Belisarius I Thunder at Dawn

by David Drake

"You've only got three hundred cataphracts," she protested.

  "Pull the grenadiers back," he repeated. "They're lightly armored and they've got no experience in hand combat."

  The hecatontarch gestured at the huge mob marching toward them.

  "They'll just get in my cataphracts' way," he growled. "Pull them back and keep tossing grenades. I'll try to hold as long as I can."

  Maurice stalked forward, roaring commands. Antonina added her voice to his. The grenadiers and their wives scampered back up the tiers. The Thracian cataphracts moved in from the flanks, forming a solid line in front of the grenadiers. The bucellarii didn't wait for Maurice's order before firing a volley of arrows.

  "Aim for the Malwa!" ordered Maurice.

  The enemy broke into a charge. There was no discipline to that charge. No formation of any kind. Simply—six thousand men racing toward three hundred.

  By the time the traitor army reached the lowest tier on the southwest curve of the Hippodrome, a thousand of them had been slain or wounded by grenades and arrows. The kshatriya, especially, had suffered terrible casualties—including Balban, who was bleeding to death in the arena. A cataphract's arrow had ripped through the great artery in his thigh.

  But the traitors sensed victory. Their own grenades were beginning to wreak havoc. And they were now too close for that horrifying cataphract archery. True, the armored Thracians loomed above them like iron statues—fierce, fearsome. But—there were only a few of them.

  The mob poured up the tiers.

  "NIKA! NIKA!"

  The cataphracts raised their swords, and their maces. Soon, now. The first line of the mob was but twenty yards away.

  Thousands of them.

  Ten yards away.

  The line of thugs suddenly disintegrated. Shredded, like meat. Stopped, in its tracks, by a thousand plumbata. The lead-weighted darts sailed over the heads of the cataphracts and struck the charging mob like a hammer. The entire front line collapsed—backward, driving the thugs who followed into a heap.

  The cataphracts stared. Lowered their swords. Turned their heads.

  Behind them, marching down the tiers in ordered formation, came a thousand Roman infantrymen. Above those infantrymen, atop the uppermost tier of the Hippodrome, was their commander. Standing next to the commander of the Theodoran Cohort.

  It did not seem strange, to the cataphracts, to see two generals kissing each other fiercely in the middle of a battle. Not at the time. Later, of course, the episode would be the subject of many ribald jokes and rhymes.

  But not at the time. No, not at all.

  The cataphracts did not wait for the infantry to reach them. As one man, three hundred Thracians simply charged forward, shouting their battle cries.

  Some of them: "Nothing! Nothing!"

  Most of them: "Belisarius! Belisarius!"

  And, one enthusiast: "Oh, you sorry bastards are fucked!"

  An hour later, after clambering over the trampled corpses packed in the northern gates, Sittas and Hermogenes slogged across the Hippodrome.

  Their progress was slow. Partly, because they were forced to avoid the multitude of bodies scattered across the arena. Partly, because Sittas paused when he came upon Balban's body long enough to cut off the Malwa's head. And, partly, because they had found Hypatius cowering in the bulwarks and were dragging him behind them.

  Belisarius and Antonina were sitting on the lowest tier by the southwest curve of the racetrack. Valentinian stood a few feet away. Antonina was still wearing her cuirass, but she had removed her helmet. Her head was nestled into her husband's shoulder. Her cheeks were marked by tear-tracks, but she was smiling like a cherub.

  Sittas dropped Balban's head at their feet.

  "You can add that to our collection," he said, grinning savagely.

  Antonina opened her eyes and gazed at the trophy. She made a small grimace of distaste. Then, closed her eyes and sighed contentedly.

  "How many?" asked Belisarius.

  "A hundred and twenty-eight," replied Sittas. "Irene says we got most of them. Beyond that—"

  He waved a thick arm, grimacing himself. Not a small grimace, either.

  "The place is a slaughterhouse. Especially underneath, in the horse pens."

  Hermogenes shook his head. His face was almost ashen.

  "Thousands of them tried to escape through the stables."

  Belisarius winced. The only entrances to the stables were small doors, barely wide enough to fit a racing chariot.

  "Most of them are dead," muttered Hermogenes. "Trampled, suffocated, crushed. Christ, it'll take days to haul the bodies out. The ones at the bottom aren't much more than meat paste."

  Hermogenes reached back and hauled Hypatius to his feet. The "Emperor" collapsed immediately, like a loose sack. The smell of urine and feces was overpowering.

  "Theodora'll be happy to see him," snarled Sittas.

  Antonina's eyes popped open.

  "No," she whispered. "She's at Hell's gate already."

  She turned a pleading gaze up at her husband.

  Belisarius squeezed her shoulder. Nodded.

  Hypatius spoke. "Have mercy," he croaked. "I beg you—have mercy."

  "I will," said Belisarius. He turned his head.

  "Valentinian."

