Justinian

MYAKES

Till then, Brother Elpidios, I hadn't known whether Justinian had courage. He'd never needed to show any, if you know what I mean. He had spirit, he had temper- he had temper and to spare- but you can't tell what a man will do when somebody tries to kill him till you see it happen. He turned out to do just fine, thank you. The biggest problem was keeping him away from the Arabs. He wanted to kill every last one of them himself.

The Sklavenoi, Brother? He spent a lot of the retreat to Sebastopolis cursing Neboulos and every one of the barbarians, ranting and fuming about what he should have done to them when we were fighting back in the Sklavinias. He wasn't joking, either. Like he said there, when he said something like that, he meant it. That worried me.

Then he got quiet. That worried me even worse.

Inside the citadel, I stared at Leontios, wishing I could turn him to stone as the monster Medusa had with her victims in pagan myth. "You disobeyed me," I told him in a deadly voice.

"Emperor, I did what I thought best, seeing how things were," he answered. In fact, against him Medusa might have glared in vain, his head already having been formed from solid marble. He went on, "I've been fighting battles for your father and you longer than you've been alive. I know something about them, that I do."

"You disobeyed me!" This time I, shouted it. "You disobeyed me, and we lost the battle on account of it. The blame is yours- yours!" Looking back on it, the last word was probably a scream.

But screaming at Leontios was like screaming at a post. All he did was bow his head slightly, as a traveler in wet weather will do to keep the rain out of his eyes. "Emperor, I didn't do a thing to lose the battle," he said. "Not one thing. If the special army hadn't betrayed us, we might have won."

If your special army hadn't betrayed us, was what he meant, but not even Leontios was blockhead enough to say such a thing to me. Snarling, I answered, "If we'd had a decent attack from the left, not the paltry one we got, we would have smashed the Arabs before the cursed Sklavenoi went over to them. They would have stayed loyal if we'd been winning."

Leontios bowed his head a little farther. "Maybe so, Emperor," he said. "It could be so, I suppose."

He could not have said, Liar, any louder had he bellowed it at the top of his lungs. I sprang to my feet. Had I still been wearing my sword, I would have cut him down where he sat. How much grief and torment that would have saved me in years to come! But God does not reveal to mere men what lies ahead, and, in any case, I had taken off the sword on coming into Sebastopolis. And so, rather than striking that large, hard head from his shoulders, I hit him in the face with my fist, as hard as I could.

He too leaped, with a roar of pain. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. I hit him again. This time, expecting the blow, he bent his head down so that my fist slammed into his skull. Pain shot up my arm: he was hardheaded indeed. I hit him again and again. He did not strike back. Had he done so, even once, I would have given him over to whatever half-skilled torturers a provincial town like Sebastopolis boasted. All he did was keep his head down and bring up his arms to protect his face to some degree.

At last, having done to him what, thanks in great measure to his wanton disobedience, I had not done to the followers of the false prophet, I told him, "Get out, and be grateful for my mercy."

He stumbled away, leaving a trail of blood drops on the timbers of the second-story floor. I was certain I had blackened one of his eyes. Maybe, come tomorrow, he would explain his bruises by saying he had walked into a door, as beaten wives, I am told, often do. Had he been truly considerate, he would have leaped off the city wall and broken his neck, but that, I supposed accurately, was too much to hope for.

I stood there in my chamber, breathing hard. Beating Leontios had left me excited in another way. Going to the door, I spoke in a low voice to one of the excubitores standing guard outside it. He nodded and, after consulting for a moment with his comrade, hurried away.

After about a quarter of an hour; he returned with a woman, as I had asked him to do. I barred the door. Smiling, the woman began to pull off over her head the long tunic she wore. "No," I said harshly. She paused, her face puzzled. I shoved her down onto the bed, ignoring her squawk of surprise, and took her as if by force, pretending she was my captive though she was there of her own free will. I took her several times through the night, using her almost as roughly as I had Leontios. When morning came, I rewarded her well, as her complaisance deserved. And, I vowed, I would reward Leontios as he deserved, too.

