The Sword of Attila

by David Gibbins

‘You’re lucky that I was back from hunting, and that it was not my father’s older brother Bleda who met you. He was passed over for the kingship at his birthing ceremony, but he has made up for it by being the most savage of my father’s henchmen. It was he who took away the eunuchs who came from Constantinople and butchered them like the fattened pigs that they are, with his own hands. If Priscus and Maximinus had not left when they did, they would have suffered the same fate.’

  ‘So you knew we were coming.’

  ‘By chance the Huns who arrived from the island ahead of you were in my service, providing wine and food for my retinue. One of them saw you when they passed you in the town and recognized you from twelve years ago, despite the beard and the cassock.’

  ‘Then you will know that we have met Priscus of Panium.’

  ‘It’s an open secret that he’s hiding somewhere on the island. My father liked him, admired his scholarship, and the two spent hours discussing the geography of the outer reaches of the world, my father telling him much that was new about the ice cap to the north where the Huns have gone on expeditions to hunt whales and the great tusked seals. But my father has a mercurial temper, and would have ordered Priscus executed if he had caught wind of the machinations in Constantinople. He detests intrigue, and rates men only as scholars or as warriors. Priscus is beleaguered from both sides, and there is little I can do for him.’

  ‘He told us everything, Erecan. He told us of your nocturnal visit, and what you told him and Maximinus about Attila’s plans. You remember me telling you of my dreams for Britain, but I remember you telling me of your hatred for your father after he murdered your mother, and your desire for vengeance.’

  ‘It remains undimmed. It is with me night and day. I will have it in this world, or in the next.’

  ‘Then there’s something I must tell you. Something that Flavius and Macrobius know only in part, though they may have guessed the truth. Fifteen years ago when I deserted my foederati numerus it was not just because of my distaste for what we’d been ordered to do – to mop up and exact retribution after a peasant revolt in northern Gaul. When I voiced my discontent I was brought before Aetius, who’d heard about my background and recruited me into his newly formed intelligence service. Everything I’ve done since then, joining Gaiseric’s bodyguard and coming to the Hun court, gaining Augustine’s confidence and becoming his secretary, our mission here today, all of it has been in the service of Aetius. And there’s nothing Aetius desires more than the destruction of Attila.’

  ‘Then you are my bondsman again, Arturus. But this time there will be no more unannounced departures. When there is a need to go, we go together.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘We have horses for you. As we ride you can tell me exactly what you are plotting.’

  For the next few hours the group wended their way ever further into the steppe-land, passing the two Huns and the traders they had encountered on the island, seeing how they had lashed their amphorae on the sides of donkeys and put the barrels and parcels into a cart that was being pulled along slowly by a pair of bullocks. Erecan had stopped, smashed the top off an amphora and filled a wineskin for her men, pouring the remainder into another skin and passing it to Macrobius. He had drunk his fill, and then passed it to Arturus and Flavius, who did the same. It was a Gaulish vintage that Flavius had recognized from the amphora stamp as Lugdenese, made close to the hunting estate that had been given to his grandfather Gaudentius when the Romans had decided to settle the Visigoths in the old province of Gaul. Wine had been made there since earliest times and had been drunk by Gaulish chieftains before Germanic warriors had acquired a taste for it, and now it seemed fitting that it should be drunk by the next wave of those beyond the frontiers who had found some of what Rome had to offer intoxicating.

  Flavius had tossed the wineskin back into the bullock cart and resumed his place beside Macrobius as they trotted forward, enjoying the warmth in his belly but momentarily regretting not wearing his cassock as a sharp blast of wind hit them from the steppes. The path dropped out of the wind into a gully, and Arturus dropped back too, the three of them now riding side by side behind the Huns. Macrobius turned to him. ‘Nice one with the wergild story, by the way, Arturus. That might have saved our skin.’

  Arturus gave him a rueful look. ‘If you want to get out of a scrape with Huns, tell them you were seeking vengeance. That goes straight to their soul, and they’ll forgive you just about anything.’

  ‘So,’ Flavius said. ‘Arturus, future King of the Britons?’

