Harry Turtledove - Justinian

Furthermore, I saw- I was certain I saw- an opportunity to which my so-called counselors were deliberately blinding themselves.

After the failure of their impious and infamous assault upon this God-guarded and imperial city, the Arabs had fallen into disarray. Mauias, their longtime ruler, passed from this earth into hellfire two years after they gave up the siege. Upon his death, several misnamed commanders of the faithful held their throne in Damascus in quick succession, none securely. Abimelekh, the latest, had gained it in the same year I did, though already older than my father at his death.

Through all the turmoil among the deniers of Christ, my father had sat quiet, content to receive the tribute Mauias had agreed to pay after his fleet was destroyed and his army beaten. He preferred that to battle.

I thought otherwise. Summoning my advisers, I said, "With the followers of the false prophet quarreling among themselves, should we not seize the moment to take back some of the lands they stole from the Romans during the reigns of my grandfather and my great-great-grandfather?"

The sakellarios, a dour man named Romanos, said, "The treasury has not the gold for a long campaign, Emperor."

"Since we are at peace, should we not remain at peace?" John the city eparch said, though nothing outside Constantinople was properly his area of concern.

And Christopher, the comes excubitorum, said, "Having been little used of late, the army will not be at its peak fighting condition."

I clapped a hand to my forehead. "We have not fought and so we cannot fight? The longer we do not fight, the worse we will fare when the time for fighting comes! If we stay at peace for a generation, will we be altogether destroyed when war breaks out?"

"That is not what I meant, Emperor. I-" Christopher began.

I cut him off, declaring, "I do not care what you meant. I hear d what you said, and I did not care for that, either. We shall take advantage of Abimelekh's weakness, and the war, undoubtedly a short and successful one, will more than pay for itself."

"Such promises are more often made than fulfilled," Romanos said sourly.

"You have heard my will expressed. You shall carry it out," I said. They all bowed in submission. I glowered at Romanos. I did not need a treasurer who told me why I could not do things. I needed one who would find ways for me to do as I wanted. If this copper counter obstructed me, I would replace him- and I knew with whom.

But that could wait. More urgent was picking the proper general to lead the campaign against the followers of the false prophet. Christopher the comes excubitorum I dismissed out of hand. The only military virtue I had seen him display was looking splendid in his gilded shirt of mail. That sufficed in Constantinople. In the field, it did not.

If I appointed Theodore of Koloneia commander of the army, that left the imperial bodyguards with no one to keep a tight rein on Christopher. I decided I dared not take the chance. Theodore also stayed in the imperial city.

Of the three generals who had beaten back the Arabs in my father's day, Kyprianos had by this time met the common fate of mankind. When I asked Myakes what he thought of Petronas, he rolled his eyes. "He promises more than he can give," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Myakes explained how, in my father's expedition against the Bulgars, Petronas had promised victory after my father went off to Mesembria on account of his gout. I knew too well he had no victory there, only defeat and humiliation. And so I resolved not to name Petronas to high command.

Florus, now, was another matter. No one faulted either his cleverness or his generalship. And yet\a160… having had the chance to marry Florus's daughter but instead having chosen another, I hesitated. Did he harbor, did he hide, did he nurture resentment under that clever mask? If he did, his strategic ability might prove more dangerous to me than to the deniers of Christ. When my house rose to power through civil war, when my grandfather was murdered as the overture to uprising, I had to make these calculations. Florus might have done well, but I did not send him east.

Having eliminated all these candidates, I summoned a man I knew much less well, a man of my father's generation: Leontios, whom I last remembered seeing at the time of the ecumenical synod. He was as I remembered him: round-faced, broad-shouldered, with open, smiling features and a hearty manner.

"Turn me loose on them, Emperor," he boomed. "That's all I ask- turn me loose on them. I'll beat 'em for you. You just see if I don't."

This was what I wanted to hear. One of the things I had already found out, though, was that the Emperor always heard what he wanted to hear, or what the man speaking to him thought he wanted to hear, regardless of its truth. And so I asked Leontios, "Why are you so confident?"

"Why? I'll tell you why, Emperor." He had the habit of repeating himself. As he spoke, he ticked points off on his fingers, something else he did all the time. "The Arabs, they've been through civil war. And they've been through famine. And they've been through plague. And the Armenians hate them, because the Armenians, they're Christians even if they're heretics, and they don't have any use for the false prophet. If I march an army into Armenia, the princes there, they'll rise up and help my boys throw the Arabs out. That's why I'll beat 'em."

"Good," I said- and the reasons he had named were good. Coupled with his confidence, they gave me reason to hope he could do as he claimed. I said, "I shall send you forth, Leontios, and may God grant you the victory you deserve. And, to help ensure it, I will write to the Mardaite chieftains and turn them loose against the deniers of Christ, too."

Leontios's eyes glowed. "That's fine, Emperor. That's mighty fine. With them and me hitting the Arabs at the same time, their caliph"- having fought a good deal in the east, he used the Arabs' own name for their miscalled commander of the faithful-"he'll be itching so many places at once, he won't know which one to scratch."

He was not an educated man. He was not a particularly clever man. But he had a bluff vitality to him that made those deficiencies matter less than they would have in many another. Soldiers followed him, not just willingly but eagerly. I also heard that women fell all over him, but that, true or not, had nothing to do with matters military.

He having satisfied me, I sent him forth. And, thanks to him and to the Mardaites, I showed my quivering, cowardly advisers what fools they were. Leontios ravaged that part of Armenia under Arab control, and succeeded so well there that he went on to plunder not only Iberia but also Media, the northwesternmost province of what had been the Persian Empire before the followers of the false prophet burst from the desert and subjected Romania's ancient foes.

From all these lands he sent back to Constantinople a large sum of money, which was most welcome. I knew the fisc would make good use of every follis Leontios sent, too, having replaced Romanos as sakellarios with Stephen the Persian. Many eunuchs could care for my comfort as well as Stephen had; few men, entire or not, had the gift of caring for the revenue accruing to the imperial treasury.

And while Leontios was campaigning in and beyond Arab-held Armenia, the Mardaites ravaged the borderlands from Mopsuestia in Kilikia- not far from Antioch- north and east up to the Roman province of Armenia, from which my general had set out. For a long time, their depredations kept Abimelekh from responding in any way to Leontios's invasion.

God granted us Romans another boon at this time, in that one more spasm of civil war convulsed the deniers of Christ not long after Leontios attacked them. Distracted as Abimelekh was- one of the rebels against him even succeeded in briefly seizing Damascus, his capital- he could not hope to withstand our armies. And so, for almost three years, we swept everything before us.