Honour (9 page)

Food was brought to this tent as well, to be eaten off fine plate and washed down with good wine. Flavius found himself subject to gentle interrogation and if there was some genuine interest in his time fighting on the Persian frontier that was only a mask to allow Vigilius
to probe into his reasons for being here and what he had left behind. The tale he told of the rise of Justin to the purple was only partially true; the devious machinations of Petrus were not mentioned so it was made to sound as if there had been no opposition to the elevation and no alternative candidates.

His host had never met Justin/Justinus and had, it seemed, barely heard of him, so much delving arose related to the imperial character, and as Flavius described him he was aware that it sounded too good to be real. Yet the man was a good and successful soldier and so honest he had difficulty in telling a lie without blushing. He had been loyal to Anastasius when he was alive and revered his memory now, even if it was plain he had never agreed with the policy against Chalcedon.

‘You make him sound like a paragon, Flavius.’

‘If I do, then it is because I cannot do otherwise, which is what I expect you to tell Vitalian when he questions you as you have queried me.’

That got a wry smile. ‘Are you going to tell me what I should say?’

‘If I was it would be to this effect. The general who commands you has served with Justin before. If he remembers the man from then, you could not say better than that he is the very same now.’ With that he stood. ‘I must make a last visit to my men.’

‘Then I must accompany you. The
foederati
will have been at their brew and that makes them dangerous.’

The vague noise of singing, which had penetrated the walls of the tent, became louder as they made their way through the encampment and being wistful it could hardly be reckoned as threatening. Vigilius explained if the Gautoi began their recitals with mournful ballads of their homeland, it would later turn to raucous renditions to the deeds of heroes and death to their foes.

‘If it gets out of hand, then Vitalian must personally soothe them, for they are fiercely loyal to him as their leader.’

‘No wonder he looks weary if he must attend to that every night.’

‘It is not every night.’

The sound was a backdrop to the carrying out of his final task for the day. When Vigilius suggested he return to his quarters to sleep, Flavius politely refused; he would stay with those he led and share their cots, this before he commanded his men to keep their weapons close by them throughout the night, as would he.

If the passing of the hours of darkness were noisy there was no threat of danger. Flavius woke to the sound of the guards being changed. He rose from his cot to observe that being carried out and to reassure himself that it was men of the right kind. Morning brought food, the means to wash and shave as well as a message for him to attend upon Vitalian when he was ready.

Again the general surrounded himself with his inferior commanders, making Flavius wonder if there was a lack of complete trust. It was something of a thought to hold on to and possibly pass on as Vitalian, having rehearsed his grievances and theirs, finally got to the point.

‘No man has the right to fight without just cause, therefore it is incumbent upon me to test the goodwill of my one-time comrade and see if his sudden rise has altered his character.’ There was yet again that inclusive turn before he came back to look Flavius hard in the eye. ‘But I will do so not only in the company of my sons and my officers but with my army at my back, and I will not accede to anything that favours me yet does not do likewise for them.’

‘So be it,’ Flavius replied.

Vitalian seemed to grow then, to become something of his old self, as in a loud and commanding voice he ordered that the camp be broken. ‘We depart at dawn!’

‘Which means that he is not at liberty to make a peace of his own. If he does, I think his officers will kill him.’

His audience with Justin was a private one; not even Petrus was in attendance, though Flavius had found enough time to relate to him what had occurred before being called into the private imperial chamber. He gave his report still with the muck of several days march upon him, having come south with Vitalian to only part company when the rebel army was outside the walls and setting up yet again a siege camp, albeit their numbers made such a notion risible.

‘Should I go out to meet him?’

‘I doubt he will enter the city, but if you do so, Highness, I would take as many archers as you can muster.’

‘No,’ Justin mused. ‘I can see why you think it wise, Flavius, but I am a soldier still. To get what I want means the taking of risks, though I will make sure I am on a fleet-of-foot horse. If there is trickery, it is best shown without the walls. Once inside it would be impossible to detect.’

That took Flavius back to that hurried conversation with Petrus who, if he had listened, was also full of enough worry and barely suppressed anger to speak. Justin was having trouble imposing himself on the officials he had inherited from Anastasius and the palace was seething with scheming, his nephew certain that some were openly plotting against the imperial person, furious that he would not do what was necessary.

‘He will not remove them?’ Flavius had asked.

