I felt an irrational twinge of jealousy. It had once been my duty to guard the general, but he had chosen to set me aside. The sight of Antonina made me wonder if my dismissal from the Guards had been her doing. Perhaps she thought I was too close to her husband, and had to be removed in case I influenced him against her.
The hall rang to the chatter of the assembled senators and lesser dignitaries. Their voices died away when Belisarius raised his arm for silence.
“Come forward,” he said, beckoning the chief envoy, “and state your case. King Vitiges asked for this meeting to take place. We pray that he has sent you with reasonable terms to lay before us.”
The envoy, also the tallest and most richly-dressed of the Goths, swaggered forward and gave the most perfunctory of bows.
“My royal master sends greetings, Flavius Belisarius,” he boomed, “and congratulates you on the victories you have won so far. Your Emperor is wise and fortunate in his choice of generals.”
Belisarius bowed his head to acknowledge the compliment.
“No general, however skilled and favoured by God,” the Goth continued, “could hope to prevail against such overwhelming odds as are now stacked against you. Rome is invested from all sides. You have no hope of relief from Constantinople. My master charges you not to prolong the sufferings of the citizens of Rome, who for long have prospered under the beneficent rule of our kings.”
He turned and spread his brawny arms to address the senators. “Have my people not made Rome great again?” he demanded, “have we not lifted her from the pit of shame and ruin she had fallen into, under the tyranny of your degenerate Emperors? Senators, the time of the Caesars is long past. The last Emperor of the West died in exile, and his regalia lies in a vault in Constantinople. Why, then, did you open your gates to receive Belisarius and his army of hirelings? Why do you choose the slavery that Justinian would subject you to, over the enlightened rule of the Goths?”
A white-bearded senator stepped forward to speak, but Belisarius waved him back.
“I speak for the people of Rome,” the general said in a voice that brooked no protest, “and I will tell you why the Romans admitted us. They know we are engaged in a national and rightful cause. Rome does not belong to your barbarian kings, no matter how wisely and well they might rule the city. Should we applaud a thief for spending the treasures he steals on worthy causes? He is still a thief. My master is the direct heir of Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the West, and has sent me to reclaim his inheritance.”
The envoy clasped his hands together and gave a sorrowful little shake of his head. “King Vitiges feared that would be your reply. If you are so bent on your own destruction, he begs you to think of the people of Rome, and not seek to hide any longer behind their walls. He challenges you, Belisarius, to march out with all your army and meet us in open battle. If, however, you prefer the path of reason, and agree to surrender, you and your men will be permitted to depart from Italy in peace.”
“Your king savours a victory he has not yet won,” Belisarius replied in a tone of amused contempt, “my system of warfare shall be guided, not by his judgment or yours, but by my own. Far from viewing my prospects with any gloomy forebodings, I tell you that the time will come, when, reduced to your last detachment, driven from your last camp, you shall seek and scarcely find a refuge in bushes and brambles. If any one of your soldiers thinks to enter Rome, without fighting for every foot of ground, and meeting with the most determined resistance, he shall find himself grievously mistaken. So long as Belisarius lives, expect no surrender.”
It was a fine speech, and drew a smattering of applause from the onlookers. Not for the first time, it struck me that Belisarius cut a regal figure, far more so than his master, and was fitter to rule an empire than serve one.
The envoy made no reply to this defiance, but turned and swept out at the head of his comrades, his bearded face suffused with rage.
“That’s it, then,” said Procopius, delicately stepping aside as the Goths barged past, “war to the knife, and may God have pity on the loser.”
16.
If Belisarius’ defiant response was intended to drive the Goths into a fury, then it succeeded. Very soon after their envoys had returned to repeat the general’s word to Vitiges, they started making preparations for an all-out assault on the walls.
They worked, day and night, to construct siege engines. Four mighty wooden towers, each larger than the one that had guarded the Milvian Bridge, built on gigantic rollers. Dozens of scaling ladders, and great piles of faggots and reeds to fill up the ditch when they attacked, and four battering rams. These last were the most impressive, and the most terrifying.
