The Scourge of Thracia

Chapter 4

The first dry day in a week saw the mist and low cloud lift from the heights of the Shipka Pass. A few miles north of the Shipka fort, the bleak ridge path and the rugged lands all around were dappled with the shadows of passing clouds, utterly deserted. Then seven legionaries scrambled up from a precipitous shale track and onto the ridge path. They scuttled, more like voles wary of predatory eagles overhead than soldiers of the empire.

Pavo’s chest was burning, but the whipping zephyrs at these lofty heights lent a second wind to his lungs. He shot looks all around, sure they had made a mistake in breaking from the lower, hidden path. But they had come across a series of toppled pine trunks down there and had little option. Gallus, Zosimus and Quadratus hurried at the head of the group, while Sura and two Macedonica legionaries — Sarrius and Bato — formed the rear. If the Goths have archers on the adjacent hills. . he thought with a creeping chill. Just then, a scent of pink heather danced on the air, redolent of Felicia’s scent, and this calmed him. It was a rare moment of peace. After trying in vain to seek out his brother in the Shipka fort, then enduring another night of tangled thoughts, broken sleep and nightmares of the slave market, he had woken at dawn dazed and aching, only to set off on yet another march.

Just then, Gallus flicked a hand and guided them down off the ridge and back onto the broken shale track below. It was a treacherous, narrow route that wound and twisted over the mountains just a bowshot east of the ridge path. It was littered with hidden crags, gullies and sheer climbs in places and summarised exactly why these highlands were impassable for any sort of army. Indeed, he and his comrades wore just tunics, trousers, boots and oiled cloaks, forgoing armour and carrying only their swords to aid a swift and silent journey.

They stopped in the early afternoon, sheltering from the wind behind a craggy granite lee to eat a light meal of salted meat and berries, slaking their thirsts at a brook that trickled nearby.

Quadratus squinted into the watery noonday sun and tilted the felt cap he wore on his blonde mane. ‘Sending us crawling over these hills like lice, it’s a waste of time. If Saturninus wants to know what happened to his embassy, I could tell him and save all this nonsense.’

‘How can you be certain they’re dead?’ Sura frowned, stuffing a handful of berries into his mouth.

Pavo looked up, midway through chewing on his tough, salted meat. He could only imagine what had happened to the embassy, and his mind flashed with buried images of Gothic sacrificial sites he had come across in the past — the staked bodies, the torn flesh, the skulls locked in a deathly grin.

‘If they were a day or two late, then I’d ask the same,’ Zosimus mused, slicing a chunk of his salted meat with a dagger and flicking it into his mouth, then shaking his head, ‘but two weeks? They’re bones by now.’

‘Until we set eyes upon the Gothic camp, we know nothing,’ Gallus cut in. His tone was more clipped than usual, and Pavo noticed how the tribunus met the eyes of every man but him. Then, when Pavo caught his eye and Gallus immediately looked away, he knew something was wrong.

As they readied to set off once more, Pavo stood and gazed to the south, back in the direction of the Shipka redoubt, buckling on his swordbelt, sweeping his cloak around his shoulders and hefting his light ration pack over one shoulder as he tried to make sense of it all. Dexion was supposed to be at the Shipka Pass. Felicia had confirmed it, yet every soldier in Saturninus’ camp had simply shrugged nervously or hurried away when he had asked.

‘Optio,’ a familiar voice spoke softly by his side.

Pavo blinked, startled, seeing that Gallus had stepped up beside him while the others finished their preparations to move out. ‘Sir,’ he replied, confused at the stark contrast in the tribunus’ tone from moments ago.

Gallus looked him in the eye. This was not the icy stare of the dauntless leader, nor the distant gaze of the troubled officer that had come back from Persia. This was that earnest, unguarded look of the man inside. Another fleeting glimpse of the real Gallus. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but I know all too well that I cannot keep from you that which you seek,’ he said with a tone of finality.

‘What is it, sir?’

‘When the embassy travelled north to the Gothic camp. . they travelled with a legionary escort. Your brother, Dexion, was one of them.’

The gentle words sunk into Pavo’s chest like a cold blade. He felt Gallus’ hand rest on his shoulder, but heard little else of what he said.

