Harry Turtledove: Justinian

"No!" I said again. "It shall not be." I did not need to think of my father's certain rage; I was filled with rage myself, rage at the idea that these little, sniveling men- for so they seemed to me at that moment- could think of declaring my kinsmen heretics. "Without Herakleios and Constans, we should have no universal Empire to accompany the true and universal faith. The Queen of Cities would belong to the Persians or the Avars or the Arabs. Let the Emperors enjoy credit for what they did, and do not judge what you cannot match."

After a moment, bishops who lived within the boundaries of the Roman Empire spoke up in support of what I had said. All of them, of course, remembered how my father had turned back the followers of the false prophet; most recalled the ceaseless exertions of my grandfather against the Arabs; and a few, the old men among them, had seen my great-great-grandfather repel the Persians and the Avars both. If they accepted my father as Romania's savior, how could they deny the similar achievements of his ancestors? They could not.

Once that move was defeated, the ecumenical patriarch George had his revenge on the westerners who had thought to condemn Emperors of the Romans. His voice smooth and sweet as sce nted olive oil, he said, "Honorius the bishop of Rome confessed one energy in Christ. If we anathematize the patriarchs of Constantinople for this false doctrine, how can we look approvingly upon it in other prelates? Let Pope Honorius be anathema!"

Oh, how the bishops from Italy and Gaul and Africa screamed and bellowed at that! They might have been so many just-castrated swine. Fat Bishop Arculf of Rhemoulakion turned not red but so dusky a shade of purple that I feared he would suffer an apoplexy on the spot.

But the western bishops, though raucous, were few. And those from within the Roman Empire not only outnumbered them but had grown weary of their constant prating of perfect orthodoxy in doctrine. Here was not merely one of them but their patriarch shown by the words written in his own hand to be a misbeliever. Like Polykhronios, like Sergios, like the rest, Pope Honorius was condemned in the acts of the sixth holy and ecumenical synod. No doubt he shall suffer in hell for all eternity on account of his errors.

Having anathematized Honorius, the synod had in essence completed its labors. All that remained was for the Emperor of the Romans to ratify what it had done and dismiss the assembled bishops. But my father, as I have said, had left the Queen of Cities to campaign against the Bulgars, the barbarous horsemen who had begun to harass the Romans living nearest the Danube. And, on returning to Constantinople, he found trouble more urgent than any the bishops of the ecumenical synod had caused. Thus those bishops remained assembled, though no longer meeting, until almost the autumnal equinox.

People nowadays say Constantine didn't take the Bulgars seriously enough. What? How do I know what people say nowadays, Brother Elpidios? Well, there you have me. Am I blushing? I ought to be. Twenty years ago, when I was still out in the world, people said Constantine didn't take the Bulgars seriously enough. There. Are you happier, Brother? You'd make a fine canon lawyer, I have no doubt of that.

Whenever people say- said- that about Constantine, it makes- made, excuse me- me angry, for it isn't so. He had detachments from all the military districts of Anatolia cross into Thrace for the campaign. Why not? We were, for once, at peace with the Arabs, and they were paying us tribute. He didn't figure they'd jump us from behind, and he was right.

Most of the troops from the military districts slogged north toward the Danube on horseback. The rest, along with us excubitores and the Emperor, sailed up the coast and inland by way of the Danube. The Bulgars, in those days, didn't live south of the river. They stayed up beyond it, in the swampy country in the angle between the Pruth and the Seret. They had a sort of a camp there: not really a town, but a bunch of tents all in the same place, and ringed round with palisades of brush and sticks and whatnot, as much for keeping their cattle in as for keeping enemies out.

They must have been pissing themselves when we came up toward that camp, let me tell you. We made a proud spectacle: thousands of men on horseback, all of us in chainmail that glittered in the sun, the imperial guards with silk surcoats dyed in all sorts of bright colors, banners and crosses and icons going before the companies and regiments and divisions of the army. The Bulgars took one look at us, fled back inside the camp, and didn't come out for three days straight. We could have gone right in after them, too, easy as you please.

But what's that the Book of Proverbs says? "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall"? Yes, that's the passage I meant, Brother Elpidios. Thank you. You give me those so quick, I don't have to grope for them with my own poor wits. We thought the Bulgars would flee back to the eastern lands they'd come from, but they didn't.

Oh, other things went wrong, too. The soldiers from the Anatolian military districts didn't care for the country they were in: it was damp, it was boggy, it was misty, it was everything the land they were used to wasn't. And everybody remembered that the last Roman army that had gone north of the Danube was the one that had mutinied and murdered Maurice, back an old man's lifetime before. No one said anything about that, but you could tell it was in people's minds.

Even with that, though, everything might have been all right if only Constantine's gout hadn't flared up. But flare it did, not only in his big toe- which was where it usually bit him- but also in his heel and up the calf of his leg.

I happened to draw guard duty outside the imperial pavilion the night everything went sour. He should have been asleep in there. He'd brought up a featherbed covered in silk and stuffed a cubit thick with goose down, so soft it'd be sinful for a proper monk to think about it, let alone lie down on it. You'd take oath a man could set that featherbed on knives and still sleep sound.

Except Constantine couldn't. He'd moan and he'd curse and he'd moan a little more and he'd curse a lot more. What he wanted to do, I think, was scream, but he wouldn't give in to the pain enough for that. Finally, when the stars said it was getting close to midnight- time for me to roll up in a blanket a lot scratchier than what Constantine had- he came hobbling out on two sticks, his leg all swaddled like a baby and bent so his foot wouldn't accidentally bump the ground and make him hurt even worse than he did already.

He looked bad. He looked old. He couldn't have been thirty yet, but shadows from the torchlight filled and deepened all the lines in his face. You could see white streaks in his beard. Even in the torchlight, he was pale. "Mother of God, help me," he groaned. "I have to get some rest."

I glanced over at my partner, a thick-shouldered Armenian named\a160… named\a160… well, whatever his name was, all those years ago, he looked as worried as I felt. "Wine with poppy juice in it, Emperor?" I suggested.

Constantine shook his head. His face was shiny with sweat, not on account of the heat but because he was maybe a step and a half away from keeling over dead. "I can't," he said. "I need my wits about me. I've beaten all my other enemies, all around the borders of the Empire. Once I smash these louse-eating Bulgars, too, I'll have made a clean sweep."

My partner and I looked at each other. What were we supposed to say, Brother Elpidios? You have to stop or you'll die? For one thing, we didn't know that was so. Only God knows such things. And for another thing, do you think Constantine would have listened to us? If you had any sense, you wouldn't have bet a forty-follis copper piece against a stack of gold nomismata that any Emperor from the line of Herakleios would listen to anybody. By the way he sounded, Constantine didn't care whether he went on living or not, so long as he got rid of the Bulgars.