Legionary (47 page)

Vitus rubbed his chin momentarily. ‘Parthian shot? Hit and run.’

Pavo nodded vigorously.

‘Equites, out wide,’ Vitus cried, ‘ready to pinch anything that comes over that hill!’

The cavalry raced out as he ordered, just as a wall of dark riders exploded over the ridge, only twenty paces at most behind the fleeing Horsa and Amalric.

Pavo gulped as the riders came and came — his mind flitted with flashbacks of their descent onto the ill-prepared XI Claudia just days before.

‘It’s just a detachment,’ Sura gasped, reading his thoughts. ‘Look, they’re tailing off!’

‘Then we’ve got to cut them off,’ Vitus barked, then turned to the legionary holding the silver eagle standard and the trio carrying bronze horns. ‘Aquilifer, buccinators — get my cavalry round the back of them — pen them in and destroy them. I don’t want a single one of them getting back to their main force — let’s keep surprise in our armoury.’

‘I’m trying, sir!’ The aquilifer roared as the Hun detachment wheeled around fully, breaking from the pursuit of Horsa and haring back in the direction they had come from.

‘Damn it! If they bring their full cavalry force onto us on open ground…this could be a disaster!’

Pavo felt his spirit crash. If the Huns slipped away they would be chasing shadows again. Then, on the horizon, something rippled, just ahead of the Hun detachment. ‘Sir — look!’

All across the grassy ridge, a harvest of spears rose up, held firm by blonde-haired warriors. The Hun riders reared up, throwing their flight into chaos, as the equites thundered into their rear.

‘What in the name of — who are they?’ Vitus spluttered, straining his eyes in the cloudy gloom at the spectre-like line of spearmen. Horsa and Amalric rode to the rear of the newcomers, exchanged some barked words and then wheeled around, whooping, punching the air in delight.

‘Goths, sir? I think they’re Goths?’ Pavo gasped.

Amalric leant from the saddle as Horsa galloped up to the Roman front line and Vitus. ‘My brothers are here, under Fritigern’s banner — here to avenge their kin!’ He pointed to the flapping orange flag they held.

‘One of our boats escaped, fishermen of my people, they crossed the sea to get word to our cousins! We thought them lost to the Huns!’ Amalric blurted, his eyes sparkled with tears.

As one, the Roman lines erupted in a roar of delight, while at the ridge, the Hun thousand were crushed in the Roman-Goth vice, speartips and plumbatae felling them swiftly.

‘Who’d have thought it, lads?’ Vitus mused, gazing at Horsa as he wheeled back to enter the fray. ‘Saved by Goths!’ His laughter filled the plain.

In the murmur of excitement, nobody noticed the white cloaked and hooded figure of Bishop Evagrius pushing through the crowd, past the flank of the army and up to the ridge.

Gallus waved the remaining clutch — barely thirty — of the XI Claudia back from the walls, screaming through the thick smog of battle. The auxiliaries loosed one final volley of rubble onto the Huns as they washed over the crippled battlements and into the courtyard like a black torrent.

‘Fall back — now!’ He rasped again, knocking a rock from the hand of one young legionary and shoving him towards the tiny bunker-room they had set up in the sleeping area.

Arrows spattered against his mail vest, one punctured his shoulder and another ripped across his neck in the tiny unprotected sliver between his intercisa helmet and his vest. The last to leave the rubble-heap of the walls, his skin crawled at the whirring of lassos that grew like a giant swarm of dragonflies behind him. One legionary scudded along the ground, away from the bunker, his ankles trussed in a lasso and his face contorted in a pained scream. Gallus grappled the soldier’s wrist as he slipped past and clung on, but the Hun at the other end used his mount’s power to yank the lad back, before another rode up and speared the legionary in the face. Gallus staggered back on his palms, eyes wide at the sea of riders all now thundering towards him. He turned, scrambled to his feet and ran.

He ducked under a spear thrust from his left and leapt over a sword swipe at his knees, before hammering his fist out to his right, delivering a crunching jab into the nose of another would-be killer. He swivelled, dodging another swoosh of a spear tip, all the time trying to keep one eye on the tiny doorway to the bunker.

‘Cover me!’ He roared.

