Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4) (31 page)

‘Then I will stay here in search of the answer.’

But Olivia shook her head. ‘You have chosen a road that will bring you here in good time,’ she said, her voice laced with sorrow, ‘but your journey is not yet complete.’

‘No, I welcome this as the end of my journey,’ Gallus protested.

Olivia smiled a mournful smile. ‘You forget just how well I know you. Just as the sun marches across the sky and does not stop before it reaches the western horizon, neither will you yield before you stand before those you seek.’

He clasped her hands. ‘But I will come to you in the end?’

She hugged Marcus closer, then wiped a tear from her cheek. ‘Aye.’

Gallus saw how she looked up and around, her eyes fearful as if knowing what lay behind the mist. He wanted nothing more than to hold them both at that moment, to assuage their fears, to protect them as he should have done. But the mist thickened, coiling around them like tentacles. ‘No,’ he said, his voice weak and distant as he reached out for them. But as his arms stretched, they grew distant, fading into the fog.

No . . . no! he cried out.

The mist faded and instead he saw just rising coils of smoke, heard the crackling of a fire. The memories of Olivia and Marcus’ bodies on the pyre came for him like wraiths.

No!

‘Sir!’ A voice cut through the gloom. The veil of blackness fell away and at once he was surrounded by dazzling orange flame and wracked with pain. He realised he was lying prone and shot to sitting, erupting in a fit of rasping coughing. His lungs felt as if they were on fire and white-hot pain lanced through battered ribs. He blinked and shielded his eyes from the fire.

‘Do not try to stand, sir,’ the voice spoke again.

‘Dexion?’ he croaked, seeing the primus pilus, face smeared with dirt and sweat, crouching by his side and hugging a blanket to his shoulders. Only now his surroundings became apparent. The all-surrounding fire was but a small campfire crackling away beside him within a ring of stones, sporting a silvery eel on a spit and some soggy hardtack toasting on twigs. They were sheltered in a cove by the side of a calm brook, and the firelight and a clear, starry night illuminated the outline of the craggy ravine high upstream. On the other side of the stream and hugging the edges of the cove was the ubiquitous, thick pine forest. Gallus saw his outer clothes and Dexion’s resting atop a frame of twigs near the fire. Memories of the plummet into the ravine rushed back to him.

‘How long have I been unconscious?’ he asked, alarm overcoming him as he noticed the absence of his swordbelt.

‘Since yesterday,’ Dexion replied, throwing down the scabbard and belt. ‘And it will be a few days at least before you can wield that again, or wear your armour,’ he said, nodding to the neat pile of Gallus’ mail shirt and helm inside the cove.

‘A whole day has passed?’ Gallus frowned. A fiery pain flared in his side again and he touched a hand to his aching ribs.

‘They are not broken, just bruised. I checked,’ Dexion said. ‘The fall nearly knocked me unconscious too but, er . . . ’ his face grew somewhat ashen, ‘ . . . you sort of broke my fall.’

Gallus snorted dryly at this, then winced, clutching a hand to his wounds, before drawing his swordbelt closer and looking askance at the fire – a beacon in lands like these. ‘But the Quadi, they are hunters, they must know to look downriver for us?’

Dexion shook his head. ‘They are gone. I trekked back up the side of the ravine – keeping myself out of sight, of course,’ he said, gesturing to his dirt-smeared features. ‘I heard them arguing before that cur, Birgir, ordered them to abandon the search. We’re alone out here.’

Gallus cocked an eyebrow. ‘Alone, apart from the many other brigands and barbarians who seem to be roaming these lands with impunity.’

Dexion sighed and sat beside Gallus and handed him a water skin. ‘Geridus had a point – this stretch of the highway is no more under imperial control than the distant frozen northlands.’

Gallus took a long and welcome pull on the water skin. The cool brook water seemed to soothe his fiery airways and calm his groaning belly. ‘It is worse than the Comes described. What else was there to protect those travelling the Via Militaris but the fire-blackened watchtowers and empty forts we passed on our ride? And it is thought to be like this all the way to Singidunum in Pannonia . . . what chance do we stand of making it to . . . ’ he stopped, looking to Dexion. ‘You know we are not turning back, don’t you?’

Dexion shrugged, lifting a twig from the fire and taking a piece of toasted hardtack from the end. ‘I suspected you might say that. And why should we? To return without having passed word to Emperor Gratian, eight men lighter . . . that would serve nobody. In any case, we are more than half way into the troubled stretch – closer to the upper Danubius than to Trajan’s Gate. To go back might be more dangerous than to proceed. And I promised Pavo we would return safely.’

Gallus accepted a chunk of the toasted hardtack and chewed upon it, nodding in appreciation. ‘Then our thinking is attuned. Though now we are on foot, and I fear the journey will be grim in either direction.’

Dexion’s tawny-gold eyes glazed over and the firelight danced in them. ‘So be it.’

As Dexion tended to the eel, turning it in the flames, Gallus’ mind flitted with thoughts. This journey was his and his alone. At the end of the journey waited his prize: vengeance . . . and then? Were he to be struck down having meted justice then Olivia’s words would prove true; eternity in that foggy netherworld would be his reward. But did Dexion deserve to be tangled in this deadly quest?
Yet what can I do – continue on alone and send this man back through the treacherous route we have just endured, alone?
he reasoned.

Gallus closed his eyes and saw the grey, marching ranks in the blackness of his mind. The shades that would never leave him. How many hundreds, thousands, now?
I’m sorry,
he mouthed, resting his forehead in his palms, imagining the eight brave equites joining the endless procession, trying as best he could to fend off the forming image of Dexion along with them.

