by L. Sprague de Camp;Frederik Pohl;David Drake;S. M. Stirling;Alexei
Liuderis gasped. “Are you in league with Satanas? Or perhaps you are the Devil himself? I have not told a soul of my determination to stay if my garrison leaves, and yet you know of it.”
Padway smiled. “No such luck, excellent Liuderis. Just an ordinary flesh-and-blood man who happens to have a few special gifts. Moreover, Wittigis will eventually lose his war, though only after years of destructive fighting. That is, all these things will happen unless you change your plans.”
It took an hour of talk to wear Liuderis down to the point where he asked: “Well, what plans for operations against the Greeks did you have in mind?”
Padway replied: “We know they’ll come by the Latin Way, so there’s no point in leaving Terracina garrisoned. And we know about when they’ll come. Counting the Terracina garrison, about how many men could you collect by the end of next month?”
Liuderis blew out his whiskers and thought. “If I called in the men from Formia—six thousand, perhaps seven. About half and half archers and lancers. That is, assuming that King Wittigis did not hear of it and interfere. But news travels slowly.”
“If I could show you how you’d have a pretty good chance against the Greeks, would you lead them out?”
“I do not know. I should have to think. Perhaps. If as you say our king—excuse me, noble Thiudahad, I mean the other king—is bound to be defeated, it might be worth taking a chance on. What would you do?”
“Belisarius has about ten thousand men,” replied Padway. “He’ll leave two thousand to garrison Naples and other southern towns. He’ll still out-number us a little. I notice that your brave Wittigis ran off when he had twenty thousand available.”
Liuderis shrugged and looked embarrassed. “It is true, that was not a wise move. But he expects many thousands more from Gaul and Dalmatia.”
“Have your men had any practice at night attacks?” asked Padway.
“Night attacks? You mean to assault the enemy at night? No. I never heard of such a proceeding. Battles are always fought in the daytime. A night attack does not sound very practical to me. How would you keep control of your men?”
“That’s just the point. Nobody ever heard of the Goths making a night attack, so it ought to have some chance of success. But it’ll require special training. First, you’ll have to throw out patrols on the roads leading north, to turn back people who might carry the news to Ravenna. And I need a couple of good catapult engineers. I don’t want to depend entirely on the books in the libraries for my artillery. If none of your troops knows anything about catapults, we ought to be able to dredge up a Roman or two who does. And you might appoint me to your staff—you don’t have staffs? Then it’s time you started—at a reasonable salary—”
Padway lay on a hilltop near Fregellae and watched the Imperialists through a telescope. He was surprised that Belisarius, as the foremost soldier in his age, hadn’t thrown scouts out farther, but, then this was 536. His advance party consisted of a few hundred mounted Huns and Moors, who galloped about, pushing up side roads a few hundred yards and racing back. Then came two thousand of the famous cataphracti or cuirassiers, trotting in orderly formation. The low, cold sun glittered on the scales of their armor. Their standard was a blown-up leather serpent writhing from the top of a long pole, like a balloon from Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
These were the best and certainly the most versatile soldiers in the world, and everybody was afraid of them. Padway, watching their cloaks and scarves flutter behind them, didn’t feel too confident himself. Then came three thousand Isaurian archers marching afoot, and finally two thousand more cuirassiers.
Liuderis, at Padway’s elbow, said: “That is some sort of signal. Ja, I believe they are going to camp there. How did you know they would pick that spot, Martinus?”
“Simple. You remember that little device I had on the wheel of that wagon? That measures distance. I measured the distances along the road. Knowing their normal day’s march and the point they started from, the rest was easy.”
“Tsk, tsk, wonderful. How do you think of all those things?” Liuderis’ big, trustful eyes reminded Padway of those of a St. Bernard. “Shall I have the engineers set up Brunhilde now?”
“Not yet. When the sun sets we’ll measure the distance to the camp.”
“How will you do that without being seen?”
“I’ll show you when the time comes. Meanwhile make sure that the boys keep quiet and out of sight.”