  Epilogue

  An Empress and Her Soul

  To Belisarius, the huge throne r oom seemed more like a cavern than ever, with so few occupants. But Theodora had insisted on meeting him there, and he had made no objection. If the Empress found some strength and comfort in the sight of that huge chamber, and the feel of her enormous throne, Belisarius was glad for it.

  She, now, was the lynchpin for the future.

  He advanced across the huge room with a quick step. When he was ten paces from the throne, he prostrated himself. Then, after rising, began to speak. But Theodora stopped him with a gesture.

  "One moment, Belisarius." The Empress turned toward the handful of excubitores standing guard a few yards away.

  "Tell the servants to bring a chair," she commanded.

  As the excubitores hastened to do her bidding, Theodora bestowed a wry smile upon the general standing before her.

  "It's scandalous, I know. But we're in for a long session, and I'd much rather have your untired mind than your formal respect."

  Inwardly, Belisarius heaved a sigh of relief. Not at the prospect of spending an afternoon in seated comfort—he was no stranger to standing erect—but at the first sign in days that there was something in the Empress' soul beyond fury, hatred and vengeance.

  * * *

  A City and Its Terror

  For eight days, since the crushing of the insurrection, Theodora's soul had dwelt in that realm. As Antonina had so aptly put it, at the very gate of hell.

  Much of that time, true, the Empress had spent with her husband. Overseeing the doctors who tended to his wounds; often enough, pushing them aside to tend Justinian herself.

  But she had not spent all of her time there. By no means.

  She had spent hours, with Irene, overseeing her agentes in rebus—the "inspectors of the post" who served the throne as a secret police—dispatching squads of them throughout the Empire. Those squads assigned to the capital itself had already reported back. The results of their missions were displayed, for all to see, on the walls of the Hippodrome. Next to the spiked heads of Malwa kshatriya—hundreds of them, with Balban's occupying a central position; faction leaders; Hypatius; John of Cappadocia (and all of his bucellarii who had not managed to flee the city)—now perched the heads of three dozen churchmen, including Glycerius of Chalcedon and George Barsymes; those officers of the Army of Bithynia who had been captured; nineteen high noblemen, including six Senators; eighty-seven officials and functionaries; and the torturer who had blinded Justinian.

  The torturer's head was identified by a small placard. His face was quite unrecognizable. Theodora had spent other hours overseeing his own torture, until she pushed aside her experts and fi
nished the job herself.

  There would have been more heads, had it not been for Belisarius and Antonina.

  Many more.

  Theodora had demanded the heads of every officer, above the rank of tribune, of every military unit in the capital which had stood aside during the insurrection. That demand, however, could not be satisfied by her secret police. As cowed and terrified as they were, those officers were still in command of thousands of troops. Shaky command, true—very shaky—but solid enough to have resisted squads of agentes in rebus.

  So, Theodora had ordered Belisarius to carry out the purge. He had refused.

  Flatly refused. Partly, he told her, because it was excessive. Those men were not guilty of treason, after all, simply dereliction of duty. What was more important, he explained—calmly, coldly—was that such an indiscriminate purge of the entire officer corps in Constantinople would undermine the army itself.

  He needed that army. Rome needed that army. The first battle with the Malwa Empire had been fought and won. There were many more to come.

  In the end, Theodora had yielded. She had been satisfied—it might be better to say, had accepted—the dismissal of those officers. Belisarius, along with Sittas and Hermogenes, had spent three days enforcing that dismissal.

  None of the officers had objected, with the sole exception of Gontharis, the commander of the Army of Rhodope. A scion of one of the empire's noblest families, he apparently felt his aristocratic lineage exempted him from such unceremonious and uncouth treatment.

  Belisarius, not wishing to feed further the nobility's resentment against Thracians, had allowed Sittas to handle the problem.

  The Greek nobleman's solution had been quick and direct. Sittas felled Gontharis with a blow of his gauntleted fist, dragged him out of his headquarters into the Army of Rhodope's training field, and decapitated him in front of the assembled troops. Another head joined the growing collection on the walls of the Hippodrome.

  Immediately thereafter, Sittas and his cataphracts marched to Gontharis' villa on the outskirts of Constantinople. After expelling all the occupants, Sittas seized the immense treasure contained therein and burned the villa to the ground. The confiscated fortune, he turned over to the imperial treasury.

  The treasury's coffers were bulging, now. Theodora had executed only nineteen noblemen. But she had confiscated the fortunes of every noble family whose members had even the slightest connection with the plot. The confiscations, true, had been restricted to that portion of such families' fortunes which were located in the capital. Their provincial estates—to which most of them had fled—were untouched. But, since most aristocrats resided in the capital, the plunder was enormous.

  The same treatment had been dealt to officials, bureaucrats, churchmen.

  None of them objected. Not publicly, at least. They were glad enough to escape with their lives.

  A Populace and Its Glee

  The great populace of the city had been untouched.

