Justinian

by Harry Turtledove

  "We'll take what we need from the peasant villages, and-" I broke off. I had already seen how peasant villages, there north of the Haimos range, were few and far between. I had not intended in any case to winter north of the mountains; ordering an army to winter in barbarian territory was what had brought Maurice down in ruin and set in train the events that raised my family to the throne. I did not aim to start some other family's rise to power at my expense. But having to withdraw with my attack barely begun also galled me. I said, "We will go on for another few days and see what happens." Makarios bowed and withdrew.

  What I hoped would happen was that we might get a break in the weather, another week or two of mild days after that snowstorm, in which we could strike at the Bulgars, plundering their herds if nothing else. Instead, less than half a day after the first snowstorm ended, another blew in.

  This time, it was Myakes who came to me. As perhaps no one else would have dared, he told me the truth, straight out: "Emperor, even the excubitores are starting to grumble at staying here so long. And if we're grumbling, the cavalry from the military districts has to be fit to be tied. They've already missed the harvest, and they didn't like that. They aren't fond of being stuck up here, not even a little they aren't."

  Not only had unhappy soldiers overthrown Maurice, they had also murdered my grandfather and ruined my father's campaign against these same Bulgars, inspiring his brothers to try to cast him down from the throne. An Emperor whose soldiers were unhappy with him was an Emperor whose throne shook under him.

  "Thank you, Myakes," I said. Not getting everything I wanted was always hard for me. Here, though, I saw I had no choice. "We'll go on for today, and see what we can do. Come tomorrow, it's back to the imperial city."

  We did little that day, seeing neither Bulgars nor their herds. When we encamped for the evening, I announced our return to the whole army. They could scarcely have been more joyful had I told them Christ was coming back day after tomorrow. Their delight showed me Myakes had been right, and also showed me I would have had little service from them had I insisted on continuing the campaign.

  They did not complain about going through Bulgar-held territory on the way to a pass through the mountains closer to Constantinople than the one by way of which we had entered the chilly northern land. Nor did they complain about acting like soldiers on the march, which is to say, about plundering and burning everything in their path. They would have burned for the sport of it, arson being deeply ingrained in the warrior's soul, but they did so all the more enthusiastically for being able to warm themselves at the fires they set.

  As before, the Bulgars ran away from us. Their rule, when fighting Romans, seemed to be to advance when we retreated but to retreat when we advanced. Oh, a few of their scouts always hung close to the army, now and then exchanging arrows with our own outriders, but they always fled when we sent larger detachments after them. By the time we started traversing the pass that would take us back to Romania, I took them for granted, as a man takes for granted the taste of the pitch that makes his wine keep longer than it would otherwise.

  That quickly proved a mistake, as did my earlier contemptuous estimate of the barbarians' strategy. They had placed an army in the pass, intending to block our way south. Their standards were horses' tails- one, two, three, or more- mounted on poles. Behind their line, drums thumped, echoing and reechoing as the khagan of the Bulgars shifted his men to meet our dispositions. As we drew near, the barbarians screeched what were surely insults at us in their unintelligible language.

  My own speech to hearten the soldiers was simplicity itself. Pointing south, I said, "There lies the Roman Empire. There lies the God-guarded imperial city. There lie your homes. And there stand the Bulgars, between you and those homes. Will you let the barbarians keep you from them?"

  "No!" the men shouted with all their might. Their outcry startled the Bulgars and silenced them, if only for a moment.

  "Then forward!" I said, waving toward the foe. "We shall ride through them, we shall ride over them, and we shall return to our own land once more." At my command, the horns blew the order to advance.

  Thud! Thud! went the Bulgars' drums. Shouting their war cries, they rode at us, too. Both sides loosed arrows, which began to fall like deadly rain. Hearing thousands of men shouting my name as a war cry made the hair on my arms and at the nape of my neck prickle up in awe.

