The legionary chuckled, tucking his sword away. ‘Not as many as Rome has over the years,’ he patted his purse, ‘and besides, it pays handsomely. Now if you want to die then keep waving those toothpicks at us, otherwise, drop them; Noble Balamber wants to meet you.’
Pavo shot a glance over his shoulder to Felix.
‘Don’t look at me, lad. Only way this dagger comes out of my hand is when I’m cold and stiff.’
Pavo eyed the mast; a rope billowed in the breeze from the crow’s nest high above. ‘Hold on!’ Pavo gasped and then swiped at one half of the rope with his dagger, grasping the other half with his free hand. With a ripple, the sail tumbled down, yanking Pavo upwards. ‘Grab my legs!’ Felix spun round just as the rope zipped up, carrying Pavo with it.
‘Whoa!’ Felix cried as he grabbed on and the pair shot up, wind roaring in their ears all the way up until Pavo’s shoulder smashed into the foot of the crow’s nest.
He winced at the searing pain — blood dripped from the gash in his shoulder. Then down below a posse of Hun footmen thundered onto the deck, pulling composite bows from their backs.
‘Take them down,’ the I Dacia trooper snarled. ‘Hit them in the arms and legs — your Noble Balamber wants them alive — but not for long!’ Their bowstrings strained and Felix kicked out violently into the air.
‘Come on, stop dallying and get me in the nest!’ Arrows zipped past them, thwacking into the timber of the mast. ‘Bloody…argh!’ He barked as an arrow scythed past his cheek, spraying blood.
Pavo’s mind swam, his lungs still burning from the swim and his gushing arm numbing as they hung. He pulled with everything he had, but Felix was like a dead weight.
‘Right,’ the optio snarled.
Suddenly, Pavo felt as if he was under a stampede. Felix’s boots and hands dug into his thighs, then his stomach and then his neck as the optio clambered over him. With a thud, Felix was gone, over into the crow’s nest, leaving Pavo dangling in the hail of arrows. Then he felt an arm wrestle him up and over into the tiny safe haven.
‘Wake up you dozy bugger,’ Felix roared, slapping Pavo across the face. ‘This was your great idea — what now?’
Pavo rubbed the top of his shoulder. ‘Didn’t think that far ahead…’ He looked around the tiny bucket shaped enclosure — empty apart from a bundle of canvas rolls and some cloth covered pewter jars.
‘For Mithras’ sake,’ Felix gasped, gripping the edge of the nest and peeking over the edge, ‘we’ll have to jump into the drink again. Even then, they’ll skewer us before we land!’
Pavo unravelled one canvas, and the acrid stench of paraffin curled up his nostrils. Thick bundles of arrows, their heads wrapped in dirty cloth tumbled to the floor. ‘Fire arrows!’ Behind the rolls, a pair of bows lay conspicuously, together with urns. Pavo popped the top off one and recoiled at the stench — more paraffin. ‘Let’s start a fire!’
‘Burn the ships? Heh, like it, but how do we get back to Constantinople then?’
‘Well maybe we don’t, but at least we cripple these buggers as much as possible — it’s all we’ve got.’
‘I’m with you,’ Felix replied, unscrewing the top of one of the urns.
Pavo fumbled in his purse — two flint chips, still dry, worked their way into his hand and he pulled them out and set to work, chapping them together until they began to spark. ‘You ready, sir?’
‘Hold me back,’ Felix growled, holding his prepared arrow over.
One more strike of the stones and the arrow burst into an orange blaze.
‘And this one,’ Felix held the second bow over the flame.
Just then, a voice roared out from below. ‘You’re trapped! Stay up there and you’ll just make things worse for yourself!’
Backs pressed against the nest wall, Pavo and Felix shot each other a glance. ‘Ready? Ready!’ They nodded in unison, before leaping up to hold their nocked bows high.
‘Back off, or your fleet will light up the seas!’ Felix yelled as his blazing arrow roared in the lofty breeze.
The I Dacia legionary’s face dropped, eyes wide. ‘You’ll die in the flames too,’ he stammered.
‘Worth it to see your face when you realise you’re trapped here — then when our reinforcements come you’ll be powerless to stop them landing!’
‘There are no reinforcements! You and your legion are already dead!’
‘Bollocks to you!’ Felix roared, stretching his bowstring.
Pavo followed suit, tilting his bow to the bank of triremes further up the harbour. ‘Sir, are we really going through with this?’
