Attila

by Ross Laidlaw

  From the ruined watchtower built back in the time of Marcus Aurelius as part of the Rhenish frontier defences, Gaius looked down on the moonlit scene. A vast and growing crowd was assembling on the floor of the huge chasm, its walls seamed with crags and precipices, with here and there a lofty pine sprouting from a crevice where soil had gathered. This was a natural fault, a titanic gash in the rocks which, so ran the legend, was the result of a blow from Wotan’s sword. In the centre of the space loomed a massive rock, the Wotan Stein, on which stood Gundohar, King of the Burgundians: a gigantic figure, majestic in embroidered cloak and richly decorated Spangenhelm, the conical segmented helmet favoured by German warriors who could afford it. The whole wild scene put Gaius in mind of one of those German legends featuring gods and warrior-heroes, engaged in epic battle set in some grim rock-girt wilderness.

  Gaius had listened with mounting concern to Marcus’ account of the conversation he had overheard in the forest. The meeting at such a charged spot as the Wotan Stone, with its association with heroic German myth, might have a military significance, especially in the context of veiled threats against Romans. The Burgundians might now be Christians (although only recently converted, and of the heretical Arian persuasion) and officially allies of Rome. But these constraints might well be skin-deep. The old general knew from experience how readily the German fighting spirit could flare up, and once aroused make them ferocious opponents. Even now, the Visigoths – the most Romanized of the German tribes, after tramping round the empire for nearly two generations before being granted a homeland – couldn’t be trusted to remain at peace. On the other hand, the meeting at the Wotan Stone might be nothing more than a festive or ritual gathering, the boys’ chauvinistic words concerning Romans mere childish boasting. Still, his vague feelings of a cooling of attitude towards himself on the part of the Burgundians – something now apparently extended to his grandson – couldn’t be ignored. Gaius had decided that the only thing to do was to attend the gathering in secret, and learn for himself what was afoot.

  He had said nothing about his intention to Marcus’ mother, Clothilde, or to the boy himself, merely stating that he had to go on a short journey. Then, exchanging his dalmatic for a coarse woollen tunic and the once-despised trousers, he had pulled on stout rawhide boots, flung a cloak over his shoulders, and, early in the morning of the day before the meeting, set off, carrying a satchel of provisions prepared by Clothilde. It was a full day’s journey to the Wotan Stone; arriving shortly before sunset, Gaius had taken up position in the old watchtower, before settling down for a night’s sleep prior to his vigil.

  Before the King had uttered a dozen words, Gaius felt a thrill of horror as his worst suspicions were confirmed.

  ‘Burgundians, are we sheep, meekly to obey the Roman shepherds?’ Gundohar began, in a growling shout. ‘Thirty years ago, I led you across the frozen Rhenus to claim our present homeland by right of conquest. Our nation since has prospered and multiplied, and now we need more land – land to the west and the north that is there for the taking. The Romans say we must be satisfied with what we have. But Rome has grown too soft and weak to stop us. If they lack the spirit or the power to defend what they claim is their territory – land which they themselves once seized from the Gauls – they no longer deserve to hold it. I say to you, let us take it for ourselves.’

  A roar of approval greeted his words. When the acclamation had subsided, Gundohar continued: ‘Let us choose the moment of attack to our advantage. My spies tell me that the Visigoths in Aquitania intend shortly to invade Provincia. More importantly, the Bagaudae in the north-west are planning a general uprising, to begin on the fifteenth day of May. Let us strike on that same day. Rome will then have two enemies to fight at the same time, perhaps even three if the Visigoths march. Weak, her forces divided, Rome can surely never stand against our warriors. Their dead will be our gift to the raven and the wolf. Return now to your homes, and send out the summons for all men aged sixteen to sixty to assemble here in arms upon the day.’

  Long after the last man had departed from the scene, Gaius struggled to resolve an agonizing dilemma. The Ides of May – only four days away! His immediate thought was that he must return home with all speed to warn Clothilde that, as the wife of a Roman, she might be at risk in the upsurge of anti-Roman feeling that would accompany the rising. And Marcus, as the son of a Roman, would be in even greater jeopardy. Also, in the event of a Roman counter-attack, the Burgundian Settlement would become a war zone, with perilous consequences. There was still time for Clothilde and Marcus to flee the Settlement and reach the safety of the province of Maxima Sequanorum, under Roman administration, before the fatal day; but only if he set out immediately to warn them of their danger.

