Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4) (44 page)

Another ladder was swung into place and this time the Goths were wise to the Roman ploy. They sent men up in even greater haste to add weight to the ladder. Pavo, Sura, Trupo, Cornix and four others pushed with all they had. The ladder lifted from the wall and the arms of each Roman trembled, breaths held in their lungs as they sought the final push. Pavo felt his head swim as the Goth swaying there near the topmost rung gawped, hair swooshing in the gale, sure the ladder was about to fall like the others. Then he grinned as more comrades added to the weight of the ladder and the strength of the legionaries began to fade.

‘Back!’ Pavo cried, seeing that the ploy was spent as the ladder thwacked back into place against the battlements. The legionaries took one half-step back from the parapet. ‘Plumbatae!’ he bellowed, hearing Quadratus and Zosimus cry in unison.

The legionaries each unclipped one of their three lead-weighted darts form the rear of their shields, then hoisted them.

‘Loose!’

As one, they took a step forward and hurled the darts over the wall at the upcoming Goths and the masses at the feet of the ladders. The volley was like a swarm of iron raptors. The darts flew true and battered down on Gothic skulls, shields and shoulders. Blood and matter spurted into the whipping blizzard.

‘Again,’ Pavo shouted. Another volley, another precious few moments stolen.

‘Again!’ Zosimus finished, marshalling the third volley.

The last of the plumbatae rained down. Gothic screams danced on the storm. Hundreds of them had fallen. Had this been a battle of even numbers then it would already have been won. Instead, they had merely dented Farnobius’ horde. Indeed, the ladders bent and shuddered with more climbers almost as soon as the final volley was spent.

‘Ready,’ Pavo rallied the recruits as he drew his spatha. ‘Now you grip your spear and you do not let go. If a face appears above the edge of the wall – run it through.’

The recruits within earshot nodded frantically, their faces drained of colour.

Pavo saw that the ghosts of the Great Northern Camp still haunted them. At once, Gallus’ words came to him, and spilled from his lips in a throaty cry; ‘Face the past, face the nightmares. Strike them down!’ he yelled. ‘For the Claudia!’

‘
For the Claudia!
’ the legionaries echoed in a visceral cry of defiance.

An instant later, he was shoulder to shoulder with Sura and Cornix, the blood pounding in his ears, watching the empty ladder top, hearing the breathing of the warrior ascending, smelling the reek of blood on his clothes. A grinning head appeared: rotten teeth framed in an unkempt blonde beard, eyes aflame with bloodlust. Before Pavo could even draw his spatha back to strike, Cornix thrust his spear forward with the roar of a veteran. The tip punched into the Goth’s eyes and lodged in his brain.

‘Ha!’ Cornix roared in victory. Blood spouted from the eye socket and, still locked in a grin, the Goth fell back from the ladder lifelessly, taking Cornix’ spear with him.

Suddenly, the lad’s confidence drained, his spear-hand swiping out at the disappearing weapon. ‘I’m sorry sir, I-’

‘Eyes on the ladder!’ Pavo spat.

The next man to come over the ladder top did so like a gazelle, leaping rather than climbing. He landed on the battlements and sent his longsword sweeping out to clear a space. Pavo ducked under the swipe, which knocked Cornix’ spatha-jab aside, sent Sura tumbling onto his back and sliced open the throat of the next nearest legionary. This heartbeat of disruption allowed two more Goths to climb onto the walls. They formed a bridgehead of sorts, splitting the solid line of legionaries on the battlement, parting Pavo from his century and slashing wildly to allow more comrades still to scale the ladder.

‘Close the line!’ he bawled. But the Goths were not for moving. He saw it was the nimble one – the first one to make it onto the battlements – who was their leader, with the others gathering behind him. This warrior’s hatchet face was fixed on Pavo as he brought his sword sweeping down, cleaving the legionary, Auxentius, through the shoulder. The legionary line was fragmenting. Then Hatchet-face came for Pavo. Pavo threw up his spatha to block then hoisted his shield to catch the man’s next blow, which felt like a bull charging into his shoulder. Splinters flew from his shield and he staggered towards the wall’s edge, his back wrapping over the parapet. Teetering there, he felt Hatchet-face try to grab his ankles and help him over the edge. Pavo booted his foe in the mouth, sending him back in a shower of blood and teeth, but the action sent Pavo sliding over the parapet – in some way fortunate, given that a Gothic sword clashed down on the spot where he had been, sending snow and sparks leaping from the stonework. Not convinced by this spot of luck, Pavo flailed, fingers grasping for something to stop his fall, then clasped onto the parapet edge, body and legs dangling down over the fort wall with thousands of Goths gathered below. Then Hatchet-face appeared over him, leaning out. ‘You might as well let go, Roman,’ he hissed in a jagged Gothic twang. ‘It will be less painful.’ He drew a dagger from his belt and rested it on Pavo’s fingertips. ‘I will make a trinket of your fingers – an offering to Allfather Wodin.’ With that, his grin sharpened and he tensed his shoulders to chop down.

