‘Vesiii…’ a low chorus of whispers replied.
‘What the? Mithras, did they put something in that beer?’
But no, the noise was real. More, it seemed to be coming from down below. Alert – or as alert as a roaring drunk man can be – Herma peered over the precipice: nothing on the forest floor – and surely it was too far below to hear voices like this – voices that seemed to be emanating from just a few strides away. Then he saw it: an odd, dull bubble of orange flickering in the night, not on the forest floor and not up here… but somewhere in between, as if suspended halfway down the plateau’s sheer eastern side. ‘Eh?’ he uttered, edging along the precipice to get a better look.
‘Blood and honour, always,’ the low voice murmured on. ‘And to our enemy, death and shame.’
A chorus of other voices repeated this in a low drawl.
Herma craned his neck over the edge as best he could to see down to the faint orange light. The bluff-side was riddled with craggy warts and veins so it was hard to tell what it was. Until the light of the full June moon betrayed the faintest of shadows on the bluff side – ancient and barely discernible steps, leading down to a narrow ledge. The light seemed to be glowing from within a cave of sorts down there. He swung to the south and the well-carved, torch-demarcated steps the Claudia men had climbed to get up here and had climbed and descended to go hunting ever since, then back to these, altogether different ones. Forgotten… or hidden?
He poked his tongue out, lifting a swaying foot to step down onto the first stair. The night air was windless but the beer made it feel like a gale was blowing, and the step was wickedly narrow. When a little piece of the stone crumbled away under the edge of his right boot, he threw his arms out to balance, and suddenly realised just how big a drop there was as the stone fragments plummeted into the dark void. He threw his back against the bluff, panting, then edged shakily back up from the steps onto the plateau. ‘Not tonight. I’ll tell the tribunus in the morning and we can investigate then,’ he decided, turning away from the plateau edge. But as he turned, the fear of all the gods shot through him when he almost bashed into a Gothic warrior standing right there.
‘Are you lost, Roman?’ the broken-nosed colossus grunted. ‘Your comrades are over there.’
‘Aye, it’s just,’ he half turned back to the steps, ‘ah, nothing.’
The Goth’s face was expressionless. ‘I’ll take you back to your tents then, shall I?’
Herma agreed with a hiccup. As he walked with the Goth, a thought occurred to him. ‘It’d be a good place to hide out, were the Huns ever to get up here.’
‘Hmm?’ the Goth said.
‘Down there, at the bottom of those hidden steps.’ Herma scratched his chin. ‘Be a good place to stow treasure too. Reiks Arimer could keep his treasure down there.’ A drunk-bright thought occurred to him then. ‘Hold on… the voices… is Arimer down there? He is, isn’t he?’ Herma enthused, sure he had solved the puzzle.
The Goth stopped. Herma swayed, waiting on him to move again. The Goth’s flat features split into a smile and he threw an arm round Herma’s shoulders. ‘You Romans are obsessed with Arimer’s whereabouts, aren’t you? I’ll tell you what, how about I take you to him?’
Herma’s face creased in a drunk man’s frown. ‘Now?’
‘Right now,’ the Goth nodded.
‘Well I suppose if…’ Herma started.
The rest of the sentence went unspoken, as the Goth suddenly chopped the edge of his free hand into Herma’s throat, hard. Herma gagged, winded, his voice gone. Before he could understand what was happening, the Goth surged towards the plateau edge, his arm looped around Herma’s back and driving him that way.
‘What the? No!’ Herma rasped, but his thudding footsteps suddenly died to nothing as he was propelled off the edge, his legs cycling uselessly, arms thrashing. Molten terror flooded through him and his bowels turned over as he plummeted from the plateau. The wind of the fall screamed in his ears and he tried to cry out but could not. The last thing he saw was the boiling swamp rushing up to meet him. With a thick, stinging slap, he plunged into the filth and down, completely submerged in the soupy blackness. For a moment, he was overcome with joy: for he was alive – the fall had not killed him. Tribunus Pavo had to be warned about the cave and the treacherous Goth who had thrown him down here. He kicked as best he could but the mire was like glue. He wasn’t yet sure which way was up and every movement seemed to suck him in the opposite direction to which he wanted to go. He felt harder objects brush slowly past him and imagined the rotting Hun corpse they had seen floating in this swamp on that first day. Suddenly, the blackness felt like a shroud. The breath trapped in his lungs began to burn and his brain throbbed. Panic seized and shook him. He opened his mouth to gasp in absent air. The sludge of the mire flooded into his lungs and his body spasmed and fell still, suspended deep in the mud.