‘Sir — duck!’ A familiar voice cried in reply. Gallus leapt forward and down underneath the plumbata volley from the men at the bunker entrance, his palms skinning as he skidded forward and into the bunker doorway, pulling himself round and into the corridor inside just in time to miss a volley of spears, which clattered on the doorframe, sending a cloud of mortar up in his wake.

Wincing at the grinding from a broken rib, Gallus scrambled to his feet. ‘Get that doorway sealed!’

Inside the hall, Zosimus and Quadratus leapt to action as he ran past them; grappling on two hefty timber stakes supporting the ceiling they had weakened earlier, the two legionaries heaved them backwards, tearing the support away. Three Hun horsemen had bolted inside, eyes red with the promise of blood, when the corridor roared with collapsing masonry like a furious earthquake, filling up the entrance with solid rock and burying the Huns.

The noise died, and the hall was thick with dust and a shattered group of Legionaries. Gallus made a quick head count; nineteen men left. Zosimus, Quadratus and Avitus still stood — brothers to the last.

An eerie quiet rippled around them, while from outside, the dull roar of the Huns continued unabated. Gallus’ heart slowed. He saw the face of Olivia in his mind’s eye. ‘How long?’ He asked his optios. As he finished, a metallic clank shook the building, and the rubble blockade shifted visibly. A ram. The Romans eyed one another as the noise came again, and again.

Avitus, shining with sweat, looked to his centurion. ‘Moments, sir. If we’re lucky.’

All around the foot of the hill, tents lay empty and fires doused, as the full force of the Hun horde coursed up the hillside, crushing in on the doomed fort. Outside the command tent, Balamber stood in dialogue with Wulfric, surrounded by a handful of Hun nobles and I Dacia centurions.

Balamber glared upon the Gothic tribunus. ‘A sea of blood has been let from my horde! Crushing this legion was supposed to be easy. A two day siege on a hill fort was not part of the plan, tribunus.’

Wulfric grimaced at the Hun noble’s tone, before replying. ‘And the blood of the I Dacia has been spilled equally freely. It is both of our armies who failed to stop their retreat to this fortress.’

‘And it was your precious soldiers who dishonoured themselves and decided to turn back to the empire they had betrayed in the first place,’ Balamber snarled. ‘But what more could I expect from traitors?’

Wulfric gritted his teeth together. ‘A handful of impressionable recruits lacked faith in our master plan and saw a chance to save their necks.’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘In any case, a rabble of inexperienced legionaries would never have made it back to the heart of the empire — our sponsor in this affair has gilded our path to victory.’

‘Ah, yes, your holy bishop? Well, when this legion is ground into the dust and we descend upon the empire, I shall have to have an audience with the man. Well, we still number, what, some twelve thousand — plenty to finish the job in hand. But we will need to raise further manpower after this — maybe the bishop will spend more generously this time to guarantee our success.’

‘Perhaps. And I trust you will be able to raise more manpower from your homelands, Noble Balamber? Your people will still be happy to let their sons march under your command?’ Wulfric replied.

Balamber stepped forward, toe to toe with the Gothic tribunus. ‘You speak with hidden venom, Tribunus Wulfric,’ Balamber sneered, his moustache twitching, teeth bared.

Wulfric shot him a stony gaze. ‘You are but a pawn in this game, cheap manpower for the slaughter.’

With a roar, Balamber lunged at him, clawing for his throat. Wulfric leapt back, whipping his spatha free. Wulfric’s centurions followed suit while Balamber’s nobles stretched their bows at point blank range. He held the Hun leader’s stare. Both men’s eyes sparkled with fury. The air around them seemed to crackle with tension, until something caught Wulfric’s attention from the corner of his eye. Something that didn’t look right. Not right at all.

He turned round to the hillside; the vast throng of the Hun and I Dacia army swelled up its sides, focusing on the tiny heap of rubble at the top; then he glanced to the opposite valley-side and froze: there stood a white-cloaked figure, fervently waving a purple rag on a staff.

‘What do we have here?’ Balamber cooed in curiosity. The nobles relaxed their bowstrings and the centurions lowered their swords.

The purple rag fluttered in the breeze, displaying a grubby Chi-Rho emblem. Wulfric’s jaw fell. ‘You wanted an audience with the bishop?’ He scooped a hand to the figure.

‘Your bishop, here?’ Balamber’s face wrinkled. ‘He’s signalling us?’

