by Roger Booth
*
Theoderic looked on as Athaulf and the other reiks slowly trotted off towards the skyline where, first horse then man, they began to drop out of sight. One day, he told himself, he would lead an army from the front. But better to be there at all than kicking his heels back in Narbo like poor Erfrid with the rest of the army – and their gold.
“Right, men. Let’s not keep our King waiting when the time comes. Ardrade, cavalry fore, foot to the rear. Onto the road, men, quickly now.”
From out of the trees emerged in a good-humoured tumult two thousand men and near a thousand horse. Ardrade, who had been his father’s lead retainer, cajoled the footmen towards the back, so they would not block the charge. Slowly the excited chatter died away and Ardrade returned to his rightful place at Theoderic’s side.
“Massilia, a mile beyond that rise?”
“Say so, Theoderic.”
The young reiks looked again at the ridge that concealed them from keen eyes in the town below. “Sergeric’s man is to gallop here; then we must go over that hill and down to the gates…”
“Fair few minutes,” agreed the older man, understanding at once. “I’ll take a couple of youngster’s with better eyes than mine; into the woods by the brow.”
Up ahead, once Ardrade’s small party had tethered their horses and disappeared into the trees, the road was silent. Theoderic stared at the empty cobbles; stroked the neck of his horse, sometime skittish at the tang of leather and sweat. Then his mouth went dry.
In longing he waited, his weapons grown hungry, on war’s gruff calling.
Which sets men free.
*
“I wait here?”
Athaulf looked down the hill, another wagon urgently rumbling past them. Two hundred paces he judged.
“Aye, Sergeric.”
“Good luck then.”
Wallia at his side and ten picked retainers tight behind them, he trotted on towards the gatehouse of Massilia. To his right, the white cresting sea; to the left rose a grassy slope which, as he knew, hid a second gate further round by the harbour side.
The gatehouse ahead was the usual Roman perfection, thirty stone clad feet high; an ornamental row of small decorative arches along its top, below that four round arches – two double gates for traffic and single gates for foot passage. Either side ran the town walls; walls they could not breach. A siege of Massilia was also pointless since an inlet ran from the sea right to the town’s dock. So they had come up with a plan. Unlikely it had seemed to him in Council and it didn’t seem any better now, as with every pace of his horse those gates loomed larger; and his stomach tightened another notch.
Behind him the men broke out in bellows of uproarious laughter. They had left Sergeric sitting peaceably in the open and not so much as a weapon touched. Even so, the very sight of them was enough to cause complete panic.
The main gates were swinging shut and inbound carts rushed past them, peasants lashing their mules like chariot racers, to get inside the town while still they could. Those heading out abruptly about turned. In their haste first one, then a second cart swayed, tipped and toppled over. The drivers he saw pull themselves free from the wreckage, cut loose their horse or mule; follow other carts on up the slope and out of sight.
“Lads,” Wallia turned back to the men. “We must be goin’ up in the world.”
Athaulf forced a wry smile as they skirted the carts that had toppled in the crush; in pride of place before the gates a wagon loaded with a pair of fattened pigs forlornly – and noisily – abandoned.
By a side gate, half ajar, stood three Roman soldiers, weapons to hand. As he reined in a few yards away one of the soldiers looked him up and down. “So who are you?”
He almost forgot the knot in his stomach. “I am Athaulf,” he declared. “And this,” he pointed to his right, “is Wallia.”
“And just who is Athof and that other barbarian, when they’re at home?”
“I am the King of the Visigoths and Wallia is the leader of the Ruthi, one of our oldest clans.” He added: “As you ought to know.”
“And why should we know that then?” snapped the Roman.
“Because we’re to meet Flavius Constantius, soldier,” he snapped back. “He should be arriving at the port any minute.”
One of the small group disappeared through the gate and Athaulf smiled encouragingly when the man emerged again.
“That Athof, the King, he can come in. No-one else.”
