Raptor (118 page)

“Rex… Rex…” Theodoric reiterated, and pensively. “The title is redundant. My own name, Thiudareikhs, already incorporates the rex.” Zeno’s interpreter had a little trouble translating that speech, and the man looked nervously apprehensive as he translated Theodoric’s next bold question: “And what will I be then, Sebastós—your ally, your subordinate or your mere bondsman?”

For a long moment, the emperor gave Theodoric a hard glare. But then his brick face relaxed and he said genially, “As you remark, titles are ambiguous things, easy and cheap to bestow. And we are both aware that you are the only man who could perform this mission for me. So I shall not equivocate. If you can wrest from Odoacer the peninsula of Italia, you will govern it as my deputy, my vicar, my trusted caretaker, and without meddling from me. Make of it, if you like, the new Land of the Ostrogoths. It is far more fertile, more sightly, more valuable than the lands your people now hold in Moesia. And whatever more you can make of what you conquer—even if you restore the Western Empire in all its onetime power and greatness—it will be in your keeping. You will rule it in my name, but…
you will rule.”

Theodoric took time to consider that. Then he nodded, smiled, bowed his head to the emperor, motioned for the rest of us to do the same and said, “Habái ita swe. Eíthe hoúto naí. Be it so.”

On our way back to Moesia, we traveled together only as far as Hadrianopolis. There Theodoric, Soas, Pitzias and Herduic, each taking with him a portion of our troops, fanned out in different directions from west to east, going off to canvass every least tribe and gau and sibja for new recruits to add to our army. I, with only two soldiers for attendants, kept straight on to Novae, because Theodoric had told me to resume my work on the Gothic history. If, he said, he was going to be monarch of more than he was already, he most certainly wished his people’s archive and his own genealogy to be in proper shape to be read and appreciated by all his contemporary monarchs.

So I retired to my farm and applied myself to putting that history into coherent, finished, written form. And of course I did what is expected of any notable man’s biographer: adding some luster and illustriousness to the subject’s background, however unnecessary that might be. A few historical facts I exaggerated and some others I bent and some others I omitted, and some events that actually had happened far apart in time I butted closer together. Thus I wove into the Gothic history an Amaling lineage that made Theodoric a direct descendant of King Ermanareikhs, the Goths’ equivalent of Alexander the Great, and made Ermanareikhs a direct descendant of the shadowy god-king Gaut.

In so doing, I was struck by a realization that I found both instructive and amusing. To track back through the progenitors of a present-day person means doubling the number of contributory mothers and fathers in each bygone generation. If I could retrace the entire lineage of Theodoric or myself or anyone back, say, to the time of Christ—just fifteen generations ago—that person would have had 32,768 men and women contributing to his bloodline at that date. Even in the unlikely event that someone today could pride himself on being a direct descendant of Jesus Christ himself,
who
were those other 32,767 people? There might have been a notable warrior or sage or priestess here and there among them, but surely such a teeming throng must have included lowly goatherds, base publicans, probably vicious criminals and drooling imbeciles. I decided that any man of this present day who wished to boast of his distinguished ancestry would have to be most carefully selective of
which
ancestors.

Akh, well, I said to myself, smiling, as I inscribed my finished composition on sheets of the finest vellum, in this case I had done my best. And even if future historians might cavil at certain details of my reconstructed annals of the Goths, none could object to what I wrote on the very first page: “Read these runes! They are written in memory of Swanilda, who helped.”

What time I spent at the Novae palace before Theodoric got home, I frequently spent in company with his daughters Arevagni and Thiudagotha, latest offspring of the Amal line. Princess Arevagni had grown into adolescent young-ladyhood, and she had their mother’s plumpness and ruddy coloring. The younger Princess Thiudagotha more resembled their late aunt Amalamena, having snowy skin, pale hair and a slender figure. Another palace resident often in our company was the Rugian Prince Frido, now a sturdy young fellow of about thirteen. Though King Feva had permanently encamped his army around the village of Romula, he had sent Frido to Novae for schooling under the same palace tutors responsible for the education of the two Ostrogoth princesses.

