EMPIRE OF SHADES

by Gordon Doherty

  Modares closed his mouth. From within came a noise of grinding teeth and the muscles at the corners of his jaw bunched. ‘The bulk of the army is to return to Thessalonica, as planned.’

  Pavo felt his heart sink. ‘The bulk?’

  ‘One cohort will not be returning.’

  ‘Why?’ Pavo said flatly. ‘Every single man here will be needed back in Thessalonica to man its walls and train more legions, to bolster our numbers for when we next face the horde.’

  Scapula leaned forward now, like a snake sliding into view from the side of Pavo’s vision. ‘And that is just what makes the mission so vital.’

  Pavo stared at Scapula. ‘What mission?’ he spat.

  Modares sighed. ‘In the north, across the River Danubius, lives a Gothic tribe. Last winter their chieftain, Arimer, sent an appeal to the Western and Eastern courts – seeking entry into the empire. He asked for a Roman escort through his lands and onto imperial soil, so his entry to the empire would not be misconstrued as invasion. The chosen cohort will be his escort.’

  Pavo blinked and balked, sitting back a little. ‘Hold on: this land has fallen under the heel of the invading Goths… and the emperors want to help more Goths cross the river?’

  ‘Arimer offers fealty, Tribunus…’ Modares said, his tone dry, having taken a dash of offence at Pavo’s words, ‘fealty and six thousand fighting men. Men who could be trained as legionaries. They would swell the forces stationed at Thessalonica from twelve thousand to eighteen thousand strong. Still not a match for the horde, but it would give us a chance at least.’

  Pavo stared hard at Modares. ‘Do you realise what would happen to a Roman legionary caught on the north side of the Danubius?’

  ‘The same as is happening to Arimer’s people,’ Scapula said calmly. ‘The Huns over there hunt them like game, hence their desperate pleas.’

  ‘Then send an envoy. Mounted messengers, even – they will be faster than a legionary cohort,’ Pavo insisted.

  ‘We have already tried,’ Scapula said. ‘Vitalis was a good negotiator, and last winter he travelled to the river with a batch of the quickest exploratores. Yet something happened out there. He simply vanished.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Pavo said without even trying to hide the sarcasm now. ‘So which cohort will be tasked with following in this Vitalis’ footsteps?’

  Modares flicked a finger out, rightly embarrassed, at Pavo. ‘The task falls to the Claudia, as the instruction states. It is for you to choose which cohort.’

  Pavo rocked back on his chair, a desert-dry laugh ringing round the room. ‘Then I will take the First Cohort.’

  ‘You need not go,’ Modares said quickly.

  ‘Spare me,’ Pavo said. ‘You are a fine general, sir, as I have witnessed in these last days. You know as well as I do that a good officer would never ask of his men anything that he would not do himself.’ He chapped the table once with a foul look on his face. ‘I will take the First Cohort to find Arimer.’

  Modares bowed his head a fraction almost as a gesture of respect. ‘I suspect that you will fare better with them than I would. The last time I crossed paths with Arimer’s lot they almost had the skin from my balls.’

  ‘Thank you for the encouragement, sir,’ Pavo said flatly. His eyes dropped to the surface of the table, scarred and scored like an ancient map. ‘Where in the north are they?’

  ‘Across from the old river fortress at Novae, deep within the woods that line the north banks. The Huns there are vicious – but they are not yet congregated in the masses that drove Fritigern’s people across the river.’

  Pavo nodded once, heavily, eyes tracing the invisible map he imagined on the surface of the table. Dense woods with many secrets. And crossing the Danubius itself would be a riddle with no bridges straddling the river. Before that, long stretches of marching and traversing the lofty Haemus Mountains.

  ‘Bring them back as soon as you can,’ Modares guessed and answered his next question.

  Pavo totted up the journey times there and back, and then the effort and logistics involved in organising a tribal migration.

  ‘If it is any consolation, Tribunus, Upper Thracia should now be clear of hostile warbands, thanks to your efforts today,’ Modares offered. ‘But once across the river, be watchful.’

  Pavo weighed the twin threats of forging into the barbarian north in search of a vicious tribe against remaining in this room with the snake agent by his side. ‘Always, sir,’ he replied.

