The Last Roman: Honour Part 11

The way that was taken showed that this cavalry commander was not yet the fully formed courtier, for he could not mask his anger, hard as he tried. It was with a stiff expression that he inclined his head, before spinning round and leaving the chamber. The memory of the encounter stayed with Flavius and was with him as he rode; a man in search of personal glory could pose problems.

Encamped that night, Flavius called another meeting at which he sought to cement his views. Then, having eaten, he took a tour round the tents, seeking to make his presence and his face known. He wanted, even if it was only with a look, to imply to those he led that he cared for their welfare and to ensure they knew that as they ate the supplies he had arranged for them, it was he who had worried for their bellies. It was an impossible task given if anyone spoke with him it was as rare and respectful as to have little effect.

The following morning, after the priests had said Ma.s.s and the men had broken their fast, they formed up again to head due east into the arid desert of Thannuris. This was done under a blazing sun that, with the sand dragging at their feet, took a heavy toll on the foot soldiers. Nor were those mounted spared; they spent as much time walking as riding with frequent stops for water taken from the loaded carts Flavius had sent ahead.

That would not pertain on the following day; the carts would follow the army not precede it, for they would be close to where they expected they might find their enemy. If they were west of the wells Flavius would have no choice but to order an immediate withdrawal, which would do nothing to enhance his standing here or in the capital. To give his infantry as little marching to do as possible he had sent the cavalry ahead to find the Sa.s.sanids and give him warning of what he faced.

His orders had been explicit: locate and wait unless they are west of the wells and seemingly set up to do battle, in which case we will make a display of force then retire out of the desert. Personally, he longed for them to be beyond the wells and his mood was a mixture of eagerness and anxiety as to what would be the outcome of his first battle as a general if that wish was granted. The history of fighting against the Sa.s.sanids was not one of success for the Eastern Empire but if he could deploy as he wished, then he had a chance to alter that.

How good it would have been to have someone close enough to him to confide in, to share such thoughts, like old and crabby Ohannes, long gone to meet his maker, or even his mentor Justin, to say that if he knew he faced failure he would embrace that, anything rather than risk men's lives for his personal aggrandis.e.m.e.nt.

'Rider coming, Your Honour,' came a call from one of his escort, 'and fast.'

'From Coutzes, no doubt,' Flavius replied.

He rose in his stirrups to cast a look to the front, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun. The messenger was closing at a flat-out gallop, the tail of his horse near horizontal, which had the Belisarius heart feel as if it was suddenly in his exceedingly dry mouth. That went to positive leather when the missive was delivered by the breathless rider, one of the numerus commanders that Flavius had met briefly.

'Dux Coutzes sends me to tell you that he has halted behind a ridge that overlooks the wells. The Sa.s.sanids are drawn up between us and water but he can see few in number and they seem unprepared to defend their position.'

'Few in number?'

'He has counted the tents and puts them at less than a thousand.'

'Cavalry?'

'None within sight.'

What followed was a verbal sketch of what this fellow and Coutzes had seen. An array of tents within which it was expected the enemy were sheltering from the sun and a calculation put Roman strength well above theirs. For security, the Sa.s.sanids were behind a barrier of pointed stakes buried in the ground but had left avenues through which their own men could come and go.

'My Lord feels it is possible to mount an attack and catch them unawares using those gaps between the stakes.

'Your lord has his orders.'

'I am to impress on Your Honour the point that matters no longer fit those orders. The enemy, dux Coutzes asks me to inform you, are at our mercy.'

'What of the other captains?'

'They are eager to back up his calculation.'

'They are obliged to follow mine.'

Flavius fell silent as he examined what he had been told while at the same time conjuring up a mental picture of what lay before his cavalry. If true, it was indeed a golden opportunity but would an enemy commander be so foolish as to leave himself so exposed? He must know that a Roman army was on its way; no force five thousand strong could move in such a region without news of its presence getting ahead of its progress. There was, of course, the obvious solution; he must see for himself.

He spurred his horse and took off, forcing the messenger to jump to one side, in which he was nearly trampled on by the hooves of those bucellarii who now formed his own comitatus. The dust cloud they sent up as they raced across the desert, thankfully not deep sand in this area, perhaps sent a message ahead to Coutzes, or was it just the hunt for valour that animated him?

