EMPIRE OF SHADES

by Gordon Doherty

  Hooves thrashed, and a black imperial wagon jounced eastwards along the hill tracks – the only safe route in Thracia, circumventing the Goths’ colossal winter camp. The rotund driver’s belly felt like a knot of cold chains. Having his back to the carriage – more specifically to its occupants – was unsettling to say the least. All he had been told was that he had to take them, at haste, first to Adrianople’s fabrica to perform some kind of search. Next, the arms store of Constantinople itself was to be turned inside out. But that would have to wait, he realised, the fattening crescent moon casting a pale light on the horses’ sweat-lathered flanks. They could go no further tonight. And here in this wrecked and empty land, there would be no such luxury like the beds and warm meals they had enjoyed at the waystations in the western regions.

  ‘The horses are exhausted,’ he called back as he drew in the reins, slowing the wagon.

  The four hooded men in the carriage exchanged looks, then climbed down from the vehicle when it drew to a halt. As they set about making a small fire, the driver stood back, preferring the night chill to the heat or the company of the hooded four. Even when they cooked a thin broth and offered him some, he refused. And when it came to resting, he merely lay down and pretended to sleep by the foot of the wagon. All the time he kept one eye open, watching as three of the hooded ones lay down to sleep by the fire. But the fourth remained awake, crouching by the embers, twisting a bent soldier-dart round and round, its point grinding in the dirt, the staring eye ring on his finger glinting in the moonlight. The face within the hood bore the look of a hunter. The lips moved, over and over, tongue whispering like a snake tasting the air.

  I am a shadow, I move like a breath of wind, I strike unseen, the hooded one mouthed, eyes trained on the black sky of the eastern horizon. The truth will out, and my master will have his culprit…

  Chapter 5

  Pavo and Sura rode southeast throughout early February, talking little of what had happened at Sirmium. They sped through the Diocese of Dacia, utilising the deserted stretches of the Via Militaris, then when they crossed into Thracia, they veered off into the Rhodope Mountains to avoid the region of Fritigern’s winter camp. Up on the high tracks, the pair peered silently to the north, seeing the broken shell of walls that had once been the thriving city of Trimontium and, more ominously, the massive pall of pale grey that hung in the sky nearby, over the great circular sea of Gothic tents, huts, animal pens and wagons. Fritigern’s winter camp was like a colossal boil, dominating the countryside for miles. As large as any city Pavo had ever seen, he now realised the fragmented reports were true: the Gothic Iudex’s forces had swollen since the disaster at Adrianople.

  They stayed in the hills to edge around the flatlands of southern Thracia, knowing that Reiks Ortwin and his warband posed a more immediate threat, mobile and watchful for any attempt by the empire to move armies or supplies to or from the few pinned, barricaded cities on the coast or a short way inland. The scars of Ortwin’s occupation made the last stretch of their journey the bleakest: they passed families trekking on foot having abandoned rural homes in Thracia, dragging bags and makeshift sledges of belongings, headed like Pavo and Sura towards the relative safety of the southern Diocese of Macedonia and the promise of protection offered by cities such as Thessalonica and Larissa.

  Finally, on the last week of February, the pair came to the promised land. Macedonia, Pavo thought as he gazed ahead across a green-gold stretch of rolling hills, all the way to the gloriously broad southern horizon where pastel sky met land in a sultry haze.

  Sura rode with his face pointing skywards, enjoying the first hints of spring warmth after the long winter. Their mounts moved at a walk across a meadow freckled with yellow mimosa until they found and followed the River Axios, both men conjured deep into memories of times past by the easy sway of the ride and the gentle gurgling of the green waters.

  When the salt-tang of sea air swept over them in a gentle breeze, both looked up, stirred from their thoughts. Pavo squinted ahead, shading his eyes from the sun. The haze peeled away with their every step to reveal two high tors, looming like waiting guardsmen, many miles apart, one either side of their route. The northerly mountain was streaked with scrub and golden trails, and the southern one was twice as high, its slopes thickly wooded and its peak capped with bright snow. ‘Mount Olympus,’ Pavo muttered as he eyed this greater height, thinking of his boyhood studies – one of the few good memories of his time as a slave. ‘And Mount Cissus,’ he surmised, looking at the northern slope. Between the two heights lay a huge, sheltered bay, the waters of the Mare Aegaeum turquoise and alive with glittering sunlight. Then he spotted a pale blemish on the coastal haze: a sun-bleached city near the foot of Mount Cissus, hugging the shores like a natural amphitheatre. ‘And Thessalonica…’ he finished.

