Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4) (2 page)

‘Yes,’ Fritigern whispered, then filled his lungs to bellow: ‘Yes! Seize the battleme-’

His cry was cut short by the keening of a buccina. In moments, the walltop flooded with a fresh batch of silver-clad legionaries. Two more centuries . . . then a third. He saw that they brought with them long poles fitted with steel hooks at the end. These swathes of legionaries then hooked the poles to the ladder-tops, gradually but surely forcing the ladders back from the walls until they teetered, near-vertical. A heartbeat later, the pass filled with shrill screams as the most central of the ladders toppled backwards, tossing armour-laden Goths to the ground where many perished with the stark sound of cracking of skulls and vertebrae, and many more were injured, crushed under the weight of their falling comrades. The climbers on the ladders close to the corners of the fort met a grimmer end, these ladders swinging back not onto the ridge path but out over the edges of the ridge, ladders and men tumbling down the jagged slopes in a tumult of dust, blood, snapping timber and bone and screaming. In moments, the seemingly inexorable Gothic advance had stalled – the two thousand stranded at the foot of the walls with no means of scaling the sturdy stockade. A peculiar silence descended for but an instant, before the battlements rippled with silver as a myriad darts and javelins were raised and the stretching of hundreds of Roman bowstrings sounded.

‘
Loose!
’ the centurion up there yelled.

The smack of iron arrowheads and javelins on crumpling armour and soft flesh seemed never ending. Gothic warriors fell in their hundreds. Blood-spray was carried by the whistling wind, up the Shipka Pass until Fritigern could taste its coppery tang on his lips.

‘Fall back,’ he snarled, seeing the legionaries ready for another volley. ‘
Fall back!
’

The Gothic camp lay just north of the Haemus Mountains. It was a vast sprawl of tents and torches and home to more than a hundred thousand souls; the great tribes of the Thervingi and the Greuthingi along with many ragged bands who had previously associated with neither. All now stood together as the Gothic Alliance. Near the heart of the camp, a small circle of men sat around an open fire under a cloudy night sky and a waning moon. They were dressed in leather armour and wore furs on their shoulders. Fritigern sighed as he eyed this collection of
reiks
across the fire. This council of noblemen was his to command, yet they looked upon him like scornful fathers. Through the swirling air and dancing sparks, he saw expressions of fury and despair, narrowed eyes laced with cunning and thin lips on the edge of yet another recalcitrant outburst.

In an attempt to pre-empt this, he spoke first. ‘Today was a black day. Many of our kin died at the Roman fort on the ridge path. But we must show conviction in our alliance. At Ad Salices, we showed that we
can
stand against the imperial legions.’ He grasped out, snatching at the darting sparks from the fire. His mind spun back to the spring day when his Gothic Alliance had faced the Thracian legions, turning that pleasant meadow, edged by a willow grove and the Roman hamlet of Ad Salices, into a mire of blood. ‘We can still use that as leverage – force the emperor to parley and end the blockade of the five mountain passes. Such an endeavour might ensure that no more of our kin die in the treacherous passes, and that we finally gain lands to settle south of the mountains.’

Silence reigned until Reiks Alatheus chuckled, the firelight dancing in his eyes.

‘You hark back to Ad Salices as if it was some kind of victory?’ he said calmly. This one was tall and slender with long, white locks and black eyebrows. Skilled with the sword, lethal with the tongue. ‘Yes, it was almost a fine tactical victory for us . . . but it was a strategic triumph for the Romans, for their reinforcements came – we did not break them nor they us. They had the lands and resources of their vast empire to fall back on. We won nothing that day. Nothing but this Moesian wilderness they choose to corral us within.’ He cast a hand out and swept it around the night air.

‘Aye, they treat us like goats!’ Reiks Saphrax agreed. ‘There is little meat, grain or forage to be had in this strip of wasteland. It was impoverished even before we drove the Romans from it.’ The squat, bald, slit-eyed and flat-faced man threw a scrawny chicken bone stripped of every morsel of flesh into the flames as if to stress his point.