When evening came, a clear night sky stretched over the northern end of the Haemus Mountains and the broad plains of Moesia beyond. The scent of woodsmoke from the vast Gothic camp lent a cloying edge to the air.

Gallus and his cadre, nestled in a rocky nook a hundred feet or so up the last of the Haemus slopes, glanced down over the sea of Gothic tents on the plain and then up to the night sky, cursing the waning but still bright moon and its army of stars for illuminating the hills so. Apart from this pocket of shade they were hidden in, the mountainside almost glistened silvery-blue.

He looked back to the Gothic camp. It dwarfed the Roman camp by the Tonsus — possibly seven or eight times as big — and it was most probably in better order too, with great herds of warhorses tethered within timber corrals, and each of the factions within the Gothic horde occupying an island of well-spaced tents. They used no palisade to demarcate the edge of the camp, but tall, blonde-locked and leather-armoured warriors stood every thirty paces or so around the vast perimeter and torches on high poles cast light out onto the plain around the camp. Every sentry held a spear, longsword and shield, with a self-bow and quiver cast over their backs.

‘How are we supposed to find the embassy? The place is so bloody big,’ Zosimus muttered by Gallus’ side, squinting to the far side of the camp, which was just a blur of torchlight and shadows.

‘That’s where Fritigern is, I’d guess,’ Sura said, peering at the large tent near the centre of the camp. Outside it, a tall spear was dug into the ground, a strip of sapphire blue cloth — the colours of the Thervingi — hanging from its shaft.

‘Might be, but that doesn’t mean that’s where the embassy will be. How close are we supposed to get?’ Quadratus whispered. ‘Does Saturninus expect us to reconnoitre the entire camp?’

‘We must do what we can,’ Gallus said. ‘But if we have nothing to go on, then. . ’ his words faded as he noticed Pavo, eyes fixed on the camp, scouring every inch of it, clinging onto the last slivers of hope. ‘We will stay here until we have something to report back with, and there must be someth-’ he stopped, the breath catching in his lungs. One of the campfires down below near the southern edge of the camp grew brighter and brighter still, the flames licking up into the sky as men threw fresh wood upon it. All heads switched to this.

The bonfire cast an eerie orange light on a thick ring of onlookers. Tall, stony-faced Gothic warriors — thousands of them. ‘Thervingi. . Greuthingi and Taifali from Germania too,’ Pavo whispered.

‘Aye, but this is no all-Goth affair,’ Sura added, his voice taut with tension. ‘Look!’

Gallus followed the line of the young legionary’s outstretched finger. He squinted, his mind disbelieving, his eyes insisting. Stocky, short warriors dressed in skins and furs, made inimitable by the three crude scars carved into each cheek, their jet-black, sleek locks and the odd, asymmetric bows they wore slung over their backs. No!

‘Huns?’ Zosimus gasped, his eyes darting as he discerned hundreds of them dotted in the crowd of onlookers. ‘When did they cross the river? The Goths are supposed to be at war with the bloody Huns!’

‘Yet both are at war with the empire,’ Pavo added dryly.

‘The Shipka fort is not prepared for Huns,’ Bato, one of the two V Macedonica legionaries whispered. This scarred veteran had the eyes of a frightened boy.

Sarrius, his V Macedonica comrade muttered a series of panicked curses under his breath. ‘The dark horsemen of the north.’

Gallus sensed their panic spread like a chill, and the fear intensified when the ring of onlookers around the fire suddenly parted. The hulking leader of the Gothic Alliance, Iudex Fritigern, strode through the gap. Gallus’ eyes narrowed: the big Iudex was as imposing as ever, despite his advancing years. Fur-lined shoulders, flowing red-grey locks and beard and a weather-beaten face that spoke of all he had endured alongside his people in these last years. Flanking him were two others that Gallus recognised from the blood-haze memories of Ad Salices — one tall and wiry with long, white hair, the other short and stocky, slit-eyed and bald. Alatheus, Saphrax, he realised, the two reiks who led the Greuthingi Goths and their mostly cavalry armies — the fierce mounted wing that complemented Fritigern’s infantry masses. He noticed that this pair walked with their heads held high while Fritigern, their leader, seemed hunched, head bowing ever so slightly as he approached the fire. Behind the three leaders, two men were being dragged by Gothic spearmen. Two Romans.