Liuderis frowned. “They will not like having to eat a cold supper. If we do not watch them, somebody will surely start a fire.”
Padway sighed. He’d had plenty of sad experience with the temperamental and undisciplined Goths. One minute they were as excited as small boys over the plans of Mysterious Martinus, as they called him; the next day they were growling on the edge of mutiny about the enforcement of some petty regulation. Since Padway felt that it wouldn’t do for him to order them around directly, poor Liuderis had to take it.
The Byzantines set up their camp with orderly promptitude. Those, Padway thought, were real soldiers. You could accomplish something with men like that to command. It would be a long time before the Goths attained such a smooth perfection of movement. The Goths were still obsessed with childish, slam-bang ideas of warfare.
Witness the grumbling that had greeted Padway’s requisition of a squad for engineers. Running catapults was a sassy job, inconsistent with knightly honor. And well-born lancers fight on foot like a lot or serfs? Perish the thought! Padway had seduced them away from their beloved horses by an ingenious method: He, or rather Liuderis at his suggestion, formed a company of pikemen, loudly announcing that only that the best men would be admitted, and that furthermore candidates would be made to pay for admission. Padway explained that there was no type of troop wherein morale and discipline were as vital as in heavy infantry, because one man flinching from a cavalry charge might break the line of spears and let the enemy in.
It was getting too dark for his telescope to be useful. He could make out the general’s standard in front of a big tent. Perhaps Belisarius was one of those little figures around it. If he had a machine-gun—but he didn’t have, and never would. You needed machines to make a machine-gun, and machines to make those machines, and so on. If he ever got a workable muzzle-loading musket he’d be doing well.
The standard no doubt bore the letters S. P. Q. R.—the Senate and the People of Rome. An army of Hunnish, Moorish, and Anatolian mercenaries, commanded by a Thracian Slav who worked for a Dalmatian autocrat who reigned in Constantinople and didn’t even rule the city of Rome, called himself the Army of the Roman Republic and saw nothing funny in the act.
Padway got up, grunting at the weight of his shirt of scale mail. He wished a lot of things, such as that he’d had time to train some mounted archers. They were the only troops who could really deal on even terms with the deadly Byzantine cuirassiers. But he’d have to hope that darkness would nullify the Imperialists’ advantage in missile fire.
He superintended the driving of a stake into the ground and paced off the base of a triangle. With a little geometry he figured the quarter-mile distance that was Brunhilde’s range, and ordered the big catapult set up. The thing required eleven wagon-loads of lumber, even though it was not of record size. Padway hovered around his engineers nervously, jumping and hissing reprimands when somebody dropped a piece of wood,
Snatches of song came from the camp. Apparently Padway’s scheme of leaving a wagon-load of brandy where foragers would be sure to find it had had results, despite Belisarius’ well-known strictness with drunken soldiers.
The bags of sulphur paste were brought out. Padway looked at his watch, which he had recovered from the hole in the wall. It was nearly midnight, though he’d have sworn the job hadn’t taken over an hour.
“All ready?” he asked. “Light the first bag.” The oil-soaked rags were lit. The bag was placed in the sling. Padway himself pulled the lanyard. Wht-bam! said Brunhilde. The bag did a
fiery parabola. Padway raced up the little knoll that masked his position. He missed seeing the bag land in the camp. But the drunken songs ended, instead there was a growing buzz as of a nest of irritated hornets. Behind him whips cracked and ropes creaked in the dark, as the horses heaved on the block-and-tackle he’d rigged up for quick recocking. Wht-bam! The fuse came out of the second bag in midair, so that it continued its course to the camp unseen and harmless. Never mind, another would follow in a few seconds. Another did. The buzz was louder, and broken by clear, high-pitched commands. Wht-bam!
“Liuderis!” Padway called. “Give your signal!”
