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Gordon Doherty, Author
Gordon Doherty books on Amazon
Category:
Historical Fiction
Publisher: www.gordondoherty.co.uk
ISBN-10: N/A
Type: Fiction
Pages: 405
Copyright: 27th March 2025
ISBN-13: 9798311378208
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
What would you sacrifice to save your loved ones?
Blood, treachery, reckless heroism, justice, honour. This story has it all.
AD 391: in the aftermath of civil war, the Roman Empire lies broken. The emperor is missing. Rumours fly that he has lost his mind. Sensing weakness, the Goths rise in revolt. All to the delight of the dark hand who orchestrated the civil war… and plots to stoke another.
Far out at sea, Pavo stands watchfully at the prow of the Justitia, running cargo between distant lands. At every port, he hears of the empire's swelling troubles. Of fire and zeal and panic. Of legions, bristling for battle. But his days of protecting the provinces with sword and shield are over. He, his wife and his lad will soon have enough funds to make a home on a quiet island, far from the madness.
Yet the empire is an ever-hungry beast, and Pavo is about to sail straight into its jaws…
It is a journey that will take him to the brink, and throw down before him the question to which there is only one answer: what would you sacrifice to save your loved ones?
Blood, treachery, reckless heroism, justice, honour. This story has it all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7b70FSh_kY
Excerpt
Spring 391 AD
Thracia
A warm breeze whistled through the wild barley and around the Roman escort force halted by the roadside. The small contingent of Scutarii palace riders brushed their already over-groomed horses. The men of the XI Claudia legion buffed their red-gold shields for the dozenth time. All, every so often, glanced uneasily along the Via Militaris.
A finely-armoured horseman and a red-cloaked soldier walked a short way proud of the rest and halted, both squinting into the late afternoon sun and along the great military highway – deserted, all the way to the empty western horizon where the silvery flagstones met the cornflower-blue sky.
‘I don’t understand it,’ General Promotus grumbled through his rack of yellow teeth, his unibrow twitching in vexation. ‘This is the spot.’ He sat a little straighter in the saddle – something he did often to appear taller than he actually was – then batted a scroll against the saddle. ‘Right here! The emperor was supposed to rendezvous with us here, at noon.’
Tribunus Sura tried not to let his superior’s anguish unsettle him. Promotus, while a skilled general, was famously peevish. There had to be a reasonable explanation for the emperor’s lateness. He peeled off his fin-topped iron helm and ran his fingers through his sweat-soaked blond hair. His emerald eyes shifted around the golden plains either side of the road. Bare, silent. He looked over his shoulder to his Claudian legionaries, clustered around their silver eagle standard, its ruby bull banner rippling gently in the wind. Behind them loomed a huge, crooked oak. The long dead tree was a landmark known to every legionary in the Eastern Empire who had ever marched the military highway. This was, indeed, the spot. Yet no sign of the most powerful man in the world.
There had been so much talk of when Emperor Theodosius would finally journey back from the Western Empire. Ever since winning the ruinous civil war against that sister state, three years ago, he had been unable to extricate himself from the mess inherited. All the time, the people of the East asked when… when would their mighty ruler return? Return to his seat of power at Constantinople – a rudderless ship, adrift and in the hands of his two fledgling, idiot sons. To repair the tattered Eastern Army. To organise a response to the growing threat of Alaric the Goth and his Vesi rebels, camped in Thracia’s northern parts.
The golden grasses chattered in the wind, as if part of some dark conspiracy. Trouble danced a jig in his guts. Unconsciously, he rested his hand on the pommel of his sheathed sword.
Shuffling and murmuring sounded behind the pair.
‘Stop grousing!’ Promotus snapped over his shoulder.
‘No, sir, look,’ said Sura, his soldier senses sharpening all of a sudden as he spotted it too: a tell-tale smudge of pale dust in the western sky. The breeze, blowing from that direction, became tainted with the reek of manure and sweat. Finally, sunlight winked on metal as the emperor’s standard rose into view, the Christian Chi-Rho atop it buffed to a glimmer.
‘Ah,’ sighed Promotus, resting back in the saddle. ‘All is well.’
As the imperial party emerged in full, one of Promotus’ Scutarii riders blew a horn – a triumphant note of greeting. A moment later, a matching signal sailed back towards them from the approaching party.
