The Songs of Slaves

by David Rodgers

  “Valens was quick to collect on his side of the bargain: almost immediately he conscripted many of the young strong men for his armies. They marched away in his service, many never be seen again. The battlefields of Rome were hungry for fresh blood to spill for the glory of the Imperium. The rest of my people waited in their miserable squalor, weeping for the loss of their lands, their loved ones, and their pride, and waiting for Valens to make good on his bargain. They were waiting for food to arrive.”

  Valia filled his drinking horn again. He spat into the fire. Hedrick passed a sharpening stone to Connor, who took the cue. He drew Death Drinker and began working out the new notches in the blade. The blade gently rang and vibrated as he drew the stone along the cutting edges, making the spatha seem alive in his hand. Connor admired the swirling patterns in the iron as it caught the firelight. He had never owned a sword, though Titus had spent a great deal of time teaching him to use one. Now he had this one – so simple and sturdy and perfect. But Death Drinker could not be its name. It had been Death Drinker for Valia.

  “For me your name is Archangel – my avenger, my protector,” Connor thought silently as he sharpened his weapon.

  “What did arrive was not food – not enough food anyway,” Valia continued. “What did arrive were bureaucrats – the scourge of Rome, rotten, greedy, glutted bureaucrats. Such men of high breeding but low mind as warranted the assignment of tending starving refugees in the Thracian desert came to meet out our aid. With them came well-fed, well-armed soldiers to contain us. As I said, perhaps Valens intended to keep his word; but what ensued in his name was hell on earth. The food supply was sparse. The wheat was moldy and rotten. At first they meted out some flesh; but the bureaucrats – with no immediate supervision higher than themselves – decided this could fetch them a better profit in the markets of the Thracian cities. They only passed on to us what was unfit for market, and before long they were sending us dog carcasses to eat. Soon, even this generosity was too much for them. They began demanding from us payment for the aid. Despite the pact of honor, despite the fact that our men were spilling their blood so that such men could live in prosperity and safety, they demanded our treasure. And when all of our treasure was gone they demanded to have whatever we might have left. As our desperation grew, their men took their payment from our women; and as the seasons passed and they received their ample portion of this defilement, they demanded our children. One Gothic child for every worm-eaten dog carcass. And so in my father’s youth my people had the choice of watching their child starve, or giving him up into slavery to have enough rancid flesh to keep his siblings alive another week. The slave markets of Thrace and Byzantium filled with the cries of Gothic children; the officials Valens had placed over us to protect us grew rich and fat on food meant for us as they violated our mothers and sisters; our men lay dead in far off places, not even knowing what a fate had befallen their families; and all the while – over those five long years – a great wail raised to Heaven, as my people pleaded for justice and deliverance.”

  Connor nodded his head. It was a disgusting story, but one he could well relate to. How could Rome be the mother of order and the keeper of wisdom, but the seedbed of such abuse and evil?

  “Peoples have ended this way. Who knows how many times? But this was not to be our fate. The Goths were not done. Far, far from it! As sickness and death crept in, many others would have lost their nerve, abandoned their hope for living, until they were eventually assimilated into the most miserable classes of the Imperium – all pride and legacy lost forever. But in my people the Fire still smoldered. Who knows what finally fanned those embers into flame? There are a number of stories, but perhaps no one account is actually needed. The important thing is that all at once, one day, when my father was just entering into manhood, the flames erupted. And they erupted into a conflagration!”

  “Yes they did!” Henric echoed, raising his dinking horn. The others followed suit, with Connor close behind, and they drank with studied solemnity.

  “But what happened?” Connor asked.

  “When we first settled,” Valia continued “even as our grandfathers and fathers marched away in Roman file, the filthy administrators had their soldiers go through our camps and round up our weapons. This happened with regularity over the years, at the order of Constantinople itself; for the Romans would use our strength but could not have an armed host in their midst. You fleece a sheep, not a wolf, as they say. Well, they got many of our weapons, and then they made us so weak with hunger and despair that they thought we could not have used them anyway. But many of us managed to hide our swords and daggers. When the Romans were close to finding them, we would bribe them with our women. Only too eager to shirk their tedious duty in exchange for satisfying their lusts, they would readily look the other way after a good romp. The sword is the soul of the Goth, and so through this stratagem many of our weapons were saved.”

