Daphne & Sebastian: Part Seven (The Battle of Ravenna)

a novella of war, politics, theater, sports, and religion

“Empress Theodora and Members of Her Court” (met open access)

Trokandas Arrives at Ravenna

Before dawn Trokandas’s forces arranged themselves into a formation that wrapped around the southern and eastern portions of Ravenna’s walls and cut the city off from the nearby port of Classe to the southeast. Far to the right, in the direction of Ravenna’s port and at a point from which the enemy was unlikely to appear, Trokandas stationed numerous mercenaries to protect the women and children in the camp.

“The walls are strong,” Trokandas said to his officers, “but we will starve every last idolater to death if that is God’s will.”

Before sunrise the camp was abuzz with preparations. All night men had been working by torchlight to assemble the artillery, most of which had been transported here in multiple pieces, and by the time the sun was rising Trokandas could see yet more siege towers, catapults, battering rams, and ballistae. Infantry took up the center of Trokandas’s line while hundreds of heavily armored Byzantine cavalry were perched on either side. Trokandas knew that before his army took the city, they would likely need to defeat Sebastian on the field outside the walls, but he was not worried about this and took few preparations for such a battle. His army was three times the size as it had been the last time he saw Sebastian and Sebastian’s men would surely be discouraged at the sight of Trokandas’s forces.

“A tiny little army compared to mine,” he liked to say to his officers.

Trokandas wasn’t going to give Ravenna any more time to muster defenses. He could see the men scampering about on the walls in the distance.

The sky was pink and purple when his lines advanced within catapult-range and Trokandas’s catapults were launching enormous projectiles at Ravenna’s walls. Some projectiles were smashing into the wall’s base; others were reaching behind the wall and landing on the city streets; some exploded onto the tops of the ramparts and killed the men taking position along the parapets. But even as screaming could be heard from inside the city, the walls hardly seemed damaged after these first volleys. Another set of projectiles was launched, including enormous arrows from ballistae and stone projectiles from the catapults; this time many of them were on fire. Trokandas watched with satisfaction as thick smoke rose up from behind the walls.

At the same time, Ravenna’s defenders took positions at large crossbows stationed in Ravenna’s towers and fired these directly at the catapults. Trokandas saw one of these missiles — its tip on fire — make a direct hit against one of his catapults, which caught aflame. Trokandas didn’t mind: with his siege equipment and sheer numbers, it was only a matter of time before he took Ravenna and returned in glory to the emperor.

Daphne Overcoming Her Fears

When Daphne and Lucille woke up in her bed the next morning after just a few hours of restless sleep, Daphne could hear the cries and screams filling the city outside. She knew then that the attack had begun. She remembered the last and only time she’d been in a city when it was sacked, that time also by Byzantine forces, and her whole body was full of terror. She had barely survived.

“Daphne,” Lucille said, shaking her. “What do we do?”

Daphne lay petrified in Lucille’s arms. We stay here in this room, some cowardly part of her was saying, and we pray to the gods and goddesses for Sebastian’s quick return.

Emilio was right, Daphne thought despondently, I am a stupid woman.

The killing of the bishops, at the time an act of self-preservation, felt now like the most foolish thing she’d ever orchestrated. Never had she felt so terrible about herself as when all her old acting friends had abandoned her the night before. She felt a need to redeem herself somehow. If Sebastian arrived in time to save them, she needed a story to tell him other than the one Emilio was sure to deliver. Emilio would tell Sebastian that Daphne had simply tried to stage a play, and suddenly the whole concept of staging a play in the middle of a battle struck her for what it was in Emilio’s eyes: unrealistic at best, foolish at worst, and nothing more than self-gratifying most of all.

In a moment of existential crisis, she had been obsessed with re-launching her acting career. I’m a vain and conceited woman, she thought, and she cursed herself.

“Daphne!” Lucille asked again, shaking her lover as the boom of siege projectiles pounding into the city continued. “What do we do?”

“It seems stupid to ask me,” Daphne said, enraged with herself.

Lucille said nothing.

They both knew the painful truth: had they not spread the rumors that whipped the city mob into the frenzy that killed the bishops, then Trokandas would simply be peacefully entering the city right now instead of besieging it.

“I’m such an idiot,” Daphne said, groaning and pulling the covers over her head.

