Gordon Doherty - The Scourge of Thracia

‘The more he wants it, the more I can get away with,’ she winked. ‘But he is gone for now — off to the Shipka Pass.’

Pavo felt the jealousy crumble away. But she was playing a dangerous game. ‘Felicia, you are putting yourself right on the end of their daggers. You know only too well what they are capable of.’

She seemed to sense a lecture was forthcoming and cupped his groin. ‘And you know only too well what I am capable of,’ she said in that throaty voice, casting her hair back from one shoulder to reveal the smooth skin of her neck, and letting the side of her robe fall to reveal a full, pert breast.

Pavo felt his worries scatter at the sight. At once, her robe was thrown to the floor and Pavo’s loincloth joined it. They fell back on the bed, entwined, tasting each other’s warm flesh. It had been so long for him with only dreams of her. Now he thought of nothing else other than making this moment last. As they thrust into one another voraciously, he forgot all that was going on around him. The Speculatores, the Gothic War, the precarious mountain passes that held Fritigern’s hordes back like a weak dam and the search for Dexion! Instead, he felt only pure, lustful intoxication.

They erupted in a shared cry of delight and fell back, panting. A sweet heady spell of contentment swept over them both and he lay there with her, their hands clasped, his thoughts drifting, spinning. She rested her head on his chest and he heard her sigh weakly. He traced a finger across her skin, soothing her. Moments later, she was asleep. And the effect was catching, it seemed, as Pavo felt his thoughts slip away from him. They tumbled through a nonsensical jumble of the day’s marching chatter, and off into the blackness of the past.

And he was there again. The Augusteum’s foully hot summer air wafting around him. The bite of the shackle on his ankle. The stink of the rich heckling and bartering to own him. The hollow certainty that slavery was to be his lot. Then, behind the sea of sweating faces. . the shadow in the colonnade, watching him, watching and waiting. . but for what?

He woke with a start, the dream-world fading as it was replaced by the ceiling of Felicia’s tent and the damp, musty air of the Great Northern Camp. Felicia moaned and shuffled a little. Pavo tried not to disturb her any further, but his thoughts began to gather again like dark clouds. He swept the most troublesome thought of the shadow man away, knowing well that it would be back to plague him soon enough anyway. His next thought was rather pointedly of the shrew, Lucilla. Should she come back to the tent whilst he lay, genitals on show, she might finally get her wish to harvest his balls with the scalpel. Shaken by the thought, he sat up and tied the towel Felicia had given him around his waist, taking care to make sure his crotch was well and truly covered.

‘What’s wrong?’ she muttered sleepily by his side, stroking his back.

‘Nothing. But I’d best be getting back to the contubernium . Evening curfew can’t be far away and Gallus is not in a mood to be vexed.’ He stood up as he spoke, crouching only to fold the blanket over Felicia’s naked form, stroking her hair. ‘Tomorrow, we have three new cohorts of men to add to the legion. I’ll be a true optio once more.’

‘Still an utter fool, though,’ she muttered mischievously, turning her back on him.

‘Just promise me that you’ll not act on these suspicions of yours until we’ve spoken again and planned what to do?’

‘Yes, Pavo. Goodnight, Pavo.’

He grinned at her pluck, then stood to leave, reaching for the tent flap. But a question sprung to mind and he swung back to her. ‘This tribunus you’ve been flattering. What’s his name?’

She yawned, then sighed. ‘You’re still here?’

‘Felicia?’ Pavo insisted.

‘Dexion,’ she said. ‘His name’s Dexion.’

Pavo’s stomach fell away.

The buccinas sounded around the Great Northern Camp, signalling evening curfew. Gallus wondered if any within this shambles of a camp would heed it at all.

‘Wine, Tribunus?’ Barzimeres asked, patting the jug on the table between them.

Gallus shook his head wordlessly.

‘It’s not the foul stuff they press out there. This is a fine Gallic, tart and warming!’

Gallus glanced past the jug, past the white-robed Barzimeres and around the tall, spacious tent. ‘I have enough problems to make my head ache intolerably, Tribunus, without flooding it with that poison.’

Barzimeres curled his bottom lip, stroked his tuft beard and shrugged. ‘So be it.’ He sat back, groaning and cracking his knuckles, then clasping his hands across his ample gut — no longer well hidden behind a cuirass. ‘So earlier in the day, you seemed to have some issues with the running of my camp?’

Gallus could not contain a snort. ‘You are a military man,’ he said. Of sorts, he added in his mind. ‘Don’t you take issue with what you see out there? Drunks staggering to and fro, women crawling from tent to tent like some open-air brothel, not a whiff of works going on,’ he hesitated, glowering at the new bronze breastplate, now hanging on the altogether more impressive torso of a timber figurine with his bronze-winged helm and the rest of his armour and weapons, ‘at least, not useful works.’

Barzimeres’ eyebrows flicked up at this, as if he had just been insulted by some spiteful youth. He reached forward to tear a strip of meat from the roast hare on the table, tossing it into his mouth. ‘When Saturninus led the latest reinforcements to the Shipka pass, he left me in command. Me .’ His expression darkened, the guttering candlelight struggling to illuminate his sunken eyes as he leaned forward towards Gallus. ‘I find myself in charge of some seven thousand men. A patchwork of legionaries. The broken remains of Ad Salices. Comitatenses in groups of just a few hundred. Limitanei like yourselves in tiny bands of just ten or twenty. Their comrades had died on the field by the willows, and the imperial borders they had known for years lay broken. I formed them into seven groups of a thousand. Now they are legions in their own right, just like the five defending the mountain passes. But my seven legions found their confidence weakened, sitting here like goats in a pen, waiting for the call to march north into the mountains to reinforce whichever pass had suffered the most casualties in the latest Gothic push. They were silent, pensive. . terrified.’ He sat back, his menacing expression fading and his tone lightening. ‘So I let them live here as they would in their homes. Now what you see out there is a group of men who know only pleasure and happiness. They do not dwell on the fate that awaits them at the passes unnecessarily. Leadership is not just about leading men,’ he waved a finger as if training a dog, ‘it is about managing the minds of those men. Their hopes, fears and expectations.’

Barzimeres fell silent. Gallus’ brow bent into a frown as the man tilted his head to one side, eyebrows raised. Then he realised that the bearded officer was waiting on Gallus to click — to understand his precious wisdom, and no doubt to congratulate him on it.

‘They are legionaries as relaxed as I have ever seen, Tribunus,’ he said at last. Barzimeres nodded and gazed into the distance at this, smiling haughtily. ‘Indeed,’ Gallus added swiftly, ‘I had trouble picking out the soldiers from the pig-handlers. Now, what of the palisades?’

Barzimeres’ grin faded and the sour look returned. ‘The rain has been incessant over the mountains for three weeks now. The palisade stakes sunk in the deluge and the ditches and ramparts crumbled. They were a hindrance to our foragers and to our supply carts so we used the palisades for cooking fires and filled in the ditches.’