The Scourge of Thracia

Chapter 10

Six days had passed since the fall of the passes and the Great Northern Camp. The XI Claudia marched through the afternoon, with Centurion Zosimus leading a chorus of Tits and Ale, which had the desired effect of shaking the gloom from the column and keeping the recruits moving at a good pace — the tune taking their minds from the march.

‘The barrels on the bar were brimming with aaale, and the innkeeper's wife she was hearty and haaale. . ’

The big centurion proceeded through a few verses that described — somewhat implausibly — how the innkeeper became distracted long enough for his wife to seize the chance to sit upon Zosimus’ lap. The big Thracian then finished a mime of shaking his face in two imaginary oversized, rounded objects then sang the next line: ‘Then I came up for some air and to drink my shaaaare. . ’

Some of those singing along spilled into laughter.

Gallus glanced back and noticed that Pavo too had joined in, having been cajoled by Sura. The spark had returned to the young optio’s eyes, and the sight warmed him.

‘He’s back with us again,’ Dexion said.

Gallus realised the primus pilus was looking back with him. They both saw how Pavo marched straight and tall, his hawk-like gaze on the century, hectoring them for their marching positions in between verses.

‘Aye, I have learned not to underestimate that one. But having you along with us has undoubtedly helped,’ Gallus guessed. ‘He’s lost a lot in the last few years. At every corner, at every turn.’

‘I see a lot of my younger self in him. He needs focus, responsibility,’ Dexion insisted. ‘Let him immerse his thoughts on something other than loss. Let him lead. You know he’s strong enough.’

The words could have been Gallus’ own. ‘Perhaps you’re ri. . ’ his words trailed off. Both men’s eyes were drawn to the black pall of smoke up ahead, just off the Via Militaris.

‘Halt,’ Gallus hissed. Then he flicked beckoning fingers. ‘I need two men.’

In just his mail shirt, tunic, boots and swordbelt, Pavo settled in a beech thicket north of the Via Militaris and scoured the scene: a fire-blackened villa surrounded by a charred orchard. The fig and olive trees had been plundered of their fruits, and the building itself had been robbed of any majesty it once possessed: doors hanging from hinges, toppled columns and smoke still rising from embers of the blaze that had gutted the insides. The bodies of the unfortunate owner’s personal bodyguards lay strewn around the villa’s main entrance, laced with longsword cuts, studded with arrows, eyes harvested by the crows and the empty sockets and wounds surrounded by clouds of flies.

‘Gothic outriders?’ Sura whispered, crouched in the beech thicket by his side.

‘Perhaps,’ Pavo guessed. ‘Fritigern’s scouts maybe.’

‘But I’d bet my last follis that Dux Vergilius fled from here long before they put the place to the sword,’ Sura muttered bitterly. His eyes were darting, certain the Goths were still nearby.

Pavo sighed, thinking of Vergilius. The retired dux was a sot of a man who had found himself unwittingly entangled in webs of subterfuge during his days of power — webs that had more than once snared the XI Claudia. ‘I’m sure Vergilius is gone, but so are the Goths,’ he whispered in reply. ‘They must have been gone for some time,’ he nodded to the dead bodyguards, their skin grey and putrefying and the bloodstains on their clothes and armour dark brown.

‘I still don’t like it,’ his friend muttered.

But Pavo persisted. ‘The Goths have raided the place and left, why would they return? This might just be a perfect place for us to sleep tonight — shelter and maybe some fresh rations.’

Sura still looked unconvinced, then looked around the fading, gold-threaded light that stretched across the sky and shrugged. ‘Aye, well, I’m not going to suggest that to the tribunus without having a closer look first.’

‘Fine, after you,’ Pavo nodded towards the villa.

Sura scowled at him, then stole out from the thicket and scuttled across the orchard floor. Pavo followed close behind. Both men keenly felt every twig cracking underfoot, heard every breath like a buccina cry, imagined Gothic eyes upon them and refused to meet the empty, bloody socketed stares of the dead bodyguards as they picked past those corpses.

They came to the main entrance with the tumbled column. The smoke was still thick here, and swift glances inside revealed only murky blackness. Pavo clasped a hand to his spatha hilt. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

Sura nodded. The pair rose and crept inside.