The rams were made of several tree trunks bound together and topped with a lump of iron crudely forged into the form of a ram’s head, complete with curling horns. They were placed on timber carriages with four wheels, and pushed by no less than fifty men inside a covered compartment at the base.
“Some barbarians, eh?” said Procopius as we stood on the western wall one evening and watched this frightful arsenal take shape, “it seems Belisarius has woken a bear from its slumber.”
Meantime Belisarius was far from idle. His workmen laboured feverishly to build war-machines. Onagri, a kind of mechanical sling for hurling rocks, were mounted on the towers, alongside ballistae, large crossbows capable of shooting darts the size of lances, powerful enough to pierce wood or even stone.
One of his engineers devised a particularly fearsome machine called a lupus to defend the city gates. This consisted of a thick wooden beam with holes bored into it, suspended over the archway of a gate. A lattice of sharpened iron spikes was held above the beam, and dropped through the holes when an enemy passed underneath, impaling him.
At daybreak on the thirtieth day of March, eighteen days after the beginning of the siege, the Gothic host broke camp and advanced to attack the Salarian Gate, on the northern side of the city. Vitiges appeared to have history in mind, for this was the same gate via which his famous forebear, Alaric, had forced entry into Rome over two hundred years previously.
Belisarius crammed as many fighting men as possible on the walls flanking the semi-circular towers of the gatehouse, with reserves deployed in the streets below. I and the remaining Heruls under my command were among the men on the wall, where we enjoyed (if that is the right word) a spectacular view of the advancing host.
I have mentioned that Procopius was no soldier, but he had found a helmet and a breastplate from somewhere, neither of which fitted him, and joined us on the walls. He was armed with his long knife, which I suspected he knew how to use, and a spear, which I was certain he didn’t.
“What a sight!” he exclaimed, lifting the rim of his oversized helmet to stare, pop-eyed, with genuine delight at the teeming squadrons of Goths.
His voice was almost drowned by the hellish din of their advance: thousands of marching feet, the deep, drawn-out booming of their bull-horns, their guttural prayers and war-songs, the thunder of drums and squalling trumpets.
I made no answer, incapable of tearing my eyes from the monstrous ram wheeling slowly towards the gate. The other three were lined up in a row behind it, ready to be pushed forward if the first failed in its task.
As for the main part of the Gothic army, the sight of those legions converging on Rome has haunted my nightmares for the best part of thirty years. It seemed to me that they needed no ladders or war-engines – that great boiling mass of bodies could simply pour over our flimsy defences and suffocate us with sheer weight of numbers.
“Courage, Romans! Have no fear of these barbarian animals! Cast your javelins at them, shower them with arrows and rocks and boiling oil! Send them fleeing back to the northern wastelands that birthed them!”
Belisarius’ voice rose above the tumult. His words put fresh heart into our soldiers. The ballistae and onagri on the towers hurled their missiles into the densely-packed enemy ranks, flattening scores of warriors and impaling ot
hers. I gave a savage cheer as I witnessed one bolt drive clean through a spearman’s breast, burst from his spine and transfix three men behind him.
It was now that I saw Belisarius snatch a bow from an Isaurian archer, take careful aim, and put an arrow through the neck of a Gothic officer. Our soldiers gave a great shout when they witnessed this exploit. Belisarius promptly took another arrow from the grinning Isaurian’s quiver and repeated the feat.
“Shoot the oxen!” he commanded, and our archers lining the walls bent their bows and let fly. They aimed at the beasts pulling the four siege towers rumbling towards the city, and within moments their targets crumpled to the ground. The towers stopped dead, and Procopius howled with laughter at the confusion on the faces of the Gothic soldiers packed inside.
“Look at those stupid Germanic pigs!” he cackled, forgetting that half our own men were Germans, “they spent days building those big towers, and didn’t think to put some armour on the oxen. Fresh cows needed, brother Herman!”
