Justinian

MYAKES

You know, Brother Elpidios, when one of Justinian's slaves- maybe the last one who hadn't run away by then- brought word that he wanted to see me, I wondered if he was going to take my head- just to make sure he'd done it, you might say. That was about the only time when I really thought about running off. In the end, though, I didn't. I'd been doing what Justinian told me for too long by then to break the habit, I expect.

"Tomorrow we fight," he said when I walked into his tent. "Tomorrow Helias dies. He killed my son, sure as if he'd cut his throat with his own hands."

Justinian says we had a hundred men left? I don't think so, but all right. Helias had thousands- I know that. He could squash us like a man squashing a bug and never set eyes on Justinian himself. What's that, Brother? Had Justinian forgotten he'd killed Helias's children, or did he think it didn't matter because they deserved what they got and Tiberius didn't? Truth to tell, I don't know. It amounts to about the same thing either way, wouldn't you say?

He handed me the codex- the very one you've got there- and he said, "After I win tomorrow, give this back to me."

"All right, Emperor," I told him. I understood what he meant, even if he couldn't come right out and say it.

"Fight hard, Myakes," he said, and clapped me on the back like we were talking in a tavern. "Always fight hard." He knew all about that. Nobody can say anything different there. I nodded my head and went away. The book? I stowed it in my own knapsack.

By the next morning, we didn't have a hundred men left. I don't think we had fifty. To this day, Brother Elpidios, I don't know why we had any. A few people will stick to any cause, I suppose. What? Do I mean me? Who else would I be talking about?

We put on our armor and we waited: me, a couple of other stubborn excubitores, a few men from the military district of the Opsikion, a handful of crazy Bulgars, and Justinian. He trotted his horse back and forth in front of us as if we were fifty thousand. He looked splendid in his gilded chainmail. If only he'd had a real army to lead.

About halfway through the morning, up came Helias. He had a real army. I don't know how big it was- big enough and then some, I'll tell you that. But now he was as wild for revenge as Justinian ever had been. When he saw Justinian there in front of him at last, he forgot about all the soldiers h e was leading. "Murderer!" he screamed, and set spurs to his horse, and charged.

"Murderer!" Justinian screamed back at him, and he charged, too.

We all yelled ourselves hoarse, Justinian's little band. If he cut down Helias, who could say what that army would do? His own force had shrunk in a hurry. Who was to say it couldn't grow again in hurry, too?

Over on the other side of the line, all those however many thousand men Helias had with him went quiet as the tomb. They were thinking the same thing we were, sure as the devil, only our up was their down. If Justinian nailed Helias, everything was up for grabs again.

If. If, if, if. We were thinking with our hearts, the forlorn little guard Justinian had. Like he said himself, he was past forty by then, and he hadn't done anything you'd call fighting from horseback since before he got exiled. He'd exercised, yes, but it's not the same thing. Helias was, I don't know, fifteen years younger, something like that, and he really knew what he was doing.

We didn't need long to see that. The first pass they made at each other, Helias knocked Justinian's sword out of his hand. The next time around, Justinian went after him with a dagger. No quit in Justinian- never any quit in Justinian. He didn't try and run away. If he didn't have any weapons left, he'd fight barehanded and hope for a break.

He didn't get one. Helias hit him a whack with the flat of his blade that left him swaying in the saddle like he didn't know the difference between stew and Easter. When Helias saw he couldn't fight any more, he got an arm around his neck and dragged him out of the saddle. Then he jumped down himself, and drew his dagger.

Justinian tried to kick him. It didn't work. Helias knelt down beside him. Justinian started to yell something. It might have been, "Em-!" Maybe not, too. We'll never know now. Whatever it was, Justinian never finished, on account of Helias got to work with that knife.

A minute later, he stood up. He was holding Justinian's head by the hair. I think it tried to bite him. No, Brother Elpidios, not really- a joke. If Justinian could have, he would have, but he was done. It was over. At last, it was over.

Helias's men let out all the cheers they'd been holding back while they waited to see whether he'd live. They rolled forward over us. It wasn't a battle. It wasn't anything like a battle. Only a couple of us fought.

