"In any case, I shall not be able to annul it."
"The good citizens of Rome fear nothing so much as a third siege. They have stipulated that we shall undertake nothing that can lead to another fight for their city. They write that the Goths in the Mausoleum will soon succumb to hunger; that they themselves can defend their walls; and they have sworn only to deliver up their city, after the destruction of those Goths, to their natural protector and chief, the Prefect of Rome. Are you content with that, Cethegus? Read the agreement. Give it to him, Basiliskos."
Cethegus read the paper with deep and joyful emotion. So they had not forgotten him, his Romans! So now, when everything was coming to a crisis, they called, not the hated Byzantines, but himself, their patron, back to the Capitol! He again felt at the height of power.
"I am content," he said, returning the roll.
"I have promised," continued Narses, "to make no attempt to get the city into my power by force. First King Teja must follow King Totila. Then Rome--and many other things. Accompany me, Prefect, to the council of war."
When Cethegus left the council in the tent of Narses, and asked after Tullus Faber, not a trace of the latter was to be found.
Narses, that great general, had acutely guessed in what direction King Teja had turned aside from the Flaminian Way. He had first gone north towards the coast of the Ionian Gulf, and thence, with singular knowledge of the roads, had led his fugitive people and army by a circuitous route past Hadria, Aternum, and Ortona, to Samnium. That Rome was lost, he had learned beyond Nuceria Camellaria from some Goths who had fled from that city.
The King, whose impatient and unsparing disposition ever looked forward to the end, not unwillingly found himself obliged to get rid of his prisoners.
In number about as strong as their conquerors, the captives had made the office of guarding them so difficult, that Teja threatened to punish with death any attempt at escape.
Notwithstanding, when the army marched northwards, a number of these prisoners made an attempt to free themselves by force. Very many were killed in the struggle that ensued, and the King ordered that all the rest, together with Orestes and the whole of the officers, should be thrown into the Aternus with their hands bound; where they died miserably by drowning.