Arastan saw Connor coming towards him and braced himself. He stood alone, now, his men scattered and fighting for their lives. Nearly a year had passed since their duel for Lucia’s life. As he had been on that day, Arastan was fearsome in his gilded helmet and shining mail. His amulets hung from his neck, a source of power. His shield was impenetrable, his sword red with blood. But what had changed was that then Arastan had only confidence and contempt. Now he had only a look of hatred on his face. His mission was failing, their line broken. What else had changed was that Connor was now more ready than ever, as well as possessing mail and shield like his adversary; and Connor was no longer restrained. With a poisonous glare, Arastan collected and charged.
They met with another bash of shields, but Connor quickly turned and thrust. Arastan blocked with his shield and swung. The two enemies launched in with volleys of slashes and strikes – parrying, dashing, wheeling, and hurdling into each other with their shields. Arastan took to feinting high or low, but Connor’s eyes were on his center where he could see his true intent. The furor was upon Connor, everything was stillness except for what mattered. He could feel Arastan’s fear, like a coiled serpent. And like a serpent, Arastan struck over and over again, closing the distance with the fire of his intent. Connor parried and riposted. He got past Arastan’s shield twice, but not with enough force to pierce his armor.
The look on Arastan’s face warned Connor a moment before the foeman’s horse reached him. Connor threw himself out of the way of the charging cavalryman, catching the downward swing on his shield. With a cry in Gothic, the rider closed towards his leader’s position. Arastan cast down his shield and reached out his arm. Dropping his reigns the rider shot out his hand. Connor took off, sprinting to close the distance. As Arastan clutched the rider’s wrist and jumped towards the saddle, Connor swung Archangel across the horse’s rear legs.
Horse and rider crashed forward to the ground, taking Arastan with them. Arastan tried to jump free as the horse kicked and tried to get up, but Connor was upon him. As Arastan landed on his feet he swung his sword at his attacker. Connor took the blow on his shield and chopped downward with his sword. Arastan’s sword fell to the ground, still clutched in his severed hand. Connor struck Arastan across the helmet with his shield, knocking him to the ground.
Connor stabbed the rider through as he tried to stand. Clearing his blade, he returned to Arastan. As the son of Sarus tried to stand, Connor held Archangel at his throat.
“Connor!” Valia cried, rushing up to him. He was covered in blood, some of which was his own. The sword of Lorentius was likewise covered, with new chips in the blade, but Valia had lost both helmet and shield. Connor ventured a glance around. The ground was full of the twisted dead and the writhing wounded – hundreds of them. Men on horseback – no more than a few dozen –were racing away towards Ravenna.
“Is that him?” Ataulf blurted, running up to them.
“It is Arastan,” Valia answered.
Without another word Ataulf grabbed Arastan by his mail and jerked the injured man to his feet. He stripped off the proud young man’s helmet to reveal blood-smeared black hair and a battered face that had been so handsome. Arastan could manage no words for him, but the glare of contempt still shone in his eyes.
“Sarus!” Ataulf screamed on top of his lungs. “Sarus!”
Just outside of the camp, at the back of the pack of fleeing horses, Connor saw the fierce, bear-like chieftain look towards them.
Ataulf kicked Arastan’s legs out from under him, so that the young man knelt in the blood-soaked ground.
“Sarus!” Ataulf screamed again. He reared back with both hands on the hilt of his spatha and swung, striking Arastan’s head from his body.
Sarus’s horse reared as the chieftain again drew his long sword; but Gaiseric, Henric, and half an ala of cavalry was assembling to give chase. Sarus’ cavalry men gathered around him, and together they withdrew towards the city.
As if in a trance, Connor bent down and wiped Archangel clean on Arastan’s clothing. As he returned his weapon to his scabbard he suddenly felt impossibly tired, weak, and racked with pain. All he wanted to do was to go back and make sure that Lucia was safe; and then just drink some water. His throat burned. His ears rang. He was shaking uncontrollably.