No, not me, Brother. I ran back to my tent and grabbed the knapsack with the codex in it. Then I tried to run. Why did I do that? If you'd asked me then, Brother Elpidios, I couldn't have told you. I just did it. Now, after all these years, the way it looks to me is, I'd been doing what Justinian wanted for so long that a little thing like him being dead wasn't going to change the way I acted.

I don't think it ended up hurting me. So I got caught a hundred cubits away from my tent instead of two hundred. So what? I wasn't going to get away. Nobody who stayed with Justinian till the end got away, I don't think.

Theodora? Now, that's a good question. I have to tell you, I don't know what happened to her. From that day till this, I've never heard. Maybe she's in a convent. Maybe they sent her back to her brother. Maybe they killed her, and kept quiet about it afterwards. Helias might have. Maybe she's somebody's concubine, or somebody's wife. Make up your own story. I can't help you there.

Me? Thanks to the fancy armor I was wearing, the lugs who had hold of me figured out who I was. They dragged me off to Helias. He already had Justinian's head mounted on a spear. "Ah, Myakes," he said. "So it comes to this."

"It comes to this, sure enough," I answered.

"What am I supposed to do with you?" he said.

"What are you asking me for?" I said to him. "If it had come down the other way, I'd've tried to see that you died faster than Justinian would have wanted, anyhow."

"Yes, I believe you would have," Helias said. "You never stopped Justinian from being vicious, but sometimes you stopped him from being as vicious. Does that make you better for doing something or worse for not doing more? Hard to say, isn't it?"

I looked over toward Justinian's head. His eyes were still open, but they were just dull glass. A fly was walking on one of them. I said, "He raised you up, too, Helias, and you bit his hand."

"He would have taken my head if I hadn't," he said. "You love him too well, Myakes- I don't want you running around loose. But I don't quite have the stomach to kill you, not when you did do something, anyhow, to make his evils less. I'll throw you in a monastery, and take your eyes to make sure you don't come out."

"If that's what you've got in mind, I'd sooner you did kill me," I told him.

He didn't listen. He didn't have to listen, not to the likes of me. He gave the orders, and his bully boys dragged me off to take care of 'em. It wasn't what you'd call a fancy job. They didn't bother with silver bowls and boiling vinegar, the way the executioner had with Felix. They hauled me over to a fire and heated up a couple of skewers, the kind you'd use to roast meat. Then one of them got a thick leather gauntlet from somewhere, grabbed a skewer, and burned out my left eye with it. He did that one first because it was on his right side, I guess.

What do you mean, what did I do? I did just what you'd think. I screamed and did my damnedest to get away, only I couldn't. Did it hurt? You bet your balls it hurt! It hurt worse than anything else that's ever happened to me. Then the fellow with the leather glove got the other red-hot skewer out of the fire. The very last thing I ever saw, Brother Elpidios, through the tears that were streaming down my face, was that glowing iron, coming right at me.

I heard the fellow who'd blinded me throw down the gauntlet. "Off to a monastery with him," he said, "and better than he deserves, too."

"Ahh, Myakes wasn't so bad," one of the others said, like I was dead instead of just wishing I was. "Here's his knapsack. Let him take it along." He must have opened it then, I suppose to see if anything in there was worth stealing. He saw the codex. "What's he doing with a book?"

The one who'd stuck skewers in my eyes- ugly bastard; I remember that, oh yes I do- he laughed like a jackal. "Who cares? He can keep it- it'll give him something to read." He thought that was the funniest thing in the world, and so did all his stinking chums.

But that's how Justinian's book got here, Brother Elpidios, in case you ever wondered. That's how you finally got to read it, even if I never have.

What can I say? The book is done. My story's done, because I haven't had any story to speak of since I came here. It's been the same thing over and over and over, and it'll keep on being the same thing till they wrap me in a shroud and lay me in the grave. I suppose, for a man with no eyes, it's better that way. No story, no, but no surprises, either.

And Justinian's done. Maybe it's better that way, too. I don't know. Justinian, he was nothing but surprises. For better and for worse, you never knew what he'd do next. Whatever it was, he went at it hard as he could. If he'd been better at choosing… ahhh, if he'd been better at choosing, he wouldn't have been Justinian.

And now that you've read the whole book and you've heard everything I've got to say about it, I suppose we're done, too, eh, Brother Elpidios? Brother? Are you there, Brother?