‘That is not how you deal with treachery. When you are faced with
a snake, the best way to rid yourself of it is to cut off its head, but what does my uncle do? He wants to introduce another reptile into his presence and promises to hold him close.’

Justin did not go out to meet Vitalian entirely naked; he deployed the gloriously accoutred
Scholae Palatinae
, a unit that revelled in the opportunity to display themselves and appear as what they should have been: an effective imperial mounted bodyguard, to which Petrus remarked, ‘God help us if it all if goes wrong, because those overperfumed oafs will not.’

They were halted halfway between the walls and the point at which Vitalian waited, while Justin rode on with only Flavius Belisarius and a
decharchia
of Excubitors to protect his person. When close he dismounted and Vitalian responded likewise, the two closing to engage in a private conversation. No one was sure of what was being said for there seemed no physical sign of either amity or dispute.

Finally, Vitalian took a step back, to spin round and stride out to close with and face his troops. The distance meant the words he used to address them were rendered indistinct to the likes of Flavius, but the final effect, if it was some time in coming, was stunning. As one, the entire rebellious army withdrew their swords then knelt, each one held out in submission. Vitalian did likewise until Justin closed the gap and raised him up to be taken in a tight and brotherly embrace.

The cheers were from the walls as well as from those Vitalian had led there and they lasted all the way through the Golden Gate and up the Triumphal Way as, on foot, Justin led his old comrade to his palace. It hardly seemed to matter that his army, officers included, was left outside.

I
t was two months before Vitalian’s men were deployed on the Persian frontier, eight weeks in which the first two were spent outside of the walls of Constantinople. If allowed to enter it was in small groups and that applied even to the officers, so it was some time before Flavius was able to return hospitality to Vigilius. Not that he had him to himself; his colleagues in the Excubitor officers’ quarters were keen to quiz this guest who had campaigned for nearly three years in a less than perfect army.

More impressive was the way Justin treated the one-time rebel commander; Vitalian was raised to senatorial rank and granted a pension, his sons Bouzes and Coutzes promised favour and advancement in the offices of empire. For those who attended the meeting of the imperial council it must have been strange to find him not only present but listened to when he spoke, often to disagree with the Emperor, a way of behaviour most reckoned by long experience to be hazardous. They voiced their disagreements elsewhere and in private.

Vitalian’s army was fed and paid as would be any unit of the
imperial army, in this case the only difference being that it was prompt in delivery for it was overseen by Justin personally and not left to officials who seemed to behave, when it came to paying soldiers, as if they were disbursing their own money. The Emperor wanted no trouble from disgruntled
foederati
outside his walls.

‘So you are to come with us, Flavius?’ Vigilius asked.

‘I am.’

‘And we are now of like rank?’

‘Does that cause resentment?’

‘Not with me but I daresay there are those who see how young you are and wonder how you can achieve the title of
tribunos
so quickly.’

‘Precocious ability,’ Flavius responded, though with enough of a grin to ensure it was not to be taken seriously.

‘Our newly elevated ruler obviously has great faith in you?’

‘Why do you never call him Emperor? I have heard you use every other possible word to refer to Justin but not that.’ It was the fact that Vigilius blushed and was plainly uncomfortable that made Flavius press the point. ‘Is it that you think him unfitted to the office?’

‘There must be many who do.’

‘Must?’

‘Where has he come from, Flavius? And is it fitting that a man who cannot read or write should rule over men who are trained in the arts of composition and rhetoric?’

‘Arts which they employ to confuse.’

‘These are matters that are beyond me.’

Sensing a desire not to get embroiled in a discussion that must, by definition, be insulting to his host, Vigilius changed the subject and began to talk about possible trouble on the frontier. If he was aware that he left Flavius feeling uncomfortable it did not show; perhaps his
patrician upbringing had provided him with a carapace of protection against discomfiture.

‘The Gautoi will not react well to the heat.’

‘We are past high summer now and by the time we reach the border we may face rain and even snow so they are more likely to be at home than you or I.’

‘No fighting for a time, then?’

‘Not unless the Sassanids change their ways.’

The subject that Vigilius was keen to avoid was one Flavius took up with Petrus later the same day. The patrician class had never really supported even Anastasius, who had come to his eminence through the bedchamber of his predecessor’s widow, but they were probably even less enamoured of Justin. What worried the nephew was the increasingly open way those who held positions at the palace were making their disdain known.

