This was too much for one of the Dukes, and Theoplanes surged to his feet, shouting.
“Bold! Reckless and suicidal is more like it! What of Thrace and Achaea, which lie under the Avar yoke? What of the army of barbarians that besiege this city? What of the Persian army encamped within sight of this palace, across the waters in Chalcedon? You have had bold plans before, Augustus.Caesar, but they have been failures, expensive failures!”
Heraclius surveyed the crowd of nobles and officers, ignoring the ranting of the Thracian duke for the moment. Theophanes was right; past efforts to drive back both the Persians and the Avars had been disasters. In his heart, Heraclius wondered if the entire Eastern Empire was cursed, or if, at least, he was. His support among the remaining nobles was very slim, which was only one of many reasons that he was very glad that Galen and the Westerners were in the city. Not only did Galen’s Legions give him troops that would support him personally, but also they showed the citizens of the city, as well as the nobles, that he was still Emperor.
“Lord Theophanes, sit. I know what has happened before. I know the setbacks we have suffered. But the state of affairs remains this: The Avars cannot take the city unless they can bring a fleet against us. They have neither the skills nor the facilities to build ships to match ours. This means that the only way they can take the city is if the Persians are able to cross the Propontis. The only way to cross the Propontis is if the Persians have a fleet. Though the Royal Boar sits in Chalcedon in my Summer Palace, eating figs from my orchards and drinking wine from my vinyards, he does not have a fleet. If, however, the Persians take Antioch, or Tyre, or Alexandria from us, then they could build one. So, the Persians are the true enemy. If they are defeated, then we can turn against the Avars and run them back into Dacia with their tails between their legs.”
Theophanes was still standing, but the vehemence in Heraclius’ voice had stilled him, and his courtiers, in low whispers, urged him back to his seat. Eventually, with the air of bestowing a great favor, he did so. Well, Heraclius thought sourly, that is past at least… He tapped Theodore on the shoulder. The Prince rose, bowed to the Western Emperor, nodded to the Legion officers and ignored the Eastern nobles. With the assistance of one of his aides, he unfolded a long parchment map on a wooden frame, then took his place beside it.
“My lords, this is the eastern half of the Empire, from Pontus Polemoniacus in the north on the Sea of Darkness to Arabia Felix in the south on the Sinus Arabicus. As my brother has alluded, the Persians have thrown their armies forward to Chalcedon in the west and Antioch in the south. By good fortune their advance south against Palestina and thence to Egypt has been halted for the past nine months by the presence of the Shahr-Baraz here, beyond the Propontis. We expect, however, for this to change soon. Luckily for the continued grain supply of the city, the approaches to Egypt are blocked by our allies, the kingdoms of Palmyra and Nabatea.“
Theodore paused and glanced aside at his brother. Her-aclius shook his head minusculely and the Prince skipped forward over that part of the plan. “Our forces have almost completed gathering here, in the western end of the Eastern Empire. Once the muster is complete, we will leave the city by ship under the cover of darkness. Now, our spies in Chalcedon and the ports of the East have circulated that our intent is to sail an expedition north, into the Sea of Darkness, past Sinope, to Trapezus. From there, this purported expedition will march south, gathering the support of the Armenians and cutting off the Persian armies that are still to the west of this line of advance. By this means we could force the Persians to abandon all of Anatolia and Cilicia.”
The Eastern lords were abuzz now, for this very plan had already been related to them by their spies as well as by various officers of the Imperial Court. It had made good sense, and for this reason they had agreed to meet with the Emperor. Now, however, it seemed that the plan would be changed. None stood, however, to put the question to the Prince.
Theodore waited until they subsided before continuing. “This will not be our plan. Despite the long alliances that the Empire has held with the kingdoms of Armenia and Lazica, they are unwilling to join us in this campaign. The state, frankly, is too poor to bribe them, and we do not have the men to spare in fighting our way through the mountains. We will use a different axis of attack. Both Emperors are united in the belief that only way to defeat the Persians is to strike against their heartland, the provinces between the city of their.capital at Rayy and Ctesiphon. It is not enough to defeat their armies, though we will surely have to do that as well, but we must capture their centers of religious and political power.“
Theodore turned again to Heraclius, who now stood‘. He surveyed the assembled nobles and officers with a gimlet eye. He needed these men, their troops and their gold, to carry out his plan. In a moment of odd clarity, he understood that they were as surely his enemies as the Persians or the Avars, the more dangerous because he had to rely on them. In their faces he saw, in varying degrees, treachery in the desire for power, for gold, for dominance over their fellow men. For the moment, and only for the moment, he was their master. Slowly he took a battered iron dagger out of the folds of his brocaded robe and placed it on the ta-bletop.
“This is the blade of my father,” he said. “What you will now be told must remain in strict confidence among those assembled in this room. The plan that my brother has outlined is what we desire the Persians to learn, but what he will now tell you is what they must not learn. The betrayal of this confidence will earn you death, by my hand, by this blade. Do you swear secrecy in this?”
There was a moment of silence, and then the Western Emperor rose, his face stern, like a statue cut from Minoan marble. His men rose at his back.
“I, Martius Galen Atreus, Augustus Caesar Occidens, so swear.”
His men, as one voice, echoed their master. The Western contingent sat. Heraclius turned his gaze to the easterners. They were eyeing one another, uncertain of this new tack. At last, the drungaros of the fleet stood. He was a thick-bodied man with a thick black beard and beetling eyebrows. His garb was plain, a cotton tunic with the emblem of the fleet upon it, a mail shirt underneath. Alone among the commanders of the East, he had been elevated to his position by means of ability and skill. He turned to Heraclius.
“I, Mikos Andrades, drungaros of the fleet of the Eastern Empire, so swear.”
With some reluctance, the other nobles swore as well, finally sitting.
Theodore resumed.
“The fleet will sail south, rather than north, first to Cyprus and then to the port of Tarsus. We know that the Persians hold Tarsus only lightly, and the army will seize it. From this port the army will disembark the fleet and then march with good speed northeast to Samosata on the old border with the province of Osrhoene. If our reports are to the good, the Persian army that had been encamped at An-tioch will have already marched away south, to capture He-liopolis and then Damascus on its way to Egypt. Engaged as it is against the Palmyrenes and Nabateans, this army will then be unable to prevent the movement of our force deep into southern Armenia, to the Persian city of Tauris, beyond Lake Thospitis.
“At or before Tauris, our armies shall meet our allies in this expedition, the forces of the Khazar Kagan. From Tauris we shall strike farther east, towards Rayy in Tabar-istan, before turning south to come down upon Ecbatana and Khermanshah before striking at Ctesiphon not from the west, as we have always done, but from the* north. In this way the Persians will be cut off from their traditional retreat into the highlands. Their capital shall fall and their Empire with it.”
The Eastern lords looked on with a variety of sour expressions. Heraclius could see that they felt the plan far too ambitious. No matter, he thought, we will win this time or the East will fall into the same darkness that almost consumed the West.