Smoke coiled like wandering wraiths before them as they beheld the ransacked tablinum. It seemed as if the Goths had gone to war with the walls. The delicate frescoes there were scarred with the edges of swords and ruined by the smoke, the delicate scene of a summer meadow now resembling the aftermath of a battle. The finely-tessellated floor had been hacked apart in a frenzy, the coloured blocks broken like scree, mixed with shattered pottery, shredded timber chairs and two toppled porphyry statuettes of Plutus and Vesta — the old Roman Gods powerless against the Goths. Pavo noticed something in the corner of the room: a small niche in the wall. In it sat a bronze Christian Chi-Rho, mounted on an iron frame, untouched while everything around it lay in ruin.

‘Thervingi,’ he whispered.

Sura swung round. ‘Eh?’

‘They destroyed everything but the Christian symbol.’

‘And?’ Sura hissed impatiently.

Pavo hesitated. If they were Thervingi, then they were most likely on foot. If they were on foot, then they might not be as far away as he had hoped. ‘Just saying, that’s all,’ he said, stowing this fear and turning his attentions on the next room in the villa.

Just then, a faint scratching noise stilled both of them. Pavo’s blood turned to ice. He and Sura shared a fraught glance. Sura gestured to the door that led further into the villa’s interior. Pavo nodded, albeit hesitantly then raised a hand and pushed it open. The charred door creaked treacherously, and Pavo swore silently that he would personally boot it clear of its hinges on the way back out. But his thoughts were soon brushed away as he beheld a relatively untouched atrium. A fountain trickled away in the heart of the collonaded, open-topped space. The columns lining either side were wrapped in winter honeysuckle and beds of cyclamen, hyacinth, fennel and thyme studded the walkway, gardening spades and a rake piled neatly beside them. The herby, floral scent and the babbling fountain for a moment gave the illusion that this place was all in good order.

‘Was that what we heard?’ Sura whispered, nodding to the gurgling fountain.

Pavo was about to agree, when it sounded again. Scratch-scratch.

Both men’s heads shot round to the shadowy doorway looming at the far end of the atrium and leading into the heart of the villa.

They edged towards the door, both with hands firmly on their spatha hilts and the blades half drawn. The pleasant scents of the atrium faded and the stench of decay returned as they approached. Inside was pure blackness for just a moment, until they realised it was a vestibule of sorts — a series of doors on each wall. Sura crept in one door and explored what looked like a culina in search of food. The far wall was stacked with pots and pans, a stone kiln was built into one corner and hooks dangled from the ceiling. Pavo strained to watch his friend’s back from the doorway. Then, from the gloom within he heard a dull plunk, and a muted yes! Sura turned round, holding an amphorae. Wine! He mouthed in excitement, guzzling on it then offering it to Pavo. Pavo shook his head and left Sura to dig around in the rest of the cabinets within the culina.

He moved on to the other doors, looking inside one to see that it was a cubiculum, the bed within unmade — the bedding strewn across the floor. The next room was another bedchamber, and Pavo sighed as he saw that it was much the same as the last. . except. . the bed was not empty.

A shape lay beneath the blankets and a tousled mop of fair hair was splayed on the pillow. A Goth? Rooted where he stood, he scanned the form in the bed, then realised he had to act. If the sleeping Goth awoke and raised the alarm then how many others in the countryside nearby might hear? He stalked forward, drawing his spatha as carefully as he could, levelling it to the man’s neck to buy his silence. Then, with the end of his boot, he hooked the blankets and kicked them from the bed, tensing, ready to strike. But the form in the bed remained inert. He blinked, hoping his eyes were deceiving him. No, it was real: a slave girl, no more than fifteen. She lay, face gaunt and blackened with death, throat cut, the bedding under her stained with long-dried blood and her shrivelled, milky eyes staring at the ceiling. The girl’s face became Felicia’s in his mind’s eye.

He sunk to his knees by the bedside, running his hands across his hair. Hot tears spilled from his eyes. He choked on the sobs that tried to follow and clasped the dead girl’s hand. I’m sorry, he repeated over and over. I’m so, so sorry.

He thought then of their few years together. Of their fraught romance in Durostorum. Of her fiery spirit and her fearless heart as she pursued what she felt was right, at all costs. Of how just memories of her had brought him through battle, spurred him through blizzards and drove him on through burning sands. Of the sweet, sweet scent on the nape of her delicate neck.

When Pavo emerged from the sleeping chamber and back into the vestibule, Sura’s face fell, seeing the dead girl he cradled in his arms. ‘She deserves a burial at least,’ Pavo said sombrely.

Sura said nothing, merely nodding and fetching the two spades from outside.

