Malchus lay back and stared up at the crescent moon winking fitfully through the dark canopy of the pines. The air smelt beautiful and fresh. His wounds were clean, no infection. The wine warmed his stomach. And they had survived. Life was sweet. Nearby, Tatullus could still barely speak for grief of his legion but, for Malchus, to be alive was victory. There was a tattered veil of cloud drifting across the night sky, luminous in the moonlight. The call of an owl.
‘Isn’t it magnificent?’ he said.
Knuckles belched. ‘Not bad.’
‘Not the wine, you oaf. This.’ He spread his scarred hands wide. ‘The moon, the dark heavens, the summer stars.’
Knuckles turned to Arapovian. ‘The boy waxes lyrical. Is it a fever?’
‘Of sorts. Beyond my cure.’
Malchus continued regardless, his voice a rapturous whisper. ‘This great Hunnic war that has only just begun. The sight of furious, perishing armies. A galloping black horse on a lonely plain. The sunlight glinting on spears. All of it. I love it. “Sequor omina tanta, quisquis in arma vocas”.’ He sighed. ‘There is nothing as beautiful as war.’
He was like a crazed Trojan hero out of Homer, this one. He’d die fighting, a big smile on his handsome face, his raven hair dripping sweat and blood. Then straight to the Elysian Fields.
‘You’re a fucking poet,’ growled Knuckles. ‘You better have some more wine. All poets are drunks.’
‘Don’t you think,’ said Malchus, sitting up again, ‘sometimes, that everything is beautiful just the way it is? With all the beauty and pity and horror mingled, the way the unknown gods have made it? And that really there is no evil - how could it be otherwise? And that even death is beautiful?’
‘You’re pissed,’ said Knuckles.
‘You’re how old?’ That was Arapovian.
‘Twenty-four,’ said Malchus. ‘The youngest cavalry commander on the Danube frontier.’
‘Well,’ said the Armenian, settling down to sleep, ‘there’s still time for you to believe in evil.’
They slept with their crooked arms for pillows and awoke with their cheeks wet with dew. Arapovian bathed in a nearby stream, to Knuckles’ fascination, and cleaned his teeth with a green hazel-wand. Then he shared out the bread and cheese among the people.
Stephanos ate too fast and got hiccups again. ‘Sorry,’ he said, shame-faced.
Arapovian touched him on the head. ‘You can hiccup all you like, boy. The Huns have gone now.’
Some days later, well hidden from the road, they saw passing in the opposite direction a motley family: two girls, a boy, a woman in a grimy red dress, and a man attired in a close-fitting white robe like a priest of the Church, on his chest a wooden chi-rho. All their wordly goods were packed onto a mulish-looking pony, bull-headed, deepchested, like those the Scythians rode.
The refugees came down from the woods and confronted them. The priest had been the Bishop of Margus himself. ‘But Margus is destroyed.’
Arapovian took a deep breath. ‘Viminacium, too, is destroyed. We are the only survivors.’
The man’s wife repeated, faltering, ‘The legionary fortress . . . destroyed?’
They nodded. She crossed herself. The Bishop muttered of the devil.
‘Where do you go now?’ asked Arapovian.
‘West. To Sirmium, perhaps further.’
‘You must report to the legate there. Your intelligence will be invaluable.’
The priest did not commit himself. He looked over the ragged women and children, the aged couple propping each other up. ‘We will take the people.’
The soldiers considered. It would be safer in the west, for now. The families, dazed and indifferent with tiredness, had no preference. They departed west, with the priest preaching to passers-by on the road of the wrath to come.
The four soldiers went south.
Within a few miles they found themselves some acceptable horses, requisitioned from a party of Illyrian merchants. The merchants didn’t argue. They rode on down the road at a canter. There would be more fighting to be done.
PART II
The City of Gold
1
INTELLIGENCE
Attila was talking with his generals when Orestes stepped forward and passed him something. A fine kidskin parchment, rolled up and sealed with an impressive wax seal.
Geukchu peered at it. ‘And this is the Western Emperor’s own seal?’
Attila nodded. ‘Identical.’
The wily old general was full of baffled admiration. ‘How?’
‘Information is precious.’ For their amusement, he recited what the sealed roll said from memory.
To my Beloved Brother in Christ, Emperor of the Eastern Romans, Theodosius, Greetings
It is with heavy heart that We must refuse your request for aid at this unhappy time, and make fast our own borders against the hordes of Scythia. All our forces are required for our own defence. We have trust in the Lord that you will repel this barbarous incursion alone. To do so is indeed your bounden duty, since it was your own forces from Viminacium which first stung Attila and his fearsome warriors into attack.
Your faithful Valentinian.
‘How do we know this request was ever made?’ objected Geukchu.