Felix shot him a now all too familiar glare, but before he could reply, the voice from below boomed out.
‘Perhaps you’ll see sense now?’ A patter of footsteps was accompanied by the swearing of an all too familiar Thracian voice.
‘Sura!’ Pavo gasped, glancing down to see his friend thrashing in between two Hun spearmen.
‘We’ll gut this one here and now. You’ve got till I count to three.’
‘Sir?’ Pavo fretted.
‘One…’
‘Er…stay strong, Pavo,’ Felix mumbled.
‘Two…’
‘Oh, bugger,’ the optio moaned as he lowered his bow. ‘This isn’t going to save anyone.’ He turned to Pavo with a tired look. ‘Any other ideas?’
Pavo sighed, his limbs slackening as he smothered his flaming arrow. ‘Suppose we’ve got to face their leader then? It buys us some time, at least. I don’t know how much, but while we stay alive, there’s always a chance.’
Like starving wolves, Hun warriors scrambled up the mast and were upon them in moments. Pavo’s eyes widened as the first sent a crunching blow with both of his fists into the back of Felix’s neck, dropping the optio like a stone. The second smiled a cavernous yellow-tombstone grin before thrusting his spear shaft into Pavo’s face.
Chapter 58
The gentle bleating of a distant mountain goat filtered into the stone hall where the bulk of the legion had set up their beds for the previous night — a cramped but sheltered dorm. An amber sliver of sunlight explored the hall through the cracks in the rotting shutters as the morning sun began to peek over the hills to the east. The men of the legion lay in a thick sleep, and the morning buccina call roused barely half of them. What precious sleep they had managed had been rudely interrupted by the briefly terrifying and coarse braying of a straggle of pack mules, the few who had lagged behind before the Huns fell on the main mule train and had subsequently wandered to the hilltop. After much swearing and grasping for weapons, the legionaries managed to forgive the petrified animals, who brought with them a pair of prefabricated ballista parts and bolts, a handful of tents and a pack of salted meat.
Gallus rolled his legs out of his hastily arranged cot — a pile of foliage and his cloak. His body screamed of the previous day’s battle. He hobbled to his tunic and threw it on along with his boots, which burned into his raw, blistered feet. As the rest of the legion rose, he shuffled to the barrel of grimy water in the centre of the hall and scooped a double handful of it, lashing it across his face. It jolted him as if it had washed over his heart and he gasped, running the remaining liquid through his hair. He slipped on his mail vest — stinking of dried blood — and then looked around at the still slumbering numbers and grimaced.
‘Make haste, ladies! Have you forgotten the situation we are in?’ He boomed. ‘I want you out there and alert right bloody now!’ The centurion’s voice worked like a thousand buccinas and suddenly the shuffling legionaries became sprightlier and those asleep were jolted from their cots.
He fastened his sword belt and then slid on his horsehair crest helmet. Buckling his cloak he visualised the iron shutters closing in again.
These men need you to lead them
, he repeated to himself as he strode out into the courtyard of the fort. Already, those that remained of the first cohort were all present as far as he could tell. He gave them nothing but a firm nod. Zosimus, Avitus and Quadratus waited on him at the front, the trio looked haggard and even grumpier than usual for an early morning, but they were there for him, and that was what mattered. He gathered them into a small circle.
‘We are safe from the south side,’ he nodded to the edge of the fort overhanging the sheer drop, ‘so that’s in our favour at least. Harvest whatever timber we can find — get us set up with ballistae on the walls,’ he pointed to the northeast and northwest corners of the mossy bulwark penning them in. ‘Catapults, rocks, anything we can cobble together and fire down their throats, we do it.’
‘Sounds good, sir.’ Zosimus grunted.
‘Quadratus — how did the watch go?’ Gallus turned to the Gaul.
‘Quiet — too quiet. They’re all around us down there and they’ve men to spare, to say the least.’
Gallus thought of Felix. Defeat crawled across his mind, but he pushed it firmly to the side. ‘Then there’ll be all the more for us before reinforcements come!’ The three optios smiled, and Gallus allowed his eyes to sparkle wryly.
Finally, the three cohorts and the auxiliaries were formed up. Gallus eyed the ranks and suddenly felt more alone than he ever had. Barely a thousand men stood before him. Many of those hobbled on crutches and those who stood freely wore bandages or coughed roughly, spitting blood into the dirt.