They buried her in the atrium flower beds. Pavo took the red strip of silk from his purse, held it to his lips and inhaled its fading scent one last time, then crouched, burying it with her. Time seemed an irrelevance as he remained there, gazing through the winter flowers, walking with Felicia in his memories. It was only when Sura placed a hand on his shoulder that the spell was broken. It was nearly dusk, he realised.

‘We’d best report back,’ his friend said.

Pavo stood and the pair made to retrace their steps and leave the villa, when they heard it again.

Scratch-scratch.

It shook Pavo back to grim reality. They both peered into the blackness of the vestibule at the one door they had not yet explored. They stalked back inside and pushed it open. The gloom betrayed only the first stone steps of a staircase leading underground.

Scratch-scratch.

They beheld one another. ‘We have to investigate,’ Pavo said at last, pushing the sorrow away. ‘We were asked to report if this place was free of Goths.’

Sura nodded. ‘The wine,’ he whispered to himself, glancing back to the amphorae in the culina, ‘just think of later. . and the wine.’

Gallus eyed the darkening eastern horizon, then swept his gaze across the streaked orange-gold of the western sky and to Vergilius’ blackened villa an arrowshot ahead. Darkness was but moments away and the men of his legion were again out in the open countryside. Imperial lands, he scoffed, but infested with Gothic warbands. He looked around the two centuries of his legion. Nervous, youthful faces, each knowing that a chill early winter night on this open ground by the Via Militaris with no fires and probably little sleep awaited them unless they could take shelter within the villa. He glimpsed over at Zosimus and Quadratus, each of the centurions keeping watch down the highway’s eastern and western stretches. They had not uttered a word so far. The recruits posted nearer the villa’s grounds with Dexion were equally silent. His eyes scoured the villa. Come on, Pavo, come on!

Suddenly, Dexion’s white-plume rose. For a moment, he was still, then the primus pilus twisted round and silently but urgently beckoned Gallus.

Gallus darted north, crouching by Dexion’s side, the door of hope creaking open ever so slightly as he eyed the villa, sure Pavo had given some signal that it was deserted and safe. But one look at Dexion’s face slammed the door shut. His skin had paled in alarm and his eyes were wide, staring.

‘Goths to the north,’ he whispered, flicking a finger up and in that direction, as if casting an imaginary stone over the villa’s roof. ‘On foot. Four hundred, maybe more.’

Gallus’ eyes narrowed to slits and a wraith’s cold hand searched his skin as he saw them. Thervingi spearmen and archers. Had Fritigern’s horde ridden ahead of them? No, he realised, seeing that they were an independent warband — one of the roaming bands that had avoided the mountain corral and had been raiding these parts since Ad Salices, he guessed. Like a steely herd, they jostled as they marched, many wearing Roman helms and scale or mail vests. Another Roman vexillation had been caught on the road, he realised — or perhaps a wagon-train from the imperial fabrica at Naissus had been ambushed and pillaged of the weaponry and armour meant for recruits just like those he led. They also carried with them spoils of rapine: sacks of clanking silver and gold coins, plates, cups and jewels and the few horsemen with them led wagons heaped with forage.

‘Sir?’ Dexion gasped as the Goths converged on the villa, spilling round its grounds and entering.

Gallus saw from the corner of his eye his new primus pilus’ angst, the beads of sweat darting down his face, yet he maintained his flinty demeanour.

‘We have to act, sir!’ Dexion implored him.

Gallus had heard such words a thousand times before. He shared the man’s thoughts, felt the same fears gnawing at his gut. Pavo, Sura. . another two brothers consigned to the death-march of my nightmares? And so many had fallen directly due to his orders. He looked over the two centuries of his men. He saw the icy fear sparkle in their eyes. They knew nothing yet of soldierly life other than these few days of marching and the shattering blow a horde of Goths could deliver to a legionary line — as so ably demonstrated at the Tonsus and the Great Northern Camp. They had to be trained to face odds like these. But tonight? No, they were not ready.

‘We pull back,’ he said stonily, nodding to the south and across the Via Militaris, where a shady beech dell offered some hope of concealment.

Dexion gawped, while the recruits peeled back without a moment of hesitation.

‘How can you. . with just a few words, they are dead. My brother is as good as dead?’

The words were like a knife in Gallus’ breast, but the wounds there were old and gnarled, and he did not flinch. He felt Dexion’s hands grapple his cloak as if to shake him to his senses. ‘At the Great Northern Camp, we stayed on the waterline and fought by Saturninus’ side, despite the odds, did we not?’ he pleaded, his eyes searching Gallus’ distant stare. ‘They only outnumber us two to. . ’ he stopped, gasping, frustration crumpling his features as more Goths poured around the villa, ‘. . three to one.’

