Harry Turtledove - Justinian

"What could be wrong?" I answered, doing my best to sound bluff and cheerful. "One of you go fetch me Myakes. Something I need to ask him."

The excubitores looked at each other. I could read their thought: won't it wait till morning? But I was the Emperor. One of them trotted away, shrugging as he went.

He came back with my faithful friend almost as soon as I had hoped. As Myakes drew near me, I smelled stale wine on his breath. Even torchlight made him blink and squint: he had been celebrating our triumph himself. "Go off to bed," I told the excubitores who had been guarding the pavilion. "I'm safe enough with Myakes here."

They looked at each other again. Obeying might get them in trouble with their superior. Disobeying would get them in trouble with me, the Emperor of the Romans. Sensibly, they obeyed. "Thank you, Emperor," one of them called over his shoulder as they left.

I went into the tent, holding the flap open for Myakes to follow. As soon as we were both inside, he asked, "What's gone wrong, Emperor?" Though never what a pedant would call a clever man, Myakes was no one's fool.

Wordlessly, I pointed around behind the clothes chest. H e walked over to see what I meant, and suddenly stopped dead. As I had, he made the sign of the cross. "She did it herself," I said quickly, not wanting him to think I had killed her for the mere sport of it. I have done a deal of killing since, but never for the mere sport of it- which is not to say I have taken no pleasure in the destruction of my foes. In a few words, I explained how I had discovered her body.

He nodded, clicking his tongue between his teeth a couple of times. "She probably watched her man get killed earlier today," he said. "These Sklavinian women, they're not like Romans- they don't want to live without their husbands."

Having heard that more than once before, I accepted it all the more eagerly now. "Even if the blame does rest with her, though," I said, "the embarrassment will be mine. Unless- Has the grave in which we flung the bodies of the barbarians been filled in?"

"No, Emperor," he answered, and then, without so much as a hesitation, "You want me to toss her into the pit?" No, Myakes was no one's fool.

"That's just what I want," I said. "She's a pagan, and damned, and a suicide and so doubly damned; it's not as if I'm depriving her of Christian burial."

Myakes only grunted. That aspect of things worried him not at all. He picked up the linen tunic, untwisted it and shook it out as a washerwoman might a towel, and then put it back on the corpse, which turned out to be a harder job than I had thought it would. But when I said as much, he replied, "Be thankful she hasn't been dead long, and started getting stiff. That would really make things tough." He paused, then added, "It would be the devil's own time carrying her that way, too."

Having dressed her, he stooped, slung her over his shoulder, and, grunting again, rose. I nodded in approval. Her face lay against his chest, and her fair fell down over it, obscuring it further. And it would be dark outside. "If anyone stops you-" I began.

He followed my thought perfectly, interrupting, "I'll say she's drunk herself blind. Everything should be all right, Emperor. Will you open the flap for me? I ought to be back pretty soon."

Open it I did, and out into the night he went.

Well, Brother Elpidios, what the devil was I supposed to do? She was dead. I hadn't killed her, and Justinian hadn't killed her, either. She was a pagan who'd killed herself. What? She wouldn't have done it if he hadn't abused her? Maybe, but maybe not, too. It's not a lie, what I told him about Sklavinian women. If their husbands die, sometimes they will kill themselves. It's something they do, the way we Christians cross ourselves. Of course, they can only do it once.

No one did stop me till I got to the camp gate nearest the burial pit and the prisoner pen. I saw a couple of other soldiers carrying women through the camp, as a matter of fact; it was that kind of night. The ones in their arms probably were just drunk, though.

The gate guards laughed as I came near them. "Used her up, did you?" one of them said.

"You might say so," I answered. "What with the wine and everything else"- I grinned and rocked my hips forward and back-"she's gone." And Lord, wasn't that the truth?

All of a sudden, he made a nasty face. "Aii, get her out of here!" he exclaimed. "She stinks- she's gone and shit herself." His comrades all got out of the way then. They didn't want anything to do with me, not after that.

It was easy as could be. The moon ducked behind a cloud right after I walked out of the gate. The night turned black as the soot above a lamp that's been hanging in the same place for twenty years. Instead of going all the way out to the prisoner pen, I stopped by the burial pit. It was closer. Nobody saw me heave her in. Nobody heard the soft thud her body made, landing on the others. I waited long enough so it would seem I'd gone to the pen. Then I walked back to the gate. The guards jeered at me. I swore at them, enough to sound convincing. They laughed and waved me by.

I went back to Justinian's pavilion.

How do I feel about it, Brother Elpidios? I'd sooner not have done it, I'll tell you that. But the Emperor told me to, so I did. I haven't thought about it much since then; some things you'd rather not remember. You ask all the questions, Brother. Let me ask you one for a change. Suppose Justinian had told you to dispose of her. What would you have done then?

When the tent flap fluttered open, I reached for a sword- you never lose by being too careful or worrying too much. But it was faithful Myakes. "You took care of it?" I asked him.

"I did, Emperor," he said. "No one's the wiser." His eyes went to the jar of wine I had ordered brought for the Sklavinian woman and me. After what he had done, he needed fortifying. I waved for him to help himself. The cup he picked up and filled was the one from which she had drunk, but I-

Mother of God, Brother Elpidios!

– did not tell him that, he having done me a great service. He drained the cup, then set it down with a sigh. "Ah! Better."

"If you want gold for this, you have it," I told him. "If you want rank, you have it. If you want-"

"Emperor, what I want is to go back to bed," he said. That also being in my power to give him, I waved him out of the pavilion. I lay down myself, though I did not sleep the rest of the night.

And the Sklavinian woman? No one ever asked me about her, the early shifts of guards assuming I had sent her away after I went off duty, the late shifts believing her already gone before they arrived. When you are of no consequence, how easy you are to forget! I found that out for myself, a few years later.

I greeted the replacements for the two guards I had sent away after summoning Myakes, and sent them away, too, clouding matters further. Not that I needed to worry, as things turned out: what did one prisoner, one woman, matter?

The next morning, we began the hunt for Neboulos.

Word of what we had done to the Sklavinian kinglet's stronghold spread rapidly among the barbarians. Some of them did go on hiding in trees and flinging javelins at us when we passed below; some kept shooting arrows at us out of the bushes alongside the tracks we traveled. Here and there, villagers would offer battle when the Roman army came into sight.

But, ever more often as my advance through the Sklavinias continued, the Sklavenoi yielded rather than fighting. Columns of wide-faced, fair-haired men and women went tramping down the forest paths toward the Via Egnatia and, ultimately, toward Anatolia. A few of them, when they found the chance, bolted into the woods, preferring their native wild lawlessness to life within the boundaries of the civilized world. By far the greater number, though, let themselves be resettled without the least difficulty, as reports reaching me in the field made plain.