Justinian

MYAKES

Ah, Neboulos. I haven't thought about Neboulos in going on forty years not more than once or twice, anyhow. He was a piece of work, Neboulos was, no two ways about it.

You've never heard of him, Brother Elpidios? Not till you read of him in Justinian's manuscript, you say? God and all the saints, you've made me feel ancient often enough before. Why should one more time bother me? And, thinking about it, his heyday was here and gone years before you were born, so there's no real reason you should have heard of him, but still\a160…

I wondered if Justinian would kill him when he came out with that, "You owe me four pounds of gold." Every excubitor who heard him was either snickering or rupturing himself trying not to snicker. Justinian's temper was always chancy, though. If he'd taken it the wrong way, Neboulos was one dead Sklavinian, oath or no oath. But then Justinian laughed, and when the Emperor laughs, everybody laughs.

Neboulos? Yes, he laughed, too.

After Neboulos came into our camp, warfare against the Sklavenoi ended. We rounded up some thousands more of the barbarians and sent them on toward Constantinople for resettlement. In this, Neboulos made himself useful, persuading several petty chiefs they would do better to yield than to waste their lives in useless battle.

With the Sklavinias under Roman sway, I brought the army down to Thessalonike, which, although the greatest European city in the Empire after Constantinople, had been twice besieged by the Sklavenoi over the years, and might have fallen to them if not for the miracles wrought by St. Demetrios, its patron.

I rode into Thessalonike on a white horse, at the head of the soldiers. The people of the town went wild to see me. For so long, Thessalonike had been a Roman island in a Sklavinian sea; now it was linked again to the larger part of the civilized world. Seeing Neboulos walking behind my horse, the inhabitants jeered and cursed him, for they had feared his growing power.

He took no notice of the jeers. Even when they began to pelt him, first with rotten vegetables and then with stones, he dodged only those missiles aimed directly at him, and did so with a quick economy of motion that kept all but a couple from striking him.

"Let him be!" I shouted to the crowd. "He is mine!" The Thessalonikans bayed wolfish approval at that, no doubt construing it to mean I had in mind for him a fate more bitter and lingering than any a mere mob could inflict. Would they had been right. In fact, though, it was only that I admired the courage and self-possession with which he faced them, and did not wish to watch him slaughtered as part of the celebration of my arrival.

Seeing Thessalonike and its walls, I understood how (with the help of St. Demetrios) it, like Constantinople, held out in the face of everything its foes could do. It rises steeply from the Thermaic Gulf, the Via Egnatia entering it less than half a mile from the sea. The citadel stands on the high ground in the northe astern part of the city. The circuit of the walls (counting the seawall, which is in a poorer state of repair than the rest) is about three miles. More than a hundred towers, some rectangular, others triangular, gave Roman soldiers fine vantage points from which to fight.

Kyriakos, the bishop of Thessalonike and also, in effect, its governor, greeted me just inside the Kassandreia Gate. "God bless the Emperor Justinian!" he cried, "the God-crowned maker of peace, benefactor to this city, pious and faithful to Jesus Christ our Lord!"

"God bless Thessalonike," I replied, to which the people cheered. "Through His help and that of the great martyr, Saint Demetrios, we have triumphed against our foes, who are also the foes of the saint." The Thessalonikans shouted louder for their beloved saint than they had for their city.

Kyriakos leading the way, we paraded through Thessalonike. When we passed under a great triumphal arch perhaps a bowshot inside the wall, he crossed himself, saying, "This was built by the arch-persecutors, Galerius and Diocletian."

Reliefs on the arch showed prisoners- easterners: Persians, perhaps- pleading for mercy before a Roman Emperor in antique costume like that which Constantine the Great is often seen wearing on his monuments. As the bishop had said, Galerius and Diocletian savagely persecuted Christians, and no doubt suffer the pangs of hell because of it. But without their victories, the Roman Empire would have suffered untold grief at the hands of its enemies. How was I to feel about them, then? How I felt, at the time, was puzzled.