  ‘The word king was Erecan’s, not mine,’ Arturus replied. ‘For now, I’m no more than a special agent of the magister militum; I’m just a man who exists in the shadowlands of history and might well leave no trace of his passing.’

  ‘But it could be otherwise.’

  Arturus reined up his horse as they waited to go over a wooden bridge. ‘If we succeed in our mission here, you and Macrobius can return to soldiering, as men whom Aetius might value highly for the first-hand knowledge you will get here of Attila and the Huns. But for me it’s different. Already Heraclius is on to me, and soon enough he’ll know the extent of my intelligence activities for Aetius. He might try to woo me into his own fold, but I would never serve a eunuch. This will be my last mission for Aetius. I plan to return west from here to my own people, and use the skills I’ve learned in the service of Rome to lead the resistance against the Saxons.’

  ‘If any of us survives whatever lies ahead of us in this place,’ Macrobius said.

  The last of the Hun horses clattered over the bridge, and they moved forward. Ahead lay a deepening cut in the folds of the steppe, an old river channel that had eroded into a ravine. An eagle flew high above them, dark and menacing, flapping against a wind that they could barely feel down below the level of the plain. A well-trodden path beside the stream in the centre led them along a sinuous route, left and then right. Flavius could see how the ravine could easily be defended by archers and catapult men ranged on the slopes above, the turns of the ravine breaking up an attacking army into sections of a few hundred infantry or cavalry who could be dealt with before the next section attempted to force their way through. After about a mile the ravine widened, large areas of well-watered land now abutting the stream on either side, some of it cultivated in patches of green, with people visibly hoeing and picking. They turned a corner, carried on for another quarter of a mile and came to a huge earthen vallum that stretched across the entire ravine from one side to the other, a wooden palisade with crenellations and low towers running along the top. The gate in front of them swung open and Erecan led them inside, the Hun horsemen now encircling the three men in a tighter formation as they carried on forward.

  As Flavius looked up an astonishing sight met his eyes. Ahead of them lay a vast wooden citadel, rising almost to the height of the surrounding cliffs, but far enough away to be out of arrow or ballista range. In the foreground were numerous butts for archery practice, and to the right a track the size of the hippodrome in Rome where groups of galloping horsemen were kicking up great clouds of dust. Tented encampments lay everywhere, round huts of hide with wisps of smoke issuing from holes in the centre of their roofs, horses tethered nearby and the smell of cooked meat wafting over the road. Flavius could see that Priscus was right, that this was the encampment of an army numbering in the tens of thousands, with many more men presumably in outlying encampments and on the steppes ready to heed the call to arms when it came.

  It was the sight of the citadel itself that most riveted Flavius. A palisade surrounded it, enclosing an area at least as great as the Palatine Hill and the Old Forum in Rome. In the centre was a fortress-like structure rising above the plain, surrounded by tiers of buildings in a tightly packed mass that descended to the valley floor; in overall appearance it was as if one of the circular huts of the encampments had been recreated on a grand scale. The palisade had been built from huge trunks of cedar of a size that Flavius had only seen in the f
orests surrounding the gorge of the Danube near the Iron Gates; to cut and transport such timbers would have been a prodigious feat, one presumably carried out by the Danube woodsmen themselves under contract to the Huns. In a land where wood was scarce and trees were stunted, the Huns’ own tradition of woodcraft was seen in the walls of the interior buildings, all built from short planks of varying breadths seamlessly mortised together, giving the flush appearance of ships’ hulls that, as a boy, Flavius had watched being constructed shell first in the building yards of Portus near Rome. The weakness of the citadel was its vulnerability to fire, but the chances of an attacker getting close enough with the right artillery seemed remote indeed; the Hun strategy was one of offence, fighting wars hundreds of miles from their homeland, striking out from a base with little in its location or resources to attract an attacker intent on loot or conquest.

