The Sword of Attila

by David Gibbins

  ‘Then why do you confront me? Why do you not let me be finished off by one of your archers, or leave me to skulk away and disappear?’

  Flavius replied in the Goth tongue. ‘Because I know you are no coward. Because you will stand over your trophy until you are challenged. And because he was my king, and I will have vengeance.’

  He gripped his gladius and leapt forward, avoiding a slippery slick of blood that had pooled on the rock, and thrust hard into Andag’s abdomen, feeling the muscles grip the blade as he slid it in up to the hilt. Andag had been caught off guard by the speed of his attack, and bellowed with rage and surprise, bringing up his mace and swiping it across the old scars on Flavius’ forearm. Andag fell back, staggering, the gladius pulling free as he did so and the wound in his abdomen welling up with blood. Flavius knew that his thrust had missed the spine and would not be enough to fell Andag immediately, and he stood tensed and ready, his sword dripping in front of him. He remembered his first kill all those years before, the Alan in front of the walls of Carthage, the point of vulnerability that Arturus had taught him to anticipate. Andag was visibly weakening now, his abdomen and legs glistening with blood from his wound, but he swung the mace behind him and suddenly bounded forward, his torso and neck exposed just as the Alan’s had been. This time it was Flavius who was caught off guard by the speed of the assault, unable to do anything except throw himself forward and hold out his sword with both hands at arms’ length, locking it into his body so that he became a human spear. He felt the crunch as the sword drove into Andag’s forehead, the huge man unable to stop himself because of the momentum of his arms, the mace flying out of his hands and whirling away over Flavius’ head.

  The two men slipped together on the pool of blood and Andag crashed into Flavius, the huge body knocking the wind out of him and snapping his head backwards. In the split second as he struggled with consciousness he knew that it was not the absence of Attila’s great sword that had won this battle, but sheer force of arms, the brutal struggle of men in individual combat, fighting for their lives as he and Andag had just done.

  Then he saw nothing but blackness.

  18

  Flavius recovered consciousness face down in a puddle of gore, the blood having pooled on the hard ground and trickled under his head and body. With one eye open he could see the rivulet of blood feeding the pool from the pile of corpses beyond, their wounds drained and open: partly severed heads, gaping slices through limbs and torsos, dark holes where bowels had spilled out and lay glistening in lurid cascades over the bodies beneath. He tried to move, but his body seemed paralysed, a feeling he had not had since being tackled by his Goth cousins while playing their ball game as a boy. Then he remembered Andag, the brutal body-blow as he had thrust his sword forward, the funnel of Visigoths who had run up screaming to support Theodoric, the bellowing and chanting of the Huns, the last lunges of the stricken king. He tried to move again, and felt his knees bend, and then his arms. As he did so he saw an arm lying out from the pile, half-submerged in blood, the attached torso pulverized beyond recognition and the head a mess of bloody hair and bone and brains. He kept the hand in his sight as he slowly raised himself to his knees, and then he saw it: the gold ring, unmistakably, on the index finger. It was Theodoric.

  He stared, his mind reeling. He could see the letters engraved on it: HEVA. He remembered the feast in the great hall in the forest when Theodoric had shown it to him, the heady laughter and tales of derring-do in battle, their intoxication from honey liqueur and wine and the meat from the hunt. Theodoric had explained the meaning of the letters: Hic est victoriae anulus. Here is the ring of victory. Flavius looked around, seeing the blood beginning to congeal, the flies already settling on the eyes and mouths of the corpses. If this truly was victory, then Theodoric had secured his place in the great mead hall in the sky. Flavius saw the king’s short sword poking out of the gore, and the longer one impaled in a Hun warrior a little further away. He pulled the torn chainmail on the forearm up over the hand, concealing the ring from any scavengers, and drew the sword hilt down and clasped the lifeless fingers around it. He would find Thorismud and his brother and bring them to this place, and the ring would prove that the mangled corpse was their father. And they would see that he had died sword in hand, facing the enemy, in the bloodiest battle that had ever been fought in the name of their kingdom and of Rome.

