Gordon Doherty - The Scourge of Thracia

‘There’s hardly any of ‘em,’ Dama, his mean-eyed comrade from the mines roared with glee as he saw the line of legionaries atop the stockade. ‘We’re goin’ to gut ‘em, take their heads. . take their purses.’

‘And that’ll just be the start of it,’ Vulso agreed, his voice trilling as they ran. ‘Think of the riches we’ll have when we break this wa-’

Vulso’s voice seemed to be sucked from his lungs as the world under his feet fell away. He barely had time to scream before the sharpened stake in the shallow pit he had fallen into pierced his groin and burst from his ribs. It was as if his blood had turned to fire. Agony blinded him. All around he heard swiftly muted screams, the thick cracking of bone and the wet splash of bodies being torn apart and innards leaping free. He grabbed at the writhing sensation below his torn ribs, and felt what he thought was some kind of serpent speeding past him, until he realised it was a loop of stinking, steaming blue-grey intestine escaping from his belly.

The flashing white before his eyes faded just a fraction, and as blackness closed in, he saw Dama beside him, eyes rolled up into his skull, the spike he had landed upon having pierced his jaw and burst from the top of his head.

He felt a surge of pain like he had never before known and assumed it was death approaching. But it was not. Pinned here, he would suffer for some time.

Pavo gawped at the advancing Gothic line as they plummeted into the band of snow-covered lilia pits, planted just days ago across the width of the Via Militaris. One moment Farnobius’ infantry had been running forward and the next it was as if some vast, unseen butcher’s blade had swept away their legs and hauled them down. Wet punching sounds of perforated flesh, cracking ribs and cartilage, and the animal screams of broken men filled the pass, and a sudden waft of raw guts swept across the legionaries on the wall. The Gothic advance had come to a sudden and gruesome halt. Men behind the front blundered onwards, unaware, only to stumble or trample over their impaled comrades. Pavo took no delight in the awful scenes, but when he looked up and saw Farnobius, still safely mounted further back, his face twisted into a savage grimace. Come forward, you bastard!

‘Now, lad, now!’ Geridus barked, clasping his shoulders and shaking him from his thoughts.

Pavo set down his spear, snatched up the pole with the golden cloth and swished it from side to side overhead. Three sharp buccina blasts accompanied this signal. Gradually, the chaos around the band of lilia pits ebbed as a thunder filled the air. Pavo’s eyes again pinned Farnobius, revelling in the flash of confusion on the giant’s face. The thunder grew raucous and then, suddenly, from the southern valley side on the Gothic flank, twelve horseless and driverless wagons burst from the skeletal, snow-coated ash woods there and hurtled down the steep sides. Then a pack of blazing arrows shot from the woods, thwacking into the wagons and igniting their resin-soaked timbers. At once they erupted into balls of orange fury. Some wagons toppled and careened onwards, slewing wildly towards the valley floor and sending out offshoots of the blazing timbers they were packed with.

‘Back. . back! ’ Farnobius cried, his face uplit in orange as he saw that he was within the jaws of this snare. Pavo leaned from the timber wall, one fist clenched, willing the blazing wagons to crush the cur. But the giant reiks surged clear. Yet the wave of Gothic infantry snared upon and before the band of lilia pits were not so fortunate. The wagons crashed over the stricken, crushing heads and chests and setting light to those nearby. The all-white pass was suddenly a vision of wintry fire, screaming Goths running to and fro, the ladders dropped, shattered or ablaze. The ghostly, riderless wagons finally came to a halt only after the survivors of this first Gothic attack wave took flight, hurrying back up the pass to Farnobius’ side.

Pavo felt the tension ebb and his clenched fist fell limp. His head lolled in failure.

‘It was a fine ruse, lad — an anvil of spikes and a hammer of blazing wagons — one I would have been proud to think of myself,’ Geridus shook him by the shoulders, ‘and we lost only a handful of men. Now get your head up. The day is but young.’

But when Pavo did look up, he noticed the fleeing wave of Goths. Some carried Gothic spears. A few had Gothic features, but the vast majority were darker-skinned. Men of Greece and Macedonia. ‘They’re our men,’ he realised.

‘Brigands, thieves, no doubt,’ Geridus dismissed them with a swipe of his hand. ‘After a pretty coin or two.’

But Pavo saw how the untouched, unused four thousand or so with Farnobius behind the mess of the burning wagons were true warriors. The Germanic Taifali with their tall, powerful mounts and their dark-blue howling wolf shields. The dense pack of Gothic spearmen and the pocket of vicious Huns. ‘We’ve thinned his weakest men and no more.’

‘No, we’ve repelled them,’ Sura interrupted now, ‘look.’

Pavo and all others atop the stockade peered into the driving snow. Just as they had emerged from the snow, now they faded into grey again. Farnobius was waving them back. Away from the pass?

Farnobius’ chest rose and fell as swathes of the beggars he had taken from the mines — taken from the mines, armed and fed — washed past him, clutching wounds, staggering, coming to a halt at the side of his horde. He longed for one of the survivors to dare to flee on past the horde and away from the valley, vowing that he would ride any such down and split their skull.

A frozen waste, aflame and soaked with blood, Vitheric’s weak voice asked, was this the prize you sought when you pressed your hands to my throat and held me under the waters of the Danubius?

He realised his hands were trembling and his head jerked violently.

‘What now, Reiks Farnobius?’ Egil asked, eyeing him gingerly. ‘We could still return to Trimontium. It is unlikely the Romans have taken any measures of control since we left.’

Farnobius’ eyes snapped round on Egil. He wondered if this diffident noble secretly sneered at him behind those steady words. Egil and Humbert had beseeched him to remain in Trimontium over the winter. But they were wrong. Victory had to be taken here today, at any cost. He glowered over the incongruous vision of the pass before him: the heat haze above the black and blazing wagons, the swirling, thick blizzard around it and the brown timber wall beyond that filled the defile and barred the route west. Just a thin band of iron fin-topped helms watched on from that stockade, part hidden behind bright, ruby-red shields.

You have the numbers, but they have the high ground , Vitheric said. So how might a pack of wolves bring down an eagle?

Farnobius’ eyes darted, wondering if any others could hear the dead boy’s voice as clearly as he could. But all around him gazed back at him either blankly or with looks of concern. How might a pack of wolves seek to bring down an eagle? Was the shade of Vitheric toying with him? Farnobius’ chest rose and fell rapidly as panic began to set in. Then it came to him. He looked to Egil and Humbert with a creeping smile.

‘Sometimes, to defeat an eagle, you must shake it from its lofty perch.’

As Egil and Humbert shared a confused glance, Farnobius turned away from them and looked over his horde, seeking out the few who would bring him victory.

Over an hour had passed since the Goths’ retreat back up the pass. The flames of the wagons had now died, leaving a black scar across the snow before the timber stockade. The legionaries remained in position atop the battlements, teeth chattering in the cold, eyes fixed on the ghostly shadows of the storm. Zosimus, Quadratus Geridus, Pavo and Sura had gathered at the middle of the battlements.