‘Mithras, no!’ Sura hissed.

Pavo instinctively lurched forward, eyes straining.

Gallus’ blood chilled as the firelight fell on the pair. A prune-faced, middle-aged man wearing a dirty white Roman tunic and trousers and a younger man in the scale vest, boots and cloak of an eques rider. He glanced to Bato, who nodded hurriedly: ‘That’s them — two of them anyway. The senior ambassador and one of the escort cavalrymen.’

The pair writhed and struggled like flies caught in a web. ‘Let me go you bastards!’ the eques rider cried as he was dragged to the fire. ‘Give me a sword and fight me at least! Let me die like a sold-’

Alatheus stepped forward, then lifted a sparkling sickle and boomed over the man’s visceral pleas. ‘Allfather Wodin, hear our song of war for you. Fire our hearts with courage, for what is to come. The fire of victory we offer you in return. Let the Roman burn!’ he threw his hands up in the air, conjuring a mighty cheer that seemed to shake the rock where Gallus crouched.

At once, the two Goths holding the Roman rider pinned him to the ground and two more ran over with a spit and a length of rope. Moments later, they lifted the rider and trussed him to the spit like a boar, then carried him over and into the flames, resting the spit ends horizontally across two sets of supporting poles. The fire devoured him in moments, sweeping over his cloak and hair, his skin blistering and his armour glowing. His shrieking searched every part of Gallus’ being, the scene bringing back the dark memories. The rider’s thrashing form was engulfed in orange, and soon he fell still, with the popping and cracking of splitting flesh and flaring fat the only noise. The stench of burnt meat wafted up the hillside and the watching legionaries recoiled.

Gallus noticed that while the watching crowd cheered as if this was some kind of victory, Fritigern was alone in watching the ceremony in solemn silence. The Iudex and his Thervingi Goths were Christian, he mused, so perhaps such sacrifice was distasteful to him? Or maybe he has greater troubles? he thought, his eyes narrowing on the contrasting, haughty postures of Alatheus and Saphrax.

‘Next, Allfather Wodin, turn our bones to steel and our blood to wine. For this, we give you the blood and bone of Rome,’ Alatheus continued, then stabbed a finger at the prune-face Roman. ‘Bring him!’

The wrinkled man fell to his knees, shaking visibly, his hands pawing helplessly in the air before him as if trying to waken himself from this nightmare. But the watching crowd were heedless of his suffering. Gallus watched as Alatheus strode around the terrified old man, swiping his sickle this way and that like a torturer.

Get on with it you whoreson, Gallus mouthed, seeing the utter terror in the old Roman’s eyes.

But Alatheus handed the sickle to another: a bull-shouldered colossus of a man with raven-dark flowing locks scooped up into a topknot and a jutting trident beard. He was bare chested, with spiralling blue tattoos etched on his muscular torso, and a weighty battle axe was strapped to his back. ‘Reiks Farnobius, Champion of the Greuthingi, Taker of Heads, will honour Wodin tonight.’

Gallus watched as Farnobius stalked over to the cowering Roman — who scrambled back until almost in the flames. The giant Goth reached down and grasped at the Roman’s hair, then wrenched him round like a recalcitrant pet to face the fire. Like a harvester cutting wheat, he hove the sickle across the Roman’s throat. Gouts of blood leapt from the wound, lashing Farnobius and spraying onto the fire. The Roman’s head tilted back, like the lid of a chest, scraps of skin peeling away until it was attached to the body only by the vertebrae. With the heel of his boot, Farnobius kicked at the man’s back, the body twisting and coming away, toppling into the flames, the head remaining in his grip. Then he turned to the crowd and held his trophy aloft, roaring to them. They roared thunderously in reply.

‘Far-no-bi-us! Far-no-bi-us! Far-no-bi-us!’

