Legionary

Chapter 61

Pavo stumbled to his skinned knees again as Festus rammed a sword hilt into his back, driving the breath from his lungs. He spat a mouthful of steely blood onto the floor.

‘On your feet, you little turd!’ Festus chuckled. ‘You’ll be wishing that pussy Spurius had finished you back in Durostorum, because you’ve got a whole world of pain to live through now.’ He raised his sword flat and made to swing it down on Pavo’s face.

‘Hey Festus, I hear your mother is giving the troops in Constantinople a bargain two for one?’ Sura croaked from the darkness behind him.

Festus stilled and then turned, striding across and swinging his boot full force into the shadows with a crack. Sura could only whimper.

‘Think you’re a big shot, do you, Festus?’ Felix snarled. ‘You’re just a runt recruit — one of the poorer ones if I remember rightly. Enjoy your moment of power, because it’ll be short, and after that…you’ll be executed for this!’

‘You’ll not be around long enough to worry about that,’ Festus snarled, then turned to his three legionaries. ‘Get them moving!’ At once, the three tumbled out into stark morning sunlight, staggering forward into the flagstones of the town square. The light burned at Pavo’s eyes, reflecting from the pale flagstoned square and limestone of the surrounding buildings. All four sides of the square were packed with jeering Hun warriors, women and children. His eyes swept around their snarling, baying features until he spotted the sneering face of Tribunus Wulfric. Bile rose inside his chest.

‘You treacherous whoreson!’ He cried, lurching forward from his captors only for a sword-flat to smash into his shoulder. He tumbled onto his knees and gazed up at the sky as another thick chorus of jeers rained down on the three. Then stones began to smack down around them. Pavo felt one skate from his crown but he barely blinked. Then all at once, the crowd was silent. Up front, a tall Hun, laden with animal teeth trinkets and wearing mottled animal skins, stepped up onto the wooden platform in front of them, and then settled down on a simple carved bench. Resting his bearded chin on his wrist, he burned holes into Pavo’s heart with his stare.

‘I didn’t tell you about this bit,’ Sura wavered. ‘Balamber, he’s their leader.’

Pavo looked his friend in the eye — fear danced there. Never before had Sura showed anything but foolish bravado in the face of danger. He glanced at Felix. ‘What’s the plan, sir?’

‘Buggered if I know…defiance to the last,’ Felix grumbled.

Balamber raised a hand and clicked his fingers. At once four Hun warriors shuffled from one side of the square, heaving a steaming cauldron with them. Festus roared with laughter and the crowd of Huns erupted again in excitement.

‘Is that…bronze?’ Felix stammered.

Pavo gulped at the optio’s face — pale and wet with perspiration, and then he turned to his friend. ‘Sura, what’s going on?’

But then the cauldron was slapped down in front of them. Glowing red like the depths of Hades, metal swirled as liquid. Black char formed on the surface as the air tried in vain to cool its rage. A thick iron ladle hung from its side.

‘Now, my Roman guests,’ Balamber spoke smoothly, ‘your brothers of the I Dacia have cooperated with me — look at them now; they have more gold than a lifetime as a soldier would pay. I hope you will be as cooperative?’

Pavo glanced up at the Hun’s eyes and then down at the hand of the warrior by the cauldron as he lifted the ladle clear of the molten metal. The warrior held out a petrified vole. The creature pulled and tugged with all its strength at the warrior’s leather glove, but to no avail. The ladle moved over the poor creature’s head, and tilted.

Pavo whipped his head back in disgust as a stench of burning flesh clawed at his face and the screaming of the animal slowed and stopped. Sura wretched beside him and Felix growled in disgust.

‘As a little twist,’ Balamber continued, ‘I will be rewarding you with precious metal, not if you cooperate, but if you fail to!’

The crowd roared and Balamber stood, reaching down to an urn by his throne. He grappled at something and lifted it up by black strands attached to it. Pavo blinked as he tried to put a shape to the glistening ball of metal and hair dangling there. Then it spun around and a grotesque meld of eyeball and cooled bronze hung out of what was once an eye socket.

‘Apsikal displeased me, and now his head is an ornament. Now you will talk, or your heads will form a new set of ornaments for my throne room when we take your precious empire from you!’