  Indeed, after a day, the populace came out of hiding and began applauding the purge. Throngs of commoners could be found, from dawn to dusk, admiring the new decorations on the Hippodrome. The heads of bucellarii meant little to them, and the Malwa heads even less. But the heads of high officials, nobles, churchmen—oh, now, that was a different matter altogether. Often enough, over the years—over the decades and centuries, in the memory of their families—had such men extorted and bullied them.

  John of Cappadocia's head, of course, was the most popular attraction. He had often been called the most hated man in the Roman Empire. Few had doubted that claim, in the past. None doubted it now.

  But the populace also spent much time admiring the heads of the Hippodrome factions. For the first time in their lives, the common folk could walk the streets of Constantinople without fearing an encounter with faction thugs. The leaders of those thugs—with the exception of a few who had escaped Irene's eye—were all perched on the wall. And, within days, those who had escaped the slaughter joined them—along with two hundred and sixty-three other faction bravos. Such men might have escaped Irene's eye, and the eyes of the agentes in rebus. They could not escape the eyes of the populace, who ferreted them out of their hiding places and turned them over to Hermogenes' infantrymen. Or, often enough, simply lynched them on the spot and brought their heads to the Hippodrome.

  The more prosperous residents of Constantinople—and there were many of them, in that teeming city: merchants, shopkeepers, craftsmen, artisans—did not share the unadulterated glee of their poorer neighbors. They were not immune to that glee, of course. They, too, had suffered from the exactions of the high and mighty. But—as is usually the case with those who have something to lose—they feared that the purge might widen, and deepen, and grow into a cataclysm of mass terror.

  Their fears were exaggerated, perhaps, but by no means groundless. On any number of occasions, Hermogenes' infantrymen had prevented mobs from beating or murdering a man—or an entire family—whose only real crime was unpopularity. On two occasions, the turmoil had become savage enough to require the intervention of Sittas and Belisarius' cataphracts.

  Theodora's rage had shaken the entire city. Shaken it almost into pieces.

  It was Antonina, more than anyone, who had held the city together. Partly, by the hours she had spent with Theodora, doing what she could to restrain her friend's half-insane fury. But, mostly, Antonina had held the city together by marching through it.

  Hour after hour, day after day, marching through Constantinople at the head of her little army of grenadiers, and their wives, and their children.

  "Marching" was not the correct word, actually. It would be more accurate to say that she and her Theodoran Cohort paraded through the streets. Gaily, cheerfully—and triumphantly. But theirs was not the grim triumph of cataphracts, or regular soldiers. Their was the insouciant triumph of humble Syrian villagers, who were sight-seeing as much as they were providing a sight for the city's residents.

  Who could fear such folk? With their families parading with them? After the first day, none. By the second day, Antonina's parades had become as popular as the grisly display at the Hippodrome. By the third day, much more popular.

  Much more popular.

  The vicinity of the Hippodrome, for one thing, was becoming unbearable due to the stench. Gangs of slaves were hauling out the bodies and burying them in mass graves. But there were thousands of those bodies, many of them—as Hermogenes had said—not much more than meat paste smeared across the stone floors and walls. Fortunately, it was winter, but even so the bodies were rotting faster than they could be removed.

  For another, the vengeful glee of the common folk was beginning to abate. Second thoughts were creeping in, especially as those people sat in their little apartments in the evening, enjoying the company of their families. Reservations, doubts, hesitations—as fathers began wondering about the future, and mothers worried over their children.

  The death of arrogant lordlings was a thing to be treasured, true. But, at bottom, none of Constantinople's commoners thought Death was truly a friend. They were far too familiar with the creature.

  No, better to go and enjoy Antonina's parades. There was nothing, there, to frighten a child. Nothing, to worry a mother or bring a frown to a father's face. There was only—

  Triumph, in the victory of humble people.

  Enjoyment, in the constant and casual conversations with those simple grenadiers, and their wives. And their children, for those of an age—who gazed upon those lads and lasses with an adulation rarely bestowed upon rustics by cosmopolitan street urchins. But those were the children of grenadiers—a status greatly to be envied.

  And, most of all, a feeling of safety. Safety, in the presence of—her.

  She—the closest friend of the Empress. Whom all knew, or soon learned, was striving to hold back the imperial madness.

  She—who smote the treason of the mighty.

  She—who was of their own kind.

>   She—who was the wife of Belisarius. Rome's greatest general, in this time of war. And Rome's sanest voice, in this time of madness.

  Belisarius had already been a name of legend, among those people. Now, the legend grew, and grew. His legend, of course. But also, alongside it—swelling it and being swollen by it—the legend of Antonina.

  "The whore," she had often been called, by Rome's upper crust.

  The populace of Constantinople had heard the name, in times past. Had wondered. Now, knowing, they rejected it completely.

  "The wife," they called her; or, more often, "the great wife."

  Her legend had begun with the words of a famous holy man, spoken in distant Syria. The grenadiers passed on his words to the people of Constantinople. The legend had expanded in a kitchen, here in the city itself. The grenadiers and the cataphracts told the tale.