Flame of the West (12 page)

  
Belisarius looked sick at the news. The council of war he had hastily summoned was a decimated gathering. Almost half our officers were dead, slain in the never-ending series of battles and sieges.

   “
If these reports are true, we can’t fight such an army,” croaked Bessas, a dried-up, wizened shell of the man he had once been, “we must ask for peace, and hammer out terms with Vitiges.”

  
“We can fight them. We will. We must.” said Belisarius in the same lifeless tone. “The Franks are even more undisciplined than the Goths. Do not be dismayed by their numbers. They have few cavalry, save their king and his attendants, and their infantry are peasants, poorly-armed and trained.”

   “Two hundred thousand peasants are a formidable prospect,” said Bessas.

   “I have heard disquieting rumours of their axe-men,” added Hildiger, “they carry double-edged battle-axes, capable of cutting a horse and rider in two with one blow.”

   The news of the Frankish invasion had dealt a severe blow to morale, and Belisarius was unable to raise the flagging spirits of his officers. I said little during the meeting, but was again summoned to his presence afterwards.

   “I can’t trust any of the others to deal with the Franks,” he said, “they are broken reeds, all of them. Even Bessas.”
   He had shaken off his cough, but still looked ill and tired, and trembled slightly as he faced me. “The Franks cannot be allowed to advance unchecked through Liguria. Even now Theodebert is moving towards the River Po. I have troops there watching his progress, but they are far too few to bar his passage.”

   I could guess what was coming next, and braced myself. “Six thousand men are all I can spare. I cannot go north myself until Osimo has fallen, so a trusted subaltern will have to lead them against the Franks.”

   “I thought you wanted me for an envoy, sir,” I said weakly.

   “So I do, Coel, so I do. But this present crisis must be dealt with first.
Push back the Franks, and Rome will heap you with honours. I will make sure of that. The Emperor will reward you with a triumph in Constantinople, as he rewarded me after the conquest of Africa.”

   I was tempted to say the Romans would be honouring a corpse, but it would have done me no good. Through my own caution and unwillingness to stand up to the general, I had earned his absolute trust.
Now he was relying on me to defeat a massive invasion of Frankish warriors, led by one of the most ruthless barbarian kings of the age.

   Just how ruthless, I was about to discover.

13
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My little army marched north into
Liguria, towards the region of the Po where the vast Frankish horde was said to be massing. Belisarius was aware of my friendship with his secretary, and sent Procopius with me.

   “He said I am a lucky talisman,” said Pr
ocopius, “no Roman army has tasted defeat while I was present.”

  
“It must be down to your skill at arms,” I said drily. I had watched my friend practising with the spatha, and narrowly avoid cutting his own foot off.

   “You have never seen me fight in earnest,” he retorted, shaking his skinny fist, “just wait. The Franks sha
ll flee before me like fire. Theodebert will beg for mercy before my flashing blade!”

   Procopius strived to keep up my spirits as we neared the town of
Pavia. Our scouts had reported the presence of our cavalry near the town, as well as a squadron of Goths. Both sides were watching the Franks on the other side of the river.

   It was difficult to predict Theodobert’s intentions. He had crossed the
Alps in response to his kinsman Vitiges’ pleas for aid, but he was a greedy, self-serving warlord, always with an eye to his own profit. His army was big enough to crush all of us – Goths, Burgundians, Romans – and seize Italy for himself.

   We were still some miles from
Pavia when his motives became clear. A troop of horsemen came flying down the highway in wild disorder, straight towards our vanguard.

   “They are ours,” I said bleakly, shading my eyes to make out their banners, “Huns, I think. Looks like they have taken a beating.”

   I counted eleven riders. A few horses with empty saddles trailed behind them. The fugitives had no way of going around us, and so ploughed to a halt in a storm of dust and confusion.

   “Well?” I demanded when their shame-faced captain trotted forward. His helmet was gone, his mail hauberk smeared with blood, and his eyes had a familiar haunted quality: those of a man who ha
d witnessed slaughter, and barely escaped with skin and soul intact.

   He cleared his throat, and saluted. “The Franks have crossed the river, sir,” he croaked, “they fell upon us without warning. We tried to make a stand, but th
ere were too many. They attacked the Goths as well, and drove them back towards Ravenna.”

  
Procopius gave a low whistle. “So Theodobert has betrayed his ally. What faithless scum these barbarians are. Then again, why not? He has enough men to defeat all of us.”

   “What of their numbers?” I asked, trying to suppress the rising tide of panic in my breast, “is the Frankish host as big as they say?”

   The captain ran a shuddering hand over his face. “Yes, sir. Like a plague of locusts, covering the land as far as the eye can see. Nothing but banners, and hordes of barbarian warriors, filling the air with their accursed chanting…”

   He was clearly a broken man, and I dismissed him to the rear with
what remained of his command. I beckoned at Procopius to ride a little way forward with me, out of the hearing of my subalterns.

   “What should I do?” I hissed, “I can’t offer battle against such a horde. What do you know of this Theodobert? Is he a better soldier than Vitiges?”

   Procopius nodded grimly. “A better soldier, and a shrewder and greater man in all respects. He won’t be fooled by our paltry war-tricks, as we fooled Vitiges at Rimini. Theodobert is a wolf, and will tear our throats out if we let him.”

   He glanced at the barren fields beside the highway. They were untilled, the peasants who usually worked the land either dead or driven off. No crops grew on the parched soil, where there should have been a ripe yield of golden corn.

   Vast stretches of the Italian countryside were equally afflicted, the natural rhythms of the seasons disrupted by the ravages of war. As a result, thousands of peasants were condemned to starve, or swell the numbers of beggars in the towns.

