Justinian

JUSTINIAN

I ordered Neboulos's special army and the armies of the military districts to assemble at Sebastopolis, in the military district of the Armeniacs. Those soldiers having begun to move before I could, the excubitores and I traveled by sea to Amisos and then went down to Sebastopolis rather than making the whole long, slow journey by road.

As I left the ship that had brought me to Amisos, the officer in charge of the fleet said, "Good fortune go with you, Emperor, and God bless you and your army."

"Thank you, Apsimaros," I said. "May you have safe winds back to the imperial city." He nodded. His face was long and thin and pale. I believe he had German blood of some sort in him, which accounted not only for his looks but also for his peculiar name, one without meaning in either Greek or Latin.

The excubitores and I rode toward Sebastopolis the next day. I looked back and saw Apsimaros's fleet sailing west toward Constantinople. I sighed a little. If we could travel by land as readily and cheaply as by sea, governing the Roman Empire, feeding the cities, and collecting taxes would be far easier than they are. But even a paved highway like the Via Egnatia, while allowing soldiers to move rapidly from one part of the Empire to another, does not let good travel cheaply. Take grain in carts more than a couple of days' journey and its price doubles or worse. And so, very often, inland districts are more isolated than islands.

Too much time wasted on a wish that is and must for all time be idle. When, with the excubitores around me, I rode into the camp, I glowed with pride at the size of the army I had caused to be assembled. The tents of the cavalry forces from the military districts stretched over a wide expanse of dusty plain. Off to one side were other tents and huts, these run up in a less orderly fashion. I pointed them out to Myakes: "See how large Neboulos's special army is? As many men there as in the contingents from the military districts, I'd say."

"Looks that way," he answered, peering toward the Sklavenoi. "But how many of 'em there are is only half the question. The other half is, how well will they fight?"

"They fought us well enough when they didn't have to face the liquid fire," I said, nettled. "The followers of the false prophet can no more make the fire than the Sklavenoi can. What would keep the special army from fighting well, then?"

"Nothing I can think of," he said, which pleased me, but then he added, "Of course, the Arabs might think of something I can't," which did not.

Leontios rode out from the camp to greet me. "Here we are, Emperor, gathered together at your order and as you commanded," he proclaimed, redundant as usual.

I waved toward the half-separate camp of the special army. "As you see, we have the men we need to hit the deniers of Christ harder than they expect."

His round face went mournful. "Oh, aye, so we do, provided we don't come to blows and start fighting among ourselves first."

"What do you mean?" I demanded.

"The Sklavenoi are cursed thieves, is what I mean," he said. "Every time one of them gets near my Romans, he steals something: a knife, a chain, some money, it doesn't matter what."

Neboulos came up then, riding on a pony that struggled under his bulk. "Emperor," he cried, "these cavalry, they hate your special army. They taunt us. They say they screw our wives, screw our sisters, screw our daughters, when they fight us before. They laugh. They make us hate them worse than your enemies."

Both Leontios and Neboulos started shouting at me, forgetting my station in their quest for advantage. Then I shouted, too: "Silence!" Leontios remembered himself first, and bowed his head. Neboulos, less used to having anyone over him, went on for another sentence or two before realizing he was doing his cause more harm than good by such rudeness. When he quieted, I pointed to him and said, "Are your men stealing from the cavalry of the military districts?"

"Soldiers always steal," he said.

That had a good deal of truth in it, which I declined to notice. "Soldiers loot from enemies," I said. "They do not steal from their comrades. The warriors from the military districts are the comrades of the special army. Do you understand that?"

"Yes," he said, giving Leontios a look anything but comradely.

"Good," I told him. "You had better. The next Sklavinian who steals from a comrade will have his hand cut off. Do you understand that?" He nodded sullenly. I said, "Good. See that your men understand it, too."

"That's fine, Emperor," Leontios said, beaming. "That's fine and dandy."

I turned my gaze on him. "Are your men taunting the Sklavenoi, as Neboulos says?"

He looked less happy. "Urr\a160… ahh\a160… Some of them, maybe, Emperor. Some. A few."

"That must also cease," I declared. "All of us here in this camp must join together against the common foe: the followers of the false prophet. Tell the men from the military districts that any of them caught obscenely mocking their comrades in the special army will be given a choice." I smiled unpleasantly.

"A choice, Emperor? What kind of choice?" Leontios was not so swift to follow my thought as I would have liked.

"A choice of the part he would sooner lose," I answered: "his tongue, with which he boasted of the lewdness he had committed, or his prick, the instrument of that lewdness."

"You Romans, you like to cut things," Neboulos observed.

I ignored him, watching Leontios. The general's round face (which he was not good at keeping closed) said he had not truly reckoned the men of the special army his comrades. "I will make certain the cavalry from the military districts knows of this choice," he said at last.

"See that you do." When assembling my army, I had not considered that its separate parts might find each other as inimical as the Arabs. If making them all fear me more than they hated each other yoked them in common cause, make them fear me I would.

