—We camped in the fields of Collafierro. The terrain was expansive, open, ideal for rest and reorganization. But it was there that we saw them. At first, we thought they were trees swaying in the wind. Then we believed they were shadows. But no. It was a forest advancing toward us.
Amalasunta held her breath.
—A forest?
Marco nodded slowly.
—A forest of spears.
They advanced in compact formation, in silence, the spears raised like reeds in a contained storm. At first, we confused them with legionaries employing a new formation, an evolution of the old infantry blocks. But it didn't take us long to understand the truth. They were Latin peasants.
Amalasunta raised an eyebrow slightly, as if it were hard for her to believe.
—Peasants...?
—Yes —Marco replied without hesitation—. Without armor. Without banners. Without commanding shouts. They only carried a long spear, a round wooden shield, butcher's knives, axes for felling, and even wooden clubs with rusted nails. Nothing noble, nothing regimented. Tools deformed by desperation. But the most terrifying were their eyes… —he lowered his voice without ceasing to look at her—. They were not the eyes of recruits or cowards. They were the eyes of men who already knew how to kill. Not for glory. Not for country. But out of necessity. Out of conviction. For something we did not understand.
He turned toward her and, though he wrapped an arm around her, his body remained rigid, as if the echoes of the battlefield still resonated within him.
—and the worst… —he whispered— is that they were not afraid.
His words hung in the air like a barely uttered curse. Amalasunta did not respond. She only pressed herself beneath the sheets against his chest—not as a lover, but as someone who knows that she has awakened a memory that will not soon fade, a specter from the past that has crept back among the folds of the present.
Marco took a deep breath, still damp with sweat, but his voice now was like stone polished by confession. Cold, dense, inevitable.
—Ingomer, as haughty as always, reckless to the core, ordered a direct charge. I had read the reports of his previous battles. They were confusing reports, yes, but there were patterns. I tried to warn him: the spears they had faced before were shorter, the formations more open, more primitive. This was not so. This was different.
He shifted slightly in the bed and looked toward the window, where the night thickened like spilled ink.
—These spears were long, compact, dense. It was… a Macedonian phalanx.
Amalasunta looked at him without speaking. Her body, still bare beneath the sheets, was like a testament from another world, one of pleasure, where the names of defeat did not exist. But the word she had just heard, phalanx, brought her back. It resonated in her memory with the gravity of forbidden books, like an ancient echo.
Marco smiled bitterly.
—Ingomer couldn't even pronounce it. He looked at me as if I were speaking of demons. He said, "What the hell is that? A name for some Greek whores?" —he tilted his head with irony—. Then he laughed, despised me, and said, "The Romans no longer know how to wage war." He left me at the rear.
Amalasunta closed her eyes, as if she could already guess what was coming. Marco continued speaking in a lower, deeper voice.
—He unleashed the cavalry. I knew it. I begged him not to. I told him that this time the spearmen would not flee. That they would resist. That what we faced was not a rabble.
And they did not flee.
The spears did not break. They did not splay out to feign retreat as in previous campaigns. They held firm, tense like a vegetal and metallic creature that does not back down, does not waver. The horses saw them, and hesitated. They halted. Some reared up. Neighed. The charge dissolved into its own momentum. And without that impetus, they were left bare, exposed before the enemy.
Then the arrows began.
—From within the formation —Marco continued in a subdued tone—. As if the forest itself were shooting. But it was not peasants straining those strings. They were hunters. Men who had spent their lives stalking among branches, aiming at the heart of a moving deer. They knew what a crest, a cloak, a badge was. They did not shoot at random. They shot to kill the leader.
The officers were the first to fall. One after another, as if an invisible executioner were sweeping through the line. It was almost a ceremonial act.
—Without them, the Ostrogoths stood frozen. Two thousand men, immobilized. Their momentum dead. Fear sneaking in among the hooves of their mounts like dense fog. And then… the hedgehog advanced.
Marco closed his eyes as if reliving the brush of death upon his skin. His voice dropped even lower.
—The pikes moved unhurriedly. Not galloping. Not like a sudden onslaught. They advanced like the tide. They slid. They grazed. They cut. They lacerated.
Amalasunta embraced him tightly from behind, in silence. There were no useful words—only the bitter certainty that the enemy they had faced had no face, but they did have method. And purpose.
Marco continued speaking, not like one recalling a memory, but like one unloading a weight that had corroded his soul.
—I did not wait for orders from Ingomer. I couldn't. I knew that if I did, there would be no one left to obey. It had cost me dearly, but I had control over my troops. Peasants, yes. Redeemed bandits. Artisans armed with old spears. But they obeyed me. They feared me. They believed in me. And that was enough.
He swallowed hard.
—I ordered them to advance, shields held high. Not to break the hedgehog. Not to achieve glory. Only to halt the disaster. Our mission was simple: to free the Ostrogoths from that trance. To shatter the fear that had paralyzed them.
He looked again toward the ceiling as if searching there for the lost sky of that battle.
—When I arrived, Ingomer was already at the front. Alone. With his war hammer raised, striking the spears as if they were reeds. A giant among dwarfs. A fallen god among men without names.
