Promised Land

by Roger Booth

  “He’s a Balthing, Theoderic.”

  “That’s why I ask, Rohilde. Wallia’s thought is to spread Athaulf’s and Erfrid’s retainers. Then we have Balthings everywhere. One would be my right hand man.”

  For a while she looked doubtful, obviously surprised.

  “Wallia was going to talk to you. We wouldn’t just do it. But since…”

  “No, Theoderic, it’s kind of you to ask,” she interrupted. “And those men need a man to follow, not a woman. No Balthing worthy to lead them, now….”

  The Ocean’s breakers were more an orderly parade than a battle charge, the waters of the harbour still. The woman riding by his side was still, too. She thought a moment longer before coming to her decision. “The next King will do well to have Balthings at his side. Wallia is tough as twisted cord. But even he cannot live forever. When Wallia’s gone, you’re the only one the people will follow.”

  “Even after this?”

  “You heard Sigesar. We make our choices then live by God’s. You may not be much of a sailor – I don’t think any of us are. But you went in the boats, Theoderic. You’re a brave man.” She looked him in the eye. “I’m so sad for Ardrade and the others. But, for the good of our people, it’s a blessing you at least still live.”

  He wondered if cornflower blue eyes could really be the terror he had often thought; as terrifying as the bucking green of an Ocean storm. “For the good of our people?” he summoned the courage to ask.

  *

  Since their arrival in Gades she had not left the town once; she had hardly been outside the house. The Ocean’s waters all lumbering innocence; wrapped in her heaviest cloak it was a pleasure to feel the dampness of the heavy, blue air stroke her hands and face. Everywhere brushwood and the tang of sea-weed and rotting shell-fish; these were the only hints of the Ocean’s past crimes. Thoughtful and knowing, she leant back against the leather bolster of the carriage; she not the one to rebuke the waves for their duplicity.

  In the wagon she rode alone. Once hers had been a lifetime of solitude, but she had never felt alone before, not among the Goths. This morning, and for the first time, she wondered why she tarried among such people, not a hostage but of her own will and doing.

  Despite all the painful poring over their Bible she had hardly understood a single word Sigesar spoke. That hardly mattered, she supposed. She had heard enough from Herfrig, the night before last, when he returned to Gades. The eyes deep-sunken in the long, fine face, boots caked in mud and sand; he was a warrior returned from battle. And a battle lost.

  “How many boats, you say?” Wallia asked him, face between fury and grief.

  “Eight, Uncle,” the young Goth had answered. In the house they spoke Latin for her sake. At least, Herfrig and Rohilde, they always did.

  “Theoderic, he lives?”

  “Aye, Rohilde. We came upon him and the other boats in Baelo.”

  “Baelo?”

  Herfrig had nodded absent-mindedly. “Fishing village, perched on a bay; small but enough to save Theoderic and the others. We found them up in the ruins of the old town. They’ve begun the march back, I’ve sent horses.”

  “And the boats?” Wallia asked.

  “The pilots stayed with them. What use to us now are boats?”

  She had never heard Herfrig speak like that to Wallia before, who had swallowed; then growled with a reluctant nod. “And the men?” he finally asked.

  “We searched the coast, Uncle, a morning beyond Baelo and all the way back. Some we found, and some will even live. If the fever spares them.” There was a far-away look in his eyes. “Mostly it was bodies on the sand, half in half out of the surf; gulls and shattered timbers. We buried them there, too many to bring back to Gades.”

  The carriage was approaching the walls, hands raised in loyal greeting by the guard, proud to serve her. She forced a nod; a grateful smile. Hardly touched by the low winter’s sun, the narrow streets were still dotted in puddles. She recognised the way to the mean, provincial doorway that, for now, was house not home.

  None of this accounted for her sense of desolation.

  The night before the fleet left she had knelt by her bedside, quietly, like she had done many times as a young girl. Guiltily she had prayed, lips barely speaking the fateful words; prayed that Africa be spared, Rome be spared. Those prayers the Lord had seen fit to answer; at what cost to the people who so honoured her as their Queen. For Rohilde’s sake she had prayed, too; that Theoderic might live. This small mercy the Lord had also granted. But it did not make things any better.