“Don’t say that,” Lucille said. “Had we not gotten those bishops killed, they might have had you tried and executed as a witch.” She paused. “Daphne, what do we do?”

Daphne pulled the covers down and got out of the bed. She rushed to the window which overlooked the palace square. Women and children were congregated and screaming, too terrified to remain in the tenement buildings that could easily collapse. Some men were rushing in the direction of the armory, positioned closer to the walls; other men sat terrified with their families. In the distance she saw smoke rising from structures closer to the action. And when she looked into the sky beyond the walls, she saw arrows and other projectiles, volleying back and forth between the two sides.

“We have to have faith that Sebastian will arrive and save us,” Lucille suddenly said, desperate for her friend to wake up and do something.

“We’re going to die,” Daphne said despondently.

“No we aren’t,” Lucille said confidently. “Daph, you can do this. What do we do?”

Daphne had never been so afraid as she was right then. But facing the destruction consuming the city, Daphne also knew that Lucille was right: she needed to be strong; she needed to come up with something. She was unwilling to simply sit in the palace hiding when her city, the place she had called home for years, was facing such certain destruction. Emilio had taken away her play, but as buildings near the walls began to catch fire, and as projectiles rained down from the sky before killing men, women, and children, her artistic needs felt like a joke. Still, Daphne dug deep inside of herself and pulled out the courage that always arrived eventually when she was scared.

Daphne in the Streets

Daphne felt the impulse to be outside with the same icon she had held up before the crowd in the square days before. She had seen the power such icons had over the people, and she was confident that they could use these tools to instill more confidence in the defenders. Daphne and Lucille threw on some cloaks and then each took an icon with the face of Christ, Daphne’s the same as the one she had already used. Then they rushed toward the exits of the palace, ignoring the guards who tried to convince them not to leave.

They each rushed to the palace stables. Daphne took her horse, a wedding gift from Sebastian, and she waived away the guards, instinctively deferential toward her as Sebastian’s wife and effective city regent, so that Lucille could take a spare. When one guard insisted that Lucille’s horse and even Daphne’s would be needed for battle, Daphne held the icon in his face.

“We are going to ride through the city with these,” she told the guard. “We are going to remind the people of the stakes: their whole religion could be wiped out by the end of the day. I suggest,” Daphne continued confidently, “that you take your place on the ramparts.”

The guard, who had been held back by the cowardice which gave him all the excuses he needed to stand here protecting the horses, obeyed her and began running toward the front walls where the main action was. Soon enough the Isaurians would be taking battering rams to Ravenna’s gates and the front line would require every man available.

Daphne rode with Lucille into the courtyard, staring down at men, women, and children who were screaming, crying, and embracing in terror near the fountain.

“Ravenna!” Daphne boomed into the palace square. Projectiles continued to pound into buildings further away. With one hand on the reigns, she held up the dark face of Jesus. The people remembered her and listened. “These invaders,” Daphne continued, “seek to destroy Christ himself. If they succeed there will never be another icon in Ravenna again. They will pillage all the art from the cathedrals and they will melt down every precious icon. They’ll use the gold to hire more mercenaries and they’ll continue to destroy Christianity itself. Men, don’t be cowards! Defend your Faith! Report to the armory!”

At this many men, clothed like peasants, obeyed her and after hurried goodbyes with their families began rushing away in the direction of the armory. Daphne and Lucille rode their horses slowly through the streets, skillfully holding up their icons and somehow managing to suppress their own fears in the face of the constant boom of projectiles into the city. Everywhere they went they proclaimed the same message, and soon other women were copying them. These women cried out to God to save Ravenna. Soon everywhere Daphne and Lucille went, there were women walking around with their icons while reprimanding the men who were still fearfully staying back from the action. Yet more men began rushing toward the armory.

“Remember your families, men!” Daphne cried out as she rode her horse down streets filled with panicked people. “If you die, you die to save your families. Think of your small defenseless children! Dwell upon what will happen to your daughters and sons!” And as she spoke, she thought of what could happen to her; she struggled to keep bottling up the fears she had from the violence she had seen and been subjected to during the Byzantine destruction of her hometown in northern Italy. All the while she and Lucille were holding their icons in the air, their horses walking beneath them through the chaotic streets of Ravenna.