The sight of Alaric striding forward took his attention away from himself. The King had fought without armor and was covered in small lacerations and abrasions. His arms were bloodied with killing, but he had lost his sword and shield. He moved like a man dreaming, his face expressionless, his breathing even. Connor and many of the others followed him as he walked without a word towards the edge of the camp. Such was his affect that no one dared speak to him. Reaching the edge of the camp, where Sarus had only just fled, Alaric stopped and turned towards the site of battle, where the dead lay piled on top of each other. There were not just warriors, but others had been killed in the chaos too – whether at the hands of the attackers or in the confusion. Where his people had slept in their dream of peace, now there lay corpses of men and horses, trampled tents and turned over wagons; but what struck almost everyone was that it could have been – indeed, was intended to be – so much worse.
Alaric turned back towards the walls of Ravenna that rose tall and silent in the dawning light.
“Honorius!” Alaric bellowed, his frame drawn up and his face contorted in anguish once more. “Honorius! This is on your hands! Now the fate of Rome is on your hands!”
XXVII
Connor carelessly tossed the hand mallet aside and started lashing the cords to the tent stakes. Lucia sat down on the ground, too tired to wait for the shelter to be ready. Connor knew his eyes were just as red as hers. It was only the second day on the road, and such a massive group could only cover so much ground; but no one had recovered from the events of the other night. Enraged, Alaric had ordered the camp struck immediately, and the tens of thousands of Visigoths had marched away the moment the dead were buried.
The joy that had greeted the promise of the treaty was replaced by grave words and grim faces. Throughout the host the usual talk along the road was muted – there was no longer anything to say. The future they had long fostered hope in had died at its very birth. There was nothing to do but to try to invent another. But how were they to find it with every door closed on them? As the nation of refugees trudged the white stones of the Roman road under the hammer of the summer sun, the only thoughts that were easy were thoughts of revenge.
Connor checked the tension on the cords to be certain they would stand up to the increasing eastern wind. Around him others were doing the same – but now there were so few men in his section. Connor had not realized it in the heat of battle, but Valia had lost seventy-three men in the shield wall against Sarus. The only unit that had suffered more casualties was Alaric’s own bodyguard. As a cavalry ala Valia’s force was now cut down to about a third.
Connor looked over to Valia, who had already finished his own tent and was sitting on a camp chair. The young Visigoth warlord’s face was creased with weariness and worry, as well as pain from the several injuries he had sustained in the action. Valia was a noble by birth, but the wealth and strength of a warlord were in the number of men he retained. His reputation depended not just on bravery but on how his men prospered. Connor knew Valia well enough to be sure that his first thoughts were of sorrow for the friends they had all lost – men they had shared days in battle and nights surviving in the wilderness; men with whom they had been bonded to in true brotherhood, the brotherhood of adversity. Nonetheless, he must be keenly aware that while they may have even saved Alaric and Ataulf from Sarus’s sword, their raw bravery was the only thing that could be said to be adding to Valia’s status. For whatever reason, years ago Valia had tried to distinguish himself in the battles in Gaul instead of merely following the main body of his people. Now half the valiant men that loyally followed him back from that fruitless mission lay dead in the ground. Far from being a bringer
of wealth to the sworn men that trusted him for leadership, Valia would have a name as a warlord hungry for suicide missions. From what Connor had seen of warrior culture, the young leader may possibly never recover his place. Even this evening, as morale amongst his friends was so low, could any of them be harboring ideas of defecting to any of the other warlords who surrounded them, in hopes that they may be luckier? Connor, and perhaps Valia, hoped that the men were made of truer metal than that, but only time would tell.
“What are you thinking about?” Lucia asked him. Connor smiled weakly and sat down beside her.