  Behind, Herfrig and the rest of his men reined in. The young Goth slipped from the saddle, came and opened the small wagon door; gave her his hand. Just then she noticed his eyes had left her; watching carefully, impassive, back up the street to where Rohilde and Theoderic were riding side by side, heads close together, faces solemn but happy. It was what she had been waiting to see all year. Another day she would have rejoiced; at least allowed a smile to break through the funeral mask that, since Barcino, she had worn about her heart.

  As it was, and overhead, she heard the rasping lament of sea-birds blown in from the harbour. Thoughts came to her of another town; far distant and by a milder sea. For the first time in an age, she found herself thinking of the red brick towers and soaring blue skies of Ravenna.

  XIV

  The month of January in the year of our Lord 416: by Summum Pyrenaeum

  Herfrig ignored the cold; cold from the deep snow he was lying on and cold from the chill winter air, fresh snow falling as a damp, silent curtain. Instead, he concentrated on what he could see from between the fir trees. Soldiers everywhere, hundreds of them, guarding a makeshift parapet that flanked the road, the snow-covered earth banks protected by lines of sharp staves. The road itself was open but, either side of the parapets, he could make out the carts they would use to block the gap.

  More than the well ordered rows of tents, there was something about the men, the way they carried themselves. They didn’t look like limitanei pressed into service away from the protection of their forts. He was looking at a detachment from a Roman field army; the Army of Italia or a regrouped Army of Gallia. Three years it was since they had taken Jovinus at Valentia. From everything they knew of the man, unlikely Constantius had been idle in the meantime. The Goth next to him on the ground tugged his arm and pointed further up the valley across on the other side.

  It was the fort they had passed the year before when they left Narbo. Whether the fort was deserted then, or the few limitanei in the garrison had simply lain low as they passed by, he couldn’t say. But the fort was not deserted any more. Not large the fort; enough space, as Herfrig judged, for half a numeri or infantry regiment, few hundred men and that at a push. Except that the same sort of parapets that guarded the road now also surrounded the fort in a great arc; from the squat stone walls all the way down the hill to the roadside. Men and also horse, if eyes and ears didn’t deceive him. Two thousand men, perhaps more, held the pass against them.

  The man lying next to him wasn’t a Goth at all; he was a Roman runaway of some kind. They knew him as Smiler. “What do you make of them?” Herfrig whispered.

  The man Smiler cocked his ear, trying to catch any words drifting up from the men below. He shook his head. “Serious bastards, Herfrig. Can’t tell who exactly, but they’re not about to turn tail at the first sight of our swords. Serious bastards,” he repeated. “Not sure it can be done.”

  He agreed but said what they both knew. “We’ll have to think of something.” A last, long look and they were sliding backwards through the snow. Bending double at first to stay below the line of the ridge, they slipped away through the forest. The snow here lay undisturbed apart from their earlier tracks, its whiteness sharp against the grey of a January sky, greyer still under the canopy of the great pines. His breath a dense cloud before his face, the smooth su
rface hid shallow gullies that tripped him, quietly cursing, onto his knees; at times full length into the snow.

  Half an hour or more they trudged, slipped and fell their way towards the horses and the rest of their troop; the sounds of the Roman camp smothering into silence. He slipped yet again. The man Smiler grinned and, brushing the snow from his cloak, Herfrig scowled back with a certain grim satisfaction. Whatever else, he knew more than the Romans in their orderly camp. Because the snow in that valley wasn’t staying unblemished much longer.

  *

  Between the broken banks of the snow clouds the moon shone near full. The camp fires crackled, all about smoke and steam; smoke from the fires, steam from the men and their horses. This his first command, all the men his uncle could spare. Beyond their ring of fire, lay the snow they would march through tonight. For now there was laughter and spirits were high, as the men ate before breaking camp.

  “Strange, Smiler, the mood of the men. They must know the odds.”

  The other shrugged: “Not so strange, Herfrig. This is what we do and we’re good at it. Unlike damn boats,” he added.