Wulfric stared at the Hun leader, sharing his confusion. Then his heart thundered as he pieced it all together. ‘Noble Balamber, we must turn the army around!’

The Hun detachment lay broken, still and silent in the grass. The Gothic spearmen had finally stopped cheering, and let Amalric down from their shoulders. The Gothic prince had then roared the warriors into the Roman line — now formed in a wide crescent, six hundred men wide. Auxiliary archers hovered in front of them and the equites circled on the flanks, eager for the push over the ridge. Eight thousand they now numbered with these reinforcements.

Pavo stood with Sura on the front line, quickly gulping at cool water and tearing at their bread rations. No matter how much water he swigged, his mouth remained dry as sand, and he jigged on the balls of his feet as his bladder seemed to have filled up again.

‘Ha — the old soldier’s curse!’ Vitus grinned down at him.

‘It’s becoming all too familiar, sir,’ Pavo cocked an eyebrow.

The standards rippled across the line, lifted by a growing wind which seemed to be scudding dark storm clouds across the afternoon sky.

Vitus raised his arm to indicate to the I Italica Legion; the men of the XII Fulminata were ready. Only a murmur of voices and ripple of armour being adjusted could be heard, until Vitus grabbed the legionary standard and pumped it into the air.

‘Soldiers, advance!’

Pavo felt his blood race at the roar of the army. As one, they thundered forward. The ridge hovered ever closer.

Destiny lay on the other side.

The wind whipped and howled in the valley and the sky was now a foreboding grey. Outside the Hun command tent, Balamber remonstrated with his nobles, who scrambled around the rear of their army, roaring, desperately trying to control the horde. He threw a pewter cup against the hearth as the swarm continued to push on at the fort, blinded to the orders by their bloodlust.

‘Turning round when we’re on the cusp of victory? You’d better be right about this, Wulfric, or there’ll be a price to pay for making me look foolish.’

‘I think we have confirmation, Noble Balamber,’ Wulfric barked, pointing to the ridge again.

There, like an iron sunrise, two shimmering eagle standards sparkled even in the gloomy grey. As true as day follows night, a thick blanket of armed men rose beneath the standards, pouring over the lip of the ridge, dressed in white tunics, scale armour and intercisa helmets. The bishop was unceremoniously swallowed by the march.

A fine whipped rain descended and Balamber’s eyes widened, his hands wringing at his sword pommel.

‘Bring my horse,’ he snarled at his bodyguard. ‘I want a thousand left to finish the stragglers in the fort. The rest — they must prove their worth to me now. Muster the garrison in Chersonesos — the Romans will die under our hail.’ With that, he leapt onto his horse and spurred her into a gallop, roaring above all of his nobles, whacking his sword flat into the backs of those bringing up the rear of the horde. Like a forest fire, the horde turned, gradually at first, then in a fluid motion. Their cries filled the air and they began to spill back down the hillside, Balamber marshalling them like a war-god.

Wulfric thundered towards the I Dacia ranks. Having recognised the coming attack far sooner, they were already formed up on the right flank of the Huns, facing into the base of the valley. ‘Refuse the flank!’ Wulfric boomed at his men and they dropped back to present a diagonal front to the Roman advance. With their numerical advantage, they could anchor one flank and let the Huns do the dirty work of fighting forward and encircling the Romans. As they settled into position, the massive Hun horde formed by their side.

As the Roman relief force thundered down the hill, now less than a stadia away, the assembled dark riders waited on their leader’s word.

‘Forward!’ Balamber cried, barging through to the front line, sword raised high.

The valley trembled as the two massive forces careered down the opposing sides. The sky roared with thunder as the gods gathered to watch.

‘What in Hades was our bishop doing trying to signal the enemy?’ Vitus growled over the whipping wind, blinking rain from his eyes as he trotted forward.

Pavo panted as he jogged to keep pace with the tribunus. ‘He bribed the foederati, he bribed the I Dacia, and he’s in league with the Huns!’

‘Let’s give him his reward then, Pavo. Eternal damnation for him and his gold-loving dogs!’

Vitus threw a guttural roar forward, Pavo and Sura echoed him and the noise erupted along the Roman line, augmented by a chorus of buccinas. The Hun lines raised their horns and threw a terrible wail in return. The stretch of land between the two sides vanished with every stride and Pavo focused on the front ranks of the opposing line; the I Dacia.