Brother.
By his side was… Pavo frowned… Comes Richomeres?
The mottled western general – present at the Battle of Ad Salices – stopped to speak with the Tribunus of the Lancearii. But Dexion strode straight for Pavo.
‘Brother!’ he repeated.
Dexion clasped a forearm to his, clutching it firmly and shaking it whilst clapping his other hand to Pavo’s shoulder. Then the pair embraced.
‘By all the gods, Brother, I thought you were dead,’ Pavo uttered, the words visceral and breathless in relief.
Dexion withdrew, gripping him by his biceps and beholding him as if starved of the sight. ‘Never, brother. Never. One thing no man can deny of me is my ability to survive.’ He shook Pavo like a prize. ‘Father was a survivor, and you are too… and so am I,’ he grinned.
‘Primus Pilus!’ Zosimus gasped, throwing a hand up in salute. Quadratus and Sura followed suit, as did Pavo. Every Claudia legionary within earshot – each well-versed in the legend of the missing Iron Tribunus and his second in command – did so too.
Pavo shook his head, a thousand thoughts demanding to be aired. What had happened on the journey west to Gratian’s court? Why was he only returning now? Where was the Western Emperor? But like a hot lance rising from his lungs, the most pertinent question spilled out first.
‘Where is Tribunus Gallus?’
Zosimus, Quadratus and Sura hung by Pavo’s side, their wide and expectant eyes asking the same question.
Dexion’s face darkened and he sighed. ‘The journey west was fraught, Pavo. We faced Quadi raiders that should have wiped out every one of our small party. That I made it alone is a wonder.’
Pavo’s eyes darted, recalling the group of ten that had raced west from Geridus’ fort at the Succi Pass: Gallus, Dexion and eight equites. ‘No,’ he whispered. By his side, Zosimus threw down his fresh water skin with all his strength. The skin exploded as the big Thracian wheeled away in anger. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sura backing away, shaking his head. Quadratus was the only one who seemed to hold on to some form of hope that he had misheard. Dexion extinguished that with his next words.
‘He gave his life to ensure I could make it all the way to Emperor Gratian’s court.’ Dexion shook his head, his brow creasing as he recalled some painful memory. ‘He said that all that mattered was that one of us reached the West. He… he said that if only one of us could make it, he’d rather it was me.’
Pavo gazed through his brother, his mind awash with memories of the Iron Tribunus. The stark, stern, emotionless colossus that had led the Claudia through everything. The man Pavo had discovered underneath that steely carapace. He and maybe only he knew that Gallus’ need to go west was driven by the need to alert Gratian… but also by the urge to reap revenge for the dark times in his past. At the last, had the Iron Tribunus chosen the former over the latter?
Dexion continued before he could mull this over thoroughly. ‘The Quadi shot down all of our riders then rode Gallus and me down – had us cornered in a gully. One of us could have clambered upon the other’s shoulders to climb free, but that would have left the other at the mercy of the Quadi. He gave me no choice in the few moments we had to decide.’ Dexion pinched the top of his nose with thumb and forefinger. ‘I climbed from the gully… I hated him for making me do it. I hated him for saving me,’ he laughed bitterly. ‘What sense does that make?’
‘Did… did you see him fall?’ Quadratus asked, raking his fingers through his blonde locks.
Dexion nodded faintly. ‘I tried to help him. From above the gully I threw my sword down at the Quadi pack as they rushed for Gallus. The blade struck their leader and took him down,’ he laughed bitterly again, ‘plunged into his breastbone – the blade shattered as it burst through the bastard’s back. After that, there was nothing I could do. They took the tribunus down with a flurry of axes.’ He shook his head again, as if at war with himself. ‘I should have done something.’
Quadratus fell oddly silent.
Pavo felt nothing. The joy at Dexion’s return and the news of Gallus’ death blending into a horrible, meaningless void. He fought off the shackles of grief, knowing his brother was wracked with guilt. ‘You went west. You sent a relief force to the Succi Pass just when we were at our lowest ebb there. You alerted Emperor Gratian to the perilous state of these lands.’ Now Pavo gripped his brother by the biceps, shaking him. ‘You did everything you could.’