Sebastian Arrives

Sebastian’s forces took battle formation on a hill just to the south of Trokandas’s forces, so that Trokandas’s forces were wedged between Ravenna itself and Sebastian’s army. And Sebastian’s forces were strong: the center was composed of infantry while on either side were hundreds of heavily armored cavalry. Another few hundred heavily armored cavalry lingered behind Sebastian’s frontlines on the rearside of the hill. Trokandas had placed a small detachment on this hill to protect the position but Sebastian’s army had easily overrun these forces while Trokandas was focused on attacking Ravenna itself. Now, as Sebastian looked out upon the field, he could see enormous heaps of smoke rising from behind Ravenna’s walls.

Lucas, Sebastian’s second-in-command, glanced across the field and turned to his commander. Each man was on horseback. Sebastian would be in charge of the cavalry on the right; Lucas would lead the cavalry on the left. They would attempt to surround Trokandas’s army: Lucas’s cavalary would charge from the left; Sebastian’s would charge from the right; and the infantry would charge up the center.

“The Franks will arrive soon?” Lucas asked, clearly worried.

“The Franks will arrive,” Sebastian said. “Yes. They will approach from the north.”

But there was no sign of any Franks and they had been due shortly after dawn. For a moment Sebastian imagined the Frankish leader harboring concealed intentions: let the Byzantines kill each other over pictures and then mop up the survivors. And this was something the Franks would certainly be capable of doing: like the Byzantines, their forces contained large numbers of heavy cavalry who could arrive at the end of the battle and charge into the exhausted survivors of both sides. And then there was still the possibility they could try to trick Sebastian’s Byzantines into letting them into Ravenna, then take the city for themselves.

“I’m not so sure we should trust them, Lord,” Lucas said, his face colored with concern.

Sebastian knew why Lucas was afraid: the same reason why Sebastian was afraid. This was not a fear for himself but a fear for others: for the people who would die if they failed. Each man had a wife behind those city walls, and Lucas had several children.

“We should not wait to attack,” Lucas said. “We should attack immediately.”

Sebastian hesitated. “If the Franks arrive soon, the battle is won immediately,” Sebastian said.

“The Franks aren’t coming,” Lucas said. “I don’t trust them, Lord.”

“Our scouts estimate that we are outnumbered at least three to one by the Isaurians,” said Sebastian.

“We have no choice,” Lucas countered. “They’ll break through the gates while we sit here.”

“You’re probably right,” Sebastian conceded.

Trokandas’s army was enormous; Sebastian clearly recognized the banners of the mercenary forces the man must have hired while scorching the monasteries of Italy. But Sebastian had fought many battles against enemies with superior numbers, and he knew that his own bravery as a commander as well as the courage of his own men could generate a charge that would make Trokandas’s entire army flee. That, Sebastian thought, was what it took to win in these sorts of battles: no questioning, just bravely charging into the enemy like he had against the Lombards.

Sebsastian thought of Daphne in the city and what would happen to her if he failed to stop Trokandas. He didn’t know about Daphne’s involvement in what had happened in the city, but it hardly mattered: anyone with the slightest power was going to be held responsible for the murder of those stupid bishops.

Then Lucas and Sebastian saw an enormous quantity of Trokandas’s infantry rushing toward the gates. In their center was one massive battering ram and above them flew projectiles, back and forth between Ravenna and the besiegers. Some groups of men held ladders. Sebastian watched numerous Isaurian infantrymen collapse dead as they rushed toward the walls; arrows and enormous missiles from large crossbows on the ramparts were picking them off as they charged. Most of them were dead by the time the main groups reached the gate with the battering ram and ladders.

At that point, soldiers above the gate poured oil down onto the battering ram and then dropped burning projectiles from the ramparts and onto the Isaurian infantry. The battering ram, the ladders, and several of the humans burst into flames; then a projectile from a catapult smashed into the defenders on the rampart. A piece of a parapet broke off, fell to the ground, and smashed an Isaurian soldier’s head open. It seemed as though every infantryman Trokandas had sent on this charge was now dead.

“This is what he’s known for,” Sebastian commented. “The men are disposable to him.”

But the battering ram had been only one of many siege devices possessed by Trokandas. As Sebastian gazed upon the field packed with Trokandas’s heavy cavalrymen and infantry, he saw that numerous siege towers had already been assembled. Meanwhile catapults continued launching burning projectiles into the city while large crossbows fired missiles at the walls. Those walls, which Sebastian had imagined as impregnable, were now losing little bits and pieces that crumbled down from them after each projectile hit. For a moment Sebastian could almost feel those walls crumbling in his hands, and he thought desperately of Daphne.

