Legionary: The Scourge of Thracia (Legionary 4) (43 page)

‘Up,
up!
’ Zosimus screamed, helping legionaries from where they had fallen, haranguing those not rising fast enough.

Pavo helped Cornix to his feet then swung to the rumbling from the eastern end of the valley. Beyond the ruin of the wall, the lilia pits and the blackened wagons, the grey, ethereal mass of Farnobius’ horde had returned. It was darkening, coming forward.
Racing
forward.

‘Retreat to the fort!’ Geridus cried, wincing as he hobbled on his weary legs, one ankle seemingly injured.

Slowly at first, then quickened by the sight of the onrushing horde, the legionaries rushed to the scree path, the sagittarii hurrying down from the southern shoulder of the pass to join them. Pavo was near the back of the crowd. He glanced over his shoulder as he readied to step onto the scree path. Farnobius’ Goths came at a charge, leaping over the lilia pits, scrambling over the collapsed wall. And the giant reiks came too now, waving his Taifali cavalry with him at a gallop. He glanced up at the steep and difficult path up to the fort plateau, then back to the horde, ever closer.

‘We don’t have time,’ he cried.

‘What?’ Sura gasped, turning with him to see the reality. Now the Goths were swinging round to face the northern valley side, forming a narrow front and readying to drive up the scree path in pursuit.

‘Go,
go!
’ Zosimus urged the legionaries further up the path, then leapt back down beside the pair. A moment later, Quadratus was with them too. ‘Not one of these whoresons gets through us, aye?’ the big Gaul said.

‘Aye,’ they growled in reply. A handful of legionaries followed suit and added to this line – enough to blockade the narrow uphill path and add a thin second rank. Squashing together and forming a shield wall, they backed up the path slowly, feet crunching in the gritty snow, presenting their spears downwards to the foremost Goths – Screaming tribesmen with bloodshot eyes and the wet redness at the back of their throats glinting.

‘Brace!’ Pavo yelled.

The Gothic charge seemed heedless of the slight high ground the Romans enjoyed and slammed into the narrow front. The battering of colliding shields rang out along with the wild song of sparring iron. Pavo felt the breath leap from his lungs as a great weight surged onto his shield – a stocky Goth had clambered up and over it. Pavo thrust his spear up, tearing the foe’s belly and enduring a shower of guts as a reward, then lifted his shield arm just in time to block two well-aimed spear thrusts. What followed was a blur of thrusting spears and Gothic longswords clanging against Legionary spathas and helms as they defended like lions, stepping back up the scree path. Pavo’s limbs grew numb and his breath came in rasps as he parried a Gothic blade then lanced another opponent through the ribs. He lost sight of their progress up the path, knowing only that to blink or look over his shoulder would be fatal. All he heard from the plateau behind and above was some odd grinding noise – like metal and wood working together. In the corner of his eye, he saw only comrades falling – the men in the second rank rushing to take their place. Then came a moment when he sensed the strength leave him. His next parry was weak, and the Gothic blade battered from his helm and another scored across the bridge of his nose and cheek. He felt Sura and Zosimus by his side stagger and stumble too. Moments later, he felt the ground even out underfoot and realised they had stumbled up and onto the fort plateau. They were just paces from the fort gates and respite, but without the narrowness of the path to protect their flanks, their narrow front buckled and Goths swarmed to envelop them. Pavo saw Farnobius riding up the path, face alight with glee, axe raised. He heard that odd metallic-wooden clunking noise once more – this time growing into a titanic groan, as if rushing for him – then a cry sounded from behind them.

‘
Down!
’ a burring voice cried.

He swung to the shout, then saw a colossal shape rushing for him: like a great eagle’s claws – open and razor-sharp, every steely talon as tall as a man. Instinctively, he ducked under this nightmarish apparition, his comrades doing likewise. But the Goths all around them, blinded in their quest for blood, were not so swift. With a swoosh that split the blizzard, the talons ripped through the nearest of them. Blood showered Pavo as his mind raced to understand what was happening while more Goths staggered back in fear of the awful talons. Every hair on Pavo’s neck stood rigid as he looked up from where he was crouched and saw a vast horizontal timber beam, swinging out from the fort’s southern gate tower. From it dangled thick ropes and on the end of these, the vicious claws. Up on the gate tower he saw the outline of Geridus, framed by a streak of lightning and hurling curses into the storm as he and a handful of his men operated this merciless device, swinging the claw arm to and fro over the scattering Goths. Then, when the claw was hovering over a tight pack of Goths, the ropes slackened. The claw plunged down upon them and at once, like a tendon, the ropes snapped taut, lashing the four talons together.

Four men were caught in the device’s grasp. One was snared right on the ends of the talons and run through in four different directions. The claw was lifted up and a soup of this Goth’s bowels, blood and bladder sprayed down on the others nearby.

Pavo gawped at this: so this was the Comes’ ethereal friend – a merciless war-machine? He barely felt the hands that hoisted him and the others back from the devastation, hauling him inside the fort. Only when the fort gate was slammed shut did the spell break.

Farnobius backed his stallion away from the ferocious claw as it swung to and fro. The device had cut down mere handfuls of his men, but the sight of it was enough to drive his men back. Not one of his warriors had even approached the fort gate because of it. He licked his lips, judging the flight of the claw, eyeing the ropes. ‘Have the men bring the Roman ladders up from their toppled timber wall.’