  “Unlike boats,” Herfrig solemnly agreed. He cut away a chunk from the dripping haunch of hare, wrapped the meat in the thin, flat bread they had brought from Barcino and which was beginning to show its age. For both of them this might be their last meal and was a last meal not a time for truths? “What made you join us?” he casually asked.

  Smiler turned, mid-mouthful, the surprise obvious in the suddenly narrowed eyes.

  “I’ll fight, Herfrig. I’ll fight as well as you. Even though, once, I was one of them. If that’s what’s on your mind.”

  He from the old clans, the King his uncle, a man who might, one day, himself even be King; he should have known better. “Smiler, it wasn’t that. Not for a…”

  The once Roman looked into the flames, tore away a clump of meat with his yellow teeth. Then the stubbled scar creased in a double smile. “No offence taken, Herfrig; no offence. Words just slipped out bad. Fact is – first time anyone’s ever asked.”

  Herfrig eyed the Roman who was Goth; took another half of the round, flat bread, filled it again, the taste of the meat dancing on his tongue.

  After a time: “By trade he was a miller, my old man,” Smiler began and slowly; as if it was so long ago that, first, he must remember how things had been. “Birth name’s Garvus. Lived in a small town just south of Rome, nothing special. Whole family’d been millers, one after the other. Not by choice. You see, Herfrig, the Empire, it’s a wonderful place if you’re rich. The houses you and the other maistans live in, they’re everything you could want.” There was a shine to the eyes. “Apart from a woman.”

  Herfrig smiled encouragement. Listening to those few words he had suddenly realised. How, in all his days, he had never spoken to a Roman about anything much; could hardly say he even knew a Roman to talk to apart from Galla Placidia. And she wasn’t just a woman but a Princess and a Queen.

  “Your father’s a miller and you’re the eldest son, then you’re a miller too,” Smiler went on, scar picked out in the shadowy light. “Emperor’s laws say so. Fair enough if you’re rich. Who wouldn’t want their kin always as rich as themselves? But what if you just don’t want to live in the same dusty streets all your days; and know your own son and their sons won’t know any different? Not ever.”

  Smiler belched and eyed fondly the half chewed leg in his hand, running thick with the juice. “Lot of the land nowadays, it’s owned by the Emperor and folk like him who wouldn’t know the way to their own front door.”

  “But Galla Placidia once told me,” Herfrig objected. “She’s lived in Constantinople, Rome and Ravenna. Since being with us, she reckons she’s seen near half the Empire.”

  “Aye, with us – otherwise Constantinople, Rome and Ravenna it would’ve stayed.” Lovingly, like with a woman, he licked his fingers one by one. “I know you think much of her, Herfrig. All the lads do,” Smiler assured him through the half-hearted protest. “She did for that bastard Sergeric. But I bet Galla Placidia’s seen more of the real Empire than the whole Imperial court put together.”

  “Aye.”

  Herfrig looked carefully at Smiler’s cloak; not the same care to the edging of hood and arms. But, from a distance, no-one would say who was born Roman and who a Goth. “Why us?” he asked again.

  The man Smiler, once Garvus, thought a while. “Suppose I could’ve run off to the hills. Lots do. Live rough, steal a bit. Most get caught, end on a cross staring up at the sky. Doesn’t stop the next ones, mind. Some even make a go of it. But it’s a mug’s game, you ask me. You’re still part of that world, those laws; those rules.”

  “And our laws, our rules?” he spoke softly.

  “Your laws? What, don’t steal from another Goth and only kill someone in a fair fight? Not hard those laws.”

  Herfrig kept a level gaze. Smiler hadn’t been there when he killed Brandas. Not fair, not even a fight; perhaps Smiler had never heard. Perhaps Smiler thought Brandas had it coming; as he had.

  “A Roman I was, free-born too, and I still couldn’t do a thing but the Emperor had a law that told me what and how. When first I joined the people, I was a washed up nobody in one of the camps and did much as I pleased. Even as a King’s man, I still do.”

  Smiler had spoken the last words with pride and well he might. Things went on the way they were, so many of the leading men dead, the Roman might find himself one day in Council. But, still, Herfrig was curious about one thing. “So, Smiler, you think Rome is finished?”