Gallus did not make to push him away. Instead, he fixed him with a gimlet stare. ‘Pull back, Primus Pilus. That is an order.’

Gallus saw something in Dexion’s golden eyes — a spark of hubris. Dexion’s crouched legs stiffened as if ready to spring towards the villa. Gallus knew what was coming next and swept out his spatha instinctively, resting the flat of the blade across the man’s chest. ‘Two of my men are beyond saving. I do not wish to lose another today.’

As the order was passed around, the men of the XI Claudia swept over the highway like a shadow. Gallus was last to cross. Dexion with him, head bowed. As they crouched in the dell, Gallus cast a last look to the darkening north. For a moment, his eyes betrayed a glimpse of the wistful storm inside.

Mithras, if you have any strength left to give, then give it not to me, but to them.

The inky pool before them grew darker as they descended the stony staircase. Pavo ran his palms along the wall, feeling the stonework grow dank and cold as the stairs wound round and down.

‘This is torture,’ Sura hissed, behind him. ‘I can’t see a bloody thing. And the steps are a bit sli-’

His words ended abruptly, and Pavo felt something heavy slam into his back. The pair tumbled down the last few steps in a flurry of curses and yelps. At the bottom, they both leapt to their feet and drew their weapons, facing one another, sword to sword, then breathed a sigh of relief as they realised what had happened. ‘A bit slippy, aye?’ Pavo said sarcastically.

When he saw Sura’s furtive, flicked, single-fingered hand-gesture of a reply, he made to protest, then realised something. He could see. He glanced around and saw the weak shaft of twilight that was piercing the gloom, streaming in from a ground-level grating near the top of this cellar. It was enough to discern a collection of barrels on a rack lining the near wall. Wine, no doubt. There were a pair of spears leaning against the wall and a pile of dry, cracked hides in the corner next to them. The only other thing in the room of note was on the far wall. A door. It was no ordinary door, this was a bulky, iron-strapped timber ingress, more akin to a side gate on a grand city wall.

The pair approached it. Pavo saw fresh scars on the thick timbers, and traced a finger over them. ‘A strong room? Someone’s been hacking at this recently.’

‘I wonder who?’ Sura scowled.

‘There’s something else though. Something’s missing.’ Pavo glanced over the hinges, the iron strapping and skirt. ‘There’s no handle?’ He crouched to peer through the keyhole and the hole where the handle should have been, seeing nothing but darkness. . and the faintest glimmer of something. Gold?

‘No handle? Nonsense!’ Sura scoffed, nudging him aside. ‘I used to be known as the finest locksmith in Adrianople, you see,’ he said, crouching, hands resting on his knees as he winked through the hole adroitly.

‘Sura, I’ve been there, I’ve picked locks. That one is no simple latch,’ Pavo sighed.

But Sura ignored him. ‘Thing was, most of the time I was hired by folk wanting to get in to other people’s property,’ he looked up, flicking his eyebrows up as if in admission of ill-behaviour. ‘I gave it up when I was caught and they tried to ram the keys up my-’

‘Quiet,’ Pavo hissed.

Sura frowned, midway through a gesture of looping one thumb and forefinger together and forcing the other forefinger through it. Then his face paled as he heard it too.

Scratch-scratch.

‘It’s coming from inside,’ Sura whispered, leaping back from the bolstered doorway. ‘How?’

‘There must be someone inside,’ Pavo realised. ‘They must have taken shelter in there and locked themselves inside.’

‘But who would have the keys?’ Sura replied.

Both shared a look of realisation. ‘Dux Vergilius?’

Pavo crept forward again, ready to call out to whomever was behind the door, when Sura slapped a hand across his chest. He followed his friend’s frozen stare. Up the well of steps, orange torchlight danced. Shadows jostled on the walls.

The legion? Pavo mouthed, hearing a dull babble in the villa up above.

Sura cupped a hand to his ear, then shook his head, his face falling. Goths, he mouthed in reply. A heartbeat later and the babble grew louder, the torchlight brighter and the shadows larger, stretching out and down into the cellar along with the thrum of descending footsteps.

Pavo’s heart hammered on his ribs.

They both looked for somewhere to hide, then their eyes simultaneously locked onto the pile of dried hides.