For all his former bold attacks against the Arabs, Leontios proved a cautious, even an apprehensive, commander. Instead of setting out at once and storming into territory held by the deniers of Christ, he spent day after day drilling the cavalry from the military districts and Neboulos's special army.

I chafed at the delay, but did not follow my first impulse and order him to advance. The reason he adduced for waiting was plausible enough: planning cooperation between the Sklavenoi, who were foot soldiers, and the mounted men from the military districts. He tried several different formations, at last settling on one that placed the special army in the center of the line with cavalry on either wing and a body of horsemen behind the Sklavenoi as a reserve.

"The cursed butterheads can't move very fast, anyhow," he said to me. "We'll let them hold the Arabs and use the cavalry to get round the foe's flanks."

"Don't call them butterheads," I said. Two Romans had lost their tongues for taunting the Sklavenoi; four men from the special army had had their hands cut off for theft. The rest of the Romans, understanding they had been warned, accepted their fellows' punishment as something they had earned. I was less confident of the effect of my order on Neboulos's men, who were unused to discipline from their chieftains or anyone else save possibly their wives. I went on, "I wish we were already in combat with the followers of the false prophet. That would help pull us together."

"Soon, Emperor, soon," Leontios said soothingly. "Won't be long. We have to be ready. We have to prepare." Again he repeated himself. Again he said the same thing twice in slightly different ways.

I do not know whether Sergios and Patrikios, on their return to Damascus, told Abimelekh enough to let him anticipate my intentions, or whether the spies the Arabs keep in Roman territory (just as we keep spies in the lands they rule) sent word that our men were on the march. However he learned of it, the misnamed commander of the faithful hastily gathered together his soldiers and treacherously invaded Romania before we began our stroke against him. Thus was my wish for a speedy meeting with the Arabs granted, though not in the way I had intended.

Frontier guards all but killed their horses galloping back to Sebastopolis with word of the invasion. "It's a big army they have, Emperor," one of the men said on being brought before me. "I didn't reckon they could put so many men in the field so fast, but I was wrong."

"And the standard they're fighting under," another scout added.

"What standard is this?" I asked.

The scout hesitated, then answered, "Emperor, they've skewered a rolled-up parchment on a spear and carry it before them, saying it's the treaty you've broken."

"Liars!" I shouted. "Satanic hypocrites! They're the ones who broke the treaty, not I. They've put their own false, filthy words on their coins and on their papyrus, and I'm going to punish them for their presumption."

"Yes, Emperor," the scout said hastily, bowing his head. "All I'm doing is telling you what I've seen and what I've heard."

"Very well," I said, reminding myself the messenger was not responsible for the news he bore. A thought occurred to me: "Does Abimelekh lead them in person?" I saw myself parading the miscalled commander of the faithful through Constantinople in chains before sending him to the mines to work himself to death.

But all the frontier guards shook their heads. "No, Emperor," said the one who had told me of the Arabs' lying standard. "It is his brother Mouamet, the prince of northern Mesopotamia."

A prince of the Arabs' ruling line struck me as good enough prey. Having dismissed the scouts, I took counsel with Leontios, discussing how best to defeat the Arabs and drive after them into their territory. When the general heard who commanded the followers of the false prophet, he looked solemn. "This Mouamet is not a warrior to be despised, not a man to hold in contempt, Emperor. He sheds blood without pity. When the Arabs were fighting their civil war, he took Mesopotamia and Syria and Armenia from the rebels and restored them to Abimelekh's rule."

"You've beaten the Arabs before," I told him. "Surely, since God is on the side of us Christians, you can win another victory." Leontios's large head bobbed up and down. Relying on his ability to duplicate the successes he had enjoyed in the past, I sent him away and summoned Neboulos.

"We fight soon, Emperor?" the Sklavinian chieftain asked. "I hear these Arabs, they come into your land like you come into my Sklavinia."

Ignoring the comparison, I said, "Yes, we will fight them. The brother of their ruler commands this army of theirs. I want to capture him and treat him as he deserves for breaking the treaty."

"You treat him as bad as Sklavenoi whose hands you cut off?" Neboulos said.

"Worse," I promised, at which he looked suitably impressed. I should have paid more attention to the tenor of the questions he was asking. Looking back, I see that. Unfortunately for the Roman Empire, at the time I did not.

We moved east from Sebastopolis the next day. We did not go as far as I would have liked, the Sklavenoi, who marched on foot, compelling the cavalry from the military districts to slow down so that the two parts of the army would not separate from each other.

Leontios rode up to me, fuming. "Look at those disgraceful barbarians," he said, pointing to the men of the special army.

"You have known for some time they are foot soldiers, have you not?" I asked, annoyed at the tone he took with me.

"Yes, Emperor," he said, but still without the proper submissiveness. He pointed again and, as was his wont, repeated himself: "Look at them. Disgraceful."

Look I did. The Sklavenoi were not marching in neat, well-ordered ranks and files. They ambled along in groups that might have been made up of friends or relatives or men who came from the same wretched little village. As they walked, they sang and joked and passed skins of wine back and forth. Their weapons stuck up at all different angles. They certainly lacked the disciplined appearance of the regiment of excubitores accompanying me.