“Soldier,” he rebuked gently. “I am the King of the Goths. You know that won’t do.” He added sympathy to his eyes. “I’ve already left my escort a safe distance from the walls,” and he turned to indicate where Sergeric and the other fifty Goths still waited patiently back up the road
The soldier grimaced and ducked back through the gate once more. A moment later he put his head around the door.
“It’s all right. The officer says so.”
The other guards filed inside and he swung out of the saddle, saw Wallia beckon with an urgent wave of his hand towards Sergeric and the waiting men. So far so good, he thought, stepping through the narrow gate.
He came to a halt.
The knot in his stomach had disappeared and so had any hint of a smile. Before him, the main way down to the harbour was crowded with the wagons that had fled from them for safety. In the houses close by men sat at work or stood selling their wares. Above, from the windows, women hung out the washing. In the streets, others bore homeward the food of the day, children in tow.
This was no boyhood jape, he realised, and Massilia a town not a fort. But, once inside, the three thousand men back over the hill would not think so; not until the curious eyes fixed on him from beneath bonnet and cap all stared without sight, heads hacked and bodies gashed lifeless by angry blades. Before him flickered other Roman eyes, dark painted eyes in a brightly coloured room in Burdigala; and he wondered how to them he could ever explain.
“I am Boniface, praepositus of Massilia. Which of you claims to be King of the Visigoths?”
The rasped words half cleared his mind. The Romans he saw had been far from idle. A welcoming party of soldiers in three lines of ten stood behind their officer. Dodging the carts another soldier was running full pelt down the street towards the centre of the town.
From outside the squealing protests of the abandoned pigs: “I do not claim to be the King,” he stiffly declared. “I am the King.”
“And you say you are to meet General Constantius today? You have a letter, I presume?” asked the man Boniface, his eyes never leaving Athaulf’s an instant.
Just a minute more; Sergeric and his men must be galloping already. Count slowly one to ten. He fumbled for the letter that was not there then whispered to Wallia. “Now.”
*
Wallia, too, had been counting. He had got far beyond ten – what an actor Athaulf could be. That play of the wide-eyed, bumbling barbarian had won them precious time.
The short command barely spoken, with Herfrig and Harduric he was hauling the retaining beam clear. Then he heaved at one of the great gates. To his relief, it swung easily on its hinges. He drew his sword and was stepping aside to let the riders through. Only the riders weren’t outside. They weren’t even close. In disbelief Wallia watched as only now did Sergeric raise his arm and order the men forward.
At the same time he heard the Roman officer scream: “Advance!”
“Out! Out!”
In a step the men were outside, shields swinging from their backs. Athaulf was now the only Goth still inside the walls and the Roman front rank rushed him. Sword point flicking from side to side, he was about to trap himself in the corner of the half open gate; before Wallia grabbed his arm and unceremoniously dragged him clear.
“Nephew,” he jerked his head. “You and Harduric; get that cart.”
Herfrig unde
rstood. Then the pigs squealed and Wallia was shouting again. The Goth line opened just in time as the cart ran full into the Roman ranks.
The advance halted.
The pigs squealed more.
But the Roman rear line was now manhandling the cart out of the way, while the officer reformed their ranks far too quickly for Wallia’s liking.
They held their own, the shield wall strung across the gateway. Three Romans fell, blood spouting from their legs, side or face. But at their officer’s urging they kept pressing. Beyond the carts, the town’s main street was now full of soldiers running towards them. He knew those onrushing men would see them dead and buried unless help arrived – and very soon.
But, at moments like these, the world for him slowed down. In battle a man walked into a dark hall where death somehow had accepted him as equal partner. It was why, in his whole life, he had never been afraid.
He parried one Roman’s thrust, forced his spear through the eye of another. He felt their line being forced back – not quickly but backwards they were inching. And he wondered; whether today from the dark hall he would never return.
