The Valentian Campaign

by Marc Jones

  When he turned he could see the Ostrogoth. He had dirty blond hair, was clean shaven and looked tired beyond words. Stilicho smiled slightly in welcome and then gestured at the table, where someone had left a jug of wine and two silver beakers. “Thorismund.”

  “Stilicho,” the king of the Ostrogoths said curtly, before he strode over to the table and poured himself some wine. “You’re taller than I thought you’d be.” He spoke very good Latin, with the occasional slight archaism.

  “And you’re shorter. I mean no offense.”

  “I take none,” Thorismund said with a short, almost savage, smile. “So – we meet at last.”

  “Indeed we do. I will therefore be blunt – where are your people going to? And why?”

  The Ostrogoth drank a little wine and then looked down at the surface of the liquid in the beaker. “West,” he said eventually, looking up. “Somewhere… safe. As for why…” His voice trailed away as his eyes fixed on something that Stilicho couldn’t see. Hunted, almost desperate, eyes. He’d seen those eyes before, in the faces of men who had been talking about Adrianople.

  “As for why?” He prompted as gently as he could.

  Thorismund smiled bleakly. “The Hunnoi. Always the Hunnoi. They press Westwards and we run Westwards. Again and again.” He looked at Stilicho. “And now we are here. On your borders. And I do not think that you will let us in. Not after what happened with the Visigoths. Of course we could force our way in. We could wait for the level of the Danubius to fall and then ford or swim the river. But you have an army here and I have a people who want to live. Plus it is almost autumn.”

  Stilicho watched him carefully. Excellent – the Ostrogoth had overestimated the number of men facing him. “I cannot let you over the Rhenus to join with the Visigoths. I cannot. After Adrianople, there would be some who would have me murdered for simply suggesting it.”

  Thorismund nodded as something seemed to go out of him slightly. “I was afraid of that. I think that I knew that.”

  Aha. A realist then. Just as he had suspected. “There is one place I can suggest though. To the North West. Magna Germania has been through a lot. The Franks are scattered, as are Vandals. The more friendly tribes have drawn close to our borders. If you want to head North West… then there is room there. But not beyond the Rhenus.”

  Thorismund looked at him with eyes that were heavy with thought. “I see. So there is a… a void there – is that the right word?”

  “It is. That far. But no further. They are not our lands. But we have been hard pressed in recent years. Peace would be welcome. Not that we don’t have the ability to fight.”

  Thorismund was silent for a long, long moment. Then he smiled slightly. “When you are running,” he said quietly, “It is always best to know when to stop and turn to face your enemies. Very well. I will take my people North West. Thank you Stilicho. Your advice has been valuable.”

  Stilicho smiled and finally drank from his own cup. Ah, Falernian. Someone had been very generous. Then he looked back to Thorismund. “Will the Hunnoi keep coming West as well?”

  This bought him a dark smile from the Ostrogoth, who drained his beaker with a gulp. “Of course they will. Perhaps we will be able to fight them off, with the mountains at our back? Perhaps… they will go after you. Or Constantinople. Who knows? But when they come – they will be a storm you would not believe.”

  He placed his beaker on the table, nodded and then strode off up the hill. And as Stilicho watched him lead his horse away he felt a chill that seemed to blow down from the nearest mountain.

  Aurelianus the Elder looked down at the eagle that lay on the desk in front of them all and took a deep breath of air into his lungs. Then he sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. “I still have trouble believing the evidence of my own damn eyes. To see such a thing, here and now! In front of me!”

  “Believe me sir,” Cato said wryly, “I couldn’t believe it when I saw that holy man from the Painted People wave it around in front of his men like a talisman – and as a goad to us! It wasn’t until it was in my hands that I really believed it.”

  “When I was a boy I heard the rumours about what happened to the Hispana,” Poplicala rumbled. “I thought that they were nothing more than lies. Especially when I also heard the rumours in Valentia about what the savages to the North might have. I thought it was just a minor standard perhaps. But an Eagle?”

