The Scarlet Banner

by Felix Dahn

CHAPTER XVI

Procopius to Cethegus:

I have witnessed many a battle, many a conflict of Belisarius,--usually from a very safe distance,--but never have I seen so strange an encounter. In this, which decides the fate of the Vandal kingdom, we have lost in all only forty-nine men, but solely picked warriors, and among them eight commanders. Fara, Althias, and Johannes,--all three are wounded. Yet we have not many--perhaps a hundred--wounded men, as the Vandals fought only with the sword. That yields almost as many killed as wounded. Most of our dead and wounded may be credited to the three Asdings, two noblemen in boar helmets, and an apparently crazy monk. Eight hundred Vandal corpses covered the field, by far the larger number of these fell during the flight. We have captured, sound and wounded, about ten thousand men; women and children unnumbered. In our two wings we did not lose a single warrior, except one Hun whom Belisarius was unfortunately compelled to hang. He had stuffed pockets, shoes, hair, and ears with pearls and gems which he picked up in the Vandal camp, especially in the women's tents, and which our Empress has honestly earned.

Our pursuit of the Vandals was checked only by our greed. The fallen and captive Vandals had many ornaments of gold and silver on their persons, their horses, and themselves; our heroes plundered every one before passing on. Our horsemen, who reached the camp first, did not venture, in spite of their longing to pillage, to enter it at once; they thought it impossible that a force so superior in numbers should not defend their own camp, their wives and children.

The King is said to have paused a moment as if stupefied; but when Belisarius with our whole body appeared before the tents, he exclaimed, "The avenger!" and pursued his flight toward Numidia, attended by a few relatives, servants, and faithful Moors. Now all the Vandal warriors who had reached the camp scattered in wild confusion, surrendering their shrieking children, their weeping wives, their rich possessions, without a single sword-stroke; and these men are, or were, Germans! It would be no wonder if Justinian should now try at once to liberate Italy and Spain from the Goths.

Our men dashed after the fugitives. All the rest of the day and the whole moonlight night they slaughtered the Vandals without resistance; they seized women and children by thousands to use them as slaves. Never yet have I beheld so much beauty. Nor have I ever seen such heaps of gold and silver money as in the tents of the King and the Vandal nobles. It is incredible.

Belisarius was tortured after his victory by the most terrible anxiety. For in this camp, filled to overflowing with the most beautiful women, treasures of every description, wine and provisions, the whole army forgot every trace of discipline. Fairly intoxicated with their undreamed of good fortune, they lived solely for the pleasure of the moment; every barrier gave way, every curb broke; they could not satisfy themselves. The demon of Africa, pleasure, seized upon them. They roved, singly and in couples, through the camp and its vicinity, following the track of the fugitives wherever the search for booty or revelry lured them. There was no thought of the enemy, no fear of the General. Those who were still sober, laden with treasure and driving their captives before them, tried to escape to Carthage. Belisarius says that if the Vandals had attacked us again an hour after we took possession of their camp, not a man of us all would have escaped. The victorious army, even his bodyguard, had entirely thrown off his control.

At the gray dawn of morning with the blast of the trumpets he summoned all the warriors; that is, all who were sober. His bodyguard now came hastily in deep shame. Instead of thanks and praise, he gave leaders and men a lecture such as I never before heard from his lips. We have become mere hired soldiers, adventurers, ruffians, fierce and brave, like greedy beasts of prey; well suited for bloody pursuit, like hunting leopards, but not fit to leave the captured game to the hunter or bring it in and fasten it in a cage; we must first have our share of the blood and the food. It is by no means beautiful; yet it is far more enjoyable than philosophy and theology, rhetoric, grammar, and dialectics. But the Vandal War is over, I think. To-morrow we shall doubtless capture the fugitive King.

* * * * *

I always say so. The most weighty decisions hinge upon the most trivial incidents. Or, as I express it when I am in a very poetical mood, the goddess Tyche likes to sport with the destinies of men and nations, as boys toss coins in the air and determine gain and loss by "heads" or "tails."

You, O Cethegus, have condemned my philosophy of the world's history as old wives' croaking. But judge for yourself. A bird's cry, a blind delight in hunting, a shot sent to the wrong mark, and the result is this: the Vandal King escapes when already within the grasp of our fingers; the campaign, which seemed ended, continues, and your friend must spend weeks in an extremely tiresome besieging camp before an extremely unnecessary Moorish mountain village.

Belisarius had committed the pursuit of the fugitive King to his countryman, the Thracian Althias. "I choose you," he said, "because I trust you above all others where swift, tireless action is needed. If you overtake the Vandal before he finds refuge, the war will be over tomorrow; if you permit him to escape, you will give us long-continued severe toil. Choose your own men, but do not take time to breathe by night or day until you seize the tyrant, dead or alive."

Althias blushed like a flattered girl. He took besides his Thracians several of the bodyguard and about a hundred Herulians under Fara. He asked me also to accompany him, less, probably, for the sake of my sword than my counsel. I willingly consented.

And now a flying chase, such as I had never imagined possible, began in the rear of the Vandals. Five days and five nights, almost without a pause, we pursued the fugitives; their hoofmarks and footprints in the sand of the desert were unmistakable. We gained on them more and more, so that on the fifth night we were sure of overtaking and stopping them the next day before they reached the protection of the mountain--Pappua, it is called.

But the capricious goddess did not wish to have Gelimer fall into the hands of Althias. Uliari, one of the Alemanni bodyguards of Belisarius, is a brave, strong man, but reckless, fond of drink like all Germans, and, like nearly all his countrymen, a passionate lover of the chase. He had been repeatedly punished because, while on the march, he pursued every animal that appeared. On the morning of the sixth day, just at sunrise, as we were remounting our horses after a short rest, Uliari saw a big vulture perched on a prickly bush about the height of a man, which rose alone from the desert plain. To seize his bow, snatch an arrow from the quiver, aim, and shoot was the work of a single instant. The cord twanged, the bird flew away, a cry rose. Althias, who had again dashed forward in advance of us all, fell from his horse, wounded in the back of the head under his helmet. Uliari, usually an unerring marksman, had not yet slept off his potations of the night before. Horrified by his deed, he set spurs to his horse and fled to the nearest village to seek sanctuary in its chapel.

But we were all trying to help the dying Althias, though he commanded us by signs to leave him to his fate and continue the pursuit. We could not bring ourselves to do it. Nay, when Fara and I, after our friend had died in our arms, wished to go on; his Thracians demanded with threats that the body should first be buried, otherwise the soul would be condemned to wail around the place until the Day of Judgment. So we dug a grave and interred the dead hero with every honor. These few hours decided Gelimer's escape; we could not make up the lost time. The fugitives reached their goal, the Pappua Mountains on the frontier of Numidia, whose steep, inaccessible peaks everywhere bristle with jagged rocks. The Moors who dwell here are bound to Gelimer by ties of loyalty and gratitude. An ancient city, Medenus, now a mere hamlet of a few huts on the northern crest of the mountain, received him and his train. To storm this narrow antelope path is impossible; a single man can bar the ascent with his shield. The Moors have scornfully rejected an offer of a large reward to deliver up the fugitives. So the watchword is "patience." We must pitch our tents at the foot of the mountain, bar all the outlets, and starve the people into a surrender.

That may occupy a great deal of time. And it is winter; the mountain peaks are often covered in the morning with a light snow, which, it is true, the sun soon melts when he breaks through the clouds. But he does not always break through. On the other hand, mist and rain continually penetrate the camel-skin coverings of our tents.