Harry Turtledove - Justinian

"All those matters, and others as well, do need regulation," I said. "I agree."

He gaped at me in glad surprise. "You do?"

"I said so. Twice, now." I put a hand on his shoulder. "Begin getting ready for the synod at once. Send out letters to bishops within the Roman Empire, to those under the control of the Arabs, and to those in the western lands the blond German barbarians rule. Set the date for the synod as, hmm, two years from now. That will give all the clerics wishing to attend time enough to come to Constantinople, and will give us plenty of time to prepare for their arrival."

He bowed. "Emperor, you are generous beyond what we deserve."

"Nonsense. Without the church, how shall we be saved?" After a moment, I went on, "And I want as many bishops from the western lands as possible to come. There were only a few"- I particularly remembered Arculf of Rhemoulakion-"at the holy ecumenical synod, which I suppose is why they would not admit their Pope Honorius was anathematized at the synod. I want no such, ah, misunderstanding after the synod to come."

"Quite right, Emperor," the ecumenical patriarch said. "The pretensions of the bishop of Rome grow tedious at times. Peter may have founded their church, but Andrew founded ours, and he too was an apostle. And Rome, these days, is a contemptible ruin of a town, as your grandfather discovered when he traveled to the west, while Constantinople is and shall always be the grandest city in Christendom. Let the ignorant western bishops see our magnificence and taste of our learning and return to their own lands better and wiser men."

"They will be as good as they will be," I replied. "Let them return with correct doctrine, and spread it through those barbarous regions."

"Yes, Emperor. That, too," he said.

Everyone who talked with Justinian around that time did his best to talk him out of resettling the Cypriots then and there. In all the hundreds of years of the Roman Empire, I don't think there's ever been such a man for resettling people as Justinian was. If you lived somewhere and your ancestors had lived there for the past five hundred years, to him that was plenty of reason all by itself to move you someplace else.

You know what it puts me in mind of, Brother Elpidios? It puts me in mind of the Assyrians in the Holy Scriptures, who resettled the ten tribes of Hebrews so well, they've never been heard from since. Ah, now I've gone and surprised you- I hear it in your voice. Yes, I've paid attention when they read the Holy Scriptures here. Why shouldn't I? I'm an old blind man; being read to is all I'm good for.

Anyway, this time we managed to keep him from shipping the Cypriots to Anatolia. He would sometimes listen to reason, and with everyone telling him to wait, to be patient, where reason lay was pretty plain this time.

Sometimes, of course, he wouldn't listen to anyone or anything at all. Life got\a160… interesting then, for him and for the whole Roman Empire.

The next spring, I crossed over into Anatolia to see how the Sklavenoi I had resettled were getting along, and how Neboulos was progressing with the creation of the so-called special army. Most of the Sklavenoi had been transferred to points along the Gulf of Nikomedeia, the easternmost projection of the Sea of Marmara. Had I given more detailed orders to the men bringing them into Romania, they would have been widely scattered across Anatolia. As things were, though, their keepers had taken them along the military road to the eastern frontier, from Chalcedon across from the imperial city to Libyssa and then to Nikomedeia, and there, perhaps forty miles from Constantinople, had turned back toward the capital, leaving the Sklavenoi to fend for themselves.

That the sturdy barbarians had done. As I traveled the military road myself, I saw a good many thatch-roofed huts like those the Sklavenoi had made in the villages I had captured the year before in Thrace and Macedonia. The men and women working in the fields were fair-haired Sklavenoi, the sun making their yellow locks shine like gold. Although not long in their new homes, they had wasted no time in buckling down: sensibly so, for, had they dawdled, they would soon have begun to starve.

From Nikomedeia, the military road runs east. Another, lesser, road goes south from the fortified town toward Nikaia, site of the very first holy ecumenical synod. It leaves the Gulf of Nikomedeia at the harbor of Eribolos, ten miles south of Nikomedeia. I did not follow the road all the way to Nikaia, but went west along the southern shore of the gulf about halfway to the seaside town of Prainetos, for more Sklavenoi, Neboulos among them, had been resettled thereabouts.

Only a track hardly deserving to be called a road ran from Eribolos to Prainetos; most travelers from one to the other would have gone by sea. Sometimes there were cliffs right at the water's edge, with more high ground lying farther inland. But here, as on the flatter terrain north of the gulf, Sklavinian farmers were out in the fields, tending their crops and minding their flocks and herds.

As he had before he surrendered to me, Neboulos made his home in a village larger and wealthier than the mean Sklavinian mean. When, accompanied by my excubitores, I rode up to that village, I saw fair-haired men wearing leather jerkins practicing with javelins in a field close by. Neboulos himself stood among them. I could not follow his barbarous dialect, but he seemed to be congratulating the warriors who threw well and upbraiding those who did not.

A broad, sincere smile was on his face as he left the Sklavenoi and approached me. "Have a care, Emperor," Myakes muttered. "Anybody in charge of soldiers who looks that cheerful, there's something wrong with him."

"Ah, Emperor!" Neboulos called. "You come to see my special army- your special army? I have them go through their paces for you."

"That is what I came to see," I told him, wondering if he was not too eager to show off the barbarians. How convenient that he should have had a unit of them exercising just when I arrived. Was it too convenient? Word of my coming might have got there ahead of me, giving him the chance to show me what he wanted me to see.

Nothing I could do about that, though. Being shown what others want him to see is a bane of the Emperor's existence. Everything is always prettied up, everyone on his best behavior. And so I watched perhaps a thousand Sklavenoi march and countermarch, throw javelins, and shoot arrows at bales of hay. They did well enough to look to be a useful addition to the Roman army.

"Are these the only men with whom you've been working?" I asked Neboulos. "How many men do you propose having in the special army?"

"These are not only men, no," Neboulos answered. "How many men do you want in special army? You resettled lot of Sklavenoi in this country. If you want twenty thousand men, I give you that many."

"If you can give me twenty thousand men…" I felt weak and dizzy with desire, as if, like David spying Bathsheba, I had suddenly and unexpectedly come upon a beautiful woman in her nakedness. But my lust was for martial conquest, not carnal. With twenty thousand fierce Sklavenoi joining the cavalry from the military districts, I might be able to seize Damascus, the Arabs' capital. I might even be able to take back from the followers of the false prophet the holy city of Jerusalem, as my great-great-grandfather Herakleios had regained it from the Persians.

"I put twenty thousand men in your army, Emperor," Neboulos promised. "Maybe thirty thousand, even. We march where you march, we fight where you fight."

That promise he ended up keeping, too. My own euphoria did not last long, for I was used to men exaggerating what they could do in hope of gaining advantage they did not deserve. I would have been satisfied had he ended up giving me half of what he claimed, but, as I say, he, unlike so many, did fulfill his promise. That, unfortunately, proved to make matters worse rather than better… but, as I do too often, with such comments I get ahead of myself.