  As they descended the gentle slope towards the bay, they gazed at the high, pale-golden walls wrapping the crescent-shaped city. From within rose a triumphal arch, a magnificent, domed rotunda, a white-marble odeum, a palace hill festooned with lush, terraced orchards, a grand racing circus and an aqueduct, picking its way across the packed wards of the city with water from the slopes of Mount Cissus on its back. It was a marvel to rival even Constantinople.

  But as they drew closer, they saw also the blemishes of war. Before the city walls lay an ugly scar of disturbed earth: the crescent-shaped band of countryside abutting the land walls was brown and churned, huge quantities of soil and grass having been dug up to form an outer bastion composed of turves about half the height of the city walls, topped with a sharpened palisade.

  Pavo and Sura shared a look, each thinking of the message that had summoned the Claudia legion to this place. ‘The vast military… campus?’ Sura said, unconvinced.

  ‘Looks more like a hasty defence,’ Pavo said. ‘Macedonia is yet untouched by the Goths, but it looks as if Theodosius expects that to change before long.’

  As they drew closer, the pealing echoes of industry mixed with the cries of seabirds. The bay was thick with fishing boats and a fleet of galleys cut through them, headed for the city’s sweeping wharf.

  ‘Military galleys,’ Pavo noted.

  ‘Reinforcements,’ Sura said, his voice tight with hope.

  ‘From where?’ Pavo replied. ‘The Syrian forces of the Limes Arabicus have already been stripped to its bare bones in recent years.’

  ‘Aye,’ Sura conceded, ‘Egypt too.’

  As they approached the wooden gatehouse built into the turf stockade, he noticed the gleam of sentries’ helms on a bridge above the gates, saw the sparkle of their scale corselets, the brightness of their green shields emblazoned with golden lions passant. The IV Flavia Felix, he realised, a Western regiment from Pannonia, comitatenses, no less – nominally superior to limitanei regiments like the Claudia. A fresh legion, unscarred by the war.

  ‘Comitatenses, haughty pricks that they usually are… but damn, is that not a sight for weary eyes?’ Sura chuckled under his breath.

  ‘Who goes there?’ one of the Flavia sentries snarled.

  Pavo tilted his head back and glared up at the fellow. ‘Tribunus Pavo of the XI Claudia. Reporting for duty as instructed by Emperor Theodosius.’

  ‘Another few stragglers from the Claudia,’ the man shrugged to an unseen other up there. The gates swung open.

  ‘This is it. The beginning,’ Pavo said. ‘We’ll find out where the Claudia are stationed in here then we’ll muster them and…’ his words tapered off as he came to a halt just inside the gates, his eyes combing the interior of the turf-walled camp. Vast tracts of barren space stared back. A cool sea breeze added to the sense of emptiness.

  ‘Is that it?’ Pavo muttered, squinting to the eastern end of the camp. Before a tight grouping of goatskin tents, five blocks of iron soldiers stood for inspection. Five comitatenses legions from Pannonia, including the IV Flavia Felix. ‘Only five thousand men?’

  ‘Hold on, there’s those lads too,’ Sura said, pointing to the
strip of shade under the city walls where a clutch of less than two hundred men trained, their wooden swords clack-clack-clacking. ‘They’ve reformed the VIII Gemina?’

  ‘It would seem so,’ Pavo said, recognising their frayed banner – white, adorned with a running blue hound. The Gemina were limitanei like the Claudia, but they had been nearly obliterated in the early stages of the Gothic War before the surviving few had been drawn back and reassigned to serve as city watchmen. Now it seemed they were tasked with being a legion again.

  Near them were small knots of troops from other regiments – more pieces of the army shattered at Adrianople. One group bore the sky-blue standard of the Hiberi, one of Valens’ Auxilium Palatinum regiments. Once so proud, a thousand men in gleaming iron… now just a smattering of seventy men, most with a hotchpotch of scavenged armour and tatty, mismatched shields, few holding their heads high. And he spotted a rabble of sixty at work mending tents under the dark red Nervii banner too, and no more than one hundred and ninety milling around a square of tents marked with the sapphire standard of the Fortenses… Theodosius had inherited a bleak estate.

