Harry Turtledove - Justinian

"You've beaten the Arabs before," I told him. "Surely, since God is on the side of us Christians, you can win another victory." Leontios's large head bobbed up and down. Relying on his ability to duplicate the successes he had enjoyed in the past, I sent him away and summoned Neboulos.

"We fight soon, Emperor?" the Sklavinian chieftain asked. "I hear these Arabs, they come into your land like you come into my Sklavinia."

Ignoring the comparison, I said, "Yes, we will fight them. The brother of their ruler commands this army of theirs. I want to capture him and treat him as he deserves for breaking the treaty."

"You treat him as bad as Sklavenoi whose hands you cut off?" Neboulos said.

"Worse," I promised, at which he looked suitably impressed. I should have paid more attention to the tenor of the questions he was asking. Looking back, I see that. Unfortunately for the Roman Empire, at the time I did not.

We moved east from Sebastopolis the next day. We did not go as far as I would have liked, the Sklavenoi, who marched on foot, compelling the cavalry from the military districts to slow down so that the two parts of the army would not separate from each other.

Leontios rode up to me, fuming. "Look at those disgraceful barbarians," he said, pointing to the men of the special army.

"You have known for some time they are foot soldiers, have you not?" I asked, annoyed at the tone he took with me.

"Yes, Emperor," he said, but still without the proper submissiveness. He pointed again and, as was his wont, repeated himself: "Look at them. Disgraceful."

Look I did. The Sklavenoi were not marching in neat, well-ordered ranks and files. They ambled along in groups that might have been made up of friends or relatives or men who came from the same wretched little village. As they walked, they sang and joked and passed skins of wine back and forth. Their weapons stuck up at all different angles. They certainly lacked the disciplined appearance of the regiment of excubitores accompanying me.

But, however unaesthetic their progress might have been to the eye of the military purist- such as Leontios was giving every indication of being- they were moving along every bit as fast as the imperial guards. I pointed this out to Leontios. "Well, so they are, Emperor," he said. "And if anything goes wrong, which God forbid, you'll see them run a lot faster than the excubitores, too."

"What do you know of the Sklavenoi?" I said angrily. "You never fought against them- your station has always been here, in the east. I was the one who beat them, Leontios. It wasn't lack of courage that caused their defeat. We had liquid fire, and they did not. And they were broken into clans and tribes that did not support each other."

"Why should they support each other now, then?" he replied, not knowing when to give up the argument. "They're still broken up into clans and tribes, not so?"

"All of which have come under the leadership of Neboulos." I put ice in my voice. "General, your objections have been noted. You shall now carry on with the campaign and defeat the Arabs."

"Yes, Emperor," Leontios said tonelessly, and rode away.

When we encamped for the night, the disorder among the men of the special army was enough to distress me, too. I sent for Neboulos. He waved my concerns aside, saying, "Who cares how we camp? We fight good." Since that was what I had told Leontios, I let myself be persuaded.

Leontios sent scouts out a good distance ahead on our breaking camp the next morning. Well before noon, some of their number came galloping back, having encountered the outriders of the army Abimelekh's brother commanded. Horns rang out and banners waved, ordering my force to deploy from marching column to line of battle.

With so many thousands of men and horses involved, that maneuver is more complex than any of the dances concerning which the fifth-sixth synod registered its disapproval. Being practiced at the drill, the cavalry from the military districts went through their evolutions smoothly enough. The men of the special army performed less well. Not only were Neboulos and their officers shouting at them to hurry, but every Roman captain who could spare a moment screamed for them to move faster, lest they give not only themselves but also the entire army over to destruction.

By the grace of God, we had taken our position- perhaps fifteen to eighteen miles east of Sebastopolis- when the followers of the false prophet came into sight. Their scouts and ours exchanged arrows, our men raising a cheer when one of theirs pitched from the saddle and groaning if one of our own men fell.

Before long, the whole of the army the prince Mouamet led grew visible from the cloud of dust it had raised. The Arabs raised a great shout: "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" Chills ran up my spine. I had heard that war cry as a small boy, standing on the seawall of Constantinople beside my father when the deniers of Christ came to besiege the imperial city. We beat them then. I expected us to beat them again.

"Christ with us! The Virgin with us!" the men from the military districts shouted back at the Arabs. They also shouted my name, loud and long: "Justinian!" The Sklavenoi were shouting, too, a great bellowing like the howls of wolves and the roars of lions. I sent one of the excubitores running over to Neboulos to ask what their war cries meant.

When he came back, he was grinning, and reported, "Emperor, the barbarian says what they're shouting is, 'We'll make soup out of your bones.'\a160"

"That," I said, "is an excellent shout."

As the scout had told me, the Arabs did carry, in place of their usual banners, a rolled-up sheet of parchment or papyrus impaled on a spear. Their standard-bearer rode out ahead of their army and called out in good Greek: "We have not broken what we and you Romans agreed to with oaths." He waved the spear. "God will judge the truth, and take vengeance on those who abandon it."

My army waited to hear what I would do. Pointing to the Arab, I did some shouting of my own: "A pound of gold to the man who brings me that lying standard!" My voice carried, as it has a way of doing when I am angry. Up and down the line, a score of horsemen from the military districts spurred their mounts toward the man holding the spear on high.

Followers of the false prophet galloped out to meet the Roman cavalry. A small battle developed then and there, ahead of the larger one to come. Neither the horsemen from the military districts nor the Arabs drew back by so much as the breadth of a finger. Men tumbled from their horses, struck by arrow and sword and spear. To my anger and disappointment, the Arabs' standard-bearer kept on upholding the spear alleged to bear on it the treaty they alleged I had broken.

Fighting soon became general all along the line. From my position not far behind the special army, I soon lost sight of the ends of the left and right wings, tens of thousands of horses kicking up so much dust from the dry ground across which they galloped as to screen those distant formations from my view as if fogbanks lay between me and them. In front of me, Neboulos was screeching orders like a man possessed. What he was saying I do not know for certain, as he used his own idiom rather than Greek. The Sklavenoi he led shot their envenomed arrows at the followers of the false prophet, and hurled great volleys of javelins when the foe drew close enough to give those some hope of hitting.

Had the Arabs pushed close enough to try handstrokes, the men of the special army would have been at a disadvantage, they having most of them only daggers, not swords, with which to defend their persons. But the torrents of missiles the Sklavenoi loosed against them prevented their making that discovery for themselves.