If I could not live in Constantinople, I would sooner make my home in Thessalonike than in any other city I have seen. But I could not stay there long. It was already September, the beginning of a new year, and I wanted to strike a blow at the Bulgars before returning to the imperial city for the winter.
To reach the Bulgars, the Roman army had to pass through the territory of the seven tribes of Sklavenoi they had subjected to themselves when they settled south of the Danube after my father failed to crush them north of the river. The roads leading up to that country were frightfully bad. Even when it was under Roman rule, it had been a raw frontier district, and it had been ravaged by Goths and Huns and Avars and Sklavenoi and Bulgars; whatever highways had existed were now dirt tracks at best, memories at worst.
The Sklavenoi of the Seven Tribes tried to withstand us from villages surrounded by a circle of wagons, as Neboulos had; the dreadful roads must have prevented word of what we could do to such works from reaching so far north. Liquid fire proved as effective against them as it had against him.
He stood at my side as the flames leaped forth and seized the wagons. "How do you Romans do that?" he asked me, watching the Sklavenoi try and fail to douse the flames, watching our soldiers take advantage of the chaos the fire caused and cut down the barbarians.
"It is a gift from God," I answered. Neboulos was free enough within the camp, but not so free as to be able to sniff around the wagons where the liquid fire and the tubes and bellows used to project it were stored. I had warned his guards their heads would answer for that. They believed me, which was as well, for I meant every word of it.
"Your god is a strong god," Neboulos said. He knew little of the true and holy Christian faith, worshiping instead the lying demons who, calling themselves gods, have deceived and damned the Sklavinian race.
These Sklavenoi did not resist so stoutly as had the barbarians Neboulos had led. On our breaking into their village, they threw down their bows and javelins and cried for mercy in their own tongue and in such fragments of Greek and even of Latin (this having been, before the barbarians' invasions, a Latin-speaking land, they must have learned it from a few surviving peasants) as they had. We took prisoners by the thousands, and sent them down toward the Via Egnatia for resettlement.
Among the prisoners were many comely women. As far as I was concerned, the soldiers who wanted them were welcome to them.
Having defeated the Sklavenoi of the Seven Tribes, we pushed north and east over the Haimos Mountains, invading the land the Bulgars held directly. They fled before us, driving their herds of cattle and sheep with them. Unlike the Sklavenoi, who lived in villages and farmed, the Bulgars were nomads without fixed abode, and the more difficult to bring to battle against their will on account of that.
We might yet have punished them as they deserved, they being unprepared to resist so many Romans roaming through the land they had stolen, had not the weather turned against us. It might as well be a different world north of the mountains; the olive does not grow there, nor does the grapevine: the winters in that benighted province are too fierce to let either survive. And the first snowstorms came early that year, covering the land in white.
The chief quartermaster, an officer named Makarios, approached me with a worried look on his face. "Emperor, we have campaigned all through the summer," he said. "We have not the supplies, especially for the horses, to go on in the face of snow."
"We'll take what we need from the peasant villages, and-" I broke off. I had already seen how peasant villages, there north of the Haimos range, were few and far between. I had not intended in any case to winter north of the mountains; ordering an army to winter in barbarian territory was what had brought Maurice down in ruin and set in train the events that raised my family to the throne. I did not aim to start some other family's rise to power at my expense. But having to withdraw with my attack barely begun also galled me. I said, "We will go on for another few days and see what happens." Makarios bowed and withdrew.
What I hoped would happen was that we might get a break in the weather, another week or two of mild days after that snowstorm, in which we could strike at the Bulgars, plundering their herds if nothing else. Instead, less than half a day after the first snowstorm ended, another blew in.
This time, it was Myakes who came to me. As perhaps no one else would have dared, he told me the truth, straight out: "Emperor, even the excubitores are starting to grumble at staying here so long. And if we're grumbling, the cavalry from the military districts has to be fit to be tied. They've already missed the harvest, and they didn't like that. They aren't fond of being stuck up here, not even a little they aren't."
Not only had unhappy soldiers overthrown Maurice, they had also murdered my grandfather and ruined my father's campaign against these same Bulgars, inspiring his brothers to try to cast him down from the throne. An Emperor whose soldiers were unhappy with him was an Emperor whose throne shook under him.
"Thank you, Myakes," I said. Not getting everything I wanted was always hard for me. Here, though, I saw I had no choice. "We'll go on for today, and see what we can do. Come tomorrow, it's back to the imperial city."
We did little that day, seeing neither Bulgars nor their herds. When we encamped for the evening, I announced our return to the whole army. They could scarcely have been more joyful had I told them Christ was coming back day after tomorrow. Their delight showed me Myakes had been right, and also showed me I would have had little service from them had I insisted on continuing the campaign.
They did not complain about going through Bulgar-held territory on the way to a pass through the mountains closer to Constantinople than the one by way of which we had entered the chilly northern land. Nor did they complain about acting like soldiers on the march, which is to say, about plundering and burning everything in their path. They would have burned for the sport of it, arson being deeply ingrained in the warrior's soul, but they did so all the more enthusiastically for being able to warm themselves at the fires they set.
As before, the Bulgars ran away from us. Their rule, when fighting Romans, seemed to be to advance when we retreated but to retreat when we advanced. Oh, a few of their scouts always hung close to the army, now and then exchanging arrows with our own outriders, but they always fled when we sent larger detachments after them. By the time we started traversing the pass that would take us back to Romania, I took them for granted, as a man takes for granted the taste of the pitch that makes his wine keep longer than it would otherwise.
That quickly proved a mistake, as did my earlier contemptuous estimate of the barbarians' strategy. They had placed an army in the pass, intending to block our way south. Their standards were horses' tails- one, two, three, or more- mounted on poles. Behind their line, drums thumped, echoing and reechoing as the khagan of the Bulgars shifted his men to meet our dispositions. As we drew near, the barbarians screeched what were surely insults at us in their unintelligible language.
My own speech to hearten the soldiers was simplicity itself. Pointing south, I said, "There lies the Roman Empire. There lies the God-guarded imperial city. There lie your homes. And there stand the Bulgars, between you and those homes. Will you let the barbarians keep you from them?"
"No!" the men shouted with all their might. Their outcry startled the Bulgars and silenced them, if only for a moment.
"Then forward!" I said, waving toward the foe. "We shall ride through them, we shall ride over them, and we shall return to our own land once more." At my command, the horns blew the order to advance.
Thud! Thud! went the Bulgars' drums. Shouting their war cries, they rode at us, too. Both sides loosed arrows, which began to fall like deadly rain. Hearing thousands of men shouting my name as a war cry made the hair on my arms and at the nape of my neck prickle up in awe.