Pavo roared in defiance. A sickening crunch of steel splitting bone filled his head, coppery blood spattered over his face, and he waited on that nauseous, weightless sensation of falling. But there was no such thing. And no pain in his fingers. He looked up, blinking and spluttering through the streamlet of dark lifeblood that gushed from Hatchet-face’s mouth and chest. His eyes fixed on the tip of a spatha blade protruding from the Goth’s breastbone, then he frowned at the look of shock on his lifeless face. The Goth’s body slumped forward, the dead weight crushing Pavo’s fingertips. He roared, feeling the corpse’s body armour pinch what remaining strength he had to hang on.

In the next heartbeat, his grip failed him. The weightlessness ensued. But at the same time, a bloodied hand wrenched Hatchet-face’s corpse back by the hair and hauled it back, then a hulking figure shot out a hand, grasping Pavo’s at the last, before wrenching him back onto the roof.

‘Ach, it is a good thing you are the lean type,’ Geridus groaned, wincing as he staggered back breathlessly from the parapet then shaking Hatchet-face’s blood from his blade.

‘Sir, we have but moments, the walls are almost overru-’ Pavo stopped, seeing the walls were already overrun. Legionaries and Goths fought like wolves all around him and the Gothic numbers would soon tell.

‘Aye, aye,’ he growled, ‘so let us employ our final gambit.’

Pavo frowned, hoisting his shield as a Goth swiped at him then cutting down with his spatha to shatter the man’s arm. ‘What gambit?’

‘To the gatehouse,’ Geridus roared over the beset parapet. ‘
To the gatehouse!
’ he repeated.

Word spread. It was fraught, but first Herenus and his slingers, then the sagittarii, then the legionary centuries who fought a defensive action, backed along the battlements towards the gatehouse. Men fell too rapidly, legionaries spinning away from Gothic swords, faces or necks torn. Pavo heard the echo of the southern gate tower’s enclosed stairwell behind him. Moments later, they were inside. The Goths did not follow, instead pressing on to wash around the battlements, assuming the Romans were in flight and the fort was theirs to ransack. As he and his legionaries sped down the winding, barely lit stairs, he scoured the darkness, confused, sure Geridus had lost his mind. Were they to spill into the innards of the fort then all was lost, for there was nowhere left to defend within. And to spill outside . . . he shuddered at the thought of dying in the midst of Farnobius’ masses out there.

He saw the dim outline of an opened doorway at the foot of the stairwell – a small opening meant for guards to enter or leave by. Here, Geridus waited, shepherding the legionaries out one by one but at haste, whispering to them, directing them.

Pavo froze. ‘You’re leading us out onto the plateau?’

Geridus waved the rest outside, then led Pavo as the last man. They were veiled by the blizzard and the curve of the southern gate tower from the mass of Goths around the fort’s southern wall. The Comes held out a hand, pointing to the dark, descending tunnel that led to the brook on the valley floor. ‘Down into the pass,’ Geridus whispered.

‘And then?’ Pavo replied, his gaze darting to the edge of the Gothic mass, swarming only paces away around the southern wall in eagerness to swamp the newly taken battlements and as yet unseeing of the Roman escape. ‘If we leave this fort then Trajan’s Gate has fallen. We have failed.’

Geridus offered him a dry grin as he heard from up above the victory cries of the many Goths now pouring over the fort’s southern wall. ‘If we leave this fort then it is not before time. For the walls can both stave off an attacking foe . . . or destroy them.’