  He slowly raised himself to his feet, seeing the fresh wound on his forearm across the four white scars where the Alaunt had torn into him all those years ago before the walls of Carthage. He remembered the raging thirst he had felt after that battle, and he felt it again now, only this time it was as if his soul itself needed replenishing. He took a few hesitant steps forward, swaying on his feet, and then saw the colossal form of Andag lying contorted among the corpses just ahead of the pool. The weight of Andag’s own body as he had slipped in the blood and fallen on Flavius’ sword had driven the blade through the back of his neck and out of his forehead, and yet he had lived on for a few tormented moments, somehow heaving himself up and staggering back before falling, his hands clasped against the sides of his head and his eyes wide open and distorted with horror.

  Flavius put one foot on Andag’s head, reached down and pulled out the gladius, holding it unsteadily and looking around in case any more of Attila’s warriors were ready to spring up and attack him. But the only living forms he could see on the battlefield were dazed Roman milites and Visigoths wandering among the piles of corpses, occasionally reaching down to check a fallen comrade, sometimes delivering a sword or spear thrust to end the agony of a friend or dispatch an enemy. Macrobius was there, and behind him Flavius could make out half a dozen men of the old numerus; Astragos the Sarmatian was supporting Maximus, his head wrapped in bloody fabric. Macrobius had removed his felt hat, and he looked old, his hair white and his face etched with lines, but as he came closer he seemed the timeless image of a Roman warrior. Flavius held up his arm and the two men clasped hands, the survivors of the numerus gathering around them. For once, there were no quips, no attempts at battle humour. They were all exhausted and caked in blood, and the scale of the carnage seemed to leave even Macrobius dumbstruck.

  ‘I need to find Thorismud,’ Flavius said, his voice hoarse. ‘His father lies slain beneath that pile of corpses.’

  Macrobius pointed to a cluster of men and horses over a fold in the ground to the west. ‘He is conferring with Aetius. Thorismud wishes to pursue Attila, but Aetius is warning against it. Attila is a spent force, and Thorismud as the Visigoths’ new king needs to secure his throne in Tolosa before he sets off on campaign again.’

  ‘I will go to him. Before that, we need to find water for our men.’

  ‘The stream through the battlefield runs red with blood. The nearest source is the river above the point where the stream flows into it, about two stades to the west. We will need to leave now to reach there before sundown.’

  Flavius rested his hand on Macrobius’ shoulder. ‘Make it so, centurion. The last great battle of Rome is over. We have done our duty and upheld our honour. Now is the time to look after our men.’

  ‘Ave, tribune.’

  That evening Flavius stood in the darkness beside the river Aube, just outside the flickering circle of torches that surrounded the burial pit. Below the bank at the fording place the horses whinnied and stomped, already saddled up and watered for the long journey they would begin that night to the Visigoth capital of Tolosa ten days to the south. To the east over the battlefield the sky glowed orange like a false dawn, lit up by the pyres that the Romans and the Visigoths had made from the mounds of their own dead; the fallen Huns and Ostrogoths would be left on the battlefield to be picked over as carrion, a last great feast for the vultures that had followed the armies of Rome since they had first set out on their wars of conquest more than a thousand years before.

  It had begun to drizzle, and through the spluttering of the torches Flavius could see the Visigoth chief
tains around the grave, their heads bowed and their swords drawn and held point down in front of them. The only other Roman present was Aetius, standing in the shadows beyond the far side of the torches, his helmet in his hands and his gaze grim and resolute. After Flavius had taken Thorismud and his brother to their father’s body, they had carried it to this spot and dug the grave themselves, easily removing the soft sand that had built up against the river-bank at this place; only once they had laid out the corpse did they send word to the chieftains to make their way from the encampments. The burial had been hasty and in secret to keep it from the eyes of the scavengers who would already be lurking around the battlefield, waiting to strip the corpses and pick the blood-soaked ground clean of anything of value. But there had been another reason for Thorismud’s urgency. He had used the ceremony to secure oaths of fealty from the chieftains, the men whose backing would be vital if he were to strengthen his claim to the Visigothic throne. Some of them would go back to the encampment to drum up loyalty among their men, while others would ride that night as Thorismud’s personal bodyguards to Tolosa, hoping to reach the capital before news of Theodoric’s death did and to assert Thorismud’s right to kingship over any claim from his brothers. The ceremony over Theodoric’s grave had not been one of grief and mourning; it had been a new council of war.

