Fall of Empires

Chapter 11

Antioch lay dark and silent and clouds shrouded the moon. The men’s footsteps sounded loud on the cobbles as they made their way through the city. Romanus could feel his hands shaking in anticipation. His fingers were clammy on the hilt of his drawn sword and his breath came in shuddering hisses. He had waited long enough for this moment.

The men had gathered in small groups at the pre-arranged times and locations and then  had made their way to the rallying points. There the carefully hidden weapons had at last been brought out and placed in the hands of those who would take back the city. Most were former members of the garrison or militia who had remained loyal to Romanus following the fall of the city and were eager to restore their honour, having been so easily overcome by the Persians. Their numbers were swelled by the more militant elements of the Blue faction and by clients of Romanus’ wealthy supporters. As word had spread through the city in the last few hours that a plot was underway to bring down vengeance on the heads of the Jews, many more citizens had taken to the streets to be carefully marshalled by Romanus’ supporters. All of this had taken place, just as Romanus had predicted, without arousing the suspicions of the Persians. The Persian garrison had been lulled into a false sense of security by the subservient behaviour of Antioch’s citizens thus far during their occupation. There had been no trouble. Romanus’ allies had made sure of that as much as the men who presumed to now run the city on the Persians’ behalf had done.

The Persians guarding the imperial barracks were lax in their duties and unsuspecting. Most of the thousand-strong garrison would be sleeping, just as his men had been on the night that the city had fallen. No men were stationed on the city walls. After all what was the need? The Persians controlled all of the territory around the city and the war was continuing far away in Egypt and Cappadocia. The nightly street patrols had stopped altogether some weeks back as the Persian commander had ceased to worry over the need to police the city and instead enjoyed the hospitality of his Roman allies. Tonight he and his men would pay dearly for their complacency.

Romanus raised his hand to halt the men behind him. These were the rabble, those with no military training who were of use only against soft targets. Four hundred of his most reliable fighters were making their way towards the imperial quarter. A smaller number would cross the river in small boats to surprise the sentries and prevent the alarm from being raised. Romanus stood in the dark street and waited for the flames that would signal the success of his attack on the barracks to light up the sky.

When it came the eruption of flame against the dark sky was a sight that filled him with savage joy. The assault must have been a complete success. Having cut down the sentries, his men had surrounded and fired the barracks, hurling jars of pitch and flaming torches into the buildings and turning the entire garrison quarters into a terrifying inferno. Any Persians escaping the flames would be cut down by the waiting attackers. More men had been stationed along the river, ready to put any Persians who jumped into the Orontes to the sword if they should make it to the bank.

The night rang with the clashing of steel and the screams of dying men. It was glorious! Now it was the hour of reckoning. He raised his arm once more and gave out an incoherent yell of pent up rage and hate. It was taken up by the mob behind him as he unleashed them to tear through the Jewish quarter. Sounds of violence and destruction broke out all around him as doors were kicked in, men were cut down as they ran to defend their homes and women were dragged from their beds and brutally raped.
Romanus would have liked to stay and enjoy the spectacle but he had more important business. He led his remaining companions towards the house of the merchant Bardas Diogenes where the Persian garrison commander had accepted an offer of more comfortable accommodation within the city. Romanus wished once again that he could have sent more men to the house of Eusebius Psellus, but for now he would content himself with the deaths of Bardas and the Jew Shimon. He vowed to himself however that Eusebius’ day would come.
Arriving outside the large town house, Romanus found the gates in the outer wall barred and the occupants alert to the threat. It was no matter, his men began battering at the gates with a marble pedestal looted from one of the houses in the Jewish quarter and soon they splintered and gave way. The Persian commander stood in the outer courtyard with two companions, their swords drawn. He saw Bardas join them, an ancient looking blade in his hand. Their eyes met and hatred crackled between them.

A dozen of Romanus’ bolder followers rushed at the Persians who left half of them dead on the flagstones and the remainder standing panting and unwilling to press the assault further. The defenders backed slowly towards the house, from within which a gaggle of frightened slaves peered out through an open doorway. One of the Persians was bleeding profusely from a sword cut across his face and he wiped blood from his eyes. The anguish on the Persians’ faces at the fate of their countrymen in the barracks was plain to see. They gathered themselves to spring once more at Romanus’ remaining men but were stopped in their tracks by a volley of arrows loosed by some enterprising members of Romanus’ mob who had succeeded in clambering over the outer wall and onto the roof of an outbuilding that stood at the edge of the courtyard. The Persians slumped lifeless to the ground. Bardas had taken an arrow through his side and had fallen onto his knees, dropping his sword as Romanus approached him.
‘Your Persian friends have failed you, Bardas. Now you understand the price of treason.’

‘Damn you, Romanus.’ Bardas wheezed, coughing up blood from his punctured lung. ‘What evil have you done?’
‘I have cleansed this city of Persians and Jews and restored it to good Roman governance.’

‘And how long do you think that will last?’ Bardas painfully gasped in air. ‘No Roman army will come to your aid from the north. The army of Egypt has been defeated. The Persians are at the gates of Alexandria. What do you think will happen when word of this reaches Khusrow? He will slaughter the people of this city after what you have done.’

‘I doubt Khusrow will spare soldiers for Antioch now. The war is far from here, Bardas.’

‘He will not forget a thousand of his soldiers massacred, Romanus. You are a mad fool. You have destroyed your city. You have killed my son.’ This last word was choked off as Bardas gathered his ebbing strength to launch himself in rage against Romanus and was run through by the former prefect who gave his blade a vicious twist before wrenching it free. Bardas slumped to the floor with a groan. Romanus watched the despair in Bardas’ eyes fade to glassy emptiness and then wiped his blade on the sleeve of the dead merchant’s blood-soaked tunic.

‘Take what you want and then burn the house.’ Romanus’ followers gave a ragged cheer at this order. ‘Cut off the merchant’s head and put it up in the forum next to the Jew’s.’

Let the people see the fate of those who had sought to outwit him.

Across the city the flames from the burning barracks were now dying down. Romanus took a deep breath and sheathed his sword, satisfied with the night’s work. He had restored his honour and taken his revenge upon his enemies. Whatever happened to the city, he would ensure his own survival, he told himself. That was all that mattered in the end.