  “Well, now it is back in our hands,” Gratianus said, his hand chopping down in a gesture of finality. “Where it will stay.” He looked at Aurelianus the Elder. “You know what this means for us. This gives us a standard to rally the people around. This gives us an anchor.”

  Aurelianus nodded firmly. Then he grimaced slightly. “When the army was in the North, in Valentia, Vitalis started to spread rumours. Said that your mission there was a waste of time, that the North was being reinforced at the expense of the South or the West.”

  “But the South was not at risk,” Cato said, frowning. “The East has seen the raids from the Sea Wolves fall to nothing and the West is now protected against the worst of the raids by the Hibernians.” Then his face clouded over. “Oh wait. Of course – this is a power play.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is,” Aurelianus the Elder said with a sigh. “He was hoping to bolster his position. Of course we know now that he was also hoping that my son would die…” He clenched his fists for a long moment. “Or at least that’s what we think at the moment.”

  “Sadly there is no proof of who sent the man,” Cato muttered. “He killed himself in too final a way – which reminds me, where could he have gotten such a poison?”

  “A good point,” Aurelianus muttered, his eyes still on the Eagle. “We cannot accuse without proof. And we must make the most of this.” He gestured at the Eagle. “So – we must go to Londinium. To the Council. And we must brag of what you have done in the North. We have to sweep away all the doubts and concerns and vague niggling worries that Vitalis has sowed in the minds of so many people. He sees himself as leading Britannia one day, I am sure of it. Well – we must sow our doubts about him in the hearts of men.”

  Athanaric found himself thinking some very dark thoughts as they rode down the road. Euric was up ahead of them somewhere, probably spouting more bombastic drivel. The king of the Visigoths was a good fighter but not much of a thinker. And that was shame because they needed a thinker at the moment. There was too much that was wrong with their situation at the moment.

  Their numbers were shrunken down to the point that he was getting worried about how many spears they could bring to a fight. The civil war had weakened them very badly indeed. He sighed and then looked around. This was good land. Good farmland. A good place to settle down and raise a family. Well, he would do just that.

  Hearing raised voices up ahead he craned his neck slightly. Euric had held his hand up for them to stop and as he reined in he urged his horse through the slowing riders so that he could see what the problem was. Then he blinked. The road ahead was filled with Gaulish cavalry. A lot of them. Grim-faced and with long spears in their fighting hands.

  He looked over at Euric, who was walking his horse up to meet the leader of the Gauls – and then he felt himself go pale. Constantius. Flavius Constantius. What was he doing there? He nudged his horse around with his knees and then got close enough to hear the two.

  “Turn your people around and get out of Gaul, Euric. Before I change my mind and have you all killed.” Constantius bit the words out. He hated dealing with these scum, and indeed his first thought had been to ambush them, wipe out the fighting men and then sell all the women and children into slavery, preferably somewhere like Hispania or Africa. But he’d soon realised that such an action – whilst enormously satisfying – would be a mistake. Stilicho had Visigoths amongst his personal retinue and they would have wanted to avenge their slain kindred. No, this was the best way. Get them out of Gaul.

  Euric, he could see clearly, was having trouble
working out what was happening. He wasn’t too surprised by that, as the man was not supposed to be the sharpest knife in the world. “We have permission to be here,” the Visigoth said, his face turning red with anger. “Stilicho, the Magister Militum himself, said that we could settle in Gaul.”

  “Stilicho has the best interests of Rome and his own hide in mind. He does not speak for Gaul. Not any more. You cannot settle here. Not so close to the Rhenus. And not with the Ostrogoths on the other side. Do you think that we’re stupid? Do you think that we can’t feel our backs itching from the shadow of the dagger that you represent? No. You cannot settle here. Gaul no longer hears the voice of Stilicho. You must leave.”

  Euric stared at him, his face paling as his lords and attendants muttered and scowled and traded uneasy looks behind him. “But where can we go?” He asked the question with bitter pride. “We are trapped here in Gaul. Would you let us over the Rhenus? Can we join our cousins on the other side?”

