The Sword of Attila

by David Gibbins

  Macrobius was in front of him, yelling. ‘Come on, tribune. To the walls of Carthage. We must run for our lives.’

  Half an hour later Flavius sat among his men just inside the east gate of the city wall, the great wooden doors having been opened for them by the squad of sentries from the garrison who had sworn to remain on duty until they were all safely inside. He had watched the sentries bar the gate and then retreat down the streets towards the harbour to join the other rear guard of the garrison, waiting on the quayside to be taken off by the last remaining galleys. The suburb around them seemed deserted, but Flavius knew that the people of Carthage were cowering inside their houses – those who had believed the assurances of the traitor Bonifatius that civilians who stayed would not be harmed nor would they have their property damaged, that city officials would be promised a place in the new administration under Gaiseric and his council of chieftains. It was not an assurance that had been extended to the milites of the garrison, nor one that would have been believed if it had. Their token display of resistance from the trench had inflicted enough casualties to stoke the Vandal’s rage, extinguishing any slight chance of mercy that they might once have had. Their only chance of survival was to get out of Carthage, and to get out now.

  Flavius lifted one of the skins that had been left for them by the sentries and let the water pour down his throat, swallowing great gulps and letting it splash over his face. He passed it back to the man who had handed it to him, and then looked around. Macrobius had given him the butcher’s bill, but he could count well enough for himself. They had lost two more men during the retreat to the walls, one to a marauding Alaunt and the other to his wounds, collapsing dead as he was being helped along. Of the original numerus of eighty men, only sixteen survived. Sixteen men. Flavius had thought his command puny to begin with, but this was beyond a joke. And yet they were the remaining army of Africa, the last soldiers from the force that centuries ago had smashed its way up these slopes to claim Carthage as its own, and he was still their commander. Every one of them bore the scars of the onslaught, some of them gaping bite wounds from the Alaunt and others crushed and ripped flesh where they had endured blows from the clubs of the Alans; Flavius’ own scars of battle, the four parallel gashes from the dog’s claws along his forearm, were beginning to swell up and throb painfully.

  The Sarmatian archer Apsachos rolled over, raised his right leg and peered at the shredded flesh of his calf. ‘That was a dog’s breakfast, sir, if you ask me.’

  The man beside him guffawed, and then grimaced in pain, clutching a red patch that was seeping through the chainmail on his right side. ‘You crack me up, Apsachos. If I wasn’t holding my innards in, I’d give you a belly laugh.’

  ‘Let ’em out, and let’s see if you’ve really got guts. I didn’t see you showing any back there.’

  ‘That’s because you were too busy waving your arse at the enemy as you were trying to escape, while I was taking on an Alan single-handed.’

  ‘The only one I saw do that was your tribune, Flavius Aetius,’ Macrobius said, squatting down among the men. ‘But everyone showed guts here, as did our comrades who are now with God. And Apsachos, if you were as quick with the latrine-digging as you are with your quips, I’d get you the corona civilis with olive-leaf garlands.’

  ‘Decorations for this action, centurion? A failed rear-guard stand in a failed campaign, Rome’s finest running away with their tails between their legs after abandoning Carthage, the jewel of the empire? I think this is one that our beloved generals eating their grapes and saying their prayers in Ravenna and Milan would rather forget.’

  Macrobius peeled back the mangled chainmail on his left arm, revealing a broken Vandal arrow deeply embedded in his shoulder. ‘We’ve all got our decorations, Apsachos, decorations that will stay with us on our bodies to remind us of this day and our comrades who fell here. That’s all that matters. The generals with their heads in the clouds and the bishops to lead them can go to hell. And now drink up that second skin that the guards left us. I can hear the Alaunt baying at the gates. If we don’t go now, we’ll be the dogs’ lunch as well.’

