Harry Turtledove - Justinian

One great reason so many of the Sklavenoi surrendered was the impression the liquid fire made on those who escaped from Neboulos's village. The tales they spread among their tribesmen grew in the telling, too, as such tales have a way of doing.

Bardanes Philippikos came up to me of an afternoon, bringing with him a Sklavinian whose long yellow beard had ugly streaks of gray. Bardanes' swarthy face bore an amused expression. "Emperor, this fellow wants to see the dragon we used to burn up Neboulos's wagons," he said.

"Does he?" I did not smile. I made a point of not smiling. "Tell him he may not see it. Tell him God gave that dragon to the Emperor of the Romans, who looses it against his enemies. It is not to be seen by the common run of barbarian, unless he be a foe facing the fire."

Bardanes started to laugh. I looked very fierce. If the Sklavenoi believed what I was saying, they would be more inclined to give up. His expression changed. He translated my words into the nasty grunts the yellow-bearded man used for speech. The Sklavinian gave back a guttural torrent of sound. When he was through, Bardanes said, "He thinks you are some kind of wizard."

"Good," I said. "Tell him that if the Sklavenoi anger me enough, I will turn them all into mice. Tell him to tell some of his friends, and then let them go into the forests to spread what I say to their kinsfolk who still skulk out there." If the foe was superstitious, I would take advantage of it.

Bardanes translated again. The Sklavinian stared at me. His eyes were big and wide and blue and stupid. His hand twisted in some sort of apotropaic pagan gesture, he being too ignorant to make the sign of the holy and life-giving cross. I scowled at him, stuck out my front teeth ahead of my lower lip, and said, "Squeak!"

The barbarian almost wet his trousers. Bardanes looked as if he would burst, but did not let out the laughter he held inside. In Greek, he said to me, "Now I see what you are doing, Emperor: you are playing on his fears."

"Of course I am," I answered, surprised as I had been with Basil that anyone would need such a lesson. Well, at least Bardanes understood it when it came in front of his face. My time at the imperial court, and particularly my time on the throne, had shown me how seldom men grasp the lessons they are offered.

On through the hills and valleys of Thrace and Macedonia we went, cleansing them of Sklavenoi either through their voluntary surrender or by fire and sword. I wondered if I had Mardaites to spare for Thrace, to set up a military district there like those in Anatolia. If I could find the men for a military district, their presence on the land would protect Constantinople against barbarous assault.

No matter where we went, we did not catch up with Neboulos. That grated on me; I was never one to like the ends of a knot left loose. I doubled the reward for his capture, then doubled it again, but he still eluded us. Like water through a clepsydra, time was running out in the campaigning season. And then, as I began to despair of laying hands on the Sklavinian kinglet, he once more sent me envoys.

These men were not so arrogant as his previous ambassadors had been. They wriggled on the ground before me like worms. When at last they rose, their tunics were filthy and covered with leaves and twigs. Their spokesman came straight to the point: "Neboulos yield to you, you let him live?"

I thought it over. I would sooner have taken his head, but leaving him alive and in my hands was better than letting him run loose through the winter, rebuilding strength with no Roman troops around and probably compelling me to fight this campaign all over again. "I shall let him live," I said, not without an inner pang.

"You swear this?" the Sklavinian asked. "Swear by your god, your funny god, god no one can see?"

I crossed myself. "By God, by the holy Mother of God, and by all the saints in heaven, I swear no harm will come to Neboulos if he comes to me of his own free will."

"He come," the Sklavinian said. "He come three days' time. You stay here, no fight, no burn, three days' time?"

I hesitated before answering. The Sklavenoi might have been trying to buy time for some mischief, or even for a full-scale assault on us Romans. If they did try that, though, I was confident they would regret it. And so I said, "Very well. We shall stay here for three days without making any attacks. But if by the end of the third day Neboulos has not yielded himself up to me, there will be such a great burning that any crow flying across the Sklavinias will have to carry its own provisions, for it will find none here."

The Sklavinian wheezed. At first I thought him consumptive, then realized he was stifling laughter. He translated my remark for his comrades, who evidently had no Greek. They laughed out loud. What I had intended as grim threat, they took for a joke. Truly there is no reasoning with barbarians!

I cast a wide net of scouts around the open meadows where we encamped. If the Sklavenoi contemplated assailing us, they would not catch us napping. The wait in one place, I must say, did the army good, and was in particular a boon to our wounded, who no longer had to endure jouncing along over roads more imaginary than real in our supply wagons. Several men the doctors had given up for lost recovered, thanks in great part to the quiet rest they were able to enjoy.

And, on the third day, true to his promise, Neboulos came to our camp. He rode in alone, on a better horse than any other I had seen in the Sklavinias. I received him on a portable throne, surrounded by servants and excubitores, reproducing as best I could in the field the splendor of the great palace of Constantinople.

When he dismounted, one of my grooms took charge of the horse. Chainmail rattled on his shoulders as he walked toward my high seat. He also wore an iron helmet, which, like the mailshirt, looked to have been taken from a Roman soldier. He had a sword on his belt- and almost died under the spears of the excubitores when he drew it. But, instead of attacking me, he stabbed the sword deep into the ground. He took off the helmet and hung it on the sword hilt. Then he undid the mailshirt; his armor clattered about him, to use the Homeric phrase, as he let it fall to the ground.

"Emperor, you are too strong for me," he said in Greek that, like his horse, was better than I had looked to find among the Sklavenoi. "I surrender myself to you."

Standing there before me in plain linen tunic and baggy wool trousers, he cut a surprisingly impressive figure. He was not tall- I overtopped him by half a head- but very wide through the shoulders and narrow in the waist, with arms as thick as a thin man's legs: a warrior to reckon with. For a Sklavinian, he was handsome. True, his face was broad, but his features, though blunt, were regular. His eyes were wide and candid and a very bright blue; on a woman, they would have been devastating. He trimmed his buttery hair and beard more closely than most of his countrymen. Looking at him, one might have imagined he was a quarter of the way along the line toward becoming a Roman. He was older than I, but not old: thirty, thirty-five at the most.

"You would have done better- for yourself and for your people- if you had surrendered before," I said.

Those massive shoulders rolled in a shrug. "I thought I could beat you. Till now, I never met any man I could not beat. But you have too many horsemen in iron shirts, and that fire you throw"- it was not a grimace of fear, but one of anger, frustration-"I cannot match it, and my men will not stand against it. And so- you have me."

"And what shall I do with you?" I mused. I had promised not to kill him, and I keep my promises, as both my friends and my enemies have reason to know. I had not promised, however, not to lock him in a tiny chamber somewhere, feeding him bread and water till he eventually had the good grace to expire.