Gordon Doherty - The Scourge of Thracia

Gallus eyed a rise ahead. A thin pall of smog hung there and the air was spiced with the scent of woodsmoke. He heard the dull clink of tools, the chatter of voices and the lowing of oxen, then spotted the tip of a damp, golden banner rapping in the breeze. The Great Northern Camp, he realised. Rest, warmth and food for his men. Tonight, when they slept, he could contemplate his own affairs once more. Over the next few days, the training and organisation of these three new cohorts would be a welcome distraction. . until Gratian brought his agents east.

The very thought of having to integrate some seventeen hundred men set his mind aflame with ideas. The new cohorts would have to be evaluated in every aspect: their physical condition, their morale, their experience, their kit. New officers would have to be selected to lead them, for too many of his trusted men had been lost in these last years — Felix in Persia, Avitus at Ad Salices and Brutus to these damned Goths. And the role of the XI Claudia would have to be established with this Saturninus, the magister equitum in charge of the mountain passes and the Great Northern Camp. For a moment, he was lost in planning, then realised his dark thoughts of the Western agents had receded entirely.

He climbed the rise and slowed at the top, the four with him slowing too. For a moment, nobody spoke. Down the gentle hill lay a wide green plain through which the River Tonsus snaked from west to east: a broad river, its torrents swollen with the autumnal rain. Nearest them on its southern banks was a vast arc of muddy ground and a sprawl of tents, people and activity. It was vaster than any army camp he had ever seen. But this was no army camp, this was a jumble of mud-spattered legionary tents, wagons, roaring campfires and grubby, torn standards. Milling and jostling amongst this disorder were masses of people — some in armour, some in robes, many clearly not even military personnel. The scene was more akin to a vicus — the typical hotchpotch of lean-to taverns, trader’s tents and brothel shacks that usually sprung up outside a legionary fortification — than a great military camp. There were maybe fifteen thousand bodies, wandering to and fro like a grazing herd. Worse, there was no visible training taking place, and no sign even of a clear street plan, with tents at odd angles and pitched too close together or way too far apart. All this was set upon a tract of near-quagmire.

‘What the?’ Zosimus said, lifting his helmet off and scratching roughly at his stubbly scalp. ‘This is it? Where’s the perimeter palisade?’

‘Where’s the watch?’ Sura added, frowning and trying to find something other than a single timber watchtower that had been erected on the furthest edge of the camp — right next to the riverbank. Atop this, one man stood, gazing down onto the camp rather than across the river and off to the north where the danger surely lay.

Quadratus, however, did the sentry’s duty for him, looking beyond the camp and the river to the jagged fangs of the Haemus Mountains, still misty blue in the haze of mizzle. ‘I hope the blockades in the passes are slightly better organised than this.’

Gallus felt many urgent questions form in his mind, then multiply and grow before fracturing into jagged shards. His head ached at the mere sight of the mess before him. The mountain passes, just a half-day’s march north of this muddle, would fall indeed if this was any indication of their quality.

At that moment, he noticed Pavo, the only one who had not commented. He had overheard the young optio’s conversations with Sura, and knew that within the muddle of a camp before them, Pavo’s woman, the flame-haired Felicia, waited. He met Pavo’s eye for a moment, and saw the anticipation in there.

I envy you, lad. You’d march into Hades to protect her, wouldn’t you? Had I only been so brave. . when it mattered.

‘Centurion,’ he said to Quadratus.

The big Gaul read the signal, hoisted the XI Claudia standard and chopped it forwards.

The five marched for the camp.

They trudged forward into ever more boggy ground, boots sucking and squelching. They reached the first of the filthy tents without so much as a challenge, a salute or a sideways glance from the people wandering to and fro. Gallus caught a whiff of strong wine. He passed something vaguely resembling an ordered row of legionary tents and felt a pinch of optimism, only to spot the piles of armour and weapons lying at one end of the row: mail, swords and helms in a slovenly heap, wallowing in mud and soaked with rain. He cast a look back at the four with him, and realised their blanched and angered expressions were a good gauge of his own. On and on they walked, past horses wandering untethered, hideously drunk men urinating on the mud-track or lying unconscious and bare-breasted women coming in and out of soldiers’ tents. He spotted a trio of chatting men dressed in mail and with spears and shields resting by their sides. Sentries, at last. He called to the nearest one. The man swung round. His face was nearly purple, with a bulbous, pitted nose and rheumy eyes. His thin hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat and rainwater and his unshaven jaw was spattered with mud.

‘Aye, what d’you want?’ the man slurred angrily through blackened teeth.

Gallus’ teeth ground together. ‘Name and rank,’ he said in a low growl.

The man gazed through Gallus for a moment then snorted. ‘Ha!’ he said, waving a dismissive hand and turning back to the other two he had been talking with.

Gallus marched through the bog, slapped a hand on the man’s shoulder and spun him round. ‘You have one more chance before I have you flogged, you. . ’ he stopped and stepped back, his nose wrinkling at that stale stench of wine again. He glanced at the man in incredulity, then to the spear he held. ‘You’re as drunk as an ass — and you’re on sentry duty?’ he said, nodding to the spear.

At this the trio of men looked to one another then burst into laughter.

Quadratus and Zosimus stomped forward to flank Gallus, each half-drawing their spathas. The zing of the steel edge rasping on the scabbard mouth served to underline their tribunus’ flinty tone and quietened the laughter almost instantly. At the same time, Pavo and Sura flanked their comrades, levelling their spears. Now the drunks fell silent.

‘At ease,’ Gallus said under his breath, raising one hand a fraction. Reluctantly, the four lowered and sheathed their weapons. ‘I feel we could quarrel with this type all day if we so desired.’ He cast a sour look around the drunken rabble in every direction. ‘Mithras knows there are enough of them. Come on,’ he waved to his men, ‘we should head for the centre of the camp. We may find some answers there.’

Near the mid-point of the camp, he spotted a jutting frame of timber with a windlass mounted upon it.

‘Artillery work?’ Pavo suggested, squinting and craning to get a better view over the passing clusters of men.

‘Not quite,’ Gallus sighed, seeing that it was in fact a screw press, surrounded by countless barrels of grapes and amphorae of wine — doubtless the source of the vile, cheap stench in the air.

He heard the tink-tink of hammers once again, much louder and closer this time, and felt the wave of heat that could only come from a nearby smith’s furnace. ‘At last,’ he growled to his four. ‘Someone both sober and with a purpose.’ But when they reached the smith’s workshop — a small area covered with a sheltering timber roof — there were no new or mended weapons or armour to be seen. Instead, the fleshy smith was working on a curved sheet of bronze, tap-tapping away at it on the round end of his anvil. Gallus frowned, seeing the ripples in the bronze taking the shape of a torso, then noticing a broken stone cast a few feet away.