I was a close friend to all those young people, but each of them regarded me rather differently. Though Frido sometimes still addressed me deferentially as “Saio,” he more often treated me as an admired older brother. Arevagni affectionately called me “awilas,” uncle. However, she being at that uncertain and skittish age of budding into early womanhood, Arevagni was as modest and shy in my presence as she was with Frido and every other adult male. Thiudagotha, by contrast, was still a girl-child and, like another I had known in the long ago, she seemed instinctively to regard me more as an aunt than an uncle. I did not demur; after all, I had once, in a manner of speaking,
been
her aunt Amalamena. So Thiudagotha shared with me all her girlish notions and confidences—one of which was that, when she grew up, she hoped to marry “handsome Prince Frido.”

It did not appear to bother any of those young people that each of them saw me differently. But it did sometimes make me feel, as I had felt at other times in my life, a trifle unsure of my
own
identity. On such occasions, I would repair to my farm again, to live for a while and reassure myself of my being the herizogo and marshal Thorn. Or I would go to my town abode, and live for a while equally secure in the identity of the independent lady Veleda.

Theodoric and his officers had to stay afield for quite a long time, because their mission of recruitment was not as simple as in the past, when the mere mention of a war in prospect would have made every able-bodied Ostrogoth rally instantly to the battle standards. Theodoric’s people had now been habitant in these Moesia lands for long enough that many onetime warriors had turned farmers, herders, artisans, merchants—men with fixed domiciles and occupations and wives and families. They were, in the manner of the legendary Cincinnatus, understandably reluctant to be snatched from their plowed furrows and settled ways. So the men who came earliest flocking to Theodoric’s colors came mainly from landless non-Ostrogoth tribes, nomad tribes, even barbarian tribes. Then, of course, when the word got about that this was not just
any
war being planned, but the conquest of all Italia, even the most sedentary men could not resist the prospect of winning loot richer than had ever before been offered them. So the former warriors shed their commonplace obligations and their peacetime lethargy and their clinging womenfolk, to turn warriors again.

Many of the recruits—trained, experienced, practicing and
ready
soldiers—came from the Roman legions, and this was a thing unprecedented. Though Theodoric had agreed that no Roman legion should be employed to assail a brother legion, the fact was that
every
legion outside Italia consisted predominantly of men of Germanic heritage. Among the Danuvius forces under Theodoric’s magistracy were the legions I Italica, VII Claudia and V Alaudae. Of their legionaries, numerous officers and many more rankers went to their superiors to resign their commissions or to take temporary leave or to request detached duty—or they downright deserted—and came over to our Ostrogoth army. Whether they came out of fondness for Theodoric or for the lure of plunder, those professional soldiers were most welcome. Still, it was a sad thing to see, for such a defection from the legions could never have been dreamed of in the great days of the empire.

By the time our army was ready to march, the new additions and the rejoining former warriors had swelled it to some 26,000 men. With King Feva’s 8,000 Rugii, that gave Theodoric a force of foot and horse totaling about 34,000, or more in number than eight regular Roman legions. However, getting that many men ready to march took still more time, so Theodoric had to plunge into the formidable work of preparation as soon as he returned to Novae.

The entire force had to be apportioned and organized into manageable legions, cohorts, centuries, contubernia and turmae, with officers appointed for each level of organization. The newest recruits required training, and men joining after a while away from arms required reacquainting and practice with their weapons. For those men who brought no mounts, horses had to be rounded up and trained for war, some of them even requiring breaking to saddle. Supply wagons had to be procured, and new ones built. New torque-ropes had to be braided and new, green-oak torque-posts cut for the siege catapults, and oxen procured to draw their massive carriages. Armor had to be made for men who had none; in some cases, even boots and basic clothing. Swords and spears and knives had to be forged for men who had none, and many more of those weapons made for spares. Countless new arrows had to be turned and tipped and fletched, and extra bowstrings twisted and whipped. And
everybody
had to be fed, now here in encampment, later on the trail. So those men that did not need war training or practice were set to the work of bringing in the land’s autumn harvest and doing the autumn butchering. When grain had been threshed and winnowed and bagged, when wine and oil and beer had been barreled, when meat had been dried or smoked or salted, Theodoric dispersed those stores as King Feva once had done. Barges took loads of the food and feed and other supplies upriver to deposit them at intervals along what would be our line of march.