“They’re just going to keep charging,” said Lucas. “It’s only a matter of time before they break through and then our wives will be killed. My children will be killed. Lord, we must attack. They just had a failed charge. They’ll be scared when we hit them.”

“They will be,” Sebastian said. “Let’s take advantage of their fear.”

As his eyes scanned the scene, Sebastian finally found Trokandas. The Commander was turned back, facing him, and at Trokandas’s command a whole line of Isaurian and mercenary forces turned around to do battle with Sebastian.

Sebastian gave the orders to advance. The infantry charged first, up the middle in the shape of a wedge so that the depth and weight of the middle column of infantry could break through the line by sheer force of manpower, and on either side of this wedge swooped down hundreds of heavily armored cavalry. The cavalry would strike from the right and left while the infantry attempted to break the lines in the middle. If all went to plan, Trokandas’s forces would be surrounded. If they were scared enough after their failed charge, they would flee.

Sebastian himself rode with the cavalry to the right. Trokandas turned a few catapults around and these began launching fiery projectiles through the air to strike at Sebastian’s reserves. Sebastian saw Trokandas there on the right side, staring off-and-on at him while barking orders from his horse. Men fell dead around Sebastian as arrows struck, but in some cases the arrows bounced off the men’s heavy armor. As they charged Sebastian and his fellow cavalrymen fired arrows into the enemy forces, striking dead numerous infantry and cavalrymen. Sebastian aimed for Trokandas, missed, and then lost sight of his enemy in the madness. More arrows came flying in from behind Sebastian, many of these finding some Isaurian or mercenary to kill.

Once the cavalry drew closer to Trokandas’s lines, they slipped away their composite bows and pulled up enormous lances which they aimed directly at the cavalry against which they were about to collide: Trokandas, also a Byzantine commander, had more or less the same formation as Sebastian, his flanks protected by heavy cavalry that could help to corral and surround an opposing enemy. These cavalry were also now attempting to charge at Sebastian’s approaching cavalry, but it was too late: the charge had no time to accelerate and they may as well have been stationary. Once Sebastian and his men hit this group of Isaurian cavalry, the force of their enormous lances easily knocked them clear off their horses.

Unfortunately for Trokandas, Sebastian had pulled the corralling maneuver first, and he had done so at the very moment when Trokandas’s men were suffering the psychological effects of a failed charge that left hundreds of them dead.

With Daphne’s safety in his mind to summon up his courage, Sebastian and his cavalry pounded into the right side of Trokanda’s infantry, slaying any remaining Isaurian cavalrymen in their path and forcing the enemy infantry to move toward the center where Sebastian’s infantry struck. Meanwhile Lucas’s cavalry were simultaneously striking from the side opposite Sebastian.

Sebastian dropped the lance and pulled out his sword. He began slashing and maiming the horses and men around him as he rushed through Isaurian lines. Blood sprayed all over Sebastian when he sliced his sword clean through one man’s neck so that the man’s head tilted back. The air was saturated with the sounds of groaning men dying on the ground and swords clashing into one another. Sebastian’s forces continued to press against the Isaurians, corralling them from right, left, and front, and as Sebastian’s cavalry killed men on the right and left, Sebastian saw how his infantrymen broke through the center of the enemy’s lines.

Isaurian infantry were now running away toward the city where they were struck down by arrows flying from the ramparts into Trokandas’s forces.

Despite a numerical advantage, Trokandas’s main forces were now almost completely surrounded, and the men were being pressed into one another by the four-sided onslaught of Lucas, Sebastian, the infantrymen in the center, and the dead end of Ravenna’s gates. At certain spots in the center, the Isaurians were so surrounded that they had squeezed into groups so tight that no man could even lift his sword, and all the while Sebastian’s forces went on killing.

“Go for the siege equipment!” Sebastian shouted, and he quickly led a group of men on horseback toward the catapults. They cut down the men operating these and they set fire not only to many of the catapults but also to the wooden siege towers. Normally he would like to capture these, but he couldn’t be sure yet that the battle was won and, more importantly, he couldn’t leave Daphne’s safety to chance.