  Despite the food and wine, Connor felt sickened. In Eire a man used his sword to protect his woman, not his woman to protect his sword. He knew it was best to keep his questions and observations to himself, but how he wished to be on his way, out of the company of these strange, hard men and out of this corrupt, God-forsaken country.

  “In any case, when the time for action finally came we were not completely without means,” Valia said. “One day the well-guarded administrators came in, looking to sow their gifts of rotten provisions in exchange for more rape and slaving. But on that day they crossed a line, and found themselves on the wrong side of a Gothic sword. The so-called provisioning party was cast down so quickly that the soldiers on one side of the camp did not even know it had happened. It started with a single fight, but in moments those Romans who were not instantly slain were unarmed and kneeling before our people on the ground. My father would often tell me of the fear he saw in their eyes as they pleaded for their worthless lives. But pleading had never helped us, and it was not to help them. We poured out five years of anger on them in one night.

  “But that was just the beginning,” Valia continued. “Released from its halter, the horse just runs faster. At first light, all the able bodied men of the settlement had surrounded the nearby fort. The garrison – who had allowed themselves to grow accustomed to controlling starving plebes, but was no longer fit to face real resistance – fell quickly before our fury. Inside my father and his kinsman seized weapons and provisions that they desperately needed. Because there was no turning back. God’s gift of a little food and blood only made us hungrier for both. We marched on the nearest Thracian settlements, taking food and taking revenge. Some were even able to rescue some of our kindred and children that we had lost to slavery – but so many more of them were gone forever. Throughout the countryside, civilians were fleeing and soldiers were mobilizing against us. But there was no stopping us. This was not a simple uprising. We had broken our iron fetters. They would never put us back into slavery. We had become a people on the move.”

  Valia stopped his tale long enough to raise his drinking horn high. The men gathered round the fire joined him, all draining their vessels. Connor looked up to see the Goths smiling, the light of the fire reflecting the gleam in their eyes as they relived the tale they must have been hearing since birth. Valia again refilled his drinking horn, then passed the flagon around as he launched back into his story.

  “We were a people on the move, but not on the run. We had enough of running. We were marching with our wives and children and all our possessions, marching slowly and methodically south – into the heart of the Imperium. As we went our numbers swelled, not only with the Gothic slaves we freed; but many of our brave young men were coming home to us. Stories of the abuses we had suffered had been suppressed, but news of our uprising quickly travelled. The Goths serving in the forces of Rome found their way back to the pack, back to their families. Most brought with them more weapons, but also their intimate knowledge of the Roman war machine – knowledge that was to prove very useful. Then we were
joined by aid unsearched for. A force of Ostrogoths, our kinsmen of old, had defected from the Huns and crossed the Danube. They brought with them a group of Alans. Both of them came well-armed and on horseback, adding numbers and vigor to our growing cavalry. Now my people had their freedom, and they had their weapons, and now they had their horses. So we marched straight towards Constantinople – perhaps not even knowing what we would do when we got there – but laying waste everything in our path.

  “Well, for once Valens acted quickly. He assembled his legions and prepared to march out from Constantinople to meet us. Rumor still has it that his co-Augustulus in Italia was also sending legions, but when Valens heard that we were only about a hundred miles away and that his troops well-outnumbered us, he marched on us without waiting for aid from the West. He was eager to snatch the glory for himself, and to this end he personally led his army out to the field.”

  “Well, some days later they caught up with us, the dispossessed nation of Goths, in the plains a little west of Adrianople. I must say, my people had been fighting the Romans for those months, but the arrival of this definitive host forty thousand-strong caught us unawares. Ten thousand of our cavalrymen were away from the main body, foraging for food to feed our mass of people. But our chief Fritigern was a bold man; and his kinsman and co-chief, Ativern, was a wise man and skilled at the art of divining. They sent messengers to the Romans to slow their advance with the promise of diplomacy; while sending his swiftest messengers to recall the cavalry.