Pavo left the main fire and walked around the edge of the plateau, night-dark and quiet. Alone he cycled over his thoughts, but found few answers to his problems. He groaned and looked skywards at the silvery sand of stars. When he dropped his gaze back to ground level again, he saw something that jolted his heart: a black shape, crouched in the bole of a spreading oak near the north edge of the plateau. A dark and hooded creature, two eyes glowing from within, but not at him for once. Pavo’s face hardened as he watched Scapula, flexing and unflexing his fingers, examining his palms. He approached, seeing tiny red arcs - scars where the agent’s fingernails had split his palms from gripping or wrenching something too violently. Pavo was just considering his lack of weapons and guards when he stepped on a twig. Scapula’s head shot up. The wide-eyes settled into arcs as narrow as the cuts on his hands.
‘You don’t sleep much,’ Pavo remarked flatly, thinking of the night in the ruins of Novae Fortress when the speculator had been perched on his haunches, hissing and strangling some imaginary victim. Probably re-enacting a previous kill, he thought in disgust.
‘Nor you, Tribunus,’ Scapula replied.
‘Sleep is the land where demons lurk,’ Pavo drawled, recalling Gallus’ words from one dark night on campaign when Pavo had found him awake at the edge of camp, staring into the night.
Scapula’s top lip lifted momentarily in what might have been a sneer. He flicked a finger beyond Pavo. ‘For you, and for the boy legionary too.’
Pavo looked back to see he had pointed at Stichus. He had noticed the speculator and the young soldier talking near the fire some nights. Some common bond had been formed – with a speculator, surely not?
‘He endures grim dreams every night,’ Scapula explained.
‘I imagine the dreams of any soldier are dark,’ he replied, eyes groundward.
‘Not as dark as mine,’ Scapula said with a scathing laugh.
Pavo looked up, his eyes tapering.
‘The boy seems to think he understands me,’ Scapula muttered, again looking at the palms of his hands, ‘and my dreams.’
Pavo studied Scapula from under a shaded brow. ‘I would have guessed that your nightmares are scared of you,’ he said, flatly.
Scapula laughed once, the sound more like a growl. ‘You loathe the Speculatores, don’t you, Tribunus?’ he said, smiling like a wolf now.
Pavo stepped a little closer, sitting on a hewn trunk opposite Scapula. ‘On the contrary, I’m sure your kind have stopped many a usurpation, offed many a demagogue.’
‘It’s not all about the knife,’ Scapula said, drawing his dagger from his belt case and twirling the point gently against the tip of his finger. ‘Sometimes our job is to keep people alive.’
Pavo felt a chill pass across his soul then. Images of that strange dream with the goose and the wolf rose and faded in his thoughts.
‘Brethren, we are,’ Scapula said again after a time. ‘Raised as if of the same blood. Like starlings, we move in unison, think as one, act as one. When one falls, another takes his place. The spirit of the brethren goes unharmed; it is etern
al, immortal.’
‘Like a living corpse,’ Pavo said flatly. It brought his thoughts to Dexion, once his sibling and one of these brethren. ‘One of your sort fought alongside the legions at Adrianople,’ he said as impassively as he could.
‘Dexion,’ Scapula replied instantly. ‘Now but ashes, I believe? He was an exemplary agent. Not a spot of remorse or mercy. A shadow for a soul, untainted by the merest speck of light. I often wonder: from what womb did such a marvel spring?’ He fell quiet and cast a lasting gaze at Pavo that asked a hundred tacit questions.
Pavo’s teeth ground. ‘He was my half-brother, but you know this already, don’t you?’
Scapula smirked, his eyes stony-hard. ‘Like starlings…’ the speculator stoked his dagger tip through the leaves and bracken on the earth before him. ‘You grieve for him?’
‘I grieve for what he became,’ Pavo said. ‘He was never truly my brother. He was brethren. These men here,’ he cast his head back towards the legionary tents, ‘they are my brothers. We march, fight, live and die as kin. Your brethren are black and false, Speculator. We fight for one another, for our families, for our way of life. You?’ his heart was racing now, ‘You betray, steal and murder, blind, deaf and dumb to the unworthiness of your…’ Pavo’s voice trailed off, realising his last few words were best left unspoken.