  Scapula, watching this exchange carefully, tapped his fingers on the tabletop. ‘Good, then it is settled. Now, as Emperor Gratian, my master, commanded, I will be coming with you.’

  Pavo turned his head slowly to the speculator, realising the trap he had just walked into.

  Chapter 8

  On the green meadows by the broken city of Trimontium, Fritigern’s great camp sprawled. An oval nearly two miles in diameter, packed with tents, crackling fires and timber pens replete with goats, sheep, chickens, ponies and warhorses. In place of a wall or palisade, a halo of stiff-faced sentries edged the camp, gazing out over the countryside, spears standing proud, long hair rippling and lifting in the spring breeze, their red leather vests shining like the bodies of beetles in the morning sun. A wing of Greuthingi horsemen came thundering in from the north, whooping, punching their fists in the air, dragging behind them makeshift timber sleds heaped with plundered Roman mail and provender. Within the camp, families played, cooked and mended clothes, warriors tended to their horses, honed spears and stockpiled longswords, arrows and fresh shields.

  Near the heart of the camp, agitated voices rose and fell like an unruly choir. The noblemen there sat on an arc of hewn logs, shoulders draped in furs, ornate helms worn to emphasise their station. Iudex Fritigern sat on the stump of a felled birch facing the arc, poking at the low fire with a cane. His long flowing hair and beard were now mostly iron-grey – threaded here and there with the fiery red of his departed youth – and his battle helm was simple and well-dented. He wore a baked leather vest and an old blue cloak of noble ancestors. Staked beside him was a spear, and tied near the tip was a sapphire banner depicting a soaring black hawk.

  ‘The sun is hot on our skins, Iudex. It is time for fresh plunder,’ one nobleman called.

  ‘The new emperor boasts from his walls at Thessalonica, that we are too hesitant, that his new army will shatter our forces,’ a dull-eyed other pitched in. ‘Just as his legions murdered Reiks Ortwin and his warband.’

  ‘Bluster!’ said another. ‘I hear of a vast military camp, dotted with precious few soldiers. Ortwin was beaten by a mere rag-tag force, because he was a dullard. The legions were smashed at Adrianople. Smashed they remain.’

  ‘Lead us against this rabble, to another glorious victory, Iudex, as you did that day,’ said a gaunt reiks.

  Fritigern continued poking at the fire, one eyebrow lifting to look up at the ones who had spoken. Respect like this had been the only real reward to come from the horrors of that day last summer when his armies had soaked a hill in Roman blood.

  ‘Aye, we should flood into eastern and southern Thracia again,’ a sponge-nosed noble enthused. ‘Hammer the stunned legions that stagger there thinking they have retaken that soil because they have beaten Ortwin.’

  Fritigern flicked an eye up at this one and barely concealed a single, wry bleat of laughter. ‘There is little left in eastern Thracia to take – neither treasure nor food to fill our bellies. If we return to those parts we will find only hunger and disappointment.’

  ‘So what would you have us do? Roast here all summer?’ Sponge-nose raged.

  And a handful of others growled in agreement. The respect was not widespread, that much was clear. Enough supported his role as Iudex of the allied Gothic tribes… just. The rest were merely waiting for the balance to shift or the opportunity to arise to shift it forcibly. His eyes drifted to the two who had yet to speak, the pair who had been like knives in his sides all along, two of the highest
reiks of his council.

  Alatheus and Saphrax sat on the top tier of the timber arc, glowering down like gulls. Alatheus, tall and lithe with waist-length hair as white as his robes and starkly-contrasting with his night black eyebrows was certainly the shrewdest of the two; Saphrax – built like a squat turret, hairless and slit-eyed, draped in mail – was more of a fierce watchdog.

  Fritigern saw Saphrax’s pugnacious face crease and his pale lips part to say his piece:

  ‘You may be waiting on a decision for some time, noblemen,’ Saphrax scoffed, ‘for this is the leader who “will not quarrel with Roman walls”.’ Raucous laughter exploded all round the arc of seats. ‘The one who cowered from the prospect of battle with the Romans for so long, clinging to the hopes of a shameful peace.’ He roared with amusement at his own slur.

  Fritigern eyed Saphrax carefully, letting the forced hilarity fade away like bad wind. ‘There was hope of peace, yet I fear it died along with tens of thousands of men on the plains of Adrianople.’ He let a silence follow. A crow cawed somewhere nearby and not a soul spoke. ‘And of the walls? Only a mindless brute would drive at them, suffer defeat after defeat and continue regardless.’

