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Category:
Historical Fiction
Publisher: www.gordondoherty.co.uk
ISBN-10: 1691229938
Type: Fiction
Pages: 413
Copyright: Feb 05 2020
ISBN-13: 9781691229932
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
What hope has one forgotten soldier of bringing an emperor to justice?
What hope has one forgotten soldier of bringing an emperor to justice?
Winter, 382 AD. The Gothic War is over. After years of bloodshed, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Goths have struck a deal for peace. Imperial heralds crow about the treaty as if it were a triumph. Feasts and celebrations take place across the Eastern provinces. Every hero of the war is honoured and acclaimed... except one.
Tribunus Pavo languishes in exile, haunted by a dark truth: that it was Gratian, Emperor of the West – the most powerful man alive – who caused the war and manipulated its every turn. Tormented by memories of loved ones lost during the great conflict, one word tolls endlessly through Pavo’s mind: Justice!
But in this great game of empire, justice rarely comes without a grave cost…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ftUn7kYn4
Excerpt
The bulbous-nosed legionary halted, statue-still, an arrow tip sticking out of his left eye socket like a pointing finger, the milky liquid of his eye and pinkish-grey chunks of brain gently pattering down on the desert floor between him and Pavo. The legionary’s body swayed, then crumpled. Some of the others had slowed, looking around in confusion, some still ambled on towards the well, oblivious to the silent strike.
Stunned, Pavo’s eyes swept like a hawk’s, across the desert village, then snapped onto the one thing that had changed. The man who had been painting a pot was now winking behind a bow, ready to loose another arrow. More, he now saw the similar shapes on the other roofs, and the bandits hiding in the doorways of the houses, betrayed by the blink of their steel blades.
‘Ambush!’ he cried as best as his parched throat would allow. Sura’s shoulder crashed against his, knocking both of them clear of the potter’s next arrow. All at once, his world was a tumbling chaos of dust, whizzing arrows and the punches of steel meeting flesh. Footsteps pounded and a desert battle cry rose as the hidden assailants sprang from the doorways. Pavo righted himself. Where was Sura? Some way behind them he heard the camels grunting in panic, heard Stilicho blaring orders from distance. But there was no imperative here other than survival.
A dusky-skinned bandit bounded towards Pavo, his loose robes flailing, his yellow-tinged eyes mean and his black beard wildly overgrown. The man had all the advantages: surprise, speed, weapon drawn. Pavo frantically grabbed at his shield strap, pulling the scarred, pale-blue screen from his shoulder and swinging it in front of him just as the bandit’s broadsword swished round. The blade sliced into the leather edging and bit into the wood. Pavo grabbed the shield edge with his free hand and pivoted on his heel, the movement yanking the wedged blade from the bandit’s hand. Before completing a full turn, he dropped his free hand to his scabbard and clasped it around his spatha hilt, drawing the legionary sword in one move and chopping it round into the bandit’s neck. The man stumbled away in a fit of grunting and slapping at the lethal wound, dark blood sheeting out between his fingers. At once, Pavo sensed the whirr behind him, swung once more and fell to one knee, bringing his shield up to catch two more arrows.
‘There are scores of them!’ Sura cried from nearby.
Pavo saw his friend, splashed red, working his sword free of another bandit’s body. In every direction, clusters of these mean-eyed robbers closed in. Fourteen of the escort legionaries lay dead or twitching. His heart pounded in his throat as he realised that he, Sura and the other fourteen remaining were trapped. His eyes swung to the potter’s house, closest of the white-walled homes. The archer-bandit up on its roof was dead thanks to a thrown legionary spear and he now hung like a wet drape over the roof’s edge, staining the white walls red. ‘Inside!’ he cried to Sura and the surviving legionaries. He unclipped a plumbata – one of three lead weighted darts secured on the inside of his shield – and hurled it in the general direction of the nearest bandits, causing them to slow and duck.
It would buy them a breath of time.
Lunging up from one knee like a sprinter, he charged for the potter’s house, the others converging there with him. Three more legionaries fell as they ran but, in a metallic thunder and a chorus of gasping, the men barrelled into the house – a well of cool shade. Colourful rugs lay on the floor and a scented oil burner glowed. Nobody else inside. An old cane ladder led up to an open square hatch of sunlight.
‘Onto the roof,’ Pavo bawled, waving each man up.
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