Caesar's Sword: The Complete Campaigns

by David Pilling

  “Can it be true?” he exclaimed, staring at me with desperate hope in his eyes. Procopius showed him the fragment of map charting out the route of the underground aqueduct west of Naples.

  Belisarius, for so long a frustrated and disappointed figure, instantly recovered his old self. “Summon Bessas, Troglita and Photius to my pavilion,” he ordered one of his guards, “they are to come as soon as possible.”

  I exchanged glances with Procopius. “Photius is here, sir?” I asked, striving to keep the emotion out of my voice.

  Belisarius was striding about, rubbing his hands together, his brows knitted in thought. “What?” he said distractedly, “Photius? Yes, he is here. Sicily is quiet, so I summoned him to join us with as many men as he could spare. He came with a hundred or so. Not enough, but a hundred is better than none.”

  I racked my brain for an excuse to withdraw. I could not face Photius, not here in the open, not now. The blood pounded in my veins as I contemplated setting eyes on the treacherous pig. How could I, in all honour, restrain myself from plunging Caledfwlch into his heart? Murder committed in the broad light of day, in front of so many witnesses, could not go unpunished, and the old line of British princes would end in hemp.

  Procopius appreciated the difficulty. His mind was quicker than mine, and came up with a solution.

  “Go and fetch the rest of the scrolls from my tent, Coel,” he ordered me, “I think there are some duplicate maps of the aqueduct among them.”

  The implication was clear: make yourself scarce, and don’t come back until the council is over. I gratefully withdrew, and waited nervously in Procopius’ tent until he returned some hours later.

  “Belisarius was annoyed at your failure to return,” he said, yawning, “but I persuaded him that the duplicates weren’t necessary, thank God. There are none anyway.”

  “So what was decided?” I asked.

  “He is going to send a detachment of Isaurians into the tunnel. They will widen the aperture, until it is large enough to admit men in full armour, and then offer the Neapolitans a final opportunity to surrender. If they refuse…Naples will suffer the horrors of the sack.”

  “Was my name mentioned during the council?”

  “It was. Belisarius spoke highly of you, and I had the pleasure of seeing young Photius’ face drain of blood. His mother must have informed him that you are still alive, but still he was shocked to hear your name on the general’s lips. And frightened, if I am any judge.”

  That was something. Photius now knew that I stood even higher in the favour of Belisarius, which might dissuade him from trying another clumsy attempt on my life. I decided that his mother was responsible for sending Lucius and Elene to hunt me in the tunnels below the aqueduct. Unless Procopius had indeed betrayed me - which I doubted, considering the efforts he had made on my behalf – she must have had spies watching my movements.

  I groaned. More traitors in the Guards, perhaps, or among Belisarius’ staff. It was impossible to be certain. All I could do was live from day to day, guard my back, and pray my luck held.

  The next day Belisarius sent heralds to the gates of Naples, summoning Stephen and the elders of the city to his presence once more. They shuffled outside and, as before, met Belisarius at his pavilion.

  Stephen looked drawn and ill with terror, as well he might, since his efforts to raise the citizens of Naples against their Gothic overlords had proved futile. Belisarius had paid a lot of gold for his useless services, and he must have feared that the general meant to take his head as recompense.

  Belisarius calmed his fears by embracing him as a brother. “I have a message,” he said, holding the quaking old man at arm’s length, “that I wish you to remember and repeat to your fellow citizens. It is this.”

  He stepped back and flung up his right arm in a grand flourish, aping the rhetorician’s pompous, old-fashioned style in a way that drew a chuckle from his officers.

  “I have often seen cities taken by storm,” he boomed, “and know too well, from experience, the sad results which commonly ensue. In the memory of these I view, as in a mirror, the future fate of Naples, and my compassion is strongly moved at its impending ruin. I frankly tell you that I have prepared an expedient for entering your walls, of which the success is certain. It would fill me with grief if so ancient and noble a city, peopled by brother Christians and Romans, suffered the havoc of war, and especially by an army under my command. My authority would be insufficient to restrain the victorious troops from bloodshed and pillage; they partly consist of barbarians, who claim no kinship with Rome, and would regard your downfall without pain. During the short respite I have granted you, while it is still in your power to deliberate and choose, prefer, I beseech you, your own safety, and avoid the destruction hovering over you. Should you reject my offers, you may blame the sufferings that follow, not on my desire for vengeance or the harshness of fortune, but to your own stubborn folly.”

