Gordon Doherty - The Scourge of Thracia

‘Loose!’

As one, they took a step forward and hurled the darts over the wall at the upcoming Goths and the masses at the feet of the ladders. The volley was like a swarm of iron raptors. The darts flew true and battered down on Gothic skulls, shields and shoulders. Blood and matter spurted into the whipping blizzard.

‘Again,’ Pavo shouted. Another volley, another precious few moments stolen.

‘Again!’ Zosimus finished, marshalling the third volley.

The last of the plumbatae rained down. Gothic screams danced on the storm. Hundreds of them had fallen. Had this been a battle of even numbers then it would already have been won. Instead, they had merely dented Farnobius’ horde. Indeed, the ladders bent and shuddered with more climbers almost as soon as the final volley was spent.

‘Ready,’ Pavo rallied the recruits as he drew his spatha. ‘Now you grip your spear and you do not let go. If a face appears above the edge of the wall — run it through.’

The recruits within earshot nodded frantically, their faces drained of colour.

Pavo saw that the ghosts of the Great Northern Camp still haunted them. At once, Gallus’ words came to him, and spilled from his lips in a throaty cry; ‘Face the past, face the nightmares. Strike them down!’ he yelled. ‘For the Claudia!’

‘ For the Claudia! ’ the legionaries echoed in a visceral cry of defiance.

An instant later, he was shoulder to shoulder with Sura and Cornix, the blood pounding in his ears, watching the empty ladder top, hearing the breathing of the warrior ascending, smelling the reek of blood on his clothes. A grinning head appeared: rotten teeth framed in an unkempt blonde beard, eyes aflame with bloodlust. Before Pavo could even draw his spatha back to strike, Cornix thrust his spear forward with the roar of a veteran. The tip punched into the Goth’s eyes and lodged in his brain.

‘Ha!’ Cornix roared in victory. Blood spouted from the eye socket and, still locked in a grin, the Goth fell back from the ladder lifelessly, taking Cornix’ spear with him.

Suddenly, the lad’s confidence drained, his spear-hand swiping out at the disappearing weapon. ‘I’m sorry sir, I-’

‘Eyes on the ladder!’ Pavo spat.

The next man to come over the ladder top did so like a gazelle, leaping rather than climbing. He landed on the battlements and sent his longsword sweeping out to clear a space. Pavo ducked under the swipe, which knocked Cornix’ spatha-jab aside, sent Sura tumbling onto his back and sliced open the throat of the next nearest legionary. This heartbeat of disruption allowed two more Goths to climb onto the walls. They formed a bridgehead of sorts, splitting the solid line of legionaries on the battlement, parting Pavo from his century and slashing wildly to allow more comrades still to scale the ladder.

‘Close the line!’ he bawled. But the Goths were not for moving. He saw it was the nimble one — the first one to make it onto the battlements — who was their leader, with the others gathering behind him. This warrior’s hatchet face was fixed on Pavo as he brought his sword sweeping down, cleaving the legionary, Auxentius, through the shoulder. The legionary line was fragmenting. Then Hatchet-face came for Pavo. Pavo threw up his spatha to block then hoisted his shield to catch the man’s next blow, which felt like a bull charging into his shoulder. Splinters flew from his shield and he staggered towards the wall’s edge, his back wrapping over the parapet. Teetering there, he felt Hatchet-face try to grab his ankles and help him over the edge. Pavo booted his foe in the mouth, sending him back in a shower of blood and teeth, but the action sent Pavo sliding over the parapet — in some way fortunate, given that a Gothic sword clashed down on the spot where he had been, sending snow and sparks leaping from the stonework. Not convinced by this spot of luck, Pavo flailed, fingers grasping for something to stop his fall, then clasped onto the parapet edge, body and legs dangling down over the fort wall with thousands of Goths gathered below. Then Hatchet-face appeared over him, leaning out. ‘You might as well let go, Roman,’ he hissed in a jagged Gothic twang. ‘It will be less painful.’ He drew a dagger from his belt and rested it on Pavo’s fingertips. ‘I will make a trinket of your fingers — an offering to Allfather Wodin.’ With that, his grin sharpened and he tensed his shoulders to chop down.

Pavo roared in defiance. A sickening crunch of steel splitting bone filled his head, coppery blood spattered over his face, and he waited on that nauseous, weightless sensation of falling. But there was no such thing. And no pain in his fingers. He looked up, blinking and spluttering through the streamlet of dark lifeblood that gushed from Hatchet-face’s mouth and chest. His eyes fixed on the tip of a spatha blade protruding from the Goth’s breastbone, then he frowned at the look of shock on his lifeless face. The Goth’s body slumped forward, the dead weight crushing Pavo’s fingertips. He roared, feeling the corpse’s body armour pinch what remaining strength he had to hang on.

In the next heartbeat, his grip failed him. The weightlessness ensued. But at the same time, a bloodied hand wrenched Hatchet-face’s corpse back by the hair and hauled it back, then a hulking figure shot out a hand, grasping Pavo’s at the last, before wrenching him back onto the roof.

‘Ach, it is a good thing you are the lean type,’ Geridus groaned, wincing as he staggered back breathlessly from the parapet then shaking Hatchet-face’s blood from his blade.

‘Sir, we have but moments, the walls are almost overru-’ Pavo stopped, seeing the walls were already overrun. Legionaries and Goths fought like wolves all around him and the Gothic numbers would soon tell.

‘Aye, aye,’ he growled, ‘so let us employ our final gambit.’

Pavo frowned, hoisting his shield as a Goth swiped at him then cutting down with his spatha to shatter the man’s arm. ‘What gambit?’

‘To the gatehouse,’ Geridus roared over the beset parapet. ‘ To the gatehouse! ’ he repeated.

Word spread. It was fraught, but first Herenus and his slingers, then the sagittarii, then the legionary centuries who fought a defensive action, backed along the battlements towards the gatehouse. Men fell too rapidly, legionaries spinning away from Gothic swords, faces or necks torn. Pavo heard the echo of the southern gate tower’s enclosed stairwell behind him. Moments later, they were inside. The Goths did not follow, instead pressing on to wash around the battlements, assuming the Romans were in flight and the fort was theirs to ransack. As he and his legionaries sped down the winding, barely lit stairs, he scoured the darkness, confused, sure Geridus had lost his mind. Were they to spill into the innards of the fort then all was lost, for there was nowhere left to defend within. And to spill outside. . he shuddered at the thought of dying in the midst of Farnobius’ masses out there.

He saw the dim outline of an opened doorway at the foot of the stairwell — a small opening meant for guards to enter or leave by. Here, Geridus waited, shepherding the legionaries out one by one but at haste, whispering to them, directing them.

Pavo froze. ‘You’re leading us out onto the plateau?’

Geridus waved the rest outside, then led Pavo as the last man. They were veiled by the blizzard and the curve of the southern gate tower from the mass of Goths around the fort’s southern wall. The Comes held out a hand, pointing to the dark, descending tunnel that led to the brook on the valley floor. ‘Down into the pass,’ Geridus whispered.

‘And then?’ Pavo replied, his gaze darting to the edge of the Gothic mass, swarming only paces away around the southern wall in eagerness to swamp the newly taken battlements and as yet unseeing of the Roman escape. ‘If we leave this fort then Trajan’s Gate has fallen. We have failed.’