  Near the western edge of the camp, a turma of thirty equites rode up and down, tossing spears at target posts. There were no other horsemen present in the entire camp. Since the Scholae Palatinae – the crack imperial cavalry schools – had been ruined at Adrianople, there had been little cavalry of any sort in these parts. A cluster of seventy or so sagittarii archers and a smaller group of funditores rained a thin drizzle of arrows and slingshot into the painted ends of log sections – and these marksmen appeared to be the sum total of the campus’ missile units.

  And at last Pavo saw the small grid of tents surrounding the faded, frayed ruby bull of the Claudia. The sight warmed and saddened him at once. Footsteps rattled up from their right, and both swung to see Libo, Cornix and Trupo – the centurionate of the Claudia – beaming, Rectus hobbling in their wake.

  ‘Sir!’ Libo cast a hand up in salute. ‘We thought you had perished out there. You said you’d follow us here within two weeks – it’s been nearly two months!’

  ‘We were… diverted,’ Pavo replied.

  ‘Five, six… six thousand men?’ Sura finished counting.

  ‘All in,’ Libo said, sweeping a hand across the turf camp entire, ‘Six and a half thousand.’

  ‘Extra wine for Libo tonight,’ Rectus mocked dryly. ‘He had to take his socks and boots off to count past ten.’

  ‘Against a horde of Goths, now fifty thousand strong… ’ Sura said what they were all thinking.

  ‘You saw them out there, didn’t you?’ Rectus asked, face etched with concern.

  ‘Aye. Fritigern remains at Trimontium,’ Pavo replied. ‘But spring is almost here. He’ll grow restless before long. And in any case that mutt, Ortwin has never ceased plundering over winter. We have work to do out there.’ He squinted once more as he looked around. ‘Who’s in charge of this place?’

  The answer came from behind in the form of a whinny and a dull thud of hooves in dirt. Pavo turned to look up. There, like an escaped nightmare, was a Gothic warrior, saddled on a black mare. Bare-chested, he wore just a leather baldric on his top half – the longsword hanging diagonally across his back – green trousers decorated with blue lozenge patterns and leather boots. His amber hair hung in long, thick curls to the small of his back, and a thick moustache drooped across his top lip. Pavo’s skin crept with an army of invisible ants.

  ‘You. Name and rank,’ the Goth snapped in a crude accent.

  Pavo tilted his head to one side. ‘Tribunus Pavo of the XI Claudia Pia Fidelis. I might ask you the same, Goth.’

  ‘Pavo-’ Rectus started.

  ‘The emperor was right,’ the surly Goth cut Rectus off to reply to Pavo. ‘It will take a lot of work to shape the tatters of the eastern legions into a useful force again.’

  Pavo frowned, fire rising in his chest to retort, when buccinae sang. All heads swung to the city walls, where the trumpeters stood.

  ‘We will talk again soon, Tribunus Pavo,’ the Goth sneered, then walked his horse past him, towards the city gates. ‘In the meantime, we have an audience with the emperor.’

  The buccinae blared again. Confused, Pavo and Sura looked this way and that as the five Pannonian legions broke up their parade, the Gemina ceased training, the equites dismounted and led their steeds back to the stable shacks and the slingers and archers too hurriedly stowed their weapons, all gradually converging on the now open city gates. Within the hour, Pavo, Sura and the Claudia men followed the rest inside.

  ‘They’ve been talking about this for weeks,’ Libo said, pressing a skin of watered wine into Pavo’s hand as the Claudia moved through Thessalonica’s flagstoned market ward, bustling crowds of citizens walking with and amongst them.

  ‘There’s been much talk of reorganisation,’ Cornix added, leaping up onto and walking along the edge of a monumental fountain as he spoke. ‘New commanders, new legions.’

  ‘And about bloody time,’ Rectus muttered.

  They passed through a cypress-lined avenue then came to the agora. Here, Pavo noticed that a banner from each understrength legion had been erected at the southern end of the paved square. He thought nothing of it and carried on over to the agora’s northern side, where the crowds were converging at the white-marble odeum. The semi-circle of terraced seats was soon full to capacity, with many others including the Claudia men clustering around the base and the edges, all eyes on the empty dais facing the crescent arena. The scent of sea air and roasting fish wafted from the nearby wharf district, and noises of excitement and some of unrest – groups chanting and shouting about the recent hike in taxation – competed with the screeching of gulls. But the cries fell away when a lone buccina wailed three times.

