It was necessary to wheel and fight his way back to rejoin his own side, now breaking off the fight on blown horses and with many wounded to retire over a field littered with dead or dying men and horses. The horns were blowing furiously from both sides of the battlefield as an action which had reached stalemate was discontinued, both sides later arranging a truce so that their casualties could be collected.
That night, around blazing fires, Flavius Belisarius listened to much boastful talk of the deeds his fellows had performed and what they would do on the morrow when the fight was resumed. If they were truthful in that they were disappointed — for Lacauris had decided that it was better to talk than fight and once they had commenced a parley, no doubt on instructions from Constantinople, it was decided that it was better to pay a bounty in talents of gold to Kavadh for peace rather than to engage in all-out war.
Flavius, along with the rest of the Roman army, retired once more to Dara to what was, in essence, boring garrison duty.
CHAPTER TEN
Flavius only found out why the border had flared up into that desultory campaign on his return to the capitaclass="underline" he also found Petrus once more acting as a close advisor to Justin in a relationship with as many strains as agreements. The star of Euphemia had waned and his had risen as Justin found the task of ruling the empire, especially the greedy and fractious bureaucracy, increasingly difficult; as Petrus pointed out, with his uncle being subjected to all sorts of obfuscation and downright intrigue in pursuit of personal gain, his pious wife was ill-equipped to deal with it and had been for some time.
‘But most of all he needed sound advice to respond to the offer from Kavadh, for it was clear some of his other advisors had been bribed by the Sassanids to favour it.’
‘An offer of what?’
‘Eternal peace.’
‘How many times has Rome been offered that, Petrus!’
‘Scoff if you will but it may be this time he meant it. Kavadh does not easily hold his throne, you know, and he came by it by deposing another. He had lots of enemies, some very powerful, as well as allies to keep loyal.’
‘Both of whom he pays off with the gold we gift him.’
‘It works.’
‘It’s a wound dressing not a solution.’
‘My, Flavius, have you become the wit?’
‘You know I’m right.’
‘What else would you have us do? Fight Kavadh to a bloody finish and take control of lands we cannot hold? What would we then face, the same troubles he has internally and on his eastern and southern borders? It is too big a meal to swallow.’
‘Alexander not only swallowed Persia, he crossed the Indus too.’
That got a wry look from Petrus, implying it was meaningless to look back to the glories of the ancient Macedonians, that Flavius should know the truth as well as anyone. The Eastern Roman Empire lacked the resources to inflict a complete defeat on the Sassanids of Persia, indeed it was a task that had been beyond the Roman Empire at the height of its powers. All of the fighting on the eastern border had been and was, at its root, defensive and that had really been the situation for centuries. Frustrating it might be for an ambitious soldier, but it was a fact.
‘What else did that devil offer, eternal peace being so common when his coffers are bare?’
‘His son and heir, Khosrau, as hostage. The boy is coming up ten and it was suggested he would benefit from a Roman education here in Constantinople.’
That made Flavius sit up; if true it was serious, not as had been the case from what he had heard on the border and indeed before he ever got there; the Sassanids made peace for money and only for a period until they needed more.
‘We refused.’
‘We?’
‘I advised my uncle, he finally agreed.’
‘But surely if Kavadh’s heir was in Constantinople?’
‘He would not break the peace?’ Petrus asked, but it was not really a question. ‘Part of the offer was that Justin should adopt Khosrau.’
‘That confuses me.’
‘It did my uncle till I pointed out the flaw.’
‘Which is?’
‘Justin has no children. To adopt Khosrau would technically make him the imperial heir as well as the Sassanid. It was that advice that got me back into my uncle’s confidence, given most others counselling him, and I include his wife, were too stupid or too compromised with gold to see where it might lead.’
‘No one in the empire would accept a Sassanid to succeed Justin.’
‘How naïve you are, Flavius. How many of the men around my uncle secretly harbour a desire to take the diadem when he, God forbid, dies? And if they cannot have the purple for themselves then the promotion of another and a chance to be the power behind the throne will serve. Do you really think to them it matters where the candidate comes from when we have had upstart Isaurians with Zeno and now an Illyrian whom they hold to be a barbarian.’
‘From within the boundaries of empire.’
‘Do you really think that would matter?’
Flavius got no chance to respond, Petrus was off tugging at his hair as he paced back and forth, cursing the ambition of men who he would not admit to being his rivals, just as he would not admit to his own aspirations. Justin was correct when he insisted his nephew was out for his own ends; the one unknown was how he would deal with it, for being childless and, barring a second marriage to a much younger woman, something he had never shown any signs of contemplating, he would remain so.
‘How is the health of the Empress Euphemia?’ Flavius enquired, mischievously, for if he could deduce what was needed to create a succession, namely her demise prior to a new consort, it was certain Petrus could too.
‘Robust, God be praised,’ came the fulsome reply.
Petrus was obviously on the horns of a dilemma with that lady, part of him wanting her and any influence she might still have out of the way, the other the fear of a sudden illness carrying her off and leaving the field clear for someone to replace her. Not that he would have eschewed precautions; there was probably some young and fertile woman already listed in the Sabbatius mind to take on the role. On second thoughts, she would be young and infertile.
‘When my view finally prevailed and the suggestion was formally rebuffed, Kavadh started to assemble his army once more to counter the insult.’
‘And got his bribe again,’ Flavius sighed. ‘It should not be so easy.’
‘Perhaps, one day it will not be so.’
Looking for further explanation Flavius was left in limbo; all he had was that look on the face of the imperial nephew that hinted at plans laid that would be long in coming to fruition, that quickly masked by another more calculating.
‘Come, Flavius, we must go down to the docks and some entertainment. Back from the wilds of Mesopotamia you will be in need of comfort of a kind I hardly believe can exist out there.’
‘Don’t be so sure, Petrus,’ came the reply as Flavius stood to comply. ‘If you have not known the sweetness of an Arab concubine do not dismiss it so.’
‘You savoured some?’
‘Of course.’
‘Flavius, you’re as big a rogue as I am.’
‘Petrus, no one is as big a rogue as you.’
‘Have you met this dancing girl of his yet, the one I am told he is so very enamoured of?’
Justin and Flavius were walking together on the sward that filled the area between the imperial palace and the walls abutting the Propontis, a place where the Emperor regularly took exercise. And he was striding out, still fit even in his eighth decade of life and the fourth of his reign, with an expert eye cast at those Excubitors exercising their military skills in the open spaces between the trees, swordplay and spear work accompanied by much shouting from instructors.