Caesar's Sword (I): The Red Death

by David Pilling

  Gelimer entertained hopes that the Roman soldiers would alienate the populace by looting and pillaging as soon as they entered Carthage. Such was the usual behaviour of victorious armies. Belisarius, however, wisely kept his troops outside the walls until their hot blood had cooled. Mindful of how severe his discipline could be, they were mild as lambs to the citizens, and marched through the streets with a display of order and discipline unmatched since the days of the Republic.

  Belisarius’s first act was to enter Gelimer’s palace, seat himself on Gellimer’s throne, and eat the victory feast that had been prepared for Gelimer and his officers.

  Word of these humiliations soon reached the king, and drove him to ever more desperate stratagems. Hoping to stir up the African peasants against the enemy, he placed a price on the head of every Roman soldier, to no great effect since all the Romans were safely inside Carthage. He also wrote a pitiful letter to his brother Zano in Sardinia, a copy of which I later read in Constantinople:

  “It would seem (he wrote) that your expedition has tended less to the conquest of Sardinia than to our overthrow in Africa. The Vandals have lost their courage, and with their courage their prosperity: our supplies, our arms, our horses, even our capital itself, all are in the possession of the Romans! Nothing is left to us but the field of Builla and the hope which your valour still inspires. Resign, then, all thoughts of Sardinia, and join me. Here, with united forces, we may either restore our empire, or at least not be separated in adversity.”

  Zano obeyed, and made all speed with his army to come to his brother’s aid. Thousands of Vandals responded to Gelimer’s summons, along with a number of Moorish desert tribes that he employed as auxiliaries. Much of his treasure had been stored at Carthage and was now lost to the Romans, but the generosity of his people supplied him with sufficient funds to assemble and feed this new army.

  As I have said, many of the Vandals had no love for Gelimer, but they knew as well as he that this had become a war of national survival. The Romans, so he preached, were bent on the conquest of their territory and the extermination of the Vandal race.

  I was kept in his entourage as a sort of pet, and an example of what Gelimer would do to Belisarius when he took the general captive.

  “He shall serve me thus,” Gelimer would declare, as I was forced to kneel so he could use me as a foot-stool to mount his horse, “and be tethered at all times. At night the great general shall sleep in a kennel with the other dogs.”

  His troops would laugh at my ritual humiliation, and spit and kick at me as I grovelled in the dirt. My hands were kept tied, save to relieve myself or at meals, when I was obliged to serve Gelimer his wine. At other times he treated me with unnerving courtesy – his mind was cracked, no doubt of it – and more like the honoured captive he had promised I would be.

  He only seriously threatened my life once. As part of his attempts to stir up rebellion, Gelimer had sent conspirators into the city to encourage the Arian and Vandal citizens to rebel, and bribe the Hunnish mercenaries into deserting the Romans. A Vandal scout came galloping into the camp to inform Gelimer that the Romans had discovered and arrested one of these agents.

  So far Belisarius had behaved with the utmost mildness and conciliation, to the point where the Vandals jeered that he must be a woman in military dress. Now the gentle mask was ripped away. He had the captured agent, whose name was Laurus, taken onto a hill outside the gates of Carthage and slowly impaled on an iron stake.

  Word of this atrocity, which was meant as a warning and an example, caused Gelimer to temporarily lose his reason. He raged and swore and babbled incoherently, tore at his clothes, clawed his face and struck out wildly at any that came near him. When he saw me, standing in my usual position just behind his chair, he drew Caledfwlch and pressed its edge against my cheek.

  “I shall stab out your eyes,” he hissed, “and send you to Belisarius, strapped to the back of a pony. Or cut off your privy parts and make you carry them to him in a bag. That would be justice for the death of faithful Laurus, would it not?”

  If I blinked, or avoided his gaze, I was lost.

  “Wanton abuse of prisoners does not become the great,” I said with forced calm, “Belisarius’s treatment of Laurus has revealed himself to be a lesser man than you.”

  The wild look flickered and died in Gelimer’s eyes. “Yes,” he said slowly, and took the blade away from my skin, “he is the lesser man. You are right. And he has the lesser army. His time shall come.”