By the time Flavius had sight of his mounted men they were lined up on the skyline, having ridden to the top of the ridge behind which, he had been told, they had previously been hidden from the enemy. All Coutzes had to do was look over his shoulder to see the man to whom he was bound to defer approaching. Did he do that, Flavius did not know for the sound of the horn, floating across the intervening s.p.a.ce, saw the whole of his cavalry disappear down the slope before to leave an empty skyline, though they could hear the loud yells of over a thousand throats.

By the time Flavius and his escort crested that rise Coutzes, right to the front with his banner-bearer by his side, had closed the gap between the ridge and the line of forward-pointing and sharpened Sa.s.sanid stakes. The rest had echeloned into ragged arrow shapes and were, following that dux banner, heading towards those gaps that had been described, while to the rear Flavius saw what seemed like panicked defenders seeking to get to their stacked weapons and prepare to mount a defence.

From their elevation Flavius and his men could see what happened, a sight denied to those who rode in the wake of Coutzes. As soon as he chested through the gap, his body fully extended in his stirrups, his sword raised and swinging, the sand-coloured ground disappeared beneath him. He and his horse had charged into a deep, concealed ditch and those following him did likewise, the noise of screaming men and terrified horses filling the air as riders and their mounts piled on top of those already fallen.

'Back to Atafar. Tell him to turn round and march to the west as fast as he can.'

Order given, Flavius spurred forward, for what was before him now was a melee of his mounted units, riding in circles with no set purpose, while he could see the seemingly disordered Sa.s.sanids were anything but. In the distance, probably having been camped at the wells, bodies of mounted men, horse archers by the size of their mounts, were cantering forward to take part in the fight, proving that this had been a carefully designed stratagem.

Worse, disciplined units of foot soldiers, many more than the tents they had abandoned should have contained, were formed up for battle, preparing to advance over solid ground to first finish off those in the ditches and then to take on what was now a completely demoralised force of cavalry.

In amongst them was their general, waving his sword and yelling for them to retreat, a command hard to get across until he found the horn blower was still alive and could sound the right call in a way that would reach those who needed to hear. Some did not follow Flavius as he raced back towards that ridge, either out of loyalty to their dux or sheer confusion and they would surely die.

There was little doubt of his fate and those who had followed him. If the horses and riders falling on top of Coutzes had not killed him there were enough slas.h.i.+ng Sa.s.sanids in the ditches to carry out the deed. So busy was he trying to get his remaining men clear of danger, it was an age before Flavius Belisarius came to realise the truth. In his first battle as a commanding general he had been soundly defeated.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

The wait was frustrating: how would Justinian respond to what had occurred? Fast the imperial service might be, but it still took time to cover six hundred leagues there and back and that was before you factored in the period taken to a.s.sess not only the reverse the force from Dara had suffered but how to react to it. Even considering all those particulars it still seemed to drag out to an interminable wait during which, even after a month, Flavius could not get out of his mind the scale of the defeat.

Half his cavalry had perished either by rus.h.i.+ng headlong into those concealed ditches or in the ground between them and the ridge from which Coutzes had attacked. They had been victims of the infantry but it was the enemy cavalry that posed the greatest threat. Leading the remainder of his own mounted forces away, Flavius had sought to distract the pursuit by drawing them off from Atafar and his retreating foot levies, who needed time to have any chance of avoiding a ma.s.sacre. The ploy failed; the Sa.s.sanids had declined to follow him on a more northerly route and kept their mind on the primary task.

It had occasioned no tears when in his despatch he named Coutzes among the dead; that was not the case with Atafar and even less with the men he led. Many had perished, this he knew from a later examination of the body-littered field where they had sought to stand and fight, so many having fallen to arrows. The old Arab had died leading them, but there was another grim reading of what he observed: there were fewer bodies than Atafar had brought to Dara. How many had been taken as prisoners to endure a life of slavery?

In writing the full report Flavius had the memory of Vincent to aid him. The Equestrian was able to pa.s.s on the exhortations that Coutzes had employed to persuade his fellow captains to disobey what was a direct instruction from their general. Even if these were included and the outcome described Flavius made no attempt to s.h.i.+ft the blame; he was the man in command and if he had entrusted part of his force to Coutzes he bore the responsibility for such a poor decision.