Amalasunta tensed slightly.
—Yes —Marco said, as if he had felt that shudder in her—. He could have crushed them one by one, if he had reached them. But he couldn't. The spears were long, firm, too well crafted. Strength was not enough. Courage was not enough. He could only deflect them. Not break them.
He paused.
—An arrow grazed his neck. Another ricocheted off his helmet. Yet another pierced his shoulder and made him turn. And then… a pike entered through his left shoulder. I saw it make its way through the rings of his armor as if it were penetrating mud. Almost simultaneously, another pierced his abdomen below the rib. He bent. He did not fall immediately. He fell like oaks do: slowly, as if in defiance.
Then more arrows arrived. One struck his thigh. Another went through his forearm. And yet another became lodged in his leg, in the muscle that still sustained his weight. He fell to his knees.
Marco lowered his head.
—It was then that my men covered him. I threw myself to the ground with them. His guts were already spilling from his abdomen, trembling, stained with mud, blood, and smoke. The pike in his belly had not come out clean. It wasn't a wound. It was a tear. We tied him up with leather ropes. I myself sewed up his abdomen right there, in the middle of that shower of arrows, with thick linen thread and a forged needle. I don't know if minutes passed or an eternity. I only remember the sound of falling bodies and my hands, forcibly closing a body that no longer wished to stay within itself.
He took a deep breath, and then his voice turned hollow.
—I mounted him on a horse. Half-conscious. Bleeding like a river. And I ordered the retreat.
He looked downward. Something within him had shattered with that final phrase.
—It was not a victory. Not even an escape. It was survival out of habit.
Amalasunta said nothing. She only rested her head against his chest and closed her eyes. She held back tears. She held everything in, for she understood, deep down, that the worst was not what Marco had seen. The worst was what still lay ahead.
Marco sighed. The account was no longer a mere memory, but a confession that tore at his pride with every word. Amalasunta remained silent, holding him close in the warm half-light of the tower, as if time had stopped just for them.
—We lost to peasants —he finally admitted, his voice laden with bitterness—. Barefoot men, armed with spears and an ancient hatred burning in their eyes.
And when they thought that was the worst, the riders arrived.
Like wolves after a wounded prey.
There was no glory in their ambushes, only cold death, without epic scale or mercy.
—Then I understood —he continued, gritting his teeth as if the truth still burned him—. We had not faced their main force. Those men were nothing more than bait. And we had bitten the hook.
He sat up slightly, the sheet slipping to his waist, and fixed his eyes on hers.
—There is no possible victory against such cunning. The cunning of turning servants into a war machine, of making even the most miserable part of something greater than himself.
He paused. His pupils hardened.
—Had Ingomer attacked as in the days of Alaric, perhaps we would have won. That phalanx was not invincible. But the Ostrogoths are no longer what they once were. They have mixed too much with Rome.
And that… was not good.
Amalasunta embraced him more tightly, letting her hair cover his chest like a veil of shadow and gold. Her voice was soft, yet edged with the sharpness only she could wield.
—It seems you no longer distinguish between Rome and Ravenna.
Marco looked at her, a barely contained tremor in his jaw. He wanted to deny it, but the words did not come.
—Perhaps —he finally acknowledged—. But you and I know they don't worship God. Only power.
Amalasunta gave a smile—not of mockery, but of a tenderness emerging from deep within.
—The dictator has sworn freedom of worship in his New Rome. Before his men and before me. Perhaps… understanding can be reached.
Marco did not answer immediately. He only held her close, and for a moment, atop that tower where love and war merged in sweat and scars, they both looked toward a horizon that could still be different.
Marco sat up. The sheets fell aside, revealing his body marked by war, faith, and doubt. For days he had seen Rome burn not only on the battlefields but in his dreams: looted churches, desecrated altars, and chants drowned out by the sound of steel.
And yet, there was Amalasunta, naked as a pagan statue yet alive, tempered by a will he had seen in no one else.
She offered him a way out.
How had she managed it?
The question pierced him like a dagger. Had she given herself to the dictator? To that man with the unfathomable gaze and ancient power?
For the first time, a smoldering jealousy tinged his mouth.
Childish. Absurd.
But as real as the scars on his skin.
He looked at her. And then he understood.
Everything he had done, every lie, every calculated gesture, was to keep him alive.
There was no room for reproach.
Only love.
Amalasunta, still reclining, watched him with a grave sweetness. Her dark eyes knew that that moment would change everything.
—The Church will survive —she said, with the calm of someone announcing a natural law—. As it always has. When the barbarians looted the temples, when blood stained the altars… it survived. And in time, it will transform these too.
Marco lowered his gaze—not in submission, but in acceptance.
—And we —she continued with a serene smile— will be part of its aristocracy. As it always has been. Nothing really changes. Only the face of power, which comes and goes with the seasons.
She sat on the bed, took his hand, and kissed it tenderly.
—Surrender the city. And love me… until your hair is as white as those mountains.
Marco looked at her.
And for the first time in a long while, he felt no guilt.
No fear.
Only love.
And a decision that, though painful, had already been made.