Legionary: Viper of the North (43 page)

When Sura stormed after him, Pavo grasped his friend back. ‘Leave him! Get to the ballista!’

Sura spun away from the fleeing Goth, panting in fury, then grappled the right winch as Pavo gripped the left. Gallus and his men at the far end of the bridge had been thinned to a mere handful now. The pair groaned as they pulled at the wheels, veins bulging in their arms, Pavo’s wounded bicep slick with blood. At last, each winch clicked – the bowstrings were fully retracted. ‘That’s it, it’s ready!’

Sura stood back from the device, eyes glinting in bloodlust. He cupped his hands to his mouth and roared across the river. ‘XI Claudia!’

Gallus spun round after slashing one Gothic horseman from belly to neck. The tribunus’ eyes snapped onto the pair behind the bolt-thrower. He relayed the order again and again, until the straggle of legionaries that remained realised what was happening, and barged away from the bridgehead to slide down the riverbank.

The Goths were momentarily bemused by this, some laughing, some throwing gleeful curses, watching as the Romans seemingly fled for the waters. Then their leader looked up to the northern bridgehead, his mouth agape, eyes bulging.

Pavo dipped his brow, his gaze trained on the leader with a steely conviction.

‘Loose!’

The giant device bucked as the ropes unleashed their tension, hurling the four colossal bolts directly across the bridge. The riders had not even a heartbeat to react, before their bodies were ripped asunder like wet rags, man after man skewered on the same bolt. Limbs spun free of torsos, heads disintegrated, mounts were smashed like insects, and the air was blotted with puffs of crimson. Then all was still.

The riders who had been moments from exterminating the Roman retreat now numbered only a handful, the rest gone from the world or moaning, their bones shattered or their mounts pinning them to the earth.

Pavo felt no joy, no glory at the sight, only disgust. Yet they had to die for their deeds. Then, he wasted no time in sealing the victory. ‘Load the next set of bolts!’ He roared.

At this, the Gothic survivors looked to one another, eyes wide. Then they heeled their mounts into a turn and a gallop, back to Marcianople.

He slumped against the ballista, panting, limbs shaking, wounds burning. Then he looked up to share a weary glance with Sura, the pair’s relief going unsaid.

Then, a drumming of boots on the bridge sounded as the surviving legionaries came hobbling across, Gallus at their head. But only eight men came with him. The core of the legion still lived; Felix, Zosimus, Quadratus, and Avitus were followed by Crito and Noster.

‘Pavo! What are you waiting for? Get the next set of bolts loaded up!’

Pavo looked up to see Gallus frowning at him. He shrugged to his tribunus. ‘There are no more bolts, sir, I just said that to scare them.’

Gallus slowed, as if searching for a rebuke. Instead, his face settled into the usual ice cold expression. ‘Good thinking, soldier,’ he nodded briskly.

Pavo would normally have felt his heart swell at this; drawing a tepid acknowledgement from Gallus was a rare feat – like a bear hug from any other. But he could only think of Salvian, lying back on the ridge, tangled somewhere in that bloody mire of dead.

His gaze was drawn back to the southern horizon and the ridge that lay beyond it; framed by the smoke plumes from the city, a dark cloud of carrion birds circled in the sky over there, waiting to swoop and pick the flesh from the Roman dead on the ridge. Sorrow stung behind his eyes. Then he noticed something move on the sides of the plain.

He tensed, grappling his sword hilt.

‘Relax,’ Quadratus grunted, clasping a hand to his shoulder. ‘They’re ours!’

The ballista crews that Gallus had planted in the treeline stumbled up the track towards the bridge. Some thirty men, all having cast off their heavy armour and weapons. All around him, the weary legionaries cried out hoarsely, urging the artillerymen on.

But Pavo’s brow dipped as he sighted the lead artilleryman’s face; wrinkled in terror.

‘Something’s coming for them!’ He cried, and the rest of the legionaries spun to look.

At that instant, a fresh wing of fifty Gothic riders thundered into view from the treeline, in pursuit of the artillerymen. Pavo instinctively looked to Gallus for an order, his gut shrinking as he realised what that order had to be.

‘Take the bridge down!’ Gallus barked, his voice grave.

Crito was the first to gasp a reply. ‘But, sir, the artillerymen?’

Gallus shot Crito a look that would surely have scorched the veteran’s soul, but before the tribunus could add words to the glare, a trilling battle cry sounded from behind them. The legionaries spun to see the big Goth who had fled the giant ballista, bursting from the nearby trees, leading another seven spearmen.

Gallus’ head twisted to the threats haring in from the north and the south, then he barked; ‘Zosimus, Quadratus, Felix, Avitus, with me, we’ll take on those spearmen.’ Then he glanced around the four remaining legionaries. ‘The rest of you – take that bridge down!’

As Gallus rushed forward to intercept the spearmen, Sura, Crito and the young recruit, Noster gawped after him. Then Noster and Sura gulped and pulled their axes from their belts. They cast hesitant glances at the bridge, then at the fleeing ballista crew and then the Gothic cavalry less than a quarter mile behind.

Crito cast a foul glare upon them. ‘Drop your axes!’ The veteran snarled. ‘We’re not condemning our own men to death!’

Pavo wanted to agree with the veteran’s words wholeheartedly. But the cold reality was that if they left the bridge standing, the Gothic riders would race across the river and slay the artillerymen and the rest of the legionaries on the northern banks anyway.