Dexion nodded, reluctantly accepting this modicum of comfort. ‘Emperor Gratian and the western army are on the march through the northwestern hills – through the Succi Pass that you so staunchly held. The army here and his are to rendezvous at Adrianople by the first week of August. After that,’ his lips grew taut, ‘Fritigern and his horde had best be ready. They will pay dearly for the storm they have conjured.’
Pavo touched Dexion’s arm again. ‘They will, brother, they will.’ He looked around behind him, seeing the red-faced, furious Zosimus snarling at the first and third Claudia cohorts – the big man’s anger was his only way to mask his grief – and Sura absently waving the Second Cohort towards their camping area, his face pale and lost. He looked back to his brother. ‘But put those thoughts from your mind. Tonight, let us talk as brothers. Tomorrow, this column will march on towards Adrianople, and you will lead us.’
As Pavo and his brother turned away, looking to help set up the Claudia tents, he noticed again that Quadratus remained where he stood, watching Dexion in steely silence.
The very next day, Dexion took charge of the XI Claudia, barking them onwards as the column veered away from the coast and headed north along the Via Militaris. Just as the men of the Claudia had predicted, the temperature soared as they moved inland – noticeably hotter than just weeks ago when they had trod these plains with Bastianus. Now, it was a dry, burning heat that crackled on the skin and stole the moisture from the mouth.
Pavo swept a sheet of perspiration from his brow. ‘That sun is merciless. It was hot enough in June. But this? I’ve never known a summer like it.’ He tugged at his sweat-soaked tunic. ‘Mithras be with us when we draw closer to the horde and have to don our mail shirts.’
‘Aye,’ Quadratus agreed, squinting and snorting something up from his throat and spitting the rubbery, glistening mass into the cracked ground as if to quench it. ‘I feel like I’m on a bloody spit. Almost as bad as the Persian desert.’
‘One cotyla of water every hour,’ Zosimus shouted over his shoulder to the marching ranks, motioning to his lips as if drinking. ‘If you fall sick from thirst, you’ll have me to deal with.’
When they stopped to rest, refill their water skins from a meagre stream and eat a midday meal of bacon fat and bread under the scant shade of makeshift awnings, Pavo sat with Sura, Zosimus and Quadratus. Dexion sat with them to eat, and Quadratus – usually one for telling ribald tales as he ate – was uncharacteristically mute as he munched.
Dexion did not stay with them for long. As soon as he had finished eating, he washed his face in the stream then stood, walking amongst the Claudia men as they ate and drank, regaling them with stories of the legendary Iron Tribunus’ bravery in the western woods.
‘He stood his ground against those bastards,’ Dexion enthused. ‘If he hadn’t… I wouldn’t have made it through those forests. I’d never have made it to the Western Emperor’s court. We might never have been able to march to face Fritigern like this.’
Pavo watched him, letting his brother’s words conjure images of the fallen tribunus. Gallus had been a titan, the one man who had held the legion together. Silent, cold, steely, standing firm in the eye of the storm. Most would remember him as this and nothing more, but Pavo’s memories came round to those few times when the tribunus had spoken to him from the heart. A tortured man, beset with grief for his lost family. A man who showed when it mattered that he cared for his legionaries not just as comrades, but as kin. His throat thickened. He looked up at Dexion again, still mid-tale, and pondered
what the fates held in store. For a moment, he wondered if Dexion’s return was a blessing or a curse: for if a clash with the Gothic horde awaited, might he lose his brother too?
‘You’d think he had known Gallus as long as the rest of us,’ Quadratus said under his breath.
Pavo looked round to see the big Gaul, his meal unfinished, his eyes on Dexion. At first, Pavo felt a needle of hurt that his hulking comrade and good friend should speak ill of his brother. Something about his expression must have alerted Quadratus to his inner feelings. The Gaulish centurion quickly added: ‘I… I just mean, we have many tales we could share as well.’
‘And we should. The men will need every bit of encouragement we can give them the closer we draw to the horde,’ Pavo agreed.
