The Songs of Slaves (33 page)

             
“You are supposed to be fighting for Rome.”

             
“Ah, but which Rome are we to fight for?” Valia said.
“Honorius’s Rome?
Constantine the Usurper’s Rome?
Eudoxia’s Rome?
Why not fight for our Rome?”

             
“But we are within the
Imperium
now. I underst
and that there is a civil war of
some kind going on, but how can Arastan attack Roman citizens in the name of Rome? You speak of needing secrecy and going through a hostile land. If you are the armies of Rome then why would you fear your fellow Romans?”

             
“Gods above!”
Henric exclaimed.

             
“What sort of Britannic rock did you crawl out from under?” Gaiseric said, laughing.

             
“Innocence is a gift,” Valia said, lifting his hand. “But let me ease you of its burden. Should we be surprised, friends, that wherever he was they told him so little of us? Honestly, Connor, it makes me feel better about you; because I think that if they were going to send a spy to us it would not be as one left
like
a child in the woods.”

XV

“When my father was just a boy, we Goths lived far away from here,” Valia began. “Our tribes had long been settled in the hills, plains, and woodlands across the Danube. In those days, the Gothic tribes were of one accord – well, more or less. We were proud and strong. Our lands were secure, and our flocks of sheep and cattle large. Our ways were solid and orderly, and had been in place for generation upon generation.”

             
The fire crackled and danced as the young nobleman’s voice took on a subtly chanting quality. Valia had removed his mail and untied his hair, giving him the appearance more of a shaman than a warrior. They had all finished their spits of stolen pork and their shares of hard bread, and were now passing a flagon of wine to refill their drinking horns. Connor could hear the hum of conversations and laughter from the other nearby campfires as the wanderers settled from their day on the road.

             
“The
Imperium
– Rome – was our neighbor; and as neighbors will, we made war on each other from time to time. For war is the way of man, and contention
is as food and drink to the Goth, they say. But the story of our relations with Rome back then was more of trade then of war. And whether at arms or in trade we always respected them.”

Connor raised an eyebrow at this; for though Titus had not provided him with a thorough knowledge of history, he had more than once mentioned Gothic raids and invasions going back hundreds of years. It was about a hundred and fifty years ago, if he remembered his facts, that Goths had left the
Augustulus
Dacius dead in a swamp. 

“We thought they respected us,” Valia continued. “But we should have known better. But over the years, as our wool and wood and craftwork spread throughout Rome, Rome’s thought and religion spread through our lands. In imitation of our wiser brother we learned to write our language, and eventually embraced the Christian god – the god of our respected foe Constantine. The real Constantine, that is. And so those times were, and who knows what might have happened if everything had not so suddenly changed.

             
“But change they did. And change came on a pale horse. The Huns rode out of the East. We had fought them before, but in the time of my father they were suddenly so numerous – a massive confederation of savages, drawing other restless tribes unto themselves. They defeated the mighty horsemen, the Alans, and used their surviving warriors against us. They conquered a great number of the Ostrogothic tribes – our own brethren
–
and heating old enmities they forced them to fight us as well. Before we even realized it, we were surrounded and embroiled in dark war. And such a war it was!
A war of terror and indiscriminate death.
The Huns care not for age, or man or woman. They care not for honor. They only care for violence, dominion, and gain. If a brave man comes against them they will shoot him from afar rather than match iron with him. And if you can clash swords with one, another will catch you ‘round the neck with his lasso and drag you to death with his horse. How can even the mighty stand against men such as these, who murder rather than fight; especially when they come in such great number, hell-bent on the destruction of everything except for what they would take for themselves?”

             
Connor glanced across the fire at Tuldin. The Hun seemed impassive, showing neither displeasure nor pride at these allegations thrown at the feet of his people. Even Connor needed no lengthy introduction to the Huns. Enough slaves had been all too eager to tell him the stories – whether through their own experience, or far more often through the hearsay of others. The Huns were said to be from far away – from the wild lands at the edge of the world
–
though many Romans held to the story that they were actually
the spawn of Gothic witches and
the demons they conjured. It was said that on the first day of their birth the male children were disfigured with knives, and that their faces were bound to increase their fearsome appearance. As he looked at Tuldin it seemed that this much at least was true – long scars ran from his mouth across his cheeks and from his forehead across his nose; and while Connor had already observed that the battle scars, swollen ears, and broken noses common amongst these Visigoth warriors made comeliness unusual in this camp, Tuldin was nothing short of ugly. His bowlegged walk attested to a life spent mostly in the saddle; and of course Connor had already witnessed his uncanny speed and skill with the bow – a bow of many layers of
wood and horn that had such power as to be supposedly unequalled amongst that of any other race in the world. The stories spoke of the hardness of the Huns, who came from a place so barren that they lived on raw meat and wore clothes made from the skins of field mice and rats. But what had always stood out in the stories was their cruelty. They were reputedly a people who loved not only murder but torture, and who took delight not merely in victory but in annihilation. Yet, here one of their numbers sat quietly, around the same fire with these men whom were telling a tale of their lasting enmity. What was happening to this world?

