Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

He sent for me later and questioned me closely. I felt, although I know not how to describe it, an affinity for the man, youth though he was. He told me he was just returned from Persia, from the Court of King Shapur III, where he had been the personal ambassador of Theodosius himself On his return to Constantinople he had been dispatched immediately to form some intelligent appraisal of the rebel Magnus and his

modus operandi,

and to divine a method of defeating him.

You may imagine my astonishment as I listened to him speak, although I must tell you it never crossed my mind to doubt him. The reverence in which he was held was all too apparent. The Proconsul himself deferred to this young man!

In short, Flavius Stilicho thanked me for his life and offered me manumission

—

for all my men — if I would serve with him and give him my allegiance. He assured me I could do so with honour, for he would require me neither to divulge information concerning Magnus's plans nor to bear arms against the soldiers among whom I had fought my way across Gaul. Father, I did not even hesitate before accepting his offer. I knew, somewhere in my soul, that I was born to fight beside this Flavius Stilicho. And I had decided long before then that I was unhappy in the ranks of Magnus Maximus. I chose to be Stilicho's man, and my soldiers all chose to follow me.

Since that day, I have not looked backward. Offered the chance to leave and wait for Stilicho elsewhere, far from Magnus, I chose to remain with him. Three months later we were in Asia Minor, and for the next nine months we went soldiering wherever Stilicho was needed. Then, three months ago, Theodosius promoted him to Commander of the Imperial Household Troops, and we have been in Constantinople ever since. I suspect we will not stay much longer. Stilicho lives on horseback and detests the confinement of a city, and besides, there are too many battles to be fought throughout the Empire.

My rank is now that of prefect. I am a cavalryman, and a cavalry man by conviction. But that is another story, and I am presently composing another letter

—

this one is already too long

—

in which I will tell you of the developments in Stilicho's mind, and in my own.

Farewell, Father.

My love to Aunt Luceiia, and to the tribe of small Varri who, I am sure, run all of your lives. I shall send this in care of Pontius Aulus Plautus, Publius Varrus's friend in Colchester, by military courier. He will see that it reaches you from there.

Your dutiful son, Picus

I read that first letter from Picus four times without pause, from start to finish, when Cay eventually passed it on to me. I had been awaiting it impatiently for a long time, schooling myself to be calm. Cay had received no fewer than fourteen letters in all, none of them short and none of them showing, externally, any sign of order, process or continuity. Picus stood revealed, by the end of all of them, as a highly conscientious and able correspondent, but an unthinking one in that he seldom gave any indication of the dates on which he was writing. In consequence, his father had to read all of his letters in random order as they came to hand, and only after that could he begin to place them in some kind of temporal progression.

He then extended to me the privilege of reading them as a series of consecutive observations. And they were fascinating. The first of them, of course, was probably the most moving of them all, emotionally. But the second amazed me, recalling to my mind instantly a comment, by our friend Alaric, to the effect that God has willed it that no great idea should ever occur to one man alone. When the truly great developments in mankind's progress appear, they always seem to appear simultaneously in many lands, promulgated by many intelligent and visionary people.

Greetings, Father,

Already, having completed the first step, it seems this writing task grows easier. I suppose that is due to the difficulties I had with my first attempt, when the array of subjects to refer to and deal with seemed endless. This letter, by comparison, is much simpler; it has but one major component.

Father, I wish to write to you of horses

—

horses, cavalry and the way in which a single man's perception of the importance of both may alter history. The man in question is, of course, Flavius Stilicho

—

nothing I write to you in future will be untouched by his influence, even should he die tomorrow, which the gods forbid!

I know you are aware of the debacle at Adrianople some years ago, in 376. That was the year I first joined the Eagles. Irrespective, however, of your own personal judgment on that affair, I have to regurgitate it here, since it has a direct bearing upon the entire tenor of this letter.

The officially sanctioned story of that fiasco, as I am sure you will recall, is that the Imperator Valens, co-Emperor at the time with Valentinian,

was careless and silly enough to march a consular army of eight legions

—

40,000 men!

—

through hostile territory without taking even the most elementary precautions. His army then, in extended line of march along a lakeside, was surprised by a migrating tribe of Ostrogoths who, being mounted on horseback for their journeying, seized the moment and the day by charging at Valens's host in an undisciplined but deadly, densely packed mob. Their concerted attack, completely unexpected, rolled Valens's extended legions up like a parchment scroll before they had time even to think of deploying into line of battle.

It was a fluke, we are told, one of those unforeseen and unforeseeable developments that, in war, must simply be accepted and accommodated.

Flavius Stilicho will have none of that. He asserts

—

and none who listen can argue against his thesis or his logic

—

that it is inconceivable that any haphazard attack by an undisciplined rabble, no matter how huge their numbers or how densely packed their mass, could totally demoralize and destroy an entire Roman consular army of 40,000 men, killing all of them, including an Emperor and his entire staff.

That such a thing happened is incontrovertible. How it happened, how it

could

happen, is a matter open to the wildest conjecture. How it is

likely

to have happened, however, is a conjecture that one might analyse quite pragmatically, and Stilicho has succinct ideas and opinions on that topic. From those ideas, and his deliberations concerning them, he has drawn a number of conclusions, and upon those conclusions he has constructed an amazing calendar of future events. Being privy to his thinking, and without any disloyalty or fear of being censured, I have decided to apprise you of Stilicho's thoughts, knowing that they will interest you both generally and specifically, and knowing also that the effort of detailing them for you will assist me personally in assimilating them.

His deliberations and his findings, stated categorically, follow, and I must inform you, regretfully, that the language and the clarity of thought are Stilicho's alone:

i

. Valens and his army, although culpable of dereliction by default, could not collectively have shown the degree of mindless, suicidal ineptitude so clearly alleged in the official version of the incident. Valens had superb generals, legates and distinguished senior officers attached to his staff. Even had Valens been patently insane on the level of a Nero or a Caligula, his commanders would still have retained their military competence and responsibility for the army.