The Last Roman: Vengeance

by Jack Ludlow

  The encounter left the youngster with his thoughts, even more troubled now than hitherto, the information that had been imparted to him by Dardanies gnawing at his innards, his imaginings filled with punishments of increasing bloodiness to be visited upon Senuthius, none of which seemed to be enough to satisfy his anger.

  The why was a point simple to conjecture with; the how, when he thought on it, eluded him for he was on the wing, letting circumstance carry him forward without any clear idea of where it would lead. The notion that they should find a way to detach themselves from this mass of believers and extract his vengeance foundered on one question: to where would he and Ohannes go that would advance his cause?

  To seek to get back to Dorostorum without the presence of this Sabbatius and those with him was too dangerous to contemplate, and Flavius had no idea how far they had yet progressed from the capital − all he knew was that logic demanded they should be on this road. And there was another consideration: would they seek to continue on their task in the face of Vitalian’s declared rebellion? Ohannes doubted it.

  ‘If I was them an’ got a sniff of this, I would set my horses for the Bosphorus and use the whip too.’

  ‘General Vitalian might let them pass through.’

  ‘In a pig’s ear, Master Flavius − they come on the business of Anastasius so the least he would do is hold them, worst he might cut off their heads.’

  Frustration made Flavius lash out. ‘Can you not think of anything to say that might bring me cheer?’

  ‘You’re alive, be grateful for that,’ came the gruff response, before the old man nodded and added, ‘Bit of a hold-up on the horizon.’

  They were making a final approach to the encampment to which Vitalian had called for his co-religionists to assemble. Instead of a flow of bodies it now became a sort of jostle, then a heaving near-stationary mass, the cause only established when they finally made it to the camp entrance.

  There some of the general’s officers were trying to sort out and direct to the right place those arriving, particularly trying to assess who had the right kind of weapons, as well as single out any who might have previous soldiering experience, set against peasants fired by religious fervour and armed with every kind of farming tool that could double as something to fight with; such people had a purpose as numbers, but as soldiers they would be a military asset of questionable value.

  ‘Do we want this, Master Flavius?’ Ohannes asked. ‘For there is little time to decide.’

  Flavius had gnawed on that problem every time they passed a milus stone; now he was being forced into a decision: the source of his hopes and his only chance of justice for his family lay in either Constantinople or those who had been sent from there to undertake an enquiry. If Vitalian was going to force the emperor to change his religious edict that could only be done by force, which meant marching on the capital.

  ‘So it is in that direction we must go, Ohannes, and hope that somewhere we will meet up with those we need to aid us.’

  ‘Hard to get clear once you join an army and painful if you’re caught.’

  ‘Then tell me how we can get past this point and carry on ourselves?’

  That got a shake of the head. ‘Even less safe, happen.’

  ‘Then we are, as we have been for a time now, in the lap of God’s mercy.’

  ‘Amen to that.’

  Even with his years and thanks to his very obvious sword and spear – Flavius was sure his bad haircut had an effect too – Ohannes was spotted as a potential warrior. Questioned, he was quick to relate his military service and since he would not be parted from Flavius and he was equally armed, both were directed to the area set aside to form up proper units, centuries in the old Roman pattern that the leaders hoped might be able to perform like a proper army.

  The shouting and the swishing of the short flagellum reminded Flavius of the vine saplings employed like whips by the men who had sought to train him and his friends in arms. But now he was under a breed of a different stripe; those issuing orders were tall and muscular, very fair of hair, with striking blue eyes and light skin that tended to peel, or at least go very red, in the sun, added to various adornments about their person of gold and silver.

  ‘Gautoi, I reckon,’ Ohannes informed his young charge, when he had examined them closely, adding that they had come down from the north in the last few years, providing a new source of mercenaries for the empire. ‘Worse than Germans, I hear.’