  He was correct in one regard. The Vandal army that mustered at Builla was huge, and over the course of several weeks swelled to over forty thousand fighting men.

  Belisarius wisely made no attempt to sally out and attack this multitude, but devoted all his efforts to repairing the defences of Carthage. The ditches that surrounded the city were deepened, the gaps in the ancient walls filled, and the crumbling ramparts shored up and strengthened. His fleet patrolled the seas, but was unable to prevent Zano’s army from landing on the African coast, at a point between Mauritania and Numidia.

  Zano’s arrival at the camp instilled a sense of euphoria in the Vandals, and fuelled their belief that God meant them to defeat the Romans. The royal brothers embraced wordlessly and clung tightly to each other while the troops roared and chanted their war-songs.

  I experienced a growing sense of dread as I gazed out over that sea of flushed, hairy faces and waving banners, and pitied the Romans holed up inside Carthage. If the Huns accepted Gelimer’s bribes and deserted, Belisarius would be left with less than thirteen thousand men. Of these, ten thousand were infantry, a good number of which were unfit for anything but standing in a line.

  Gelimer and Zano were fully aware of the plight of the Romans, and determined to make the most of it. When their combined army was fully rested, they decided to march on Carthage and retake their capital by storm.

  Chapter 19

  The Vandals advanced to within twenty miles of the city, and encamped near a village called Tricamarum. Stamped forever on my memory is the sight of that vast host, squadron after squadron of horse and foot, an entire warrior nation on the march. Thousands of Vandal women and children followed in the wake of the men, and stubbornly refused to obey when Gelimer ordered them to turn back.

  His Moorish auxiliaries fascinated me. The fierce desert tribesmen made for ideal light cavalry. They wore little armour over their head-scarves and long, flowing robes, and were armed with long knives and a single javelin apiece. Most were mounted on tough desert ponies, but a few rode camels – stinking, obnoxious beasts, which their riders boasted would induce panic in the Roman cavalry, for horses hate the smell of camel. They certainly alarmed the Vandal horses, and were obliged to keep a distance from the main army.

  At Tricamarum Gelimer ordered the destruction of an aqueduct that supplied Carthage with water, as part of his plan to force the Romans to give battle.

  “They cannot hide behind their walls for long without water,” he gloated, “Belisarius has the option of taking to his ships and fleeing back to Constantinople, or of marching out to face his destruction.”

  “The general will not run, Majesty,” I said, “that is not his way.”

  He regarded me balefully. “And you know him so well, do you?” he mocked. “Tell me, then, what sort of man is he? I know he is a good soldier, and what happened at Decimum proves that he enjoys the luck of the gods. But of the inner man, I know very little.”

  “His watchword is duty,” I replied simply, “that is my reading of him. The Emperor has given him a task, and he will fulfil it or die in the attempt. He cannot be bribed, or dissuaded against his better judgment.”

  We rode on in silence for a while, and the steady thump-thump of infantry drums masked the pounding of my heart.

  “I think you speak the truth,” said Gelimer, “and I understand Belisarius better now. Look at the Empire that he fights for. It is like a conjoined twin, one member of which has died and rotted away, leaving the
other sibling to live on as best it can. The glory has passed. Rome is degenerate and corrupt. She relies on mercenaries to defend her borders. Every year a little more of her territory is lost, snatched away by the younger and more vigorous races she once ruled.”

  “Belisarius, now,” he added, wagging a finger at me, “is a man born out of time, a throwback to the days of antiquity, when Rome was an enemy worth fighting. He should have lived in the time of Scipio Africanus, or Julius Caesar, or even Aetius. His destiny is to die fighting for a cause that is already lost. A pity.”

  I felt like laughing in his face. The Romans had already beaten Gelimer once, and were in possession of his capital and much of his treasure. But that would have meant my death – or perhaps not, since Gelimer’s moods were so unpredictable. Overall, I thought it best to agree with him.

