Prophecy: Death of an Empire: Book Two (Prophecy Trilogy)

by M. K. Hume

  ‘Rise, good man, and continue with your duties,’ Theodoric ordered rather stiffly. Myrddion wondered if he was embarrassed at displays of bowing and grovelling. ‘Is this lad one of your apprentices?’ the Visigoth asked in a voice that seemed thready now that he was out of the sunlight, as if some vital bodily element leached out of him in the dimness of the tent.

  ‘Aye, lord, Cadoc ap Cadwy has been my loyal assistant for two years. We met at the encampment of King Vortigern, High King of the Britons, after a vicious battle with the king’s son. As you can see, burn scars caused the tendons in his shoulder to contract and restricted his arm movements. His injuries put an end to his usefulness as a warrior, but he has become my strong right hand. He makes great progress and will soon become a healer himself.’

  ‘The lands of the Britons seem much like mine – sons rise against fathers and the kinship of blood matters little when a throne is at stake,’ Theodoric murmured in a voice so soft that Myrddion had to strain to hear the words. The king’s voice was bleak, but his cynical eyes carried a sheen of something that was vulnerable and sad. Is a kingdom worth this pain and loss of trust? Theodoric obviously has faith in no one, the healer thought suddenly, and he drinks to excess to keep his demons at bay in the long watches of the night. Is anything worth such a half-life?

  ‘Do your scars pain you, Cadoc ap Cadwy?’ Theodoric asked, switching his attention disconcertingly from master to apprentice. ‘They appear painful to me, but I know nothing of healing. May I inspect them?’

  Cadoc allowed Theodoric to run a hesitant palm over the raised cicatrices that covered the apprentice’s neck and shoulder. Though the king recoiled from the ragged, hairless skin, he asked Cadoc to move his arm so that he could see for himself the full extent of the apprentice’s incapacitation. Then, in a very human gesture, he pulled Cadoc’s sleeve gently over the old scars.

  ‘Do you regret the loss of your warrior trade, Cadoc ap Cadwy?’

  Cadoc’s eyes never left King Theodoric’s pale face, although a brief flicker of embarrassment slid across his eyes.

  ‘I once took bodies apart for my bread, lord king. But I am now learning how to put them back together. Which trade is the fairest labour for a man, my lord? I am proud to serve a master who is the most skilled healer in all of Britain.’

  Theodoric acknowledged Cadoc’s pride, but the cynical veil clouded his eyes once more and Myrddion marvelled that a man of such power had decided that feelings of sympathy were signs of weakness.

  For an hour, Theodoric talked to those patients who were conscious and asked pertinent and intelligent questions about poultices, painkilling and Myrddion’s obsession with cleanliness. The healer gave detailed, considered answers to each query, earning Merovech’s gratitude for his courtesy and the care he took to fully explain his trade.

  ‘What are these evil humours that you describe so vaguely, healer? Surely something that cannot be seen lacks the power to harm a healthy man?’

  Myrddion treated Theodoric’s question seriously and replied as carefully as he could, although he scarcely knew the answer himself.

  ‘I wish I knew, my lord. If I did, I would be the greatest healer in this world, and I would have discovered the means to defeat death itself. But as my craft now stands, we know that something causes plague, lung disease, gangrene and brain sickness, and that these curses are invariably fatal, but we cannot see with the naked eye what causes these ailments. We use the words evil humours, but we are too ignorant to know if that description is accurate. But I do know, in the case of open wounds, that cleanliness increases the patient’s chances of survival, even if I don’t know why.’

  Theodoric nodded reflectively. ‘Aye, I understand. Sometimes it’s enough to know that a strategy works, even if we’re ignorant of the reasons for its success. The ancients built bridges that span great rivers in magical feats of engineering. Today, the builders’ skills are forgotten, but we still use their roads and bridges freely. And speaking of roads, healer, your services will soon be needed in other places and the time fast approaches when you must leave. I will ensure that your patients are cared for within Aurelianum, and you may expect my servants to begin moving them within the hour. You will plead that you are needed here, but the battle that is coming will dwarf anything that you have experienced in the past. Yes, some of these men will die because you have left them, but countless others will perish without your skills after we have come to grips with Attila on the Catalaunian Plain. I am sorry to give you no choice in this matter, but kings cannot rule with their hearts – only their heads and their muscle. We leave at noon, so you must pack and prepare to join our baggage train.’