‘Of my master?’ Scapula finished for him, leaning forward gleefully. ‘Surely you would not speak ill of the Emperor of the West?’
Pavo let a long silence pass then rose, casting Scapula a hard parting look. ‘Brothers,’ he reiterated, ‘not brethren.’
As he strode on around the plateau-edge, he felt his anger ebb. After a while sleep tugged at his eyelids and weariness cast a fog over his mind. But then he heard something in between his footsteps: a whisper on the night air. There and not there at once. Chanting? A few men had reported the like here and there, but it had come to nothing. And as soon as he was sure it was real it was gone again.
He looked all across the plateau and only a few Gothic tents still glowed orange with light at this late hour. It hadn’t come from any of them. He heard it again. It seemed to float from just beyond the unguarded eastern edge of the plateau. How could that be? This stronghold was just as sheer-sided on that edge as it was on the north and west. He moved a little closer, turning his ear to the drop: now the words of the chanting took on an edge of clarity.
‘Doom to the unworthy. Glory to the brave,’ one voice muttered.
‘Vesiii… ’ several more replied.
Pavo’s skin crawled. He crept a little closer to the precipice and crouched right on the brink, holding onto a thick tussock of grass for balance as he peered over. The faintest glow of orange caught his eye, halfway down the cliffside. There’s something down there?
‘Tribunus?’ a Gothic voice cut through the night air and sent tongues of fiery fright through Pavo. He staggered back from the edge. Rising and swinging round to see one of Eriulf’s bodyguards. A giant with a broken-nose. ‘Be careful – the ground there is soft and liable to fall away.’
‘As are my bowels, guard,’ Pavo gasped. He flicked his head back towards the edge. ‘The light and the voices, what are they?’
The guard looked at him blankly, his eyebrows knitting in confusion. ‘Lights, Tribunus?’ he said, stepping a little closer to Pavo.
Pavo made eyes to the edge. ‘Aye, the… ’ he fell silent. The voices were absent. Suddenly, he felt foolish. Had sleep been walking with him, conjuring it all in his head?
‘Voices, and lights, you said?’ the guard persisted. ‘Strange. Come,’ he beckoned Pavo back to the edge, ‘stand where you were and show me where you saw the lights.’
Pavo edged back to the brink. The Goth placed a hand on his back: ‘I’ve got you, you’ll be fine,’ the broken-nosed man said calmly. ‘Lean out as far as you like.’
But Pavo could see from here, there was no light down there. Now he felt a throbbing headache coming on. He leaned out a little more, just to be sure.
‘Sir, something wrong?’ Opis asked, strolling over to the scene.
The big Goth straightened up and laughed. ‘The tribunus has had a few too many barley beers,’ he said, tilting an imaginary cup to his lips before strolling away.
‘I have a stinking sore head, Opis, but not from the beer,’ Pavo muttered, backing away from the edge, rubbing his temples and returning towards the legionary tents.
‘Have you seen Herma?’ Opis asked, walking with him. ‘He’s not in his tent.’
‘He had an eye for one of the Gothic women,’ Pavo replied, ‘perhaps he is with her? We’ll wait until the morning and…’
As soon as their voices faded and the eastern precipice was deserted again, the dull, orange bubble of light halfway down rose into life again.
Summer baked the land, searing July days spliced with occasional warm rains, followed by mornings where the forest roof around the plateau roiled and drifted with vapour.
Pavo rose one such morning just after dawn, ambling across to a rock near the plateau’s edge. He sat there, eyeing the sea of mist, hearing the strange cawing of birds, the occasional roar of wild cats and the panting of bears. And at times, like a nightmarish echo, he heard the keening ibex horns and haunting ‘whoops’ of the many small Hun riding parties out there. They had seen the demonic horsemen a few times since that day in the meadow, but had been swift to hide themselves and so far, no more hunters had perished, and no more armoured scouts had been sighted, so far. Perhaps the fear of the Hun masses was unfounded.