  “Would you still claim your right to settle here, as promised by Stilicho? How many places have your people passed through these past twenty – thirty years?” Constantius shook his head. “We cannot let you pass back North East again. If I asked you to scatter your people all over the South you would not agree, as you would be absorbed within a generation or two.

  “No – East, or perhaps South. Not a step further West. If you want to ask permission to settle somewhere else from Stilicho then go to Italia and ask him. Avoid Gaul. These lands stand ready to defend themselves. Against everyone who threatens.”

  Athanaric pursed his lips for a moment and then directed a sidelong look at Euric. The idiot seemed to be having a hard time thinking all of this through and he bit off a silent curse. Their people stood on the edge of a knife and he was still busy herding his thoughts through a gap in a wall with agonising slowness. Couldn’t he see the opportunity that was open here? With some fast talking, surely they could make a deal. “My king,” he muttered. “My king!”

  Euric shot a flat look of hatred at him and he realised that he had interrupted the man in the process of adding two and two together in his head and coming to a conclusion. He risked it anyway. “My king – a word.”

  “What?” Euric hissed it and he realised something else. That Euric was rather sharper than he had realised and might have picked up on the veiled contempt that he’d been trying to hide since the coronation. He felt his mouth go dry for a moment but then he swallowed and nudged his horse closer.

  “My king – if they are rebelling against Gaul, surely an offer of extra spears would not go down unkindly? They’ll need every man they can get.”

  Euric looked at him through narrowed eyes and then nodded briefly. “Maybe.” He looked back to Constantius. “Your rebellion against Rome will need spears. Assistance. Men to fight. We can provide that.”

  But Constantius surprised them both by putting his head back and roaring with laughter. “You mean trust you? Like Alaric? Yes he was your king, but oh – how many promises did he break? How much trust did he earn? And can we now trust you more than Stilicho could trust him? No again. A thousand times no.” He looked at them. “Turn around and leave Gaul. Head East.”

  Euric licked his lips slowly and for a moment Athanaric wondered if he was going to order them to attack the Gauls. But there were at least a thousand of them, well-armed and in decent order, with those damn stapeda things that the Visigothic wrights had only recently started to make. Moreover any charge would have killed off Euric and probably most of the last of the Visigothic nobility. And then Euric nodded choppily and then turned his horse around. “Back,” he said in a voice that sounded like ashes. “We head East.”

  As he turned his own horse and listened to the murmurs and angry mutterings around him Athanaric swallowed and then tried to ignore the host of butterflies that had suddenly appeared in his stomach. This was not going to end well. For Euric. Or for the Visigoths. And he eyed the horizon to the South. Time to depart perhaps. Because blood would be spilt when night came.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The rider found him on the road that led from Forum Julii to Aquileia. Stilicho was talking quietly with the commander of the VII Legion (or what passed for it – it was understrength, underequipped and very short on morale) when the mounted messenger found him. He was covered in dried mud and caked dust and his horse was lathered. The man caught sight of him and urged his tired horse towards him, saluting as he approached and then pulling out a message from an oiled waterproof pouch.

  “Magister Militum,” the man gasped – and there was a quaver in his voice and a tremble to his outstretched hand that raised the hairs on the back of Stilicho’s neck. “A message from Ravenna.”

  Stilicho nodded and took it, telling one of his men to take care of the messenger. He looked at the message itself with a stony face and then cracked the wax seal on it so that he could read it. As he squinted at the words he felt his heart plummet in his chest.

  Gaul had revolted. Gaul had revolted. He sat there and felt his mind race through the implications. This was very bad indeed. All three of the main provinces of Gaul had rebelled - Gallia Aquitania, Gallia Belgica and Gallia Lugdunensis. Oh and Germania West of the Rhenus.

  He looked at the horizon as he assessed and totted up men in his head. Very well then. This wasn’t the total disaster that it would have been fifteen or twenty years ago. Back then there would have been a large army on the Rhenus. All the border fortresses on the Rhenus had now were a group of shattered units and others that were rebuilding but barely better.

