Count Belisarius

Meanwhile Belisarius gathered the weaponless Guards together and added a thousand able-bodied Thracian peasants to them, taken from among the refugees. He told the officers: 'Yonder is a pleasure park of the Emperor's, surrounded by a palisade of stakes. Lead your men there and let them bring back two stakes each from the palisade. These must serve instead of swords and spears. For shield, collect metal salvers and dishes from private houses.'

Then this unwarlike rabble marched out through the gates, Belisarius riding at the head with his 300 veterans. My mistress and I watched him go, with pride and foreboding. She said softly, disregarding the regiment of civilians who followed unhappily behind, like a train of captives: 'Three hundred was the number of the Greeks at Thermopylae, according to the old song. Not a man of them returned, but their name will live for ever.'

I replied, with a smile, to cheer her: 'Unlucky souls, who had no Belisarius to command them!"

But she: 'Against ten or twenty thousand Huns what are these few worn-out men riding out to meet them in battle, by the orders of the Emperor? You expect a miracle, Eugenius?'

I replied: 'I do, having seen many.'

At the village of Chettos, two miles from Melantias, where the Cham Zabergan was encamped, Belisarius set his men to dig a ditch and pile a rampart; and every man planted one of his two stakes on the rampart to form the stockade, keeping the other to carry as a spear. Belisarius sent his veterans forward to dispose themselves as if they were cavalry pickets of a large, widely extended army. Behind them, on a front of five miles, the infantry burned numerous sentry-fires at night; and by day (for the weather had been rainless) dragged bushes along the roads and raised huge clouds of dust.

On the second night an important message came, carried by a peasant boy. It was from old Simeon again, whom the Huns had brought with them as a guide and interpreter. He reported that Zabergan's forces numbered not much more than 7,000 picked cavalry, the remainder of his force having taken the road to Greece; and that they would attack the camp in three days' time, because this was a lucky day in their Calendar.

'And in mine,' cried Belisarius, 'for it is the birthday of my wife Antonina.'

The camp at Chettos was further strengthened with a barrier of thorn-bushes; ploughshares and harrows were scattered in front of the gates to do the work of caltrop'. The veterans joked together, calling this 'The Pincian Gate', and that 'The Flaminian', and a little hill to the south was 'The Mausoleum of Hadrian'.

Zabergan learned at last that he had no army against him worth the name, but only the aged Belisarius and a few reckless men. He therefore thought it sufficient to send 2,000 Huns, under his brother, to overwhelm the Imperial camp. Their way led through a wide, thick forest, in which there was a narrow defile: this was a notorious haunt of bandits, whose habit it was to lie in wait for prey among the thick bushes that fringed the track. Here Belisarius prepared an ambush. On one side of the track he hid Trajan's troop, on the other Thurimuth's; and behind them, lining the steep sides of the defile, his army of 'spectators', as he called his stake-armed infantry.

Let me not lengthen the talc unnecessarily. The Huns rode into the ambush without a thought of danger. At the trumpet signal Belisarius and Uliaris charged them suddenly with the remaining troop – Andreas, well ahead of the rest, carried the standard. After the lance, the sword: Belisarius fought in the front rank, cutting and thrusting with all his old precision. For a moment the standard was in jeopardy; but Andreas killed a Hun who tried to snatch it from him, plunging a dagger in his belly. Then Trajan and Thurimuth charged from the rear with their troops, while every man of the spectators yelled as fiercely as if this had been a chariot-race, clashing stakes against mock-shields as though impatient for the order to charge. The Bulgars were terrified. They could not use their bows in that narrow place, nor display their skill in cavalry manoeuvre. They were wearing only buff-coats; which made them the less able to resist the furious onslaught of the mail-clad veterans. They gave way suddenly and streamed back in headlong rout.

Belisarius pressed the pursuit, not heeding the arrows that the Huns fired as they fled; his horses could not easily be wounded, because of the metal poitrails he had improvised for them. His own arrows stung more than the Huns'. Four hundred of the enemy were killed, including the brother of Zabcrgan, whom Uliaris had transfixed with his lance in the first charge. The remainder fled back to Melantias, crying: 'Home, brothers, home! The spirits of the dead are upon us – aged men with fiery eyes and white hair streaming!' They gashed their cheeks with their nails in sign of lamentation.