He counted off the seconds. The first Goth was down, a spear in the ribs. The shield wall closed up again. The Romans shouted in triumph but now he felt the earth vibrate, heard the hooves of galloping horses. Then there were Sergeric’s men, jumping from the saddle and throwing themselves into the line just as the second gate began to swing open and the full force of the Roman charge hit home.
The lines of shields swayed forward and back as both sets of men tried to overpower the other. Between shields, the points of sword and spear looked for flesh they could tear, blood they could pour in sacrifice onto the dry, hard ground. They were badly outnumbered and the only thing saving them was the narrowness of the lines crammed between the gates.
Athaulf was next to him in the front line. Unlike the rest of them, he had carried no shield. Then Wallia saw the sword drop to ground, remembered thinking this strange.
The Roman spear arm swung back, the point blooded, poised for another thrust.
“The King! Make way,” he roared, tugging at Athaulf.
The spear thrust he parried. The Roman’s arm fully extended, a Goth spear flicked forward and home under the arm pit. In the seconds it took for the Romans to step over their dying man he hauled Athaulf through the Goth ranks that opened on his command.
“Athaulf, get to Theoderic. I’ll hold ‘em here.”
“I am the King, the King does not….”
Blood was seeping through the chain mail below the shoulder, the eyes still open, barely seeing. Together with the man Smiler he helped a foot into its stirrup and heaved. Athaulf slumped forward, holding tight to neck and mane.
“On your life, Smiler,” he shouted. “Get him to Theoderic. On your life.”
*
The men burst out of the trees, followed by Ardrade, and threw themselves up into the saddle.
Twisting about, Theoderic raised his arm, under him his stallion bucking, and the hooves of a thousand horse shattered the forest’s silence. Ardrade fell in alongside just before he went over the rise. Massilia below, the sudden blue width of the sea; he was jumping into a different world before they raced in a headlong sprint down towards the town and the onrushing messenger.
“The Romans…” The man was shouting and pointing: “The gates.”
The vicious, little battle there spoke no good. Two Goth horsemen painstakingly walking back, one man slumped forward in the saddle; a Roman column working its way along the walls – they spoke no good either.
Theoderic glanced over his shoulder. The footmen were only just coming over the brow.
“Ardrade,” he ordered, pointing to the sally party. “Ride those Romans down.”
“You,” he said to Sergeric’s man. “Get to the footmen. They’re to follow me to the main gates.”
Ardrade had already peeled away. The galloper made about, while Theoderic drew his sword. “Sound the horn!”
And his spurs bit deep into the flanks of his charger.
*
Before the gates they were packed tight as fish in a barrel, Wallia in the last rank, he couldn’t force himself further forward. Four ranks deep they’d been. Three deep they were now. He wondered for how much longer. He took half a pace back and answered the latest Roman heave with an enormous thrust of his long legs and wide shoulders.
Then the long blast of the horn; Goth cavalry he saw galloping headlong towards them with foot soldiers scampering behind in the far distance. Another group of horsemen went charging off, over the slope, and at once he guessed; Roman bastards on a flanking attack.
He wasn’t alone in hearing the horn. An abrupt command and the pressure on the ranks suddenly gave way. The Romans had turned. The gates he saw move and then he heard the crash of them slamming shut. The fight that had raged furiously just moments ago was ended as abruptly as it had begun, in its place rearing horses and deep throated Goth roars. Theoderic and his riders were washing up against the walls, their flailing hooves as much a threat as Roman blades.
Wallia caught Theodoric’s eye, pointed up at the walls.
“Archers!”
“Archers, men!”
A horse’s flank almost bowled him over. He ducked behind the cover of an upturned cartwheel. One by one Theoderic’s men shook their swords, rang spear point against the stone walls or the haft of an axe against the timbered gates. Then they spurred away, the little battlefield ringing to their war cries. Meanwhile, in the emptying space by the gates, unbidden, the men of the shield wall were rounding up their dead and wounded. And even as they did this, they began to laugh.