That he would be removed he had no doubt and he was resigned to his fate. Being a friend to Justinian would not count for much when every voice around him would be questioning his appointment of Flavius Belisarius to so important a post in the first place. They would do so with caveats to his imperial sagacity, of course, but these courtiers had spent a lifetime honing their oratorical skills. They were well versed in getting the message they really wanted to impart over to even the most deaf of rulers.

It hardly aided his mood when Flavius heard that the castle building he had set in train at Minduous had been abandoned in the face of a Sa.s.sanid threat. There had been no battle; all the enemy had to do was show enough strength in numbers to make the effort untenable and force the men Flavius had sent to carry out the construction running for the safety of Dara.

The day the messenger rode through the gates brought on that which Flavius dreaded, yet the despatches he brought were far from censorious. Instead they warned him that following their successes, the Sa.s.sanids were now emboldened enough to make an attempt to invest and capture Dara itself and that Kavadh was busy raising the necessary forces, which would take time and allow Flavius to prepare.

There was no hint of dismissal; the despatch informed him that fresh and better troops were on their way to support him and that he was now charged with making sure the fortress did not fall. As well as levies from the province of Phoenicia he was promised mercenary cavalry from both the Huns and the Germanic Heruls, who were numbered among the best mounted soldiers the empire possessed.

There was no point in asking if the information regarding an attempt of Dara was correct and even less did he have time to do so. The Romans had spies everywhere and in the past some of their intelligence had proved to be either wishful thinking or downright invention to secure their stipend, but he had no choice but to act as if it was true.

There was a second message, a private communication from Justinian in which the Emperor chided him for what had happened, but that was leavened by his point that when it came to defeats Flavius Belisarius was in some exalted company. How many of his fellow generals had failed as he had over the last decades? When he wrote that he still had faith in him it was couched in words that told him there were many voices a.s.sailing the imperial ear with contrary advice.

Justinian went to some lengths to address his concerns and showed some insight into the problems facing the man in the field as opposed to the people at court. When it came to organisation he was sending out Hermogenes, the magister officiorum, to oversee matters of supply and organisation. Surprised at the appointment of such a high-ranking bureaucrat Flavius wondered if it was a case of Justinian removing an irritant from his council. The other point was more personal; he urged him to appoint a domesticus, someone committed to him personally with whom he could discuss those matters that had to be kept within the bounds of discretion.

'Perhaps such a sounding board would have allowed you to see Coutzes for what he was.'

The letter ended with the kind of good wishes that one friend sends to another, only marred by the fact that it was purported to come not just from Justinian but from Theodora as well.

Mulling on it Flavius took to the idea of a domesticus. Ohannes had come under that designation in his father's household but a servant was not what Justinian was proposing. What he had in mind was a higher sort of position, filled by a man who might sometimes treat him as near an equal. If he was to have a person in that role then he too must be a soldier, for he needed someone with whom he could exchange ideas on his military and command responsibilities.

It was a few days later, when out studying the ground outside Dara, that he found two things: the field on which he wanted to fight and the man who would fulfil the role that Justinian had suggested. A eunuch called Solomon, he was a middle-ranking official of the Mesopotamian council who had, at one time, been a soldier. Such functionaries aided Flavius in his role as dux, given he was responsible to Constantinople for whatever happened in the whole province.

One of Solomon's duties was the recruitment or drafting of labour to keep the fortress in good repair, the roads, too, and any of the other tasks that were needed to maintain buildings, sewers and the like. It was, for the dux, an office easy to abuse by inflating costs or hiring out the labour to private individuals, and this had happened under his predecessor.

Expecting the same rapacious overlord, Solomon had shown some surprise when it became obvious that this Flavius Belisarius was not out to fill chests with gold; he wanted only that the necessary works be carried out without excessive expenditure and nothing for himself. If their a.s.sociation had not been of great length it had been mutually agreeable and based on doing that which was right, unlike that of others the dux was obliged to deal with, who took his insistence on honesty badly.

Solomon was along for a very sound reason: Flavius would be in need of much labour if the plan forming in his mind came to pa.s.s, so with him was the man who would have to see part of it implemented. When he alighted on the possibility that Solomon might well fulfil the role of domesticus it was because the combination was suitable, a knowledge of civil affairs married to a military background, these facts pointed out to him. But would he accept?

'At least you cannot, with such a name, be challenged for your wisdom.'

'It will be your wisdom I am supposed to challenge, Your Honour.'

