The fight was very simple, the Bulgars wanting to trap us and crush us, our own men battling bravely to return to the Roman Empire after having traversed a large part of the enemy's territory. We were better horsed than the Bulgars, and wore iron while they were in leather. And so we broke through, scattering them before us and leaving large numbers of them dead on the ground. I drew from this combat an important lesson: never to let the foe place himself between my army and my own heartland.
MYAKES
Why am I coughing, Brother Elpidios? Being an old man isn't reason enough? Justinian's right: that was a good lesson to learn. He forgot it once, years later, and paid dear for forgetting.
But that's not all. You've been reading a good many days now, Brother. I haven't often heard Justinian shade the truth, but he does here. Aye, we broke through, but to hear him talk about it, it was as easy as smashing up the Sklavenoi. It wasn't like that, not even a little bit. I wish it had been.
The Bulgars' horses were little and scrubby, but they were fast. Their bows shot farther than ours- not a lot, but some. And the leather they wore had been boiled some kind of way, till it was almost as hard as iron. As for the damned Bulgars themselves, they were as tough as you could want. Still are, I guess, come to that.
Does Justinian say how many dead Romans lay on the ground? No, eh? Well, there were plenty. If we hadn't outnumbered the Bulgars, I think they would have beaten us. We made it into Thrace, aye, but we weren't a happy bunch afterwards. Just as well winter came down hard; we went home, the men from the military districts back to Anatolia and the excubitores to Constantinople, and the Bulgars, they stayed home, for which we were all duly grateful, especially, I think, Justinian.
JUSTINIAN
All the while we were traveling through the country the Bulgars had stolen from my father, during the battle against them, and on the road through Thrace back to the imperial city, I studied Neboulos. He affected not to notice me, but his blue eyes were watchful, too. Yet he said nothing, knowing, I suppose, his fate was not in his own hands.
Like any barbarian seeing Constantinople for the first time, he gaped at the city's walls and then, all over again, at the wonders they contained. "So many people, all in one place," he marveled, and then, in his clumsy Greek, asked me, "With so many people here, why do you want us Sklavenoi, too?"
"The countryside is emptier," I told him. "Even Constantinople has fewer people and more open spaces than it did a hundred years ago."
"Hundred years?" He shook his head. "Who remembers so long ago?"
"Augustus, the first Emperor of the Romans, ruled in the time of our Lord, Jesus Christ, almost seven hundred years ago," I replied. "God has never allowed a break in the line of Emperors from that time to this."
Neboulos looked at me. By his expression, he thought I was lying to impress him. Then he looked from me to the marvels of Constantinople once more. They presented a better argument as to my truthfulness than any I could offer, for no barbarians, their thoughts rooted only in the present, could have conceived of them, let alone built them. When he turned back to me, his face was troubled. "How do you stand living in shadow your ancestors cast?" he asked.
"They are our guides," I said. "We follow them as best we can. And, because we know Christianity, whe re they were mired in pagan falsehoods, we have surpassed them."
"This god who gives you fire is strong," he admitted. "He drives away all other gods you used to have?"
"Yes, you might say that," I answered: how to put it any more clearly to a letterless barbarian ignorant of the true and holy faith except insofar as he might have delighted in plundering a church of its treasures should he have managed to take a Roman city.
"And I," he said, thumping his thick chest with a big square fist, "I will be strong for you. I drive away all enemies you have now."
He had not pestered me about that notion of his, not in Thessalonike, not in the Bulgars' country, not on the return from that country to the imperial city. Had he pestered me about it, I should naturally have come to suspect him. But now, when we were just across the Bosporos from the many Sklavenoi I had resettled in northwestern Anatolia, seemed an equally natural time for him to inquire about my plans for him. In my mind's eye, I saw him leading a force of fair-haired warriors combining Sklavinian cunning and Roman discipline. Further, I saw myself loosing him, like an arrow from a bow, straight at Abimelekh's heart.
Not yet having learned the full depths of Sklavinian cunning, I said, "So you will make me an army from among your fellow tribesmen, will you?"
"Yes, I will make you army," he said, and his eyes glowed bright as stars. "I will make you special army. You show me your enemies. You take me to them. I drive them all away."
That fit in so perfectly with my own thought of a moment before, I said, "Let it be so. I shall send you to Anatolia. Make me an army. Make me a special army, Neboulos, and I will show you all the foes you want."
"I am your slave," he said.
Stephen the Persian prostrated himself before me, as he had in the days when he served in the palace rather than the treasury. "Emperor," he said in his eunuch's voice on arising, "I have seen how much gold your campaign against the Sklavenoi and the Bulgars cost, and I am pleased to be able to tell you that, when the tribute from the Arabs and the taxes collected within the Roman Empire are both taken into account, we have gathered in more than you expended."
"That is good news," I replied. "Your predecessor always seemed to be finding reasons for me not to do the things the Roman Empire requires of me. You, now, you find the gold with which I can do those things. That is what I want in a sakellarios, Stephen."
"So I have interpreted my duties from the beginning," Stephen said. "I should also like to commend to your attention a certain Theodotos, a former monk from Thrace, who has ably served your cause, being most ingenious in sniffing out those who would keep from the fisc monies rightfully belonging to it."
"If he does that, he is truly given by God," I said, playing on the meaning of Theodotos's name. Stephen's beardless cheeks plumped as he smiled. I went on, "Bring his name to me again, that I may reward him for his diligence."
"I shall send you a written memorandum, Emperor, detailing his contributions in full," Stephen said.
"Better yet," I told him, and he bowed his way out of the throne room.
That evening, I took supper with my mother. I had, I confess, been avoiding her since my return to Constantinople, for she kept assailing me with the multifarious virtues of my daughter Epiphaneia, a subject on which I remained resolutely deaf. The more she praised the child, the less desire I had to learn whether any of the praise was true.
Indeed, the only reason I consented to dine with her was her promise not to raise the subject of Epiphaneia at the meal. That promise she kept… in a way. Instead of talking about Epiphaneia, she talked instead about prospects for my remarriage. "How happy you will be," she said, "when you hold a child in your arms and give it all the love that pours from your heart."
"You know, Mother," I said, "if you were looking for a way to put me off the idea of remarriage for good, you couldn't have found a better one, not in a year of trying." For I heard all too clearly the unspoken reproach that I did not hold Epiphaneia in my arms and give her my love.
I now realize my mother was right; I had an obligation to my family and to the Roman Empire to remarry and to produce an heir as soon as possible, thereby securing the succession and reducing the risk of civil war. But I still mourned Eudokia, and the thought of yoking myself to a new wife held no appeal. And if I lost a second wife as I had the first, grief, not love, would pour from my heart. The previous few years, I had had enough of grief and to spare.