Vengeance Read Online Free Page B

needed to breathe deep to contain his mirth as he watched the equine struggles: having been taught to ride almost as soon as he could walk, he sat easily in his saddle, even on an energetic beast a mite oversized for a lad his age and build. His horse was a stallion to grow into, an animal that pawed at the ground and loved nothing more than to run, requiring a firm hand to keep it in check, never more than when, out on a ride, Flavius turned for home and the lure of food took hold.
    Now he hoped to test him in battle and with Ohannes in his wake, holding the reins tight, he went in the direction taken by the imperial cohort, easy to see by the rising smoke from burning farms now highin the sky. Outside the city they came across one of those farmers and his family, trundling along as fast as they could go, a cart bearing their possessions, having abandoned their home to head for what would now be a very crowded fortress.
    Being mounted and wearing Roman armour they asked him for information he did not possess; his assurances that they had little about which to worry when it came to survival failed to gain much traction.
    ‘Fighting men will have gathered all over the district. Once all available forces are gathered the barbarians will have a choice to flee or be slaughtered.’
    ‘Rumour is they are in their thousands.’
    Tempted to scoff – the Sklaveni could not muster such numbers – Flavius had to rein that in as much as he was needing to do with his skittish horse. ‘At worst we must hold them until aid comes. You should be safe to return to your farm.’
    The answer was a glare, before the farmer smacked the rump of his plough horse to move it and his family on, the children taking their cue from their sire to add their own baleful look. There was a moment when he considered telling them who he was and to whom he was related but that died as he recalled his age; that would be against him, even if he did feel his advice to be sound.
    Armed men would now be rushing to his father’s aid from all over the district, the
limitanei
– those able-bodied men who could be quickly mustered to fight alongside him – necessary given he led a unit under-strength for the length of border he was tasked to maintain when serious trouble threatened. If imperial taxation was high, none of the proceeds seemed to be employed in paying for the soldiers needed to secure the borders, which left many ofthe men who had served in the armies of the empire to seek private employment.
    It was from these that support would come; a decent-sized local farm would run to a quartet of fighters, some bigger landowners to as many as ten. If it sounded good in theory it was less so in practice; Decimus Belisarius had to rely heavily, despite his reluctance to do so, on the men mustered by the greatest local magnate, a senator whose landholdings and wealth dwarfed those of anyone else in the borderlands.
    If Flavius had not been at his studies he would have heard his father cursing the very name of Senuthius Vicinus as soon as he was informed of the raid; not that the son was unaware of the antagonism between them or the reasons for it, their differences – from religious dogma to conduct – being a frequent parental refrain.
    Given his numerical weakness Belisarius senior was adamant that only by peaceful cooperation could he hope to effectively fulfil his duties. He worked assiduously to maintain relations with the tribal chieftains across the Danube and by doing so he hoped not only that they would restrain their more excitable young bloods, but that he would also be forewarned of any incursions into their lands by the tribes to the north.
    Senuthius was the exact opposite; too often he acted like a man poking a hornet’s nest with a stick and with no regard for the consequences. He provoked the Sklaveni by sending raiders across the river: livestock his men would merely butcher, crops they would burn; it was slaves Senuthius sought, fit young