Jack Ludlow: Triumph

To acknowledge it was open to severe risk was an understatement and that became more obvious as he worked out in detail what needed to be done. Flavius knew the men to whom he allotted this task would have to make the attempt during the hours of darkness and they needed to get to the end of what would be an unlit tunnel and one that could not be reconnoitred in advance.

If there was a strong body of defenders at the point where it crossed over the city wall they would only discover that with contact. If not, and once inside, they would need to keep going until they came across a wide enough conduit to provide an exit, something like a side channel that fed a set of baths. They would likely be close to the centre of a densely inhabited city in which the natives were hostile.

The Isaurians, four hundred in number, were chosen to mount the raid, they being a body of fighters he knew were keen to impress him, having been absent from of all of his previous battles in both North Africa and Sicily. He had with him a Goth-speaking cavalry commander called Magnus, directed to accompany Ennes, the man selected to lead.

He was a member of the general’s close bodyguard and a noted warrior; if they were challenged Magnus would seek to fool the defenders, if that failed Ennes would try to fight his way through. Every tenth man was directed to carry an unlit torch and the whole was to be accompanied by a pair of trumpeters.

Timing was critical; he needed those men to be ready to debouch from whatever exit they found just as dawn broke, this while the rest of the army made a feint against that section of the walls close to the aqueduct to distract the garrison.

Thus, from the battlements, in the hours of darkness, the Neapolitan defenders observed many a torchlit group of attackers move into position and the reaction was as expected. The threatened section of the walls was reinforced by the more martial Goths and many a taunt echoed in the darkness to tell these fools what fate they could expect.

Flavius, keen to encourage these exchanges, took another Goth speaker as close as he dared to engage the defenders with offers of gold if they surrendered, their attempts greeted with jeers and catcalls. Hopefully these were loud enough to drown out the noise of that barrier being dismantled and, following on from that, such a body of soldiers struggling in total darkness along a narrow corridor in which they were barred from using their torches, there being too many gaps in the aqueduct brickwork that might leak light.

Some of them found the Stygian darkness and the eerie echoes too much to bear and Flavius found himself called from the walls to consult with Magnus, who had led half the badly shaken attacking party back out into the starlight. Flavius quickly called for two hundred replacements from his comitatus , an act that so shamed the Isaurian retirees that they insisted on going back.

There was no time to argue; dawn was not far off and there was still the need for distraction, perhaps more now that the invasive force numbered six hundred instead of four. The Goth speaker was still where Flavius had left him, now sending insults towards the walls about their manhood and wayward mothers that got a furious and satisfyingly noisy reaction.

For a commander, indeed for the lowest soldier, waiting can be the hardest part of war and Flavius was doubly cursed by not having any notion of how matters were proceeding where it really counted. That changed when the first trumpet blew, soon followed by the sight of numerous waving torches from two of the towers that stood either side of the nearest of the great gates.

The horns of the main force blew to sound the advance and the whole of the besieging army surged towards walls nearly denuded of the previous defenders, who were now too busy trying to retake those towers. The noise now was not of jeering but metal on metal, the yelling of men fighting and the screams of those wounded or dying.

With his men climbing their ladders and coming face-to-face with a poor defence it looked to Flavius as if they might overcome the walls without the aid of those of their comrades within. But Ennes had other ideas and right before his eyes the gates between the towers swung open and their general watched as his troops surged through.

There was no attempt to control them once they were inside, indeed it would have been dangerous to try. Naples had defied the army of Justinian and it would pay the price in both blood and rapine. All Flavius could do was gather to him Solomon, Photius and a large and well-armed body of his comitatus to enter the city and seek out the leading citizens, either to cast them in chains or, if they were of the stripe of Stephanus, to keep them alive.

A wealthy trading city and one that had not faced any serious threat for many decades, Naples was ripe for plunder and that was moving forward slowly like a murderous tide, the pace dictated by the rate of pillage. Through every open doorway Flavius could hear the screams of women and children, who would be spared and sold into slavery, as well as the cries for mercy of men who, once they gave up what valuables they possessed, fell silent as their lives were extinguished.

The cobbles beneath his feet were already running with blood, trickling down the slope that led towards the central area and then to the harbour. Bloodlust was being fuelled by ample wine, which required that his bodyguards form a wall of shields before him as gore-spattered men, now becoming insensible through drink, staggered around prepared to kill friend as well as foe.

If such creatures carried severed heads, their more astute comrades had sought out sacks to bear away that which they were busy looting, objects of gold and silver. Others had found money chests and were heading back out of the city to a place where they could be securely left, herding before them the women and children they would subsequently sell. All Flavius could do was let them pass as he struggled to move forward, for he had a more serious purpose.

One time part of Magna Graecia, Naples had been thoroughly Romanised so Flavius knew to head for what had been the Forum and the Senate House, finding matters easing as he got ahead of his looting soldiery. The area surrounded by the old Roman buildings, as well as the spoke-like thoroughfares and one-time pagan temples now turned into churches, were packed with those who had found time to flee with some of their possessions, the sound of their mass prayers setting up a low hum.

The notables who had defied Flavius had scurried to the Senate House in the hope that they would be defended by what remained of the Goth garrison who had moved out of the fortress to defend the walls and paid a high price in the process. Flavius found what amounted to a small body of men lined up before the oration platform making ready to sell their lives dearly. Before them lay several bloodied and battered bodies, one being that of Asclepiodotus.

Flavius first ordered that the routes to this central precinct be blocked to keep out his own marauding soldiers, then moved forward to parley with the surviving Goths, a mere seventy men now facing hundreds. Stephanus emerged from between the columns of the building, moving through the line of armed men to close with the conqueror and to bow low.

‘It falls to me to surrender to you our city and to plead for mercy.’

‘Too late for that, Stephanus. I have the right to put every man, woman and child to the sword.’

‘Which I hope your Christian conscience will not allow.’

Flavius looked at the body of Asclepiodotus and not just him; the man who had preached defiance was surrounded by what had to have been his supporters as well as the stones by which they had been so cruelly slain. Seeing the direction of the gaze, Stephanus acknowledged an obvious truth: that he and his companions had been killed by his own people.