Free Flame of the West by David Pilling Page A

dust from long hours of riding without pause.
       “Sir, Narses has arrived in Italy with seven thousand men. He landed at Ancona and made camp outside the city. I – we – suspect that he and John the Sanguinary are in league together.”
       Belisarius was no stranger to court intrigues and sudden vicissitudes of fortune, but this took him aback. His long, pale features turned an alarming shade of grey, and for a moment he swayed on his feet, like a tree buffeted by storms.
       Procopius hastened forward with a chair. Like a man in a dream, Belisarius slowly lowered himself into it. Outside, the bells of the smaller churches and basilicas inside the city started to toll, summoning the faithful to prayer.
       “ Betrayed,” he muttered, clawing weakly at a map of central Italy, “the Emperor has betrayed me. In the very moment of victory, when I have the Goths on the run, he sends the eunuch to slide a knife into my back.”
       He placed his elbow on the table and rested his forehead in the palm of his hand. His jaw clenched. For a moment I thought he might start weeping. An embarrassed silence fell inside the nave of the basilica. The assembled officers and subalterns studiously avoided each other’s eyes.
       “John holds Rimini,” Belisarius said slowly, staring at the table, “by now, the Goths will have laid siege. He is shut up there, and cannot get out. So we may forget him for the present. Narses is at Ancona, or was. You know nothing of his plans?”
       “No, sir,” I replied, “I briefly spoke with him, but he said nothing of importance.”
       Hildiger might have corrected me, but chose to remain silent. Belisarius looked like a man on the verge of breaking. Being informed that his Emperor – the Emperor he had served so loyally and successfully, for so many years, constantly fighting and winning against the odds – had indeed lost faith in him, and sent Narses to poison his glory, might have tipped him over the edge.
       Belisarius gathered himself. “So Narses has come to challenge me, has he?” he cried, “to frustrate my plans and feed the suspicions of the Emperor. Well, I shall go to meet him, and make him welcome in Italy. With a helmet on my head, a sword in my hand, and fifteen thousand men at my back!”
   He no longer sounded tired, and his voice rose to a shout.
       “ Italy has witnessed battles between Roman armies before, and shall do so again, if Justinian’s favourite dares to stand against me. Let Narses throw in his lot with Vitiges. Let my enemies join against me. I shall chastise them all!”
       Seized with new energy, Belisarius ordered his army to break camp and marched that same day. I had never seen him driven by such anger before. He pushed his troops mercilessly, force-marching them north-east, right across the plains of central Italy. Some fifty miles lay between us and Ancona, and Belisarius was determined to snare the eunuch before he could slip away. 
       The Goths, meanwhile, were left to reduce Rimini at their leisure, and make Ravenna virtually impregnable. I thought it insane that the Romans should allow their enemy such a respite, but it was ever thus: the history of the Roman Empire, and the Republic before it, is littered with destructive civil wars. Julius Caesar himself had to defeat Pompey and other rivals before he made himself dictator of Rome.
       Belisarius sent a troop of Huns ahead to look for Narses and his army. They returned with news that Narses had raised his camp at Ancona, and marched south along the coast to the town of Fermo.
       “You will have to run faster, little rabbit,” Belisarius remarked grimly, “if you mean to elude me. Fermo, is it? Does his fleet await him there?”
       No, came the reply, there were no ships in the harbour. Belisarius looked puzzled, but immediately despatched orders for the army to turn east, straight towards Fermo.
       Fifteen thousand horse and foot hurried across