  “Finished? Look at them towns and ask yourself – could they ever build ‘em again. Me? I don’t think they could. Truth is, Herfrig, I haven’t a clue. But if you’ve been listening you’ll know one thing. If you’re a miller’s son and you want to be anything else, well, for you Rome is finished. And that, Herfrig; that’s all there is to it.”

  Herfrig looked at the heavens and hoped they could make some sense of it up there, beyond the lines of cloud edged bright by the moonlight. At dawn they would attack the Roman garrison in two groups, one led by a Roman, the other by the King’s own nephew. And both would fight as any Goth would fight.

  To follow Smiler, the Empire maybe had too many laws. But then no less right had been Athaulf and the woman who still was their Queen. If they were to become a nation worthy of the name then they, the Visigoths, needed a sight more. And tomorrow he must battle the only people who could show them how.

  *

  Wallia surveyed the dishes of fish and capon. For a King it was modest fare and he wondered what, behind her settled front, Galla Placidia made of it all. In the camps and what he did know; men would draw knives over so royal a supper. “Any trouble?” he asked.

  Theoderic tried to juggle with a fish, his goblet and speak at the same time. “Sorry, Wallia, lovely fish; haven’t had anything like it for weeks. But no, not really; men on horseback, riding the hills,” he shrugged. “Nothing serious.”

  “You were right about the Vandals that time by the dunes, before… before we sailed.”

  The young face lost its shine. “Aye.”

  Wallia pretended he did not know why. “Cowards you said they were, Theoderic. Cowards they are.”

  Like any proper Goth he had never had any time for the Vandals; after the last days in Gades his opinion of them lower still. The day after Sigesar’s sermon, the people still grieving their lost men and in the middle of a hurried Council, word had come from Fredbal, King of the Siling Vandals. Followed by the maistans he had gone outside, seen the cart and a smirking messenger. “A royal gift, Wallia, from my master Fredbal. For your journey home.” Throwing back a heavy sail, the messenger’s smile got wider amid the sudden putrid stench of a half-decomposed horse, covered in eager flies.

  Opposite there waited more Silings; these with bows. They could have pinned the entire Council against t
he wall with one volley of arrows but did not seem sure what to do. He had returned the messenger’s smile. “An embrace of thanks to your master,” he said; a hand about the man’s shoulders, a knee to the groin. Then he stamped back inside and ordered Harduric to clear the street; of Silings and of dead horses. And keep it well clear until they left; which had been a hurried two days later.

  He realised the eyes of the room were upon him; shook himself from his thoughts. “Just as well, too.”

  “Aye,” agreed Theoderic, whose men had provided the rear guard. “Wagons so spread out, they could've taken us one by one. If they’d had the nerve.”

  “Many dead?” asked Rohilde.

  They had bought supplies from the Alans on the long, dark road back. Even so, the corn wagons had creaked through Barcino’s welcoming gates, boards bare.

  Theoderic nodded. “Enough, Rohilde. We dug that many graves by the roadside, there’ll be good crops in the fields this year.”

  The two women glanced down at their food but somehow Theoderic didn’t seem to notice. “Where’s Herfrig tonight?”

  “Up to his neck in snow, I hope – at Summum Pyrenaeum, with Smiler and a thousand others. See if they can take the pass.”

  “It’s defended?”

  “Be surprised if not, Theoderic.” Wallia leant back. “See, takes just a day, even a few hours to destroy an army. We saw that at Gades,” and he frowned; words clumsy again. The goblet came to his aid. “But it takes a hellish long time to build one back up. The Romans, well, it’s a wonder they even remember how to throw a javelin these days.”

  “You mean the battles with the Vandals and us,” asked Rohilde.

  “Not only with barbar…not only with invaders from outside.” Galla Placidia spoke firm and Wallia had already noticed. Though Barcino held only bad memories for the Roman, since their return she was more her old self. “We’ve had our share of pretenders, Rohilde. The Frigidus, I know you lost many men. But so did the armies of East and West. Then, in Gallia, the armies of the West were divided twice more between my brother and the usurpers.”