  It was a powerful speech, in a style calculated to appeal to the scholars and rhetoricians inside Naples, as well as strike terror into the citizens.

  Stephen bowed. “I shall tell them, General Belisarius,” he murmured, his face ashen, “I shall tell them to prefer life over death.”

  The deputation returned to Naples and recited Belisarius’ threats to the populace, to no avail. The Neapolitans and the Goths still held us in contempt, and were convinced that Theodatus would soon send an army to chase us away.

  Belisarius’ patience was at an end. Even as he spoke with Stephen, his Isaurians were at work under the aqueduct, widening the aperture I had found at the end of the channel.

  It was dusk by the time the Isaurians returned. Belisarius now ordered four hundred men, led by myself and an officer named Magnus, to make our way to the tunnel and prepare to attack. We were provided with dark cloaks, covered lanterns to light our way, and two trumpeters to sound the signal when we broke into the city.

  “When we hear the trumpets outside, I will order a general assault on the walls,” Belisarius informed us at a last hurried council, “Bessas and the pick of my troops will scale the ramparts, while you storm through the streets and open the gates from the inside to admit the rest of our men. Understood?”

  I and the cluster of officers around me murmured in agreement. Photius was among them, and I could feel his eyes scorching into my back. I refused to look at him, fearing that my temper would overflow.

  “Control yourself,” Procopius had advised me before hand, “do not lunge at your enemies, but be content to wait. Your opportunity for revenge will come.”

  That opportunity, I had decided, would arise during the sack of Naples. When the fighting was at its hottest in the streets, amid the chaos and bloodshed, I would stalk Photius like a tiger might stalk its prey in the jungle.

  Our assault very nearly met with disaster. Magnus and his four hundred men followed me to the ruins of the aqueduct, where I managed to find the entrance again after some witless stumbling about. There, to my amazement, at least half of his command refused to enter the tunnels.

  “I will not go through that portal,” declared one of the faint hearts, “it is a doorway to Hell.”

  Magnus raged at them, but they would not be moved, and in the end it was only the arrival of Belisarius in person that restored the situation.

  “What is the reason for this delay?” he demanded, his face pale with fury, “into the tunnels at once, you laggards, or I will have every tenth man among you executed by his fellows!”

  The threat of decimation, an ancient punishment not used in the Roman army for centuries, was enough to restore their courage.

  Once again I descended that sloping floor into pitch darkness, though this time I had the comfort of a lantern and hundreds of men at my back. While I retraced my steps through the subterranean passage, Bessas and his detachment advanced towards the foot of the rampart above ground.

  Soon we reached the end of the channel, and caught a glimpse of starry night sky
through the gap in the wall that the Isaurians had mined and widened.

  I paused to study the gap. The path through it led upwards into a courtyard, at a steep incline that would be difficult for a man in armour to ascend.

  “I will go first,” I whispered to Magnus, “give me a rope, and I will drop it down for the next man to follow.”

  He agreed, and I stripped off my helm and coat of mail. I weighed Caledfwlch in my hand before handing it over to Magnus for safe keeping. As ever, I was reluctant to place my precious heirloom in the hands of another, especially a stranger.

  In the end I decided to risk the extra weight, and slung my sword-belt over my shoulder. Magnus and another soldier boosted me up the wall, and I clung to the almost sheer sides like a monkey, groping for handholds.

  Straining with effort, I struggled upwards by inches, Caledfwlch dangling awkwardly down my back. Somehow I scrambled up and over the edge of the hole, and threw myself, panting, onto the cobbles of the courtyard.

  When I had recovered my breath, I got up and approached the large olive tree in the middle of the yard, meaning to tie the rope around the trunk and pay it down the gap for the next man.

