Minutes later, scouts came posting up, confirming Belisarius’ observation. Soon, the Kotrigur host was near enough to enable Justinian to make out details: squat, powerfully built men with flat, Oriental faces, mounted on huge, ill-conformed brutes; on the back of each warrior was slung a powerful-looking bow and a quiverful of long arrows. Obviously unwilling to engage the formidable Roman ‘army’ threatening their flank, the river of horsemen made a wide detour to the side into the tributary’s valley — as Belisarius had intended. Overweight and middle-aged he might be, but the retired general had lost none of his military flair.
‘They’ve fallen for it!’ exclaimed the general, slapping his thigh in glee. ‘Let’s spring our trap, Serenity.’
Spurring along the lip of the valley ahead of the slow-moving enemy column, the two Roman leaders arrived at where the river’s enclosing walls narrowed and steepened to become a gorge. Here, armed with darts and javelins, was stationed a large body of the citizen-militia recruited earlier. Piles of boulders, together with sheaves of extra missiles, had been arranged along the canyon’s edge. Despite his age, and hardly ever having set foot outside the capital these fifty years, Justinian found that he was enjoying immensely this challenging adventure.
Waiting for the Kotrigurs to come in sight, an air of tense expectancy built up among the Romans to a nerve-jangling degree. At last, from around a bend in the river, the nomad van appeared, and soon a densely packed mass of horsemen was drawing level far below.
‘Right lads,’ called Belisarius, ‘let ’em have it!’
A storm of stone and iron burst upon the Kotrigurs. Dropping from the heights, the huge rocks acquired enormous impetus, smashing men and horses to a bloody pulp, while volleys of sharp-tipped shafts skewered their helpless targets by the score. Unable to respond, the nomads milled about in desperate confusion; at last, on retreat being sounded by a horn-blast, they turned and streamed back up the valley, leaving hundreds of casualties strewn upon the floor of the defile.
In a gesture of infinite regret, Zabergan spread his hands, a wry smile creasing his broad Mongol face. ‘My young men — so headstrong, so high-spirited,’ he said to Justinian in apologetic tones. ‘“A spot of cattle-rustling in Thrace”, was all they wanted, so they said. Things got a little out of hand, I fear; I found myself unable to control them.’ And he sighed and shook his great head.
That was rich, thought Justinian, coming from a ruthless despot as feared among his followers as by the targets of his depredations. The two men were seated on cushions in the chief’s yurt, furnished in barbaric splendour with eastern rugs and hangings, weapons of the chase and war, furs, and looted vessels of silver, gold and bronze. Anyone less unable to control his men would be difficult to imagine.
‘Well, let us call your, ah. . “visit” an unfortunate misunderstanding,’ said the emperor, torn between inner mirth and indignation. ‘So, now you wish to take the foedus,* for your people to become Friends of Rome?’
‘Indeed, My Emperor. It will be a privilege indeed to serve one whose feats of arms are known throughout the world.’ Zabergan added slyly, ‘And whose generosity to his allies is equally legendary.’
‘The labourer is worthy of his hire, I suppose. Mind you, I expect results — no Utigurs, Slavs, or Bulgars to cross the Danube into Roman territory. An annual subsidy of, say, fifty pounds of gold; would the Khan of the Kotrigurs find such a sum acceptable?’
Justinian was well satisfied with the outcome. Zabergan duly led his Kotrigurs back across the Danube and seemed prepared to earn his subsidy, for no further raiding parties crossed the river. Not everyone agreed with his methods of maintaining peace beyond the frontiers, Justinian knew. His generals to a man (Belisarius included) regarded the stratagem of paying barbarians to keep the peace or to police other barbarians as shameful appeasement, unworthy of a Roman emperor. Which did not trouble Justinian one whit; his policy worked, and that was all that mattered.
After a tour of inspection of the Long Walls against ordering a programme of urgent repairs, Justinian and Belisarius returned to Constantinople at the head of their tiny army. As they rode past market gardens and fields of sunflowers, the emperor reflected on the main events occurring since the termination of the Gothic War. Apart from the start of silk production in the Empire, and barbarian incursions into the Balkans — now hopefully halted thanks to his deal with Zabergan — those seven years had seen: the death of Pope Vigilius and his replacement by Pelagius (a most reluctant ‘convert’ to Justinian’s Edict condemning the Three Chapters, acceptance being the price for Peter’s Throne), with the goal of religious unity however, seemingly even more remote than before; a series of destructive earthquakes (one of which had caused the dome of Hagia Sophia to collapse); a recurrence of the plague — mercifully less lethal and of shorter duration than its terrible predecessor; a renewal of the so-called Eternal Peace with Persia; and a wary alliance forged with yet another formidable tribe of steppe-nomads, newly arrived in Trans-Caucasia from Mongolia (the survivors of a massacre masterminded by the Chinese) — the Avars.
Of his friends and close advisers none remained, thought Justinian with sadness. John of Cappadocia, his one-time right hand man, following his disgrace at the hands of Theodora had taken Holy Orders, and died some years before. Narses, ever-efficient and still on active service in Italy though in his eighties, was however, never a man the emperor found that he could warm to. Popes, bishops, generals, and civil servants — all had come and gone, most serving him with competence, some brilliantly, without ever touching his heart. Wait though, he was forgetting; there were two faithful servants he could count as friends — Belisarius and Procopius, of course. Both had stood by him at that supremely testing time — the Nika Riots. Belisarius had shown unswerving loyalty throughout a long career, and Procopius — almost alone of his officials — had been brave enough to visit him when stricken with the plague. So, following Theodora’s death, he was after all not quite so alone as he had thought.
Constantinople came in sight: behind the mighty Walls of Theodosius stretched a vista of low hills rising one behind the other, studded with domes, towers, and tall columns topped by statues of past emperors, with — in the far distance — the looming mass of Hagia Sophia, shrouded now in scaffolding against the reconstruction of its fallen dome.* Entering the city from the north by the Charisius Gate, the procession was greeted by a deputation of senators and dignitaries headed by Procopius, now city prefect (duly promoted to the post — as Justinian had promised on his sick-bed). As it advanced past the Cistern of Aetius then through the ruined Wall of Constantine, the column was cheered to the echo by ecstatic crowds who had assembled to welcome home their emperor and favourite general, together with their little band of citizen-militia. True, no wagon-loads of booty or lines of chained captives accompanied the victors, but Roman arms had triumphed and Roman honour been upheld.
When it reached the Church of the Holy Apostles the procession halted, Justinian dismounting to enter and light candles before Theodora’s tomb. As he rose from his knees after offering a prayer, the emperor experienced a sudden, overwhelming conviction. His victory against the Kotrigurs had proved the sign appearing in his dream to be no false illusion. God had indeed forgiven him, and confirmed that he, Justinian, truly was His Chosen One. He would enter Heaven after all, to be forever reunited with Theodora.
Rejoining the procession, another realization struck Justinian that further raised his spirits. In taking on the Kotrigurs, he had, at last, exorcised those demons of self-doubt and hesitation that had plagued him all his life, resulting in: the deaths of Atawulf and Valerian; his self-harming in the Cistern of Nomus, the mark of which he carried to this day; his near-fatal hesitation to speak up for his uncle in the Senate; his vacillating concerning Belisarius; his failure to support Silverius or send troops adequate to protect Antioch. At last, those phantoms from the past could finally be laid to rest. As the column made its way beneath the towering arches of the Aqueduct of Valens, the emperor felt calm, and happier than at any time since Theodora had died.