‘You can’t polish horseshit either,’ Pavo mused in his friend’s wake, cocking an eyebrow. ‘Though you certainly can talk it.’
Sura scowled over his shoulder at Pavo as the trader melted back into the throng, roaring with laughter.
The Imperial Way led them downhill, and the grandeur of the city was unveiled before them. Sweeping hills encrusted with marble and brick, tall and ornate palaces, red-tiled Christian domes and columns bearing statues of emperors past pointing skywards. The opulence intensified as the peninsula tapered to its tip, where the Imperial Palace sat perched high on the first hill, overlooking the Hippodrome. Workers crawled over this finery like ants, still busy harvesting gold from the finest monuments to fund the legions in the Gothic struggle.
They cut across the Forum of the Ox and made their way to the north of the city. After passing under the shadow of the Great Aqueduct of Valens, they approached the city’s northern sea walls where a salt-tang from the Golden Horn spiced the air. Pavo looked up to the small, squat barrack compound at the end of the street, near the Neorion Harbour gate. Instantly, he and Sura halted as a barking voice from within the compound cut across the hubbub of the streets. A voice that refused to be ignored.
Gallus.
‘Could scare the shit out of a bear from fifty stadia,’ Sura muttered, sitting upright, shoulders squared.
Pavo straightened likewise, instantly sympathising with the poor legionaries in there and on the sharp end of the tirade. The Tribunus of the XI Claudia Legion was relentless. A man who ate as rarely as he slept, and seldom showed anything other than pure steel to his ranks. But a man with boundless courage.
They came to the main gate of the barrack compound. This had been the home for Gallus and his small vexillatio of the XI Claudia for these last few weeks. Two centuries, detached from the rest of the legion and stationed here to prepare for the mission to the east. The sentry on the barrack walls wheeled a hand in the air to someone unseen, below.
The gates creaked open and the training yard inside the compound was unveiled. One century of eighty men marched in tight formation around the square, ruby shields only inches apart, their mail vests polished and their tunics underneath bleached white with purple hems. The iron fins on their intercisa helmets bobbed like a school of sharks. Their spear tips pierced the air and their spathas swung from their scabbards in time to the march. And, as a recent measure, each man carried a composite bow strapped to his back. The aquilifer marched near the front, carrying the legion standard; a staff topped with a silver eagle, and a ruby bull banner hanging from the crossbar just underneath. This was Centurion Quadratus’ century, but today Primus Pilus Felix – Gallus’ right-hand man – led them. This short and swarthy, fork-bearded Greek showed no sign of fatigue as the drill went on. And it had been ongoing for some time, Pavo reckoned, going by the sweat lashing from some of his younger comrades’ faces. Some of them shot furtive and pleading glances to the rear compound wall. Pavo looked to the figure standing up there and knew their pleas would go unheard.
Gallus was perched there like a bird of prey, watching in silence, his ruby cloak wrapped around his tall, lean frame. The plume of his intercisa danced in the sea breeze. The rim and cheek guards of his helm hugged his gaunt, starved-wolf expression. Rumours had spread that Gallus was ill at ease with this mission and with the enforced separation from the remainder of his legion – the few other tattered centuries of the XI Claudia still stationed out in the makeshift Thracian Limes. Indeed, Gallus’ mood often seemed aligned to that of a bear with a hangover who had just trodden upon a rusty nail. The tribunus’ ice-blue eyes scrutinised every movement of the marching men, just waiting to bark them into line should they dare stray an inch from their positions.
As he and Sura dismounted, Pavo noticed Gallus’ glare flick across to them. They tensed instinctively.
Then a heavy pair of hands slapped onto their shoulders from behind. ‘Finished pussying about on horseback, have you?’ a gruff voice spoke.
Pavo’s heart lurched and Sura yelped beside him. He spun to see Centurion Zosimus, his immediate superior and leader of the other century of the vexillatio. The oak-limbed and granite-faced giant wore a mischievous grin under his shattered nose, and his stubbled anvil jaw and shaven scalp were bathed in sweat.
‘Yes, sir!’ the pair replied.
‘At ease,’ the big Thracian said, picking some strand of meat from his teeth. Then he frowned, his gaze shifting to the bloodstain on Pavo’s tunic. ‘What happened out there?’
‘It’s nothing, the bleeding has stopped,’ Pavo replied. ‘A Gothic scouting party had broken through the temporary limes and they were riding south-east of Adrianople.’