Gordon Doherty: Viper of the North

Constantinople, Summer 352AD

On the northern lip of Constantinople, just a stone’s throw east of the Prosphorion Harbour, the midday heat baked a secluded wharf. A small party of legionaries from the wall garrison stood there, gazing across the shimmering waters of the Golden Horn to the northern headland. Behind them, the sea walls hid them from the grandeur and bustle of the great city, with only an occasional muffled roar from the Hippodrome echoing onto the dock.

Optio Traianus shuffled in discomfort; sweat trickled down his back underneath his scale vest and the salty sea air did little to quash his nagging thirst. His hooked nose wrinkled and he shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare as he scanned the waters once more. Only trade vessels and fishing boats dotted the placid surface while the galleys of the imperial fleet lay docked nearby and unaware of what was to take place on this wharf. He shuffled again, one foot tapping restlessly.

‘He’ll come,’ Centurion Valgus muttered.

Traianus looked to his superior and frowned; the ageing, white-haired centurion’s craggy face was curled into a baleful grin, and his hand seemed overeager to rest by his scabbard. He darted a glance around him to see that the other eight legionaries wore the same looks. Then he noticed something on the battlements of the sea walls; a gleaming conical helmet with the distinctive noseguard of a sagittarius . Then another, and another.

‘Archers too, sir, to oversee an exchange of prisoners?’ He asked Valgus. ‘This may seem a little heavy-handed to our. . visitor?’

‘Then you do not know the true measure of the man who comes here today, Optio.’ Valgus turned to him, his eyes sparkling. ‘You know why they call him the Viper?’

Traianus rubbed his narrow jaw; Iudex Anzo of the Thervingi Goths, a ruthless warlord hailed by his followers as the Viper. As the number of previously disparate Gothic tribes pledging allegiance to the Viper’s banner grew, so did the sense of unease within the senate and the upper echelons of the army. And today, the Viper was to come here, to the heart of the empire. ‘I know of him; the Goths say he earned his name because he is a ferocious fighter and slayer of men. A man with the mind of a strategos. Cunning and lethal.’

Valgus shook his head. ‘Aye, but ask the few Romans who have faced him and lived; they will tell you a different story. Sent whole legions to Hades, he has. Slaughtered just as many Roman citizens too. And he’s slain any Goth who has stood in his way. A stone-hearted, murderous whoreson.’ He turned back to the waters, sucked air through his teeth and squared his shoulders.

The gate clunked open and he turned to see a trio of legionaries leading a boy onto the wharf. This was Draga, Iudex Anzo’s son. Draga had lived as a political prisoner in the capital for over a year. Barely ten by the look of it, he wore his fawn hair in the Gothic style, scraped into a topknot, revealing green eyes that were cold and spiteful. He wore a Roman-style frayed, red tunic. This exposed the skin around his shoulders and a blue-ink snake stigma that wrapped around his collarbone like a torc.

Suddenly, the boy flicked his gaze up and glared at Traianus. Traianus’ jaw stiffened at first at the cold stare. But behind the coldness there was something else there. Perhaps a glimmer of hope at being reunited with his father. Traianus gave the boy a tentative nod.

‘Don’t look at him and see a boy,’ Valgus whispered in his ear, ‘look at him and know that his mind is filled with the same black thoughts as his father. Yes, they’ll be reunited today, one way or another. .’

Traianus’ face fell as he noticed Valgus again touch a hand to his sword hilt as he said this. He had not reckoned on drawing his own spatha today, but it seemed a certainty now. ‘Sir, the tribunus , he briefed us only on an exchange of prisoners?’

‘Aye, he did,’ Valgus shot a furtive glance around to see who was within earshot, then looked to Traianus with his eyes narrowed, ‘but the senate have paid for an alternative outcome.’ He winked and patted a hand against his purse, which clunked with coins. ‘I briefed the rest of the lads earlier. Don’t worry, follow my lead and you’ll get your share, and the tribunus need never know.’

Dread swelled in Traianus’ gut as he glanced around him, then to the gate leading back into the city. Locked.

‘A vessel approaches!’ One of the archers called out from the walls.

All heads turned to the north. A medium-sized cog slipped from the headland and into full view. Its triangular sails were sun-bleached and at the tip of the mast a dark-green banner embroidered with a viper writhed gently in the breeze. It was a run-down ship with only a few mercenary crewmen dotted around the rigging and rows of crates were piled on the deck. They watched as the vessel drew in to dock; all was quiet apart from the creaking of dried-out timbers, the gentle lapping of water on the wharf side and the screeching of the gulls and terns that followed the vessel in hope of a meal. Traianus watched the birds swooping and darting. Despite his best efforts, he could not shake the thought of the carrion birds he had become so accustomed to seeing on the battlefield.

Two tall Gothic warriors, wearing their hair scooped up into topknots and armoured in red leather cuirasses, emerged from below deck. They roped the vessel to the wharf by leaning from the side of the ship. They then laid a gangplank from the ship’s edge to the dockside and walked over it to stand either side. Silently, each erected a pole bearing a smaller dark-green viper banner. Then, from the far side of the deck, two more figures emerged and walked forward.

The first figure wore a dark-green cloak, hood raised, face in shadows, hands clasped. Despite the heat, Traianus could not suppress a shiver at the sight as the figure drifted forward. Then, ever so slowly, the figure reached up with knotted hands to lift the hood down, revealing sharp, cold features and a thick fawn moustache that hung over taut lips. The hood rested on his shoulders, revealing the fangs and licking tongue of a snake stigma on his collarbone, just like Draga’s. This was Iudex Anzo. This was the Viper. His gaze felt like ice on Traianus’ skin.

The hulking Goth who walked beside the Viper was draped in a fine scale vest and carried a longsword, an axe and a dagger in his belt. His sleek, dark hair was knotted back and his face was flat and broad, with an arrowhead of a nose between dark eyes and a neatly trimmed beard filling out an already bold jaw. From his left ear dangled three bronze hoops. Each of his forearms bore a snake stigma like that on the necks of Anzo and Draga. Most ominously, his hands dangled close to his weapons as he cast a look of barely disguised contempt across the waiting legionaries.

‘Ivo is Anzo’s sword, his trusted man,’ Valgus whispered. ‘Keep your eye on him.’

Traianus shuffled to stand straight as Ivo’s gaze swept past him.

Then two more Gothic warriors emerged from below deck. They bundled before them a bedraggled, bald and ageing Roman in a filthy tunic. So this was the ambassador who was to be exchanged for Draga. Traianus winced at the sight of the torture wounds that pockmarked the man’s skin and wondered when the poor wretch had last seen the light of day.

‘Ave, Romans,’ Iudex Anzo spoke in a rasping Gothic twang, his tone sour. He did not wait for a reply as his gaze quickly fell on Draga, held by two legionaries. ‘My son, you are unharmed?’

The Gothic boy’s face remained grave. ‘That, we can discuss once we have set sail for our homeland, Father.’