  The Gautoi claimed kinship to that race, but came from a land separated from Germania proper by a large inland sea. Flavius was thrown back on his histories, to recall from his studies that all the tribes north of the Rhine tended to be numerous and formidable as enemies. The fate of Varus in the Teutoburger Wald was still told to frighten children. In that deep forest, during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, three of his legions had completely disappeared along with their eagles, every legionary assumed to be horribly mutilated or burnt alive in wicker baskets.

  Since those far-off days the Rhine had been breached time and again and Gaul overrun, though each barbarian incursion eventually led to settlement. The Ostrogoths, another Germanic tribe, had, halfway through the last century, overrun the old Roman provinces of Italy, which Constantinople had feared lost to the empire for good.

  After much bloodletting, a chieftain called Theodoric had taken power. He proved to be an admirer of the Roman way of life and, independent merely because of distance and a lack of any desire for reconquest, he had taken up residence in the imperial palace in Ravenna. Then he sent to the previous Emperor Zeno a message to acknowledge that he acted only as an imperial subject; in short, he did not claim the title of Western Emperor.

  ‘Don’t like ’em much, whatever German band they come from,’ Ohannes added, when this was recounted to him, the fate of parts of the empire not something to hitherto trouble his thoughts. ‘But, by the Lord, can they fight!’

  ‘Which we might see evidence of,’ Flavius crowed happily, receiving from his companion a jaundiced look when he added, ‘Maybe we’ll get a chance to test our skills against them.’

  He then found himself looking into the face of one who had come close and it was not friendly. The blond hair under the man’s helmet was plaited and hanging either side of a face dominated by a huge moustache of the same colour, while the glare he was emitting left the youngster in no doubt that he would happily employ his whip. He barked something in what presumably passed for Latin amongst these mercenaries, but it made no sense to the people at whom it was aimed, which made the fellow, already red-faced, go puce and start bellowing and gesturing with flailing arms.

  ‘Think he wants us to form up,’ snorted Ohannes, making no attempt to hide his amusement.

  This led to a great deal of shuffling as the group of which they were part sought to get themselves into some form of order. Partly achieving this task, revealed to them a person of higher rank, evidenced by the nature of his good-quality apparel, his fine helmet and, most of all, his chest armour, a breastplate decorated in much the same fashion as that of Flavius, though the devices were different. He also had a thin, leather-covered baton, edged with gold top and bottom.

  A strong arm took hold of Flavius and pushed him to and fro until he was level with the man on his left, the Scythian getting an appreciative nod as he got himself in line on his own and helped others to do likewise. That occasioned a call to the finely clad fellow who had to be in command and he stepped over to stand before Ohannes, asking him where he was from and, if he was an ex-soldier, with whom he had served.

  Flavius listened to a list of campaigns and generals under whom the old soldier had fought until finally Ohannes mouthed the name of his father. The sound of that, rarely mentioned in these last days, had the youngster hanging his head and working hard to hold back the tears, while at the same time wishing that his companion had kept that information to himself.

  Then he heard Ohannes say, ‘As fine an officer as I ever served under, sadly
no longer with us.’

  ‘I am minded to elevate certain people to the rank of decanus,’ the officer said in clear and good Latin. ‘You are clearly a man of experience …’

  ‘And years, Your Honour, happen too many to be leading others.’

  ‘Let us see how this century forms up, but I have marked you.’

  The tip of the baton was used to lift Flavius’s chin and when his head came up he found himself looking into the unblinking glare of someone who probably matched his late brother Cassius in age, with smooth features and penetrating blue eyes, the question that followed a demand to be told the youngster’s background.

  ‘I am the son of a soldier,’ he replied, in what he hoped was a less elevated argot than that he had been taught to speak by his pedagogue Beppolenus, holding his breath until that got a nod. ‘Dead now.’

  Expecting to be asked to explain further, Flavius was grateful when no enquiry followed; he did not want his identity to be known. He had half turned away when another question occurred and he spun back. ‘Can you ride?’

  ‘No,’ Flavius replied.