Gaufrid the Goth scratched roughly at his crotch and swigged the last of the wineskin he had picked up from the villa’s larder, then belched loudly as he descended into the cellar. The eight men who shared his plan followed closely behind. He beheld the bulwark of a door that had defied him and the men of his warband so obstinately over this last week, still grinning back at him, unsullied apart from the few scrapes he and his comrades had subjected it to. He tossed the wineskin to the floor and snarled, drawing the axe he had picked up from an abandoned forester’s cabin and hacking at it once more. Splinters of wood flew in every direction, but the door held firm and he only stopped when he became breathless.

‘Damned Romans and their barriers,’ he panted.

‘There is little point in blunting another weapon on it,’ a comrade remarked.

Gaufrid swept his collar-length fair locks up into a knot and tied them above his head. ‘Then what are we to do; let the greedy bastard who leads this warband continue to take the spoils of our efforts, or break this door down and take whatever treasure lies behind it for ourselves?’

‘If there is gold in there and we find a way in, do you think he’ll let us waddle back up the stairs and keep whatever we take?’ the other countered.

Gaufrid’s eyes darted as he thought things over. ‘Perhaps we could come back alone in a few days?’

‘There is no time. We are to eat here then march for central Thracia and be reunited with Iudex Fritigern.’

Gaufrid issued a deep, throaty sigh, then swung away from the door. ‘So be it,’ he snarled, then violently chopped the axe down into the centre of the piled hides where it wedged upon something, before waving the others with him from the cellar.

As the door clunked shut at the top of the stony staircase, Pavo fell back from the inside of the stronghold keyhole and gasped for the deep breaths he had longed to take while the Goths had been down here.

Sura chuckled by his side, flicking a long, bent nail over in his hand, his grin barely visible in the trickle of gloom that fell into the locked chamber via the keyhole. ‘Master locksmith, I told you. And you doubted me?’ he said.

‘Keep your voice down. If they come down here again then they’ll have your balls and mine on a plate, door or no door,’ Pavo hissed, hiding his admiration that, for once, one of his friend’s outlandish boasts had actually proved well-founded. With the sense of urgent danger ebbing, he suddenly realised that they were inside this mysterious chamber but surrounded by total blackness beyond the tiny chink of light at the keyhole. They had no idea who, or what, was in here with them. He felt around on the floor with his foot, disturbing some loose, shale-like pile of something just a stride into the darkness.

‘Mithras! I think we’re good for wine and ale money for the next while,’ Sura whispered, scraping up a handful of the loose material. ‘Gold solidi, piles and piles of them.’

‘What the?’ Pavo gasped, picking up handful after handful

‘Seems like Dux Vergilius left behind a fair bit of his fortune,’ Sura remarked.

Pavo shook his head. ‘Hold on — the noise, remember?’

Sura’s silence was telling. Pavo felt a chill from within the unseen depths of the treasure chamber. His skin prickled and he was sure he saw shapes moving in the blackness. He stooped by the keyhole and tried to reflect the fading twilight from the surface of a coin, but it was useless. And they dared not open the door for fear of the Goths upstairs hearing.

‘Find something,’ he said. He and Sura picked their way over the piled coins, feeling the walls as they went. All was cold and hard. Then Pavo felt something different. Something warm, writhing. He leapt back and the thing leapt from his hands. ‘Mithras!’ he yelped.

‘What?’ Sura gasped. ‘Wait a moment, I. . ’

Three grating noises sounded from the far side of the chamber, and at once, an orangey pool of light sparked to life, revealing Sura, holding a lamp he had found in one hand and his flint hook in the other. The orangey bubble grew into a rich yellow, revealing the cat-sized rat that Pavo had fondled moments ago, now at the door.

Scratch-scratch.

Pavo made to sigh in relief, then saw the look of horror on Sura’s face, his gaze fixed on Pavo’s feet. Pavo looked down, then staggered back. The blue-grey corpse of a man lay there on the piled coins. Dead for only a day, he guessed. His eyes and cheeks had been chewed away by the rat, but enough of the veined flesh remained along with the unkempt, white hair for Pavo to recognise him.

‘Vergilius?’ Sura stammered, stepping over cautiously. ‘He must have been too afraid to leave. He must have starved in here.’

Pavo eyed the filthy, urine-soaked robe the dux wore. Then he noticed the gold coins clutched in the man’s palms, lined with teethmarks, and saw the chipped edges of the teeth in the gawping mouth. ‘Aye, it would seem so, thought not for want of trying.’