‘A situation I could end within a day if he would allow me to.’

‘He will take you back into his confidence soon I am sure.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Flavius,’ Petrus spat back.

‘I didn’t mean it that way. If your uncle is foundering he cannot but be aware of it and who can he trust except you to remedy that?’

‘Perhaps he will elevate Vitalian,’ was the equally jaundiced response. ‘From what I am told he allows that stoat much licence.’

There was no point in even seeking to refute that description or to say that Justin probably reposed more trust in the views of a fellow soldier than he did in men who had risen to prominence through the known to be corrupt imperial bureaucracy, a body he had been unhappily observing for years.

‘He certainly trusts you now more than he does me.’

‘For which I do not accept any blame. And can I say that I was not
pleased to be some cog in your scheming, either.’

‘Could I have trusted you to stay silent?’

‘You will never know, Petrus, because you never tried.’

‘You’re too like my uncle.’

‘Thank you for that. If it is a fault to you it is a compliment to me.’

Flavius was afforded another private audience with Justin before he departed for Asia Minor and one in which, given he had a licence to speak granted to few, he decided to plead the case of Petrus, not because he had forgiven him but because if Justin was having difficulty then his nephew was, even as a habitual intriguer, the person he could most rely on.

‘Not an opinion my wife would share.’

Tempted to respond by pointing out that pillow politics were a bad idea, Flavius asked instead how the lady was adjusting to being the Empress Euphemia.

‘She never took to living in the palace before, as you know, but she seems content now that we occupy the imperial apartments and no one dare look down their nose at her.’

‘Apartments within which she proffers to you political advice?’

‘Careful, young man! That is not a territory to stray into.’

Flavius did not know Euphemia well but he was aware she was strong of mind, a person not afraid to express her opinions and she would be doing that to her spouse regardless of his new eminence. She was also deeply religious, with a particular fondness for the saint whose name she had adopted. Her lack of regard for her nephew sprang from a deep and genuine piety; Petrus appeared too cynical for her, a man who used religion rather than adhering to it.

Justin too was religious but without being so fervent as to be blinded. He came across as one who trusted God to see into men’s
souls and make his decisions as to the rightness of their beliefs, hence his pardoning of Vitalian, not to mention the way he had embraced him, and not only physically. Was he too trusting? Did he, Flavius, have the right to pronounce upon such a matter? If Justin had become like a surrogate father to him it was his real parent that counted now. Decimus Belisarius had been adamant that a true Roman never wavered from the need to speak truth to the powerful.

‘It must be confusing to go from
comes Excubitorum
to where you are now, Highness.’

‘Such formality, Flavius, when we are alone?’

‘Would it trouble you to know that I have concern for you, for the burden you carry?’

Justin favoured him with an avuncular smile. ‘If you have a worry, Flavius, make it that you survive another bout with the Sassanid.’

‘I would not presume to advise you—’

‘But you are about to,’ came the sharp interruption.

‘Petrus?’

‘We are back to that?’

Aware that he was either causing discomfort or sailing very close to the wind, probably both, Flavius spoke with some haste. ‘He is committed to you.’

‘He is committed to himself.’

‘Do they not complement each other?’ That got a grunt. ‘He served you well previously and he would do so again if you will allow him.’

‘A period in the wilderness will do him no harm, it might even temper his behaviour, especially in the matter of his social life.’

Justin did not have to say where that objection came from but it did confirm to him that the Empress was putting her stamp on the way in which things were run.

‘He fears for you.’ The look that got obliged that he add something. ‘And he has said so.’

‘Let him fear for himself for I am not beyond behaving in a manner he would approve of.’

Flavius took that for what it was, an empty gesture; Justin would never threaten or harm his own blood. ‘Can you test him, give him a chance to show you what he can do to ease your burden, to take the weight off your shoulders?’

‘They are broad enough.’

By the tone of that response Flavius knew that to plead more would achieve nothing. He had done his best and adding more might risk his own standing with a man he had come close to loving.

‘I hope you will bless me as we set out on campaign.’

‘I will bless you, Flavius, even as I will miss you. Petrus does not know what he has in his advocate.’

It was often the case that when trouble began to brew the cause was hidden from the people destined to deal with it. Messengers had come from Constantinople warning of the need for extra preparedness so the frontier army knew that the Sassanids were stirring, not that they were entirely unaware. Lacauris, the
magister militum per Orientem
, had his own informants, mostly traders who criss-crossed the borders and no doubt gave similar service to the Kavadh or his satrap in Nisibis regarding the Romans.