  ‘Pity, we are in dire need of cavalry.’

  ‘Why do you lie?’ Ohannes asked in a whisper, when the officer had moved off and was far enough away to not hear.

  ‘I want to stay close to you.’

  That required no explanation and nor did the flagellum that struck Flavius’s arm, followed by the barely comprehensible instruction to stop talking. The blow delivered, the moustached face was thrust forward to gloat over the reaction caused by the pain, only to look confused by what came back from a pair of eyes nearly free from the blemishes that had disfigured them. Flavius gave him a stare of total blankness, which he held as the sapling was lifted again – his attitude was clearly being seen as defiance – but no blow followed, for the intended recipient did not flinch.

  In an established military encampment the units of ex-soldiers and those who had their own weapons were allotted proper huts in which to sleep and to store their possessions. The rest were put into tents, which was less of a problem than it might have been given the weather was dry, as was the ground after a day of sun.

  Most important of all they were fed, Vitalian having lopped off the head of the magister militum – the man who had delivered the message from Anastasius cutting off his rations – and purloined his treasury in order to buy food to supply his putative army as well as pay them. An added tax on landowners in Moesia was imposed so he could continue to do so, as well as distribute small sums to his new recruits: if many might have come for religious reasons others had not, and they would not stay without some kind of reward.

  To say the camp was in chaos was an understatement; for every man present who was aware of the basics there were ten rustica who had no idea. As the head of an established fighting force Vitalian had good men capable of issuing instructions but pitifully few able to obey them, added to which, fired only by religious fervour, these farm and field labourers were not of the type to respond to the harsh discipline necessary to make them truly effective.

  ‘Such numbers will look good at a distance.’

  ‘Not, Ohannes,’ came the mordant reply from Flavius, ‘if the men examining us have good eyesight.’

  They too had been drilled, but with a tenth of their century having served before, old habits came back and others had at least the wit to follow their lead, so if they were bellowed at it was with instructions to march this way or that, to wheel as a body, to form various combinations in which they would be deployed to fight, added to the method by which, should they be forced to retire, they could do so in good order.

  There was no training in actual fighting, mock combat, which came as a severe disappointment to Flavius, added to which he was beginning to get frustrated at the time it was taking for Vitalian to move; he needed to be on the road. Halfway through the several days this drilling took, Ohannes was given the rank of decanus, responsible for seven plus himself.

  If what he commanded was less than perfect, Vitalian knew how to inspire even the rabble, this evidenced when all were called before the oration platform, in front of which he had lined up his formidable-looking foederati, to be told that soon they would march on the capital and give the emperor a choice of two outcomes: either he would have to reverse his position on Chalcedon or face being deposed and thrown to the mob in the Hippodrome. The cheer this received was loud enough to chase every bird in the region away from nest and perch.

  It was instructive to observe the reality of a military organisation as opposed to that of which Flavius had so copiously read. In recounting the nature of successful campaigns, historians, even when they were in personal command, never referred to the toil visited upon the common soldier. They wrote of manoeuvres and battles as if those involved were mere fodder to their ambition, nothing more than an asset to be employed.

  Camp life at the level at which he was living was very different and he had to suppose that once they moved the obvious lack of overall cohesion in the host must get worse. Flavius saw the sense of Vitalian sticking to the Roman model of organisation, which had the advantage of simplicity for a range of recruits who would struggle to adopt the way the empire was now restructuring its army; his father, given the number of men he led, had stuck to the description ‘cohort’ and the title ‘centurion’ when it had long gone out of use in the main imperial forces.

  He was also acutely aware of the change in Ohannes in the coming days; for a man who claimed he had been short on obedience himself and who had been reluctant to take promotion, he came down hard on any of his contubernium who showed any inclination to question his orders. He wanted the barracks clean and the men who served under him that too.

  ‘Don’t go getting used to this, which is comfort,’ he growled. ‘It will be tents once we are on the march and nowhere to shit either. We cook our own grub and keep ourselves up to the mark, for I have no craving to feel the centurion’s rod if any of you lot are slack.’