‘I hope you’re all feeling refreshed, because last night may well have been your last rest for quite some time. We are safe for the very short term up here, but if you haven’t noticed, there are no cattle or olive groves up here for us to feast on. In short, we’ve got to make what we have last.’ Gallus paused for a moment. ‘As you all well know, we lost a lot of our brothers yesterday.’ A solemn silence hung in the air as the wind whipped up dust around the legion. ‘We’re short on men and we’re short on food, but when it comes to Roman endurance and cold, hard skill with sharpened iron — we are kings!’ Gallus paced evenly in front of the legion. ‘A detachment has been sent out to call for a relief force. I’m talking of true Romans here, not of the treacherous whoresons down there, willing to sell their honour to animals.’ The legion rumbled in exhausted agreement. ‘But let these animals come,’ Gallus whipped his hands up to either side. ‘Let them come, for we will be waiting, like a lion waits on its prey. For the empire, men…for the empire!’
Suddenly, the air was alive with the hoarse cries of the thousand. Punching the air, rattling swords on shields.
‘Cut down what timber you can find, we need artillery, we need arrows and bolts. Pile rocks on the battlements, find urns that we can heat sand in and pour from the walls. I want you to busy yourselves today by building this place into a real Roman fort — to be a testudo for us to defend until a relief force comes.’ Gallus heard the words
if a relief force comes
echo in his head as he spoke, but simply acknowledged it and showed his stiff jaw to the legion as they broke up to set about their tasks.
‘Is this really all there are left?’ Avitus sighed when the cohorts were out of earshot. ‘A thousand men against twenty times that. Sir, you know we don’t stand a chance, don’t you?’
‘We can’t win, Avitus, fair enough. But we don’t have to. The relief force is our lucky dice.’ Gallus saw the unconvinced gurn the three new optios wore, and dropped the rhetoric. ‘Okay, it’s looking bleak, but those men need to believe,’ he swept a hand back over the tattered legion. ‘Stay with me, men, I need you.’
Chapter 59
Pavo sat up with a start, chains clanking and biting at his wrists. Dank didn’t even begin to describe the filthy dungeon he found himself in. Illuminated in a semi-gloom from a portcullis entrance, high above, a stench of mould and rotting meat insistently clawed at his nostrils. With a retch, he realised he had been lying semi-submerged in a green-brown pool of
something
. He ignored the thundering pain marching through his head and tried to focus on the shapes on the floor around him
‘Welcome to my lair,’ a voice croaked from the darkness.
‘Sura! What happened?’
‘Seems like they want to get a bit of inside information on the XI Claudia.’
‘What in Hades…’ another voice croaked as a shape beside him sat up. The gloom outlined the short form of Felix. ‘Feels like I’ve been sleeping in a bath of turds? Oh bloody heck…I have,’ he yelped, wiping the murky slime from his face. ‘Well, we’ve got the time you were after, Pavo. Let’s start thinking.’
Pavo held up his shackles, as thick as his wrists and nearly rust-free.
‘Forget it,’ Sura cut in. ‘Believe me, I’ve tried — nearly broke my wrist in the process.’
‘How long have you been in here — how long have
we
been in here?’ Felix snapped.
‘You’ve been out cold for the best part of a day — as best as I can tell.’
‘A day?’ Pavo yelped.
Felix dropped his head into his hands. ‘We’ve screwed it up.’
‘What are they waiting on out there? Why don’t they torture us or kill us — what use are we to them in here?’ Pavo muttered.
‘What use are we to anyone in here?’ Sura mumbled in agreement.
‘Right, how’s about we start shouting?’ Felix offered.
‘What, to get attention? That’ll work, but it’ll likely be in the form of a spear shaft in the face…again!’ Sura mused, rubbing his fingertips on the angry red welt around his eye.
‘Sod it, we’ve got to do something,’ Pavo reasoned.
All three fell silent for a moment, and then in unison, they filled their lungs.
‘Come on then!’ They cried. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Their echoes bounced from wall to wall until they were breathless. Pavo’s head thumped in protest as they fell silent, slumping back down in despair.
Then a roar of iron grating filled the stairwell above.
Four shapes filled the dim light at the top of the stairs and then thundered down to the dungeon floor.
‘All right you pigs — you want what’s coming to you?’ Festus sneered, his three I Dacia legionaries grinning in unison. ‘Ah, Pavo,’ he cocked an eyebrow, ‘it’s going to be doubly painful for you, I can assure you.’