  The fight was very simple, the Bulgars wanting to trap us and crush us, our own men battling bravely to return to the Roman Empire after having traversed a large part of the enemy's territory. We were better horsed than the Bulgars, and wore iron while they were in leather. And so we broke through, scattering them before us and leaving large numbers of them dead on the ground. I drew from this combat an important lesson: never to let the foe place himself between my army and my own heartland.

  MYAKES

  Why am I coughing, Brother Elpidios? Being an old man isn't reason enough? Justinian's right: that was a good lesson to learn. He forgot it once, years later, and paid dear for forgetting.

  But that's not all. You've been reading a good many days now, Brother. I haven't often heard Justinian shade the truth, but he does here. Aye, we broke through, but to hear him talk about it, it was as easy as smashing up the Sklavenoi. It wasn't like that, not even a little bit. I wish it had been.

  The Bulgars' horses were little and scrubby, but they were fast. Their bows shot farther than ours- not a lot, but some. And the leather they wore had been boiled some kind of way, till it was almost as hard as iron. As for the damned Bulgars themselves, they were as tough as you could want. Still are, I guess, come to that.

  Does Justinian say how many dead Romans lay on the ground? No, eh? Well, there were plenty. If we hadn't outnumbered the Bulgars, I think they would have beaten us. We made it into Thrace, aye, but we weren't a happy bunch afterwards. Just as well winter came down hard; we went home, the men from the military districts back to Anatolia and the excubitores to Constantinople, and the Bulgars, they stayed home, for which we were all duly grateful, especially, I think, Justinian.

  JUSTINIAN

  All the while we were traveling through the country the Bulgars had stolen from my father, during the battle against them, and on the road through Thrace back to the imperial city, I studied Neboulos. He affected not to notice me, but his blue eyes were watchful, too. Yet he said nothing, knowing, I suppose, his fate was not in his own hands.

  Like any barbarian seeing Constantinople for the first time, he gaped at the city's walls and then, all over again, at the wonders they contained. "So many people, all in one place," he marveled, and then, in his clumsy Greek, asked me, "With so many people here, why do you want us Sklavenoi, too?"

  "The countryside is emptier," I told him. "Even Constantinople has fewer people and more open spaces than it did a hundred years ago."

  "Hundred years?" He shook his head. "Who remembers so long ago?"

  "Augustus, the first Emperor of the Romans, ruled in the time of our Lord, Jesus Christ, almost seven hundred years ago," I replied. "God has never allowed a break in the line of Emperors from that time to this."

  Neboulos looked at me. By his expression, he thought I was lying to impress him. Then he looked from me to the marvels of Constantinople once more. They presented a better argument as to my truthfulness than any I could offer, for no barbarians, their thoughts rooted only in the present, could have conceived of them, let alone built them. When he turned back to me, his face was troubled. "How do you stand living in shadow your ancestors cast?" he asked.

  "They are our guides," I said. "We follow them as best we can. And, because we know Christianity, whe re they were mired in pagan falsehoods, we have surpassed them."

  "This god who gives you fire is strong," he admitted. "He drives away all other gods you used to have?"

  "Yes, you might say that," I answered: how to put it any more clearly to a letterless barbarian ignorant of the true and holy faith except insofar as he
might have delighted in plundering a church of its treasures should he have managed to take a Roman city.

  "And I," he said, thumping his thick chest with a big square fist, "I will be strong for you. I drive away all enemies you have now."

  He had not pestered me about that notion of his, not in Thessalonike, not in the Bulgars' country, not on the return from that country to the imperial city. Had he pestered me about it, I should naturally have come to suspect him. But now, when we were just across the Bosporos from the many Sklavenoi I had resettled in northwestern Anatolia, seemed an equally natural time for him to inquire about my plans for him. In my mind's eye, I saw him leading a force of fair-haired warriors combining Sklavinian cunning and Roman discipline. Further, I saw myself loosing him, like an arrow from a bow, straight at Abimelekh's heart.