  At the gate into the palisade Erecan leapt off her horse, dismissed her warriors and watched them canter off to an encampment nearby. Earlier, she and Arturus had fallen back from the group, talking intently, and Flavius had known that she was being told of their plan to find and take the sword. The men got off their own horses, handing the reins to waiting boys, and followed Erecan inside, past the gate guards and up a wide stairway that led to the central part of the citadel. When they were out of earshot of the guards and had reached another entranceway, Erecan stopped and turned to Flavius. ‘Arturus is your manservant, your armourer. He’ll go down this passageway and await my return, and then he and I will go to the strongroom. First I will take you to the audience chamber. My father will only have a short time for you, as he is intending to ride on Parthia tonight. But he respects Aetius as a general, and he’ll listen to what you have to say.’

  ‘I’ll decide what that is when I see him,’ Flavius said.

  ‘Don’t offer him concessions of land, as Rome did to the Visigoths and the Alans. Attila will regard that as a sign of weakness. And offers of gold he is used to from the eunuchs of Constantinople. You don’t want to remind him of eunuchs. He despises them, and then he will despise you.’

  ‘No eunuchs,’ Macrobius said gruffly, hand on his sword pommel. ‘At least that’s one thought I share in common with Attila.’

  ‘And take your hand off your sword. You’ll be allowed to wear your weapons into the audience chamber, as any man who willingly lets others take his sword from him is regarded as a weakling. But to touch them will be to invite instant death.’

  ‘This sounds like it’s going to be a bundle of laughs,’ Macrobius grumbled.

  Flavius glanced at him. ‘It’ll be one to tell your grandchildren.’

  ‘Children would be a good start. Coming here isn’t exactly going to increase my chances of that. Most soldiers my age are veterans with a nice plot of land and a wife, and sons already in the army.’

  ‘Wait until you see the gold,’ Erecan said. ‘Then you’ll be pleased you came.’

  ‘Now you’re talking.’

  ‘When you’ve had your audience, I’ll take you to the strongroom,’ she went on. ‘Once there, we will need to work out our best route of escape.’

  ‘That sounds like a plan.’

  ‘And one last thing. Watch out for Bleda. He’s loyal to his brother, but embittered after years of resentment at not having been selected for the kingship. He hates me because he took my slave mother for his own after I was born and Attila then decided to kill her, and he blames me for that. He would happily find an excuse to destroy me.’

  ‘Do you have anyone you can rely on?’

  ‘My two closest bodyguards, Optilla and Thrastilla. They’ve been my guards since my birth. They will come with us.’

  ‘All right. Let’s move,’ Flavius said.

  Arturus and Macrobius disappeared down the passageway to the left, and Erecan led Flavius up the stairs and into a wide chamber with wooden colonnades around the walls, and with the floor and the wall spaces between the columns covered with overlapping carpets, brightly coloured and tightly woven. It reminded Flavius of the interior of Berber tents he had seen in Africa before the fall of Carthage, the dwellings of another people more at home with a nomadic than a sedentary lifestyle; to the Huns, even a citadel as impressive as this one would have none of the permanence or meaning of Rome or Constantinople, and would only be seen as a temporary capital while their king marshalled his forces for his final apocalyptic thrust westwards.

  Erecan pushed her way through two more sets of doors, and then pulled a final set inwards, standing aside while Flavius made his way forward. He was inside another colonnaded chamber, but instead of being enclosed, this one was open to the elements, a large circular aperture in the roof drawing out wisps of smoke from a smouldering fire in a stone hearth below. On either side of the entrance were two huge Goth mercenaries, both carrying axes, and beyond the hearth Flavius could see a Hun warrior, presumably Bleda, his hair streaked with grey, cross-armed and glaring at them, the birth scars on his cheeks livid in the firelight.

  The doors slammed shut behind him, and Flavius took another step forward. Beside the Hun warrior he could see another figure, seated on a wooden throne, slouched to one side, with his moustache and sloped forehead clearly visible. He too bore the birth scars on his cheeks, and he was drinking from a golden tankard and eating meat off a bone, and staring across the hearth at him.

  Flavius had reached his destination.

  It was Attila.

