Pretty soon, we made up a good-sized band. The horsemen pulled me and the rest of the excubitores up behind them, so we rode double. That let everybody move faster, which made all of us happier, let me tell you. The sooner we got some nice tall stonework between the Bulgars and us, the better we'd like it.
I was riding near Justinian a couple of furlongs from Ankhialos when his horse quit on him. Poor beast must have hurt itself, lamed itself some kind of way, because it just wouldn't go on no matter how he swore at it and no matter how he booted it.
"Another traitor!" he shouted, and leaped down out of the saddle. His sword was already in his hand. If the Bulgars had come at him, he'd've fought hard- nothing wrong with his courage. If you haven't seen that by now, Brother, you're blinder than I am.
But he would not stand being crossed, not for a moment, not even by a horse. Slash, slash, and he cut both the animal's hamstrings. Beast screamed like a woman as its back legs went out from under it. "If I can't have you, the Bulgars will get no joy of you," Justinian said, as if it was a woman. He scrambled up onto somebody else's horse and rode pillion the rest of the way to Ankhialos.
The Bulgars, thank God, didn't try storming the town. If they'd tried, they might have done it. The soldiers who were in there, I don't think they would have put up much of a fight. When you got down to it, though, it didn't matter much. Tervel had done what he'd set out to do. We weren't going to invade the Bulgars' country, not after he'd stomped the cavalrymen from the military districts we weren't.
More Romans got into Ankhialos after the band that had formed around Ankhialos. They'd had to do real fighting to reach the city. Some of them brought in trophies: a few heads, bows and arrows, a couple of the boiled-leather shirts the Bulgars wear instead of chainmail.
Justinian ordered the excubitores to confiscate all those prizes. "What for, Emperor?" I asked.
"We'll display them on the walls of Ankhialos, to impress the Bulgars with our might," he answered. With anyone else, I would have laughed. It made a pretty fair joke, after what Tervel had just done to us. But he wasn't joking. I could see that. He wanted trophies up there, just as if we'd won the battle. Maybe he thought we did. I tell you, Brother, I didn't have the nerve to ask.
We stayed in Ankhialos till the third day after the fiasco. Then the Roman troops in the city boarded the ships moored in the harbor and sailed back to Constantinople. We never tried fighting the Bulgars again, not as long as Justinian lived. That's the story he didn't want to tell there. I guess now you can see why. I wouldn't have been very proud of it either.
Now that I've yattered away for a while, Brother Elpidios, your voice should be all fresh and rested. What did Justinian like well enough to admit in writing he'd done it?
JUSTINIAN
I received from Cyrus the ecumenical patriarch word I had long been awaiting, namely, that he and Constantine the bishop of Rome had at least the beginnings of an understanding concerning Constantine's acknowledgment and acceptance of the canons of the fifth-sixth synod I had summoned before being sent into exile.
"Excellent," I told Cyrus. "About time we see some sense from a Roman pope."
"Yes, Emperor," he said, nodding. "I think your treatment of Felix made Constantine see cooperating with the Roman Empire is a wiser course than opposing its might."
"A good thing for him he has seen it," I answered. "If I weren't busy elsewhere, I'd use him as I used Felix. Or rather, I'd use him as I would have used Felix if I hadn't had that dream that told me to spare his useless life."
"A dream may be the voice of God, Emperor," Cyrus said. "You were wise not to risk divine anger."
"I thought the same," I said. Why God thought the rebellious bishop of Ravenna deserved to remain among the living was beyond me, but no mortal man could oppose His desire and hope to prevail. Shifting my thoughts from what I had been unable to prevent to what I might be able to accomplish in times to come, I asked Cyrus, "How close, precisely, has Pope Constantine come to accepting the canons of the fifth-sixth synod?"
"He does still have reservations on a few of them, Emperor, but expresses those much more temperately than have previous bishops of Rome," the patriarch replied. "He may, if God be kind, accept those canons almost in their entirety."
Almost complete acceptance was indeed more than any previous bishop of Rome had shown himself ready to grant, but struck me as inadequate nonetheless, being a partial rejection of canons inspired by the Holy Spirit. "To which of them does he still object?" I asked.
"In particular, the thirteenth and the thirty-sixth," Cyrus said. "To refresh your memory, Emperor, these are-"
"I know what they are," I snapped. "The thirteenth requires a married man ordained a deacon or priest to keep on cohabiting with his wife rather than putting her aside, as is the ignorant practice throughout the patriarchate of Rome. The other states that your rights as patriarch of Constantinople are the same as those of the arrogant bishops of Rome, their primacy to be due solely to seniority. How can the popes object to that, it having been stated in the acts of the first ecumenical synod of Constantinople and in those of the ecumenical synod of Chalcedon?"
"Do not ask me to fathom the western mind," Cyrus said, "for I cannot. But with the principle already enshrined in the acts of the ecumenical synods, as you say- and your learning is marvelous, marvelous- perhaps we need not insist on its formal acknowledgment here."
"Perhaps," I said grudgingly. "What of the thirteenth canon, then?"
"The thirteenth canon does allow clergy in barbarous lands to retain their previous practices where those are not clearly forbidden," Cyrus said. "That offer, if not grounds for agreement, is at least grounds for negotiation."
"Very well," I said. "Go ahead and negotiate with Cyrus, since he seems willing to talk. Yield as little as you can, and accept nothing before submitting it to me for approval."
Cyrus bowed. "It shall be exactly as you say, Emperor, in every particular."
I was surprised that he needed to reassure me on the point. Did it prove other than exactly as I said in every particular, Cyrus's tenure as patriarch of Constantinople would come to an abrupt end. I had raised him to the patriarchal dignity because of his loyalty to me; should that loyalty falter, Kallinikos's fate would also fit him.
While he and Constantine sent letters back and forth, a desultory war with the Arabs broke out in southeasternmost Anatolia. The deniers of Christ, after some months' fighting and after Roman forces fell into confusion because of quarrels among their generals, succeeded in breaking into Tyana, north of the Kilikian Gates. They were unable to go farther, though it gave them a base from which they might later try to effect deeper penetration into Romania.
Under other circumstances, the fall of Tyana would have filled me with fury. But I paid little heed to it, nor has it much concerned me since. For one thing, the negotiations with Rome at last seemed likely to bear fruit, and gaining the pope's acceptance of the canons of the fifth-sixth synod counted for more with me than losing a dusty Anatolian fortress.
"The only remaining sticking point," Cyrus reported to me after exchanging a couple of letters with Constantine, "is the thirty-sixth canon, the one proclaiming Constantinople's authority equal to that of Rome, and Rome's primacy that of honor and seniority alone."
"Are you truly certain this point is adequately covered in the canons of the first ecumenical synod at Constantinople and that held at Chalcedon?" I said.
"I believe so, yes," Cyrus replied.