The Golden Horn

An "Evening of Empire" Short Story

Triachus Sextus Nervicanus has been in the Roman navy for almost twenty years and has seen its remorseless decline from the inside. Now commanding the fast patrol Liburnian warship Minerva: Together with what remains of the Ravenna fleet he is transferred to Carthage to hold the line against the Vandal King Gaiseric's relentless eastern expansion following his capture of he Provinces of Mauretania and Numidia.

The last Western Roman fleet is treacherously stacked by Gaiseric's navy but Sextus manages to escape and rallies the last half dozen Roman ships where he is joined by aByzantine flotilla and mounts afinal resistance to Vandal hegemony in the western Mare Nostrum.

Victorious, he heads back to the home of the Byzantine fleet the Golden Horn of Costantinople where he is greeted as a Hero of Rome by Emperor Theodosius and rewarded with an appointment as Navarchus. An Admiral of theEastern Roman Navy.

This is a short story based on characters first introduced in the Dark age novel "Evening of Empire" and seeks to explain to the listeners of the original novel what happened to them when they left Britannia.

©2025 Leonard Gill (P)2025 Leonard Gill