Over in the camp the horse lines began to scream. The horses didn’t like the sulphur dioxide. Good; maybe the Imperialist cavalry would be immobilized. Under the other noises Padway heard the clank and shuffle of the Goths, getting under way. Something in the camp was burning brightly. Its light showed a company of Goths on Padway’s right picking their way over the broken, weed-covered ground. Their big round shields were painted white for recognition, and every man had a wet rag tied over his nose. Padway thought they ought to be able to frighten the Imperialists if they couldn’t do anything else. On all sides the night was alive with the little orange twinkle of firelight on helmets, scale skirts, and sword blades.
As the Goths closed in, the noise increased tenfold, with the addition of organized battle yells, the flat snap of bowstrings, and finally the blacksmith’s symphony of metal on metal. Padway could see “his” men, black against the fires, grow smaller and then drop out of sight into the camp ditch. Then there was only a confused blur of movement and a great din as the attackers scrambled up the other side—invisible until they popped up into the firelight again—and mixed it with the defenders.
One of the engineers called to say that that was all the sulphur bags, and what should they do now? “Stand by for further orders,” replied Padway.
“But, captain, can’t we go fight? We’re missing all the fun!”
“Ni, you can’t! You’re the only engineer corps west of the Adriatic that’s worth a damn, and I won’t have you getting yourselves killed off!”
“Huh!” said a voice in the dark. “This is a cowardly way of doing, standing back here. Let’s go, boys. To hell with Mysterious Martinus!” And before Padway could do anything, the twenty-odd catapult men trotted off toward the fires.
Padway angrily called for his horse and rode off to find Liuderis. The commander was sitting his horse in front of a solid mass of lancers. The firelight picked out their helms and faces and shoulders, and the forest of vertical lances. They looked like something out of a Wagnerian opera.
Padway asked: “Has there been any sign of a sortie yet?”
“No.”
“There will be, if I know Belisarius. Who’s going to lead this troop?”
“I am.”
“Oh, lord! I thought I explained why the commander should—”
“I know, Martinus,” said Liuderis firmly. “You have lots of ideas. But you’re young. I’m an old soldier, you know. Honor requires that I lead my men. Look, isn’t something doing in the camp?”
True enough, the Imperial cavalry was coming out. Belisarius had, despite his difficulties, managed to collect a body of manageable horses and cuirassiers to ride them. As they watched, this group thundered out the main gate, the Gothic infantry scattering in all directions before them. Liuderis shouted, and the mass of Gothic knights clattered off, picking up speed as they went. Padway saw the Imperialists swing widely to take the attacking foe in the rear, and then Liuderis’ men hid them. He heard the crash as the forces met, and then everything was dark confusion for a few minutes.
Little by little the noise died. Padway wondered just what had happened. He felt silly, sitting alone on his horse a quarter mile from all the action. Theoretically, he was where the staff, the reserves, and the artillery ought to be. But there were no reserves, their one catapult stood deserted off in the dark somewhere, and the artillerists and staff were exchanging sword strokes with the Imperialists up front.
With a few mental disparagements of sixth-century ideas of warfare, Padway trotted toward the camp. He came across a Goth quite peacefully tying up his shin with a piece torn from his tunic, another who clutched his stomach and moaned, and a corpse. Then he found a considerable body of dismounted Imperial cuirassiers standing weaponless.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
One replied: “We’re prisoners. There were some Goths supposed to be guarding us, but they were angry at missing the looting, so they went off to the camp.”
“What became of Belisarius?”
“Here he is.” The prisoner indicated a man sitting on the ground with his head in his hands. “A Goth hit him on the head and stunned him. He’s just coming to. Do you know what will be done with us, noble sir?”
“Nothing very drastic, I imagine. You fellows wait here until I send somebody for you.” Padway rode on toward the camp. Soldiers were strange people, he thought. With Belisarius to lead them and a fair chance to use their famous bow-plus-lance tactics, the cataphracti could lick thrice their number of any other troops. Now, because their leader had been conked on the head, they were as meek as lambs.