  “There is much I could say of what was to come of that day. Many a good song has been made from those strange and glorious events. But I fear my tale drags on too long, so I must save some of these for another time. What I will tell you is that diplomacy quickly failed, not only due to the ruse of the Goth but again due to the greed of the Roman. As the Roman forces spread out along their lines of battle, our badly outnumbered fighting men pushed their families far to the back and put the baggage carts – full of the rich plunder of Thrace – in the center. They formed a line around it. The Romans attacked, and not without valor. They knew that their homes and families could be in danger if our advance through the countryside was not checked, to say nothing of the pride and prestige of the Imperium itself. But as they charged in, our shield wall held. It was shield wall against shield wall, and shield wall against cavalry too; but my people would not break. Too recent was the memory of hellish imprisonment in the refugee camps, too bright the fire of defiance in my people’s hearts. The Goths would not be slaves again, and so we fought with all our fury. When one man fell in the shield wall, another took his place without a thought to danger. The fighting stretched on, a dead-even press; and then suddenly – like a thunderbolt – our cavalry returned, speeding from the hills with spatha and spear blazing in the late day sun. Visigoths and Ostrogoths and Alans they came; and they smashed into the Roman forces like the fury of God. Even as they did, our infantry deliberately gave ground, thus pulling the Romans closer to the baggage carts. We enveloped them there, closing around them until the Romans – growing weary and suffering terrible losses – were trapped between the carts and the full press of our men and horse. Their great but dwindling number was compressed so tight that they had difficulty swinging their swords without running into each other. And it was there that we slaughtered them! Such terrible slaughter, a reaping field!

  “The Romans that could run ran. The rest fought with desperation and doom, until the life was crushed from them. Among those that ran was Valens, the emperor. His guard fled with him and some of his eunuchs on horseback, but when they realized that they could not get away, they took shelter in a nearby cabin. Some of my people followed them there, but they did not know that it was the Augustulus, for he had exchanged his Tyrion Purple cloak and gilded armor with a subordinate who lay dead on the battle field. Had they known it was him the resistance that his guard put up in defending the cabin would not have deterred us from taking him alive, for such a great prize that would have been. With that prisoner we would have had the ultimate bargaining piece over the Imperium. But alas for Valens and us, he was in disguise, and so the Gothic warriors simply burned the cabin to ashes with Valens and everyone in it. And so ended the Augustulus Valens in fiery misery, killed by the hands of the people whose trust he had betrayed. And so was the Roman Imperium handed its most crushing defeat in many centuries. They had come with an army of forty thousand against what they considered to be a barbarian rabble. By the end of the day thirty thousand of their soldiers joined their very emperor in death, deep within their own territory – only a hundred miles from the palaces of Constantinople. It was my people’s greatest moment, up till that time.”

  Valia was beaming. Around the fire the other Goths were nodding their heads reverently. Connor joined them in their silence for a moment. He had heard people speak of the Goths many times – almost always derisively. He had known a number of Gothic slaves. But he had never heard any of this story. He suddenly realized that this battle – these events – that Valia now described may have been the same crisis that Titus used to allude to. Connor wondered if Titus had been amongst the ranks of the Western Army, marching to the aid of the doomed troops of Constantinople; and he was struck by the thought of what may have been different for him if Valens had not acted so foolishly.

  “How long ago was that?” he finally asked.

  “Thirty nine, forty years?” said Valia, looking to Henric for confirmation.

  “Thirty eight I think.” the older warrior said.

  “So the story does not end there, of course,” Valia said. “Needless to say, it did not take the new Augustulus, Theodosius, long to sue for peace. After several smaller battles and a host of talks, our people were finally given an amenable situation – land in Moesia, along with a good bit of autonomy and adequate respect, along with all that had been promised but withheld from us the first time; all in exchange for a military service and of course a ceasing of hostilities. It was agreeable to us – after all, we could not run forever, and with our principal enemies all dead, what was the point in carrying on a war against the entire world? And so my father and his people passed those decades in relative peace at home, with the young men serving as foederati at the far reaches of the Imperium, exercising our warrior gifts against Vandals, Allamani, Persians, and of course Huns.