  “Who goes there? What are you doing? Intruders! Help! Murder!”

  A woman’s voice, shrill and cracked and elderly, squawked behind me. I let out an involuntary yelp and spun around. Caledfwlch banged against my thigh as I scrabbled for the hilt, though I was faced with nothing more formidable than a fat old peasant woman in a brown smock and an apron dusted with flour.

  Nothing more formidable, did I say? She had a broad, lantern-jawed face, and stuck out her chin as I finally managed to wrestle Caledfwlch free of its sheath.

  “Brave young man,” she sneered, folding her heavy forearms, “to draw sword against a woman. Come near me with that thing, sir, and I will scream for help. I have neighbours who will hear me.”

  She was a problem I failed to foresee. I had assumed the house that adjoined the courtyard, being in such a ruinous state, was deserted.

  What could I do? Bessas would have put his sword through her heart, without hesitation, but I wasn’t made of such stern metal.

  Procopius would have appreciated the absurdity of the situation. The entire fate of our assault on Naples, and on the Italian campaign in general, now depended on me silencing one querulous old matron.

  “Please,” I said in a wheedling voice, “remain silent, and you shall be amply rewarded.”

  She raised one hairy eyebrow. “Rewarded, eh? Rewarded by whom, may I ask? You speak with a strange accent. I think you are one of General Belisarius’ foreign mercenaries, come to murder us all while we sleep. I’ll not have it!”

  She started to suck in a deep breath. Before she could scream, I dived at her and struck out with Caledfwlch. The flat of the blade whipped across her face with a noise like a wet cloth slapping against rock. Her little eyes crossed, and with a gentle sigh she folded into a heap.

  God forgive me, I had struck a woman. Cruel necessity demanded it, yet still I made the sign of the cross before sheathing Caledfwlch and hurrying back to the olive tree. My fingers shook with nervous excitement as I took the coil of rope from my belt, looped and made it fast round the narrow trunk, and tossed the other end down the gap.

  We worked with feverish haste, but something like two hours had passed before all our men were lifted to the surface. I retrieved my armour and struggled back into it. As for my matron, she was trussed and gagged and safely deposited in a corner of the yard, where she struggled in vain and none molested her.

  A good portion of the night remained, and the first grey shreds of dawn were yet to pierce the night sky. “To the gates,” said Magnus, “Bessas will be waiting.”

  The broken-down timber gate of the courtyard opened onto a narrow alleyway. We crept down it, two by two, four hundred men attempting to move as silently as mice. Procopius had shown us his old maps of the city, so we had some vague idea of our location, and that we had to make our way to the gatehouse on the northern wall.

  Naples slept soundly. The streets were deserted, and nothing opposed our progress save a couple of stray dogs, who barked indignantly at us until I heaved a rock at them. The curs loped away down a side-street, and we continued on to the gatehouse.

  When the twin towers flanking the gate rose before us, Magnus ordered a dozen men forward to deal with the Gothic sentinels on the rampart.

  I was one of the dozen. We removed our boots, and ran noiselessly on bare feet across the cobbles and up the steps. The guards drowsed at their posts, and didn’t sense our approach until we were on them. I slid my arm around a brawny Gothic neck and drew the edge of my dagger across his throat. He writhed and kicked in my grip, gasping for air as blood pumped from the gash. I threw him off the parapet, and his flailing body hit the cobbles like a sack of meal.

  The rest of our men were quick and silent about their work, and within seconds four Goths lay dead. Our trumpeters raised their instruments to their lips. The shrill blasts echoed across the darkened plain beyond, and were answered by a roar from Bessas’ men. They had crawled as close as they dared to the foot of the walls, and laid flat on their bellies, waiting for the signal to attack. Now the plain seemed to come alive as they sprang to their feet and rushed the gates.

  Somewhere a gong sounded, and lights flared in the street below. Gothic soldiers stumbled from the guardrooms flanking the gates, still half-asleep as they buckled on shields and helmets, shouting blearily at each other in their strange tongue. Magnus and the rest of our men burst out of hiding and quickly overwhelmed them. A brutal street-brawl broke out, figures grappling with each other in darkness.