It was a small force, Sura observed – smaller than this escort group. Serving as a vanguard were a few hundred silver-shielded riders of the Gentiles palace cavalry school. Bringing up the rear was a single vexillation from the Hiberi – a palace legion, their golden lion standards fluttering in the breeze. In between ambled a stream of sumpter wagons and attendants. Sura cocked his head: the party seemed to be approaching at no more than a shuffle.
‘No wonder they’re bloody late,’ Promotus griped under his breath. ‘If they were any slower, they’d be going backwards.’ He forced a smile, threw up a hand and called out in salutation. The Gentiles commander shouted back in reply.
A dire chanting rose. Sura’s eyes narrowed as he sought out the source: a circle of a few dozen priests in the centre of the approaching party, carrying the emperor’s standard as if they were a legion. Then he spotted something in their midst. At first he thought it was a dog; but no, it was a man. On his hands and knees, crawling.
Sura blinked twice to be sure his eyes were not playing tricks on him.
‘Is that… is that Theodosius?’ croaked Promotus.
The Emperor of the East crawled in filthy, tattered robes, his knees and elbows bruised and bleeding. Even at a distance, Sura could see his eyes: wild, bloodshot. His lips were flickering like the wings of a butterfly. Every so often, he stopped, clasped his hands before him, and placed his forehead on the ground. The whole party halted while he did this, before rumbling forth again.
Seeing this, the waiting Claudians and Scutarii riders broke out in a chorus of consternation.
‘Quiet!’ Promotus snapped. As usual, he dealt with his concerns by becoming even more tetchy. ‘About face,’ he boomed, whirling a finger in the air. ‘We came here to escort the emperor home to Constantinople, and that’s what we will do.’ He turned a volcanic look on Sura. ‘You Claudians, form a vanguard.’
***
Over the rumble of the march back towards Constantinople, the emperor’s moaning – Christian prayer, repeated over and over – came and went.
‘What happened to him?’ whispered Libo, Sura’s wild-haired, one-eyed primus pilus - second in command of the Claudia.
Sura took a time before answering, as all the recent gossip tumbled through his mind. ‘Penance,’ he said at last.
Libo’s false wooden eye stared wildly into the distance, while his good eye dropped to study the ground before them. ‘Ah, yes… for the red races.’
Sura nodded grimly. The previous summer, the chariot champion of Thessalonica had been jailed for raping a stable boy in the moments before a big race. A gang amongst the crowds, angered that they wouldn’t get to see their hero, turned upon the imperial officer who had cast the charioteer into jail. They had hacked off his limbs and dragged the still-living head and trunk through the city streets. When word of these events had reached Theodosius’ distant western residence, the enraged emperor had issued an order, to throw the racegoers of Thessalonica a spectacle that would never be forgotten.
The crowds had piled into the city’s arena… only to find that this time there were no chariots, no horses. Just a legion, waiting, swords brandished. The iron gates had slammed shut, sealing the masses in… and the racing arena had been painted red. Women, children, elderly, slaughtered indiscriminately along with the few dozen perpetrators. Since then, rumours had flown like arrows. Some said Theodosius had been beset with guilt for what he had done, that he had spent the time since begging at the feet of Bishop Ambrosius of Mediolanum for forgiveness. And this was the result.
The emperor’s prayers suddenly became strangled wails. Heads twitched as the Claudian legionaries cast anxious looks back at this shadowy pastiche of their mighty leader.
‘Come on lads, relax,’ said Centurion Pulcher, his pitted face pinched like a walnut in the late afternoon heat. ‘Sorties like this – close to the capital – are to be enjoyed. Much smoother than the north. Last time I was up that way, I stopped for a piss by the trees, and a Vesi bandit’s arrow came whizzing out of the shadows. Nearly shot my cock off.’
‘Nearly?’ said young Indus, whirling his sling playfully by his side as he marched behind Pulcher. ‘Even the legendary Odysseus himself would have struggled to hit such a tiny target.’
A welcome gale of laughter spread across the Claudian ranks, mercifully perforating the tension.
Pulcher twisted at the neck to shoot his charge a blood-curdling smile. ‘At least the bandit didn’t shoot his load too soon, eh? What is it the brothel girls down by the new harbour call you again?’
