Gordon Doherty - Legionary

He turned to his optio as an icy trickle of rainwater spidered down inside his tunic. ‘It’s cold, wet and painful, aye, but Nerva wants us to be the leading light for the Danubian legions, wants us to breathe a bit of belief back into the frontiers.’

Felix lifted his eyebrows. ‘Aye, and wants to pay us triple, I hope?’

Gallus offered him a cocked eyebrow. ‘What, so you can fill the coffers and drain the barrels at The Boar? ’

Felix chuckled, then dropped back and took the silver eagle standard from the aquilifer again, hoisting it so that the ruby bull banner caught the gentle breeze. ‘Up the pace, lads. Baked pheasant and garum dates for grub tonight!’ Mocking catcalls were hurled from the veterans, and the recruits to the rear buckled into a chorus of laughter.

Gallus felt a rare sparkle of warmth course through his veins at the brief glimpse of camaraderie. Since his wife’s death, the legion had meant everything to him. He could only numb the loneliness in his heart by becoming part of the military machine. The hazy days of his upbringing in Rome, when life had colour, were slipping away. To be old and grey, settled on the porch of a small villa by Capua in the Italian countryside, sipping wine with their children and grandchildren at play — that was the dream he and Olivia had shared. Now, it was the sweet memories of his precious few years with her that were fading like a dream.

Suddenly, something whipped across his face. Stunned for an instant, Gallus raised his hand to his cheek — dark-red stained his fingers. All around him, the forest writhed as he eyed the arrow quivering furiously in the tree to his side.

‘Ambush!’ He roared. As the word left his mouth, the air filled with a swarm of hissing missiles, punching into the pack of legionaries. A handful fell with a grunt, arrows shivering in their exposed necks and limbs.

‘Shields!’ Gallus cried. The rest of the men collapsed into a shielded column, three lines of men, presenting shield bosses to their attackers; those in the middle using their shields as a roof. Those too slow to slip into position were punched to the ground under the hail.

Gallus crouched, teeth gritted, as volley after volley of missiles hammered down upon them like iron hail. He glanced along his side and then back to the other side. To his right, a young legionary gripped his shield by the rim, and it wavered on every arrow strike, his knuckles slipping. Gallus reached over to grapple the shield handle in example, but recoiled in disgust when an arrow zipped in through the gap above the offending shield and crunched through the holder’s eye. Another man down. Then another, and another. The mini testudo contracted further and further as Roman bodies toppled with every bombardment. Gallus growled at the impotence of their situation. These men had entrusted their lives to him, but they were being picked off like mosquitoes. First century or not, they were not combat ready, unable to maintain a solid testudo, even. Every avenue of attack he could think of would mean dropping their shield wall for a moment at least. That meant certain annihilation. Yet to stay put meant they had only moments left in any case.

‘Sir! They’re moving,’ Felix croaked, now crouched back to back with his centurion. Gallus risked a glance out of the shield wall as the rain of arrows slowed, and spotted the darting movement behind the tree line. Was this the build up to a charge?

A crack of thunder rippled across the sky and with it came a torrent of rain and a fork of lightning. No advance came. Again, Gallus stole a glance above his shield. The tree line was empty.

‘Felix, what’s happening over on your side?’

The optio gasped. ‘They’re retreating, sir; they’re running northward!’

Gallus cocked an eyebrow. ‘Running away? What the…’

His words tailed off and he touched a hand to the earth. He felt a tremor, growing in intensity. His eyes widened as he saw the foliage ripple up ahead. Something was coming for them, and it was coming for them quickly.

‘Cavalry charge — right on top of us. Form a line three deep…’ then he hissed, so only Felix could hear, ‘…or we’re dead!’

Ignoring the cramp in their tired limbs, his men sprang from the crouched testudo shell, and pulled round to face south, spears dug into the mud like a threadbare porcupine. The freezing rain clawed at their faces as they beheld the dark mass hurtling towards them.

Gallus’ eyes narrowed as he tried to take in the charge; a hundred or more stocky riders with long dark wispy jet-black locks billowing behind rounded caps and clad in skins; what looked like composite bows and javelins looped on their backs, with long cutting swords and daggers hanging from their belts. As they thundered closer, Gallus’ features wrinkled at their faces; flattened, broad, and yellow. Their cheeks appeared to be symmetrically ripped with a triple line of angry scar tissue and their eyes were almond-like and unblinking. The riders on the wing of the charge had lengths of rope looped into lassos on their belts.

‘Hold steady!’ Gallus roared over the rumble of hooves.

As Gallus filled his lungs at the last, his mind flitted with visions of Olivia on their wedding night; Olivia carrying their child. Then, the shadowy form of mother and child on the pyre. I’m coming to be with you . He leaned forward, feeling his men bracing along with him, when suddenly, like a storm dropping, the onrushing cavalry broke into two halves. They washed past the stunned legionary group, and on at the same breakneck pace to the north.

Gallus expelled the breath in his lungs, his mind reeled. ‘What the…’ he glanced at Felix. ‘They’re after the archers!’

His line slumped in utter relief. Some men belly-laughed in shock, others vomited in the mud. Felix looked down the track as the rain became sheet-like.

‘Who…what are we dealing with here, sir?’

Gallus gazed down the track with Felix in bewilderment as a crash of lightning illuminated their faces.

‘The lion’s jaws, Felix. The lion’s jaws!’

Darkness settled on Constantinople as the revelry from inside the Imperial Palace rolled out over the rooftops. Senator Tarquitius drew the crisp night air into his lungs, resting his elbows on the balcony to marvel at the burgeoning city as he sipped watered wine from a fine silver chalice.

Things were certainly looking up for him since his expulsion of that damned slave Pavo; the crone’s words haunted his nightmares still, but at least now he knew he could not harm the boy and her curse could not take effect. As for the rest of her rasping diatribe…well, that could wait.

Now, here he was in his element. All the ingredients were present; Roman aristocracy, slackened morals and high spirits. This potent recipe had provided him with the ideal political stepping-stone here in Constantine’s Nova Roma . Even the steeliest opponent would drop his guard after a skinful of wine and the close attention of an exotic slave girl. Eventually, promises would be made and secrets revealed to his crystal-clear mind. Political careers soared and crashed on such sensitive information. Tarquitius had taught the senate a valuable lesson with his dealings; he was a player in this age of imperial upheaval.

The blossoming of the Christian faith had gripped the minds of the people and provided another channel entirely for the brave and ambitious to seize power. To adopt the worshipping of a Judean that their ancestors had brutally murdered seemed to fit snugly with the expedient madness of the empire of recent times. Only a few generations previously, citizens had cheered as the lions ripped out the throats of Christians bound to posts in the arena. Now, Rome had pompously nominated herself at the head of the faith, and in direct contact with the Christian God. Now, a new breed of madness held sway with Emperor Valens; Arianism, the stream of Christianity the emperor favoured, had been forced upon the faithful from the plebs all the way up the ecclesiastical tree. Unhappy clergy tend to be more receptive to the ideas of a senator, he mused. Now, he smirked, the fruit was ripe for picking.