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Authors: Gordon Doherty

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BOOK: Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire
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Even without horse, coin or water, I would travel east alone to find out what happened to you. If Mithras wills it, I will find you or your bones out there, Father,
the voice in his mind answered with alarming clarity. He looked down as a tear of his own splashed onto Felicia’s fingers, then nodded in silence.

They each looked up, seeing each other through their sorrowful blur, then Pavo pressed his lips to Felicia’s, tasting her salty tears. Their embrace was lasting and they clung to one another, her warmth like a salve to his tired body. It took a gruff grunt from the corner of the room to end their moment, somewhat abruptly.

‘When you two come up for air, can I get some wine over here?’ Quadratus moaned. ‘I need something to numb the bloody pain.’

At this, Felicia’s face split with a wide and toothy grin and she wiped the tears from her eyes. The sight warmed Pavo’s heart. Felicia squeezed his hand then slipped away to tend to Quadratus. Pavo gazed after her, until Gallus’ barking from the walls snapped him from his trance. He looked to the doorway and out into the training yard. The iron tribunus was now descending the stairs to berate his men further. Pavo stepped outside, readying to help Zosimus in gathering the century. He heard the lapping of waves from over the sea walls and saw the masts of the two triremes that would carry them towards the rising sun. A shiver danced across his skin and he answered the dark whispers in his mind.

To the east, then.

Chapter 2

 

 

The following morning at dawn the XI Claudia set out on their voyage to Antioch. With a crew of well-fed
remiges
manning the oars, the two triremes cut through the calm, turquoise waters of the Propontus, startling thick, silvery shoals of fish and weaving between myriad verdant islands. The one hundred and sixty legionaries of the XI Claudia wandered the decks of this miniature fleet – Gallus, Felix, Centurion Zosimus and his century on the lead vessel and Centurion Quadratus and his men on the other. Unburdened of armour and packs, they were in good spirits. On the flagship, they helped with the rigging, jibed with the overly officious
beneficiarius’
insistence on supply crates being stacked at perfect right angles, and played dice on the deck in the pleasant early summer sunshine.

At this stage, Pavo could only laugh at the memory of his previous sea voyage – for some reason he had spent that journey doubled over the lip of the vessel, hurling up bile, but this time his stomach was calm like the still waters. But, when the fleet passed through the Hellespont and entered the waters of the
Mare Aegaeum
, he remembered exactly why that was. A wind picked up and the waves grew choppy. In moments, Pavo felt as if his gut was on fire and his head spun as if he had drunk too much ale. He staggered across deck to the prow, then doubled over to reacquaint himself with the olives, bread and watered wine he had consumed at the outset of the voyage. His vomiting session roused a chorus of cheering from his comrades, supportively orchestrated by Zosimus and Sura. They were swiftly silenced, however, when a sudden, sharp gust cast some orangey, bilious spray back over their faces.

Tired and nauseous, Pavo found sleep easy to come by. A stiff northerly wind helped them on past the islands of Chios and Samos and into the southern stretches of the Aegaeum. He woke on the fifth day of their journey as they stopped at the well-fortified port of Rhodos to take on fresh water and rations. Just stepping onto solid land instantly refreshed him. They visited one of the many dockside taverns, but only had time to fill their bellies with a thick and hearty lamb stew and a few jugs of the famed local wine. Quadratus was particularly disgusted at having to leave again so soon – just as a curvaceous local woman was growing merry enough to succumb to his charms. Meanwhile, Gallus had spent the whole time ashore quarrelling with the portmaster about something.

They set off again, turning east to sail into the
Mare Internum
and along the coast of southern Anatolia. Pavo took up a spot at the stern, resting his back against the lip of the vessel, awaiting the return of the vile nausea.

He pulled a strip of scarlet silk from his belt and held it under his nose. Felicia had scented the piece with a rose perfume. He closed his eyes and imagined nuzzling into her neck, just as he had done on that last night. Gallus had given him leave from the barracks. So, in their tenement room by the Saturninus Gate, he and Felicia had eaten a meal of figs and pheasant, washed down with a jug of rich red wine. They had made love until exhaustion put an end to their endeavours. Then he had slept without nightmares. The visions that had haunted his nights for years rarely let him be; images of Father stood alone on a sea of sand dunes, his empty, staring eye sockets, his hands outstretched, then the sandstorm that always rose and consumed them both. Tears welled in Pavo’s eyes.

At that moment, a wave rolled under the ship, shaking Pavo back to the present. He braced for the sickness to return. But it did not. He frowned, patting his belly.

‘Found your sea legs at last?’ Felix asked, strolling across the deck.

‘I pray to Mithras I have,’ Pavo chuckled.

‘Well the next test will be to see how we cope in the heat of Syria.’ Felix eyed the horizon and stroked at his forked beard as he said this. ‘This sortie might be little more than policing Antioch or something. They have trouble with partisan urban cohorts in the eastern cities, I hear. We might rarely have to step out of the shade . . . but I doubt it.’

‘Do you have anything to go on, sir?’

‘About the mission? Not a thing. Not a bloody thing.’ His expression was stern and his gaze had drifted to Gallus, standing near the prow, silent and staring, his plume and cloak fluttering in the breeze. While the rest of the legionaries wore only tunics and boots, Gallus was – as always – encased in armour. ‘I fear the tribunus knows more than he is letting on. He’s protecting us.’ Felix looked to Pavo with the driest of grins. ‘And Gallus rarely shies from scaring the shit out of us. So whatever it is, it will not be pretty.’ Felix took a long pull on his skin of soured wine and issued a brisk sigh. ‘And things are going askew already,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Keep this from the ranks, but we were expecting to meet an escort galley in Rhodos – men sent from Antioch by Emperor Valens to guide us through the pirate-ridden waters ahead and safely to the east.’