His laughter was short-lived. The towers were rendered immobile, but the ram continued to rumble on towards the gate. Belisarius screamed at our archers to fell the men pushing it, but most of the arrows rebounded or struck harmlessly on the thick coverings of ox-hide the Goths had stretched over the compartment at the base.
Some of the Isaurians were supplied with rags dipped in oil, and had lit braziers ready to set the rags on fire after they were wrapped around the tips of their arrows.
The fire-arrows had been intended to set the Gothic towers ablaze, but now their officers ordered them used against the ram.
It worked. The ox-hide was dry as tinder, and the flames quickly took hold. Most of the men cowering inside abandoned the ram and fled into the open, where our bowmen had great sport picking them off.
Now the great swarm of Gothic infantry broke into a charge. Our archers mowed them down as they struggled across the ditch, filling the freshly-dug trenches with twitching bodies. Their comrades clambered over the dead and wounded, or filled the ditch with heaps of faggots and reeds to act as rough bridges.
“Let them burn!” roared Belisarius, and the Isaurians poured their flaming arrows into the ditch, setting the dry reeds alight.
The flames turned that ditch into Hell on earth, through which the Goths struggled, screaming as they burned alive. Many of them suffocated, trampled by their fellows, but still the rest bravely came on.
So much wasted courage. The few that managed to cross the ditch and reach the foot of the walls were exposed to javelins, rocks and hot oil dropped on them from above.
Every man on the wall was supplied with three javelins apiece. I cast the first of mine at a Goth just as he glanced upwards. The slender iron-tipped missile passed straight through his gaping mouth and out the back of his neck.
“Well struck!” cried Procopius, his voice shrill with excitement, “give me one of your javelins, Coel, and let me fell one of the bastards.”
I handed him one, and laughed at his clumsy attempt at a throw. The javelin flew well wide of any Goths and stuck, quivering, in the earth.
“Another!” he demanded, but I was distracted by a sound of a trumpet.
I looked down and saw Constantine standing in the street. His helmet was dented, and his breastplate smeared with blood. He had a desperate, wild look in his eyes, and waved his arms frantically at me.
“The Goths!” he shouted, “they are inside the city! My men cannot hold them!”
Constantine, I remembered, had been entrusted with guarding the north-eastern quarter. His troops were stationed at Hadrian’s mausoleum on the south side of the Tiber.
The noise of battle was deafening, and only I and a few other men on the walls had heard him. I risked a charge of desertion if I abandoned my post, but Constantine was clearly in dire need of reinforcements.
“Follow!” I yelled in the ear of one of my Heruls. He passed the word to his comrades, and I led them down the steps to the street. A few others, no more than a dozen or so, trailed after us.
“Coel,” Constantine said warmly, gripping my wrist, “I knew you would not fail me. Come, we must hurry.”
We raced through the streets, heading towards the sepulchre of the Emperor Hadrian. The enormous silhouette rose above the ramparts and dominated the skyline in that part of the city.
The sepulchre consisted of a massive square base, with a circular mole, about a thousand feet in circumference and made of great blocks of white marble. Its base was adorned with statues of gods and equestrian figures worked in bronze and marble, and the whole surrounded by a paved sidewalk and a railing of gilt bronze, supported by pillars crowned with gilded peacocks.
Appropriate to the memory of the great soldier-emperor whose remains were housed inside, it served as a fortress as well as mausoleum, and was connected to part of the outer defences.
“The Goths hid beneath the Church of Saint Peter,” Constantine breathlessly explained as we ran, “my attention was called away to another part of the walls, and I left just a few men to guard the mausoleum. Suddenly the enemy poured out of hiding and rushed the defences.”
The Church of Saint Peter lay outside the circuit of the walls, within a stone’s throw of the mausoleum. Some clever Gothic officer must have had the idea of concealing some of his men in the arcades and porticoes of the church, while the others were sent to draw away the defenders.