Attila smiled. ‘We know. And we know that this response will anger even mild-mannered Theodosius. Not least because it’s half-right. Those insults sting us most which contain a grain of truth. It was Valentinian’s folly to order our punishment, but it was Theodosius’ cavalry from Viminacium that responded. And look what befell them. Oh that I could see Theodosius’ puny rage for myself!’ Tears of mirth glimmered in his wolfish eyes. ‘Siege-engines, our mercenary friends, regiments of my beloved horse-warriors - those are fine and powerful weapons. But so, too, are information, misinformation, confusion, dissension, terror.’ He smiled, his eyes roving towards the scrolled letter one last time. ‘Poisonous weeds in the golden meadow of Rome.’
‘And so this Theodosius will have no help from the West?’
‘None.’
‘Not even from the gallant Master-General Aëtius?’
Attila’s face darkened at the name. ‘Not until the East is laid waste from the Euxine Sea to the Adriatic, and from the Danube to the Golden Horn.’
Sicily: the naval harbour at Messina. The square red sails flapped and batted from the yardarms in the stiff summer breeze. It was a good week to sail, at the start of the campaign season. Though in his fifties, on mornings like this Aëtius still felt like a fresh young legionary of twenty. The gentle swell of the blue Tyrrhenian Sea, out beyond the massive grey harbour walls, and an inward swell of optimism and hope. The weather was good for a week. Today he would oversee the last of the stores and provisions, and increase the ammunition loads. There would be no heavy swell to dislodge it in the holds. In the night the men would board, along with two thousand horses: powerful chestnut Cappadocians, beautiful, high-stepping Moorish greys. Tomorrow, two hours before dawn, they would weigh anchor and sail on the soft night breeze. In two days’ time, Rome would be taking Carthage. Again. Sons of Scipio.
After he had been summoned back by Galla Placidia from his pleasant enough exile at the Court of the Visigoths, and his interminable games of chess with good old, irascible King Theodoric, Aëtius had learned with horror of Valentinian’s vaunted punitive expedition. Executed ruthlessly enough by the VIIth Legion at Viminacium, being nearest to the impertinent Hun encampment, and yet a monumental folly. He had waited a while for the hammer to fall. But none came. Instead, there was good intelligence from the Danube frontier that the entire confederation of Huns and associated tribal peoples had moved away north. The expedition had worked. Valentinian was triumphant. Aëtius was sceptical. He waited further developments, but there were still none.
So with some misgivings, he resumed his plans for renewed war with the Vandals, with the hated King Genseric, and the recapture of the crucial African grainfields. Africa. He had always loved the very word. In Mau
retania there were still lions and elephants and giraffes. And the golden wheat-growing river valleys of Tunisia, and the vast irrigation works, olive groves up to a hundred miles inland. Rome must win Africa back. Half a million tons of grain a year used to come into Ostia from that vast province, that peaceful, highly civilised province, with its twelve thousand miles of legionary roads, kept under law and order by just one legion. Primitive, rain-sodden Britain had required four!
Aëtius had seen with his own eyes the magnificence of Roman Carthage. The huge hexagon of the outer harbour handling six hundred ships a day, the beautifully proportioned inner circle, the marble monuments of Admiralty Island . . .
Yes, Rome must win Africa back.
The optio came to a halt and saluted before the general, who was seated at his outdoor wooden desk. The general looked up and shielded his eyes from the white Sicilian sun. For once he looked quite cheerful. Those bleakly penetrating grey-blue eyes seemed to have an almost Mediterranean sparkle in them. The wide, set mouth, turned down at the corners almost with bitterness, seemed today to be animated by something approaching a smile.
‘Speak, boy.’
‘Orders from Ravenna, sir. The emperor commands your immediate return.’
Aëtius set his elbows on the desk, interlaced his fingers, rested his chin on his knuckles, and gazed out over the vast harbour of Panormus. Over a thousand ships riding at anchor in and beyond the harbour walls. Twenty thousand men under arms in the camps around the town. His very finest legions: the Batavi, the Herculiani, the aggressive Armigeri Propugnatores, as well as crack cavalry units like the Cornuti Seniores, the Armigeri, the lightning-fast Mauri Alites. Only the finest of them all, the Palatine, was missing, stationed near Ravenna as the imperial bodyguard, on Valentinian’s command. Wasted.
Swarms of slaves wheeling handbarrows of provisions and armaments up the narrow, cross-ridged gangplanks to the full-bellied supply ships. An angelic chorus of white gulls in full cry. Genseric in Carthage, on the back foot. At least one of his sons confined with insanity, so they said. The precious grainfields of Africa once again within Rome’s grasp. The best opportunity for a generation.
‘May I ask why?’
‘Invasion, sir. In the north. Attacks on the Danube station.’
His heart plummeted. Icy depths. He knew, he knew, he did not want to know.
‘And what of the Danube fleet? The frontier legions, depleted as they are?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I . . . It’s a major invasion, they say.’
‘How major?’
‘I don’t know, sir. A barbarian horde.’
Aëtius studied the optio’s face, his ruddy, sixteen-year-old candour. Vitulasius Laetinianus was his ludicrous name. The general called him Rufus.
‘Teutons?’
‘Scythians, sir. Steppe warriors.’
‘Many?’
‘I don’t know, sir. The emperor is most urgent. The fortress at Viminacium has already been wiped out.’