There were more corpses and wounded near the camp, and a few riderless horses calmly grazing. In the camp itself were Imperial soldiers, Isaurians and Moors and Huns, standing around in little clumps, holding bits of clothing to their noses against the reek of sulphur fumes. Goths ran hither and thither among them looking for movable property worth stealing.
Padway dismounted and asked a couple of the looters where Liuderis was. They said they didn’t know, and went on about their business. He found an officer he knew, Gaina by name. Gaina was squatting by a corpse and weeping. He turned a streaked, bearded face up to Padway.
“Liuderis is dead,” he said between sobs. “He was killed in the mêlée when we struck the Greek cavalry.”
“Who’s that?” Padway indicated the corpse.
“My younger brother.”
“I’m sorry. But won’t you come with me and get things organized? There are a hundred cuirassiers out there with nobody guarding them. If they come to their senses they’ll make a break—”
“No, I will stay with my little brother. You go on, Martinus. You can take care of things.” Gaina dissolved in fresh tears.
Padway hunted until he found another officer, Gudareths, who seemed to have some sort of wits about him. At least, he was making frantic efforts to round up a few troopers to guard the surrendered Imperialists. The minute he turned his back on his men, they melted off into the general confusion of the camp.
Padway grabbed him. “Forget them,” he snapped. “Liuderis is dead, I hear, but Belisarius is alive. If we don’t nab him—”
So they took a handful of Goths in tow and walked back to where the Imperial general still sat among his men. They moved the lesser prisoners away, and set several men to guard Belisarius. Then they put a solid hour rounding up troopers and prisoners and getting them into some sort of order.
Gudareths, a small, cheerful man, talked continually: “That was some charge, some charge. Never saw a better, even in the battle against the Gepids on the Danube. We took them in flank, neatest thing you ever saw. The Greek general fought like a wild man, until I hit him over the head. Broke my sword, it did. Best stroke I ever made, by God. Even harder than the time I cut off that Bulgarian Hun’s head, five years ago. Oh, yes, I’ve killed hundreds of enemies in my time. Thousands, even. I’m sorry for the poor devils. I’m not really a bloodthirsty fellow, but they will try to stand up against me. Say, where were you during the charge?” He looked sharply at Padway, like an accusatory chipmunk.
“I was supposed to be running the artillery. But my men ran off to join the fight. And by the time I arrived it was all over.”
“Aiw, no doubt, no doubt. Like one time when I was in a battle with the Burgunds. My orders kept me out of the thick until it was nearly over. O
f course, when I arrived I must have killed at least twenty—”
The train of troops and prisoners headed north on the Latin Way. Padway, still a little bewildered to find himself in command of the Gothic army, simply by virtue of having taken over Liuderis’ responsibilities on the night of confusion, rode near the front. The best are always the first to go, he thought sadly, remembering the simple, honest old Santa Claus who lay dead in one of the wagons in the rear, and thinking of the mean and treacherous little king whom he had to manage when he got back to Rome.
Belisarius, jogging along beside him, was even less cheerful. The Imperial general was a surprisingly young man, in his middle thirties, tall and a bit stout, with gray eyes and curly brown beard. His Slavic ancestry showed in his wide cheek bones.
He said gravely: “Excellent Martinus, I ought to thank you for the consideration you showed my wife. You went out of your way to make her comfortable on this sad journey.”
“Quite all right, illustrious Belisarius. Maybe you’ll capture me some day.”
“That seems hardly likely, after this fiasco. By the way, if I may ask, just what are you? I hear you called Mysterious Martinus! You’re no Goth, nor yet an Italian, by your speech.”
Padway gave his impressively vague formula about America.
“Really? They must be a people skilled in war, these Americans. I knew when the fight started that I wasn’t dealing with any barbarian commander. The timing was much too good, especially on that cavalry charge. Phew! I can still smell that damnable sulphur!”
Padway saw no point in explaining that his previous military experience consisted of one year of R.O.T.C. in a Chicago high school. He asked: “How would you like the idea of coming over to our side? We need a good general, and as Thiudahad’s quaestor I’ll have my hands full otherwise.”