‘Reiks?’ Egil said, his voice laced with fear and his eyes tracing the claw’s path.

‘Do as I say. And you can stay down there – this place is only fit for warriors,’ Farnobius growled as he drew his axe from his back, then walked his stallion forward onto the plateau.

Ever forward, invincible king,
Vitheric’s voice urged him.
Nobody can slay you.

Moments passed and Pavo remained sitting where he had slumped inside the fort. He wondered if the chaos outside the closed fort gates was real. In here, he could only hear dull roars of the storm and foreign voices outside. In here he was sheltered from the stinging blizzard, a strong warmth came over his skin as feeling began to return. Then he saw the staggering, gasping, momentarily lost men of his century around him, dotted around the inside of the fort. He saw Zosimus and Quadratus rise, and rose with them, knowing there was to be no respite. ‘On your feet!’ he bellowed.

He led them up the stony staircase on the inside of the fort’s southern wall, up onto the battlements. As soon as he ascended onto that lofty parapet, the blizzard was back, swishing, sparring and thicker than ever. Pavo shielded his eyes from the squall and peered all around. These newly repaired battlements were well-stocked with javelins and spears. Geridus’ archers and Herenus’ slingers were already lined up and loosing what remaining missiles they had down onto the Goths on the plateau. He ushered his men into place and Zosimus and Quadratus did likewise with their centuries. ‘Together, shields up, spears level, as before!’ he barked to them, then sped over to the southern gate tower, flitting up the few steps onto the rounded parapet here. Now he saw the great claw for what it was: a massive beam anchored by an immense load of iron and fixed to a pivoting iron-strapped timber floor.

‘See?’ Geridus said, spinning to him and grinning maniacally. ‘Farnobius came here to feast, but just a dash of terror is enough to turn any meal sour.’ The old Comes showed no sign of his old affliction, his beard was caked in snow and his face was almost blue with the chill.

The claw opened again, snatching up a Goth then swinging and releasing him at pace against the fort walls, where his brains were dashed out against the stonework. The rest of the Gothic spearmen were darting to and fro, like sheep escaping a wolf. Pavo glanced back along the walls. They had lost maybe sixty men in the melee so far. More than two centuries-worth of legionaries, plus one of slingers and one of archers remained. That number might hold this fort for some time, especially as the Goths had no means of gaining entry. And with this mighty claw . . .

He craned over the roof’s edge, ducking back momentarily as a Gothic arrow skated off the battlement beside him, then he froze, seeing Farnobius edge forward. The giant was flanked by a host of his spearmen who held up their shields as he slid from his stallion, watching the swinging claw and tossing his axe over and over in his grasp.

‘Sir . . . ’ Pavo started, then Farnobius roared, leaping forward and up, swiping his axe blade across the ropes that suspended the claw. With a thick snapping, the tendons were severed. The claw dangled by one, fraying rope, then this unravelled and the great iron talons thumped onto the plateau.

‘Ah,’ Geridus yelled over the gale, ‘then the fun is over.’

Pavo barely heard this, seeing the Goths who now raced unbounded up the scree path and onto the plateau carrying the Roman ladders that had fallen with the timber stockade. ‘Mithras, no!’

Geridus stepped back from the shattered claw, his eyes widening as he saw the ladder-tops swinging up against the fort’s southern wall.

Clack-clack-clack
,
they sounded as they made contact with the parapet.

Wordlessly, the aged Comes drew his gem-hilted spatha from its scabbard. ‘It is time to whet my blade once more, it seems,’ he said at last in a stony burr.

Pavo barged from the gate tower and back into place with his century on the southern walls. The Goths were already scurrying up the rungs of their ladders like a plague of ants, their long, blonde locks flowing from their stolen Roman helms, daggers clutched between their teeth and longswords held in white fists. A hail of arrows from below screened the climbing Goths. This volley plunged most densely into the sagittarii, and thirteen of these precious archers groaned, clutching the shafts embedded in their chests and throats, before slumping where they stood or toppling out over the fort walls, bronze helms falling off and red cloaks billowing.

‘Get these ladders away from the walls. Come on!’ Pavo roared, taking up his spear then pressing the butt against the top rung of the ladder and pushing, waving Trupo and Sura to his aid.

‘Push!’ he groaned, grasping the ladder top and shoving it back from the wall. The ladder wavered there, almost vertical, the battle of weight undecided, until Cornix and two other legionaries jabbed their spear butts at it too. Now, the ladder creaked upright, then toppled over, taking Pavo’s spear with it, out into the Gothic mass with a chorus of screaming. Men fell from the ladder or leapt clear, but those on the highest rungs were dashed on the snowy ground, necks broken by the weight of their armour. One fell on the nest of his comrades’ spears and another landed before a Taifali horseman, starting the warrior’s mount and causing it to rear up and thrash its hooves at his head, staving in his skull.

A great cheer rose up from the men on the walls and Pavo felt the fiery grip of hope. Along the wall, two more ladders tumbled, felling or injuring the climbers and disrupting the sea of warriors beneath – one of the ladders toppling right over the edge of the plateau and skating down the valley side in a flurry of thrown up snow and bodies. But moments later . . .
clack!