Although they had suborned Neboulos and the large majority of the Sklavenoi, although they had defeated the army I had assembled against them, the Arabs did not try to bypass the fortress of Sebastopolis and penetrate deeper into Romania, nor did they linger long around the town. The force we still had was too large to let them split up into raiding parties, which it might have defeated in detail on sallying forth, and large enough to remain a threat to their entire army. After burning some fields and pasturelands nearby, they withdrew.

Had I worn Prince Mouamet's shoes, I would have been bolder. But then, I had seen Leontios's quality only too well, while the Arab might have remained ignorant of the depths of his fecklessness. At any rate, scouts having confirmed that the deniers of Christ were indeed withdrawing, I counted myself and the Roman Empire lucky, in that they were not gaining so great an advantage from their victory as they might have done.

A couple of days after their withdrawal was confirmed, the Roman army also left Sebastopolis. Instead of triumphantly advancing into the lands the Arabs had stolen from my ancestors, we were trudging back toward Constantinople in defeat. That was hard to bear, all the more so in light of the high expectations with which I had invested the campaign.

The men from the Armeniac military district soon detached themselves from the army, returning to the farms they tended when their services as soldiers were not required. The men from the Anatolic military district and that of the Opsikion continued westward with the excubitores. So did the Sklavenoi, a remnant less than a third the number Neboulos had brought to Sebastopolis.

On our reaching Ankyra, the horsemen from the military district of the Opsikion prepared to take the southbound road, going back to their farms and villages. I put a stop to that, ordering them to accompany the rest of the army as we proceeded west toward the Sea of Marmara. Some of the men from the Anatolic military district also wanted to break away from the army: at Ankyra, we were already close to their homes. Again, I did not let this happen.

A few days later, we reached Dorylaion, another good-sized town- or, rather, strong fortress- in the Anatolic military district. Another good road leads south from it into the military district of the Opsikion. Once more, the men from that military district tried to leave the army.

I met with some of their officers, saying, "I have one more task these men can perform for me. I do not think they will find it a disagreeable task, even if it does take them farther from their farms than they might have expected."

"If you tell us what it is, Emperor," one of those officers said, "we'll be able to let them know, and then we won't have the grumbling that's been going through the ranks." His colleagues nodded.

But I shook my head. "Keep them together, and tell them just what I've told you- no more, no less. The mystery will bring them along, I think." I smiled, something I had done little since losing the battle east of Sebastopolis. The officers obeyed me, not least because their curiosity was also piqued.

I had the same sort of conversation with the officers from the Anatolic military district. They too got the bulk of their men to remain in the ranks, though a few, their home villages being so close to our line of march, did succeed in slipping away and resuming the farmer's way of life in which they passed the time between campaigns.

I was less concerned at that than I might have been under other circumstances, for we were moving along easily, de ep within the bounds of Romania, and I did not expect the onset of any foe. Indeed, all the men we had left except the excubitores had stowed spears and javelins and bows and arrows- all the weapons save those they wore on their belts- in the supply wagons that rattled along with the cavalry from the military districts.

We had passed Malagina, on the way up to Nikaia, when Myakes said, "Emperor, I know you have something on your mind, but I don't know what. If I ask you straight out, will you tell me?"

"No," I said. He gave me a reproachful look, having sometimes succeeded with such looks since my boyhood. I looked back at him, making my own features, insofar as I could, reveal nothing. He looked more reproachful yet, which I took to mean I had succeeded. Smiling, I said again, "No."

"You're a cruel man, Emperor," he said. Still I held my face steady. Sighing, he withdrew from my presence.

As we traveled the road from Nikaia up toward Nikomedeia, we began passing through country wherein the Sklavenoi had been resettled in large numbers. News of what had passed at Sebastopolis having preceded us to that part of Bithynia, our line of march found many Sklavinian women, often with brats at their side or squalling in their arms, come to learn whether their men had turned traitor, had fallen in the fighting, or had returned against the odds.

Sometimes we would see and hear happy meetings and cries of delight, sometimes wails of grief when a woman learned her barbarous husband was not coming home. Only a handful of Sklavinian women felt obliged to slay themselves from grief on learning that their men had perished. Most who discovered their men missing from the shrunken ranks of the special army assumed those men had run off with the followers of the false prophet to Syria, and so did not deem themselves required to commit suicide to join them in death. Some, indeed, wasted no time in taking up with other barbarians.