Just north of the triumphal arch was an impressive church dedicated to St. George: Thessalonike seemed to have, and to need, several churches favoring the military saints. It also had, along the Via Egnatia, a church dedicated to the Mother of God. "In here," Kyriakos said proudly, "rests an icon of our Lord which human hands did not paint." His pride was justified, for by possessing such a holy image Thessalonike showed itself to be no provincial backwater, but a city to be reckoned with.

Shortly after passing the church dedicated to the Virgin, we turned north up a meaner, narrower street leading to the church of St. Demetrios, a church worthy of standing comparison to any I have ever seen, save only the great church in the imperial city. It is an old-fashioned basilica, rectangular in plan, with a wooden roof and with a transept giving it something of a cruciform appearance.

"Here we shall celebrate the divine liturgy," Kyriakos said, "celebrating also your glorious victory against the godless Sklavenoi who have for so long oppressed and harassed Thessalonike."

Notables, both priests and laymen, filled not only the wide nave of the church but also the aisles to either side, aisles separated from that nave by columns of red, green, and white marble, a stone with which Thessalonike is abundantly supplied. I admired the mosaics of St. Demetrios and others, who I learned were a prefect Leontios (the coincidence of names amused me), who had built the first church on the site more than two and a half centuries before, and Kyriakos's predecessor, John, who had led the defense of the city against the Sklavenoi during my great-great-grandfather's reign.

At the close of the liturgy, I took communion from Kyriakos, eating of our Lord's flesh and drinking His blood. Afterwards, the bishop introduced me to a whole great swarm of prominent Thessalonikans, men whose names vanished from my head the moment I left the city they inhabited. And why not? Men who think themselves worth remembering come to Constantinople, to see if they can prove it.

A partial exception was Dorotheos, commander of the garrison of Thessalonike. Even he, though, was less than he might have been, allowing Kyriakos to take the leading role in administering Thessalonike; in that, though, he but acquiesced to a long-standing tradition of episcopal control in city affairs.

To me, Dorotheos said, "You have done a great thing, Emperor, in subduing the Sklavenoi hereabouts. They've made life miserable for us the past hundred years."

"Your hinterland is free of them now, for I've cleared them out by the tens of thousands," I answered, and then paused, struck by a happy thought. I had been contemplating making Thrace a military district on the order of those in Anatolia; doing the same around Thessalonike would give the city warriors on whom to draw should the barbarian menace revive. I said, "I will send military peasants here, to settle on some of the lands cleared of the Sklavenoi. And you, Dorotheos, you I shall name the first commander of the military district of Hellas." At the last moment, I chose that more sweeping title instead of naming the district after Thessalonike.

"Thank you, Emperor!" Dorotheos exclaimed. We both knew, of course, that great stretches of Hellas remained outside effective Roman control- indeed, outside any Roman control at all- being overrun by more bands of Sklavenoi. All the same, the name offered the promise of eventual redemption for the territory named.

Then Kyriakos said, "What a splendid promotion for you, Dorotheos," in tones suggesting he did not find it splendid at all. I realized the bishop was used to being the leading man in Thessalonike, and found anything tending to aggrandize a rival distasteful in the extreme. I also realized I would be wise to do something to placate Kyriakos, as he would probably remain more important here than Dorotheos even after the military district of Hellas was established.

At a supper later that evening, I found a way to grant Kyriakos a favor without diminishing the new authority I was conferring upon Dorotheos. The centerpiece at the feast was a roast kid basted with olive oil and crushed garlic. Watching Neboulos amused me; while relishing the fatty richness of the dish, he cut away the crisp outermost slices of meat and shoveled on salt with both hands to kill the taste of the garlic, the Sklavenoi, like many barbarians, being less fond of it than we Romans.

When he noticed my eye on him, he said, "Emperor, I am glad again I surrender to you. You Romans live by sea, make all salt you want. You do not sell salt to me. You do not sell it to my people. Now at last I can eat all I want." And he reached for the saltcellar again.

"Selling salt is against our law," I said, and let it go at that. Without salt, preserving food is much harder. That makes the stuff a weapon of war, hardly less than iron. Anyone selling his foes that which strengthens them deserves what happens to him.

Neboulos sprinkled still more salt over the fresh surfaces of kid his knife exposed. Turning to Kyriakos, I adapted the text of the Book of Matthew, saying, "In the Sklavinian you see a man for whom the salt has not lost his savor."