Gallus saw how the moonlight danced in this Farnobius’ eyes, betraying a bestial bloodlust, his face streaked with the Roman’s blood. The giant swung round, basking in the adoration, though Gallus noticed every so often how the reiks’ face twitched, as if bothered by an invisible hornet. Then he noticed now how many of the crowd were wearing not just the robes of men preparing for a night of rest, but arms and armour, and he heard the whinnying of horses from unseen stables somewhere in the camp. And in the northern half of the camp, where the majority of Fritigern’s Thervingi seemingly resided, he saw glinting silver. They’re mobilising? His flesh crept and his eyes fell back to the bonfire as he realised what was happening. A sacrificial throat cutting was the marker the Goths laid down before. . before they went to war. The next attack on the passes was imminent. And what might the coming of the Huns mean for the defenders there? His mind flashed with all manner of dark possibilities.

‘Sir,’ Zosimus said with an urgent tone. ‘They’re not finished.’

Gallus’ minds snapped back to the present as Alatheus’ next words rang out: ‘Bring the next of them!’ he cried. Duly, Farnobius and the spearmen who had dragged the two Romans to the fire stalked off towards a small tent nearby the fire to collect fresh victims.

‘We have to get back to the blockade,’ Bato insisted.

‘And what about our men down there?’ Zosimus growled, pointing towards the tent.

Gallus glanced around his men, and saw Pavo’s haunted expression, fixed on the fire. Do not let emotion cloud your judgement, a voice snarled inside him. For the first time in years, he ignored it.

‘There is much we do not know about this horde and their intentions,’ he said. ‘I’d wager whoever is left in that tent knows a damn sight more than we do. We must try to free them.’

The intensity of the sacrificial bonfire seemed to dull the light elsewhere in the camp, and for that, Pavo could only mouth a prayer to Mithras. The great cheer at the death of the next Roman had caught the attention of the Gothic sentries around the southern edge of the camp. They clustered together, craning to see the executions, leaving a stretch of forty strides unguarded. This allowed he, Sura, Bato and Sarrius to steal inside, faces smeared in dirt. Picking their way through the sea of tents, the mesh of guy-ropes and shadows, they made their way towards the prisoner tent. A stench of horse-sweat, dung and foul stews wafted around them.

‘Down!’ Sura hissed.

At once, all four crouched or lay in the shadow of the nearest tent. A pair of scale-clad Thervingi sentries strolled past them, their necks stretched and their eyes straining to see the bonfire as the screams of the next victim rang out. Pavo felt his gut turn over at the cries. What if that was my brother? They stole across to a lengthy wagon — within sight of the prison tent — and crouched.

‘Look,’ Pavo hissed, pointing to the flap of the prison tent. Two men stood guard there.

‘Huns,’ Sura growled. One had a misshapen skull, elongated at the crown with lank dark hair hanging like curtains from his oversized forehead. He was tearing at something with his teeth. The moonlight flashed over it: a raw cut of red meat, blood staining his foul teeth and dribbling down his chin. The other swigged at some milky substance from a skin. The stench of their food was even fouler than the reek of their filthy-looking hides.

‘Raw horse meat and fermented mare’s milk,’ Pavo whispered. ‘Makes a mouthful of year-old hard tack sound delicious.’

‘How do we do this?’ Bato asked behind them, failing to keep the tremor of fear from his voice. ‘The tent’s well-guarded. They’ll see us coming at them.’

Pavo’s eyes darted. ‘Yes, they will. So you give yourselves up.’

Bato gawped in horror at the suggestion. ‘Sir?’

Octar the Hun dug at his teeth with a dirty fingernail. The sinew of meat was bothersome to say the least. ‘Damned horse should have been tender,’ he chuckled to his fellow sentry, ‘I rode her with great care, after all.’

But his kinsman did not reply, instead levelling his spear, gawping into the darkness beside a nearby wagon. Octar frowned, then beheld the two dirt-encrusted shapes emerging from the shadows there. In a heartbeat, he had his bow from his back, drawn taut, the arrowhead trained on the rightmost Roman’s chest. But the pair were weaponless and had their hands raised in supplication.

Octar glanced inside the prison tent, sure none of those inside had escaped, then back to the pair. ‘Who are you? What are you doi-’ his words ended with a gasp as a white-hot pain shot through his back and tore through to his front. He glanced down to see the tip of a Roman spatha jutting from his breastbone. A moment later, it was ripped away. A heartbeat after that, he toppled to the ground and in the blackness that enshrouded him he searched for Tengri, the Sky God of the Steppe.