  Not yet having learned the full depths of Sklavinian cunning, I said, "So you will make me an army from among your fellow tribesmen, will you?"

  "Yes, I will make you army," he said, and his eyes glowed bright as stars. "I will make you special army. You show me your enemies. You take me to them. I drive them all away."

  That fit in so perfectly with my own thought of a moment before, I said, "Let it be so. I shall send you to Anatolia. Make me an army. Make me a special army, Neboulos, and I will show you all the foes you want."

  "I am your slave," he said.

  ***

  Stephen the Persian prostrated himself before me, as he had in the days when he served in the palace rather than the treasury. "Emperor," he said in his eunuch's voice on arising, "I have seen how much gold your campaign against the Sklavenoi and the Bulgars cost, and I am pleased to be able to tell you that, when the tribute from the Arabs and the taxes collected within the Roman Empire are both taken into account, we have gathered in more than you expended."

  "That is good news," I replied. "Your predecessor always seemed to be finding reasons for me not to do the things the Roman Empire requires of me. You, now, you find the gold with which I can do those things. That is what I want in a sakellarios, Stephen."

  "So I have interpreted my duties from the beginning," Stephen said. "I should also like to commend to your attention a certain Theodotos, a former monk from Thrace, who has ably served your cause, being most ingenious in sniffing out those who would keep from the fisc monies rightfully belonging to it."

  "If he does that, he is truly given by God," I said, playing on the meaning of Theodotos's name. Stephen's beardless cheeks plumped as he smiled. I went on, "Bring his name to me again, that I may reward him for his diligence."

  "I shall send you a written memorandum, Emperor, detailing his contributions in full," Stephen said.

  "Better yet," I told him, and he bowed his way out of the throne room.

  That evening, I took supper with my mother. I had, I confess, been avoiding her since my return to Constantinople, for she kept assailing me with the multifarious virtues of my daughter Epiphaneia, a subject on which I remained resolutely deaf. The more she praised the child, the less desire I had to learn whether any of the praise was true.

  Indeed, the only reason I consented to dine with her was her promise not to raise the subject of Epiphaneia at the meal. That promise she kept… in a way. Instead of talking about Epiphaneia, she talked instead about prospects for my remarriage. "How happy you will be," she said, "when you hold a child in your arms and give it all the love that pours from your heart."

  "You know, Mother," I said, "if you were looking for a way to put me off the idea of remarriage for good, you couldn't have found a better one, not in a year of trying." For I heard all too clearly the unspoken reproach that I did not hold Epiphaneia in my arms and give her my love.

  I now realize my mother was right; I had an obligation to my family and to the Roman Empire to remarry and to produce an heir as soon as possible, thereby securing the succession and reducing the risk of civil war. But I still mourned Eudokia, and the thought of yoking myself to a new wife held no appeal. And if I lost a second wife as I had the first, grief, not love, would pour from my heart. The previous few years, I had had enough of grief and to spare.

  And I was still very young. When you are twenty or so, an endless sweep of years seems to stretch out before you. Ignoring the past history of my family, I was certain I had all the time in the world to marry again and get an heir. Little did I know then the fate God, in His ineffable wisdom, had decreed for me.

  And further, not to put too fine a point on it, I was and am a man of my house, meaning a man of strong will. The quickest way to set me against an idea forever was and is to urge it on me too strongly. No donkey or mule could dig in his heels more stubbornly than I under such circumstances. The course my mother advocated was one for which I did not care, the more vehemently and persistently she advocated it, the less I cared for it.

  She was stubborn herself, no doubt having acquired the trait from my father if it was not inborn in her. All through the time before my throne was stolen from me, she kept urging- no, she kept nagging- me to wed again. I can think of no more important reason for my failure to do so then.

  Thinking to distract her so I could finish my supper in peace, I said, "I hope you don't miss Stephen the Persian too much here in the palace. He is as good in the treasury as I hoped he would be, and the hopes I had for him were of the highest."

