Gordon Doherty - Legionary

The blackness offered nothing as he bounced from pillar to pillar, while the rapping footfall of the old man seemed to be always only a dagger swipe behind. Pavo tossed the purse to one side, the contents clunking down and spraying across the cellar floor. At last, the old man’s footsteps slowed at the distraction. Pavo would die for the loss of the purse. Nevertheless, it was that or dying on a dagger tip here and now.

He scrambled on until a chink of light beckoned him in one particular direction, a candlelit corridor. Running onward, he barely noticed the treasure vault as he sped past it, on through an array of storerooms, then up a flight of stairs before bursting through a rusted door and out into the stark daylight of the palace grounds. He skidded and fell onto a bed of gravel, blinking.

Birds sang over the steady hum of the crowd outside, and the bored guards stood by the gates and doors, ignorant of Pavo’s nightmarish encounter. As his breath stilled, disbelief swirled inside him. Had that all really happened? Surely he had to go back for the purse — otherwise, execution was a certainty. The crisp normality of the late winter morning persuaded him, and he stood to go back to the cellar door. But the door burst open at that very moment, and the snow-white haired and white robed old man stood, panting, face creased in fury, with a golden Christian Chi-Rho cross dangling around his neck. He extended a bony finger at Pavo.

‘Stop the thief!’ The man roared.

At once, the guards were jolted to life, haring in on Pavo, spathas sliding from their scabbards. For barely the blink of an eye, Pavo considered reasoning with them, then turned on his heel and sprinted for the main gate. From that direction, two guards came at him and they jostled as he tried to barge past. Then one of them chopped their spatha down, slitting a fine red line on Pavo’s shoulder. He leapt back and spun; swords came at him from every direction — apart from the palace door. He thundered across the courtyard and in through the cavernous corridor. He burst into the secretary’s office, hurdled the table, leaving a screaming secretary and a blizzard of scrolls and papers tumbling through the air in his wake, before launching himself up the staircase.

It was narrow and spiralling, and his limbs leadened as quickly as his breath grew fiery. However, the clatter of urban guards right behind him spurred him on until he stuttered to a halt as the staircase ended on a rooftop balcony. A red-tiled roof sloped up behind him and a three-story drop onto flagstones yawned in front of him.

‘You’re dead, thief!’ One guard cried as he rounded the last spiral of stairs.

Encouraged by that and similar comments, Pavo hurdled over the balcony edge and slapped prone onto the roof, only to feel the tiles slip under him. He clawed at the tiles above as his legs began to slide from the edge, kicking into thin air. A swarm of guards buzzed on the courtyard below, sensing a reward for catching the intruder.

The crack of a breaking tile pulled his eyes back towards the balcony. One guard had ventured carefully across the tiles and stood over him, grinning like a shark, and holding out a hand. ‘You’ve got two choices, thief. You take my hand and I’ll give you a quick death. Or, you can let go,’ he flicked his eyebrows up and nodded down to the courtyard.

Pavo gritted his teeth and let go.

He thrust an arm out at the wall in a dead man's desperation. Swathes of ice-smooth marble mocked him as it glided past. He screwed his eyes shut and waited on the shattering impact of the flagstones. Then, with a crunch of bone and gristle, his arm was nearly jolted from its socket, and his world became still again.

Prying one eye open, he looked down. The guards gawked up at him, dangling from a snarling carved lion head, barely a story up. Bless Emperor Valens and his embellishment program . At the palace gates, a crowd had gathered to take in the excitement. Seemingly, it was better to watch a slave being beaten to death than to spend the day earning an honest crust. Then they began to cheer as the guards silently grinned and drew their bows.

The twang of bowstrings harmonised with a stony crunch as the carving shuddered loose from the wall under his weight. One arrow ripped his earlobe; the rest whacking against the marble, while Pavo pivoted round and straight through the sectioned glass of a window directly below. Shards pierced his skin as he slid across the floor inside, but fright had him on his feet and racing, he was on an inner balcony, one floor up, and the corridor below was clear. Sensing an unlikely escape, he hopped over the balcony and fell onto the floor below with a grunt, then bounded for the main door of the palace. Unguarded! They’re all looking for me back there!

As he burst through the doorway, sunshine bathed him — never had it felt so warm. Then, by his side, a glint of metal flashed. Urban guard armour. A dull crunch tore through his head.

‘…that’ll teach ‘im,’ a voice chuckled.

Hitting the ground like a sack of rubble, his mind swam in ever-blackening circles. Then he heard footsteps approaching.

‘He’s barely a grown man?’ a frail voice spoke. ‘And he’s built like a gazelle, you fools — what does the Holy See pay you for?’

Pavo pried open an eye just enough to see the blurry figure of the old man with the snow-white hair.

‘It won’t happen again, Bishop Evagrius,’ a shamed guard replied. ‘It’s the slave from that senator.’

‘Senator Tarquitius,’ the bishop spat.

‘Shall we slit his throat?’ The guard offered enthusiastically, grinning at Pavo as if he was a cut of raw meat.

The bishop hesitated, looked around at the gathering crowd of administrators, guards and slaves, and then sighed. He leaned in closer to the guard and spoke in a hushed voice. ‘Unfortunately the situation is delicate. This slave must die, but he’s not my property. Take him to Tarquitius’ villa. See that the senator opens his throat by sunset.’

A gold Chi-Rho cross was swinging from a chain around the bishop’s neck. Pavo’s vision turned tunnel-like, fixed on the Christian symbol. His mind sank deeper into a muddy haze. Pavo lifted his head groggily and opened his mouth to speak, when a sword hilt smashed into his face.

All was black.

The mild breeze of the afternoon swirled around the villa from the open shutters. Pavo’s legs wobbled as another screaming wave of pain washed from the lump above his left eye, crowned with dried blood caked into his bristled scalp. Yet he stood firm, for today, he was to face his fate.

His master’s pristine villa contrasted absurdly with the slave quarters in the cellar. The filthy packed dirt floor, pooled with stagnant water, was his to call home — his and three other slaves, packed into the tiny space. Brackish water, hard cheese and fouling meat scraps were brought to them once a day. Toil in the wildly ostentatious gardens and around the villa was the diet at all other times. A bleak life, but one that he could almost tolerate, were it not for the beatings. His only grace was that, so far, Tarquitius and his senatorial cronies had not turned their sexual attentions on him, but almost every other male slave had been left bleeding and haunted after being dragged away for a night. Every morning he had run his chapped fingertips over his only possession; the legionary phalera — tracing it lightly for fear of rubbing away the precious engraving. He wore it around his neck on a leather thong. Despite everything, and in his father’s memory, the fight had never left him.

That he was living his final moments was not so much of a surprise. What puzzled him more was that he had survived so many of the illicit ‘jobs’. It had begun five years ago, when he was just fifteen, after a chance meeting with a shadowy character outside the Hippodrome. He had started taking on sorties for the Blues and the Greens — the pseudo-political gang rabbles who held sway on the streets of the capital. Once before, while on a job for the Greens, the Blues had caught him, then proceeded to beat him into unconsciousness, leaving him for dead in the gutter. He remembered that sensation; the numbness, the feeling of darkness creeping slowly through his flesh. He had lain there all night, and only when the morning sun touched his skin was he able to move, to crawl back to Tarquitius' villa. He shuddered at the memory and prayed that if he was to die today, that it would be a quick death.