The Songs of Slaves (63 page)

Even now, in the late afternoon, thousands of them were marshaled in arms and armor on the fields before the walls. But there were still no siege engines, still no attack on the massive fortifications. Connor looked at the barriers that kept the Romans starving but untouchable. He would not want to be one of the men to try to scale a flimsy ladder to those battlements and guardhouses – even if there were not to be armed men trying to resist him. The defenders of Rome would shoot them with arrows, cast stones at them, and pour boiling oil and flaming naphtha to melt their skin and burn out their eyes. They would pierce them with blades as they made their way over the ledge. But really, it would be easy enough for them to just push the bending, rattling ladders off; let their would be attackers fall to the hard earth far below, mangling limbs, breaking skulls and spilling brains. Connor had heard many tales of siege warfare, and he had no desire to throw his life into the blind churning of Tyche’s Wheel which was that gruesome maelstrom of violence.

“Amazing, isn’t it,” Rulf said, cutting into his thoughts. “I felt the same way the first time I saw it.”

Connor nodded, suddenly wondering how long he had been staring at the city. Fingal twitched his ear impatiently,
then
vibrated the muscles of his right rear flank to ward off a fly. Connor nudged him forward again, and Rulf followed.

“There may be a million people in the city,” Rulf continued. “Wealth has been accumulating here for ages. Soon we are going to take that away from them. We’ll see how they like being on the bottom for a while.”

Connor knew that just two years ago the Visigoths and their allies had lost innocent family members while these Romans had either participated or at least widely approved. He knew all the abuses and atrocities that had been committed and understood the need for revenge. He had sin
ce made peace with Montevarius’
memory, but not the system that had enslaved him and the others. And yet, the way Rulf talked of revenge made it sound disgusting to him. A way lay ahead for both peoples – one that would preserve not just the greatness of these structural and
cultural masterpieces, but restore the dignity of the Visigoths as well. Why could no one find a way to make it work?

“I thought the Romans paid us all their wealth in tribute two winters ago,” Connor said instead.

Rulf snickered. “What a man thinks he can pay and what can be taken from him are two different things.”

They followed the wide road into the Visigoth camp, crossing several guard posts which Rulf passed through with a wave and a word. They came first to the familiar scene of row upon row of low tents of oil cloth or hide; then gradually they came within the rows of commandeered houses and buildings. The pathways were tight and the buildings over-crowded, as homes meant for one family now held three or more. Expansive as the town outside the walls was, Alaric’s forces had swelled and swelled again as it was joined by Goths from all over the
Imperium
and beyond; as well as hundreds or even thousands of run-away slaves and even
bacaudae
. Food was coming in from the seized ports, and foraging parties scoured ever farther into the ravaged countryside. Provisions would be
scarce, Connor knew; but the Visigoths were doing far better than the Romans, who were already starving. The streets stank of excrement and refuse, as the encamped army – the encamped nation – found it to be too much trouble to effectively deal with their own waste. Conditions were ripe for an outbreak of plague, Connor thought. In the rambling treatises that usually accompanied Titus’ language lessons, Connor had learned about running camps in such a way that sanitation and health were preserved. Goths like Valia also knew the principles, but there were now just too many people and they had been here just too long. Dervel had been a healer – as all holy men in Eire were expected to be to one degree or another – and had taught Connor that disease comes from contact with – or even proximity to
–
the unclean. Here the unclean was quickly becoming inescapable. If nothing changed, soon people would be dying on both sides of the walls.

Rulf led on almost to the city walls – denizens that appeared to have once been coveted properties of a vanished wealthy merchant class. Connor ignored the grand but predictable houses and trampled gardens, for he could not take his eyes off of the perimeter that protected the city. The first half of the wall sloped
steeply upward, and then became vertical. Every city entrance was flanked by U-shaped towers that jutted forward, ensuring that any force that assaulted the gates would be subject to almost three hundred sixty degrees of missile attack. Connor had seen walls like this at Ravenna, but never this close. As he gazed at them he felt fear grow within him. And if the walls struck fear in the hearts of his kind, he reasoned, then they must also put some confidence in the hearts of the protected – though those people be reduced by plague and their armor rattle loosely on the famine-stricken bodies.

“C
onnor?”

Gaiseric approached from the door frame of one of the unkempt mansions. He was dressed in mail and his light brown hair was tied back for war; but all this was belied by his ready grin. Two other warriors – one whom Connor recognized and one whom he did not – accompanied him as the tall Goth ca
me out to meet them. Connor rei
ned in his horse and dismounted. As one of the men took the reins, Connor met Gaiseric’s embrace.

“We thought we’d seen the last of you,” Gaiseric said.

“I told you I would be back.”

“Aye, but you didn’t look like you meant it,” Gaiseric laughed. “What happened to you? You look like hell.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“Well, come inside. Everyone will be pleased, Valia most of all. Where’s that pretty girl of yours?”

“Gone,” Connor answered.

“Really?
Then they will be less pleased. I hadn’t foreseen that – it seemed to me that she was really taking to you.”

“I hadn’t foreseen it either,” Connor said. “But I should have.”

“Women,” Rulf said.

The young man had no idea what they were talking about, and Connor doubted the lad had much experience to formulate such aphorisms – but it was what all men say when they are confronted with the mysteries of their own failings, and so the youth applied it where he thought it was needed.

“Thank you for guiding me here,” Connor said. “Give your captain my best.”

“Actually, sir, I was wondering if I may accompany you further,” Rulf said, stepping forward.

“We have some five hundred men,” Gaiseric told Rulf, smiling when he saw Connor’s surprise to this news. “I doubt Lord Valia has room for more.”

“I just want to meet him, sir,” Rulf said. “And then maybe just ask him.”