They marched on through the searing afternoon. That night, after eating a meal of bread and cheese washed down with watered wine, he and Dexion sat together near the edge of the camp under an inky sky scattered with a silvery sand of stars. They talked of Father, mostly, of their shared hopes that he was right now walking in Elysium, watching his sons. Pavo told Dexion of the dream that had plagued him.
‘The crone is there and then she is gone. It is her presence that makes me sure that this is not just some nonsense nightmare. Before I know it, the farmhouse is ablaze and I am on the floor next to a dead, pure-white eagle and an injured wolf. That’s when it seems most real… that’s when the shadow-man’s blade seems certain to split my head. It is the same dark figure that was there, at the slave market, when I was a boy – or at least in my dreams of that place. It taunts me, strikes down the brave wolf. It seems to know something and is on the cusp of telling me – then I awake. That is the greatest taunt.’ He made a circle of dots in the dirt with his finger. ‘Some say dreams are a way for the mind to solve the riddles of the day. Something you already know… or know just pieces about,’ he traced a circle around the dots, ‘but cannot bring together.’ He snorted drily. ‘Or perhaps it is for the best that I wake – sometimes it is better not to know.’
Dexion chuckled. ‘Dreams and nightmares serve only to confuse and torment. I do not dream.’
Pavo looked at his brother askance. ‘Everyone dreams.’
‘I trained myself to stifle my dreams. I choose not to suffer them. There, emotions run unchecked, fears grow talons and fangs, hopes inflate and tease you that they might be real.’
Pavo nodded, seeing his brother’s brow furrow just a fraction. ‘You will have to teach me your method one day?’
‘I could teach you,’ Dexion replied quickly. ‘I could teach you everything I know.’
Pavo tilted his head to one side momentarily, bemused at the speed of the offer. ‘When the legions have faced the horde, when this war is over… I’d like nothing better, Brother,’ he agreed. The sparkle in Dexion’s eyes showed just how much this meant.
They chatted on, and eventually Pavo remembered the scroll from the Narco waystation. He automatically reached for his purse then remembered how it had become soaked and ruined while wading in the Hebrus. ‘Ach!’ he cursed.
Dexion arched an eyebrow.
‘There was something I forgot to tell you,’ Pavo said. ‘A centurion of the wall guard back in Constantinople – a bit of an arse but a good soldier – was struck down in one of the Gothic raids. Before he died he muttered something, saying he knew you and one of your comrades.’
Dexion curled his bottom lip, nodding.
‘Brethren, he called you.’
Dexion looked past Pavo’s shoulder as if distracted, taking a measured sip from the watered wineskin.
‘Anyway, he gave me some message about a waystation. A place called Narco.’
Dexion chuckled, eyes meeting Pavo’s then looking past him in turn. ‘Narco?’
‘I found a scroll there – a scroll that mentioned you. It said you had reached the Western court and would be returning east.’ Pavo continued. ‘…to ensure the emperor’s victory… It fair lifted our hearts when we read it.’
Dexion smiled.
‘Odd thing though. Both the message and the scroll had this insignia on them.’ Pavo traced the staring eye symbol in the dirt with his finger. ‘Do you know what it means?’
Dexion stared long and hard at it, his brow creasing before he shook his head. ‘An imperial logo of some sort?’
Pavo shrugged. ‘Perhaps – not one I’ve ever seen before though.’
‘And the scroll?’ Dexion asked.
Pavo held up his empty palms. ‘I had it, then Zosimus took a look at it and-’
‘Where is it now?’ Dexion cut in sharply, smiling and blinking rapidly as if something was caught in his eye.
‘Ruined,’ Pavo said, sensing tension in his brother’s gaze.
Dexion laughed and his shoulders sagged a little. ‘Ah well, the mystery remains and we must march to war,’ he said, combing a hand over the dirt drawing so it was no more.
Pavo cocked his head to one side. ‘And yet some say Valens seeks peace with Fritigern. Do you think such a thing can truly come to be… given all that has happened in the last few years? So many scars, so many affronts. So many dead.’
Dexion smiled sadly. ‘Both leaders are vainglorious and often rash. I suspect that the poison we call emotion will have its day, Brother. Battle is a certainty.’