Now Indus looked aghast, and accidentally slapped himself on the face with his sling.
‘In-and-out Indus, wasn’t it?’ chuckled Centurion Darik, tall and handsome, his long dark locks beating across his chiselled desert features in the wind.
‘I heard it was just “in”,’ said Verax, the legion’s medicus, his cheeky spreading smile causing his trident beard to splay.
‘I was in a hurry!’ Indus spluttered.
‘A massive hurry,’ said his marching partner, Durio, stifling a snigger.
Betto, the legion’s bookish aquilifer, bumped the haft of the Claudian eagle standard, and proclaimed: ‘Any length of time, is but a pin-prick of eternity…’
Everyone looked at the aquilifer, confused.
Betto scowled back, exasperated. ‘I read Marcus Aurelius to you all, not two nights ago.’
‘Pin-prick, you say?’ Libo said with a studious look on his face. ‘New nickname for you, Pulcher?’
Laughter exploded, drowning out Pulcher’s protests.
Sura’s lips twitched with amusement. This was the way of the Claudia. Once a border legion, now something of a utility force, an expendable regiment. A rabble of soldiers, some said, not up to the quality of the field legions, and certainly not of the elite palace corps. But they were brothers, each and every one of them. He smoothed at the folds of his red cloak and thought of the one to whom it had once belonged; the closest of brothers. His heart ached for the old times, when Pavo had been the Claudian leader, and he the second in command.
The fading of the spring breeze stirred him from his memories. Gone were the golden prairies either side of the road. Instead, the Mons Asticus massif – a shrub-lined whaleback mountain – rose on one side of the highway, and smaller foothills on the other. In these more sheltered parts, the air became muggy, humid, sticky and unpleasant on his skin. A vile stink of mouldering damp and decaying vegetation hit him from up ahead. There stretched a reedy, mist-shrouded marshland left behind by an overflow of the River Hebrus last year. Fortunately, the military road had not been flooded, the flagstones standing just proud of the fens like a causeway. They trooped on into this murk, the waters either side of the road bubbling and belching.
A flock of wrens exploded from the swamp mist and, with a chorus of rattling chirrups and beating wings, vanished into the foggy sky. Sura looked to the spot from which the birds had burst, seeing the shuddering reeds. Something itched inside – his hard-won soldier senses. He threw up a hand to call for a halt and the Claudians did so instantly. With a chorus of swearing and grunts of surprise, so too did the rest of the column.
A clop of hooves rattled up behind. ‘What’s the hold up?’ Promotus barked. ‘We’re already running late.’
‘Stay back, sir,’ said Sura, his eyes sweeping the swamp.
Promotus ignored him, clopping out ahead. ‘Come on, you idlers. Keep movi-’
A spear sailed from the mist and plunged down into the neck of Promotus’ horse. The poor beast reared up, blood sheeting from the wound, hurling Promotus from the saddle and onto the road.
Struck with horror, Sura stared at the spear shaft, the runic markings. He knew what was happening, even before a spectral groan rose from the swamp – the dreaded war horn of Alaric. He and his Vesi rebels were not in the north. They were here. Right here.
Packs of rugged Gothic warriors burst from their hiding spots in the misty reeds, screaming, whirling longswords, axes and war hammers, bows nocked, their long hair swishing. Some were bare chested, some with the dark red leather armour of the tribes, others wore stolen Roman armour. All surged towards the column’s flanks, their draco standard held high, the bronze dragon head atop the pole set in a fearsome snarl, the blood-red ribbons thrashing like a tail. Leading the strike at the emperor’s position was the rebel leader, the Red Dragon himself – Alaric. His twin blond braids flowed in his wake, his sword shining high.
Promotus scrambled to his feet and staggered backwards past Sura and the Claudians like a man retreating inside the safety of a city gates.
‘Shields!’ bellowed Sura. ‘Protect the emperor!’
With a clatter, hundreds of Claudian ruby-gold shields came together, folding in around the column front and flanks, spears levelled through the gaps.