‘You heard the tribunus’ orders!’ Pavo barked in reply. ‘Do you want to live, or die?’

Noster lifted his axe again, but hesitated, eyes wide with indecision. Pavo growled, then strode over to the bridge, hefting his own axe as he slid down the banking to the supporting pillars. He hacked at the nearest one, then again and again. The bridge shuddered and sagged at one side. Sura was already skidding down the opposite side of the bridge to chop at the other pillar. He looked up at Noster and Crito. ‘Come on!’ He roared.

At this, Noster slithered down the banking to chop at the remaining pillar. The three hacked furiously, blocking out the wails of confusion from the artillerymen, now only a few hundred strides from the bridge.

The bridge juddered and sunk in the middle. Timbers toppled into the water. Then Pavo swung his axe back for a blow that would surely smash through the last of the supporting pillars on this side. But a hand grabbed his wrist.

‘You’ve gone too far this time, you spineless bastard!’ Crito spat, inches from his ear. ‘You’re too keen to see your comrades die, just to save your own neck.’ His face was a shade of crimson from the gore of the fight and pure, boiling rage. ‘I could have saved my wife and my daughter if it wasn’t for
you
!’

The words bit at Pavo’s chest, and he affixed Crito with a firm stare. ‘I lost my family, years ago. The few who have ever come close to replacing them have been slain too.’ For a heartbeat, Salvian’s face appeared in his mind’s eye. ‘And as for the ballista crew? I’ve never met them, but they are like brothers to me!’

The pair glared at one another, then they were shaken back to the present by a cry from Noster. ‘The pillar on the far side needs to be hewn!’

Pavo glanced across; the bridge would not fall away without that last pillar being smashed. He thought of all that was lost to him, and all he would give to have it back. With that, he leapt up, hauled himself onto the sagging bridge, then rushed across the timbers.

‘Pavo?’ Sura yelled after him.

Pavo skidded down onto one knee and smashed his axe at the main pillar supporting the southern bridgehead. Once, twice, and again, each time seeing the fleeting images of Tarquitius’ haughty expression, of Father stood on the dunes, of Salvian, lost in the tangled carpet of dead. Then, with a groan and a crack, the pillar was gone, and the bridge slid into the waters, disintegrating, pieces being washed downriver by the furious current.

It felt like a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. For there was no doubt now. He was to die.

As the thundering of the Gothic horsemen grew closer and closer behind him, he saw Crito. The veteran gawped at him from across the river, eyes wide in disbelief. Then he gave Pavo an earnest nod. Pavo nodded back, then glanced to Sura and Noster, before grappling his axe in one hand, spatha in the other.

Then he turned to face the riders.

The Gothic cavalry were but strides away, and the artillerymen skidded to a halt, clustering around Pavo and the ruined bridge, wailing. Pavo saw the Goths through a crimson veil, and the blood pounded in his ears, the phalera pressing into his chest. For an instant, he realised he would now never know the truth of his father. Then he gritted his teeth.
Perhaps Father himself can tell me of it when I meet him in Elysium.

With that, he barged forward and let out a roar, lining up to leap for the central Gothic rider. He barely realised that the fleeing artillerymen had rallied behind him and rushed in his wake, daggers drawn, echoing his cry.

Like a handful of gazelles turning on a pack of lions, the battered Romans leapt up at the riders, butting, punching, stabbing, pulling the Goths from their mounts. Pavo shouldered the leader in the gut, knocking the man from his saddle, the pair crunching to the plain. He smashed his sword hilt into his foe’s jaw, then spun the blade and drove it down into the warrior’s chest. As the warrior vomited a thick bloody soup, Pavo stood, ripped his sword free and spun to face his next opponent. At that moment he realised numbly that they had only heartbeats; the small band of brave artillerymen were being butchered around him, despite their bravery. Then he twisted to face the pair of Gothic riders who circled on him, longswords raised to strike. He snarled and raised his spatha, braced for the end.

But a Gothic war horn wailed across the plain. At once, the riders relaxed their sword arms, before calmly sheathing their weapons and heeling their mounts into a canter back across the plain in the direction from which they had come. Pavo’s heart thundered and his limbs trembled with fatigue, but his mind was awash with confusion as he watched their withdrawal.

Then he saw it.

On the plain, a good four hundred paces away, the backdrop of beech forest rippled. A solitary figure was there, just before the treeline, watching them. A rider, saddled on a jet-black stallion, draped in a dark-green cloak, the hood throwing shadow over the face, clutching a war horn in one hand. The hood twisted towards the clutch of bloodied Romans.

Pavo felt the figure’s unseen eyes rake on his skin.

Chapter 17

In the distance, a cock crowed and the deep orange of a new day spilled over the horizon, illuminating the forest and a clearing with a babbling brook at its centre and a handful of bloodied legionaries strewn across its floor in deep slumber. Besides the three sentries, only one other man was awake.

Gallus gazed into the embers of the campfire. His face was black with soot and his peak of hair was tousled and unkempt. He lifted a stick and poked at the ashes, eliciting a weary burst of flame. As the heat grew again, a rich and charred meaty aroma wafted across him from the morsel of cooked rabbit that lay by his foot, uneaten despite the nauseous hunger in his belly. Twisting the stick in his hands over and over again, he glanced around the ragtag band of legionaries who lay deep in exhausted sleep around him.
Too few
, he winced.
Where have you taken my legion, Mithras?