  Two Lancearii legionaries – another of the few eastern palace regiments not utterly destroyed by the Goths – stepped onto the dais, their red oval shields ablaze with golden sun motifs, their bronze scale jackets gleaming and their silvery plumes dancing in the gentle sea wind. Theodosius followed in between them. Pavo stared hard at the man. Mithras, bless us with a good leader. All the gods know we need one.

  Theodosius was somewhat shuffling in his gait, dressed as he had been in Sirmium in a trailing white, silk robe that masked his steps. The diadem sparkled on his light-brown, well-oiled hair, and there was not a drop of iron on his person. Pavo’s gut twisted a little. We need a warrior to lead us, he ruminated.

  ‘Citizens of Rome,’ Theodosius said. His voice carried well across the gathered ranks. ‘Each of you has lost dear parents, siblings and children in recent times. And the brave men of the legions, who gather here despite so many brothers lost…’

  Pavo felt a twinge of emotion, plucked like the string of a kithara by the emperor’s well-chosen words. Instinctively, he glanced sideways to Sura, face wrinkled with tell-tale signs of that same sentiment, which he quickly disguised when he tilted his wine skin and took a long, numbing draught. There was something about the emperor’s demeanour which lent weight and authenticity to his words: that troubled face, perhaps? Valens had always struggled with speeches such as this. Theodosius not so, it seemed.

  ‘Today is where the salvage begins,’ Theodosius continued. ‘Each of you will help this land to flourish again.’ A murmur of excitement sounded from a few men. ‘It is my duty and it is an honour, an honour, to be your high general in what is to come.’ More murmurs, a few breaking into anticipatory, low cheers. When another pair of Lancearii emerged from the back of the dais, carrying a white cuirass and a swordbelt, the noise rose, and when the emperor extended his arms, allowing them to draw the armour onto him, they shot into a crescendo. Theodosius drew the spatha, head staring skywards, the blade aloft and catching the winter sun. ‘Victory, for God… for us all!’ he thundered.

  The cheering exploded. Fewer people were present than at packed Sirmium, but the din was impressive: the chesty roars of soldiers, the shrill cry of citizens, the dunt-dun
t-dunt of watching sentries’ spear hafts banging on roofs and flagstones and the strong drone of clusters of priests at each side of the stage. Pavo noticed many of the ranks mouthing and singing prayers to the heavens likewise. Unlike the limes that had been the Claudia’s home, here it was the Nazrene Christ-God and not Mithras who held sway.

  ‘Victory, for Mithras,’ Sura said calmly amongst it all, pointing one finger at the sky, ‘God of the Light.’ Almost every other Claudia soldier echoed the sentiment.

  When the cheering faded, Theodosius let his arms settle by his sides again. ‘But reward cannot come without struggle, and struggle we must. Fritigern’s horde numbers greatly, and we do not. Thus, we must seek to bring our legions back to what they once were.’

  ‘This is it,’ Opis whispered, ‘the Gemina lads mentioned some rumour about a detachment of legions being shipped in. The Egyptian Field Army, one said, or maybe Syrian legions.’

  ‘The galleys we saw coming into the bay?’ Centurion Cornix added hopefully.

  Pavo and Sura shared a doubtful look, remembering their earlier conversation when approaching the city.

  A rumble of movement drew all eyes to the southern edge of the agora. Footsteps, echoing down the broad cypress avenue towards the open square, coming from the wharf district. A mass of figures, approaching through the shadow cast by the bath house. Men. Four or five thousand men.

  The cheering was reborn and reached new levels. ‘The legions from Syria are here!’ the jug-eared tribunus of the Flavia Felix shrieked like an excited girl.

  Now Sura’s expression changed, hope creeping back in. Pavo felt his doubts fall away too, squinting to see, imagining another set of serried, gleaming regiments to add to the Pannonian five. And then his heart sank as they spilled onto the agora in a disorganised mass. Not soldiers. Rogues. Men in rags, many hunched and grey, some shaking with illness or confusion, most with teeth as brown as mud or none at all, and some walking with canes. One fellow was even missing an arm, his greasy black curls of hair sticking to his grime-smeared face.