At this impossible news, Aëtius relaxed a little. Clearly the message had got garbled in the panic. Fear always exaggerated, so ‘a barbarian horde’ might equally mean all of a few hundred scrap-merchants.
‘Viminacium is a legionary fortress, boy,’ he said evenly. ‘Only a Roman legion with siege-engines could take it.’
‘The message says that it has fallen, sir. To the Scythians. Their leader has sent further insults to the emperor in the East, saying that the Byzantines have dishonoured the grave-mounds of his people.’
‘Grave-mounds?’
‘Sir. Saying that the empire must apologise, beg his forgiveness, make obeisance, pay reparations. Words of limitless arrogance.’
‘He has a sense of humour. Which grave-mounds?’
‘On the north banks of the Danube, sir. On the Hungvar.’
Aëtius rested his hand on the basalt paperweight on his desk. Papers flicked in the sea breeze. ‘You do not know the barbarian leader’s name, do you, boy?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, then. His name is Attila, Great Tanjou, Khan of Khans. The Lord Attila.’
The boy regarded his general oddly.
‘Remember it. You will have cause to. We all will.’
Aëtius looked out again over the thousand fluttering sails. They suddenly seemed to him the saddest sight he had ever seen. Where is Africa, which was for the whole world like a garden of delights? Now these ships would never sail for lost Africa. Attila knew this, too. His brief boyhood friend. He started to say something to the startled boy about it. How he and Attila had ridden together, hunted together, across the limitless Scythian grasslands . . . Never such freedom, never such innocence again . . . Until he realised he was blathering like an old man, the boy Rufus listening, bewildered. He halted, then waved him away. The boy trotted off along the dockside.
It was better his optio should not see or hear him now. He got to his feet, no longer feeling like a young legionary of twenty. So: it had come. The final hour. Just when Rome was about to recover her African strength, with one last, mighty gasp, Attila had chosen to attack. He knew. He knew. And once the attack had started, it would not stop.
Old Theodoric had warned him that the Huns and the Vandals would form an alliance. Aëtius had thought it impossible. Attila and Genseric had hated each other since boyhood, as only two tyrants can. They had been hostages together in Rome. Genseric and his brother Beric, long since killed in a ‘hunting accident’, had been quickly seduced by Rome’s pleasures. The runaway Hun boy rather less seduced. Aëtius knew it all. He had learned all he could of Attila. He knew him of old.
Feeling as if his dry old heart would crack, he sent out word for the fastest ship to be prepared to sail for Ravenna.
Attila summoned Orestes. ‘Take another letter: To our Beloved Ally, King Genseric, Lord of the Vandals, Conqueror of Africa, Suzerain of the Lands of the Setting Sun . . . Have I missed any?’
‘Commander of the Arian Faithful?’
Attila stroked his thin grey beard. ‘I like it. Put that in, too.’
He resumed. ‘How fondly I remember our happy boyhood together in Rome, my dearest friend. How we cared for each other in our youthful loneliness, in exile in those sullen courts of empire, so far from our respective homes. And how saddened I was to hear of the death of your noble-hearted brother Beric in that cruel hunting accident.’
Even Orestes’ eyes glittered with amusement at this. Attila had to wait a few seconds before he could speak again. ‘I should have been a court jester,’ he said.
‘But to happier matters. The invasion has started. The Hun army, your loyal allies in the north, have conquered half the way to Constantinople already. The vainglorious Roman legions fall before us like grass before the scythe. Their degenerate cities are but fuel for the fire. None stands in our way. And consequently, there will be no Roman attempt upon your own empire of Africa, that rich territory that is rightfully yours by the judgement of Almighty God. May your people bless the wisdom, justice and mercy of your rule. May the glorious dynasty of Genseric prosper. May the fine sense of your sons prevail.’
‘Too much,’ said Orestes. ‘His sons are renowned idiots. One resides in a dungeon in the palace, chained up and gibbering like an ape.’
‘Ah. Yes. Change the last two lines. May the martial valour and Christian righteousness of your dynasty prevail for ever. And may Genseric come to reign pre-eminent in the West, as his most loyal ally Attila shall reign in the East, in a conjoined harmony of Emperors and Brothers.’
‘Hm,’ said Orestes. ‘Just about.’
‘Until such time as we decide to eliminate you and take your empire for our own.’
The corners of Orestes’ mouth twitched. He laid his pen aside.
‘Oh,’ said Attila, wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘I should have been a jester.’
2
POLITICS AND WITCHCRAFT
The moment Aëtius stepped from the ship, the worst was confirmed.
‘
Sir, the Huns have crossed the Danube. They have fallen on Margus Fair.’
‘Very well.’ He nodded and turned away.
All was ready. It was time to begin.
It was time for the end to begin.
He turned back, looked the man in the eye. ‘And Viminacium? Can that be true?’
‘As far as we can tell, yes, sir. Flattened.’
‘So they have siegecraft?’
‘They or their auxiliaries, yes, sir. They took down the walls of the fortress in a day and a night, if reports are correct.’
Attila: The Judgement Page 17