Gaiseric shrugged,
then
led Connor inside.

Connor expected the shade of the house to offer some relief from the heat, but the air within was stuffy and smelled much as the rest of the camp did. Though long the home of rich and fashionable owners, the mosaic floors were in disrepair, the frescoes defaced by drunken hands, the great bath near the courtyard dry, and almost all the
furniture long since burned to fuel
winter nights. The house was full of men at arms, a few sharpening weapons or repairing their kits, but most engaging in the prevailing activity of all armies everywhere – waiting. Mercifully, Gaiseric led Connor
through the oppressive mansion-turned-mead hall out onto a covered porch.

Valia stood up so quickly he spilled his wine. He crossed the tiled floor in three bounding steps.

“Connor!
I was beginning to fear that you were dead.”

From the look in Valia’s eyes that was not exactly what he had thought, but it was a more charitable thing to say.

“I am
back
, if you will have my sword at your side, my Lord,” Connor said.

“You don’t need to ask that, my brother. We have missed you – though I will say that you have missed nothing.
Just waiting, waiting and more waiting.”

“I hear that you have five hundred men.”

“Five hundred thirty, and growing every day,” Valia said. “Since the tale of what happened at Ravenna has become a popular story amongst our people I have had many wanting to join my
ala
.
I have many more than I am used to; but that could all change in the
coming days. I’ve decided to see what happens here before I make any decisions. Still, I miss the days when it was just the few of us – the two of you, and Henric and Tuldin and men I knew not just by name but by character.”

Gaiseric nodded his agreement.

“Where have you been?” Valia asked. “Here – sit down. Have some wine.”

Connor accepted the wine, but just held the cup.

“I’ve been in Umbria,” Connor said. “I took the woman,
Lucia
, to her family. Hopefully she will be safe there.”

Valia nodded. “That is no easy thing.”

“Perhaps,” Gaiseric offered. “But if it had to happen, now is the time. She’s a beautiful woman, but a few days from now you can leave Rome with ten like her.”

Connor forced a smile to acknowledge his friend’s attempt to cheer him up. Somehow Gaiseric had missed the concept that having a woman fall in love
with you and carrying one off from a fallen city was not the same thing.

“You were gone some time,” Valia intervened.

“I needed to think,” Connor said – though it would have been more accurate to say that he had needed time to stop thinking.

“Well, in all your wanderings and wonderings you must have discovered that Constantine has the passes through the Alps blocked to us, that Ravenna is indeed done with talks, that Sarus has disappeared, and that Heraclian has cut off all of Italia from the Egyptian grain shipments.”

“We are trapped here,” Connor summarized Valia’s assessment. “There is only one road ahead.”

“And we are all on it together,” Valia said, a smile further creasing his scarred face.

“We are,” Connor said. “But it was not just this that brought me back. I suppose I could have hid somewhere until it all blew over. It is sometimes easier for one wolf to escape than a pack. I came back because I need to see where this road leads. I have been walking
it for so long. I want to see if I am walking it for a reason.”

Valia and Gaiseric laughed at Connor’s gravity.

“We’ve missed you, brother!” Valia said, raising his cup. “Let’s all see if we are walking this path for a reason.”   

XXX

             
Connor ran at the head of his column of men, keeping close to the walls of the houses and gardens. He led the way through the narrow alleys, picking his way by feel in the darkness. He could hear the other columns of warriors moving like water towards the meeting place. Despite the attempted stealth shields struck fences, spear butts bounced on cobblestones, and some of the men breathed loudly at the set pace. Connor waited to hear the sound of alarm from the massive walls of Rome – or worse yet, the hiss of arrows and
ballista
missiles. But so far the mustering of nearly a thousand shock troops through the night-blackened outer town had gone unnoticed. High atop the ancient walls, the sentries of the eleven hundred and thirty six year old city seemed to believe that it was just another night in a siege characterized by inaction.

             
Connor motioned for the column of twenty warriors to stop as he reached the appointed spot. He could see Valia through the darkness, his group huddled under the eaves of a large house. Before them – just a hundred meters away – stood the imperious Salarian
Gates, huge doors of iron, oak, and bronze that barred the north eastern entry to the Eternal City.

             
His night vision sharpened by his fear and hot, pounding blood, he spied Gaiseric’s group, and then Henric’s, and then others. Connor wished that he were with them now, wished that he could rely in the assurance of their swords at his side, as he had so many other times. All waited in silence; with the camp fires of the Visigoths extinguished and the sounds of the myriad of nomads there muted, as if the whole camp slept.  At least Connor would have his friends at his side when the attack was sounded. But how that attack was to proceed was still a mystery – they did not so much as carry a siege ladder. Alaric had come to Valia and a few other selected warlords just a few hours before. They were to take their combined force of roughly a thousand warriors and assemble at the Salarian Gate. They were to wait for a signal, and then secure the path for the others. Alaric had never said what the signal was. Connor guessed that they would all know it when they saw it.

             
Connor purposefully slowed his breathing as he squatted in the dark. The August air was hot, despite the
late hour. Rain clouds teased them with the hope of respite. Connor supposed that he ought to be thankful that these blocked the moon and the stars, but it only unnerved him further – as if the heavens themselves were shielding their light from what would happen tonight, as if the gods hid their face from this evil. Connor tightened his grip on his shield. He adjusted his grasp on the shaft of his spear, only then becoming aware that he had been clutching it so tightly that his fingertips had fallen asleep. He wore his mail, but still had not been able to afford a new helmet or find an old one to fit him properly.
Archangel
was on his back, where he could draw it more readily in the shield wall. His
pugio
was across the front of his body, where he could easily reach it with either hand when the fighting got tight.