The man was far from young, well past four decades, lugubrious in his nature, with a long, thin face, sad eyes and a lantern jaw below a wide mouth. If not a beauty that reply showed he was made of the right material.

'Tell me what you think of this place.'

'Do you intend to fight here?'

'Perhaps.'

'Hard to take Dara by siege, Your Honour,' came the reply, as Solomon looked over his shoulder at the ma.s.sive walls plain to see from where they sat.

'Hiding behind those is no way to defeat the Sa.s.sanids and I want to soundly beat them.'

'For pride, would it be?'

'No, and I know from where your question springs.'

'Hurts to be bested.'

'I doubt you know how much, but I would not risk men's lives for my reputation.' That such an a.s.sertion was not questioned, even by the look on Solomon's face, cheered him. 'If Kavadh's armies invest Dara with us defending, it will drag to our aid every soldier the empire can spare for they cannot be sure it will hold. The Sa.s.sanids have not lost the art of siege warfare. Odd that we Romans taught them how and we have forgotten ourselves. There's not a ballista in the whole imperial army.'

'Nor the men skilled in their use. Kavadh has them too.'

'So his generals will have the means to keep us locked up in Dara, this while any forces marching to relieve us will be in the open and that is where we have always failed against our enemies. Say they are beaten, where does that leave us and our garrison? This time I want to fight them on my terms and all I need to know is, is this a good place?'

'Well,' the older man mused, 'you have a good-sized hill to secure one flank and you can be sure if the Sa.s.sanids come this far they will attack you as they must to get at the city.'

'You sense I will be defensive?'

'You would have to be and you'd best make sure no one panics and closes the fortress gates if matters look to be going against us.'

'Us?'

'If I accept your offer I would be by your side.'

'You should have remained a soldier, Solomon.'

'Fewer aches and pains with quill and parchment.'

'Less exhilaration.'

'I might be past that.'

'Yes or no?' It was a while before the nod came but come it did. 'So, let me outline my intentions.'

'I'm told there are men on the way. Best consult with their captains, do you not think?'

There was no cordiality in the reply. 'This time the men I lead will do exactly as I require.'

The least welcome of the men who came to lead his forces was Bouzes, brother of the late Coutzes, now sole dux of Phoenicia Libanensis and Vitalian's eldest son. From the first it was obvious, even if it was never mentioned, that he knew of the way Flavius had castigated his brother in the recent defeat and that was demonstrated in his resentment when required to obey an instruction. It was in this situation that having Solomon to talk to was an advantage.

'Who are those who would support him at court?'

'A wise question, to which I do not know the answer, such a place ever being a mystery to me.'

'One it might be wise to solve, Your Honour. Best to know who you will offend before you threaten to send him home.'

'Is that what you would suggest?'

'I sense it is what you wish to do, and yes, I would come to the same conclusion with greater confidence if I had some inkling of the trouble it will bring you.'

'I cannot think on that. Send to Bouzes asking him to attend upon me.'

That his arrival was long delayed sent a message to Flavius, which did nothing for his mood when the man who might be his senior cavalry commander eventually arrived. But he was not going to let himself be checked for tardiness.

'We are of equal rank, Flavius Belisarius, are we not? So it ill becomes you to be angered that I do not run to your side like a faithful dog.'

There was much of his father in Bouzes, the same stocky build and wide shoulders, most tellingly in the hard stare. But there was also his brother there, the same sureness of mind and no hint that listening served as well as talking.

'Do you blame me for your brother's death?'

That shook Bouzes, being so unexpected, but he quickly recovered. 'You led him.'

'The trouble is no one led him, for he would not have it. I will not bore you with an explanation of his folly, nor how expensive it was in the blood of those he had command of. Suffice to say I will not bear a repeat of the att.i.tude he displayed.'

'Repeat?'

'Do not pretend you have no idea of what I am saying. Coutzes disobeyed a direct order from me. You, Bouzes, may be lucky to get the chance.'

'What do you mean?'

Flavius changed his tone then to make sure his point went to where it was needed. 'At the next sign of disrespect I will send you away from here.'

'You need my men.'

'And they shall stay, which will give you two choices, to slink back to your satrapy or go to the Emperor and plead your case.'

That took the blood from the man's face; he had the same fears as Coutzes, that Justinian was just biding his time before having him killed, and his need was similar: to take part in a battle, to behave with distinction and prove that he was a loyal subject.