Pavo felt his stomach weaken as he watched Sura being wrenched forward, his head tilted to one side and the ladle held over his ear. A pair of filthy hands grappled with Pavo’s jaw and twisted his neck, forcing him to watch the spectacle. Beside him, Felix stifled a roar of frustration as he too received the same treatment.

‘See, Pavo — that’s going to happen to you, too! I’m going to enjoy this,’ Festus roared from the sidelines.

‘Now talk, or feel my wrath!’ Balamber cried. The crowd roared on his every word.

Pavo felt his vision close in. Then Sura thumped forward onto the ground — unconscious from fear. The crowd began to jeer in disgust.

‘Enough,’ Balamber roared over them. ‘It seems that these Romans don’t have the heart to die like men. Yet they have not talked!’

‘Die!’ Roared the crowd in unison.

Pavo winched open one eye just enough to examine Balamber’s face; the Hun leader stroked his beard, eyes darting from the cauldron to the three of them. A wicked grin split his face and he raised his hand and pointed a bony finger right at Pavo.

‘Let this one taste the precious metal…’

Pavo’s heart thumped in terror and the crowd erupted in cheers as his head was wrenched back and his mouth prised open. A grinning Hun lifted the growing ladle to Pavo’s mouth and the stinging heat of the liquid metal singed the hair in his nose. His limbs trembled and terror raced in his blood and Pavo desperately sought the words of the soldier’s prayer to Mithras.

Then a shout came from the harbour walls.

‘Fire!’

Balamber dropped his hand, his mouth falling open as he turned to the disturbance. Two Hun warriors tumbled forward into the square. ‘One of the ships of the fleet has been set alight — we must hurry or they will all catch!’ Panic rippled around the watching thousands, and the jeers for death stopped.

‘To the dock!’ Balamber cried, sweeping his hands at his people as if they were toy soldiers. ‘Keep the wall guard full strength though — this smells of treachery to me!’

Pavo fell forward, panting in disbelief. He shot a glance up at Felix, whose face was wrinkled in befuddlement as smoke billowed from the harbour.

Balamber strode over to Pavo, Felix and the prone form of Sura. He leaned in next to them, the reek of animal blood wafted from his teeth as he whispered, ‘You will die and die horribly — but only once you have talked!’ He stood tall again. ‘Guards, take them back to the cells!’

Three I Dacia legionaries bundled them forward. Pavo caught flitting glimpses of the dock and the fleet through each passing alleyway; an angry black smoke snaked up around the masts and an orangey glare tinged the air above the decks. His head spun — he was sure they had doused their fire arrows.

‘Stop!’ A voice grunted.

Pavo’s blood curdled in his veins. That voice. He looked up slowly, and their eyes met. Spurius. The contorted spasm of anger that was his face hadn’t changed a bit.

‘Hand them over to us,’ Spurius barked, motioning to the two I Dacia legionaries by his side. ‘We’re taking them to the cells — you lot are needed at the docks!’

‘Lucky us!’ Sura gasped.

The legionaries grappling them looked at each other.

‘What are you waiting for? Get moving!’ Spurius roared.

The legionaries scuttled off and Spurius stepped round to wrench Pavo forward. Felix and Sura cursed as his two helpers grabbed them. They were bundled roughly along the main street and then sharply into a narrow alley between two dilapidated Roman style tenements, dim and shielded from the pandemonium nearby.

Sura fell to his knees and spat at Spurius’ feet. ‘I should’ve known. Festus is a traitor but at least he obeys his new Hun master. Go on, stick a dagger in our throats then — but you’ll be the ones who end up getting liquid metal in your head when your master, Balamber, finds out.’ His voice bounced off the alley walls and up and over the buildings.

Pavo winced as Spurius lurched forward and swept his fist into Sura’s jaw. With a crack of bone, his friend’s head fell forward and he was silent.

‘Any more loudmouths?’ Spurius hissed.

‘What are you playing at?’ Pavo spoke, eyeing the face of his old tormentor. Spurius wore a look of agitation, sweat drenched his v-shaped brow, trickling over his nose, and his eyes darted again and again to the alley mouth.

‘No time to explain.’ Spurius whipped his spatha free with a rasp of iron and hoisted it aloft. ‘Stay still,’ he croaked before bringing it hammering down.