  While the Vandals were camped at Tricamarum, their scouts raced back to report that Belisarius was on the march. He had left a garrison of just five hundred men to hold Carthage, and sallied forth at the head of his army to face the Vandals in the field.

  “Did I not say he would?” cried Gelimer, before going on one knee to thank God for delivering the enemy on a platter. His officers did likewise, Arians and Catholics in a rare moment of unity. Their prayers were led by Zano, the king’s brother, who somewhat resembled Gelimer physically but was the more constant character and a better soldier.

  According to the Vandal scouts, Belisarius was marching straight towards Tricamarum. This was soon confirmed, and the sandy plain became frantic with activity as the enormous Vandal host broke camp and readied for battle. Gelimer ordered the women and children to stay behind, and had his Moors shift at spear-point those who refused to go. He and Zano harangued their troops, urging them to remember the glory of their ancestors, who had carved out the Vandal kingdom of North Africa, and consider the fate of their families if the Romans prevailed.

  The Vandal host was hurriedly drawn up into line, with most of the cavalry on the wings and the mass of infantry in the centre. Zano had the command of the latter, while Gelimer took charge of the mounted reserve and the auxiliaries.

  The King kept me close by his side, so I might witness his glorious deeds and the number of Romans he personally slew with Caledfwlch.

  “Remind me, Briton, how many barbarians your grandfather slew in one battle with this sword?” he demanded, raising his voice above the din of drums and war-horns and thousands of marching feet.

  “Nine hundred and sixty, Majesty,” I shouted back, “so my mother told me.”

  “Today I shall make it a round thousand!” he laughed, and featly tossed the sword in the air. I watched it fall with greedy eyes, longing for the blade to puncture Gelimer’s throat, but he caught it by the hilt and grinned at my expression.

  The clamour eventually died down, and the Vandals stood ready, some forty thousand men arrayed in perfect order. A light breeze swept across the plain, whipping up the sand and snapping at their pennons and banners. Gelimer disliked the eerie silence and ordered his drummers to beat constantly. The sound of drums, he claimed, would smother the fears of his men and fill their hearts with martial ardour.

  Belisarius did not come. The horizon to the west remained empty, and no distant sound of trumpets pierced the air. Gelimer peeled off his gauntlets and gnawed his fingernails in frustration.

  “Enough!” he shouted at last, “I will not be kept waiting. Sound the advance.”

  He threw up his arm, the war-horns again boomed out their song, and the Vandal host lurched into life. They tramped west in the direction of Carthage, sending out parties of scouts and skirmishers to look for any sign of the Romans.

  Belisarius was too clever to advance into the lion’s mouth. Instead he had halted some thirty miles from Carthage and drawn up his little army on the banks of a small river, a confluent of the Merjerda that runs through Algeria and Tunisia. His bucellarii were drawn up in the centre, my old comrades the Heruli on the right along with the rest of the foederati, and his infantry in the rear. The unreliable Huns, whose loyalties were still far from certain, had taken up position some distance from the main army.

  My heart sank. The Romans were pitifully few, and a ripple of laughter passed through the ranks of the Vandal infantry as they beheld the enemy. Gelimer was exchanging jokes with one of his generals – they were merrily debating whether to employ the captured Belisarius as a groom or a cook – when Roman trumpets sounded from across the river.

  Belisarius had fooled the Vandals into thinking he intended to fight a defensive battle. Instead he seized the advantage and threw his bucelarii, all fifteen hundred of them, at the Vandal centre.

  The forward squadrons of Zano’s infantry were still deploying. His mounted officers charged back and forth, screaming at their men to get into line as the heavily armoured Roman horsemen splashed across the river and stormed towards them.

  “Archers!” shouted Gelimer, though none could hear him besides me and his immediate guards. Some of his captains were alive to the danger, and a few hundred Vandal horse archers spurred from the wings. They might as well have shot flowers, for their arrows pattered harmlessly off the thick Roman armour.

  The bucelarii crashed into the Vandal spears like a tidal wave against a flimsy sea-wall. I felt the collision in my gut and winced at the carnage as scores of infantrymen disappeared under the churning hoofs. Then the Romans were in among the shattered Vandal ranks, spitting men on lances and striking right and left with their spathas.

