Gordon Doherty - The Scourge of Thracia

Quadratus returned just then, pushed fresh cups into each of their hands and grinned the driest of grins, revealing a flinty sobriety for just an instant. ‘He expects us to survive. It’s what we’re good at.’

Sitting a little taller at this, and without another word, they clacked their cups together and drank.

Pavo felt the darkness of deep sleep drain away. Suddenly, he sensed an ethereal scene take form around him. Strange, yet familiar at the same time. He was on a raft at sea. No, not a raft, nor a sea — it was a wooden platform, raised above an ocean of faces, waving their arms, calling out, eyeing him like a mangy dog. He felt something heavy on his ankle, and looked down to see a manacle. A heavy, iron manacle. And his legs were different — those of a young boy. A foul terror rose in his belly as he realised where he was.

No! he mouthed silently, recognising the tall, marbled sides of the Augusteum square, seeing the other slaves standing beside him, chained likewise, heads bowed, spirits broken.

Just then, he saw a grinning, corpulent face, wading through the crowd towards the platform.

‘Forty Solidi!’ Senator Tarquitius cried.

No! You’re dead, this isn’t real! He mouthed without a sound. But every instant that passed seemed to vitalise this strange, strange place. He could feel the sun blistering his bare skin, the stinging of the blisters on his feet, smell the gold-toothed slave master’s foul breath.

‘Sold!’ The slave master cried. A thick clunk of iron and the shackle was off.

Pavo felt unseen rough hands seize him from behind and push him towards Tarquitius.

No! he screamed, his voice still absent as Tarquitius’ face widened in a smug smile of victory, arms outstretched, ready to ensnare him.

As he struggled and thrashed, he noticed something. Beyond Tarquitius’ sweating, bald face and behind the rest of the yelping crowd: the crone. The milky-eyed, withered old woman who had intervened that day. She stared at him with her sightless eyes. Her face was grave and she stood with one arm extended, a bony finger pointing to the north edge of the Augusteum. As he was passed through a sea of hands, he struggled to snatch a glance at the colonnade there. Then he saw it — a figure! Little more than a shadow, half-hidden behind one column. He could see no eyes, but this one was watching him. Watching him pass into slavery.

Then, through the blackness of the shadow, the eyes glinted like jewels.

Pavo reached out, just as Tarquitius’ arms closed around him.

‘Who are you?’ he called out, his voice coming back at last.

But the shadow-man slipped behind the column.

‘Who are you?’ he yelled as he woke. He realised he was panting, sweating, sitting upright, both hands outstretched, his mouth dry and foul from the wine and his head giddy. He heard his last words echoing around the barrack block, followed by a grumble of discontent from Zosimus’ bunk, nearby.

‘Shut up, Pavo,’ the Thracian said through taut lips and gritted teeth without opening his eyes.

He noticed the shafts of pale light shining in through the shutters and guessed it was dawn. In the bunk below, Sura was fast asleep. From the bunk block next door, he heard Quadratus’ rhythmic snoring. He lay back, aware that he only had a few more hours to sleep before Gallus would have them up and preparing for the briefing from Traianus. He closed his eyes, but saw only the shadow-man behind his eyelids. Each time it seemed to jump out for him, as if to escape his nightmare. Worse, the neat wine from last night had left a vile nausea in his belly and rendered his head like a war drum. Thump, thump, thump.

When a furious volley of farting sounded from Quadratus’ room, he finally gave up on the notion of more sleep, slid from the bunk, pulled on his tunic and crept outside. He noticed Gallus’ room was empty too, his bedding awry. He soaked his face and scalp with water from the trough in the barrack parade square, then gulped a few mouthfuls to slake his acute thirst and wash away the taste of stale wine. Flashes of the tail-end of last night’s revelry came to him then: Zosimus drawing a dagger on a cat that had clawed at his ankles as they staggered from the tavern, then the sight of a short, hiccupping, trouserless man on the street outside with glazed eyes and some slurred story about his missing breeches. He palmed at his eyes then plunged his head into the water to be rid of the ludicrous scenes. He rose and swept the water from his scalp and face, then started as a messenger scuttled past him and on out of the barracks. He traced the man’s path to see he had come from the barrack walls. A figure remained up there, perched there like a crow.

‘I can see the purse was well-spent?’ Gallus said glibly.

‘Sir, it was,’ Pavo saluted, hoping he wasn’t swaying on his feet. Had the tribunus been there all night? ‘But we will be well readied for Traianus’ briefing this afternoon.’

‘Excellent,’ he said, then patted the scroll the messenger had just given him against one palm. ‘However, I’ve just been informed that the magister militum has brought the meeting forward. We are to be at his quarters within the hour.’

Pavo suddenly felt more than a little queasy.

The five stood before the wide table in Traianus’ planning room, gazing at the yellowed map of the empire pinned out before them. Pavo shuffled uneasily in the stifling morning heat, rivulets of sweat streaking down his back under his woollen tunic. It was so hot that it felt as if a hypocaust was ablaze under the tiled floor. His stomach churned from the foul wine and his mouth was parchment-dry. He eyed the goblets of cool water laid out on the table for each of them, but knew it would be against decorum to gulp from it while the magister militum spoke. Worse, the sight of the closed shutters gave the otherwise austerely decorated office the feel of a desert tomb. A swift glance along the line told him he was not alone. Sura’s eyes were glassy and bloodshot, while Quadratus and Zosimus had a grey tinge to their skin. Gallus, however, was alert, standing tall, eyes sharply following Traianus’ sweeping hands across the map as the magister militum briefed them. He showed no signs of his lack of sleep other than a slight shading under his eyes. Pavo searched the tribunus’ keen gaze for some hint of the trouble going on within, but found nothing.

‘The cane!’ an urgent voice surfaced from his medley of thoughts.

Pavo looked up groggily to see Traianus’ eyes fixed on him. The magister militum’s nut-brown skin told of a life spent under the eastern sun and his white hair placed him at maybe fifty years old. But it was his scowl and pursed lips under his hooked nose that seemed to scourge Pavo with an invisible whip. ‘Will you hand me the bloody cane!’ Traianus repeated.

Pavo started, then snatched up the cane with the bronze hand on the end, offering it to Traianus sheepishly and feeling a burning look of rebuke from Gallus on his skin.

‘So the Goths are pinned down in Moesia,’ he tapped the bronze hand on the stretch of land along the River Danubius’ southern banks where a handful of small, carved wooden horsemen were clustered, then swept the hand across the vast, curved area below this that ran west to east depicting jagged peaks, ‘but only because we can employ the great bulwark that is the Haemus Mountains.’ Traianus used the bronze hand to push five carved wooden legionaries out across the mountains, positioning five of them at roughly equal steps along the range. ‘There are five points where Fritigern and his horde might be able to bring their armies, wagons and people across those peaks, and five legions — one thousand men in each — have been deployed to resist any such effort. Thus, these five passes are vital.’ He tapped the hand along each one, west to east. ‘The Oescus Valley, the Trojan Pass, the Shipka Pass, the Kotel Pass and the Sidera Pass.’