Alatheus’ nose wrinkled at Saphrax’s interruption. ‘My point is that we have
no
leverage, Iudex. The time for parley with the emperor has passed. The five passes must be taken by the sword. So far . . .
we
have failed to do so,’ he said, all those at the fire glancing to Fritigern as if attributing blame. ‘And rumour tells us that Emperor Valens is readying his armies from far and wide. If he brings all his forces to these lands, then we are without hope. Thus, we must look to whatever means might be available to change this state of affairs.’ he finished with a slight bow. A murmur of agreement rippled around the circle of men.

Fritigern’s eyes grew hooded. He could not refute the man’s habitually well-chosen words, yet he knew that to remain silent would further weaken his position amongst these nobles. He could best any of them in combat, he was sure – despite his ageing body – and no one of them led enough warriors to challenge his own loyal and numerous Thervingi ranks.
But together, they could destroy me . . .

‘We need to act, Iudex,’ Saphrax urged him. Another rumble of accord. ‘We need food.’

This time, Fritigern opted not to react. Instead, he took up his wineskin and swigged from it. Alatheus and Saphrax, he was sure, hungered more for power than for food. These two leaders of the Greuthingi Goths had crossed the Danubius and entered imperial lands shortly after Fritigern and his Thervingi the previous year. The Thervingi and Greuthingi had quickly allied as one force, driven by their shared need to escape the wrath of the Huns north of the river, and to stave off the threat of starvation whilst marooned in Roman lands. Only adversity could serve as a crucible for such an alliance, for the largely Arian Christian Thervingi and the pagan Greuthingi had seldom missed an opportunity to quarrel and make war in years past. And so it was that the two Greuthingi Reiks had gracefully bowed to Fritigern’s command, and the many thousands of cavalrymen they brought with them had been a welcome addition to the growing Gothic ranks. Neither man had made a move to unseat him in that time, yet there was a foul air of impending perfidy whenever either spoke. The reek had always followed these two. Indeed, Alatheus and Saphrax had been mere regents before the Greuthingi had crossed the Danubius, serving the boy-reiks Vitheric; yet somehow in the great river crossing the healthy and spry lad – a strong swimmer – had drowned. Alatheus and Saphrax, of course, had been elected in his place. Would either now be so bold as to challenge his authority at the head of the Alliance? And for what prize – the chance to lead this wandering and desperate Gothic horde for themselves? No prize for any man, any man but a fool.

He looked up, sure to meet the eyes of each man around the fire. ‘In today’s assault on the Shipka Pass defences, I was repelled, but I learned much. The walls of that fort
can
be brok-’

Just then, a cry rang out from the northern edge of the camp, cutting him off. All necks stretched, heads turned and a murmur of confusion broke out. Fritigern peered through the forest of torches to the gloom out there. He saw many heads emerge from the sea of tents: families, children and barking dogs roused by the cry and wary of its meaning. He rose from the fire and strode to the north, embers swirling in his wake and leather-armoured bodyguards hurrying to flank him. Nearing the perimeter of the vast camp, he slowed, his eyes fixed on the blackness of night beyond. It was crawling with shapes. ‘The legions?’ he whispered to himself as the chill finger of fear traced his spine. ‘They have come round our flanks?’ Then a hand rested on his shoulder.

‘At ease, Iudex,’ Alatheus purred. ‘The Romans remain in the south guarding the five mountain passes, ignorant of all that goes on in these parts. What you see before you is an army of reinforcements.’

Fritigern swung to the tall, lean reiks. ‘What? I knew nothing of this.’ His eyes darted, trying to make sense of it all. ‘You have summoned Athanaric’s cursed Goths from the Carpates Mountains?’

Alatheus shook his head. ‘These men are not Goths, Iudex. We felt a different caste of warrior might ease the taking of the five passes.’

‘
We?
’ Fritigern glared at him, then repeated; ‘I knew
nothing
of this!’

