‘But, Odovacar-’ exclaimed Theoderic, stunned.
‘-has shown himself to be a renegade, threatening to send warriors to help Illus in Isauria, against me. Why, I can’t imagine, except that power must have gone to his head. Granted, he’s made a reasonable fist of running things in Italy, but he can’t be allowed to flex his muscles in the East. He must therefore be removed. The last claimant to the imperial throne in the West, Julius Nepos, died eight years ago.* So, this is where you come in. Interested?’
Theoderic felt himself drowning in a tide of conflicting emotions. Vicegerent of the Eastern Emperor! It was a heady thought — next to the purple and the diadem, no higher role existed in the Roman world. His ambition to be accepted by the Roman state, an ambition which had been cruelly manipulated and thwarted in the past, would be fulfilled beyond his wildest dreams. And why had Zeno thrown in that remark about Julius Nepos, unless to suggest to Theoderic that the imperial throne was still vacant, and that therefore. .? Resolutely, he banned his thoughts from pursuing such intoxicating speculation — for the moment, anyway. Then, inside his mind, Theoderic seemed to hear the voice of Timothy urging caution: ‘He’s using you, Deric, employing the old, old trick of setting barbarian against barbarian — finally to rid the Eastern Empire of those troublesome Ostrogoths. Odovacar’s just an excuse; the Scirian’s posture over Illus is little more than sword-rattling, a reminder that, in the sphere of power politics, he can’t be overlooked. Anyway, what’s the vicegerency? An empty title which it costs Zeno nothing to bestow. A fiction devised to preserve the comforting illusion that the “one and Indivisible Empire” still continues in the West, under the aegis of the Eastern Emperor. Remember, Deric, the ABC I taught you when dealing with the Romans. A: accept nothing; B: believe nobody; C: check everything.’
But the pull of Rome (which also held out a solution to the problem of his remaining within the empire, which Severinus had pointed out to him) proved too strong. Seduced by glittering images of semi-imperial status — riding in state through the venerable City; saluted by senators from ancient noble families; acclaimed by throngs of cheering Romans. . He heard himself reply, ‘I accept.’
Then, unbidden, the opening words of Myrddin’s prophecy rang in his head: ‘A horse comes from the land of the live eagle to that of the dead one, where he fights and kills a boar that has come there before him.’ The meaning was suddenly clear. The eagle, the enduring symbol of Rome. The live one — the Empire of the East; the dead, the now defunct Western Empire. A horse, long the totem of the Ostrogoths. A boar, the motif of the royal house of the Sciri. The Ostrogoths would come from the Eastern Empire to Italy, where they would defeat Odovacar. Wonder tinged with dread swept over Theoderic.
The sheer immensity of the enterprise to which he was now committed began to dawn on him. The task was staggering in its implications: the migration not just of the warrior host, but of a whole people, to the number of two hundred thousand souls, involving the organization of transport, food supplies, equipment, planning and following a route of nearly a thousand miles through sometimes hostile tribal territory and difficult terrain. The challenge called for someone with the vision and authority of a Moses. Thus far in his career, he had proved himself a successful warlord: good at plundering, sacking cities, holding his own (just) against rival Goths, and Romans — hardly a glittering record. Now, at thirty-four, the call upon his leadership was of uncharted, infinitely greater dimensions. Would he prove equal to the test?
* ‘Fire!’ (Literally, ‘Hurl!’; orders in the East Roman army were still given in Latin.)
* In 480 — i.e., after the deposition of the last Western Emperor, but still leaving open the possibility that the throne could, in theory at least, be occupied again.
PART II
FIFTEEN
Cold is the way to Miming, hidden and perilous, and it lies over icy mountains and frozen seas
In his dream, Theoderic saw the ancestors of his people, the Gothones, in countless galleys crossing the Mare Suevicum* from Scandia — a cold land of fiords, forests and tall mountains — to Germania. There, under a great leader, Filimer, they began the long, long journey that ended only when they reached the northern shores of the Pontus Euxinus.† In two great clans, the Balthi, and the Amali of divine descent, they travelled with their herds and wagons, between the valleys of the Viadrus and the Vistula, across a mighty watershed, and so to the great southward-draining rivers, the Pyretus, the Tyras, the Borysthenes and the Tanais,‡ that led them to the Euxine.
That had been a time of gods and heroes, long ages before their kinsman, the missionary Ulfilas, persuaded the Gothones to adopt the faith of gentle Christos, a ‘king’ who sacrificed himself not only for his people (who rejected him), but for all mankind. Folk then believed in Odin the mighty, in Balder the good and gentle, and in evil Loki who brought about the death of Balder, and so hastened the coming of Ragnarok, the dreadful day when gods and evil beings shall destroy each other, and when Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life and Fate, shall be consumed by fire along with Earth itself. In those far-off days, a hero was the only man who mattered, brave deeds alone worthy of recounting, and a king’s self-sacrifice for his people the noblest act a leader could perform. And then. .
And then had come the Huns, thought Theoderic, awaking. Like a storm of angry locusts, the Hunnensturm had burst upon them from the east. True nomads, unlike the farming Goths, the Scythian* horse-archers — squat, powerfully built men with yellow skins and flat Oriental faces — had conquered or driven out all who stood in their path. The Balthi, who later became the Visigoths, had sought refuge within the Roman Empire; the Amal had stayed, becoming subjects of the Asiatic horde. In a heroic gesture, redolent of the ancient tradition of kingly sacrifice, Ermanaric, the Amal king, had taken his own life, hoping thus to placate the old gods, who might then help his people prevail against their oppressors. If so, the hope was vain, and the Amal — as the nation of the Ostrogoths — were destined to become the ally of Attila in his campaign against West Rome. Following the Hun king’s death (which occurred the year before his own birth, Theoderic recalled) and the disintegration of his empire, the Amal had remained for a time in Pannonia, the territory allotted to them by their Hun masters. And the rest, thought the Amal king, is history — my own and theirs, interwined.
His dream had been extraordinarily vivid and was slow to fade; Theoderic experienced an unaccountable, sharp longing for the homeland of his ancestors — those icy mountains, fiords and forests he had seen in his sleeping thoughts: a fitting stage for mighty deeds of valour, from where fallen heroes were translated to Valhalla. But perhaps such feelings were nothing more than childish nostalgia. Could the things his forebears had seen and felt really be transferred across the generations to himself? Anyway, was not Italy, sunny, rich and fertile, a more appealing vision? Of course it was, Theoderic told himself sternly, banishing northern fantasies to a dark corner of his mind. This was the real, the Roman world, where a man’s status was measured in wealth and property, a world which had no place for gods or heroes.
He shaved (a Roman custom he refused to abandon), dressed and, munching a hunk of bread dipped in wine, left the house in Novae he had commandeered. Resentful Romans making way for the tall German, Theoderic strode through well-paved streets to the Amal camp outside the city walls. Here, preparations were under way against the day of departure for the great expedition. Wagons, gear and weapons were being furbished, carts were bringing in the harvest (Theoderic had promised Zeno not to live off the land while travelling within the empire — a promise which, because of the residual affection and respect he harboured towards the old fox, he knew he would keep) — a scene replicated countless times throughout all lands assigned to the Amal in Moesia Secunda and Dacia Ripensis.