As he waited for the sun to burn off the rain vapour, he honed his spear with a Gothic whetstone. The repetitive action soothed his thoughts, spirited him away from the peculiarity of his whereabouts, and lightened the massive weight of responsibility on his shoulders. He wiped the speartip with a rag and caught sight of his reflection with a start: he had neglected to shave for a week and now his jaw was sprouting with the beginnings of a beard, and his hair hung on his neck and brow in loose curls. He glanced down at himself, his legionary cloak and tunic were stained with smoke and grime and he had taken to wearing a pair of Gothic trousers. He looked over his shoulder to see Sura, swaddled in a lozenge-patterned cloak lent to him by Eriulf, his untended hair knotted on the back of his head in the Gothic style. Even Libo – a man who at the best of times resembled a tattered but very Roman spongia – had been transformed. The Gothic woman with the boils and brown teeth whom he had become friendly with was sitting behind him as he mended his boots, combing and taming his wild hair and massaging resin into it to soften it, giving him a tribal braid on one side. The hiss of sizzling boar-bacon rose from a fire nearby along with the wondrous scent, and for a moment, he felt content and safe.
Yet the disappearance of Molacus had never been explained. He had accepted that the Batavian had deserted. But then, just weeks ago, young Herma had vanished too. That disappearance had cut him to the bone. A young man but a veteran of Adrianople, gone like a vanishing mist. ‘Where? Why?’ he whispered into the ether. ‘You were no deserter, lad. And you were always a clumsy bastard,’ he mused with a grain of sad humour, thinking of the time Herma had snagged his testicles on the rings of his mail shirt, or the umpteenth time he had cracked his head on the low doorway to the principia shack at the Rhodope fort. He looked down at the moat-like swap that ringed the foot of the plateau. ‘You’d never be able to pick your way down there and across that in the dark.’
‘Who are you talking too?’
Pavo swung round to see Runa, settling on the rock beside him. She playfully nudged him with one thigh, almost knocking him off then handing him a plate of crispy bacon and scrambled eggs. ‘To myself, it seems,’ he replied sadly.
‘The mists have almost lifted. We should be heading out to hunt soon,’ she said, running a finger across the tip of his spear carefully to check for sharpness.
Pavo took a spoonful of creamy eggs and a sliver of crunchy, salty bacon. The hot nourishment flooded his belly wit
h warmth and gladness as he considered the hunt ahead.
‘Perhaps today you will not be outwitted by your prey?’ Runa mused. ‘You are very lucky it is not you lying on a boar’s plate this morning.’
Pavo snorted. ‘You were every bit a part of it!’
‘Was I the one who came charging across the stream like a maddened ox?’ she cocked one eyebrow.
‘No, but you did manage to set off one of our traps,’ Pavo shot back gleefully, gulping down a mouthful of berry juice from a cup. ‘I could have left you hanging there, you know.’
‘You could, but then you’d have gotten lost again on your way back here alone,’ she chuckled, her laughter tinkling like silver bells.
‘Right, enough talk.’ Pavo said gruffly, standing. He shot her a stern look, which did not last, then offered her a hand to help her stand, which of course she refused.
By late afternoon, they moved as a pair along the foot of a forested ridge, Siward and Sura mirroring their movements on top of the ridge. Pavo looked up, sensing Siward slowing. The Goth signalled silently towards the end of the ridge. Boar? He waved a finger forward, three times. The two teams scuttled on, Pavo caressing his spear, ready for the one chance these forest hogs would give a man to strike them. He heard the grunting of the boars, and the gurgling of water.
They set eyes upon the boars, foraging for roots and mushrooms in a small clearing ahead, illuminated with shafts of sunlight. A stream creek lay between them and the clearing, deep as three men standing on each other’s shoulders and narrow like a vein running through the forest floor. A felled pine lay across the creek like a bridge.
‘You two, go first, softly as you can,’ Siward whispered down from the ridge top. Behind him, Sura made a yapping dog motion with his hand, his face pinched in derision. When Siward flashed his head round, Sura quickly transformed it into a scratch of the ear.
Runa beckoned Pavo on. ‘Tread where I tread, not like a rampaging bear,’ she said, then sped onwards. They came to the pine and crept across painstakingly, careful to stay low. On the far side, Runa ducked down and he did too. The boars suspected nothing, so far. Sura and Siward came across the felled pine next. Silently, carefully… then with the dull rumble of crumbling earth and snapping twigs as the root end of the pine shuddered down the banking.
EMPIRE OF SHADES Page 18