  And that eventually came to pass, as it had to, for endless time was not a luxury Vitalian could afford. There had already been desertions, either through a loss of desire to continue or a hatred of discipline and the punishment that went with it. So finally they marched, and if those at the head, the mostly German and Gautoi foederati, both mounted and on foot, looked impressive, what came in their wake did not. The better centuries marched in reasonable order but, still armed with that which they had brought from their farms, the rustica looked and were a motley horde.

  Worse was their inability to carry out swiftly and effectively the very necessary tasks that must be performed when setting up a temporary camp after the first day. Tents had to be erected and in regular lines all centred round the general’s headquarters. Each century had to dig a latrine fit to serve the eighty men in the unit, and that was often a cause of dispute, as was whose turn had come to fetch the food as well as who should gather the wood to cook it.

  When it came to guard duty − which, outside those before his own quarters Vitalian quite wisely left to those bodies of men he thought he could trust, while sparing and favouring his barbarian foederati − Flavius and his ilk found themselves lumbered with more of that than was strictly their due. But there were other evenings when the duty fell elsewhere, allowing a small amount of freedom to do other things: look for friends in other units, find the leather workers and see to repairs of footwear or scrounge for extra food.

  For Flavius, given they were now marching down the main imperial highway, the Via Gemina, and they always camped somewhere within walking distance of some reasonable-sized habitat, a town or a large village, it gave him a chance to go and ask his most pressing question. In Debellum they had camped around a proper citadel, it being a city, and so he took to wandering the streets and that was when the name of F. Petrus Sabbatius registered.

  It only raised his hopes for no more than a few seconds; the man who answered in the affirmative, if he did not know what the imperial envoys were a
bout, did know that when the city was told of Vitalian’s rebellion they headed south, not north. They were on their way back to Constantinople and it was a glum Flavius who returned to the camp that night, to toss and turn, seeking to decide what to do.

  ‘Continue as we have,’ was what he said to Ohannes in the morning, as they bathed in the lake that abutted the city. ‘What choice do I have?’

  Progress, which was laid down at five leagues a day, proved near to impossible and the mustered force lost much potency through the inability of many of the peasant levies to keep up the pace. As a positive, the further south they went, they were greeted as they passed through any town by crowds wishing to bless their cause, although the gifts of food and wine did nothing to speed progress; the combined factor of both often had them trying to make camp after sunset instead of the full light of day.

  ‘Seen it all before, Flavius,’ Ohannes would say, when some act of insubordination or stupidity was obvious enough to be observed. ‘Including being showered with flowers and kisses. Same lot will hurl curses and stones at you if you have to fall back.’

  It amused Flavius, the way the old man now addressed him: he seemed to have taken to his rank and was more than happy to no longer address his young friend as a superior being. Not that he was hard on the lad, able to take the joke with which Flavius responded, that if Ohannes laid on with too much chastisement, then he would decamp to join the foederati cavalry.

  Long days melded into a week and if there were losses in numbers due to illness or desertion, what was left was growing leaner and better as good habits took over from petty confrontations. Those chosen to lead the mass of rustica were asserting their authority and the men they were in charge of were wise enough to see where their own interests lay, for if they behaved they were fed. Added to that, there were priests along to encourage them and to press them to recall their purpose.

  For a youngster who had read avidly about marching armies and bloody battles what he was engaged in was a cause of ceaseless fascination. If he could see the faults in Vitalian’s hastily gathered host he could also begin to work out the remedies, not least that this army would have been much improved by a longer period of training and by actively divesting itself of some in the ranks, perhaps even reforming into the more modern formations of arithmos and numeri. Easy to say, hard to do and dismissed out of hand by Ohannes, who thought that handling soldiers in units of eight was hard enough; to expand it into the up-to-date and three-to-four-hundred-strong numeri would result in havoc.