Pavo clenched his eyes and waited on the iron to split his skull. The pain would be short lived, and then blackness would overcome him. He felt his arms being jolted forwards at the shoulders and a thunk of iron cutting iron. Blinking, he looked to his wrists to see the severed chain of his manacle swinging. Felix and Sura had been freed likewise. He looked up at Spurius, mouth agape.

‘No time — I mean it! Come with me.’ Spurius wafted his hand and stalked towards the mouth of the alley. He leant out, then ducked back and hugged the wall as a crowd of Huns tumbled past, laden with buckets and urns. Then with another quick glance both ways, he flipped his hand again to wave them forward.

Pavo went first, stopping just short of the shaven-headed hulk of a man he had strived to stay well away from until now. Suddenly, Spurius was off across the flagstoned main street and he dived into the opposite alley — between two more crumbling Roman tenements patched up with mud and roofed with rotting thatch. Pavo had a look both ways, ducking back as another ten of the I Dacia raced past. Then he, too, scudded across the road. ‘What now?’ He panted to Spurius as he pushed his back against the cold stone wall, the reek of smoke from the docks stinging his eyes.

‘Give me a foot up,’ Spurius whispered, jabbing a stumpy finger upwards.

Above them was a drop in the roof of the tenement where the mortar had crumbled, leaving a v-shaped hole just a few feet above them. Pavo cupped his hands, just as the rest of their party stumbled into the alley. Spurius wasted not a second, springing up from Pavo’s hands and clutching at the wall’s edge. Despite his considerable bulk, he managed to squirm up and over. The thud of his hobnailed boots on timber from within the building caused them all to start. Then Spurius poked his head over.

‘What are you waiting for? Move!’

Pavo caught Felix and Sura’s suspicious looks and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘You got any other ideas?’ Felix shook his head, then stepped forward and cupped his hands, nodding to Pavo in distaste.

Soon the six of them were up and inside the exposed attic of the tenement, creeping along the dry and rotting timber floorboards, squatting and rising to keep their eyes just above the dilapidated brickwork. The building was empty, but they all held their breath as they watched squads of hundreds racing back and forth to the docks, where now they could see the nearest trireme — black underneath the curtain of orange flame that enveloped it.

‘Not a bad job, even if I do say so myself?’ Spurius mused.

‘You what? I want some answers — what in Hades is going on here?’ Pavo hissed.

‘Time for that later, suffice to know I’m on your side, now you see that boat?’ Spurius extended a sausage-like digit to the bireme at the far end, bobbing innocently far from the blaze. ‘Well that’s our route out of here.’

‘We’ve been here,’ Felix hissed, poking his head in between the two. ‘Six men cannot pilot a bireme — think again.’

‘Already have,’ Spurius cut in, ‘there are forty men on that ship, ready to do anything to clear their names. They’re due to do a patrol of the coast for the next few days, but they’re well up for getting back to Constantinople. Yes, they took the gold, but like me, they had no choice; take a lump of gold in your hand or a blade of iron in your throat — which would you go for?’

‘I don’t bloody believe it…we’ve got a chance!’ Pavo gasped to Felix and Sura.

‘So all we have to do is get through the thousands of Huns out there?’ Sura sighed. ‘You chaps will be okay, but we’re a little conspicuous?’ He eyed the filthy, soaking and bloodstained tunics they wore.

‘Lads,’ Spurius whispered, clicking his fingers, ‘get the gear!’ His two colleagues scuttled over to the corner of the attic, pulling away a dusty canvas to reveal three sets of I Dacia armour. Spurius grinned. ‘Get kitted up, we’ve only got so long before people start asking the lads on the bireme questions.’

Pavo clipped on the scale vest — light in comparison to his old mail one; the comitatenses armour was leagues ahead of the limitanei armour in terms of quality — scales of iron, much lighter and offering more complete protection, and it was still silver in colour, not a hint of brown rust. And the intercisa helmets were mirror-like, such was their perfection. He tightened his sword belt; it felt good to be armed again. They tightened up their chin straps and looked each other over.

‘Bloody affront to the Claudia this is!’ Felix chuckled, cricking his neck and rubbing his hands.

Without comment, Spurius hopped over the edge of the wall and slid down to the alley again. Pavo followed suit and they edged warily through the shadows to the opening. The cry of gulls grew and tang of saltwater and black woodsmoke thickened in the air as they approached. Spurius gave them all a stony look.

‘Chins up and chests out, lads. We’ve only got one shot at this.’