             
“In time the Huns managed to divide us,” Valia continued. “I must say, the strength and resolve of the Goths faltered. One great chief was dead, slain by his own hand rather than face the terror one more day. Another managed to flee with his tribe up into the wild Carpathians, in the Forest Between as that cold land is called; but few could follow him there. The rest of us were trapped, with the savages and their allies closing in. It seemed that we only had one option. We appealed to Rome. Not for military aid
–
for everyone knew they would not commit to anything that was not their own
–
but for asylum. Even as they had used the fierce
Sarmatians as a guard against us (before we defeated them) we appealed to the
Augustulus
Valens in Constantinople to use us as a guard against the Huns. Only let us cross the Danube, and settle some ground in Thrace. We asked only for some land, and some provisions to keep us alive until we could settle in and grow our own food. In exchange we promised service of arms and loyalty to the
Imperium
. We reasoned that facing the Huns with nothing but the river at our back we were doomed; but if we could face the Huns as the first line of defense of the Roman
Imperium
then we could not fail. And so we were fooled by our own belief.

             
“Valens consented. He was even enthusiastic about the plan. Perhaps his intentions were pure. We will never know. In my father’s youth my people crossed over the mighty river. We built up a great refugee camp of tents in the driving Thracian dust and wind. Content to rape our lands, the Huns followed no further for a time.

“Valens was quick to collect on his side of the bargain: almost immediately he conscripted many of the young strong men for his armies. They marched
away in his service, many never be seen again. The battlefields of Rome were hungry for fresh blood to spill for the glory of the
Imperium
. The rest of my people waited in their miserable squalor, weeping for the loss of their lands, their loved ones, and their pride, and waiting for Valens to make good on his bargain. They we
re waiting for food to arrive.”

             
Valia filled his drinking horn again. He spat into the fire. Hedrick passed a sharpening stone to Connor, who took the cue. He drew
Death Drinker
and began working out the new notches in the blade. The blade gently rang and vibrated as he drew the stone along the cutting edges, making the
spatha
seem alive in his hand. Connor admired the swirling patterns in the iron as it caught the firelight. He had never owned a sword, though Titus had spent a great deal of t
ime teaching him to use one. N
ow he had this one – so simple and sturdy and perfect. But
Death Drinker
could not be its name. It had been
Death Drinker
for Valia.

“For me you
r
name is
Archangel
– my avenger, my protector,” Connor thought silently as he sharpened his weapon.

“What did arrive was not food – not enough food anyway,” Valia continued. “What did arrive were bureaucrats
–
the scourge of Rome, rotten, greedy, glutted bureaucrats. Such men of high breeding but low mind as warranted the assignment of tending starving refugees in the Thracian desert came to meet out our aid. With them came well-fed, well-armed soldiers to contain us. As I said, perhaps Valens intended to keep his word; but what ensued in his name was hell on earth. The food supply was sparse. The wheat was moldy and rotten. At first they meted out some flesh; but the bureaucrats – with no immediate supervision higher than themselves – decided this could fetch them a better profit in the markets of the Thracian cities. They only passed on to us what was unfit for market, and before long they were sending us dog carcasses to eat. Soon, even this generosity was too much for them. They began demanding from us payment for the aid. Despite the pact of honor, despite the fact that our men were spilling their blood so that such men could live in prosperity and safety, they demanded our treasure. And when all of our treasure was gone they demanded to have whatever we might have left. As our desperation grew, their men took their paymen
t from
our women;
and as the seasons passed and they received their ample portion of this defilement, they demanded our children.
One Gothic child for every worm-eaten dog carcass.
And so in my father’s youth my people had the choice
of watching their child starve,
or giving him up into slavery to have enough
rancid flesh to keep his siblings
alive another week.
The slave markets of Thrace and Byzantium filled with the cries of Gothic children; the officials Valens had placed over us to protect us grew rich and fat on food meant for us as they violated our mothers and sisters; our men lay dead in far off places, not even knowing what a fate had befallen their families; and all the while – over those five long years – a great wail raised to Heaven, as my people pleaded for justice
and deliverance
.”

             
Connor nodded his head. It was a disgusting story, but one he could well relate to. How could Rome be the mother of order and the keeper of wisdom, but the seedbed of such abuse and evil? 

             
“Peoples have ended this way. Who knows how many times? But this was not to be our fate. The Goths were not done. Far, far from it! As sickness and death crept in, many others would have lost their nerve,
abandoned their hope for living, until they were eventually assimilated into the most miserable classes of the
Imperium
– all pride and legacy lost forever. But in my people the Fire still smoldered. Who knows what finally fanned those embers into flame? There are a number of stories, but perhaps no one account is actually needed. The important thing is that all at once, one day, when my father was just entering into manhood, the flames erupted. And they erupted into a conflagration!”    

             
“Yes they did!” Henric echoed, raising his dinking horn. The others followed suit, with Connor close behind, and they drank with studied solemnity.

             
“But what happened?” Connor asked.

             
“When we first settled,” Valia continued “even as our grandfathers and fathers marched away in Roman file, the filthy administrators had their soldiers go through our camps and round up our weapons. This happened with regularity over the years, at the order of Constantinople itself; for the Romans would use our strength but could not have an armed host in their midst. You fleece a sheep, not a wolf, as they say. Well,
they got many of our weapons, and then they made us so weak with hunger and despair that they thought we could not have used them anyway. But many of us managed to hide our swords and daggers. When the Romans were close to finding them, we would bribe them with our women. Only too eager to shirk their tedious duty in exchange for satisfying their lusts, they would readily look the other way after a good romp. The sword is the soul of the Goth, and so through this stratagem many of our weapons were saved.”