Discussion of such matters did not filter down to the rank of
tribunos
; they were given orders to march and could do no more than obey. Once more the pillars that marked the boundary of the empire set the point beyond which Lacauris had no desire they should go, which was military folly to more than Flavius, granting as it did their
potential enemy the time to choose when to act. It was the general opinion that, if they were not to cross into Sassanid territory, it would have been better to stay at Dara and invite an attack on ground they could easily protect.

The Roman army were encamped on an open plain severely lacking in the kind of features required for a defensive battle. There were few hills and no river on which they could secure one flank. Added to that they were facing the rising sun, which meant any attack at dawn would come with the sun at the Sassanid rear and be blinding to the Romans. If Flavius chafed at having no part in the higher decision-making, he was at least sure the cavalry he commanded would behave well for he had trained them rigorously.

As a military force, mounted soldiers had several inherent problems as well as certain advantages. In the latter case they could move from one point in a battle to another quickly, and if so desired visibly, thus disrupting enemy plans. In addition they could be sent in as shock troops to break up an attack. The problem lay in the truth that once released into the fight they became impossible to control and were usually lost as a continuing fighting force, so a wise general husbanded his horsemen until he knew they could be effective.

There was a certain stateliness to the way the Sassanid army deployed; it was done without haste, a great cloud of dust, as if they were rehearsing to fight rather than preparing to engage in one, this based on the certain knowledge that the Romans would not advance into their territory, for if they had determined to do so it would have happened already. As usual messages were exchanged, the Sassanids inviting their foes to quit the field and admit the battle lost before it had even begun, and in addition demanding promises that Constantinople pay high sums for their folly.

Lacauris might hold the office of
magister militum
but it had long been a tradition in imperial armies to split the command between two generals on what was seen as the sound reason of nullifying the kind of risk that had been inherent when emperors personally led their forces. One strong-headed leader could lose more than a battle, he could risk the empire, but in addition to that there was the knowledge that a too successful fighting man could become a threat.

The history of Rome was replete, from the days of Julius Caesar onwards, of men who had finished a successful campaign only to turn on those on whose behalf they had been fighting in a bid for personal power. To protect against both, control was split, which meant that any tactics employed had to be agreed upon as a wise course of action.

Thus Lacauris had to consult with his co-commander, Restines, as to how to draw up his forces and that took time. Eventually the army deployed with the mass of infantry in the centre, the archers behind them and the cavalry, Flavius included, holding the right wing. The left was allotted to the forces once led by Vitalian and at the front of that body stood the Gautoi
foederati
. If they had arrived in Mesopotamia and relished the winter they were less comfortable now in late spring rapidly turning to hot summer, and Vigilius, who commanded them, had arranged for great urns of water to be added to their baggage train so they could use it to cool themselves as well as quench what seemed a permanent thirst.

Perozes, the Sassanid general, had greater numbers but not in such strength as to easily overwhelm the Roman position, so he sent forward his centre to engage and fix the Roman infantry. If the battlefield was devoid of hills it was not without rising ground and Flavius was sat on a mound that had a view of the way matters were developing. It was his impression that the enemy were not pressing evenly along their
whole front; the greater pressure seemed to be on the point at which the infantry adjoined the
foederati
.

It was testament to the ability of Vigilius that he sensed this and began to reinforce his own right until obviously commanded to cease the manoeuvre and return to his original formation, at which point Perozes released the weapon most feared by the Romans, his horse archers. These men, Armenian mercenaries, rode short and agile ponies and operated as a fast-moving mobile force.

They were no more disciplined than any other mounted troops but they did not have to be: their task was to so harass enemy formations by stinging attacks with flights of arrows that they began to lose their cohesion. That was what began to happen to the
foederati
, who were assailed not just from their front but on their flank, which left any man holding a protective shield in doubt as to from where the threat was coming.

Now the pressure on the right of centre began to tell for the Sassanids as some of their spearmen began to break into a gap that had appeared on the left of the Roman infantry, which led to an order that half the cavalry should move across the rear of the army to shore up that flank and if possible drive into the enemy infantry and break up their assault. Flavius being part of that deployment felt the surge that comes to any young man at the prospect of actual battle.