Pavo glanced at his brother from the side of his eye. It was an odd thing to say, given the emotional chats they had enjoyed in these last days. But the moment was soon forgotten, the pair chatting long into the night.
When the army set off again the next morning, it was a quiet, watchful procession as they edged ever northwards. Messengers came and went at the head of the column, bringing Valens updates. The Goths were massed somewhere beyond the horizon, but Fritigern would soon hear of the Roman advance.
The horde would not be still for long.
Chapter 16
Starlight and torches illuminated Kabyle’s acropolis and the Council gathered there.
‘Bononia?’ Fritigern repeated, shuffling in his timber throne atop a stone plinth. The two warriors before him stretched the hide map of Thracia a little more, as if it might reveal extra tracts of land to the east and west.
‘Gratian and his army are at Bononia. Distant Bononia,’ Alatheus clarified, motioning to a point just off the top left of the map. A rumble of hushed chatter broke out across the acropolis, the Council of Reiks sure they had misheard. ‘Our scouts saw it with their own eyes. The weak Roman garrison there was preparing to receive a flotilla of some sort. And the scouts also heard word of a landward approach along the Danubius’ southern hinterland too. Gratian comes, but he will pose no threat to us – not for weeks.’
Fritigern’s weary mind turned this revelation over and over. Rumour had been rife that Gratian’s army was but days west of Kabyle, approaching like a sibling claw to that of Valens’ army that marched from the south, but this changed everything. Even making good time, an imperial column and its baggage train would take weeks to traverse the road from Bononia to central Thracia. The crackling torches and the night-chorus of the crickets grew deafening as he tried to understand why the Western Emperor was still so far away.
‘Meanwhile, Valens and his army approach Adrianople. A lone army, in effect,’ Saphrax added.
The babble grew and grew, then one man shouted: ‘No match for the horde!’
Fritigern looked at the man who had spoken: the night sky behind the fellow was uplit in orange from the innumerable torches in the lower town and the great camp that filled the plain southwest of the city. The last of the warbands from the furthest corners of Thracia had arrived just today. The horde was reunited. Nearly thirty thousand Thervingi spearmen and archers, ten thousand Greuthingi riders and countless families, wagons and cattle were crammed around Kabyle, every one of them waiting for his word.
A chorus of agreement greeted this. ‘We should take the southerly track at once – to intercept the Eastern Army on the march!’ another cried.
‘Aye!’ Many voices agreed.
Fritigern raised a hand. ‘It is too late for that.’ A chorus of sighs and scoffs sounded in reply. He raised his voice to be heard over them. ‘Valens is already close to Adrianople and will reach its sheltering walls within days. We will not catch him and his legions on the road.’
Alatheus leaned forward a little, looking up at him in incredulity. ‘Are you suggesting we stay here? Still?’
Saphrax swept a hand out, gesturing to the silos down in the lower town. ‘The people already see the dwindling grain. Many now know the store at Durostorum was destroyed, know we cannot sit out the cold season here. Men have been fighting over it, hording what they can.’
‘Factions have been emerging amongst the tribes,’ Alatheus added. ‘There is only one way to quell their unrest and replenish the stores. Battle, conquest.’ He held up a shaking fist. ‘The horde is gathered and awaits the order to move out. Crush Valens’ army and all Thracia is yours. Even Constantinople will pay tribute or fall.’
‘You have little choice,’ Saphrax insisted.
‘You must do as we suggest,’ Alatheus added quickly.
Fritigern heard their voices and the growing clamour from the Council. The noise scrambled through his thoughts like a colony of ants until he thought his head might burst. ‘I will not lead the horde from this place to throw them at Adrianople’s defences, do you understand?’ he snapped, banging a fist on the edge of his throne then shooting a finger at Alatheus and Saphrax. ‘You and your restless tongues will not twist my hand. I will never needlessly risk the lives of the people gathered here… certainly not on the word of a pair of Greuthingi asps like you!’
A horrified hush fell upon the Council.
Alatheus’ nose wrinkled and his lips grew thin, revealing clenched teeth. ‘Ah, so the mask of the pious Iudex slips… the man who considers himself to be our King… the one who worships the same weak God as Emperor Valens… the man who dishonours Wodin.’
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