“Nothing of merit,” Connor said, putting his big hand on her knee and kissing the top of her head. The Visigoths had been Connor’s saviors, but Lucia’s victimizers. The fact that Arastan’s men, and not Valia’s, had been her father’s killers did not matter much – these barbarians had participated in the looting and had been indistinguishable to her at the time. Over the months Connor had seen her warm up to some of the women, and she did not shoot Gaiseric and Henric her famous death glares as often as she once had. Valia she still fully hated, but seldom spoke of it. Despite all this, Connor saw Lucia looking at those around her with empathetic eyes. The despair in the group – not just their ala but the entire mass of nomads – was inescapable. But Connor realized it was more than this. Just as when he had been a slave, he had eventually started to fall into the role. The need for fellowship with others and the patterns of day to day life had been inexorable. Lucia was no slave, but she had been – with varying degrees of willingness – a part of the company for many months. Connor looked at her hair, bound in a single braid as the Gothic women’s hair was. She had long ago abandoned the worn out and unseasonable woolen travel clothes from her villa, replacing them with clothing like the linen dress she now wore – cut from multiple pieces of cloth and sewn with large stitches by Gothic hands. The green color was beautiful on her, and brought out the bronze of her skin and the deeper green of her eyes, but the Lucia of a year ago would not have thought it fit even for one of her bodyslaves. Instead of gold or precious stones she wore an amulet of cleverly woven tin wire from a leather thong around her neck. Connor smiled, despite his dark bent of thought, as he imagined that if their luck changed and he was able to come by some gold that Lucia would not be far from looking like a barbarian princess.
“What are you staring at?” Lucia asked, feigning annoyance.
“The stars will be out soon,” Connor said.
“I know what that means. Let’s eat some supper first, shall we?”
“Are you worried about me keeping my strength up?” Connor teased. Lucia smacked him on the shoulder; but when Connor put his arm around her and pulled her closer she rested her head contentedly on his chest.
“You know what I do not understand?” Connor said, his mood shifting back.
“What?” Lucia asked.
“Why did Sarus do it?”
Lucia lifted up her head and sat back.
“I guess I do not so much mean ‘why’ in terms of motivation,” Connor said, interrupting her before she began. “That much is both as unanswerable and obvious as it ever is – greed, jealousy, anger, a skewed view of the world, a belief that you are right and that you will somehow change everything for the right even if you act wrongly – the same things that seem to be at work in every traitor and murderer. What I mean is why did he do it this way? Was he really acting on behalf of Honorius?”
“You said that he fled towards the city once he was beaten,” Lucia reminded him. “That proves it.”
“Yes – the city let him in. Someone at the gate knew who he was and what he was doing. And how they infiltrated the camp in the first place was brilliant – why send black-clad troops across half a kilometer of no-man’s-land to attack a camp when you could just have them casually stroll in days in advance? There is no telling how long Sarus’ men were waiting in our midst. But why just Sarus’ three hundred men? Why did the three hundred men not serve as the distraction for a large-scale attack from the Roman legions from the city? What did Honorius think Sarus could do with just a few hundred unsupported warriors?”
“It was just an assassination attempt,” Lucia said. “Maybe as such it was too big. That’s how you ran into it, besides by luck.”
“I don’t know,” Connor said. “If Honorius did not want peace he should have rejected the treaty.”
“Maybe he did want peace, but not with Alaric personally,” Lucia observed.
“So Sarus was delusional enough to think that he could just murder Alaric and Ataulf and take their place with the people, and then Honorius would grant peace with him, as King of the Visigoths,” Connor reasoned.
“Or maybe the Augustulus wanted them both dead,” Lucia said. “Maybe Sarus was promised Roman legions that never came. Surely Sarus could not have expected his chance of escape without help to be very good.”
Connor nodded. “Honorius’ plan may have been to destroy both Alaric and Sarus; and thus enrage the Visigoths so much that they attacked the walls of Ravenna, where they would be destroyed by the well-fortified defenders.”
