Legionary

Chapter 4

The first century crunched rhythmically over the bracken forest path. They had woken that morning under sodden tents. At least the rain had eased from the driving sleet showers of the previous day to a tame vertical drizzle. Now, late afternoon, the light was beginning to fade as they moved under a canopy of leaves, and a musty whiff of damp vegetation hung in the air. At the head of the column, Gallus systematically scoured the way ahead; the men had marched without rest since dawn and now time was the enemy. Without a safe campsite, they would have to employ a double watch tonight.

‘Can’t see a bloody thing, sir,’ Felix rasped, batting another branch from his face.

Gallus kept his eyes forward, trudging on. ‘The map definitely puts the first fort here, maybe just a bit farther ahead…I don’t know, the forest has swallowed up every other bloody landmark we were supposed to have passed,’ he pinged a finger off the parchment map, ‘this map must date from the Trojan War!’

‘Standard fare for a recon mission, eh?’ Felix sighed, craning over to examine the sodden parchment. ‘Open plains and valleys to the south and we’re instructed to go crashing through the forests!’

Gallus traced a finger over their route again in hope of a revelation. Three Roman forts lay across the neck of the diamond-shaped peninsula, but the etching also indicated watchtowers, trading posts, roads and settlements. He had chosen not to veer from this one ‘highway’ in search of these — not so wise in hindsight. He cursed to himself silently.

‘We’re headed almost due east and this path is, or used to be, Roman. Unless some bugger has dug the thing up for fun, we’ll reach the fort before nightfall,’ Gallus asserted despite his own doubts. Yet he could sense his optio’s unease. ‘We’re not here to engage the Goths, Felix, simply to ascertain their positions along this frontier.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Felix replied, ‘just wish we could see something — not much of a reconnaissance if all there is to report is bloody trees,’ he spluttered and then moaned as yet another branch whipped into his face, leaving a sprig of leaves in his forked beard.

Gallus’ eyes were trained on the map and the large red dot on the southwest edge of the diamond; the fortified citadel of Chersonesos, the old Roman capital. Now it was rumoured to be the Goths’ main trading centre. Tribunus Nerva had explained that the mission sponsors had favoured this complex countryside reconnaissance over the alternative; sending a single spy into the city disguised as a merchant to measure the Gothic strength. Gallus sighed; Emperor Valens and the shadowy figures that surrounded him saw the first century as little more than pawns, happy to face the implications of orders thrown down from above like scraps of meat. He bit back the urge to moan.

‘If leaves and branches are all we have to face here, Felix, I’ll be a contented man.’

He had to stay positive. Gallus knew there was still work to do with his new century to form them into a cohesive unit of men — men who could trust each other in battle. Nerva had set this only as a secondary objective for Gallus during the mission brief. However, to Gallus it was key to their survival in this foreign land and to the future of the limitanei, the border legions, as a whole. A hotchpotch of recruits, veterans and comitatenses dropouts, the XI Claudia were withering. As small an operation as this was, a successful reconnaissance could sow the seeds that might see the XI Claudia return for a full conquest of this old province. It could inspire the thousands of men in the other border legions, spread along the frontiers in draughty forts with nothing to aspire to but staying off the end of a Gothic spear.

He turned to his optio as an icy trickle of rainwater spidered down inside his tunic. ‘It’s cold, wet and painful, aye, but Nerva wants us to be the leading light for the Danubian legions, wants us to breathe a bit of belief back into the frontiers.’

Felix lifted his eyebrows. ‘Aye, and wants to pay us triple, I hope?’

Gallus offered him a cocked eyebrow. ‘What, so you can fill the coffers and drain the barrels at The Boar?’

Felix chuckled, then dropped back and took the silver eagle standard from the aquilifer again, hoisting it so that the ruby bull banner caught the gentle breeze. ‘Up the pace, lads. Baked pheasant and garum dates for grub tonight!’ Mocking catcalls were hurled from the veterans, and the recruits to the rear buckled into a chorus of laughter.

Gallus felt a rare sparkle of warmth course through his veins at the brief glimpse of camaraderie. Since his wife’s death, the legion had meant everything to him. He could only numb the loneliness in his heart by becoming part of the military machine. The hazy days of his upbringing in Rome, when life had colour, were slipping away. To be old and grey, settled on the porch of a small villa by Capua in the Italian countryside, sipping wine with their children and grandchildren at play — that was the dream he and Olivia had shared. Now, it was the sweet memories of his precious few years with her that were fading like a dream.

