Gordon Doherty - The Scourge of Thracia

‘They’re finished, surely,’ Quadratus insisted, pointing down into the pass where the Goths’ broken and burnt ladders lay near the band of lilia pits. ‘They’re not coming over this wall now.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Pavo countered.

‘Perhaps they’re simply fashioning new ladders?’ Sura mused.

‘No,’ Zosimus said with distrusting eyes, ‘they’re up to something. They want us to wait here, watching the east, freezing, guessing.’

‘It is safest to adopt a position of distrust,’ Geridus agreed. ‘We should stay vigilant.’

Pavo noticed the timber walkway shudder ever so slightly. He frowned, seeing that not a man on the parapet had moved. He was about to dismiss it when he saw a build-up of snow slip from one of the sharpened palisade tips. But there was certainly no thaw underway. Then he felt the shudder again. Suddenly, he remembered Saturninus’ words on that frantic day when the Great Northern Camp had been overrun: The Shipka Pass has fallen. The Hun horsemen came around the impassable mountains and sliced into our rear! His eyes widened as he turned to look over his shoulder, down behind the timber wall where the Roman spears and quivers were stocked. His eyes traced further up the pass and locked onto a swirling current of snow.

‘Turn!’ he cried.

The others with him started at the cry. Pavo heard only their babbling replies as he saw the dark horsemen emerge from the snow and race for the rear of the Roman wall. Nearly one hundred Huns bore feral snarls on their faces and whirled looped ropes like slings above their heads.

Geridus swung round and gasped at the sight of them. ‘What the — how. . no cavalry can ride around this pass! It cannot be!’

‘These are no ordinary horsemen, sir,’ Pavo cried. ‘They can ride rugged hill trails like no othe-’

His words were cut off as the lassos licked out, leaping up to the wall, wrenching unsuspecting legionaries down by the neck. Panic erupted as many of them thought thousands were bearing down on their rear.

‘Slingers!’ Pavo bellowed to Herenus and his men. Only now they saw what was happening, and loaded their slings with fumbling hands. ‘Sagittarii!’ he echoed to the archers.

But the Huns were at work. Now they looped their ropes around the buttressing beams and up and over the sharpened picket tips. Like a colony of ants at work, they wheeled away, using the strength of their ponies to set the timbers to groaning, bending, then, with a sickening shredding noise, the stockade shifted violently under Pavo’s feet. A heartbeat later, the whole thing moaned, then sagged back, the picket-stakes that were hauled back dragging others with them. Legionaries half-climbed, half-fell down the ladders. Many were thrown down by the violent lurches of the structure. Pavo slid and scrabbled as those with him slipped away. Suddenly, he was falling. A moment later and with an almighty crash, he found himself buried in snow. For a nightmarish moment, he could not dig himself free, but when he did, he saw the nightmare was truly upon him: the wall had fallen. It lay broken, men scattered behind it, while the Huns raced back off into the grey at the western end of the valley — though many of those hardy steppe riders lay writhing in the snow, peppered with belated Roman arrows and slingshot.

‘Up, up! ’ Zosimus screamed, helping legionaries from where they had fallen, haranguing those not rising fast enough.

Pavo helped Cornix to his feet then swung to the rumbling from the eastern end of the valley. Beyond the ruin of the wall, the lilia pits and the blackened wagons, the grey, ethereal mass of Farnobius’ horde had returned. It was darkening, coming forward. Racing forward.

‘Retreat to the fort!’ Geridus cried, wincing as he hobbled on his weary legs, one ankle seemingly injured.

Slowly at first, then quickened by the sight of the onrushing horde, the legionaries rushed to the scree path, the sagittarii hurrying down from the southern shoulder of the pass to join them. Pavo was near the back of the crowd. He glanced over his shoulder as he readied to step onto the scree path. Farnobius’ Goths came at a charge, leaping over the lilia pits, scrambling over the collapsed wall. And the giant reiks came too now, waving his Taifali cavalry with him at a gallop. He glanced up at the steep and difficult path up to the fort plateau, then back to the horde, ever closer.

‘We don’t have time,’ he cried.

‘What?’ Sura gasped, turning with him to see the reality. Now the Goths were swinging round to face the northern valley side, forming a narrow front and readying to drive up the scree path in pursuit.

‘Go, go! ’ Zosimus urged the legionaries further up the path, then leapt back down beside the pair. A moment later, Quadratus was with them too. ‘Not one of these whoresons gets through us, aye?’ the big Gaul said.

‘Aye,’ they growled in reply. A handful of legionaries followed suit and added to this line — enough to blockade the narrow uphill path and add a thin second rank. Squashing together and forming a shield wall, they backed up the path slowly, feet crunching in the gritty snow, presenting their spears downwards to the foremost Goths — Screaming tribesmen with bloodshot eyes and the wet redness at the back of their throats glinting.

‘Brace!’ Pavo yelled.

The Gothic charge seemed heedless of the slight high ground the Romans enjoyed and slammed into the narrow front. The battering of colliding shields rang out along with the wild song of sparring iron. Pavo felt the breath leap from his lungs as a great weight surged onto his shield — a stocky Goth had clambered up and over it. Pavo thrust his spear up, tearing the foe’s belly and enduring a shower of guts as a reward, then lifted his shield arm just in time to block two well-aimed spear thrusts. What followed was a blur of thrusting spears and Gothic longswords clanging against Legionary spathas and helms as they defended like lions, stepping back up the scree path. Pavo’s limbs grew numb and his breath came in rasps as he parried a Gothic blade then lanced another opponent through the ribs. He lost sight of their progress up the path, knowing only that to blink or look over his shoulder would be fatal. All he heard from the plateau behind and above was some odd grinding noise — like metal and wood working together. In the corner of his eye, he saw only comrades falling — the men in the second rank rushing to take their place. Then came a moment when he sensed the strength leave him. His next parry was weak, and the Gothic blade battered from his helm and another scored across the bridge of his nose and cheek. He felt Sura and Zosimus by his side stagger and stumble too. Moments later, he felt the ground even out underfoot and realised they had stumbled up and onto the fort plateau. They were just paces from the fort gates and respite, but without the narrowness of the path to protect their flanks, their narrow front buckled and Goths swarmed to envelop them. Pavo saw Farnobius riding up the path, face alight with glee, axe raised. He heard that odd metallic-wooden clunking noise once more — this time growing into a titanic groan, as if rushing for him — then a cry sounded from behind them.

‘ Down! ’ a burring voice cried.

He swung to the shout, then saw a colossal shape rushing for him: like a great eagle’s claws — open and razor-sharp, every steely talon as tall as a man. Instinctively, he ducked under this nightmarish apparition, his comrades doing likewise. But the Goths all around them, blinded in their quest for blood, were not so swift. With a swoosh that split the blizzard, the talons ripped through the nearest of them. Blood showered Pavo as his mind raced to understand what was happening while more Goths staggered back in fear of the awful talons. Every hair on Pavo’s neck stood rigid as he looked up from where he was crouched and saw a vast horizontal timber beam, swinging out from the fort’s southern gate tower. From it dangled thick ropes and on the end of these, the vicious claws. Up on the gate tower he saw the outline of Geridus, framed by a streak of lightning and hurling curses into the storm as he and a handful of his men operated this merciless device, swinging the claw arm to and fro over the scattering Goths. Then, when the claw was hovering over a tight pack of Goths, the ropes slackened. The claw plunged down upon them and at once, like a tendon, the ropes snapped taut, lashing the four talons together.