As long as the numbers of invaders could be counted in the hundreds all was well. When they came in thousands that left the borderlands at their mercy. Concern was mitigated by their limited aims: plunder until checked and then a swift withdrawal across the river with their booty, knowing they would not be pursued.
‘The leader is a Kutrigur Hun called Zabergan, Autokrator, and he leads a force calculated at twenty thousand men.’
‘Cut that in half,’ Flavius advised.
‘Half is still a great number,’ was Justinian’s response, before he turned back to the fellow who had brought the unwelcome news. ‘Do we have any notion of his intentions?’
‘All we know is that Zabergan is heading for Thrace, while another part of his force has taken a path that will bring them to Greece.’
Maps were produced, instructions despatched to Narses, still in command of a huge army, to tell him of what was happening in his rear, but the problem lay in Constantinople. The size of the army was not as it had been on Justinian’s accession. Everything that could be mustered was on the various fighting fronts so there was no readily available force to send into Moesia against Zabergan. It was a case of wait and see what this Hun would do.
He came on; there was no retiring back to the Danube with his spoils and if the city itself was safe – nowhere had walls like Constantinople – that did not apply to the hinterland. Intelligence came hinting that Zabergan was intent on crossing to Asia Minor, tempted by a land that had not been plundered for centuries and was dripping with possibilities.
To get there he would ignore the capital of the empire; all he had to do was get across the narrows of the Hellespont and the men to stop him did not exist. The various companies that were quartered in the city had become the domain of the rich and idle, men who looked very martial in their fine liveries but would be of no use in a real fight.
Given all of his experienced generals were away fighting, when Zabergan reached Melantias, a mere sixty leagues from the capital, Justinian had only one man to turn to. If he had few soldiers he at least had a brilliant man to command what could be cobbled together.
‘A poisoned chalice,’ was Antonina’s vociferous opinion. ‘So the mob will stop howling at him.’
‘Yet one I cannot refuse.’
‘You’ll get yourself killed. Do you intend to face these devils on your own?’
‘Perhaps,’ Flavius replied, as he made his way out of the palace to join Solomon and the bodyguards he had managed to retain, ‘I should send you to frown at them.’
‘Don’t die,’ was her wailing cry.
She would not have heard Flavius’s reply, it being too soft. ‘We all die, God wills it so.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A hundred-strong bucellarii consisting of some of his old comitatus, leavened by Goths and Vandals who had taken service with him, was never going to be enough to confront and stop Zabergan, so Flavius sent his most trusted men to those places in the city and surrounding countryside where old soldiers gathered, with enough in the way of rewards to tempt them from whatever life they had chosen, and by the time he had departed the city he had a force numbering some six hundred effectives.
Everyone was superbly equipped, for their general had raided the quarters of the useless units, such as the Scholae Palatinae and deprived them of their weapons, armour and horses. As a leader who had always valued experience over numbers he was not content – how could he be, facing a host of the size reputed? – yet he was lifted in spirit by the way the various contingents gelled within days into a proper formation.
The lack was in any infantry and that was impossible to address, so again using Justinian’s gold he bribed the peasantry on his way to depart their fields and hamlets and take service in what would, and this was driven home, be a case of them protecting their hearths from a marauding horde heading their way.
Watching them move up the road he was reminded of the host led by Vitalian over forty years previously, of which he had been a part. Fired by religion, that march on Constantinople had consisted of very much the same sort of people – farmers, artisans, day labourers – and they carried the same variety of weapons. Old swords and spears had been dug out, axes were more numerous and sharp enough to shave a chin. It was the other tools that amused: scythes, pitchforks and one he recalled had once probably saved his live, a long-handled pollarding tool with a serrated billhook at its end.
Solomon rode at his side, a man who, if he bore the title of domesticus and was responsible for the organisation of the life of his general, was much more useful than any mere domestic servant. First, he was brilliant at supply so that the marching army, now numbering thousands, never lacked for food or warmth. Added to that, he had proved both in North Africa and Italy to be a clever commander of men, indeed against the Vandals Flavius had stood off and let Solomon successfully complete a battle he had been the first to engage in.
Progress was attended by a great dwell of noise, this due to the enthusiasm of the peasants he had recruited who, never having been in battle, were convinced of their innate ability to beat any foe they came across. God was with them – so were their priests – and he would not let them fail against pagans.
‘How I pray that they are right,’ Flavius said, when Solomon alluded to the almost constant bursts of cheering that emanated from their rear, as well as that which animated it. ‘I hope, too, some of them make it home.’
‘We have been in some bad places together, Comes, but I can’t think of one worse than this.’
‘Do not be insulted if I say that any man who has no desire to be here has to remain.’
‘Where else would I go?’ Solomon barked, clearly irritated.
Flavius smiled to take the sting out of the exchange. ‘I don’t know about you but I could think of a hundred places.’
‘Home?’
‘Where would that be, Armenia?’
‘Where else, with a sound roof, good horses and women and all the time in the world to hunt.’
‘My father’s domesticus was an Armenian and an irascible old mentor he was. I would not be here without him having saved me on more than one occasion, but when you talk so fondly of home I fear I have none.’
Solomon knew better than to allude to the villa they had so recently departed, rarely occupied since Flavius had been accommodated in the palace and still not seen by him as a domicile for a family. He was also aware that in years of serving alongside his general he had never alluded to the past beyond his arrival in Constantinople.
‘There had to be a home once, Comes.’
‘There was – and a happy one. I had good friends, a strong family and I can even remember fondly the pedagogue whom I teased so mercilessly up until the day it was all taken from me. We are now retracing steps that I took in the aftermath. I have wondered since we set out if being on this road is taking me towards my destiny.’
‘That is a gloomy reflection.’
‘True,’ Flavius said emphatically, ‘and that is a mood that will not serve. We must act as if victory is foretold.’
‘Don’t let the priests hear you say that, they will think it blasphemous.’
It took a week of marching to get into a position that would oblige the Huns to react, Flavius having no doubt his approach would be known. He hoped Zabergan would have no idea of the composition of his army for, if he did, there could only be one result. At every stop for the night, he had lit ten times more campfires than were truly required, hoping to fool the Huns as to his numbers.