Eric Flint: In the Heart of Darkness

Belisarius and Antonina were sitting on the lowest tier by the southwest curve of the racetrack. Valentinian stood a few feet away. Antonina was still wearing her cuirass, but she had removed her helmet. Her head was nestled into her husband's shoulder. Her cheeks were marked by tear-tracks, but she was smiling like a cherub.

Sittas dropped Balban's head at their feet.

"You can add that to our collection," he said, grinning savagely.

Antonina opened her eyes and gazed at the trophy. She made a small grimace of distaste. Then, closed her eyes and sighed contentedly.

"How many?" asked Belisarius.

"A hundred and twenty-eight," replied Sittas. "Irene says we got most of them. Beyond that-"

He waved a thick arm, grimacing himself. Not a small grimace, either.

"The place is a slaughterhouse. Especially underneath, in the horse pens."

Hermogenes shook his head. His face was almost ashen.

"Thousands of them tried to escape through the stables."

Belisarius winced. The only entrances to the stables were small doors, barely wide enough to fit a racing chariot.

"Most of them are dead," muttered Hermogenes. "Trampled, suffocated, crushed. Christ, it'll take days to haul the bodies out. The ones at the bottom aren't much more than meat paste."

Hermogenes reached back and hauled Hypatius to his feet. The "Emperor" collapsed immediately, like a loose sack. The smell of urine and feces was overpowering.

"Theodora'll be happy to see him ," snarled Sittas.

Antonina's eyes popped open.

"No," she whispered. "She's at Hell's gate already."

She turned a pleading gaze up at her husband.

Belisarius squeezed her shoulder. Nodded.

Hypatius spoke. "Have mercy," he croaked. "I beg you- have mercy ."

"I will," said Belisarius. He turned his head.

" Valentinian ."

An Empress and Her Soul

To Belisarius, the huge throne room seemed more like a cavern than ever, with so few occupants. But Theodora had insisted on meeting him there, and he had made no objection. If the Empress found some strength and comfort in the sight of that huge chamber, and the feel of her enormous throne, Belisarius was glad for it.

She, now, was the lynchpin for the future.

He advanced across the huge room with a quick step. When he was ten paces from the throne, he prostrated himself. Then, after rising, began to speak. But Theodora stopped him with a gesture.

"One moment, Belisarius." The Empress turned toward the handful of excubitores standing guard a few yards away.

"Tell the servants to bring a chair," she commanded.

As the excubitores hastened to do her bidding, Theodora bestowed a wry smile upon the general standing before her.

"It's scandalous, I know. But we're in for a long session, and I'd much rather have your untired mind than your formal respect."

Inwardly, Belisarius heaved a sigh of relief. Not at the prospect of spending an afternoon in seated comfort-he was no stranger to standing erect-but at the first sign in days that there was something in the Empress' soul beyond fury, hatred and vengeance.

A City and Its Terror

For eight days, since the crushing of the insurrection, Theodora's soul had dwelt in that realm. As Antonina had so aptly put it, at the very gate of hell.

Much of that time, true, the Empress had spent with her husband. Overseeing the doctors who tended to his wounds; often enough, pushing them aside to tend Justinian herself.

But she had not spent all of her time there. By no means.

She had spent hours, with Irene, overseeing her agentes in rebus- the "inspectors of the post" who served the throne as a secret police-dispatching squads of them throughout the Empire. Those squads assigned to the capital itself had already reported back. The results of their missions were displayed, for all to see, on the walls of the Hippodrome. Next to the spiked heads of Malwa kshatriya-hundreds of them, with Balban's occupying a central position; faction leaders; Hypatius; John of Cappadocia (and all of his bucellarii who had not managed to flee the city)-now perched the heads of three dozen churchmen, including Glycerius of Chalcedon and George Barsymes; those officers of the Army of Bithynia who had been captured; nineteen high noblemen, including six Senators; eighty-seven officials and functionaries; and the torturer who had blinded Justinian.

The torturer's head was identified by a small placard. His face was quite unrecognizeable. Theodora had spent other hours overseeing his own torture, until she pushed aside her experts and finished the job herself.

There would have been more heads, had it not been for Belisarius and Antonina.

Many more.

Theodora had demanded the heads of every officer, above the rank of tribune, of every military unit in the capital which had stood aside during the insurrection. That demand, however, could not be satisfied by her secret police. As cowed and terrified as they were, those officers were still in command of thousands of troops. Shaky command, true-very shaky-but solid enough to have resisted squads of agentes in rebus .

So, Theodora had ordered Belisarius to carry out the purge. He had refused.

Flatly refused. Partly, he told her, because it was excessive. Those men were not guilty of treason, after all, simply dereliction of duty. What was more important, he explained-calmly, coldly-was that such an indiscriminate purge of the entire officer corps in Constantinople would undermine the army itself.

He needed that army. Rome needed that army. The first battle with the Malwa Empire had been fought and won. There were many more to come.

In the end, Theodora had yielded. She had been satisfied-it might be better to say, had accepted-the dismissal of those officers. Belisarius, along with Sittas and Hermogenes, had spent three days enforcing that dismissal.

None of the officers had objected, with the sole exception of Gontharis, the commander of the Army of Rhodope. A scion of one of the empire's noblest families, he apparently felt his aristocratic lineage exempted him from such unceremonious and uncouth treatment.

Belisarius, not wishing to feed further the nobility's resentment against Thracians, had allowed Sittas to handle the problem.

The Greek nobleman's solution had been quick and direct. Sittas felled Gontharis with a blow of his gauntleted fist, dragged him out of his headquarters into the Army of Rhodope's training field, and decapitated him in front of the assembled troops. Another head joined the growing collection on the walls of the Hippodrome.

Immediately thereafter, Sittas and his cataphracts marched to Gontharis' villa on the outskirts of Constantinople. After expelling all the occupants, Sittas seized the immense treasure contained therein and burned the villa to the ground. The confiscated fortune, he turned over to the imperial treasury.

The treasury's coffers were bulging, now. Theodora had executed only nineteen noblemen. But she had confiscated the fortunes of every noble family whose members had even the slightest connection with the plot. The confiscations, true, had been restricted to that portion of such families' fortunes which were located in the capital. Their provincial estates-to which most of them had fled-were untouched. But, since most aristocrats resided in the capital, the plunder was enormous.

The same treatment had been dealt to officials, bureaucrats, churchmen.

None of them objected. Not publicly, at least. They were glad enough to escape with their lives.

A Populace and Its Glee

The great populace of the city had been untouched.

Indeed, after a day, the populace came out of hiding and began applauding the purge. Throngs of commoners could be found, from dawn to dusk, admiring the new decorations on the Hippodrome. The heads of bucellarii meant little to them, and the Malwa heads even less. But the heads of high officials, nobles, churchmen-oh, now, that was a different matter altogether. Often enough, over the years-over the decades and centuries, in the memory of their families-had such men extorted and bullied them.