  Distract her I did. "That eunuch is a shark in man's clothing," she said, her eyes flashing angrily. "Were it not for his robes, you would see the pointed fin on his back. He has not held office long, but already everyone in the city hates him."

  "What better recommendation for a tax collector?" I said with a smile.

  "Don't joke about it," my mother snapped. "He goes too far- he goes much too far. Anyone who dares protest either how much he collects or how he collects it suffers. He is fond of the switch and, if that fails, the whip."

  I shrugged. "The fisc must be fed, or the Roman state starves."

  "He is a bloodsucking wild beast, and he thinks the fisc is the soul of the Roman state, not its belly. I told him as much, to his smooth, fat, evil face. I told him he was making you hateful to your subjects, too."

  "And what did he say to that?" I asked.

  "He said that, if he didn't collect all he could, he would make himself hateful to you," my mother replied, "and that is not all-"

  "And do you think he was wrong?" I broke in.

  My mother held up her hand. "You are the Emperor now, and so you may speak when you like. But you are also my son, and so you will hear me out. I had not finished." She paused, waiting to see how I would respond. She was indeed my mother, no matter how annoying to me she made herself at times, so I waved for her to go on, which she did: "As I was saying before you interrupted me, that is not all your precious Stephen the Persian said, nor all he did. He said I should mind my own business and let him mind his-"

  "An excellent idea," I said.

  She kept on talking, right through me: "And he picked up one of the switches he uses to thrash those who will not pay what he demands, and he hit me once across the back with it, as if I were a schoolboy who had not learned his lessons."

  She was my mother. Had she not also been nagging me, pushing me in directions in which I did not wish to go, no doubt I should have been outraged. As things were, the first thought crossing my mind was, Good- you deserve it. Saying that, though, would only have made our quarrel worse. What I did say was, "Now that I am back in the imperial city, I will tend to matters of the fisc myself. You need never have anything to do with Stephen the Persian again."

  It was not enough. Looking back, I see that. At the time, I deemed it the height of generosity. My mother's mouth thinned to a pale, narrow line. "Thank you so much, Emperor," she said, and left the dining chamber quite abruptly- and quite against etiquette.

  I do not think she spread the story through the city. In spite of our spats, she was always loyal to the family. I know I did not spread the story. Nevertheless, it did spread, which mean
t it must have spread from the lips of Stephen the Persian, boasting of the power he wielded. Perhaps he made himself feared with such tales; he surely made himself hated. And, as my mother had warned me, he made me hated, too. We both paid the price for it a few years later.

  ***

  "Emperor, have mercy!" The fat little man- John, his name was- arose from his prostration with a wail like that of a distraught mourner in a funeral procession. "Have mercy on the pitiful island of Cyprus!"

  He was the archbishop of Cyprus. Even so, having learned that anyone coming before the Emperor of the Romans on his throne will make a small problem seem large and a large one seem the end of the world, I discounted at least half that anguished wail. What remained after such discounting, though, was enough to concern me. "Have mercy on Cyprus?" I said, raising an eyebrow. "I thought I have had mercy on Cyprus, arranging for the taxes from the island to be shared between us and the followers of the false prophet. The island has had no share of fighting ever since."

  "Not no fighting, Emperor- less fighting," John said. "Your armies and those of the Arabs' miscalled commander of the faithful do not clash there, but s trife between their villages and ours remains. And we Christians there have to pay a tax for the privilege of practicing our true and holy faith."

  "Do they make you pay that tax over and above their half of what they collect? Or is it part of that half?" I asked, knowing the deniers of Christ made their Christian subjects pay that tax through all the lands they ruled.

  John's face twisted; he must have hoped I would not ask that question. "As part of their half of the total tax to be paid," he said unwillingly.

  "Idiot!" I shouted, and he blanched. "Blockhead! Imbecile! Cretin! Dolt! For a tax which he is within his rights to levy, you want me to go to war with Abimelekh?"

  "And for the harassment our villages endure, yes," John said.