Pavo shook the worst of the blood from his blade and hurriedly sheathed it, Sura doing the same after despatching the other Hun. Bato and Sarrius gawped, faces dotted with Hun bloodspray.

‘Take up your swords again,’ he hissed to them. ‘Stand watch and if anyone approaches, anyone at all, whistle.’ With that, he nodded to Sura and the pair ducked inside the tent, dragging the Hun corpses with them.

As soon as they entered, a wailing broke out from the shadows inside: ‘I can smell blood,’ one high-pitched voice trilled. Pavo strained to see anything in the utter darkness — anything other than silhouetted shapes scurrying to the rear of the tent.

‘We’re Roman,’ he hissed. ‘Keep the noise down or we’re all dead.’

The wailing stopped abruptly. Gasps of astonishment replaced them, quickly followed by a flurry of questions. Pavo ignored the questions, spoken with the refined accents of ambassadors. As his eyes began to adjust, he counted six shapes: five cowering at the rear of the tent, and another sitting, tied to the centre pole. This one was silent. The rest returned to their wailing.

‘Shut up!’ Sura growled.

When they did, they heard only the nearby babble of the fireside crowd, and something else. The faint, broken noise of dry, panicked lips trying to whistle. Bato. A moment later, he and Sarrius tumbled inside, their faces agape. ‘They’re coming!’

Pavo and Sura gawped at each other’s silhouettes. ‘Bollocks!’ they hissed in unison.

‘Stay back,’ Pavo whispered to the ambassadors, now petrified into silence. He and Sura levelled their swords and took up position just inside the tent entrance.

‘They’ll burn the tent and all of us in it,’ a voice spoke.

Pavo flicked a sour glance round, then realised it was the one tied to the tent pole. ‘Then what else can we do?’

‘We have moments with which to get a head start. Use them!’ the voice replied. ‘Cut me loose!’

Pavo squinted at this silhouette and weighed the risk. He could make out just a black leather breastplate. A military man? His heart thundered. Then the crunch of approaching footsteps outside cast all thoughts aside. He felt for the rope binding the man by the chest, then fed the tip of his spatha under the bonds and yanked his blade back. The ropes fell free and the shadowy figure stood.

‘Give me a blade!’ he hissed.

Pavo hesitated for a moment, then tossed him a dagger from the belt of one of the dead Huns. The figure ran for the five others cowering at the rear of the tent then, with a blur of swiping arms, a sharp tearing sound filled the tent. At once a fissure of semi-gloom and patchy torchlight from outside pierced the near-blackness inside.

‘Come on,’ the military man whispered urgently.

As Pavo ushered each of the ambassadors through the tear and outside, he heard the guttural chatter and the crunch-crunch of the Gothic footsteps coming to the tent flap. He glanced over his shoulder to see that their approaching shadows were dancing on the canvas, illuminated by the firelight. They grew and grew like giants, and Pavo saw the swinging tail of hair and bulky outline of one that was unmistakable. Farnobius.

‘Move!’ he hissed to the last ambassador, a waddling fellow who struggled to climb from the rip at the rear of the tent. Sura swung a boot into his rear and helped him on his way then leapt out next, followed by Pavo and the soldier in the dark breastplate.

They scurried forward, darting from shadow to shadow the way they had come in, Pavo and Sura leading. Pavo heard his snatched breaths and his drumming heartbeat and little else. The Gothic sentries up ahead stood facing outwards, backs turned. He reaffirmed his grip on his spatha then glanced to Sura, who nodded, and each paced towards the sentry nearest. Suddenly, behind them, the air shook with a thunderous cry. Pavo swung to see the giant Farnobius climbing from the tear in the tent, his inky eyes sweeping round, then locking onto Pavo.

‘Stop them!’ Farnobius bellowed. ‘Take their heads!’

The two nearest sentries swung round, faces wrinkled in confusion for a moment before they saw the Roman group and brought their spear tips to bear then rushed forward.