  Flavius looked at Aetius, trying to assess the strategic game he was now playing. Before Attila, Theodoric had been Aetius’ greatest enemy, and Thorismud knew that. The alliance between the Visigoths and the Romans had been one of necessity, against a common foe. With the Huns now vanquished, Aetius would know that the old enmity with Rome might resurge through Theodoric’s sons. Aetius too was not here to mourn Theodoric, but to ensure that Thorismud got off that night for Tolosa with his army. Had Thorismud pursued Attila as he wished and crushed the remnant Hun army, he might have been tempted to take up Attila’s mantle, renege on his alliance with Rome and carry on to Ravenna itself. With Gaiseric’s Vandals from Carthage now assembled like a pack of sea-wolves off the coast of Italy, Aetius knew that Rome could not withstand a simultaneous assault from two barbarian forces. Persuading Thorismud of the threat in Tolosa and of the need to secure his kingdom would take the pressure off Rome, allowing her forces that had been so depleted after the battle to regroup and Aetius to develop a new defensive strategy.

  Of all the sons of Theodoric, Thorismud was the one most likely to be well disposed towards Rome once he had settled as king, the one most worth cultivating. He had trained in the schola militarum in Rome, and had just fought victoriously alongside Rome in the greatest battle either of the allies had ever experienced. Theodoric, the youngest son, had also been at the Catalaunian Plains, but he was far down the line of succession and was too much in his brother’s thrall to be a contender; his time might come later. Of the four other brothers, Frederic, Euric, Retimer and Himnerith, none of them had been at the battle and none had strong ties with Rome. If Thorismud fell to their machinations, whichever of them survived the inevitable war of succession that followed would be more likely to forge an alliance with Gaiseric than with Valentinian and his weakened army under Aetius.

  Flavius looked at Thorismud standing at the head of the grave and remembered the eager young man in the schola ten years before when they had studied the Battle of Adrianople. Though all of the boys in the schola had known the ugly reality behind war, having grown up with intrigue and assassination and precarious alliances among their fathers and uncles and brothers, for them war had been about battles and tactics in the field; the backdrop that interested them had been logistical – the movement of armies, the size and specialism of units, keeping open lines of supply, how to organize recruitment and training. In the years that followed they had been drawn into a darker, more complex business, far removed from the point of the blade and the glory of arms. The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains itself had been a new form of war, something that few of their game-plays could have allowed, a battle in which the overview of generals and tactical nuance barely mattered and in which victory in the end was down to physical prowess and bloody attrition.

  And now Thorismud was burying his father, and faced a future as king in which there could be no place for four of his brothers. Flavius did not envy him the price he would have to pay for assuming his rightful inheritance: the squalor of internecine fighting, the murders, the distress and hatred of his sisters-in-law and their children, the guilt that would fester with him until his dying day. Today was the last day of Thorismud’s youth; the burden of kingship would weigh heavily on him. That was the reality of war, of the power struggle that lay behind it. Flavius was glad that all of that now lay behind him, that his days of fighting for the grand strategy of Rome were now over.

  The chieftains sheathed their swords and moved away. It was the signal for the two Romans to pay their respects, and Flavius and Aetius stepped within the ring of torches, standing beside the grave with Thorismud at the head and his brother at the foot. Flavius looked into the shallow pit, remembering the crushed corpse he had found on the battlefield; he saw that the head and torso had been covered with a blanket, the arms folded over on top and the golden ring clearly visible. Along with the corpse were the items that Theodoric and his brother had been able to assemble to ensure that their father did not reach the afterlife empty-handed: several bronze drinking cups, the gold and gilt-bronze horse trappings from Theodoric’s own harness, the neck torque of twisted gold that he had worn into battle, and laid alongside him his two swords, their hilts encased in gold and decorated with garnets. The smaller sword, the one that Flavius had placed in Theodoric’s hand on the battlefield, was still smeared with blood, the highest mark of honour in the grave goods of a Gothic warrior who had died facing the enemy in combat.

  Thorismud turned to Flavius, his eyes dark and unfathomable, already dwelling on the future. ‘Flavius Aetius, you fought alongside my father and you tried to save his life on the battlefield. I will not forget that. I salute you.’

