Jack Ludlow: Vengeance

In part his silence was for the sake of his pride, the reluctance to admit being bested. Yet added to that was the influence of one of the emperors of Rome he truly admired, a fighter as well as a philosopher, held in high regard by his father, a paragon he had studied assiduously both within the schoolroom and without, the stoic Marcus Aurelius. That was not the only reading in which he indulged; anything regarding Rome or Ancient Greece he studied with a passion, for instance Diodorus Siculus, who had written of the campaigns of Alexander.

Another favourite was the Commentaries of Julius Caesar and his conquest of Gaul. If the library of Dorostorum was far from comprehensive it did contain volumes of imperial history and given the nature of the empire much of that was a story of conquest: Scipio Africanus fighting Hannibal and the final conquest of Carthage. The same story of the very province in which Flavius now lived, taken from Macedonia by the Roman legions and held against constant barbarian attempts to repel them.

There was the narrative of Mark Antony versus Octavian, of campaigns all along the Rhine and the Danube as well as the conquest of Britain by the lame Emperor Claudius. All the Belisarius sons were imbued with their father’s love of things Roman, though the last of the litter was the most affected. Steeped in his reading he held it as unmanly to show either hurt or to let his parents know that anything untoward had occurred when he and Atticus fought. Being active at robust games as well as regularly taking part in military training and wrestling bouts against his peers, there was little need to explain the appearance of sudden bruises.

That streak of stubbornness came to the fore now: Ohannes’s attempt to imply they had done enough, that the duty was now to stay and protect the house ran into a wall. Flavius, once the flow of blood from his nose had been stemmed, was even more adamant that his place was alongside his relatives on the field of battle, which left the domesticus in a quandary for he lacked the standing to order this youngster around.

Thus he was torn between the requirement to protect his master’s goods, set against the need to ensure that this much-favoured son, having just survived a dangerous encounter, did not now get himself into any scrape that might prove fatal. In the balance of value there was no other conclusion.

‘Then I must accompany you.’

‘I would not impose that upon you, Ohannes.’

‘You’re not laying it on me and if you knew me better, had you seen the marks on my back, you would also know that few folk have ever got me doing anything I don’t want.’

‘I could not be unhappy, after what has just taken place, to have you by my side.’

Flavius blushed then; that statement sounded and was sententious. The knowledge that such a view was shared seemed obvious by the jaundiced look the words received, added to a derisive snort.

Ohannes insisted on one last act before departing, which was to drag the bodies of the now dead thieves, as well as that of the murdered soldier left on guard, to be left at each entrance to the house; one outside the kitchen entrance, another by the gate to the stables, both relocked from the inside, the third outside the main atrium doorway, it being hoped this would give pause to anyone else thinking of robbing the place. That complete, it was an unenthusiastic old soldier, now with sword, spear and an axe in his belt, who got himself astride a less gentle mare, a mount made unsettled by the smell of so much blood.

Flavius needed to breathe deep to contain his mirth as he watched the equine struggles: having been taught to ride almost as soon as he could walk, he sat easily in his saddle, even on an energetic beast a mite oversized for a lad his age and build. His horse was a stallion to grow into, an animal that pawed at the ground and loved nothing more than to run, requiring a firm hand to keep it in check, never more than when, out on a ride, Flavius turned for home and the lure of food took hold.

Now he hoped to test him in battle and with Ohannes in his wake, holding the reins tight, he went in the direction taken by the imperial cohort, easy to see by the rising smoke from burning farms now high in the sky. Outside the city they came across one of those farmers and his family, trundling along as fast as they could go, a cart bearing their possessions, having abandoned their home to head for what would now be a very crowded fortress.

Being mounted and wearing Roman armour they asked him for information he did not possess; his assurances that they had little about which to worry when it came to survival failed to gain much traction.

‘Fighting men will have gathered all over the district. Once all available forces are gathered the barbarians will have a choice to flee or be slaughtered.’

‘Rumour is they are in their thousands.’

Tempted to scoff – the Sklaveni could not muster such numbers – Flavius had to rein that in as much as he was needing to do with his skittish horse. ‘At worst we must hold them until aid comes. You should be safe to return to your farm.’

The answer was a glare, before the farmer smacked the rump of his plough horse to move it and his family on, the children taking their cue from their sire to add their own baleful look. There was a moment when he considered telling them who he was and to whom he was related but that died as he recalled his age; that would be against him, even if he did feel his advice to be sound.

Armed men would now be rushing to his father’s aid from all over the district, the limitanei – those able-bodied men who could be quickly mustered to fight alongside him – necessary given he led a unit under-strength for the length of border he was tasked to maintain when serious trouble threatened. If imperial taxation was high, none of the proceeds seemed to be employed in paying for the soldiers needed to secure the borders, which left many of the men who had served in the armies of the empire to seek private employment.

It was from these that support would come; a decent-sized local farm would run to a quartet of fighters, some bigger landowners to as many as ten. If it sounded good in theory it was less so in practice; Decimus Belisarius had to rely heavily, despite his reluctance to do so, on the men mustered by the greatest local magnate, a senator whose landholdings and wealth dwarfed those of anyone else in the borderlands.

If Flavius had not been at his studies he would have heard his father cursing the very name of Senuthius Vicinus as soon as he was informed of the raid; not that the son was unaware of the antagonism between them or the reasons for it, their differences – from religious dogma to conduct – being a frequent parental refrain.

Given his numerical weakness Belisarius senior was adamant that only by peaceful cooperation could he hope to effectively fulfil his duties. He worked assiduously to maintain relations with the tribal chieftains across the Danube and by doing so he hoped not only that they would restrain their more excitable young bloods, but that he would also be forewarned of any incursions into their lands by the tribes to the north.

Senuthius was the exact opposite; too often he acted like a man poking a hornet’s nest with a stick and with no regard for the consequences. He provoked the Sklaveni by sending raiders across the river: livestock his men would merely butcher, crops they would burn; it was slaves Senuthius sought, fit young men, women and children who could be sent on to the markets where such unfortunates were sold, all the way to the rich buyers in Constantinople if the younger ones of either sex were fair of hair and comely enough.

Nor did he respect anything of a religious nature; if the men who carried out his bidding came across a temple or a sacred burial site, pagan or Christian, it would be razed to the ground or desecrated, further antagonising the Sklaveni elders, while at the same time firing the desire for revenge among the younger tribesmen.