  4

  Flavius helped the last wounded man up and supported him as they trudged east through Carthage towards the harbours, following the route that Arturus had taken ahead of them to find his Nubians and retrieve his saddlebag. The city would not withstand the Vandals for long; as soon as they realized that the walls were undefended they would use grappling hooks to scale them and then open the gates for the others to follow. Flavius could sense their presence outside, a vast, restless force surging against the city, waiting for their forward scouts to reconnoitre the walls and give the signal for the final assault. He tried to quicken the pace, and after twenty minutes they had put the eastern wall a good quarter of a mile behind them. Near the sea front they passed the vast structure of the imperial baths, breaking the line of the sea walls. Ahead of them lay the famous land-locked harbours, built seven hundred years before by the Punic Carthaginians against the threat of Roman naval attack, a threat that became real when Scipio Aemilianus landed his forces from the sea and razed the city to the ground. The harbours were in sight now, rebuilt at the time of Julius Caesar, and after another twenty minutes, during which they passed villas and tenement blocks, they came to the edge of the complex just before the eastern promontory where the city jutted out into the Mediterranean Sea.

  The streets had been eerily quiet, almost devoid of people, but he could see a few dozen figures on the far side of the quay in front of the prow of a galley, the last ship afloat in the harbours. As they came closer he spotted Arturus in his cassock with the two Nubians and his mule, and beside them the white-bearded captain who had agreed to remain behind to pick up any survivors. Flavius hurried forward to the man, clapped his hand on his shoulder and spoke to him in Greek. ‘We are only sixteen in number. There are no more. Thank you for waiting, kyberbetes.’

  ‘No need to thank me, Flavius Aetius. Remember, I too was once a tribune in my youth, the commander of a liburnian in the Adriatic fleet, the classis Adriaticus. Even now as a civilian I would never leave behind fellow warriors of Rome. You and your men have virtus, unlike those members of the garrison who have already fled.’

  ‘When can we board?’

  ‘Very soon. We are loading the last of the silver and gold plate of the Bishop of Carthage. It is by express order of the emperor’s primicerius sacri cubiculi, Heraclius.’

  ‘That eunuch? The emperor’s wet nurse?’ Macrobius had joined them, and leaned over and spat. ‘Better you truss him on board and then dump him out at sea.’

  ‘Treasure before men,’ another of the numerus grumbled. ‘It’s always been the way.’

  The captain looked apologetically at Macrobius. ‘You know the score, centurion. If I show up at Ostia with no treasure and only soldiers, Heraclius’ Goth thugs will drag me off to the Mamertine Prison in Rome and flay me alive. If I show up with treasure and soldiers, all should be well.’

  ‘Best for Heraclius that you show up with treasure but no soldiers,’ Macrobius said. ‘Then that snivelling toad might live another day. I’ve got time for Valentinian, but his eunuchs can go and piss in hell.’

  Flavius looked at the captain. ‘You have ten minutes, no more. The Vandals will have broken through and be here within the hour.’

  ‘Ave, tribune.’ The captain turned to where his crew were manhandling boxes and crates up the gangplank onto the galley, a wide-beamed single-decker with spaces for thirty oarsmen and the men of the numerus, if they could fit among the crates on the narrow deck that ran above the spine of the hull between the benches. The vessel was docked on the edge of the rectangular harbour opposite the eastern channel that led out to sea, their escape route. On the other side of the quay was the land-locked circular harbour, once home of the war galleys of the Carthaginians and then the headquarters of the Roman grain fleet. Drawn up against the edge of the harbour were the remains of four Roman wa
r galleys, their bottoms staved in and their oars smashed. Flavius glanced at Arturus. ‘At least once we’re at sea the Vandals won’t be following us in a hurry.’