But, however unaesthetic their progress might have been to the eye of the military purist- such as Leontios was giving every indication of being- they were moving along every bit as fast as the imperial guards. I pointed this out to Leontios. "Well, so they are, Emperor," he said. "And if anything goes wrong, which God forbid, you'll see them run a lot faster than the excubitores, too."

"What do you know of the Sklavenoi?" I said angrily. "You never fought against them- your station has always been here, in the east. I was the one who beat them, Leontios. It wasn't lack of courage that caused their defeat. We had liquid fire, and they did not. And they were broken into clans and tribes that did not support each other."

"Why should they support each other now, then?" he replied, not knowing when to give up the argument. "They're still broken up into clans and tribes, not so?"

"All of which have come under the leadership of Neboulos." I put ice in my voice. "General, your objections have been noted. You shall now carry on with the campaign and defeat the Arabs."

"Yes, Emperor," Leontios said tonelessly, and rode away.

When we encamped for the night, the disorder among the men of the special army was enough to distress me, too. I sent for Neboulos. He waved my concerns aside, saying, "Who cares how we camp? We fight good." Since that was what I had told Leontios, I let myself be persuaded.

Leontios sent scouts out a good distance ahead on our breaking camp the next morning. Well before noon, some of their number came galloping back, having encountered the outriders of the army Abimelekh's brother commanded. Horns rang out and banners waved, ordering my force to deploy from marching column to line of battle.

With so many thousands of men and horses involved, that maneuver is more complex than any of the dances concerning which the fifth-sixth synod registered its disapproval. Being practiced at the drill, the cavalry from the military districts went through their evolutions smoothly enough. The men of the special army performed less well. Not only were Neboulos and their officers shouting at them to hurry, but every Roman captain who could spare a moment screamed for them to move faster, lest they give not only themselves but also the entire army over to destruction.

By the grace of God, we had taken our position- perhaps fifteen to eighteen miles east of Sebastopolis- when the followers of the false prophet came into sight. Their scouts and ours exchanged arrows, our men raising a cheer when one of theirs pitched from the saddle and groaning if one of our own men fell.

Before long, the whole of the army the prince Mouamet led grew visible from the cloud of dust it had raised. The Arabs raised a great shout: "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" Chills ran up my spine. I had heard that war cry as a small boy, standing on the seawall of Constantinople beside my father when the deniers of Christ came to besiege the imperial city. We beat them then. I expected us to beat them again.

"Christ with us! The Virgin with us!" the men from the military districts shouted back at the Arabs. They also shouted my name, loud and long: "Justinian!" The Sklavenoi were shouting, too, a great bellowing like the howls of wolves and the roars of lions. I sent one of the excubitores running over to Neboulos to ask what their war cries meant.

When he came back, he was grinning, and reported, "Emperor, the barbarian says what they're shouting is, 'We'll make soup out of your bones.'\a160"

"That," I said, "is an excellent shout."

As the scout had told me, the Arabs did carry, in place of their usual banners, a rolled-up sheet of parchment or papyrus impaled on a spear. Their standard-bearer rode out ahead of their army and called out in good Greek: "We have not broken what we and you Romans agreed to with oaths." He waved the spear. "God will judge the truth, and take vengeance on those who abandon it."

My army waited to hear what I would do. Pointing to the Arab, I did some shouting of my own: "A pound of gold to the man who brings me that lying standard!" My voice carried, as it has a way of doing when I am angry. Up and down the line, a score of horsemen from the military districts spurred their mounts toward the man holding the spear on high.

Followers of the false prophet galloped out to meet the Roman cavalry. A small battle developed then and there, ahead of the larger one to come. Neither the horsemen from the military districts nor the Arabs drew back by so much as the breadth of a finger. Men tumbled from their horses, struck by arrow and sword and spear. To my anger and disappointment, the Arabs' standard-bearer kept on upholding the spear alleged to bear on it the treaty they alleged I had broken.

Fighting soon became general all along the line. From my position not far behind the special army, I soon lost sight of the ends of the left and right wings, tens of thousands of horses kicking up so much dust from the dry ground across which they galloped as to screen those distant formations from my view as if fogbanks lay between me and them. In front of me, Neboulos was screeching orders like a man possessed. What he was saying I do not know for certain, as he used his own idiom rather than Greek. The Sklavenoi he led shot their envenomed arrows at the followers of the false prophet, and hurled great volleys of javelins when the foe drew close enough to give those some hope of hitting.

Had the Arabs pushed close enough to try handstrokes, the men of the special army would have been at a disadvantage, they having most of them only daggers, not swords, with which to defend their persons. But the torrents of missiles the Sklavenoi loosed against them prevented their making that discovery for themselves.

Cavalry from the reserve went hurrying off toward the right, no doubt at the request of some officer I could not see. If the crisis had been invisible, so was the solution. That a solution had been found, however, I inferred from the Arabs' failure to break through our line of battle.

If the Sklavenoi in front of me wavered, I intended to throw the excubitores into the breach. My own guards were looking now this way, now that, eager to find a place where they could battle the deniers of Christ. They shouted for me to send them into the fray.