  And there lay the rub. The nearest Roman garrison, Spolicinum on Lacus Brigantinus (coincidentally, the fort where Titus had once served as a clerk) lay many miles to the south-east – too far for Gaius to warn them in time, were he first to make a journey to alert Clothilde. With a heavy heart, the old soldier realized where his first duty lay: he must set out for Spolicinum at first light, even though it meant abandoning his daughter-in-law and grandson to an uncertain fate. The thought that his exemplars – those iron men of Rome’s heroic age – would have taken the same course without hesitation was little comfort. But, like that Roman (or was it Spartan?) matron who would rather have seen her son’s body brought home on a shield than that he should shun the battle, he must be strong. In a mood of sombre resolution, Gaius began to plan his route to Spolicinum.

  1 The Loire and the Seine.

  TWENTY-THREE

  At daybreak, when loth to rise, bear this thought in mind: I am rising for a man’s work

  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, c. 170

  Forced to think the unthinkable, Gaius acknowledged to himself that the impending crisis – simultaneous risings by the Burgundians, the Bagaudae, and the Visigoths – was one of the most serious Rome had ever faced. Conceivably, it might deal the Western Empire – already terribly weakened by the loss of Africa – a blow from which it could not recover. Always in the past, the times had thrown up a man of sufficient stature to meet the challenge of external danger: a Scipio to match Hannibal, a Marcus Aurelius to hold the line against the Quadi along the Rhenus and Danubius, an Aurelian to wipe out the Alamanni sweeping into Italia, a Boniface to crush the Moors in Africa. But now, with Boniface gone, who was there in the West capable of dealing with the present danger? Reluctantly, Gaius was forced to face the unpalatable truth that the answer was the man who had first betrayed then destroyed Boniface: Flavius Aetius. Well, so be it. A great leader need not necessarily be a good man, more’s the pity. After all, Julius Caesar’s path to greatness had been stained by treachery, bloodshed, and deceit.

  With the fate of the West hanging in the balance, his choice of route to Spolicinum was of crucial importance. He had two options. The first was to head south-west down the Rhenus valley to Basilia from his present position south of Argentoratum, then follow the Rhenus which now turned sharply east, to the southern shore of Lacus Brigantinus on which the fort was situated.

  The advantage of this route was that it was easy: it followed top-grade military roads built when the Rhenish salient was of vital strategic importance. That frontier might now be abandoned, but roads of such quality would still be serviceable. There were, however, two disadvantages. The route, at least as far as Basilia, lay in the broad fertile valley of the upper Rhenus, thickly studded with Burgundian settlements. With the rising imminent, anyone suspected of being Roman would be at risk. (Even before its proclamation, the ordinary tribespeople seemed to have been aware that something was brewing, hence the anti-Roman feeling Gaius had sensed.) The other disadvantage was the route’s length: forming two sides of a triangle, it must measure at least two hundred miles, an impossible distance for someone of Gaius’ years to cover on foot in four days.

  The second option was to cut south-east across country to Lacus Brigant
inus in a straight line. By following this third side of the triangle, the distance would be almost halved, representing an average daily stint of about thirty miles – feasible although demanding, especially for an old man. This route, apart from being much shorter, had the great advantage that it was known to Gaius – although from thirty-three years previously. To counter the lightning advance of Alaric’s Goth host into Raetia, Stilicho had summoned Roman troops from wherever they were stationed in the West, even including the Twentieth Legion in Britain. Gaius’ unit, then stationed on the Rhenus, had made a forced march to the threatened province, over the same route that he now intended to take. The terrain was punishing, a densely wooded mountain-chain which the Germans called the Schwarzwald.1 The way was navigable, using certain mountain peaks as landmarks, and threading certain valleys; Gaius just hoped he could remember them. The area was however sparsely inhabited, so security shouldn’t be a major problem. With a touch of gallows humour, Gaius reviewed his plan in military fashion.

  1. Objective

  The Roman fort of Spolicinum on Lacus Brigantinus.

  2. Aim

  To warn (within four days) Spolicinum’s garrison about the risings of the Burgundians et alii.