  Flavius bowed his head in acknowledgement and as a farewell to the fallen king. He glanced at Aetius, and the two Romans withdrew from the circle and made their way to the river bank, leaving Thorismud and his brother alone with their father. Aetius turned and put a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. ‘You have fought well, Flavius Aetius, and upheld the honour both of Rome and of your grandfather’s Goth ancestors. And by taking the sword of Attila and removing his symbol of power you may well have swayed the battle in our favour. I too salute you.’

  ‘But now I cannot return to Rome.’

  Aetius took his hand away and stared back at the burning torches, at Thorismud and his brother just visible filling the grave from the pile of sand alongside. ‘The court is a dangerous place. It is for me too, but I am magister militus and have lived with it all my life. For you, the fact that you have carried out subterfuge against one emperor, even though he was a mortal enemy of Rome, might suggest to another that you could do the same to him. Valentinian is easily swayed by Heraclius, who knows what you and your men think of court eunuchs. And there are others who influence Valentinian – the Augustinian bishops of Rome and Ravenna, who know of your association with the heretic Pelagius. There is already talk of public burnings, of Christians purging Christians. If you returned to Rome you would be walking into a maelstrom as dangerous as any battlefield, but less easy for you to navigate.’

  ‘Then I must ask that you absolve me of service to Rome.’

  ‘Thorismud will accept you into his inner council. You could do great service there for me, as my eyes and ears in the court of Rome’s last remaining ally. One day soon, in your lifetime if not in mine, a Goth prince will be emperor in Rome.’

  Flavius stripped the gilt embellishments from the side of his helmet, the marks of his rank as a tribune that he had ordered to be put on by the metalsmiths of Ravenna before sailing out to Carthage all those years before. He handed them to Aetius. ‘I have learned what it means to be a soldier. I will not be a s
py, nor a schemer. My place is with my sword in hand in front of my men. And I will not serve Rome if her emperor is to be swayed by a eunuch.’

  Aetius took the strips of gilt, weighing them in his hands. ‘It is done. You are relieved of all further duty to Rome. But I will keep these as honoured reminders of one of the last true warriors of Rome.’

  ‘And my men? Macrobius?’

  ‘They too are released from service, if that is their wish.’

  ‘They are waiting with the horses. I will ask them.’

  ‘And you? What will you do, Flavius Aetius?’

  Flavius looked up into the drizzle, feeling the drops form on his lips, tasting the salt from the sweat and the blood that were still on his face. Above them the low clouds still reflected the pyres on the battlefield, as if the blood of that day had stained the heavens themselves. He pointed along the line of the river beyond the battlefield. ‘I ride north tonight, along with those of my numerus who wish to join me. We will find a ship to take us to the western British shore where Arturus has a stronghold. I will offer my services to him as a soldier.’

  ‘War is in your blood, Flavius Aetius.’

  ‘In Britain I can fight still for Rome, not for the Rome that abandoned her under Honorius, but for the Rome that once forged a bond between the legionaries and the people of that land, the ancestors of Arturus and his men. It is a cause where Rome does not mean intrigue and murder and eunuchs, but a place where a soldier can fight as a soldier.’

  Aetius turned his hand up into the drizzle. ‘If you are going to Britain, you will have to get used to more of this.’

  ‘I’ve been to the deserts of Africa to fight the Vandals, and ridden on the steppes with Attila. In the desert, on the barren wastelands that lead to it, everything of history litters the land around you, barely covered by the dust. The constant reminder of past glories becomes a burden, a vision of battles that we have come to believe we could never emulate. Carthage was won by the exploits of Scipio Aemilianus, but his legacy weighed us down as much as it inspired us. With Attila it was different. Riding with him was like riding out of a blank canvas of the past, with no Caesars or Scipios to emulate, no victories to better, heading into an unknown future. It was exhilarating. I feel that up here too, in the north, where the rain cleanses us of the past. Soon enough the blood on the Catalaunian Plains will wash away into the cracked earth, the crops will ripen like never before, and people will forget that a battle ever took place here. One day I may be an old warrior dwelling on past glories. But as a soldier now I yearn for a place where people look only to the future.’