  Arturus tied up his saddlebag and then looked at the harbour. ‘Don’t count on it. There’s a myth that because the Goths failed to cross the Bosporus at Constantinople after the Battle of Adrianople sixty years ago, the sea is the barbarians’ Achilles’ heel. But they were inexperienced in the ways of the Mediterranean then, and more intent on going west than east. When they reached the southern tip of Greece and then Italy in their great migration, it was not so much ignorance of the sea that prevented them from going further south as the fact that they could see no point in it; they wanted land, not to become pirates. Gaiseric is different. He understands that the sea is not a barrier but a route, that the Mediterranean is a battleground that any barbarian intent on Rome ignores at his peril. Among the mercenaries from Britain who stayed with Gaiseric after I left his service was a former artificer of the channel fleet, the classis Britannica, who knew how to build the flat-bottomed boats favoured by the sea peoples of the North-West. It was boats of that design that allowed Gaiseric to cross between the Pillars of Hercules, between Spain and Africa. And you can be sure that once he and his Vandals take the harbours of Carthage they will quickly assert themselves on the Mediterranean. Raiders on land will become raiders by sea. Remember, I know these barbarians. I have seen them with my own eyes, I have fought alongside them, in the mountains and plains of the north, in the forests, on the steppe-lands many stades to the east far beyond the reach of Rome.’

  Flavius eyed him. ‘You have travelled far, Arturus.’

  ‘I have been to dark places.’

  Arturus turned to the Nubians, delved into his cassock and gave each man a small pouch of coins, and then stroked the mule’s nose, reaching up and whispering into its ear. He slapped its haunch and raised his hand in farewell as the mule trotted behind the two Nubians away from the harbour and towards the eastern gate of the city.

  ‘Where will they go?’ Flavius asked.

  ‘Some place where men like them are not enslaved by men like us,’ Arturus said. ‘I have advised them to travel east beside the great desert to Egypt, and then south along the course of the river Nile to the kingdom of Aksum. It is the first Christian kingdom in the world, founded even before Constantine the Great had his revelation and converted the Roman Empire. If they reach Aksum safely, they may find sanctuary and freedom.’

  ‘And you? Why do you not join them?’

  Arturus heaved the saddlebag onto his shoulder. ‘Because I swore an oath that I would take these works of Augustine to safety in Italy.’

  ‘Are they for the libraries of Rome? There at least the monks of the scriptoria will preserve them as the word of God, and not deface and destroy them as they are doing to so many of the great works of the pagan past.’

  ‘I will tell you once we are on the ship. We must go now.’

  The captain of the galley beckoned them forward urgently. A fat cleric pushed ahead, a bishop to judge by his robes, dragging a sack that clunked with precious church metal in one hand and with the other pulling along a slave girl by her neck. She was tall, an African, but unusual, with curly black hair and bruised cheeks, and as she was hauled by she gave Flavius an unfathomable look. He had seen enough battered slave girls in his time to think he was immune to feeling any emotion, but the sight of this girl being dragged along by a sweaty cleric with his bag of loot repulsed him. He knew it was the last thing that should concern him now, and he tried to put it from his mind as Arturus mounted the gangplank and went on board. Flavius waited until the last of his men had followed, and then stepped up the plank after Macrobius. He thought for a moment, then turned and ran back past the sailor who was unlashing the plank from the quayside, squatted and pressed his hand against the old Punic stone of Carthage for the last time. As he looked down he saw something in a crack between the blocks, a corroded silver coin, and prised it out, seeing the head of a goddess on one side. He flipped it over, staring at it, and then shoved it into the pouch on his belt. He turned and ran back up the gangplank, jumping onto the galley deck just before the men began to haul the plank on board, then looked back to see only the discarded water skins and food peelings that were the last residue of the Roman army on the shores of North Africa.

  The captain cast off and the galley edged away from the quayside, the oarsmen having sat down on the benches and flexed themselves in preparation for the task to come. Those few of the numerus who were still fit and able had taken a place alongside them at the oars, and the rest were sprawled along the central deck and in the bows. A Greek iatros, a physician who had been among the few civilians to leave with them, was already leaning over the first of them, his bronze scalpel poised to scrape away pulverized flesh and his sponge soaked with seawater to cleanse the wound. The girl with the curly hair stood up to help, but was pulled violently down by the bishop and made to massage his neck. The captain bellowed an order, and the first sweep of the oars took the galley out into the centre of the harbour and towards the narrow passage on the eastern side that led through the city wall to the open sea. The sounds of the conquerors were echoing across the city: yelled orders, the occasional word in a guttural language heard clear across the still morning air, the baying and barking of the dogs. The Romans had embarked with little time to spare, and Flavius knew that they would not be free until they had passed under the line of the city wall and out of range of any Vandal archers who might have reached the harbour gates in time.