  War-horns sounded. I looked to my left, and saw a file of Goths storming along the parapet towards us. Big men, as they tend to be, with long fair hair spilling over their mailed shoulders. Their axes were huge, double-handed butcher’s tools, capable of cleaving a man in half.

  I was the officer present, and the Isaurians who had slaughtered the sentinels looked to me for orders. The axe-men were a terrifying prospect, but I didn’t dare show cowardice in front of the men.

  “Stand your ground,” I shouted, drawing Caledfwlch and advancing to meet the leading Goth. The parapet was narrow, barely wide enough for two men abreast, and he filled the space with his enormous bulk.

  I remember him vividly: well over six feet of solid bone and muscle, an officer or nobleman, with a heavy green cloak thrown back over his broad shoulders, fastened with an elaborate golden brooch in the shape of a leaping stag. His mail was of superb quality, shining like a mirror in the pale moonlight, and his yellow moustaches and plaited beard flowed to his breast.

  All these details stuck in my mind, even though I had little time to study the brute before he sprang at me, snarling and whirling his axe.

  He was fearsomely strong, but slow. I dodged aside and that terrible axe, which must have carried twenty pounds of steel in the head, swept past and dashed against the stonework with a terrific clang.

  My back was against the wall. I thrust at his face, missed, and Caledfwlch scraped harmlessly against his armoured shoulder. The axe rose again, his blue eyes glinted in triumph, and then a throwing knife sprouted from his neck like some obscene plant.

  He dropped his axe and clawed at the blade, buried almost to the hilt in his flesh, gasping for breath as blood flowed down his fingers. I placed my foot against his chest and heeled him off the walkway. He vanished over the edge, but another Goth rushed at me before I could thank the knife-thrower.

  I closed with the Goth before he could strike, seizing the haft of his axe and stabbing wildly at his face and eyes. Somehow his helm worked loose in the struggle, and I accidentally butted him on the nose. My eyes watered in pain, he threw his arms around me, and for a second or two we teetered on the edge. It was a twenty-foot drop or more to the cobbles below.

  Desperation lent me an edge in strength. I managed to push him away and rammed my knee into his crotch. He grunt
ed and doubled over, and my heart nearly stopped as an Isaurian leaped out of nowhere, screaming like a devil, and buried his hatchet in the back of the Goth’s skull.

  “Good work,” I panted, helping the Isaurian to shove the dying Goth back against his comrades. They retreated a few steps, and had to push him off the parapet before advancing again.

  I stood ready to meet them, but then the gates burst open below us and our infantry stormed into the city. Magnus’s men had unbarred the gates from within. At the same time Bessas and his chosen men scaled the walls – I learned later that their attack was delayed by the ladders being too short, and they had to bind two together to make the ascent – and flooded onto the rampart, bawling war-cries.

  Now the city would suffer for her arrogance. The remainder of that night was a massacre. Our soldiers ran wild in the streets, slaughtering and burning and pillaging as they pleased. All their pent-up rage and frustration was unleashed, and there was nothing Belisarius or his captains could do to bring the men back under control. The Goths abandoned the walls and tried to stage a fighting retreat to the governor’s palace, but our men hunted them like dogs.

  The Hunnish mercenaries in particular excelled in savagery. They tore the Goths apart, dipped their hands into still-warm bodies and daubed their faces with hot blood. Unlike the rest of our soldiers, they had no respect or veneration for God, and stripped the altars of churches, murdering those priests who bravely tried to resist them.

  Of the citizens, only the Jews put up any form of resistance. They had been foremost in resisting our previous failed assaults, and despaired of receiving any mercy from Belisarius. He would have forgiven them, as he forgave almost everyone who asked it of him. Alas, they assumed he was a monster, and fought to the last.

  More than one Roman officer also indulged in looting, and made his fortune from the plundered wealth of Naples. I might have joined them, but my mind was enflamed with desire for revenge on Photius. I prowled the streets, ignoring the murder and riot and rape going on all around me, my mind as sharp and focused as any predator’s.