Pavo saw how he nodded to the juniper grove. Lightning struck across the sky and for the briefest of moments, he saw shapes within the trees: the six sagittarii that the Comes had held back. They read Frigeridus’ signal and began to drop from view, one by one, each of them leaping down into some hole the ground. ‘What the?’ He gasped. Then all that had happened in these last weeks flashed before him, the memories swirling like the blizzard, before one leapt out at him: the ghostly
tink-tink
of tools they had heard at night. At last he realised that all along, it had been coming from underground. Under the fort. ‘Sapping tunnels?’ he whispered. ‘You’re going to bring the walls down?’

‘I let your men patch up the stonework, but only so much,’ Geridus said. ‘The walls depend upon the wooden beams within the sapping tunnels – beams smeared with pig fat. When my men set light to them the timber will buckle . . . and no mortar will keep the walls upright,’ he said, then peered into the grove. Moments later, the six men came scrambling back into view, climbing out of the sapping mine along with thick clouds of stinking smoke. ‘It is done,’ the first said as they burst from the grove and over to Geridus.

‘Then we have little time,
come,
’ Geridus urged Pavo and the six archers onwards with him, down the winding tunnel that led to the pass floor. The howl of the storm and battle fell away as Pavo half-stepped, half-slid down the precarious descent of ancient stairs, only stopping when he came out into the storm again, his boots splashing through the frozen crust and icy waters of the brook in the valley floor. Here, he found the beleaguered survivors of the XI Claudia along with the slingers and archers – a few hundred men all told. Stained with smoke and blood, running nearly doubled over, some supporting one another, panting. They backed away, westwards up the pass, turning frequently and anxiously at the fort up on the spur. The fulcrum of Trajan’s Gate was overrun. The walls were packed with Gothic infantrymen and many of Farnobius’ riders, dismounted and eager for a share of the spoils. All but a band of some five hundred of his Taifali riders had remained at the foot of the scree path, looking up at the spur and the fort no doubt in envy of their comrades who danced on the tower-tops, roaring victory songs into the storm.

A heartbeat later, a chorus of shredding timber sounded and the fort shook visibly and grey dust billowed into the blizzard. The victory cries ebbed. Gothic heads twisted one way and then the other in confusion. A moment later, another chorus of bucking and the crash of crumbling stone. Now the Gothic song fell silent as huge chunks of masonry toppled from the walls. The whooshing of the storm alone filled the pass. Pavo was sure he could discern Reiks Farnobius up there on the edge of the plateau, backing away from the fort walls, sensing something was wrong.

Then, with a roar that defied the storm or any battle cry, the great grey walls rushed for the ground. Sudden screams were short-lived, and in a moment, all that remained of the fortress was a heap of rubble and a churning dark cloud of dust.

Pavo gazed at the black, swirling stain in the storm, transfixed.

‘Mithras,’ Sura whispered, falling back into the snow. ‘We have stopped them?’

The possibility almost burrowed into Pavo’s heart, almost sowed a seed of hope. Almost. Then his eyes widened as the remaining black veil of dust was whipped away by the blizzard. ‘It’s not over,’ he said with a hoarse whisper.

‘Eh?’ Zosimus grunted, squinting, his face etched with bemusement at what he had just witnessed.

‘It’s not over,’ Pavo repeated, his eyes locked on the trickle of horsemen fleeing down the scree path, coming to the pack of five hundred Taifali and Greuthingi riders there. ‘They’ve seen us.
He’s
seen us!’

Pavo heard the wails that broke out as he set eyes upon the form of Farnobius, coated in grey dust at the head of some five hundred riders as they wheeled away from the scree path and on at a gallop towards the XI Claudia. The giant reiks issued some animal battle cry and held his axe aloft, strong as ever.

‘Together! One more time!’ Pavo roared, he and Sura waving quivering legionaries up to stand with him.

‘Together!’ Zosimus and Quadratus echoed.

They stumbled back from the Gothic charge, forming a rudimentary line. Yet their number was nowhere near enough to block this wider section of the pass. With their flanks exposed, Pavo realised, they would not be winning this battle.
But I’ll take that dog down with me,
he vowed, seeing that Farnobius was coming for him – the reiks remembering him from the raid on the Gothic camp and the battle on the banks of the Tonsus. He saw the wild-eyes and clouding breath of Farnobius’ stallion, the gleaming edge of the reiks’ hoisted axe and the foul, blood-streaked grin on the cur’s face.