  ‘But I need more supplies, more bandages, more everything, if I am to be effective.’

  ‘Send Cadoc to my guard with your list and they will strip Aurelianum to supply your needs. My physician and his assistants will attend upon you shortly. One other matter comes to mind, and I trust that you will not take offence at my words. I believe you need a nomen to engender trust in those with whom you serve. The lack of a father in your name doesn’t shame you in my eyes, but I am not the world. Your birthplace serves to display your heritage, but I would prefer that you select a name that gives you more dignitas. You are the healer for the Western Allies, and your name should reflect your status among our warriors.’

  Then Theodoric turned away and re-joined Merovech. Wrong-footed and baffled, Myrddion was left with nothing to say.

  The journey back to Châlons was long and tedious, and the wagons groaned under the weight of herbs, bandages, unguents and potions that Aurelianum had donated gladly to the kings. Myrddion preferred to make his own supplies, but time was now a scarce resource, so he knew he must make do with whatever was on hand. Already, fresh bunches of leafy simples hung from the wooden supports of the wagon’s leather cover, swinging and drying with every jolt of the huge wooden wheels.

  Three other wagons had joined the same cavalcade. Vechmar and his servants had arrived at the camp as Myrddion was preparing to depart, and the Celt met Theodoric’s personal physician with open curiosity.

  Vechmar was a lean, dark man whose race would have been almost impossible to guess from his saturnine face. The new arrival spoke very little, but even a cursory glance at his fastidiously clean hands allayed Myrddion’s concern. But Vechmar was careful to explain that their alliance was only temporary, for he was devoted to Theodoric and intended to serve the king’s house for life.

  ‘I understand, Vechmar. While I serve no master willingly, I applaud devotion such as yours. Together we will save many lives.’

  Vechmar’s lips twisted with open contempt, leaving Myrddion to wonder what he had done or said to offend him.

  ‘I will obey my master, but I tell you honestly that I am embarrassed to labour with a beardless youth. However, I have seen your handiwork, so I hope we can rub together for the coming battle. After that our paths need never cross again. I am speaking bluntly because you deserve to know the measure of my skills and feelings, for I am shamed that my king puts inordinate trust in a foreigner who has no standing in these lands. I will treat those men who come to me in my own way and you are free to do the same.’

  Myrddion chewed over this crude appraisal and decided that he was not obliged to like the Spanish healer, merely to work with him. ‘That’s fair enough. Extra hands are vital and one field hospital will work much better than two.’

  As the road unwound before them, Myrddion’s thoughts returned to Theodoric’s suggestion of a name. Vechmar’s opinion of him had stung his sensitivities and he accepted that Theodoric understood the ways of fallible men far more clearly than he did. So, as the wooden wheels of the wagons provided a soporific background to his deliberations, he created and discarded name after name as being either foolish or pretentious. Finally, because he acknowledged that his true life had begun when King Vortigern had tried to sacrifice him at Dinas Emrys under the white brows of Cymru’s mountains, he decided on a name t
hat would last for the rest of his life, or until he chose another.

  ‘I’ve decided, Cadoc, that I will accept the advice of King Theodoric and adopt a more imposing name than I have previously used. I have decided to assume the nomen of Myrddion Emrys of Segontium. At the age of ten years, while King Vortigern’s prisoner, I learned what kind of man I would become at that cursed place, so it is probably fitting that it should remain with me always.’

  Cadoc shuddered, because he remembered that windswept fortress, dark with rain and dried blood, too well to ever forget it. But if his master chose to call himself a godling or even a fool, Cadoc would accept his decision.

  As the weary journey drew towards its completion, the wagons joined the baggage train of an immense army that had been swelled with Aetius’s legions, Alan cavalry and the untried Sarmatian warriors. Rumour among the tribes suggested that Aetius had no trust in their king, Sangiban, who had earned a reputation for changing sides whenever there was profit in doing so. In this army, all sensible men were wary around the Sarmatian warriors.