  3. Means

  i Manpower: one retired general, reasonably fit but aged.

  ii Rations: bread, salt beef, and beer – enough to last several days. (Clothilde has been generous with her provisioning.)

  iii Weapons: lacking. (Except in areas troubled by Bagaudae, Roman civilians are forbidden by law to carry them.)

  iv Base and communications: non-existent.

  v Route: south-east across the Schwarzwald from the Rhenus to Lacus Brigantinus. Distance approximately 100 miles.

  Gaius woke in the grey dawn, chilled and stiff after his second night in the watchtower. Feeling every one of his seventy-seven years, he rose gingerly from the bed he’d made from last autumn’s fallen leaves, and flexed the stiffness from his joints. What was it Marcus Aurelius (one of Gaius’ heroes) had said about getting up at dawn? ‘When loth to rise, bear this thought in mind: I am rising for a man’s work.’ Very appropriate in the present circumstances, Gaius thought wryly. Shivering beneath his cloak, he ate some of the food Clothilde had provided, washing it down with beer from a leather flagon. A robin whirred down from a gap in the roof, and perched on a fallen beam beside him. Its feathers fluffed up against the cold so that it resembled a tiny red and brown ball, it hopped closer, regarding Gaius hopefully with a bold, bright eye. Smiling, he tossed it some crumbs, and they partook of breakfast together.

  Somewhat cheered by the visit of his feathered guest, which – had he still really believed in the old gods – might have seemed a good omen, Gaius left the watchtower and took stock of the terrain. To the west, in Gaul, rolled the long line of the Vosegus Mountains, their crests glowing in the sun’s early rays. Eastwards, across the Rhenus in Germania, loomed the forbidding mass of the Schwarzwald, covered in dark firs, except where isolated peaks broke through the dense pelt of vegetation. Spring had come late that year, and patches of snow speckled the high summits. At the foot of the bluff on which he stood flowed the Rhenus, its broad valley, once chequered by vineyards and fertile farms, now reverting to scrub, the sites of villas marked by roofless ruins and weed-choked fields. In their place had sprung up isolated hamlets, each a score or so of thatched huts encircled by a palisade and surrounded by an untidy jumble of arable plots and pasture.

  ‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’ or, more appropriately, ‘gloria Romae,’ thought Gaius sadly, as he made his way down to the river. For a few nummi, he was able to persuade an early-rising farmer to row him across the river, and was pleased that neither his appearance nor his German aroused any curiosity. In a few hours, heading south-eastwards by the sun, he had crossed the flat valley-bottom and reached the foothills of the Schwarzwald.

  He paused to rehearse the key features of his route, aware that any miscalculation could be disastrous. He tried to create in his mind a map of the Schwarzwald: a great triangular massif, narrow at the top or northern end, wide at the base demarcated by the Rhenus where the river turned eastwards, and bisected by a chain of mountains running north to south. He combed his memory for the landmarks he must locate to have any hope of tracing his route. Separating the foothills from the massif proper there was, he seemed to remember, a stream called the Gutach, after crossing which he must surmount the steep western flanks of the chain, where it would be fatally easy to become lost in the tangle of valleys that seamed the slopes. Once the height of land was reached, the worst would be over. An ancient trackway, the Hohenweg, followed the ridge, whose main summits were the Kandel and the Feldberg, to a deep ravine called the Höllenthal, running west to east and leading to the valley of the River Alb which debouched into the Rhenus upstream of Lacus Brigantinus.

  Reassured at finding the Gutach more or less where he remembered it, Gaius forded the stream at a point where the channel braided. Then, in order to avoid those treacherous ravines, he struck up one of the lateral spurs that ran down from the mountain-chain like ribs projecting from a backbone. Tall, dense-packed, rising from a mossy carpet studded with ferns and berry-bearing plants, the pines closed round Gaius, enshrouding him in a twilight world suffused with a not unpleasant smell of resin and damp mould.

  Gradually the slope steepened, at times becoming precipitous; on these pitches Gaius could make progress only by gripping branches and hauling himself bodily upwards. His breath became a series of tortured gasps, his leg-muscles, unaccustomed to this sort of punishment, seemed on fire with pain. More and more frequently he was forced to halt and rest his trembling limbs, while he sucked air into burning lungs. Navigation, by the angle of the slope and occasional glimpses of the sun, was virtually reduced to guesswork. Not until he had climbed above the treeline and reached the summit chain, a matter of ascending some four thousand feet, would he be able to check his bearings by getting a sighting on one of the landmark peaks.