  Looking down at the message his eyes narrowed. Constantius was behind this. That complicated things, because Constantius was dangerously highly placed in Augusta Treverorum and had been training large numbers of Gaulish cavalry with stapeda. That complicated things. Any attempt at retaking Gaul would mean careful planning and the right mix of troops.

  The settlement of the damn Visigoths was behind this, he could feel it and he cursed under his breath as he gestured for the men around him to resume the march. He had just under a thousand or so of them under his personal command at the moment outside Ravenna. The last thing he wanted was for them to tear off to Gaul to try and rejoin their people. On the one hand he needed them. On the other hand he didn’t want them the Visigoths to become major players again. They’d been severely weakened – more so than he’d wished for.

  Stilicho rubbed a gauntleted hand over his chin and then squinted at the sun. Damn it and the Gauls had timed things to perfection. The year was getting on. Winter would soon be upon them and he couldn’t count on the passes through the Alps – or the roads through to Gallia Narbonensis – to stay clear enough for the passage of large numbers of men. Not that he had large numbers of men to send.

  He sighed and then licked his lips. He had to get back to Ravenna as quickly as possible to find out if any new news had arrived. And he had to get to Rome to exert control there. His enemies would appear like cockroaches coming out from under rotten plaster when the news from Gaul reached their ears. This was damaging, very damaging, for him. So he had to both ride and think. He needed a plan.

  Constantius stomped down the corridor that led to his office in the Basilica in Augusta Treverorum, his boots echoing loudly. Here are there he could see the odd head peek out of doorways of the corridor, followed by hasty withdrawals. He was in a foul temper and he suspected that the look on his face was a dead giveaway.

  He entered his office and then went to his desk, so that he could then glare at the map there. Well, it was done. All the months of whispering, all the months of worrying, all the months of wondering what in the name of God Stilicho was up to had finally ended. He had initiated the revolt that they had been planning for so long. It was now up to the others to carry out their part as well. Stilicho had to be deposed. The man was a menace.

  It had been the news of Stilicho’s journey to talk to the Ostrogoths that had prompted his decision to let fly the arrow into the air. Letting the
m into Magna Germania was more than a mistake, it was a disaster. With them on the East of the Rhenus and the Visigoths on the West of the Rhenus, well it didn’t take a strategic genius to work what would eventually happen. Goths in Gaul. The Rhenus would no longer be a barrier. The Goths could not be trusted.

  He shivered slightly and then sat down. It had been days since that confrontation with the Visigoths and he still felt such a chill when he thought about it. There had been a time when the approach of the Visigoths would have provoked outright panic. When Alaric had led them they had been a force. A power, one fit to shake the Earth. But now… they were a pathetic remnant. The wars, both external and internal, had weakened them badly. That said, they were still a threat. If they had time to get their feet back under them, if they reunited properly with those who had gone to fight for Stilicho… well then, they’d regain their strength.

  But to see them reduced to a wandering people had been a shock. To think that even the apparently strongest people could be reduced to such straits… well.

  He shook himself. Enough of such dark and terrible thoughts. He had too much to do. He thought for a moment about the latest letter from Marcus Caecilius Strabo in Rome and then he scowled bitterly. He was starting to get a very nasty feeling about things. Certain promises had been made and he no longer was convinced that matters were progressing according to plan.

  Oh he didn’t regret the rebellion in the least. It had had to be done – Stilicho’s actions were monumentally stupid and would achieve little more than to further the position of Stilicho himself. The security of Gaul was not something that seemed to bother that bloody man much.

  Constantius paused for a moment and then frowned slightly. He remembered the five year rule of Magnus Maximus. Remembered it all too well. The man had been insanely ambitious and Theodosius had smashed him to pieces, in the process weakening the forces that had been in Britannia and also in Northern Gaul, not to mention along the Rhenus. He sighed. He didn’t want anything like to happen now. There would be no march on Rome. He would instead consolidate his position in Gaul and in Germania Inferior – and Germania Superior if the right people acted according in accordance with common sense.