"True enough, Emperor," he said, and then, lowering his voice, "I would not mind if, like Lot's wife, he were turned into a pillar of salt. Not only would we be rid of him as a man- which, thanks to you, we are in a different way- but we could break him up and sell him for a good price."

I laughed, but quickly grew thoughtful. "You want to sell salt for a good price? I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll give the church of Saint Demetrios a salt pan all to itself, and all the revenues from it, to thank the saint for aiding us against the Sklavenoi. Let the salt pan be entirely free: you'll pay no taxes for it, and you will not be obliged to furnish salt from it to the soldiers without payment. Does that suit you, Kyriakos?"

"God bless you, Emperor!" the bishop exclaimed, which I took for an affirmative.

"My secretaries will draw up the edict tomorrow," I said, and Kyriakos looked more joyful still. Thessalonike lying by the sea, granting the church he headed the privilege of producing its own salt would bring it extra revenue without seriously inconveniencing the garrison, which had other salt pans upon which to draw. It also helped salve the bishop's bitterness at the greater authority Dorotheos was to acquire.

If I could not live in Constantinople, I would sooner make my home in Thessalonike than in any other city I have seen. But I could not stay there long. It was already September, the beginning of a new year, and I wanted to strike a blow at the Bulgars before returning to the imperial city for the winter.

To reach the Bulgars, the Roman army had to pass through the territory of the seven tribes of Sklavenoi they had subjected to themselves when they settled south of the Danube after my father failed to crush them north of the river. The roads leading up to that country were frightfully bad. Even when it was under Roman rule, it had been a raw frontier district, and it had been ravaged by Goths and Huns and Avars and Sklavenoi and Bulgars; whatever highways had existed were now dirt tracks at best, memories at worst.

The Sklavenoi of the Seven Tribes tried to withstand us from villages surrounded by a circle of wagons, as Neboulos had; the dreadful roads must have prevented word of what we could do to such works from reaching so far north. Liquid fire proved as effective against them as it had against him.

He stood at my side as the flames leaped forth and seized the wagons. "How do you Romans do that?" he asked me, watching the Sklavenoi try and fail to douse the flames, watching our soldiers take advantage of the chaos the fire caused and cut down the barbarians.

"It is a gift from God," I answered. Neboulos was free enough within the camp, but not so free as to be able to sniff around the wagons where the liquid fire and the tubes and bellows used to project it were stored. I had warned his guards their heads would answer for that. They believed me, which was as well, for I meant every word of it.

"Your god is a strong god," Neboulos said. He knew little of the true and holy Christian faith, worshiping instead the lying demons who, calling themselves gods, have deceived and damned the Sklavinian race.

These Sklavenoi did not resist so stoutly as had the barbarians Neboulos had led. On our breaking into their village, they threw down their bows and javelins and cried for mercy in their own tongue and in such fragments of Greek and even of Latin (this having been, before the barbarians' invasions, a Latin-speaking land, they must have learned it from a few surviving peasants) as they had. We took prisoners by the thousands, and sent them down toward the Via Egnatia for resettlement.

Among the prisoners were many comely women. As far as I was concerned, the soldiers who wanted them were welcome to them.

Having defeated the Sklavenoi of the Seven Tribes, we pushed north and east over the Haimos Mountains, invading the land the Bulgars held directly. They fled before us, driving their herds of cattle and sheep with them. Unlike the Sklavenoi, who lived in villages and farmed, the Bulgars were nomads without fixed abode, and the more difficult to bring to battle against their will on account of that.

We might yet have punished them as they deserved, they being unprepared to resist so many Romans roaming through the land they had stolen, had not the weather turned against us. It might as well be a different world north of the mountains; the olive does not grow there, nor does the grapevine: the winters in that benighted province are too fierce to let either survive. And the first snowstorms came early that year, covering the land in white.

The chief quartermaster, an officer named Makarios, approached me with a worried look on his face. "Emperor, we have campaigned all through the summer," he said. "We have not the supplies, especially for the horses, to go on in the face of snow."