  Darkness found him still on the westward-facing slopes. To be benighted in the forest at high altitude was not good. Cold and attack by wild animals presented real risks. However, most large animals – bear, bison, and wild boar – had been hunted almost to extinction by gangs supplying animals for the Roman Games, and had only recently begun to recover. Lynx and wildcat were less rare, and capable of inflicting serious damage, but were shy, and dangerous only when threatened. Which left wolves. Normally, they gave man a wide berth, but they might attack if prompted by hunger.

  Making separate piles of dry wood, ranging from tiny twigs to fallen limbs, Gaius scraped some punk from a hollow log and ignited it with his strike-light flint and steel. Blowing steadily on the smouldering tinder until it burst into flame, the old soldier fed it from the fuel he had prepared, until he had a vigorous blaze going. Gratefully, he huddled close to its cheering warmth.

  Ribs showing through its matted coat, the old wolf that had been trailing Gaius, halted when it saw the fire flare up. Fires meant danger, searing pain, light that dazzled and confused. He lay down on his belly, eyes fixed on the figure crouching with hands extended towards the flames. He was content to wait, knowing from experience that, come the dawn, the man would kill the fire and begin to move again.

  The wolf had seen the passing of twelve winters, none more bitter than the last. He was a huge animal and in his prime had been magnificent, with a glossy pelt of thick grey fur, shading from near-black to whitish on the belly. A successful pack leader for many years, he had fathered many strong cubs, all from the same dam. Then, four winters previously, his life had changed traumatically. His mate had fallen to a hunter’s spear; he pined for her, his leadership had lost its edge and he had been ousted by a younger rival. Forced to hunt alone, he had subsisted well enough until last winter when the red deer and the roe, his staple prey, had become scarce because, unable to dig through the crust of hard-frozen snow to browse on the underlying vegetation, many had died or migrated. He had been red
uced to hunting small rodents. Once, in desperation, he had tried to steal the bait from a hunter’s trap; hunger had made him careless, and he set off the deadfall, which collapsed, maiming a forepaw. Now, lame and starving, the wolf had suppressed his instinctive fear of man and, in order to survive, was prepared to hunt and kill this member of their kind. The man, he sensed, was old and weak. He should be easy prey.

  Gaius slept in brief snatches throughout the long, long night, tending the fire in the intervals between. As the first grey light filtered through the branches, he kicked out the embers and continued on his way. Gradually, he became aware of a faint booming sound. The noise grew louder, the earth began to tremble, and suddenly, entering a glade, he found himself confronting a mighty waterfall crashing and foaming down hundreds of feet in seven wild leaps from platforms of granite. The Falls of Triberg, he remembered, with a lifting of the spirit; he was now not far below the height of land. He pressed on; soon the trees thinned out, giving place to grassy slopes with here and there an isolated stand of mountain pine, and at last he stood on the summit ridge.

  The weather was crisp and clear, so that even distant tops – the Herzogenhorn, the Belchen, the Kandel – stood out sharp-etched against the sky. Anxiously, he scanned the horizon to the southeast, and there it was, his main landmark: round-topped and bare, towering above the other peaks: the Feldberg. Spent but enormously relieved, the old general sank down and unbuckled his satchel. The worst was behind him. With the going now comparatively level, he should tonight reach the Höllenthal below the Feldberg; and tomorrow should see him through that narrow valley to the Alb, and then the Rhenus. The back of the journey would then be broken, and he could expect to reach Spolicinum on the fourth day as planned.

  Having breakfasted, Gaius set out feeling much refreshed, and still uplifted in spirit; provided the weather held, allowing him to keep the Feldberg and the Kandel in view, navigation should no longer be a problem. Especially as there was now a clear-marked ridgeway track to follow, the Hohenweg. In contrast to the previous day, the going on the tops was superb, being firm gravel or springy turf. From the Kandel, fantastic views unrolled around him: the Vosegus and Mons Jura ranges and the distant rampart of the Alpes, while below, set off by the forest’s sombre green, tarns gleamed like turquoises. Then, at some point in the afternoon, his soldier’s instinct told him he was being followed. Turning, he saw some fifty paces behind him a huge wolf, long of leg and muzzle, gaunt to the point of emaciation, its fur dull and staring, lips drawn back in a snarl baring rows of vicious fangs.