Because of these women, the journey from Nikaia up toward Nikomedeia, which should have taken at most two days, needed more than twice that long. The army, and especially the Sklavinian portion of it, took on more of the aspect of a migration than a military force: I was reminded of the bands of Mardaites- men, women, and children- traveling the military road across Anatolia toward their new homes on the frontier against the Bulgars.

"This, this carnival is disgraceful," Leontios complained, pointing to the disorder and to the unmilitary persons among the Sklavenoi.

I fixed him with my coldest stare. "When I desire your opinion, be sure I shall request it. Until such time as I do, be so good as to keep it to yourself."

"But, Emperor, I-" he began. I squeezed my horse with my knees, urging it up into a trot so I did not have to find out what vacuous opinion he was about to put forward. Not even he was so foolish as to try to keep up with me, which, given the depth of Leontios's folly, says how obvious my move to avoid him must have been.

On our reaching Eribolos, which lies on the gulf of Nikomedeia a few miles south of the town of that name, I ordered the entire army, Sklavenoi and cavalry from the military districts alike, to march west along the coast road by the southern shore of the gulf toward Prainetos, reproducing on the way the journey I had made a few years before to see Neboulos's special army as it was being assembled and drilled. The remaining Sklavenoi were glad, the route taking many of them close to the farms and villages they had established since being resettled in Romania. From the cavalry from the military districts I heard nothing but grumbling: they had thought that, in compensation for being prevented from returning to their homes, they would be allowed to go into Constantinople, and now saw themselves diverted from the city as well.

Some of their officers were sufficiently aggrieved at being turned aside from the imperial city to come to me to complain of it. For such presumption, I would at most times have given them my heartiest imitation of the wrath of God. That afternoon, though, I said only, "I still have one task remaining for your horsemen."

One of the officers, quicker than the rest, asked, "For the cavalry alone? What about the Sklavenoi?"

"Oh, the Sklavenoi will also be involved, never fear," I told him. He and several other men tried to question me further, but I looked enigmatic and said nothing.

That evening, we halted at Leukate, where white, chalky cliffs tumble down steep and sheer to the gulf of Nikomedeia. Far below us, small waves slapped the base of the cliffs, a gentle, murmurous sound. At my order, the Sklavenoi camped nearest the cliffs. I broke the horsemen from the military districts into several blocks, posting them in a sort of cup around the remnant of the special army and the drabs and nasty little children accompanying the barbarians.

Myakes came up to me as I was talking to messengers I was about to send to each encampment of the cavalry from the military districts. Being a longtime companion of mine, he exercised the privilege such men have, saying, "Emperor, I've been looking at the dispositions you've made here. Looks to me like you're going to-"

My own disposition was none too quiet. I held up my hand. He, unlike Leontios, knew better than to go on after a clear signal to halt. "What I am going to do, Myakes," I told him, "is have my revenge." I turned back to the messengers. "Tell the men, without being in any way ostentatious, to arm themselves from the supply wagons and then to await my signal."

"Aye, Emperor," they said as one, and hurried away.

"Emperor, have mercy on them," Myakes said, suddenly and urgently: he had indeed divined my intentions. "These are the ones who stayed loyal. They-"

"Are Sklavenoi," I broke in. "Are barbarians. Are likely to turn against us in any future campaign. Are, as the Holy Scriptures say, broken reeds that will pierce the hands of those who lean on them. Are never going to have another chance to betray us Romans. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Emperor," he said, and looked down at the ground. Once more, years later, he would ask me to have mercy on my enemies. I told him no then, too. I was right both times.

Having waited until I judged the messengers had reached the encampments of the cavalrymen from the military districts and those men were arming themselves, I summoned more messengers and gave them the next order to take to the soldiers. It was the last order I would give them for the night: "At the signal, rush upon the treacherous Sklavenoi and slay them all. Slay them without mercy. But for them"- and for Leontios, I thought, but I knew what I was going to do with Leontios, too-"we would have beaten the accursed Arabs. Now we shall take vengeance upon them."