  The sight of Roman soldiers fascinated Myrddion whenever he saw them during their forced march to their marshalling point north of Châlons. Too young to have memories of the legions in Britain, he had tried to imagine the appearance of these fearsome and almost invincible warriors, and he found the reality very unsatisfying.

  A century of Roman warriors, led by a hard-bitten centurion, marched past the wagons not far from Châlons, giving Myrddion his first close view of their famed discipline. To his surprise, the legionaries were very dark, very short and surprisingly thickset under the daunting packs they carried on their backs. A rectangular shield was used as the basis for each pack, which consisted of a bedroll, a spade, a water skin, a small supply of food and the usual flint, tinderbox and whetstone. Myrddion marvelled anew at Roman organisation that made each man self-sufficient.

  Taken individually, the soldiers rarely stood higher than five foot six inches and many men were much shorter. Their serviceable armour and boiled leather protection was weighty, as were the compact thrusting spear, the narrow dagger and the sword that added considerably to the weight each man carried. Myrddion was puzzled by those swords, which lacked the crosspiece of the tribal weapons, but were longer than the Roman blades he had become familiar with in Britain. When he voiced his surprise at the weaponry, Cadoc shrugged with a soldier’s cynicism.

  ‘The Romans never waste anything, master, least of all useful weapons. The short sword is probably old-fashioned, given that the Empire has changed, but a weapon is a weapon, and the army won’t throw away a serviceable piece of kit. Why would they have sent new swords to Britain? What does it matter, anyway?’

  ‘It doesn’t, Cadoc, but I’m curious.’

  ‘It’ll be the death of you one day, master,’ Cadoc joked.

  ‘I doubt it, friend. Curiosity has kept me alive more times than I care to count.’

  ‘They’re runts, master! What good can those men possibly be against the wild Hun cavalry?’ Cadoc asked, his lip curling with disdain. ‘A strong breeze would knock them over.’

  ‘I’m not so sure, Cadoc. Look at their legs. Solid muscle! Look at the pace they are setting. Judging by the sun, they’ve been marching for five hours at that pace, but they’ve hardly broken a sweat. And they march in formation, eating and drinking on the move. If these men are any guide, it explains why Caesar was able to muster his legions faster than his enemies.’

  ‘But they’re so short!’ Cadoc repeated, his voice almost shrill with disbelief.

  ‘Those swords and spears depend on close contact where height doesn’t matter. The size of those shields is interesting too, for they would cover most of their bodies in a defensive position, while the longer swords give them greater reach. I can see now why the Romans ruled their world.’

  ‘Well, I’ve yet to be convinced,’ Cadoc replied in a sulky voice, as if Myrddion’s praise for the Romans was somehow a slight on the prowess of the Celts. Myrddion was forced to abandon the conversation with regret.

  Summer had come, along with days of sunshine so bright and vivid that Myrddion’s eyes were painful from the glare and the dust that rubbed his eyeballs raw. Ripening grain stalks raised their heads towards the sky and sunflowers followed the daily path of the sun through the skies with large yellow faces that were pregnant with seed in their deep, velvet-black centres. The occasional clusters of cottages were empty of both humans and livestock, leaving the land trapped in an eerie silence.

  The Catalaunian Plain was wide and almost completely flat, except for a long ridge whose summit, though not high, dominated the agricultural land below it. Streams crossed the ridge, some dry in the hotter months. As night fell and the allied armies set their cooking fires alight, the vast number of men, almost thirty-thousand in total, created a midnight blanket that was dotted with countless small red flowers of flame.

  At a vantage point below the left horn of the ridgeline, the allied kings gathered to hear the Roman general elaborate on his plan of action. None of the kings seriously chose to challenge Aetius for the overall control of the battle that was to come. Square, stolid and professional, Flavius Aetius radiated the calm, workmanlike confidence of a man who made his living from the trade of death. Moreover, Aetius bore an almost supernatural luck. In the failing years of the Empire and the new prominence of second-rate minds, Aetius flamed like a comet with his brilliance, his intellect and his capacity for lightning-fast strategies that devastated any enemy so foolish as to chance his arm against the Empire’s most successful general.

