"I bring you news from Constantinople. I landed only yesterday and have been in the saddle most of the time since then." He spoke with the zeal of a newcomer and was privately shocked when this announcement did not produce the excitement he anticipated.
"What is it this time?" Belisarius asked, hardly doing more than nodding once to show his respect for the Emperor. "Don't be upset, young man. Most of the men here have been on campaign with short rations for the last five days and we are all feeling hungry and fatigued. What message do you bring me? More delays?"
The rider's enthusiasm did not include a denial of the poor provisioning Belisarius' troops had experienced and he could not pretend that the General lacked reason for his behavior. He stood a little straighter and faced the older man. "I bring welcome news then; Captain Hyperion has landed at Rhegium with men, supplies and monies, and they are making their way northward to join with you in the attempt to take Roma from the invaders." He grinned, holding out his dispatches again. "Read for yourself."
Belisarius took the scrolls and broke the seals on all three of them. He read slowly, pausing once to say that his eyes hurt. "I've been on campaign too long, I think," he went on, glancing at the rider. "There are days when by sundown my eyes burn in my head. But for news like this, I am willing to have them turn into living coals."
The rider looked embarrassed. "General…"
"I say the same thing to my officers. Or I used to, when I could still remember who they were." He continued to read and shook his head. "More replacements. And they are all unfamiliar to me. Why does the Emperor remove my officers so frequently? How am I supposed to fight with strangers?"
"The Emperor," the rider reminded Belisarius stiffly, "does not need to account to you. If he knows that this must be done, then his will is sufficient."
"Of course," Belisarius said. "But when you have been in the field a while, you will want tested comrades beside you. All soldiers feel that, since those comrades are often all that stands between the soldier and death." He lifted the scroll. "To have eight new officers is all well and good, but nine of my staff are being recalled. They none of them have been with me longer than a year, but they are the closest thing to a cadre that I have now. To learn the ways of the new ones, and for them to learn my ways will take time, and we have little of that." He finished reading the first scroll and set it aside. "Very well, I will prepare for the new officers. This is from the Censor, and I will read the words of Justinian before the Censor's."
The rider nodded, since anything else would be intolerable. "The Censor is devoted to the Emperor."
Belisarius hardly responded; his brows had drawn together and he tensed visibly as he read. "How can!…"he burst out once, but read the rest in silence.
"The Emperor is not truly pleased with the progress being made here," the rider said apologetically, revealing that he knew of the contents of the second dispatch.
"That is very much apparent," Belisarius said darkly. "He has been at pains to explain to me."
The rider folded his arms. "General, the Emperor is concerned for what has been happening here."
"That, too, is obvious." He moved abruptly to the door flap of his tent. "But it is not true that I deliberately lost Roma. If I had had the men and the supplies we could have held the city and moved Totila's army back to the north. But without men and supplies my hands were tied. If Justinian believes otherwise then he has poor advisors. Every officer who came to Italy with me was dedicated to winning back all of the old Roman Empire for Justinian. I vouch for every one of them. They desired to serve the Emperor in the field and were willing to give their lives if it were necessary to gain that end. But now, I hardly know the names of the men who carry out my orders, and we have had to wage war with insufficient food and equipment. No army can continue in that way!" He paced the small confines of his tent. "I cannot accept that Justinian does not understand this, but from what he has said to me, it is clear that he does not, or that he does not know how depleted we have been." He sighed abruptly. "I should not say this, least of all to you. I am the Emperor's General, and it is my task to carry out his orders. I have not been able to, and the reasons hardly matter, do they?"
"General," said the rider, "if there has been a misunderstanding, the Emperor is a just man and he will hear you out if you petition him."
"Yes, but he has already heard out others and anything I say will have little weight now. And that does not trouble me as much as his apparent conviction that I have not done my utmost to stop the advance of Totila, given the men and materiel at my disposal." He rubbed his fingers over his brow and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That perturbs me. I have never had my loyalty and devotion questioned before. I don't know what to do to refute these charges."
"You could take Roma again," suggested the rider with a trace of sympathy.
"That is what I have been trying to do for months!" the General burst out. "Ask my men—not the officers, for they have not been on campaign long, but the cavalry and foot soldiers who have served with me since I came here—they will tell you that we have done everything possible under the circumstances. They know, because we have fought together."
"But you have lost ground. Roma is in the hands of the enemy and two ports are controlled by Totila's men." The rider stared at the peak of the tent. "The Emperor has expressed his displeasure with good cause."
"Puppy," Belisarius chided. "You've been shaving for less than a year by the look of you, and you are trying to tell me that we have not fought with determination and valor. Go outside. Look at the men. Most of them are thin because they do not get enough to eat. Half-starved soldiers make poor warriors. Our cavalry is short of mounts and there are no remounts. We have few arrows for our archers, few lances and spears. Each man should have three swords but now the soldiers count themselves fortunate if they have two. Those are the obvious problems. There are others, less visible, that beset us more keenly than hunger."
"You will have supplies when Captain Hyperion joins you," the rider assured him. "And there will be more men. He has brought also sixty horses."
"Sixty," scoffed Belisarius. "All of sixty. Gracious." He laughed. "Sixty will almost supply my men now. It will not begin to provide remounts. This is what I meant when I said that we have insufficient men and materiel."
"What of local farmers?" asked the rider.
"Picked clean months ago, and no longer pleased to help us." Belisarius dropped back into his camp chair. "We have scoured the countryside for food and mounts and equipment and slaves. At first the farmers and landholders were willing to aid us, thinking that we would give them protection and that we would be gone soon, but it has not turned out that way, and they are no longer willing to extend themselves for us. I don't blame them. We have treated them badly. Our men have foraged and raided as rapaciously as the barbarians, and they have excused themselves because it was done to benefit the ones they stole from. Now all the farmers want is for us to be gone."
With a condemning shaking of his head the rider regarded Belisarius critically. "You have not controlled your men as you should."
"If I had tried to control my men in the way you mean, they would have starved to death," countered Belisarius. "It is an easy thing for a man with six slaves in the kitchen and a full larder to condemn what we've done, but let him live with us and try to think himself satisfied on a handful of grain and a few pieces of boiled chicken, because that is what has been feeding my men for the last twelve days. For a while we had some fresh fruit as well, but the orchards are bare now."