"Aye, Emperor," they said as one, and hurried away.
"Emperor, have mercy on them," Myakes said, suddenly and urgently: he had indeed divined my intentions. "These are the ones who stayed loyal. They-"
"Are Sklavenoi," I broke in. "Are barbarians. Are likely to turn against us in any future campaign. Are, as the Holy Scriptures say, broken reeds that will pierce the hands of those who lean on them. Are never going to have another chance to betray us Romans. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Emperor," he said, and looked down at the ground. Once more, years later, he would ask me to have mercy on my enemies. I told him no then, too. I was right both times.
Having waited until I judged the messengers had reached the encampments of the cavalrymen from the military districts and those men were arming themselves, I summoned more messengers and gave them the next order to take to the soldiers. It was the last order I would give them for the night: "At the signal, rush upon the treacherous Sklavenoi and slay them all. Slay them without mercy. But for them"- and for Leontios, I thought, but I knew what I was going to do with Leontios, too-"we would have beaten the accursed Arabs. Now we shall take vengeance upon them."
As the first group of messengers had a little while before, these men answered, "Aye, Emperor." But in their voices I heard the same fierce eagerness that filled my own. Feeling vindicated, I looked round for Myakes. He had gone. Because he had served me so long and loyally, I forgave him his lack of enthusiasm this once.
I turned my attention back to the messengers. "The signal shall be two long blasts from the horn here," I told them.
"Aye, Emperor!" they said again, and, at my nod of dismissal, dashed off with gleaming eyes to pass on my commands. Again I waited. Anticipation made my heart pound ever faster, so that I had trouble judging the passage of time. At last I was certain the messengers must surely have reached even the most distant encampments. I nodded again, this time to the trumpeter. He raised his horn to his lips and blew the two notes of the signal. Standing next to him, I was almost deafened. I had wondered if all the men from the military districts would hear the call. My doubts now vanished, along with some small part of my hearing.
Yet the brief silence that followed was not altogether a product of that stunning call's effect on my ears. The Sklavenoi, who had been raucously celebrating their return to the land in which I had resettled them, paused in their no doubt drunken debauch, wondering what the two blasts meant.
They were not left in doubt for long. The noise rising up into the heavens was not like that which I had heard during the battle near Sebastopolis, nor even like that following my soldiers' breaking into the Sklavinian village from which Neboulos had ruled as kinglet. Upon our breaking into that village after penetrating the circle of carts and wagons the Sklavenoi had thrown up around it, the barbarians- warriors, women, even children- could have been in no doubt as to our intention, and comported themselves accordingly. Here\a160…
Here, as I had intended, our onslaught took them altogether by surprise. Their first cries, then, were friendly, even welcoming: they believed the men from the military districts rushing upon them sword in hand had come to join in their revels. Only when they began falling to the Roman soldiers did they realize the trap in which they had been placed, and realize also they had no escape.
How their screams and wails rose to the heavens then! And how unavailing those screams and wails were! Even a well-disciplined force of fully armed soldiers, assailed without warning from three sides at once with cliffs on the fourth, would have suffered catastrophic losses. The Sklavenoi, as they had proved again and again, were anything but well disciplined. They were not fully armed, nor could they fully arm themselves, all their weapons past knives and a few swords being stored in the wagons the men from the military districts controlled. And they were not, or many of them were not, soldiers but the sluts and brats who attached themselves to soldiers.
Everything proceeded exactly as I had hoped it might. It was not simply victory, it was not simply slaughter, it was massacre. Listening to the Sklavenoi d ying under the swords and javelins of the Roman soldiers who set upon them, listening to the screams of those who leaped off the precipices of Leukate to avoid the Romans' avenging weapons and to those of the Sklavenoi whom the soldiers herded over those precipices, that being an easier and safer way to dispose of them than any other, was as exciting, as gratifying, as the chastisement I had given Leontios in partial requital for his failure at Sebastopolis.
I was certain some of the cavalrymen form the military districts were saving some Sklavinian women to enjoy before killing them, or perhaps even to keep. Being filled with bloodlust and simple fleshly lust myself, I envied them their acquisitions. However much I lusted, though, I despatched no messenger with an order to put aside one of the yellow-haired women for me. One experience with a Sklavinian wench brought to me at sword's point sufficed for a lifetime. I stood in the darkness in front of my tent, blood thundering in my ears, listening to those who had betrayed me, betrayed Romania, dying as they deserved.
By midnight, it was over. With a squadron of excubitores bearing torches, I walked through the Sklavinian encampment. Death and the stench of death were everywhere. Here and there, my guardsmen and I had to walk on twisted bodies, no open ground showing beneath or around them. For all that, though, there were fewer corpses than I had expected. "Did our soldiers let some of the barbarians escape?" I growled, not concerned over a few women but rather over any large number of men. "If they did, they shall be punished."
Then the excubitores led me to the white, chalky cliffs. Some of them leaned over, arms extended, thrusting out their torches as far as they could. I leaned over myself and peered down. The light the torches cast on the scene at the base of the precipices was meager, but enough. Corpses were drifted there like snow after a winter blizzard. I still heard an occasional moan, not all the Sklavenoi forced over the edge having died at once.
In the morning, I would send some soldiers down there to finish their work completely. For the time being, what I had accomplished would do. And I saw every thing that I had made, and, behold, it was very good.
MYAKES
How did Justinian dare to take the Holy Scriptures' words about God and use them to speak of himself, Brother Elpidios? Yes, I think it's an outrage, too. If you want to think God punished him for that sin, how can I argue with you, considering the way he ended up?
But he was Emperor of the Romans, remember- God's deputy on earth. And any man who takes pen in hand uses the words of the Bible to help give his own thoughts shape. I think that's what he was doing, nothing worse. I don't think he had blasphemy on his mind.
Something worse? Oh, the massacre. I did try to stop it. You heard what Justinian had to say about that. The Sklavenoi who came back hadn't done anything wrong; they proved as much by coming back. But Justinian wouldn't listen to me. There were times- too many times- when Justinian wouldn't listen to anyone but Justinian.
God was listening? Well, I hope so. I'm an old sinner now, and pretty soon I'll see Him face to face. At least I can hope there's something on the other side of the scales to keep those sins from dragging me down to hell. I can hope. Can't I, Brother?
JUSTINIAN
Having avenged myself against the Sklavenoi, I dismissed the Anatolic troops and those from the Opsikion, allowing them to return to their respective military districts. As they began their journey eastward, many of them thanked me for having allowed them to take part in my vengeance.