Jack Ludlow - Vengeance

‘Put up that sword, boy, or I will order my men to kill you.’

‘Do as he says, young sir,’ Ohannes said in a low growl. ‘You cannot overcome such numbers.’

The turmoil on the face of Flavius was a mirror of his tumbling thoughts; was this an accident, an act of caution for fear of the consequences, or was Senuthius deliberately leaving his family exposed? If he was doing so he was being aided and abetted by every man who had brought a sword to this fight, as well as the cleric who brought no more than his crucifix.

Why that should be he was struggling to comprehend, for if he knew there was no love lost between his father and these two men, and a residual dislike of authority in the rest, he could not fathom the depths of the politics involved.

The sounds of fighting, which had filled the air, much louder now he was close to the action, had begun to seriously diminish; the battle was moving away from this position and that could only mean one thing. He spurred his horse once more and aimed it straight at Senuthius, ignoring those who stood in his path, his dark-brown eyes boring into the pale green of the older man, orbs set in a fat, round face topped by thin strands of hair.

The men Senuthius employed tended to be ex-soldiers and so they knew how to deal with such an assault. As a terrified Blastos jumped away for a second time, one grabbed the bridle and hauled hard while a second shoved his spear shaft between the horse’s forelegs, to set Flavius shooting forward as the mount stumbled.

Having fallen off ponies and horses many times the youngster was quick to clear his feet out of his stirrups. He also knew that to fall under the horse would lead to him being crushed, so rather than fight the motion he enhanced it, throwing his weight outwards and launching his body into the air.

If he could save himself from harm in that fashion there was no way to avoid the pain that came from landing on rock-hard ground and he felt the shock as his left shoulder made contact, as well as the immediate pain of a joint that had possibly been dislocated. His mount was over on its side, legs kicking in the air as several men sought by holding its head to keep it still. He did not see Ohannes slip off his mare to come to his aid but he did hear Senuthius order his men to leave Flavius be, his voice ringing out as he said to all assembled:

‘Never let it be said that a man of my standing makes war on children.’

The hands that began to lift him were gentle and Ohannes’s solicitous voice was in his ear asking him how badly he was injured.

‘Not hurt, not hurt,’ came the reply, which had about it a snuffling sob that gave a lie to the words, made more so by the fact that his nose was once more bleeding copiously.

‘You,’ Senuthius called. ‘I take it you are a servant of the family Belisarius?’

‘I am, sir.’

‘Then take this young miscreant away from here before I find I cannot restrain men he has so insolently insulted from slicing his gizzard.’

Helped to his feet, one hand holding a right arm now feeling numb and useless, Flavius lifted his head and glared at Senuthius. If the fleshy senator saw the look of pure hate it did nothing to affect his demeanour and his voice was steady as he spoke to those who now surrounded him.

‘Time for us to sound the advance, I think.’

It was a much-chastened Flavius Belisarius, needing one good arm to support the other and with the taste of blood still in his mouth, who eventually followed in the wake of the advancing militia, men who did so without the need to raise or employ a weapon. The raiders had made it to their boats and were now out on the river, there to jeer and bare their arses as the first of their enemies came to the bank or to hold up as trophies the shields and armour they had taken from their soldier victims.

In moving forward the militia had passed the mutilated bodies of the men of the imperial cohort, few of whom had survived. If they had they were now on the water, destined to be thrown out midstream to drown or to be taken north as slaves. Flavius and Ohannes found the bodies of the centurion and his three sons in a tight cluster not far from the riverbank and it was only later, in a visualisation that would come back to haunt him throughout his life, that Flavius realised how his siblings had sought to protect their father, putting their persons before him in a bid to keep him alive and in control of his cohort and the battle.

It was a dream that would recur often at night, but also a vision that would come to him unbidden during many a day as he recreated time and again the scene, without ever being sure he had the right of it. He would remember with clarity that all four were covered in blood and had multiple wounds, deep cuts to arms and body, so that it was impossible to know which blow was the one to prove fatal, while around them, in ground made soggy by so much gore, lay a dozen corpses of the men they had slain, evidence that they had not been cheaply overcome; the barbarians who had escaped would be jubilant but on this spot they had paid a heavy price to kill the men of the Belisarius family.

Flavius fell weeping to his knees and if he had suffered mental turmoil before this moment it was as nothing to what he was going through now, that jumbled up with the seeking of a reason why this should have happened. Being alive for fourteen summers did not prepare anyone for this, the sudden realisation that all the pillars that supported his life, barring his absent mother, were gone.

‘We must get a cart, young sir, and take their bodies home to be laid out for burial.’

Ohannes’s soft injunction took time to penetrate the troubled mind of the kneeling youth and when it did that brought forth an image of the slimy, pederast bishop Gregory Blastos overseeing the funeral rites, a thought at which Flavius rebelled.

If Senuthius had betrayed his family then he had done so with the blessing of a man who did not deserve the ecclesiastical title he wore. Added to that, Blastos would say Mass according to the Monophysite creed, an interpretation of gospel and the nature of God to which his father had never subscribed.

Decimus Belisarius had worn his Christian faith as a badge of honour and that permeated his family. That said, he had been sure that if salvation existed there were more routes to grace than the one solely provided by a church that was so often corrupt, with prelates and priests who seemed to care more for their own comfort than that of God’s flock. It had also become more Eastern and mystical, less the pure faith into which he had happily been subsumed as a young man.

Proud to call himself a Roman he had allowed himself no truck with the way the empire leant towards the Greek in both language and behaviour, refusing to allow anyone to address him as kentarchos instead of centurion, quick to remind any person unwise enough to use that military title of the nature of the domain of which they were part. It was not a Greek polity even if a high proportion of the population were of that race; it was Roman and had been, whether pagan or Christian, before the dawning of the Augustan age!

Descended from barbarian stock himself and raised outside the Christian faith – he had first taken the Eucharist as a soldier – Decimus had embraced the empire and its doctrines with a full heart and mind, to become more Roman than the citizens of the ancient city itself. It had become a creed, if not an obsession, to be seen so, to show those over whom he held sway that there was a better way to act, a true Roman way.

It was that which coloured the bereaved youngster’s thinking as he finally replied to Ohannes, his voice a hiss. ‘I wish them to be left here.’

‘What!’ Ohannes replied, clearly shocked that the boy could consider such a thing for his loved ones. ‘So the crows can peck their eyes out?’