The innkeeper sighed as the last of the legionary party trudged out into the night. The tavern now empty, he swept shards of shattered jugs and splinters from the floor, muttering to himself as he saw one partially finished leg of lamb smeared across the flagstones. Still, the men from the Thracian legion had tripled his normal nightly income, he thought with a wry chuckle. He rested his broom by the door and reached up to bolt it. But he stopped, sensing that the place was not empty after all. He twisted round, a cold shiver wriggling across his neck. There was one figure, cloaked in the shadows of the far corner. All he could see was a hand, weighing something over and over.
‘Didn’t you hear my call? The tavern’s closed,’ he grunted, hoping it sounded aggressive enough. But the figure didn’t move. ‘I said — ’ but the words caught in his throat when he saw the thing the figure weighed. A leather purse adorned with a faded, tawny gold lion — stained with blood. At last, the figure in the shadows stirred, glowering at him from the darkness. It was one of the men from the legionary rabble, he was sure.
When the figure shot to standing, the innkeeper dropped his gaze and pretended to be sweeping the floor listlessly. He felt the figure’s eyes burn on his skin, heard footsteps crossing the tavern floor then the squeaking of the door opening. With that, the figure was gone, off into the night after the legionary rabble.
The innkeeper breathed a sigh of relief, then frowned, realising he had seen the golden lion motif before. ‘Just what is a man of the empire doing with a Persian purse?’ he chuckled.
Chapter 5
Pavo staggered round and round, sweeping his gaze over the dunes. Endless as always. Confusion danced in his thoughts. ‘Father?’ he spun around looking for the solitary figure the nightmare always offered — the tortured, hunched figure with the empty, cauterised eye sockets, arms outstretched, calling for him. But the dunes were empty and he was alone. Pavo seized the moment ‘Show me my father or leave me be,’ he snarled into the ether. Just then, as if in riposte, the sandstorm picked up, hurling stinging grains against his skin. But he refused to shield himself from it, squaring his jaw in defiance. The storm grew ferocious, roaring, almost casting him to the ground. ‘You cannot hurt me anymore!’ he cried out.
Suddenly, something burst from the dunes underfoot and grasped at his ankles. Terror shot through him as he saw a knotted, bony hand jutting from the sand, clutching him. It pulled him down, into the dunes. He kicked and thrashed, but to no avail. The hands grappled at his knees, and he saw the top of a head emerging from the sand. He grasped for his dagger only to find it was not there. So he clamped his hands around a nearby rock and held it overhead.
At that moment, the head emerged from the sand as the storm grew deafening.
‘Father?’ Pavo recoiled at the gawping, sightless face — more sickly and aged than ever.
‘Beware, Pavo!’ Father cried, his straggly, greying locks whipping up in the tumult. ‘Beware!’
Then, like a predator’s jaws, the sand swallowed Father once again. Pavo cried out at this, only for the sand to suck him down too. It rushed to his waist in one heartbeat, and in the next, the sand was around his neck. A heartbeat later the air was gone from his lungs as the sand enveloped his face. He opened his mouth to scream and the sand poured in, muting his cry and filling his mouth and nostrils.
‘No!’ he cried aloud. His eyes shot open and he saw that he was entangled in his sweat-soaked blanket. He panted and clutched the phalera, then looked down from his upper bunk and around the contubernium block. The seven other slumbering forms of Pavo’s contubernium lay bathed in dawn light. A handful of them nearby had stirred at Pavo’s outburst.
‘And there we have it — who needs a wake-up call when we have Pavo and his bloody nightmares?’ Zosimus croaked testily from the bunk opposite. The centurion slid his legs from the bed and groaned, wiping his eyes with balled fists.
Just then, a trumpeting volley of farts sounded from the adjacent contubernium chamber and echoed along the colonnaded porch of the sleeping block.
Sura roused at this, cocking an eyebrow; ‘And who needs a buccina when you have Quadratus?’
Pavo shook his head clear of the nightmare, then winced as the crushing, rhythmic thud of a hangover took its place. His mouth was moistureless and felt as if it had been stripped of skin and a stabbing pain persisted behind one eye. Sighing, he pulled on the tunic folded under his pillow, then slid his legs round to drop from the bunk. He landed on the flagstones — already warmed from the dawn sun — with a yelp, and clutched a hand to his ribs. More, he felt a stinging on his cheek and touched a hand to the swollen, flowering bruise there. The scrapes and bumps from the brawl in the tavern last night had seemed innocuous when they had come back here, well into the hours of darkness.
‘Mithras, I feel like a beaten dog,’ Sura croaked as he stood likewise, rubbing his throat.
‘Aye, well that makes three of us,’ Zosimus grimaced as he stood, stark naked, eyeing his bruises then cupping his testicles to examine the swollen, purple one. With a shrug, he hooked his tunic from his bunk side and dropped it over his hulking frame, then rolled his head this way and that — the bones in his neck cricking as he did so. Next, he sucked in a breath that seemed to double the size of his chest then took to striding around the other five bunks, booting at the frames.
‘Right, you pussies! Get up and get your marching gear together!’ The still-drowsy legionaries sat up with a start, some with a yelp. They scrambled out of their bedding, bleary-eyed and throwing salutes. ‘Tribunus Gallus is finalising things with the emperor. We move out at mid-morning when he gets back. So don’t piss about — after last night, I don’t want any sloppy armour or kit showing up my century.’
Habitus, the beanpole legionary who had joined the XI Claudia only months ago, was last to rise. ‘Yes, sir!’ he barked, blinking the sleep from his eyes.
‘Mithras!’ Zosimus backed away, cupping a hand over his mouth. ‘What in Hades have you been eating, soldier? You’re breath smells like you’ve been munching on pig shit!’ The rest of the legionaries stifled their laughter as Habitus reddened. Satisfied with his torturing of the younger lads, Zosimus strutted from the contubernium, chuckling to himself. Few noticed the big Thracian frowning in disgust when he breathed into his hand and caught wind of his own breath. ‘Must have been that bloody ale,’ he muttered as he left.
Pavo and Sura took to waking the others of the century, then went outside and into the dry morning heat. The dusty drill yard at the heart of the fort was cramped, and hemmed by the colonnaded contubernia blocks. On the far side of the yard was the principia, the heart of the barracks. Like the rest of Antioch in daylight, all of the buildings seemed to reflect and intensify the sun’s glare.
‘I suppose the Flavia Firma lads will be in a similar state as us,’ Sura mused.
Pavo was about to agree when he saw the glinting square of armoured men at the far side of the principia; Baptista and his century, fully prepared to march already, waiting on Centurion Carbo, passing the time by scowling upon the newly woken XI Claudia men. The Flavia Firma were a comitatenses legion. Thus, unlike their limitanei counterparts, they wore fine scale vests, new shields freshly painted in dark-blue with the silver Chi-Rho emblem, fresh leather boots and recently tempered intercisas with flared noseguards, spathas and spears. To add salt to the wounds, they each looked fresh and alert, only the bruises from the brawl spoiling their immaculate turnout.