milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Teja and Urquhart are playing chess again, slowly and grimly, but with much less tension than the last time.

Urquhart's nose is still somewhat swollen and discoloured.

Teja would not pass judgement on that; he is far too dignified to smirk at the man's suffering.

Instead, he takes a knight with his bishop, calmly.

[[OOC: Please say in your tag which of them you want, or you might get both. Thanks!]]

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Dinah does laugh. "Why's that?"

Oooh, a history lesson!

They both laugh. Yes, Teja can laugh!

"He was a eunuch!" they declare, almost in unison.

"And ancient," Teja adds.

Dinah laughs at them chorusing like that. "And this was common knowledge, in his time?"

"It was!" Teja says. "In Byzantium, it was common to have court eunuchs. They were very Eastern about that. And of course everybody knew he was over seventy. He led his army from behind, planning and ordering, with maps and sandboxes, unlike us, who went first into battle. We saw Belisarius; but we never once saw Narses."

"Do you think that gave him an advantage?" Dinah asks. "Leading from behind where he could see the big picture?"

"It did," Teja says. "He was the one to finally conquer us, where the great hero Belisarius had failed! But it was not our way; and while it may have worked not to risk his life in battle, it did not make us respect him."

Pause.

"Which probably interested him less than a fly in wine. I never saw him, as I said; he saw my corpse being borne by on a bier."

Dinah drops her eyes in respect for a second. "What were you fighting for?"

"For our homes and our lives," Teja says. "It was a time of great upheaval, and our great kind Theodoric had settled us in Italy, one the heartland of the Roman empire, with the agreement of the then Byzantine emperor. But when Theodoric died, the new emperor Justinian wanted us out."

Dinah inhales through her teeth. "I don't know what I'd do."

Though she's probably be fighting right alongside him.

"When we were beaten by Narses in the battle of Taginae, where my friend Totila died, who was king before me," Teja says, "there was nothing left to do but sell our lives as dearly as we could. We did not wish for our women and children to become enslaved by the Byzantines, or ravished as loot; nor for our fighters to end up as ballista-fodder in the east, in the never-ending Persian war. Justinian could always use random mercenaries to throw at the siege of Sebastopolis or some such place; but we would rather die. So, being beaten strategically, on a field we had chosen, was of the essence."

Dinah's silent for a few seconds.

"And the women?"

"That is why I chose Mount Vesuvius," Teja says. "After the battle would have been lost, and all the fighters dead, all the non-fighters could have thrown themselves into the maw of the volcano, choosing death over slavery, just as the Cimbrians had, centuries before, of the Judaean rebels that were besieged at Masada."

He sighs.

"But it did not come to that. We held out, and shortly after I had fallen, our allies arrived -- just a few ships of Northmen, not enough to beat the Byzantine army, but more than Narses wanted his tired troops to have to fight in a second battle line. So he let us go. All the men that had not fallen, with their weapons; all the women and children and old people, with whatever possession they still had. Giving permission to surrender under such terms was the last thing I did in my life. My people were safe; they went north, and lived."

Dinah swallows, biting her lip, and with it any opinions of ordered mass suicide which wouldn't be appropiate right now.

"I'm glad they survived, then."

"So am I," Teja says. "As if I had been granted my dearest wish, in exchange for my life."

"I kind of think that's a fair exchange."

She has, for now, apparently forgotten Urquhart is there.

"More than a fair exchange," Teja says, "a great bounty! All my people that survived me, all the children they would yet have! Worth much more than I ever had to give."

Dinah smiles, and glances at the chessboard again, resting her chin on her hand.

She's thinking of her father, and how proud he would be of her, and how proud she is of him. But it's not an easy thing to say out loud.

Teja nods to her, quietly.

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