  “But it was not to be too long before a real war came along, a war in which my people were needed. It may perhaps come as a surprise that with so many enemies on the outside of the Imperium that this war was a war within the empire – a civil war between East and West. Valentinian the Second, the Augustulus in Rome, had wound up dead. His highest general, Arbogast – a Frank, by the way; dirty bastards – claimed that it had been suicide, but Theodosius and his lot did not much believe that. Things looked even more suspicious when Arbogast put his puppet Eugenius on the throne of Rome. Now Eugenius was a Pagan, in the old Roman way. Theodosius was a devout Christian, who had made Christianity the official religion of the Imperium and actually outlawing Pagan worship – going well beyond what Constantine the Great had done many decades before. So when Eugenius started reviving the Pagan shrines and making trouble for the Church, Theodosius knew the time had come to do something about this situation before his authority was further transgressed. So it was not to just be a war of East and West, Greek and Latin; but a war of gods and ideals.

  “That was the official story anyway. But as men flocked to the banners of their emperors, ready to do battle for their gods and their faiths, those who paid a little closer attention could not help but wonder if Theodosius was not seizing the opportunity to bring the Imperium back under a single control – his control! The Imperium had been split between thrones since the days of Diocletian, except for brief reunion under Constantine. Now Theodosius had the opportunity to rest it from a Frankish general and a hastily shored up pretender, and bring it all under his dominion; all while fighting in the name of God.”

  “There was only one pro
blem,” Henric interjected. “We Goths had wiped out his army.”

  “Indeed.” Valia continued when the men were done cheering. “Though twenty years had passed by now since the Great Battle, the Eastern army was still a shadow of what it had once been. Meanwhile the West, while not the war machine the ancestors of these Romans had boasted, was well tested against a steady stream of barbarian incursions and usurpers alike. And Arbogast was a very capable general, very feared. So it is no surprise that Theodosius turned to us for help – but I get slightly ahead of myself.

  “One of Theodosius’s best generals – one of his best assets – was a man named Stilicho.”

  There was a name that Connor did recognize, though what he had heard were only confusing references to it amongst Montevarius and his friends.

  “Stilicho was of split parentage, you might say,” Valia continued. “His mother was Roman, but his father was a Vandal lord. I met him, first when I was quite a young boy, and later just a few years ago. He was a tall man, with sandy-colored hair cut in the Roman style. His beard was also cropped in the Roman way. He had the face of a warrior, gaunt and weathered from sun and wind. His eyes were blue, and his gaze cut deep. His frame was wiry – sinewy rather than large, and his fingers were knotted like oak branches. Stilicho was brought up in the Imperium, and in his style and habits a Roman true and true; but he understood the barbarian mind and the barbarian soul. He had mastered both the Roman and the Germani arts of war. But above all, we remember him as a fair man of straight dealing – in a way he was the first truly good man that we came across since we had come within the Imperium, though he was to become our arch rival.

  “It fell upon Stilicho to reform and train the army, to get it ready for the campaign that Theodosius wanted. It also fell to him to recruit foederati to serve. He came to the Goths first. Our reputation by now was legendary. Not only had we broken the armies of the East at Adrianople, but we had been fighting the fiercest enemies of the Imperium ever since. No one wanted to cross us. Stilicho came amongst us, made his promises on behalf of Theodosius, and took his recruits. His grace of manner and understanding of our ways – the strength he projected and the respect he showed us – were very effective; but even if they had not been, you always find a Goth eager for a fight. We were eager, too – fools that we were – to prove ourselves once more, to show that we belonged here. Twenty thousand of us vowed to serve the interests of Rome – or Constantinople, more accurately – in this war between the true Augustulus Theodosius, and the pretender Eugenius.