Before the vexillation of Hiberi troops could shield the rear half of the column likewise, the Goths launched a missile salvo that slammed down into them. Hiberi men shrieked in surprise as spears plunged down into their unarmoured spots. Their tribunus flopped to his knees, an arrow quivering in one eye. Gentiles horsemen twisted sharply in their saddles, punched through by arrows. Blood leapt and bodies wilted to the ground.
The Gothic battle roar grew deafening as they bounded onto the road, swallowing up the last few paces between them and the poorly-formed bubble of Roman defenders.
‘Ready!’ Sura bellowed.
Bang!
Gothic blades met Roman shields with a thunderclap that echoed across the fens and sent Sura and the Claudian front staggering backwards, crushing them up against the unready Scutarii riders.
A Gothic champion with a fight-flattened nose surged forth and smashed his war hammer across the muzzle of a Scutarii rider’s steed, spraying the poor beast’s teeth across the highway. Seizing the rider, hauling him down from the saddle, the champion then slammed the hammer down on the rider’s head, which exploded like a grape. As man and horse fell away, the enemy warrior then whacked the hammer down upon Sura’s shield. Sura’s old shoulder injury screamed in protest but his muscles took the strain, and he thrust forward to first ram the metallic boss of the shield into the champion’s face, then dropped into a lunge to drive his spatha up and hard into the man’s guts. Twisting the blade to slide it free, there first came a hiss of escaping air, then a gout of arterial spray that showered the side of Sura’s face – the bitter stink and taste of it all too familiar.
As the hammer man vomited in death and crumpled to the road, Sura rose tall to block blow after blow from the next attackers, sparks flying and sizzling on his gore-spattered skin.
He risked a glance behind him – to the one they were protecting. The emperor was still on all fours, mumbling to himself, oblivious to the deadly jaws gnashing down around him.
Exhausted, sword blunt, Sura saw the sheer numbers Alaric had brought to bear. He felt an unexpected calmness then, as he realised it was over. At the last, he thought of his wife, Julia, back in Constantinople. And of his absent sword-brother, Pavo. He blocked one more time, the spray of sparks singeing his lips as he mouthed a final prayer to Mithras the Soldier God.
As if the prayer had been heard, the press of the Gothic rebels fell away. Sura stumbled forward a step, stunned, as the ambushers turned and fled back into the swamp.
Within a few heartbeats, they were gone, as fast as they had struck.
He looked to Pulcher, sword still levelled, walnut face striped in blood, bewildered.
All across the road, legionaries groaned, panted, wept. Commanders looked this way and that, expecting another attack. But there was none.
Promotus, seizing the horse of a dead Scutarii rider, vaulted onto the saddle, his face pale as the moon. ‘Back to the capital at haste. Full-step.’ he rasped to his escort troops and the emperor’s party. He rounded his steed to point his sword at Sura and the Claudians. ‘You lot bring up the rear, in case they pursue.’
With a frantic clank and clatter, the shaken, bloodied force reformed into a marching column, the priests bundled the bewildered emperor onto a wagon, and the Claudians plugged the end of the march, backstepping in a rearguard action, spears trained on the swirling mists.
‘By the Seven Hills of Rome and Constantinople, what just happened?’ an officer croaked from mid-column as they broke free of the foul marshy region, into the clear air of late afternoon. ‘Alaric and his Vesi rebels were camped in the north, we were assured. They weren’t supposed to be in these parts.’
‘Seems like we weren’t the only ones who knew the emperor was coming through this way today,’ General Promotus snarled. ‘What damage did we take?’
‘Casualties were light,’ an officer shouted from somewhere near the head of the column. ‘Thirty three dead. Forty or so injured.’
‘Captives?’ asked General Promotus.
‘That’s the strangest thing, sir. Only one,’ the other shouted louder to be heard over the emperor’s latest chorus of caterwauling. ‘They captured only one man.’
Backstepping in time with his Claudians, Sura’s eyes swept back and forth across the foggy swamp they had just come through. Somehow, Alaric had infiltrated imperial intelligence, and had organised the ambush perfectly. More, his Vesi force had been numerous and strong enough to have battled on, to have destroyed the emperor’s column. To have slain the emperor himself. Yet they had not. Instead, they had slipped away into the mists again with just a single captive. Why?
He met eyes with Pulcher, Darik, Libo and Betto. They, like he, were time-served enough in this twisted world to know that something was very, very wrong.
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