  ‘Good advice, Iudex,’ Alatheus said, eyes narrowing. ‘But caution is the sceptre of a weak leader. The man who hides in a cave in fear of marauding wolves is never wrong, for he goes unharmed for a time, until he starves, caged by his own doubts. Take the weight of your position, Iudex. Decide – not what we cannot do but what we must do.’ A riot of reproaching shouts and supportive cheers met this. Alatheus held up and shook a fist. ‘Lead. Or relinquish your position.’

  One noble grabbed the furred collar of another and an instant later, the zing of longswords rang out, weapons being held out like accusing fingers as the council disintegrated into spittle-flecked vitriol.

  Fritigern closed his eyes. He recalled something from his youth: in the time of a wise old iudex who had led the Goths back in those days when the tribes had lived north of the Danubius – long before the coming of the Huns. The man had mediated a blood-feud between two minor Thervingi nobles. A handsome fellow had apparently sired a bastard child with a gnarled man’s wife, and the gnarled one had cut off the handsome man’s nose as part-vengeance. Blood had been spilled and honour shed already, yet neither were for relenting and both appealed to the old iudex vociferously. The iudex had proposed a plan: for the gnarled one’s grown daughter to wed the once-handsome man’s son, and for both families to swear allegiance should either need to call upon the warriors of the other. As a boy, Fritigern had listened to the old iudex pass this judgement to the gathered tribes and enjoyed the warm sense of peaceful resolution it seemed to carry. But by the following moon, cold reality had replaced it. The noseless man, tormented by his disfigurement, strangled the gnarled one’s daughter. The noseless man’s son, enraged at the loss of his new wife, beat his father to death and the gnarled man, demented at the loss of his daughter, blamed the one who had ordered the joining. He led his soldiers to the old iudex’s village and burnt it to the ground, dragging the aged fellow from his flaming home and tossing him into a well. The memory of that old leader’s whimpering from the foot of the well had lasted for days. The only lesson amongst it all had never left Fritigern: some rifts simply could not be healed.

  Holding onto this horde entire as his own would be the death of all of them – they would starve, they would blunder onto the sharp end of some Roman re-conquest… or they would turn against one another and destroy themselves from within.

  He heard a disapproving grunt from behind him and turned to see his bare-chested brute of a bodyguard, Hengist, flanked by a pair of his royal guards in visored helms, dark red armour and embroidered cloaks.

  ‘Give the word, Iudex,’ Hengist whispered, leaning towards Fritigern for privacy, his almost-bald head gleaming and the lone knot of hair on the crown flopping to one side. ‘One word is all I need. Night is dark in these parts.’ He patted his belt from which a knife handle jutted, forehead wrinkling as he glanced up towards Alatheus and Saphrax – both glorying in the continuing clamour of unrest.

  ‘I admire your loyalty, Hengist, but no such word will ever come from me,’ Fritigern whispered in reply. ‘Alatheus and Saphrax only rose to lead the Greuthingi tribe because they drowned young King Vitheric. And look at them now. Their souls were swallowed up long ago.’

  ‘But they are picking apart your authority, stitch by stitch,’ Hengist persisted. ‘Look, even now they prepare to undermine you,’ he hissed, watching as Alatheus and Saphrax approached from the arc of seats, coming to stand by a hitching rail, near Fritigern, as if preparing to present their own plans to the council.

  ‘Indeed. Perhaps a clean tear is needed,’ Fritigern said, standing.

  Hengist grunted in confusion and the quarrelling council fell quiet as they saw their Iudex move.

  ‘We will not roam back across Thracia,’ he boomed to all as he walked over towards the approaching Alatheus and Saphrax, both of whom slowed, faces grew carefully watchful. Saphrax’s hand slid nearer his belt-axe. ‘For Thracia is conquered already and drained of plunder and food. And there are no barriers penning us in this land.’ Fritigern pointed west. ‘The Diocese of Dacia lies just miles away, untouched.’ He pointed south. ‘The Diocese of Macedonia, also untapped.’ He gestured at the hitching rail, a full drinking skin hanging from each end – left there by the last riders to use it. ‘Dacia, Macedonia,’ he said, naming each bulging skin.

