"He has hastened forward, in order to be the first to conduct the pursuit as soon as the time of truce has expired."
"Surely you have taken care----"
"Do not doubt it! He would have marched with his Isaurians alone, but I--that is, Liberius at my order--gave him Alboin and the Longobardians as companions, and you know----"
"Yes," said Narses, with a smile, "my wolves will not lose sight of him."
"But how long shall he----"
"As long as he is necessary to me; not an hour longer. So the young and royal wonder-worker lies upon his shield! Now may Justinian rightly call himself 'Gothicus,' and again sleep peacefully. But truly--he will never more sleep peacefully--that disappointed widower----"
So the two generals, Narses and Teja, were of one opinion with regard to the Gothic kingdom. It was lost. The flower of the Goths had fallen at Capræ and Taginæ. Totila had placed there five-and-twenty thousand men; not even a thousand had escaped. The two wings of the army had also suffered great loss; and so King Teja commenced his retreat to the south with scarcely twenty thousand men.
He was urged to the greatest speed by the calls for help sent by the little army under Duke Guntharis and Earl Grippa, who were hard pressed by the greater force of the Byzantines under the command of Armatus and Dorotheos, who had landed between Rome and Neapolis.
And besides this, Teja's retreat was also precipitated because of the terrible manner in which, when the truce was ended, he was pursued by Narses.
While the Longobardians and Cethegus pursued the fugitives without pause, Narses slowly followed with the main army, spreading to the right and left his two formidable wings, which extended in the south-west far beyond the Sub-urbicarian Tuscany to the Tyrrhenian sea, and in the north-east through Picenum to the Ionian Gulf, extinguishing as they passed from north to south and from west to east, every trace of the Goths behind them.