When Sebastian briefly looked up toward the walls after setting fire to a catapult, he saw her: Daphne, standing on the ramparts, holding up an icon, shouting at the men to be brave. His heart filled with fear for her and he screamed: “go back to the palace!” But she was watching him. She was smiling at him.

Daphne might not have heard him, but she saw him there on the battlefield, and after they made brief eye contact Sebastian led his cavalrymen backwards toward the center of the Isaurian line. This whole group of Isaurian infantry was now completely surrounded by Sebastian’s cavalry from behind, Lucas’s cavalry from the left, and Sebastian’s infantry from multiple sides. Sebastian killed as many enemies as possible as he charged his heavily armored horse into the screaming bodies. Some tried to flee to the right only to be struck down by archers or pursuing cavalry.

At this point, an enormous band of mercenaries positioned away from the main action broke ranks and fled. They were followed by another group of mercenaries until a whole stampede of hired soldiers was fleeing northward toward the supposed position of the Franks. Another group of mercenaries abandoned their posts at Trokandas’s camp where the women and children were. All the mercenaries were now fleeing.

Now Sebastian gave the order: “Save the siege equipment!”

Trokandas, Sebastian thought, had been far too confident.

All around him, Isaurian soldiers were being slaughtered. A half-dozen siege towers, numerous catapults, and even large crossbows would now fall into Sebastian’s hands. The men who weren’t being slaughtered were attempting to flee only to be chopped dead by Sebastian’s cavalry or infantry.

Sebastian looked everywhere for Trokandas: finally he saw the coward in the distance, rushing away from the battlefield on horseback. Behind him there were women and children also fleeing, all of them on foot; the Isaurian camp of women and children, located half a mile away from the right flank, had been abandoned. Presumably the pope had also been there: Sebastian imagined he must be with Trokandas now.

But Sebastian didn’t care about saving the pope. That was supposedly the king of the Franks’ dream. As he helped to finish off the remaining Isaurian survivors, he looked up onto the ramparts and saw Daphne there again. She stood there frozen, holding the face of Jesus Christ into the air and staring right at him. She smiled when he looked at her, and he ached with longing to be with her after the battle.

To the north, Sebastian saw the Frankish army. They were three hours late.

And now they weren’t needed.

But the Franks seemed to disagree. They slaughtered the fleeing mercenaries.

Daphne and Lucille

Daphne was hot for Sebastian like she’d never been hot for any man. She had loved imagining Sebastian in battle, and now she had seen him charge so bravely against an enemy three times his size. Images of him in Rome seizing the pope and sacking the city like it was nothing filled her mind and she rushed back to the palace to take a bath and be ready for him.

She knew she needed to keep an appropriate distance now from Lucille, and yet it was also Lucille, her chambermaid, who gave her the bath in her room. Some other servants were there as well, and only once those servants had left and Daphne was alone in the tub with Lucille beside her did she start speaking openly with her friend.

“So, Sebastian is back,” Lucille said, looking at Daphne in the bathtub in the center of the bedroom where they’d had so much sex during Sebastian’s absence.

Daphne looked at her sadly. “I know,” she said. “And I know you’re disappointed.”

“I’m not disappointed,” Lucille said unconvincingly. “He’s saved us all.”

They each looked at one another.

Daphne knew they were both thinking the same thing: Daphne would be sleeping with Sebastian again and their trysts must come to an end.

Daphne reached out and took Lucille’s hand. “We saved the city too, Lucy,” she said. “What did I tell you?” she smiled. “We’re going to be saints.”

“I don’t want to be a saint,” Lucille said.

Daphne sighed. “Lucy,” she said.

“I want to be with you,” Lucille said.

Daphne stroked Lucille’s fingers. “We’re not in the theater anymore,” Daphne said. “And I told you: Sebastian is going to get us to Constantinople! Don’t you want to see it? I told you I’d get us to Constantinople and Sebastian is going to take us there. I’ll be an empress, Lucy. And you’ll be with me there too. We’ll be safe.”

Lucille took her hand away. She stood up and paced beside the bed where they’d slept together naked on so many nights since Sebastian had left.

“I don’t want to go to Constantinople,” Lucille said. “I only want to be with you.”

“But we can’t be together, Lucy,” Daphne said. “We’ve always known this.”

“I know that,” said Lucille. “And yet I’m always going to be here with you.”

They looked at one another sadly for a few more moments. Then Lucille left the room.