I went back to Justinian's pavilion.
How do I feel about it, Brother Elpidios? I'd sooner not have done it, I'll tell you that. But the Emperor told me to, so I did. I haven't thought about it much since then; some things you'd rather not remember. You ask all the questions, Brother. Let me ask you one for a change. Suppose Justinian had told you to dispose of her. What would you have done then?
JUSTINIAN
When the tent flap fluttered open, I reached for a sword- you never lose by being too careful or worrying too much. But it was faithful Myakes. "You took care of it?" I asked him.
"I did, Emperor," he said. "No one's the wiser." His eyes went to the jar of wine I had ordered brought for the Sklavinian woman and me. After what he had done, he needed fortifying. I waved for him to help himself. The cup he picked up and filled was the one from which she had drunk, but I-
Mother of God, Brother Elpidios!
– did not tell him that, he having done me a great service. He drained the cup, then set it down with a sigh. "Ah! Better."
"If you want gold for this, you have it," I told him. "If you want rank, you have it. If you want-"
"Emperor, what I want is to go back to bed," he said. That also being in my power to give him, I waved him out of the pavilion. I lay down myself, though I did not sleep the rest of the night.
And the Sklavinian woman? No one ever asked me about her, the early shifts of guards assuming I had sent her away after I went off duty, the late shifts believing her already gone before they arrived. When you are of no consequence, how easy you are to forget! I found that out for myself, a few years later.
I greeted the replacements for the two guards I had sent away after summoning Myakes, and sent them away, too, clouding matters further. Not that I needed to worry, as things turned out: what did one prisoner, one woman, matter?
The next morning, we began the hunt for Neboulos.
Word of what we had done to the Sklavinian kinglet's stronghold spread rapidly among the barbarians. Some of them did go on hiding in trees and flinging javelins at us when we passed below; some kept shooting arrows at us out of the bushes alongside the tracks we traveled. Here and there, villagers would offer battle when the Roman army came into sight.
But, ever more often as my advance through the Sklavinias continued, the Sklavenoi yielded rather than fighting. Columns of wide-faced, fair-haired men and women went tramping down the forest paths toward the Via Egnatia and, ultimately, toward Anatolia. A few of them, when they found the chance, bolted into the woods, preferring their native wild lawlessness to life within the boundaries of the civilized world. By far the greater number, though, let themselves be resettled without the least difficulty, as reports reaching me in the field made plain.
One great reason so many of the Sklavenoi surrendered was the impression the liquid fire made on those who escaped from Neboulos's village. The tales they spread among their tribesmen grew in the telling, too, as such tales have a way of doing.
Bardanes Philippikos came up to me of an afternoon, bringing with him a Sklavinian whose long yellow beard had ugly streaks of gray. Bardanes' swarthy face bore an amused expression. "Emperor, this fellow wants to see the dragon we used to burn up Neboulos's wagons," he said.
"Does he?" I did not smile. I made a point of not smiling. "Tell him he may not see it. Tell him God gave that dragon to the Emperor of the Romans, who looses it against his enemies. It is not to be seen by the common run of barbarian, unless he be a foe facing the fire."
Bardanes started to laugh. I looked very fierce. If the Sklavenoi believed what I was saying, they would be more inclined to give up. His expression changed. He translated my words into the nasty grunts the yellow-bearded man used for speech. The Sklavinian gave back a guttural torrent of sound. When he was through, Bardanes said, "He thinks you are some kind of wizard."
"Good," I said. "Tell him that if the Sklavenoi anger me enough, I will turn them all into mice. Tell him to tell some of his friends, and then let them go into the forests to spread what I say to their kinsfolk who still skulk out there." If the foe was superstitious, I would take advantage of it.
Bardanes translated again. The Sklavinian stared at me. His eyes were big and wide and blue and stupid. His hand twisted in some sort of apotropaic pagan gesture, he being too ignorant to make the sign of the holy and life-giving cross. I scowled at him, stuck out my front teeth ahead of my lower lip, and said, "Squeak!"
The barbarian almost wet his trousers. Bardanes looked as if he would burst, but did not let out the laughter he held inside. In Greek, he said to me, "Now I see what you are doing, Emperor: you are playing on his fears."
"Of course I am," I answered, surprised as I had been with Basil that anyone would need such a lesson. Well, at least Bardanes understood it when it came in front of his face. My time at the imperial court, and particularly my time on the throne, had shown me how seldom men grasp the lessons they are offered.
On through the hills and valleys of Thrace and Macedonia we went, cleansing them of Sklavenoi either through their voluntary surrender or by fire and sword. I wondered if I had Mardaites to spare for Thrace, to set up a military district there like those in Anatolia. If I could find the men for a military district, their presence on the land would protect Constantinople against barbarous assault.
No matter where we went, we did not catch up with Neboulos. That grated on me; I was never one to like the ends of a knot left loose. I doubled the reward for his capture, then doubled it again, but he still eluded us. Like water through a clepsydra, time was running out in the campaigning season. And then, as I began to despair of laying hands on the Sklavinian kinglet, he once more sent me envoys.
These men were not so arrogant as his previous ambassadors had been. They wriggled on the ground before me like worms. When at last they rose, their tunics were filthy and covered with leaves and twigs. Their spokesman came straight to the point: "Neboulos yield to you, you let him live?"
I thought it over. I would sooner have taken his head, but leaving him alive and in my hands was better than letting him run loose through the winter, rebuilding strength with no Roman troops around and probably compelling me to fight this campaign all over again. "I shall let him live," I said, not without an inner pang.
"You swear this?" the Sklavinian asked. "Swear by your god, your funny god, god no one can see?"
I crossed myself. "By God, by the holy Mother of God, and by all the saints in heaven, I swear no harm will come to Neboulos if he comes to me of his own free will."
"He come," the Sklavinian said. "He come three days' time. You stay here, no fight, no burn, three days' time?"
I hesitated before answering. The Sklavenoi might have been trying to buy time for some mischief, or even for a full-scale assault on us Romans. If they did try that, though, I was confident they would regret it. And so I said, "Very well. We shall stay here for three days without making any attacks. But if by the end of the third day Neboulos has not yielded himself up to me, there will be such a great burning that any crow flying across the Sklavinias will have to carry its own provisions, for it will find none here."
The Sklavinian wheezed. At first I thought him consumptive, then realized he was stifling laughter. He translated my remark for his comrades, who evidently had no Greek. They laughed out loud. What I had intended as grim threat, they took for a joke. Truly there is no reasoning with barbarians!