As the first group of messengers had a little while before, these men answered, "Aye, Emperor." But in their voices I heard the same fierce eagerness that filled my own. Feeling vindicated, I looked round for Myakes. He had gone. Because he had served me so long and loyally, I forgave him his lack of enthusiasm this once.

I turned my attention back to the messengers. "The signal shall be two long blasts from the horn here," I told them.

"Aye, Emperor!" they said again, and, at my nod of dismissal, dashed off with gleaming eyes to pass on my commands. Again I waited. Anticipation made my heart pound ever faster, so that I had trouble judging the passage of time. At last I was certain the messengers must surely have reached even the most distant encampments. I nodded again, this time to the trumpeter. He raised his horn to his lips and blew the two notes of the signal. Standing next to him, I was almost deafened. I had wondered if all the men from the military districts would hear the call. My doubts now vanished, along with some small part of my hearing.

Yet the brief silence that followed was not altogether a product of that stunning call's effect on my ears. The Sklavenoi, who had been raucously celebrating their return to the land in which I had resettled them, paused in their no doubt drunken debauch, wondering what the two blasts meant.

They were not left in doubt for long. The noise rising up into the heavens was not like that which I had heard during the battle near Sebastopolis, nor even like that following my soldiers' breaking into the Sklavinian village from which Neboulos had ruled as kinglet. Upon our breaking into that village after penetrating the circle of carts and wagons the Sklavenoi had thrown up around it, the barbarians- warriors, women, even children- could have been in no doubt as to our intention, and comported themselves accordingly. Here\a160…

Here, as I had intended, our onslaught took them altogether by surprise. Their first cries, then, were friendly, even welcoming: they believed the men from the military districts rushing upon them sword in hand had come to join in their revels. Only when they began falling to the Roman soldiers did they realize the trap in which they had been placed, and realize also they had no escape.

How their screams and wails rose to the heavens then! And how unavailing those screams and wails were! Even a well-disciplined force of fully armed soldiers, assailed without warning from three sides at once with cliffs on the fourth, would have suffered catastrophic losses. The Sklavenoi, as they had proved again and again, were anything but well disciplined. They were not fully armed, nor could they fully arm themselves, all their weapons past knives and a few swords being stored in the wagons the men from the military districts controlled. And they were not, or many of them were not, soldiers but the sluts and brats who attached themselves to soldiers.

Everything proceeded exactly as I had hoped it might. It was not simply victory, it was not simply slaughter, it was massacre. Listening to the Sklavenoi d ying under the swords and javelins of the Roman soldiers who set upon them, listening to the screams of those who leaped off the precipices of Leukate to avoid the Romans' avenging weapons and to those of the Sklavenoi whom the soldiers herded over those precipices, that being an easier and safer way to dispose of them than any other, was as exciting, as gratifying, as the chastisement I had given Leontios in partial requital for his failure at Sebastopolis.

I was certain some of the cavalrymen form the military districts were saving some Sklavinian women to enjoy before killing them, or perhaps even to keep. Being filled with bloodlust and simple fleshly lust myself, I envied them their acquisitions. However much I lusted, though, I despatched no messenger with an order to put aside one of the yellow-haired women for me. One experience with a Sklavinian wench brought to me at sword's point sufficed for a lifetime. I stood in the darkness in front of my tent, blood thundering in my ears, listening to those who had betrayed me, betrayed Romania, dying as they deserved.

By midnight, it was over. With a squadron of excubitores bearing torches, I walked through the Sklavinian encampment. Death and the stench of death were everywhere. Here and there, my guardsmen and I had to walk on twisted bodies, no open ground showing beneath or around them. For all that, though, there were fewer corpses than I had expected. "Did our soldiers let some of the barbarians escape?" I growled, not concerned over a few women but rather over any large number of men. "If they did, they shall be punished."

Then the excubitores led me to the white, chalky cliffs. Some of them leaned over, arms extended, thrusting out their torches as far as they could. I leaned over myself and peered down. The light the torches cast on the scene at the base of the precipices was meager, but enough. Corpses were drifted there like snow after a winter blizzard. I still heard an occasional moan, not all the Sklavenoi forced over the edge having died at once.

In the morning, I would send some soldiers down there to finish their work completely. For the time being, what I had accomplished would do. And I saw every thing that I had made, and, behold, it was very good.