Pavo leapt back as the first sentry’s spear thrust towards his neck. He grabbed the shaft of the weapon and wrenched the guard forward, hammering his spatha up and into the Goth’s gut. Hot blood erupted over his sword hand, then sprayed through the night when he wrenched it free and swung round to block the chopping longsword of the next Goth. This one was nimble and swift. Pavo jinked back from the flurry of blows that followed, glancing over his shoulder to see three more Goths rushing to the melee. They cut down one of the ambassadors like wheat, then hefted their swords to strike at his back. He felt the absence of his shield keenly, and knew he could not fight all four of them and win.

With an eerie whirring sound, Sura’s spatha spun through the blackness and punched one onrushing Goth through the throat, then the Roman in the dark breastplate leapt to barge another to the ground, knocking him unconscious, before slashing at the hamstrings of the last. Pavo swung his attentions fully on the Goth before him, parrying his next strike, then swinging out with a right hook that caught the warrior by surprise, catching him sweetly on the jaw and sending him spinning to the earth.

‘Run!’ he cried to the group, waving the three surviving ambassadors to the short stretch of flatland and the scree slope onto the mountain path.

‘Pavo!’ Sura yelled.

Pavo knew that tone, and instinctively leapt from where he stood. A gleaming axe smacked down into the dust where he had been, and the ground shuddered as Farnobius rushed for him, swiping up the axe from the ground then hefting it back to strike again. Pavo threw up his sword to block, but his shoulders shuddered in their sockets as the blades clashed and he was thrown back by the force of the blow. The Gothic Reiks’ sweeping axe blade then battered Sura back likewise and nicked Sarrius’ neck too. The V Macedonica legionary turned to run, but managed only a few steps before a fountain of dark blood burst from the torn artery, and he slumped to the ground, clutching at the foaming wound.

Farnobius leapt in again, swiping his axe blade around in a vast arc as if to pen the legionaries within the Gothic camp, shouting more reinforcements to him. Already, jostling shapes and shadows were approaching from nearby. ‘You will take their place on the fire, Roman dogs!’ he spat, nodding to the ambassadors, now scrambling up the mountainside. Then he heaved his axe up to swipe it round again. ‘You will burn and bleed for-’

His tirade ended abruptly when a plumbata dart hissed through the blackness. A tearing of flesh sounded. Farnobius staggered back, dropping the axe, clutching the split flesh on his bicep as three more Roman figures appeared from the foot of the Haemus slopes.

‘Come on!’ Gallus cried, his spatha red with the blood of the next-nearest sentries. Zosimus and Quadratus stood with him, the big Gaul dusting his hands together and admiring his throw.

They scrambled up the shale and scree and back into the mountains, all to the howling cries and pattering arrows of pursuing Goths, no more than a hundred paces behind. A fresh gathering of cloud cut across the moon and served to mask their route as they plunged down from the ridge path and onto the broken, veiled trail. Soon, the sound of their pursuers faded, but still they ran and ran, sliding on slippery ground, leaping across narrow gullies. Pavo heard strangled cries as some of their party fell foul of these hazards. Some hours later, they came to the granite lee they had eaten at the previous day. The scudding cloud cleared, and the moon and starlight illuminated the path behind them. No sign of pursuers. Gallus gave the order to halt.

Each man panted and said nothing. Bato fell to his knees and vomited. Pavo saw that only two ambassadors had made it — young men, the older and less nimble ones having fallen to Gothic arrows or perished on the mountain paths. Then his gaze fell upon the dark one with the black breastplate. This one strode over to Pavo, his square shoulders rising and falling as his breathing calmed. ‘You fought well back there. You saved my li-’ he stopped, frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’

Pavo tried but could not reply as he witnessed the man’s features clearly for the first time. At last, his lips let loose just one word. ‘Dexion?’

The two beheld each other, neither sure what to say next.

Veda the Hun cursed his comrades who had opted to pull back and abandon the chase. Then he cursed this broken trail that the Romans had taken. Had they stayed on the main ridge path, he would have caught them by now. Instead, he thought, pausing to sniff the air like a hunting dog, they were gone. Then an idea came to him as he eyed this winding, fragmented track, veiled by foliage and overhangs of rock for large sections. Just where did it lead? The handful of Romans might have slipped from his grasp, but they might just have led him to a far bigger prize. Perhaps the hunt was not yet over?

‘Ya!’ he hissed, heeling his pony on along the broken trail.