Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4) (25 page)

Gallus’ eyes flicked to the floor momentarily as he remembered the words of the half-maddened Governor Urbicus of Trimontium.

A craven old man. He will offer you nothing.

His mind swept back to the Battle of Ad Salices. The late arrival of the western legions had been vital, Comes Richomeres leading those armies to the field just when it seemed certain that the Thracian armies might be crushed by Fritigern’s Goths. Richomeres had been hailed as a hero for snatching a dignified stalemate from the jaws of defeat, but there had been other whispers passed around too, of another western general who had been sent to the battle but had never arrived.

‘They said I turned back through fear,’ Geridus said as if following Gallus’ pondering. ‘Yet I have known decades of war, my skin is laced with cuts and my dreams are filled with the shades of lost comrades.’

Gallus frowned, wondering just how far this old man had reached inside his thoughts. ‘No man who stands with the legions in battle is a coward, sir.’

Geridus looked up now, beholding Gallus and the others with his hazel eyes, his black and wispy eyebrows in stark contrast with his white beard. His skin was mottled with age and bagged around his eyes.

‘Yet they call me just that; the Coward of Ad Salices,’ he muttered, pouring himself a cup of wine – not the first of the day, Gallus guessed going by the man’s rubicund, fleshy and thread-veined nose. ‘And I cannot deny them such accusations . . . for I did indeed turn back. My once powerful limbs would not carry me to war.’

The man met Gallus’ eyes, no, pinned him. At last, Gallus had to look away.

Geridus laughed a hoarse and throaty laugh. ‘You have nothing more to say? What does one say to console a coward who accepts his shame?’

Gallus noticed then, in the far corner of the room, a saddle, boots, shield, a swordbelt bearing a gem-hilted spatha, a magnificent bronze cuirass and a red plumed helm – all mounted on a timber frame. The fine armour was coated in dust like everything else, and cobwebs billowed with every breeze that stole into the room. Unused for some time, it seemed. ‘One might offer a second chance. Perhaps, sir, the holding of this pass might rinse the stain from your reputation?’

Geridus held Gallus’ gaze blankly for a moment, then roared with laughter, the throaty burr echoing throughout the room as if a hundred men had been tickled by Gallus’ words. When the laughter died, he shook his head. ‘My reputation is broken, Tribunus, irrefutably. I am merely waiting now.’

‘Waiting?’ Gallus frowned.

‘To be discharged. In the spring, another is to replace me. Maurus – a cruel, fickle and untrustworthy dog who has bought the favour of Emperor Gratian. So my reward is to spend my final years in retirement, recounting my shame with every passing day until the ferryman comes for me.’

Gallus sensed Geridus’ melancholy creeping under his armour, and knew it would be affecting those by his side too. ‘A winter lies between you and retirement, Comes. Is that not enough to offer you a chance of redemption? Certainly, last winter was enough to turn the eastern empire on her head, so surely it should not be asking too much for one man to guide his own fate this year? The empire needs men like you at this very moment. Indeed, I have been sent here to forewarn you of the situation. The five passes have fallen and the Goths have spilled into central Thracia. This defile has become vital once more, for if Emperor Gratian and his Western armies are to come to the aid of this land, then-’

Geridus raised a hand, beholding Gallus with a keen eye and an odd grin. ‘I remember when I was like you – free of my ailments and iron to my core . . . ’

Gallus’ patience was thinning. ‘Sir, my legion is here to help you in holding this pass until Emperor Gratian and his army come east in the spring. The vigour of my men and I will aid your cause. I hope you will put your all into the task then Gratian will see you for the man you are, and not be guided by the whispered rumours of the ambitious who have plotted to supercede you.’

Geridus’ eyes changed for just a moment. In their depths, Gallus was sure he saw an ember glowing as the Comes thought over the suggestion, then he winced, a hand shooting down to his shin. He rubbed at the robes there, his face pinched in pain. Silence overcame the room again, until Geridus sat up at last with a sigh, scratching at his shiny bald pate and turning back to the map. ‘Perhaps, Tribunus . . . perhaps.’ His eyes fell upon the area west of Trajan’s Gate. He tapped a finger on this section. ‘But as things stand, Gratian might not travel east at all.’

Gallus tensed. ‘That is impossible. It has been agreed. I heard confirmation of this from the lips of Emperor Valens in Antioch.’

Geridus sighed, eyes darting over the map. ‘Valens’ hopes are one thing. Reality is another. Gratian has his own difficulties at the moment,’ he said tapping the region around the Western Diocese of Italia’s northern borders and the precarious gap between the natural barriers of the upper Danubius and Rhine. ‘The Alemanni are said to be on the verge of revolt. Their King, Priarius, is a fractious whoreson.’ He then tapped the area marked as the Western Diocese of Pannonia, north and west of Trajan’s Gate, skirting the River Danubius’ upper course. ‘And here, the Quadi raid the western borders like wolves, fiercer than any Goth, I can assure you.’

‘Hearsay has no place over imperial orders,’ Gallus snapped, sensing his modicum of hope fading.
Gratian must come west! I will have my revenge!

Geridus’ thick, dark eyebrows lifted like a dissatisfied teacher. ‘This is not hearsay, Tribunus. The last word that came from the West confirmed Gratian’s troubles. That was over two weeks ago, and there have been no more messengers since . . . normally we expect Cursus Publicus messengers on a daily basis.’

Gallus felt his flesh creep with ire.
Justice!
‘Then surely we can despatch messengers westwards to implore him? The five passes have fallen. More than one hundred thousand Goths sit in the heart of Thracia right now,’ he leant over the map table and shot a finger out to the east. ‘Every inch of Roman land from here to the Hellespont is on the brink of collapse.’