  ‘Which?’ Sponge-nose crowed.

  ‘Decide, damn you!’ a tall, fork-bearded nobleman demanded. This one had been shouting in support of Fritigern just moments ago.

  Fritigern noticed Alatheus and Saphrax’s lips twitch in amusement.

  ‘I will not choose between Dacia and Macedonia.’

  The council members were about to erupt in a fresh clamour of jeers and complaints, when Fritigern drew his longsword and swung on his heel, bringing the blade swooshing round to the sudden gasps of his council. Alatheus and Saphrax’s faces gawped in horror as the blade’s tip passed under their chins – Alatheus’ lank white hair rising in the slipstream – before the edge of the blade sliced through the first water skin… and then the second. The double splat of the contents soaking the earth instigated a hiatus of silence. Staring eyes, mouths wide.

  ‘We will set upon both,’ Fritigern said calmly.

  Now the mouths wriggled again, first in mutters, then as a fresh clamour, this time excited, eager.

  ‘The horde is large enough to master both of the Roman dioceses.’

  The horde is too large, he said honestly within.

  ‘Halved, the horde will conquer each diocese.’

  He glanced to Alatheus and Saphrax. Halved, I will be rid of you, perhaps forever. Yet their faces were stony, giving nothing away. As the nobles erupted in an uproar of ideas and hurried planning, Fritigern kept the corner of one eye on the Greuthingi leaders. He recalled then a moment just a few years ago, before the Huns came, before he was laden with the burden of leadership, before the world was turned on its head. He was fishing by a still, clear tarn. He could see the fish within and they him. The worm on his line was bait, clear as day… but ever so appetising. Bite, he willed them.

  ‘I propose to lead one half of our forces south, into Macedonia. Who will follow me? Who will join the Sons of Fritigern?’ he said, sheathing his longsword. Deliberately, he stepped before Alatheus and Saphrax, back turned on them, facing the rest as he plucked his spear from the earth so the hawk banner caught a breeze, giving the bird life.

  ‘Always,’ one reiks stood tall and proud, beating a fist to his chest. A Thervingi – one of Fritigern’s own. ‘Aye,’ another cried. ‘My warriors are your warriors, Iudex,’ a third barked, followed by many more. ‘The Sons of Fritigern!’ they cried. Almost half, Fritigern realised. Things were on course, so far.

  ‘The other half will require a strong leader, or leadership party, for Dacia is a vast land,’ Fritige
rn asked his arc of nobles, then twisted his head ever so slightly to throw over his shoulder, ‘but a rich one.’

  ‘I will lead the Dacia contingent,’ Sponge-nose cried.

  ‘Sit down you drunken fool,’ another laughed, ‘you couldn’t lead a dog on a string.’

  Irate, Sponge-nose exploded in a tirade, ignored by the laughing others.

  ‘I will lead,’ the fork-bearded one insisted, standing tall.

  ‘Aye!’ a few called out in support.

  Fritigern said nothing, waiting on the two behind him to speak.

  ‘Where we go, the bulk of the Greuthingi riders will follow,’ Alatheus duly obliged. The riders are the key to victory, as we proved at Adrianople. Submit to our banner… the black banner we once carried across the plains far to the north before the Huns came. Join us. Join the Black Horde.’

  A moment of silence followed, then a rich clamour of shouts and support.

  Fritigern stepped back and watched as many hurried down the arc of seats to bow before Alatheus and Saphrax, kneeling, kissing their jewelled rings. In his mind’s eye he saw the tarn fish snapping its pale mouth over the worm. It was what the two reiks had always sought, what Fritigern had always resisted. But now, after so long, he realised that it was the only answer. Ride into Dacia with your black banner, break the towns, harrow the streets, make war until you are sickened of the slaughter. And when you find yourself in that ash-strewn, bare land, on your knees, starving and confused, you might hear tales of your one-time brothers in conquered Macedonia, ruling wisely and thriving.

  To Macedonia then, he thought, looking south. The towns and cities would be brought to heel, taught how to pay regular and sustainable tribute. Thessalonica, this new stronghold, would pay too. The Romans would never call Fritigern their master, not openly. But this new emperor, Theodosius, would learn to be his vassal. And the fragmented legions? If they dared stand against him, then their fate was sealed.