‘spear it. Or do you need me to rope it to a tree before you can kill it, like the Roman bitch from Beroea the other day?’

  ‘Eh?’ the second Goth snapped in reply. ‘I’ll show you,’ he growled then stomped out into the shallows, wading towards Pavo and Sura.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Sura warbled with an escaping air bubble as they saw the Goth’s booted legs coming towards them. The spear lanced into the water and split Sura and Pavo apart, but missed both, wedging between two rocks. Laughter sounded from the banks as the first Goth turned away to stroll off along the bank. ‘Lost your spear as well,’ he said as he went.

  ‘Balls to you,’ the shamed spearman snarled, turning to wade from the river also.

&nbs
p; Pavo felt fire in his lungs now, as if they were set to burst. As soon as the two Goths were up the banking and back in their camp he could rise and… but the angry spearman halted, turned round and came back to the river again. ‘While I’m here,’ he grunted, then stuck a hand into his trousers, rummaged and pulled out an enormous appendage.

  Horrified yet unable to move or react, Pavo and Sura watched as the Goth sighed and unleashed a jet of urine into the water where they hid. On and on the man’s bladder delivered. Mithras make it stop! Pavo screamed in his mind as the water grew a tad warmer. Black spots tinged the edges of his vision and he felt his limbs weaken as the air in his lungs grew foul. The Goth finally stopped urinating… for a heartbeat, before continuing, this time in a thicker, more voluminous flow and a relieved groan.

  To Hades with this, Pavo thought, reaching down by his side where the man’s spear was embedded in the riverbed. He prized it from the rocks, then swung it up as he rose from the water.

  The Goth’s expression of utter bliss melted into a look of gaping horror as he locked eyes with the dark, dirt-smeared legionary that shot out from the river. Then he emitted some silent howl – or perhaps one that only dogs could hear – as his own spear tip scythed off his manhood. With a thick splash, the fleshy mass disappeared into the murky water and shot off downstream. Quick as a lion, Sura shot up behind the man, clamping a hand over his mouth and wrapping an arm round his neck, choking him until he fell unconscious then letting his body drift off downriver.

  ‘We’re alive?’ Pavo gasped, the sweet air filling his lungs and charging his blood, sweeping away the black spots.

  ‘Just,’ Sura whispered, ushering him towards the beech thicket as a deafening clap of thunder spread across the roiling sky, now directly overhead. They waded out of the shallows and into the mesh of beech trees, finding Bastianus and Agilo crouched there.