Geridus sighed and took a long gulp of wine, that distant look returning to his eyes as he gazed into the fire. ‘I will send no more riders to Gratian.’

Gallus backed away from the table. ‘Why?’

Geridus flicked his head to the rear of the room. ‘Resigned though I may be, I have no wish to abandon my duties. I have just eighty archers to defend this pass. Outside, I have eleven horses and eleven equites remaining. Two weeks ago, I had thirty – and thirty men to ride them. Two parties I have sent west to establish what has happened with the imperial messenger system. The first I heard nothing from for a week. The second the same again . . . until one of them returned here, torn and bloodied. He and his men had found the bodies of the first party then fell into a Quadi ambush themselves. He died this morning.’

Gallus thought of the fresh grave outside.

Geridus tapped a finger on the map again and dragged it from Trajan’s Gate, tracing a line northwest, up through the westerly stretches of the Succi Valley and on across the Dioceses of Dacia and Pannonia, before coming to the River Danubius and following its course to the Diocese of Italia. ‘This route is fraught, and riddled with foes. The Quadi insurgents that took the heads of my riders have doubtless been responsible for the non-appearance of messengers or scouts coming from Gratian’s court. They control many of the roads in Dacia and Pannonia. Thus, I will not send more of my precious few to their deaths.’

Gallus drew a spare stool and sat opposite Geridus, steepling his fingers and fixing the man with a gimlet stare. ‘Comes . . . Emperor Gratian must be told that the five passes have fallen.’

Geridus remained exasperatingly unmoved by Gallus’ agitation. ‘Then show me the legions that will clear a path to the West to tell him. Until then, Gratian shall remain in his palace within the walls of Augusta Treverorum in Gaul, ignorant of the troubles of this land.’ He lifted his cup, swirled it, then frowned. ‘You eye me with contempt?’

Gallus heard the steely edge to his tone and relented, feigning deference to his superior. ‘You state only grim reality, sir. But to accept it is to succumb to it.’

‘What would you have me do?’ Geridus continued, then gestured towards the door, where one of the sagittarii stood guard. ‘You have seen how it is. I have just a century of bowmen to command. The legions of Pannonia are fully engaged on the Upper Danubius and as stretched as these forces are. I have no means of getting word to Gratian’s court.’

‘Allies, then?’ Gallus suggested. ‘Some who might carry word for us?’

Geridus sighed and rubbed at his temples. ‘There is a band of Sarmatians roaming somewhere on the pasturelands near the Danubius. They have sided with the legions of Pannonia in the past, but they are screened by the Quadi and equally as out of reach as Emperor Gratian is.’

‘There must be something, some way,’ Gallus’ eyes darted as he thought over the infrastructure of the empire’s messenger system. Roads, waystations, well-fed horses and riders. A single scroll could travel from Londinium to Alexandria in under three weeks. That system was in pieces, it seemed. The first fracture that might lead to a collapse? His mind swung back and forth, then fixed on one idea. ‘Let me try,’ he said at last.

Geridus supped his drink calmly and remained in a state of torpor. ‘Go on.’

‘Let
me
lead a contubernium west.’

Geridus’ dark eyebrows shot up. ‘You have not heard a word I said,’ he tapped the map west of Trajan’s Gate again as he said this.

‘I heard and heeded every word,’ Gallus countered.

Geridus swirled his cup and drank some more, his eyes never leaving Gallus. ‘I am ordering you and your men to stay put, Tribunus.’

That night, a cold wind howled through the pass and the junipers rustled and hissed over the square of XI Claudia tents pitched on the patch of free flat ground just outside the fort entrance. Pavo flitted up the stone-stepped, rounded tunnel that led from the valley floor, emerged from the tunnel mouth and out onto the plateau by the southern gatetower. He handed the skin of fresh brook water to Cornix and sat next to him and Trupo, watching as the former painstakingly chopped garlic and onion into tiny pieces before frying it in bacon fat over the fire. The aroma was delicious as it was, but Cornix then proceeded to add crushed juniper berries and the meat from a rabbit they had caught just before sundown along with a few splashes of the cool water. Eventually, Cornix handed him a strip of cooked meat. Pavo chewed on the succulent flesh, the juices rich with flavour and warming in his belly. ‘Mithras, Cornix, where in the empire did you learn to cook like that?’

Cornix shrugged, nudging at the remaining frying meat with his dagger. ‘I picked things up here and there. A legionary who can cook tends to enjoy a few extra benefits,’ he said, lifting his wineskin and shaking it – clearly holding more than the usual meagre ration.

Pavo chuckled and supped on his own skin of watered, soured wine, casting occasional glances to Gallus’ tent. Geridus’ rebuttal of Gallus’ pleas had left an icy tension hanging over the cramped spur. Gallus had retired to his tent early, and Pavo could only imagine what levels of anger Geridus’ refusal had stoked in him.

‘He’ll take it out on us, most probably,’ Sura said, sitting down with them and taking a piece of cooked rabbit for himself. He chewed for a moment, eyes sweeping back and forth as if in judgement. ‘A bit more garlic,’ he nodded. ‘Aye, just another pinch. I cooked for the Governor of Adrianople once, you see . . . ’

Trupo and Cornix smirked and just caught the laughs as they saw Pavo roll his eyes.

‘Lauded me all that day, he did. Set me up to cook for others. I’d have been rich . . . if it wasn’t for the dodgy wine someone poured for him later in the evening. They say he was on the latrine for a full two days – half his normal size when he finally came out.’ Sura’s face wrinkled as if to reassure himself. ‘Definitely the wine,’ he affirmed.