Wallia scanned the battlements, expecting any moment to see helmets and bows.
Instead: two short squeals of terror.
Silence.
The Roman soldiers would eat well tonight and, from him, they should eat their fill, trotters and all; so long as those battlements stayed empty just the way they were. He whistled to his horse that had waited patiently through all the confusion, watched Goth bodies being thrown across vacant saddles. Herfrig he saw mount up, Harduric too.
A helmeted head swung toward him; from behind the nose guard Sergeric, staring without expression. In quiet fury Wallia stared back, before spurring his horse on up the hill which, outside bow range, had turned into a jabbering fairground.
“Here.”
A leather wine bag was thrust into his face and, flasks to lips, tall stories Wallia heard grow taller with each swig.
Further uphill, on the crown of the slope, he found Theoderic together with his man Ardrade. He’d been right about the Romans trying to outflank them. Down towards the harbour side, Goth horsemen still cantered with whoops of joy between the scattered bodies of the sally party. Scattered but for one pile of corpses and all being stripped of armour and anything else that caught a roving eye.
“Brave men,” said Ardrade, “the ones who stood.”
“How many?”
Ardrade shrugged. “All told? A hundred I’d say; trapped by their own walls.”
“And Athaulf?” Wallia asked.
Theoderic thumbed over his shoulder; to a supply wagon brought down from the forest.
“Alive?”
“Alive, Wallia, but not half-awake. They’ve washed the wound.”
Theoderic stopped as a troop of his men rode past, some of the spear heads bright with gore. Names spoken, encouraging words and broad smiles that lasted only as long as the men were close by.
Wallia looked back down at the long walls, flowing easy as the sea; and the gates where they had come so close to losing King, reiks and all.
“So, Massilia; still it stands,” murmured the man Ardrade who might have read his mind.
Wallia studied the inside of his helmet an unnatural while. Then with the slightes
t nod: “Aye, that it does,” he said.
*
The men about the camp were in fine voice and, for a moment, they both stopped to listen. The song in praise of hay stacks and long summers ended in guffaws and bawdy shouts. Haystacks wouldn’t figure for him a while yet but, after the latest tinder-dry day, the cool night air was a relief. For now, the only sweat on Athaulf’s forehead came from the grinding pain in his shoulder.
“Damn nuisance,” he swore. He had chewed the pigeon down to the bone with just the one good hand and now had meat and juice all over his face.
“Good you eat, Athaulf. How’s the wound?” asked the great, shaggy head.
“Red – red and angry but clean, thank the Lord,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his good hand. “God, it makes me tired. Long time since I caught a wound like this, Wallia. That Roman, he was quick.”
“Not so quick now he’s not. One of the boys made sure of that.” Wallia threw a bone off into the darkness beyond the flickering fire. “Theoderic saved the day, though. Heard from Ardrade, told him to inch up far as he could without being seen – saved us precious minutes. Else we might all be very dead.”
“Quite a day for the youngster.” Athaulf smiled through the wave of pain that shook him down to the gut. “I… I told him so this morning.”
A good week’s journey still to Narbo it was the first day he had ridden a horse; not the whole day, just the hours they were in sight of the heavy walls of Arelate. He would not have reports go to Postumus Dardanus of the Goth king lying a-bed, propped up like a dowager in a jolting wagon.
“After Massilia… I slept five days?”
Wallia nodded.
“But the men seem happy.”
“Oh, happy as can be,” said Wallia with a short barking laugh. “They’ll be no trouble now; least not until winter.”
Drowsy though he was, there was something to Wallia’s voice, then that twisted smile. The two of them looked quietly into the flames until he broke the silence.
“It never was much of a plan.”
“No,” Wallia agreed. “Now I see Arelate again, we’d have never held Massilia long. Not with Arelate sitting broody between there and Narbo. Only ride past them walls in good company.”