None of that bustling activity could be done in secrecy, so of course Odoacer began making preparations of his own, and those could not be kept secret either. Travelers coming out of the west reported to us that troops from all parts of the Italia peninsula were moving north along it. Our military speculatores, sent to spy, reported in more detail—that the numbers of those troops were about equal to ours, and that they were being congregated in one defensive position. As I have told, the invisible dividing line between the Western and the Eastern Empire ran only vaguely through the province of Pannonia, and each empire had forever been trying to bend that border to take in more territory. Odoacer would have had every right to advance from the Italian provinces at least halfway into Pannonia and confront us there. But he was reportedly marshaling his forces much farther away, at the eastern border of Italia’s easternmost province, Venetia, along the river Sontius, which runs from the Alpes Juliani down to the Hadriatic Sea.

On receiving those reports, Theodoric convened a council to discuss the situation. It consisted of himself, his marshals Soas and myself, his generals Ibba, Pitzias and Herduic, his ally King Feva and that king’s son, Frido (who would at last be getting to see a war, as I had long ago promised him).

Theodoric said, “Odoacer could have chosen to engage us in the wilds of Pannonia, far from the doorstep of the Romans’ home ground, and perhaps prevent us from laying waste any of that sacred ground. Instead, he is stoutly barring only the door itself. He might almost be telling me, ‘Theodoric, you may keep and hold the disputed land of Pannonia, if you can. But here at the edge of Venetia, at the frontier of Italiae imperium, here I draw the line.’ “

Herduic said, “It could be greatly to his advantage. An army fighting on its home ground always fights the more fiercely.”

Pitzias said, “It means that we must march more than six hundred Roman miles just to get to him. A tiresome journey.”

“At least,” said Ibba, “we will not have to
fight
our way across all those intervening miles.”

“And if we do not have to fight along the way, the journey should not be too debilitating,” said Soas. “Eighty years ago, the Visigoth Alareikhs made the same march, with forces much less well equipped. He marched from here all the way to the gates of Rome, and broke them down.”

“Ja,” said Theodoric. “In planning our own march, I think we can do no better than to take the same course Alareikhs took. Follow the Danuvius Valley to Singidunum, then go up the river Savus to the city of Sirmium. That is just about exactly halfway to our destination, so we will winter at Sirmium. When we go on, following the Savus through the rest of Pannonia, through Savia and into Noricum Mediterraneum, there is nothing to forbid our sacking and foraging for our sustenance. Toward the headwaters of the Savus, we come to the city of Aemona, where we may get much useful plunder. And from there we have only an easy plain to cross to the river Sontius. We should be at Odoacer’s door by late spring.”

The rest of us nodded and murmured agreement to that plan. Then King Feva spoke for the first time in my hearing, saying in his heavy Rugian accent, “I wish to make an announcement of some importance.”

We all looked at him.

“In the expectation and the conviction that I shall before long be ruling some piece of the once Roman Empire, I have determined to Romanize my outlander name.” He turned up his nose—his notoriously short nose—and looked haughtily down it at us. “Henceforth, I desire to be styled Feletheus.”

Prince Frido winced in embarrassment; the rest of us looked determinedly elsewhere and tried not to snicker. I decided that Feva-Feletheus was as pompously vainglorious as Queen Giso back in Pomore, and I wondered how the two of them had ever produced a son so unassuming but admirable.

“Feletheus it shall be,” Theodoric said good-humoredly. “Now, friends, allies, staunch men all, let us go forth and earn the name of warriors.”

So, on a deliciously crisp day of blue and gold, in the month that by the Goths used to be called Gáiru, the Spear Month, now called September, the first month of the Roman year 1241, the Christian year 488, Theodoric vaulted to the saddle of his Kehailan steed and gave the cry “Atgadjats!” Then the earth fairly trembled to the concerted tread of thousands of boots and hoofs, and the rolling of hundreds of wagon wheels, as our mighty host moved forward, westward, Romeward.