  
“We can’t fight the Franks,” Procopius said softly, “but we don’t need to. Nature can fight them for us.”

   I took his meaning. The Frankish host was enormous, and would have to live off the land. Thanks to the poor harvest, there was precious little for them to take. In time, hunger and famine would achieve what our swords could not.

  
I ordered the retreat, back towards the nearest Roman garrison at Fiesole, a fortified hilltop town inside Tuscany. The walls were strong and well-maintained, and I counted on being able to hold the place against a siege.

  
There we awaited the onset of the Franks. Liguria was now laid open to them, and they devastated the region with typical barbarian savagery, carrying fire and slaughter to all corners.

   Uraias abandoned the province, fleeing back to his uncle at
Ravenna with his remaining troops. Exulting in his conquest, Theodobert picked Liguria clean, though he found little to please him in the burned and blackened ruins of Milan.

  
The summer of that year was unforgiving. A heat haze settled over the land. Nothing grew, and such scanty crops as had been planted withered and died in the fields. The dreaded but inevitable spectre of famine stalked the countryside, bringing starvation and the bloody flux to the country folk.

  
“The Franks will also be suffering,” said Procopois as we stood together on the walls of Fiesole one evening, watching the blood-red sun dip below the hills, “Theodobert will have to break up his army, or lose it.”

   I sent out riders to observe the enemy, and they brought back encouraging reports. The Franks were indeed suffering. Desperate for food, they had stormed and ransacked every settlement they could find,
butchering the inhabitants and – if some of the more lurid accounts were to be credited – occasionally eating them.

   The news brought me little joy. Belisarius had entrusted me with the task of driving the Franks from
Italy, but instead I had taken refuge behind high walls and abandoned the people I was supposed to be protecting.

   “There is nothing you can do for them,” Procopius assured me when I voiced my guilt, “
even if you had somehow defeated the Franks, you cannot fight famine. Whether by starvation or the blade, the people of Liguria and Tuscany are doomed to perish.”

  
He was a hard-headed man, practically devoid of compassion, but I was forged of softer metal. Finally, when I could bear the shame no longer, and was haunted by the screams of dying Italians in my dreams, I gave the order to march out.

   “I will do my duty,” I said firmly, “and meet the Franks in the field, as I should have done weeks ago.”

    “Your duty is not to die,” Procopius argued, but I refused to listen. Leaving him behind in Fiesole, I led out my six thousand men, with trumpets playing and banners flying, to seek the enemy. 

   What I found was a desert, littered with rotting corpses and the gaunt shades of the living.
We encountered some Frankish soldiers a few miles north of Fiesole, though they could hardly be described as soldiers anymore: rather, a band of wandering ghouls with sunken eyes and swollen bellies, their minds gone, reduced to the most basic urges.

   They took little notice of us, but fell like a pack of snarling dogs on some desiccate
d weeds growing by the roadside. One man managed to pull a fistful of weeds from the ground, and tried to make off with the booty, but was seized and dragged down by two of his comrades. They throttled him, and tore out his eyes, and turned on each other even as he jerked in his death-throes.

   It seemed a kindness to kill them,
and I ordered a troop of my horse-archers to shoot them down. When the Franks were dead, lying riddled with arrows, we marched on, leaving their corpses to bake and blacken in the pitiless heat.

  
I saw worse horrors, the further we advanced into Liguria, and the memories haunt me still. The Frankish host was disintegrating, murdered by the all-consuming famine. The remains of their broken, starving battalions strewn like so much human rubbish about the countryside.

   The ghastly aspect of the dead was surpassed by the living, the little groups of survivors we encountered, their skin grey and lifeless and clinging to their bones. It was easy to identif
y those who had turned cannibal and survived by feasting on the flesh of former comrades. These men had a wild and fearful look, their hollow eyes shining with maniac fury, even as their hands swung listlessly by their sides.

   We caught one such group of monsters in the
act of devouring a corpse. They offered no resistance, but ran howling into the wilderness, their lips and fingers dripping with blood. Sickened, I ordered no pursuit, but had the half-eaten remnant of their comrade given a decent burial.

  
What was left of Theodobert’s army crawled back across the Po and encamped on the northern bank. They devoured the last of their oxen, and drew water from the river, only to be hit by fresh disaster: the summer heat carried fever with it, and disease swept through the Frankish camp, carrying away a third of their number.

  
In this enfeebled state, the Franks were in no condition to refuse Belisarius’ terms, which I delivered to King Theodobert in my capacity as envoy.

   The Frankish camp
stank of death. I rode through it with a cloth soaked in vinegar and fragrant spices pressed to my face. Emaciated, haggard-faced men were digging pits to bury their comrades. Neat rows of bodies covered in white sheets lay beside them, ready to be pushed in.

   There were no horses. A
s Belisarius said, the Franks had little in the way of cavalry, and those beasts they did bring over the Alps had long since vanished down the throats of their starving warriors.

  
Theodobert received me in faded barbarian splendour. He sat before his tent in a high-backed wooden chair set on a bearskin rug. His surviving nobles and hearth-guards stood either side of the chair. Tall, well-made men, with long auburn beards and moustaches. I had last seen their like in Paris, when I fled there with my mother after Camlann.

  
I ran my eye over their armour and weapons, noting their long swords and double-edged axes, glittering mail, fine cloaks and elaborately decorated helms. I also noted the sullen, wasted look of the men under the gear, and the rank stench of sickness and death that hovered over all this martial display like a poisonous cloud.

  
The king was a youngish man, of medium height and slender build. His hair and beard were yellow, with a touch of grey, and he wore a slender golden circlet over a furrowed brow. Only the ice in his grey eyes hinted at the cruelty and ruthlessness that defined his character.