  As he looked up at the ridgeline, Aetius saw, with a lurch in his breast, that the Hun had taken part of the high ground. He pointed to the firefly lights of cooking fires clearly visible on the right horn of the ridge.

  ‘See? Attila has always had the luck of the chaos-lords and, if I’m honest, the skills to capitalise on any landscape that presents itself when battle is imminent. Look to the north!’ He pointed towards the spot where the Hun’s forces were assembled. ‘That’s Attila’s main encampment over there. He expects us to come roaring onto the plain like tyros and then he’ll loose an attack from the heights against our rear. If we were so foolish as to act impetuously, he’d crack us like lice between his thumbnails.’ Aetius began to curse like a foot soldier. ‘Unfortunately, they beat us to the ridgeline, damn them to the tortures of the gods. But it’s not a disaster for us. Given Attila’s mistake in concentrating on just a part of the heights, we are still in a position to capitalise on his errors.’

  He smiled, and turned to face Theodoric. ‘My lord?’

  ‘Aye, general,’ the king responded, as he stared into the darkness with a secret smile already wreathing his face. ‘What do you require of me?’

  ‘Oblige me by taking the left horn of the ridge, in silence if possible. We will send a contingent to join you, as will Sangiban and Merovech. The bulk of your cavalry and foot soldiers will wait behind the ridge. Let’s give Attila something to worry about.’ Aetius grinned like a ruffian, exposing worn, yellowed teeth like a sound old horse.

  ‘As I am ordered to take the ridge, it’s as good as taken,’ King Theodoric agreed softly. ‘But why at night? Would the heights be so advantageous to us, General Aetius?’ In this setting Theodoric stood easily, finally, as a man who appeared comfortable within his own skin. His son, Thorismund, huge and menacing, stood beside him.

  ‘Yes. A surprise attack, a silent establishment of foot soldiers on the opposing side of the ridge, especially carried out so soon after we arrive on the scene, will be totally unexpected. Attila is not as infallible as his men believe. The Hun will not expect such a tactic, given that neither you nor they like to fight at night. Attila sits in his camp behind the ridge while we stand before it. At dawn, we will engage the Hun on the right horn of the heights, taking them out of the battle’s equation.’

  He gazed around at his audience who began to nod in agreement as they digested his plans. ‘Can you do thi
s for me?’

  ‘Aye!’ The voices of the kings were firm, even the higher voice of Sangiban.

  ‘Thank you, my friends, for we were born for this moment. May Mithras protect us all!’

  ‘One moment, Flavius Aetius,’ Sangiban interrupted, and Aetius’s white eyebrows rose interrogatively. ‘Why hasn’t Attila taken the apex of the ridge? In his position, I would have no hesitation in doing so, and I like to know the motives of my enemy before I am fully committed.’

  Flavius Aetius smiled silkily and every man present realised that the Sarmatian would pay for his interruption. ‘I’m sure you do, King Sangiban. I also wonder as to his motivation. What do we know about the Hun? Really know?’

  ‘They like to strike fast and hard on horseback so they can fall back after inflicting maximum damage without risking harm to themselves,’ Childeric answered carefully, one finger smoothing his moustache.

  ‘Good, Prince Childeric. Good. The Hun prefers to fight on horseback so, where possible, they leave foot battles to their allies. I believe that a pitched battle on the heights is not part of Attila’s battle plan, and would only slow him down. It is a flaw in his strategy and we can use this weakness in his thinking to our advantage. If we take the high ground, Attila’s numerical advantage is neutralised.’

  ‘It can’t be that simple,’ Sangiban snapped, his eyes seeking rapidly for an answer that was more complex and satisfying.

  ‘I can understand Attila’s strategy,’ Theodoric decided. ‘He expects us to come roaring against him after his abortive attack on Aurelianum. He supposes that we will take his retreat there as a victory, and that we will act unwisely in an attempt to finish him off.’

  ‘Mmm . . . quite possibly,’ Aetius agreed. ‘But do his motives matter? If we have the high ground, we take the initiative from him. War is a game, my lords, and advantage, whether real or imagined, tips the balance in our favour.