Harry Turtledove - Justinian

"Concentration," he said again, and I shut up. Trying to tell Justinian anything he didn't want to hear wasn't easy and wasn't particularly safe even before he got his nose slit. Afterwards- well, I could get away with a lot with him, because I'd been through so much with him. But I didn't want to push it, if you know what I mean. Concentration he wanted, and concentration he got.

But it wasn't very concentrated concentration. What do I mean? It's like this: there's a fair-sized plain west of Ankhialos. That's where the troops from the military districts made their camps. But they camped the same way they'd come up from Constantinople: by regiments, one here, one there, one over yonder. Yes, somebody should have been in overall charge and made them all join together and turn into a proper army. But the only somebody who could have done that was Justinian, and he didn't bother.

The other thing he didn't do was keep enough sentries out around the camps. "You worry too much," is what he said to me when I complained about that. "The Bulgars will be shaking in their shoes when they find out I've brought a proper Roman army against them. They won't fight. They'll run away."

"That's what your father said, almost thirty years ago," I answered. "Look what it got him."

For some reason or other, that made him angry, and he dismissed me. Once he had an idea in his head, you couldn't knock it out with a hammer. I thought about asking him why he'd thought the Bulgars could fight Romans when he'd come south with Tervel, but figured they couldn't when he was coming north against Tervel. I didn't bother. It wouldn't have done any good.

Like I said, Ankhialos wasn't as ready as it should've been to supply that "proper Roman army" Justinian was so proud of. The granaries emptied out as fast as they would have if locusts had got into them, and some of the cavalry regiments hadn't even got there yet. Some of the people in the town complained to Justinian that he was eating them out of house and home.

What? How much good did that do? How much do you think, Brother Elpidios? He only killed one of them, I will say that for him.

Where was I? Oh, yes, that's right- we were starting to run out of grain. We were running low on fodder for the horses, too, now that I think about it. And so what happened was, the army started wandering over that plain west of Ankhialos, trying to keep themselves and their animals fed. They might have been a flock of sheep, the way they ate everything down to the ground.

What? Oh. Yes, Brother, one of the farmers complained to the Emperor. He hung him on a gibbet. After that, the farmers did what farmers always do when soldiers come robbing: they ran for the hills and took whatever animals they could with 'em.

I wished Leo was there, instead of off in the Caucasus. Christ, I even wished Helias was there, instead of back in Constantinople minding the store for Justinian. The Emperor had made it very clear he wouldn't pay any attention to me. Both of them were sneaky enough, they might have found some way to get him to listen.

But they weren't there. Justinian didn't listen to anybody. He'd go from one scattered camp to the next. He said he was inspecting the regiments. Maybe he even thought that's what he was doing. It looked like wasting time to me, and I was starting to think we didn't have much time left to waste.

I was right, too. Much good it did me.

The day I'm thinking about, Justinian was visiting the camp of the soldiers from the military district of the Opsikion. He'd gone to them before. He trusted them further than he did a lot of the other troops there, I suppose because Barisbakourios was their commander. He wasn't with the army either, though, which was a cursed shame, because he was one more Justinian might have heeded.

Barisbakourios had sent his lieutenant general to Thrace instead- a weedy little fellow named Theodotos. He wasn't worth much, as far as I was concerned. Some of the men in his regiment had been trained to do acrobatics on horseback. He had them showing off for Justinian when some sort of commotion started in the camps north of his.

"What's going on?" Justinian asked. It was, at least, the right question.

Theodotos didn't even try to find out. "Probably nothing, Emperor," he said indifferently, and then, to his pet acrobats, "Keep on, boys." He turned to Justinian again. "You'll like this next bit, I promise you."

But we never got to see the next bit. A couple of horsemen who weren't acrobats came pelting down toward the camp of the men from the military district of the Opsikion. They were screaming something. It didn't take us long to find out what, either. "The Bulgars!" they shouted. "The Bulgars are attacking! All's lost! Run for your lives!"

Brother Elpidios, you never saw people disappear so fast in all your born days as those cursed acrobats. One moment they were there, the next they were nothing but little dots on the southern horizon- and getting littler faster than you'd believe.

If Theodotos had been worth a follis, he would have rallied his men and sent them off to drive the Bulgars back. If he'd been worth half a follis, he would have rallied them and used them to protect the Emperor. What he did do was squeak "We're ruined!" and then jump on his own horse and gallop off almost as fast as those acrobats.

Well, that did it. That did it and then some, as a matter of fact. "Hold, men!" Justinian shouted, but the soldiers from the military district of the Opsikion weren't about to hold. They'd seen their friends run away, they'd seen their commander run away, and the only thing they wanted to do was run away, too. And that's what they did. They figured Justinian couldn't stop the lot of them, and they were right.

And they weren't the only ones. Everywhere I looked, I saw Romans running or riding south, fast as they could go. Tents in some of those other encampments were going up in flames. Justinian, I suppose, had been right about concentration after all. One strong blow had turned out better than half a dozen weak ones. Only trouble was, the Bulgars gave instead of getting.

A few of the troops from the Anatolian military district did put up a fight. The battle was lost before it got started, though. The Bulgars just ignored the Romans who were fighting back- weren't very many of 'em, Lord knows- and went after the ones who were running. They killed some of those, and plundered what the rest left behind. When a man's decided he's going to run, he'll throw away anything he's got so he can run faster. All the Bulgars had to do was follow along and pick up the flotsam and jetsam, you might call it.

Near as I could see, Justinian was going to stay there cursing the Roman soldiers up, down, and sideways till the Bulgars noticed him and scooped him up. I wondered what Tervel would do with him if they carried him north of the mountains. I wondered, but I didn't really want to find out, because I figured whatever Tervel would do to Justinian, he'd probably do to me, too.

And so, when Justinian showed no signs of going anywhere on his own, I said, "Emperor, we'd better get back to Ankhialos. Once we're inside the walls, the Bulgars won't be able to do anything to us."

"That's true," he said, as if it hadn't occurred to him- and it hadn't, either. So off we went, heading east and a little north over the plain toward the town. I wasn't the only one who'd had that same idea. The Romans who weren't fighting and weren't running south as fast as they could were making for Ankhialos.

Pretty soon, we made up a good-sized band. The horsemen pulled me and the rest of the excubitores up behind them, so we rode double. That let everybody move faster, which made all of us happier, let me tell you. The sooner we got some nice tall stonework between the Bulgars and us, the better we'd like it.