‘Aye?’ Pavo frowned, remembering Gallus’ quarrel with the portmaster. ‘You suspect trouble?’

‘No, I expect it,’ he said with a mirthless grin, then strode over to a cluster of legionaries playing dice.

Pavo heard the raucous laughter that erupted as Felix made some quip about one legionary’s personal hygiene. But he could not shift his gaze from Gallus.

 

 

The salt spray had long-since coated Gallus and chilled his skin, but he was unblinking. He sensed the world drift by all around him, as if crying out to him to remind him he was alive. The sun-bleached coastline of southern Anatolia, the crashing waves, the skirling breeze, the tang of the sea air, an occasional shadow from scudding clouds and the heat of the pleasant sun. But he was lost in his thoughts. His gaze remained on the small, carved wooden idol in his hand. It was well worn, but the features of a muscular Mithras emerging from cold, lifeless rock were still discernible.

Mithras,
he mouthed silently;
we made a bargain, did we not? I pledged everything to you and asked only one thing in return. That you allow me to forget.

No sooner had the words crossed his lips than the images returned to him. Olivia. The sweet, scented nape of her neck. The warmth of her as he slid his hands around her waist. The awe in which he beheld the tiny bundle in her arms. Baby Marcus’ ice-blue eyes staring back at him in equal wonderment. Ice-blue, like steel. At once, he closed his eyes. But he could not stave off the echoes of the clashing blades, then the images of the roaring pyre and the blackened bodies of mother and child at the heart of its fury.

Why will you not allow me to forget? Must I do more for you?

Only a stinging spray of saltwater offered any form of reply. He took off his helmet, shaking the water from the black plume, then smoothed at his grey-flecked peak of hair. He turned from the prow to look over the deck and his men. Their faces were untroubled. They jibed and joked. They still had the gift of the soldier’s skin, he thought. That tough callus that grew over a legionary’s heart soon after his first taste of bloodshed and loss. They might need it, he thought, the dark cloud of the missing escort galley still hovering in his thoughts.

At that moment, his gaze fell on a lone figure at the stern. Pavo. The young optio had been a mere recruit only a year or so previously. Crucially, he had been one of the few that had survived the treacherous events in the time since. He noticed that Pavo looked to the eastern horizon, lost in thought like a reflection of himself only moments ago. The young optio toyed with the bronze medallion hung around his neck. Gallus knew of the lad’s conviction that the piece was some link to his father.

‘Aye, we all seek answers,’ he muttered to himself. Realising he was close to smiling, he gripped the idol of Mithras tightly once more, tucked it away in his purse and grimaced, turning to face forward once again. ‘Perhaps the east will offer us both . . . ’ his words trailed off.

Squinting and shading his eyes from the sun, he saw something in the waves between their fleet and a limestone cove on the coast. It was a
liburnian
– a swift vessel with a solitary mast and a single bank of oars. The sail was sun-bleached and dyed with red, vertical stripes. There was something splashing, thrashing wildly in the vessel’s wake. The crew seemed to be crowded around the stern, cheering and whooping. Gallus frowned and then his nose wrinkled as he saw what they dragged behind the boat. A man, bound at the wrists. His body was stained red with wounds, and the crew were throwing cuts of bloody meat into the surrounding water. The man’s distant screams were harrowing, and Gallus soon realised why. Dark, shining humps split the water’s surface near the thrashing man. Then fins and thrashing tails. Next, the surface erupted as a blacktip shark burst from the depths. Its jaws stretching wide to reveal a ridged, pink throat lined with dagger-like teeth. In an instant, the jaws clamped down upon the tethered wretch. This cut the screaming short as blood pumped into the air and the water turned crimson. A cheer erupted before another poor soul was led up to the stern of the vessel. His wrists were shackled, and he wore a blood-spattered, off-white tunic hemmed with purple – legionary issue. The man puffed his chest out in defiance and spat some curse at his captors, drawing raucous laughter from them. The crew pulled in the rope from the sea and looped the frayed and bloodied end around the man’s shackles.

‘No! Pirates?’ Felix said, sidling up next to him.

‘Aye, Cretans, I’d wager. And that,’ he stabbed a finger at the crippled hull of a Roman bireme dashed against the rocks near the edge of the cove, pirates scurrying across its remains to salvage its cargo, ‘was the escort vessel we were supposed to meet in Rhodos.’ He nodded to the man in chains at the stern of the liburnian. ‘And that poor bastard,’ Gallus continued as the crew kicked the shackled man from the ship and into the sea, ‘is the last of her crew.’ Blood spray and tortured screaming followed, and both men looked away, sickened.

‘Look, there’s another liburnian,’ Zosimus added, stabbing a finger between Gallus and Felix, pointing to the cove. Sure enough, hidden by a protective arm of rock, another of the nimble pirate warships rested, its bow anchored on a stretch of white sand.

Gallus’ skin prickled. Centurion Quadratus’ trireme was far behind – barely a dot in the western horizon, and they could not risk facing these two light and lithe pirate liburnians alone. He sucked in a breath to give the order to turn round, but another cry cut him off.

‘Mithras, they’ve seen us!’ Noster shrieked.

A lone figure high up on the seaborne liburnian’s mast was waving and crying out, one hand pointing right at the Roman trireme. The men on deck instantly leapt into action, rushing to man the oars and adjust the rigging. Likewise, the train of men on the shore of the cove dropped their cargo and rushed to the beached liburnian, readying to launch it.

BOOK: Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire
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