Suddenly, something whipped across his face. Stunned for an instant, Gallus raised his hand to his cheek — dark-red stained his fingers. All around him, the forest writhed as he eyed the arrow quivering furiously in the tree to his side.

‘Ambush!’ He roared. As the word left his mouth, the air filled with a swarm of hissing missiles, punching into the pack of legionaries. A handful fell with a grunt, arrows shivering in their exposed necks and limbs.

‘Shields!’ Gallus cried. The rest of the men collapsed into a shielded column, three lines of men, presenting shield bosses to their attackers; those in the middle using their shields as a roof. Those too slow to slip into position were punched to the ground under the hail.

Gallus crouched, teeth gritted, as volley after volley of missiles hammered down upon them like iron hail. He glanced along his side and then back to the other side. To his right, a young legionary gripped his shield by the rim, and it wavered on every arrow strike, his knuckles slipping. Gallus reached over to grapple the shield handle in example, but recoiled in disgust when an arrow zipped in through the gap above the offending shield and crunched through the holder’s eye. Another man down. Then another, and another. The mini testudo contracted further and further as Roman bodies toppled with every bombardment. Gallus growled at the impotence of their situation. These men had entrusted their lives to him, but they were being picked off like mosquitoes. First century or not, they were not combat ready, unable to maintain a solid testudo, even. Every avenue of attack he could think of would mean dropping their shield wall for a moment at least. That meant certain annihilation. Yet to stay put meant they had only moments left in any case.

‘Sir! They’re moving,’ Felix croaked, now crouched back to back with his centurion. Gallus risked a glance out of the shield wall as the rain of arrows slowed, and spotted the darting movement behind the tree line. Was this the build up to a charge?

A crack of thunder rippled across the sky and with it came a torrent of rain and a fork of lightning. No advance came. Again, Gallus stole a glance above his shield. The tree line was empty.

‘Felix, what’s happening over on your side?’

The optio gasped. ‘They’re retreating, sir; they’re running northward!’

Gallus cocked an eyebrow. ‘Running away? What the…’

His words tailed off and he touched a hand to the earth. He felt a tremor, growing in intensity. His eyes widened as he saw the foliage ripple up ahead. Something was coming for them, and it was coming for them quickly.

‘Cavalry charge — right on top of us. Form a line three deep…’ then he hissed, so only Felix could hear, ‘…or we’re dead!’

Ignoring the cramp in their tired limbs, his men sprang from the crouched testudo shell, and pulled round to face south, spears dug into the mud like a threadbare porcupine. The freezing rain clawed at their faces as they beheld the dark mass hurtling towards them.

Gallus’ eyes narrowed as he tried to take in the charge; a hundred or more stocky riders with long dark wispy jet-black locks billowing behind rounded caps and clad in skins; what looked like composite bows and javelins looped on their backs, with long cutting swords and daggers hanging from their belts. As they thundered closer, Gallus’ features wrinkled at their faces; flattened, broad, and yellow. Their cheeks appeared to be symmetrically ripped with a triple line of angry scar tissue and their eyes were almond-like and unblinking. The riders on the wing of the charge had lengths of rope looped into lassos on their belts.

‘Hold steady!’ Gallus roared over the rumble of hooves.

As Gallus filled his lungs at the last, his mind flitted with visions of Olivia on their wedding night; Olivia carrying their child. Then, the shadowy form of mother and child on the pyre. I’m coming to be with you. He leaned forward, feeling his men bracing along with him, when suddenly, like a storm dropping, the onrushing cavalry broke into two halves. They washed past the stunned legionary group, and on at the same breakneck pace to the north.

Gallus expelled the breath in his lungs, his mind reeled. ‘What the…’ he glanced at Felix. ‘They’re after the archers!’

His line slumped in utter relief. Some men belly-laughed in shock, others vomited in the mud. Felix looked down the track as the rain became sheet-like.

‘Who…what are we dealing with here, sir?’

Gallus gazed down the track with Felix in bewilderment as a crash of lightning illuminated their faces.

‘The lion’s jaws, Felix. The lion’s jaws!’