‘We,’ Alatheus repeated, this time nodding to Saphrax, ‘felt it would be best not to trouble you with false hope in case our initiative did not bear fruit. We sent one of our best men north, across the river, to bring to you what you need.’

Fritigern switched his gaze between the two – each wearing looks of matching equanimity – then looked back to the crawling night. A rare shaft of moonlight illuminated the approaching horde: squat and stocky riders saddled on sturdy ponies, each rider bearing three slashes on their wan cheeks. ‘Huns?’ he stammered. ‘
Huns!
’ He could not contain his panic. ‘You fools, what have you done?’

The clouds parted to allow the moonlight to bathe the approaching horde. Many hundreds of them, scratching, cursing and spitting. These were the demon cavalry from his nightmares. The very riders that had the previous year driven his people from the fine pasture of Gutthiuda, across the river and into imperial lands, kindling this desperate standoff against Rome.

‘You think you can control the Huns?’ he hissed to Alatheus, struggling to hide his fear, recalling his old rival Athanaric’s past attempts to harness these rogue riders. ‘How many of them come?’

‘Enough,’ Alatheus smiled with irritating calm. ‘But not so many as to cause us a problem. And they bring us grain wagons too. With them come the Taifali,’ he continued, gesturing to the rear of the incoming horde. Tall, fair Germanic riders in leather and iron vests carrying lengthy lances and dark-blue shields adorned with two howling wolf heads. ‘Close cousins to the Gothic tribes.’

Fritigern ignored Alatheus, instead struggling to estimate the size of this horde of northern horsemen. A thousand Huns, maybe closer to two thousand, and the same number of Taifali, he reckoned. He sought to remain calm, to find logic in the situation: the Gothic Alliance could count over thirty thousand warriors, and that number was growing with every passing week – more than enough to keep these newcomers in check, surely. Perhaps these new riders would be of some use, he tried to convince himself. And, loathe as he was to admit it, he could not help but be impressed by the initiative, mustering a hardy wing of Germanic chargers and steppe riders and bringing them to his ranks in good order like this. This brought a question to his lips.

‘Who harnessed this horde?’

‘Our champion,’ Alatheus replied, stretching out a hand to one approaching rider near the front of the Hun horde: a mail-clad giant on a silver stallion, bull-shouldered, with raven-dark hair scooped into a knot atop his head and a trident beard.

Fritigern squinted in the darkness, then felt his stomach turn over as the moonlight flashed across this rider’s face: handsome yet spoiled by a fearsome expression and troubling, obsidian eyes. Reiks Farnobius, a troublesome leader of a few hundred of the Greuthingi Goths. The head-taker some called him. A savage on the battlefield and a mercenary off it – doubtless guided shrewdly by careful words from Alatheus’ silver tongue.
And what else did he and Saphrax convince you to do, Farnobius?
Fritigern thought, his eyes narrowing as he thought again of the drowned boy-reiks, Vitheric. Farnobius had once been Vitheric’s protector.
Where were you that night the boy died, Farnobius?

Farnobius was the only one Fritigern doubted he could surpass in combat. Yet as the colossus approached, Fritigern sensed the eyes of all the other minor reiks fall upon him again. His skin writhed with a cold shiver as he imagined himself trapped in a pit of asps: small and troublesome on their own, deadly when united.

Farnobius halted his stallion before Fritigern, then bowed in response – tilting his head just a fraction as if adding a dash of disrespect. When he lifted his head again, he wore a grin. It was the grin of a shark, passing into a stony glower as the two beheld each other for what felt like an eternity. It was only some sharp, involuntary twitch of Farnobius’ head – as if some dark and troubling thought had snagged the man – that ended the moment.

With a low snarl, the giant reiks drew the battle axe from his back and swept it up to test the edge, cutting the air before him. The grin returned. ‘Iudex Fritigern, I bring you many more horsemen for your horde; warriors who will break the Roman blockade.’ He raised his voice so the gathering crowds could not fail to hear. A clamour of eager voices chattered and gasped at this proclamation.