"We'll take what we need from the peasant villages, and-" I broke off. I had already seen how peasant villages, there north of the Haimos range, were few and far between. I had not intended in any case to winter north of the mountains; ordering an army to winter in barbarian territory was what had brought Maurice down in ruin and set in train the events that raised my family to the throne. I did not aim to start some other family's rise to power at my expense. But having to withdraw with my attack barely begun also galled me. I said, "We will go on for another few days and see what happens." Makarios bowed and withdrew.

What I hoped would happen was that we might get a break in the weather, another week or two of mild days after that snowstorm, in which we could strike at the Bulgars, plundering their herds if nothing else. Instead, less than half a day after the first snowstorm ended, another blew in.

This time, it was Myakes who came to me. As perhaps no one else would have dared, he told me the truth, straight out: "Emperor, even the excubitores are starting to grumble at staying here so long. And if we're grumbling, the cavalry from the military districts has to be fit to be tied. They've already missed the harvest, and they didn't like that. They aren't fond of being stuck up here, not even a little they aren't."

Not only had unhappy soldiers overthrown Maurice, they had also murdered my grandfather and ruined my father's campaign against these same Bulgars, inspiring his brothers to try to cast him down from the throne. An Emperor whose soldiers were unhappy with him was an Emperor whose throne shook under him.

"Thank you, Myakes," I said. Not getting everything I wanted was always hard for me. Here, though, I saw I had no choice. "We'll go on for today, and see what we can do. Come tomorrow, it's back to the imperial city."

We did little that day, seeing neither Bulgars nor their herds. When we encamped for the evening, I announced our return to the whole army. They could scarcely have been more joyful had I told them Christ was coming back day after tomorrow. Their delight showed me Myakes had been right, and also showed me I would have had little service from them had I insisted on continuing the campaign.

They did not complain about going through Bulgar-held territory on the way to a pass through the mountains closer to Constantinople than the one by way of which we had entered the chilly northern land. Nor did they complain about acting like soldiers on the march, which is to say, about plundering and burning everything in their path. They would have burned for the sport of it, arson being deeply ingrained in the warrior's soul, but they did so all the more enthusiastically for being able to warm themselves at the fires they set.

As before, the Bulgars ran away from us. Their rule, when fighting Romans, seemed to be to advance when we retreated but to retreat when we advanced. Oh, a few of their scouts always hung close to the army, now and then exchanging arrows with our own outriders, but they always fled when we sent larger detachments after them. By the time we started traversing the pass that would take us back to Romania, I took them for granted, as a man takes for granted the taste of the pitch that makes his wine keep longer than it would otherwise.

That quickly proved a mistake, as did my earlier contemptuous estimate of the barbarians' strategy. They had placed an army in the pass, intending to block our way south. Their standards were horses' tails- one, two, three, or more- mounted on poles. Behind their line, drums thumped, echoing and reechoing as the khagan of the Bulgars shifted his men to meet our dispositions. As we drew near, the barbarians screeched what were surely insults at us in their unintelligible language.

My own speech to hearten the soldiers was simplicity itself. Pointing south, I said, "There lies the Roman Empire. There lies the God-guarded imperial city. There lie your homes. And there stand the Bulgars, between you and those homes. Will you let the barbarians keep you from them?"

"No!" the men shouted with all their might. Their outcry startled the Bulgars and silenced them, if only for a moment.

"Then forward!" I said, waving toward the foe. "We shall ride through them, we shall ride over them, and we shall return to our own land once more." At my command, the horns blew the order to advance.

Thud! Thud! went the Bulgars' drums. Shouting their war cries, they rode at us, too. Both sides loosed arrows, which began to fall like deadly rain. Hearing thousands of men shouting my name as a war cry made the hair on my arms and at the nape of my neck prickle up in awe.

The fight was very simple, the Bulgars wanting to trap us and crush us, our own men battling bravely to return to the Roman Empire after having traversed a large part of the enemy's territory. We were better horsed than the Bulgars, and wore iron while they were in leather. And so we broke through, scattering them before us and leaving large numbers of them dead on the ground. I drew from this combat an important lesson: never to let the foe place himself between my army and my own heartland.