  The oars swept again, and the captain leaned on the steering oar to point the galley towards the passage. Flavius made his way among his men to the bows where Arturus was sitting, and knelt alongside. He was still running on adrenalin, and he felt jittery, his eyes darting everywhere looking for the enemy, as he turned and peered anxiously at the constriction ahead where he knew they would be most vulnerable. One of the men pointed back towards the acropolis of the city. ‘You can see them now. On the platform.’

  Flavius shaded his eyes and peered. The soldier was right. There was a stream of men along the edge of the massive masonry platform that rose above the city, the site of the old Punic temple to Ba’al Hammon and now a great basilican church. He could see one man standing apart, hands on his hips, staring out over the harbour and the sea, as if towards Rome itself. At that moment Flavius knew that he was looking at Gaiseric, that he was seeing a barbarian king for the first time. He felt a chill course through him, and he gripped the thwarts of the ship, staring hard, thinking no longer of the events of the last hours but instead of the months and years ahead, of the shape that men like Gaiseric would give to the empire that Flavius was sworn to defend.

  ‘Now is the time to see Carthage burn,’ the soldier muttered.

  Arturus tightened the straps of his saddlebag to keep the contents dry, the first drops of backsplash from the oars having reached them. ‘We may see fires, but they will be bonfires of victory, not fires of destruction,’ he said. ‘Just as the Christians in Rome converted basilicas to churches and the Colosseum to an altar to God, so Gaiseric and his chieftains will not destroy Carthage but will convert the palaces and villas to their own mead halls. The great monuments of Rome will survive, but you should not be deluded. They will be mere skeletons, like the bleached bones of long-dead warriors on the battlefield, unless Rome regroups and reacts to the threat with force of arms far greater than anything that has been put against the barbarians yet.’

  The captain barked an order, and the oarsmen pulled hard and then retracted their oars, holding them close to the gunwales as they slid into the gloom of the passageway. The sides were shadowy, indiscernible, the ancient blocks of masonry barely distinguishable from the living rock itself, while above them the towering form of the city walls was barely visible in the haze of sunlight. It was as if Carthage were already receding into history, ghostly, diaphanous, ready to be reclaimed by the silt and the marshland that
had been there when the Phoenicians had pulled up their first galley on the shoreline, before Rome had even been born. Flavius turned to Arturus, remembering what he had just said. ‘And what is it that we soldiers of Rome must do?’

  Arturus himself seemed part of the shadowland, his beard and long hair caught in the strange semi-light of the passageway as he sat upright in the bows like some mythical king. He put his hand on his saddlebag and spoke quietly. ‘I will answer by telling you what I intend to do with these books. As a boy in Britain before the arrival of the Saxons I was educated in Greek and Latin, and after my escape the soldiers placed me in a monastery in Gaul until I was old enough to join the army. I left when I was sixteen, but from the monks I had already learned of Augustine. After my years with the foederati and then as a mercenary to the barbarian kings I found much in his service that suited me. I had become sickened by killing, not hardened to it. The City of God seemed a better place than any city men could create. But then I saw how the weak men who ruled Rome began to see in the City of God an excuse for turning away from crisis, from the strategy and planning that were needed to counter the barbarian threat.’

  ‘If the City of God is all that matters, why bother with earthly affairs?’

  You have seen it for yourself, Flavius. Men – emperors – could use the teachings of Augustine as an excuse for living lives of indolence and pleasure. And then Augustine began to preach against free will, to claim that men could not influence their own destiny. The excuse was even stronger. If men’s lives are preordained, why bother debating strategy? After two years with Augustine in Hippo Regius I had begun to hear the call of my homeland, to remember the vow I had made as a boy to return to Britain and fight for my people. Word had come of a mounting resistance to the Saxon invaders in the hills and valleys of the West, of a resistance led by people and their elected captains. The teachings of Augustine no longer seemed to have a place in my vision of my destiny. I had become a secret heretic long before I left his service.’