Constantine had left his men to hold off the Goths while he went in search of reinforcements. The sound of fighting grew louder as we raced over Hadrian’s bridge and through the archway into the vestibule, a great square chamber dominated by an equestrian statue of Hadrian. His stern, bearded features seemed to glower in disapproval at us as we ascended the spiral stair leading to the central chamber.
Constantine was first through the narrow door that led onto the roof, where his men were struggling to hold back waves of Goths. The enemy had laid ladders against the outer wall of the mausoleum, and were swarming up them in their hundreds. Constantine’s Huns and Isaurians had thrown down some of the ladders, and littered the ground below with Gothic corpses, but there was no end to the brutes.
He ran to aid his men, locked in vicious combat on the western side of the base. It was obvious they could not hold for much longer. They had already suffered terrible casualties, were out of arrows and javelins, and exposed to the Gothic archers below.
I hesitated to join the fray. My six Heruls were not likely to make much difference, and I was reluctant to waste lives to no purpose.
One of my men – Ubaz, I think his name was – pointed his sword at one of the bronze statues. He had no need to speak, for the same idea had already occurred to me.
“With me!” I yelled at the others, and all seven of us ran to the statue and knelt to seize its legs.
“Ready – lift!” We put our shoulders to the task and lifted it a few inches off the floor. The damned thing was crushingly heavy, even with seven of us, and I bit my lip as fresh pain scorched through my bad shoulder.
Grunting and cursing, we shuffled sideways, crab-like, across the roof. Constantine had seen us, and shouted at his men to clear a path.
I peered down at the teeming mass of Goths below the wall, shouted “heave!” and with a final effort we pitched the statue over the edge.
It was some eight feet high, and I like to think that the long-dead sculptor who shaped it would have had no objection to his creation being used as a missile against invading barbarians. Horse and rider plunged down onto the heads of a band of Goths clustered at the base of a scaling ladder, who looked up just in time to see the fatal shadow descending on them. The screams that rose in their throats were cut off, suddenly and satisfyingly, and replaced by a grisly squelch.
“Fetch more!” Constantine roared, and a number of his men ran to pick up more of the statues that crowned the base. Some, such as the statues of Apollo and Venus and other pagan deities from Rome’s distant past, were lighter than others, and could be carried by just
two or three men.
Within moments the bemused Goths found themselves being pelted with statuary. I later heard a poet declare, much to the disapproval of the priests, that Rome’s ancient gods had come to life to protect the city, where they were had been worshipped and adored before the arrival of Christ. It was a nice image, but the hands that threw down the statues were entirely mortal.
The Goths panicked and scattered, ducking for cover and holding their shields above their heads. No fragile linden wood shield is proof against half a ton of marble, and before long the ground below the wall was strewn with dead men, flattened like insects under a man’s heel, their bodies crushed into so much bleeding pulp.
Having almost lost Rome to the Goths, Constantine was in no mood to allow them any respite. Leaving me to hold the mausoleum, he took some thirty of his men down the stair, fetched their horses from a nearby barracks and led them out of the city via a postern gate.
I watched, panting and rubbing my aching shoulder, as his cavalry pursued the fleeing Goths, spearing them like rabbits and driving them headlong across the fields. Fresh reserves of the enemy stood waiting about a mile beyond the city, and for a moment I thought Constantine meant to lead his handful of men in a death-or-glory charge. Thankfully, he turned about and trotted back to the safety of the walls.
We had slain over two hundred Goths, for the loss of some thirty or forty of our own men. Not a bad tally, but it was nothing more than a minor victory snatched from the jaws of disaster. The thousands of Gothic reserves were unperturbed by the defeat of their fellows, and stood in disciplined squares, waiting for the order to renew the assault.
“That is twice you have come to my rescue,” said Constantine when he returned from his sally, “I owe you much, Coel. Be assured that someday I will repay the debt in full.”
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