“That seems as likely a plan as any,” Lucia said. “We will probably never know. I doubt Sarus will make the same mistake again.”
“No. But he will want revenge. We killed Arastan in front of him. He will not let that go. And yet, I cannot help but wonder if the Romans had anything at all to do with this. Despite fleeing to Ravenna and being allowed inside, could it not be that Sarus was acting independently?”
“And so the revenge these people are planning would not even be justified,” Lucia followed.
Connor nodded. “Maybe it is time that we left.”
He stole a glance over to Valia, feeling guilty that he would think of abandoning him now. But the warlord would stand or fall based on his own fate, Connor thought, not his help.
“Where could we go?” Lucia said. “They say that Constantine has secured the passes through the Alps; so we are all trapped in Italia – though it starves under the weight of constant war and embargoes. Meanwhile the Augustulus has done nothing if not prove his impotence. We are sitting in the safest place in the world right now. In any city in Italia we could be overrun by barbarians, but right here we have a hundred thousand barbarians to protect us.”
Until plague hits, Connor thought dourly; but he did not want to further trouble her, so he said nothing.
Connor saw Valia stand up suddenly. He did the same, trying to see what the matter was. The other men of their unit began to gather around as well, though no one bothered to arm themselves. The Gothic host was so vast that it took a long time for the entire assembly to stop and pitch camp. To the back of the column men were probably still marching; followed by the indigenous merchants, tradesmen, entertainers, and prostitutes that always followed large armies, regardless of allegiance. Even after travel stopped for the day, traffic along the road was not unusual, as messengers and men on business travelled back and forth. But Connor spied a fairly large group – perhaps two dozen men coming north, towards them. As they came closer, all recognized the King.
Valia was the first to fall to one knee as Alaric came into their midst, riding the same black charger that had challenged the defenses of Ravenna weeks before.
“Rise, my brothers,” Alaric said as he dismounted. He was dressed in a heavy chain mail hauberk, and wore his spatha at his hip; but neither helmet nor crown rested on his head. Like so many of them, his face was darkened by weariness and grim thoughts; and though he was only thirty-five or thirty-six he appeared much older at that moment. He searched the assembly, his gray eyes resting on many of them in recognition.
“We are honored by your presence, Lord King,” Valia said.
Alaric turned to Valia and embraced him, slapping him on the back several times.
“It is I who am honored, cousin,” Alaric said, the energy of his voice in contrast to his apparent weariness. “You and your men saved my life, and saved us all from the treache
ry of evil men.”
“Will you sit?” Valia offered, indicating his folding camp stool. Alaric shook his head as one of his retainers brought up a similar chair and set it next to Valia’s. But Alaric stood and addressed Valia’s men as much as him.
“You all fought well,” Alaric began. “You fought like lions; like demons; like Visigoths.”
They bowed their heads, most not knowing how to respond.
“If you had not come when you did and fight like you did, then I do not know what might have happened. I might not be standing here today. But what is much worse than that is to think that the worms in the court of the mongrel that is unworthy of the air he breaths would all have their way. They sought victory over us. They sought our destruction. They found the edges of our swords instead.”
Some of the men cheered. This was turning more into the type of speech they were used to. Connor, Valia, and the many others remained quiet though, humbled by the praise.
“You all risked your lives,” Alaric continued. “And you did not risk it for me, but for the cause – for our people, for our future; for respect and for a homeland; and for a time when our children can hold their heads high and tell their children of the glory of their ancestors – men like you who changed the world into a place where we could live in freedom.”
Alaric paused, seeming to collect his thoughts.
“I know that you have lost many brothers,” he continued. “I weep for them too. I buried them with you. I promise you, we will avenge them.”
There was a strong cheer at this, though Connor wondered what the point was – their vengeance lay with Sarus or maybe Honorius. The ones who would feel their vengeance would probably not even know what had happened.
The Songs of Slaves Page 38