  14

  Flavius stood in front of the hearth in the audience chamber, trying to keep his posture relaxed as Attila and his brother stared at him. ‘My name is Flavius Aetius Gaudentius, tribune of the Roman army, nephew of Aetius of the same name, magister militum of the western armies. I come before you on his behalf.’ Bleda leaned over and spoke close to Attila’s ear in the guttural language of the Huns, his body tense and his fists balled. Attila replied to him and Bleda swung away, his face contorted with rage, pacing behind the throne. ‘My brother wishes to kill you on the spot,’ Attila said, his voice deep and sonorous. ‘He thinks that an envoy who does not represent an emperor is not an envoy at all, and is an insult to the court of the Huns.’

  Flavius had already decided how to play it with Attila. There would be no talk of concessions, no offers of gold. They would talk as men and as soldiers, not as negotiators. ‘I come representing Aetius because he is the only general on earth who is a worthy opponent to Attila. Valentinian is a weakling, served by eunuchs. I would not dishonour myself by agreeing to represent such a man. You can tell this to your brother Bleda, warrior to warrior.’

  ‘My brother understands every word you say. We were as well schooled in Latin and Greek by scholars brought here by my father as any of the Goth princes who were sent to Rome.’ He took a mouthful of meat, chewed and swallowed it, tossed the bone into the hearth and contemplated Flavius, wiping his hands on his tunic. ‘We don’t like eunuchs either. Bleda especially doesn’t like them. Any he finds he uses for pig-sticking practice in the field.’ He glanced up at Bleda, who grunted, his face slightly less ferocious. Attila turned again to Flavius. ‘So, what do you want?’

  ‘I bring you a gift.’ Flavius began to open a satchel that was hanging from his side, having previously been stored inside his backpack, but he was immediately pounced on by one of the Goth guards, who twisted his arm painfully behind his back and put a knife to his throat. Attila watched in amusement and then waved his hand, the Goth releasing him. ‘My bodyguards are touchy about weapons,’ Attila said. ‘The last three Hun kings were assassinated in this very chamber, including my father, Mundiuk.’

  ‘It’s not a weapon,’ Flavius said, nursing his arm. ‘It’s a book.’

  Attila grunted, his interest piqued, and waved his arm again. The Goth backed off and Flavius unwrapped the package in the satchel. It was a small leather-bound codex with vellum pages, a gift from Uago on his passing out from the schola twelve years earlier. Along with the gladius, it had been his most prized possession among the belongings t
hat Una had taken from his quarters and left with Macrobius, and with nowhere else to store it, he had decided to bring it along to annotate during their voyage. Their conversation with Priscus on the island about Attila’s interest in geography had prompted the idea that it might be a suitable gift, a way of keeping Attila occupied while the others were attempting to enter the strongroom. He walked forward, bowed slightly and passed it over. ‘It’s a pocket-book compilation of maps of the known world, based on Ptolemy but incorporating later additions, including a more detailed image of Britannia, for example. I thought you might use it to trace your conquests.’

  Attila took the volume, opening it carefully and turning the pages. ‘But not, I see, incorporating the latest work carried out by the cartographic department of the fabri in Rome.’

  ‘You know I’m unable to bring you that. But this was based on the latest intelligence when it was created by that same department at the time I was a candidate in the schola, twelve years ago.’

  Attila opened a page and stared at it intently, tracing his finger over the map and then shaking his head. ‘Ptolemy got the land to the north-east of the Danube all wrong, and the mistakes have been repeated on maps ever since. The Maeotic Lake is further east, and the great ice sheets much further north. I myself have not seen them, but Bleda and my father as young men went to the edge of the ice and encountered a race of hunters who live in snow huts, bringing back walrus ivory. One day I should like to go north too.’

  ‘There is much of the world still to conquer.’

  ‘To conquer or to explore. We Huns are not people who claim ownership over land. These steppes belong to the eagle and the wolf, the northern ice sheets to the great white bear.’

  ‘That’s what makes you so dangerous,’ Flavius replied, calculating his response. ‘The Romans conquer to occupy territory, building frontiers and forts, expending manpower and resources on it. For the Huns, to conquer means to go to battle. All of your manpower and all of your resources are put into one cataclysmic clash with an enemy. It is why Attila has become the most feared name across the world.’