  Somehow, despite their appalling losses and the nerve-shredding impact of the Roman charge, the Vandals did not break. Their sheer press of bodies slowed the impetus of the bucelarii, and they fought back with the suicidal courage of men who knew the fate of their families and their country was at stake.

  Trumpets sounded the retreat, and the Romans turned and retired in good order back across the river, leaving bloody chaos behind them. Entire squadrons of Vandal infantry had ceased to exist. The broken bodies of dead and dying warriors lay strewn in heaps, while the few survivors staggered among the human rubble in a daze, bleeding from terrible wounds.

  Gelimer sat like a statue, struck dumb by what he had just witnessed. His active brother sent gallopers tearing up and down the line to summon troops from the wings and reserve of the Vandal army to reinforce his battered centre.

  There was no time for the Vandals to think of launching an attack of their own. Almost as soon as the bucelarii had re-formed, the trumpeters signalled another charge, and they rumbled forward again.

  Belisarius clearly had but one object in mind. I can best compare his tactics at Tricamarum to a smith beating away at an inferior piece of metal. The metal may resist for a while, but will eventually yield under the blows of the hammer.

  The Vandals were better prepared this time to receive the charge, but it made little difference. Again their ranks were burst to pieces by that avalanche of iron and horseflesh, and again only their raw, desperate courage prevented the centre of the Vandal army from total collapse.

  “Damn them!” screamed Gelimer, clawing at my arm. For one awful moment I thought he meant to lead his reserves into the fight, which would almost certainly mean my death: my reins were tied to his via a length of silver chain, I had no weapons or armour, and my wrists were bound.

  The Romans fell back a second time. Here and there among the corpses scattered about the plain lay the still, gleaming forms of a dead Roman horseman and his mount, but their casualties were minimal. By contrast, hundreds of Vandals had died, and I knew the bucelarii could happily launch after charge and charge until sundown. Their horses were of the finest, and the men that rode them had undergone years of training and conditioning. Many were hardened veterans of Belisarius’s Persian campaigns.

  At this point the Moors decided they had seen enough. They turned their camels about and fled the field, pursued by Gelimer’s enraged screams.

  “Cowards! Traitors!” he railed, “you have taken my pay and eaten my br
ead, and now you abandon me? Run back to your holes, then, you desert filth! May your souls be flayed forever in the pits of Hell!”

  Gelimer carried on in this vein until the Moors were out of earshot. He seemed to have lost his wits completely, and effective command of the Vandal army devolved onto his brother. To give him credit, Zano was equal to the task, and did his best to shore up the broken lines and spirits of his troops.

  The disparity in numbers between the armies was still huge, but the Vandals reminded me of a boxer I had once seen Felix defeat at the Hippodrome, struggling to rise despite the fact he was spitting teeth and both his eyes were swelling. One more punch from Felix had been enough to finish him, and here one more Roman charge would surely be enough to hand Belisarius the victory.

  Zano’s best hope lay in the Huns. If they turned traitor and fell on the Romans from the rear, then he might yet be able to reverse the fortunes of the day.

  The Huns, however, could see which way the tide was turning, and chose to return to their former allegiance. When the bucelarii launched another charge, this time with Belisarius at their head, they did so with squadrons of Hunnish and Heruli cavalry on the wings. They were supported by the Roman infantry, long lines of swordsmen and spearmen, which until now had stood idle. Belisarius had thrown his entire army forward in an all-out effort to break the Vandals.

  By now I was utterly deafened by the noise of battle, and felt rather than heard the thunderous drumming of hoofs. The vibration came up from the ground, making my horse shudder.

  If I had been a Vandal spearman in the front line, my fragile body protected by nothing more than a little round shield, an iron cap and a padded leather tunic, I would not have stood my ground in the face of that final onslaught for all the treasure in Constantinople. They were braver men than I, and so was their commander. Zano rode up and down the ranks, roaring at his men to lock shields and hold fast against the oncoming tide.