“Do you see that peak?” he said, pointing to a particularly steep and craggy peak, its high summit wreathed in clouds, “that is Mount Papua. There is an ancient town on its northern crest, now in ruins and inhabited by a tribe of Moors. I believe my uncle means to take refuge there.”
“The Moors?” I exclaimed. “But they deserted him at Tricamarum. He surely cannot trust them.”
“Perhaps not, but my uncle has been generous to this particular tribe in the past. They may be savages, but they have their own code of honour. A little crude and warped by civilised standards, maybe, but it exists. His only other choice is to leave Africa and travel to Spain, in the hope of raising support there.”
“I will not abandon my kingdom,” growled Gelimer. Those were the first words he had uttered since we were turned away from Hippo Regius.
“Majesty,” I said, spurring my horse alongside his, “what use is further resistance? The Romans have broken your army in two battles, and Boniface has stolen your treasure. You have nothing left to fight with. Belisarius will offer you honourable terms of surrender.”
Gelimer’s face, which had aged years in a few days, creased into a bitter smile. “Take another look at that mountain,” he said, “it cannot be accessed, save by a narrow ravine that is easily defended. Up there, a handful of men could hold off the world in arms.”
I looked at Mount Papua. Gelimer was right, it seemed defensible enough, and a lot of men would die attempting to storm it. More wasted lives, in a war that had already wasted too many.
A war that could be ended at a stroke, said an inner voice.
My eyes strayed to Gelimer’s skinny neck. The Heruli had taught me how to throttle a man with my bare hands, and in the case of Gelimer I reckoned it would take very little effort. Euages would try and stop me, but a twelve-year old boy wasn’t much of a threat.
Arthur would have done it. He slew his own son. He did what was necessary.
But I was not Arthur. I was not forged of his metal. Did that make me degenerate or enlightened? I could not be certain. All I knew was that I could not kill in cold blood, even for the good of others.
We reached the lower reaches of the mountain, and from there led our weary horses on foot. The way became ever more steep and narrow, until we were walking in single file along a trail that wound on endlessly until it vanished into the mists.
“See there,” cried Gelimer, indicating the jagged walls that rose up either side of the trail, “there will be Moorish sentries watching us from the summit of those, depend on it. If they don’t like the look of us, expect a sudden shower of rocks.”
He sounded almost cheerful at the prospect of being stoned to death from above. It was not courage that drove him, I reminded myself, but madness: the same madness that had driven me to try and kill Gelimer at Decimum instead of fleeing with my comrades, and had brought me to this lethal desolation.
We had not progressed much further before someone whistled up ahead, and figures emerged from cover. They turned out to be Moors, an even poorer set than those I had seen at Tricamarum, barefoot and clad in cloaks and tunics made of coarse wool.
Gelimer gave a cry when he saw them, and ran towards the leading Moor with his arms spread wide. I half-expected them to cut him down with their javelins, but instead the Moorish chief grinned and accepted his embrace. They spoke rapidly in a language I did not understand, punctuated by much laughter and hand-clasping, while the chief’s warriors ran suspicious eyes over me and Euages.
“Come,” said Gelimer, beckoning at us, “this tribe are my friends, and will make us welcome here.”
I was still wary, and remained so as I laboured up the increasingly difficult slope, trying not to look at the sheer walls that dropped away to unfathomable depths on either side. Mount Papua was as impregnable a natural fortress as one could wish for, and surely immune from any direct assault.
“If Gelimer hopes that Belisarius will break his teeth on these jagged cliffs,” I said to Euages, “then he is doomed to disappointment. The general is a pragmatist. He will starve us out.”
“His soldiers will grow old and grey before that happens,” the boy replied confidently, “the Moors know how to sustain themselves, even up here. They have endured many sieges, and every one has failed.”
I could see why, especially during the final stage of the ascent, when the trail ran out and the Moors employed ropes and iron braces to reach Medenes.
This had once been a walled town of some import, though I could not understand why or how anyone would choose to build a town in such a remote and inaccessible spot. Euages pointed out to me another road that led to the bottom, wider and easier than the trail we had used, but entirely fallen away in places and blocked by piles of rubble.
“The Moors deliberately blocked the old road,” he explained, “so the only way to reach Medenes is to climb. Or fly, but I doubt even the Romans have mastered that.”
The town itself was in a ruinous state. Most of the encircling walls were broken and decayed, and the roofless buildings home to nothing save nesting birds. The Moors preferred to squat inside their camel-hide tents. Clusters of tents were scattered about the otherwise empty streets, little enclaves of barbarism amid the ruin of civilisation.
I made the best of these rough lodgings, hoping that Gelimer could not possibly hold out for more than a few weeks. Winter was coming on, and the Moorish scouts reported that the Romans were encamped at the foot of the mountain. From the description of the Roman soldiers they gave to Gelimer, I found that we were besieged by Pharas and his Heruli.
“Belisarius has left them to starve me into surrender,” the king said, gloomily poking at the charred remains of a fire, “while he conquers the rest of my kingdom.”
He clenched his fist. “The Romans will not find it so easy, even if I am blockaded in here. There are still thousands of my people in arms, led by captains who will not renounce their allegiance, even for Justinian’s gold.”
The king over-estimated the will and the capacity of the Vandals to resist Belisarius. While we were holed up in Medenes, Belisarius had dispatched squadrons to reduce the rest of North Africa while he marched on Hippo Regius. That city was surrendered without a fight by the treacherous Boniface, who in return was permitted to sail away unmolested with a portion of Gelimer’s captured treasure.
Vandal resistance crumbled inside a matter of weeks. Their provinces of Corsica and Sardinia offered their surrender as soon as they received the severed head of Zano, Gellimer’s brother, which Belisarius had despatched to them inside a basket. The Vandal-held fortress of Septem in the straits of Gibraltar was stormed and occupied, and the Balearic Islands reduced by one Appolinarius, a Vandal deserter in Roman service. That left only Medenes and a few other scattered outposts in Vandal hands. Belisarius was able to send word to the Emperor in Constantinople that North Africa was once again a Roman province.
All the while, as the victorious Romans dismembered his kingdom, the defeated Gelimer sat and suffered on Mount Papua. I suffered with him. Winter was coming on, and the slopes of the mountain were draped in snow. The bone-cracking cold and icy winds did not seem to affect the Moors, who cheerfully slept on the bare ground outside their stinking tents, but I was in danger of freezing to death. Our supplies of food steadily dwindled, and what there was consisted of goat’s cheese and coarse grain. The grain was eaten raw, or pounded and baked into a type of unleavened and scarcely digestible bread.
Several weeks into this miserable ordeal the Heruli made their one and only effort to storm Medenes. Pharas was impatient to end the war and earn the praise of Belisarius by bringing him the Vandal king in chains. Even so, Mount Papua presented a forbidding obstacle, and he was a good enough soldier to know that a direct assault would almost certainly end in disaster. Against his better judgment, he allowed his officers to persuade him into making an attempt at night.