[NOTE: I do this for the writing and am not eligible for a prize)


Ecfrith's owners had fled the city before the Vandals arrived, and only he and Mano were left guarding the domus on the Caeilian Hill. The domus had once been home to the head of the legionary barracks quartered there, and even now, when the legions were breaking throughout the Empire, the soldiers had promised to keep an eye on Maximius' property. But they had their own concerns. The bird seller down the street said that the soldiers were simply disappearing from the barracks, night after night, returning to their families as if their oaths to Rome no longer meant anything. Everyone looked to them to minimize the damage, but no one was in any position to stop the looting Vandals. Ecfrith could see their problem. Who was willing to die for Rome, any more?

Ecfrith suspected some were simply switching sides. With Petronius Maximus hacked to pieces as he tried to escape, the administration had broken down completely - no one left in the City to tell any Roman how to cope with tens of thousands of soldiers, pouring through the city's open gates as if a dam had broken. Word also was out that the Vandals would accept Roman soldiers who wished to fight against Rome. It all came down to hard cash – Gaiseric had it, apparently. Petronius had been so far in arrears to the troops, it had been a joke. Portable property was what mattered, now.

Ecfrith had heard that Gaiseric had promised the Pope not to sack the churches - and indeed, the Lateran Palace just up the hill had been lightly touched, mainly the portable hangings, tapestries and silken drapes, plus the small cups and silver artifacts that could disappear in a soldier's pack. He’d looked into it and seen it mostly intact, just a lot of silver pulled off the pillars. The Senators and the wealthier sort, however, were without protection and the pillage was merciless, the killing regular. Some pompous Senator simply couldn’t believe that a savage could freely enter his house and carry out his treasures – he’d make a scene, and end up without a head. Ecfrith heard screaming on the Esquiline and seen people racing towards the Circus carrying whatever they could grab – you couldn’t find a horse and cart for any price (and hadn’t, since word went out the gates were opening), so fat woman lumbered down the street with panic-stricken faces, carrying busts of their fathers and grandfathers, all their jewelry sewn in the seams of a stola. For some reason, all the fleeing men seemed to be old – where had the young men gone? Their jowls sagged, they’d borrowed the sorry clothing of slaves, taken off all their jewelry. Everyone knew where the young Roman women were – raped, soon to be slaves. Ecfrith doubted they’d be useful for much except prostitution. He hoped Salvina, the young daughter of the house, had made it away safely. She wouldn’t handle rough trade at all well.


Ecfrith was puzzled in that he had actually seen so few Vandals – their gear was different enough from that of the city to make it pretty clear who was looting whom. It seemed that they were everywhere in the City except the Caeilian. For so long, the tribe had been stuck way down on southern Spain and no one much cared what the barbarians did in the outer provinces – but then when they’d broken Africa Province and driven out the legions, the first real fear began. In spite of the horrors of the last half century – and Ecfrith was an old man now and remembered in his early youth learning that Rome was sacked by Aleric, 40 years ago! – people seemed to believe somehow that a failing government, without money, with its legions disintegrating, its borders ravaged in a half hundred places, could hold out against any barbarian people just because they lived in the heart of the Empire. Ecfrith was unsympathetic. He’d grown up in Londinium and was sold to Saxon pirates, who sold him to the Romans. Order was breaking down everywhere you looked and people only spoke the language of swords, now. It had happened to him – only fair that the Romans finally felt a boot up their arse.

But he did feel sad that Rome could not protect itself. It was still the shell of a beautiful city – well, not now, probably. There had been so many disasters, so many hopes raised only to be destroyed, so many battles, resurgences, collapses in his lifetime, that it was hard to imagine a world where violence didn’t rule. Even to the bitter end, the Imperials were far more interested in fighting each other (and literally stabbing each other in the back, like Valentinian III) than in figuring out how to defend Rome. In the end, most of them ran away and men like he and Mano were stuck, guarding their damned property.

All he and Mano could do was keep the gate barricaded with the stout wood and iron brace and try to stay invisible. Fire, of course, forced everyone out in the end, but maybe the Vandals would hit the richest parts of the city and forget about the Caeilian. It wasn’t as if it was rich, any more. Not much of the city didn’t show the shabbiness of the last decades, and only the Emperor seemed to have money. When North Africa fell, of course, it bankrupted merchants and Senators throughout the Empire, particularly in Rome. His own master had lost half his lands, that had been in the family for generations. Repairs weren’t made, costs were lowered, slaves were sold off. But still – Romans kept that stiff upper lip, that conviction that Aleric was a terrible mistake, that Rome could not be raped again. More fools they.

His heart sank as he heard shouting at the end of the street, and the crash of wooden doors being beaten in. There sounded like a big crowd coming. He and Mano looked at each other, and waited.