‘Those riders died on the edge of Quadi blades,’ Dexion said.

Gallus looked up, somewhat shocked that the primus pilus had read his thoughts. But he saw that Dexion was absently carving the meat from the eel, his gaze distant and their deliberations having coincided.

‘As would we had you not tossed us from that precipice,’ Gallus added. ‘It takes a brave man to do what you did. You saw what happened to the rider who fell and landed on the rocks, didn’t you?’

‘Aye, I will not forget either,’ Dexion said, handing him a thick cut of eel flesh. ‘But at that moment, I had two choices: die meekly and have my head taken to some Quadi chieftain’s hall to be displayed like a trophy . . . or jump. Jump and probably be dashed on the rocks, but maybe, just maybe, to land in the water and not drown or crack my head on the bed of the ravine.’

Gallus nodded, chewing on the eel meat – tough but instantly innervating.

‘In the end, that sliver of possibility won. We’re alive. Those men did not die in vain, for we might still achieve the two things you set out to,’ Dexion continued.

Gallus stopped chewing, a sense of guilt and selfishness overcoming him.
Vengeance? Justice?

‘To take word to the Western Emperor and see Thracia relieved by Gratian’s armies . . . and to return to the XI Claudia and to my brother. The last one may well be selfish, I know, but-’

‘Pavo has endured a troubled life,’ Gallus said. The words were instinctive and surprised him. ‘There is nothing selfish in wanting to be near to and protect those you love.’ He felt his ravenous appetite wane after only a few mouthfuls of meat, and took to swigging water instead. At that moment, he longed to be back in the misty netherworld, with them in his arms.

The fire crackled and they said nothing.

‘Will you return to Olivia’s side, sir?’ Dexion said at last.

Gallus switched his gaze upon Dexion like a brand. ‘What did you say?’

Dexion’s face paled. ‘I . . . your wife? You spoke her name in your sleep, over and over. I assume she is the one you would want to protect, to be beside?’

‘Then you must have heard incorrectly, Primus Pilus,’ Gallus snapped, tossed the remaining scrap of eel meat into the flames then pushed himself to his feet. His body was riven with spasms of pain and at once he wanted nothing more than to crumple back to the earth, but Dexion’s words taunted him.

I assume she is the one you would want to protect, to be beside?

‘Sir, I didn’t mean to overstep the mark,’ Dexion pleaded.

‘Tomorrow will be a hard march, but my wounds won’t slow me,’ Gallus said, gazing around the night sky, then unhooking his now-dry and smoky-scented cloak from the fireside and sweeping it around his shoulders like a blanket. ‘It would be prudent to get as much rest as we can before then.’

He uncorked his water skin and emptied the contents over the fire. With a hiss, the flames were doused, the gentle orange light was extinguished and the cove fell into blackness.

They rose at dawn the next day to find the cove dusted with a thick frost. Pools near the brook were frozen and the air had a fierce bite to it. After a light breakfast of hardtack and salted meat and very little conversation, they set off and stayed clear of the Via Militaris – instead moving along the forested lands hugging its southern edge. In here at least they were as veiled as any other cur hiding in the undergrowth in this troubled territory. Indeed, they actually observed two more Quadi bands using the Roman road as if it was their own.

‘Geridus talked of Sarmatian riders in these parts – allies, he called them. They seem to be as absent as the legions,’ Dexion mused, more to himself than to Gallus.

Gallus realised it was one of the few things the man had said all day. He felt a prickle of embarrassment on his neck as he realised how much his hasty rebuke the previous evening had cowed the man. As if to add salt to his discomfiture, his bruised ribs flared with pain. ‘They are thought to be in the north, nearer the River Danubius,’ he replied as clearly as he could without sounding snappy. But his primus pilus’ point was a strong one: they had so far tried and failed to rouse reinforcements to despatch back to Trajan’s Gate: most forts they had passed were deserted, ruined, or with only skeleton garrisons. And then there was Sardica. He could not help but emit a low growl as he remembered the fraught and brief exchange with the Governor of that city.

‘Then this place is little more than a Quadi kingdom; a sea of tribesmen with precious few islands of imperial authority,’ Dexion surmised. ‘Much like the situation in Thracia with the Goths.’

‘The Goths number hundreds of thousands. The Quadi are few and will scatter like rats when Gratian brings his army east along this path. They are merely taking advantage of the empire’s plight in other areas: as the armies are drawn to the areas of trouble – in Thracia, Persia or the Rhenus – the regions they leave behind are at the mercy of such banditry. It has always been this way. Believe me, I have seen it often enough.’

They marched on into the afternoon, noting that the clear morning sky was gradually being swallowed by ominous grey clouds. A short while later, the forest thinned and the sky unleashed a ferocious icy deluge upon them. The chill rain soaked them in moments despite the protective canopy of forest, then it turned to sleet, stinging them and numbing their extremities. The wind picked up too, sparring with them like a fist-fighter, denying their efforts to press on. Before the light had faded, both men struggled to control chattering teeth and the sleet grew blinding, driving at them.

‘We need to stop, sir,’ Dexion implored him. Clasping one hand to keep his cloak around him and the other pointing to a sheltered dip in the forest floor – the hole left behind when a giant pine had toppled and brought its roots up with it.

‘We can only be a few days from the Danubius. There, surely, Roman rule will be enforced.
There
, we will find riders to take word to Emperor Gratian.
There
, we will find reinforcements that we can send back to Trajan’s Gate. We march until darkness is upon us,’ Gallus snapped. Only as he said this did he notice the light was already slipping away.