The Sword of Attila

by David Gibbins

  Twenty minutes later Flavius slid down the final slope of tailings from the mines and joined the lakeside path where Macrobius was leading the horse just ahead of him, with Arturus and his companion waiting beyond. The main force of men, perhaps three hundred all told, had gathered under their chieftains on an area of flatter ground beside the eastern end of the lake, where the water dropped in a raging torrent towards the next lake far below, on its way down to the river in the valley they had passed on the way up. The other horses under Macrobius’ charge were dispersed among the chieftains, their only sign of status among the cloaked forms who huddled together against the snow, and who included the few remaining men from Flavius’ numerus of four years before.

  He quickened his pace now that he was on firmer ground, anxious not to keep the men waiting any longer than was necessary and hoping that the movement would relieve the cold in his limbs. Moments later he stood beside Macrobius in front of Arturus, whose grey-flecked beard was just visible beneath the hood of his cloak. Arturus’ companion had stepped down to the water’s edge, but now she came back up, her hood thrown back and her face raised to the snow, her long brown hair tied back and the scars on her cheeks showing up livid in the cold. The years of war had toughened Erecan, made her fiercer, more beautiful. Beneath her cloak she still wore the scale armour that her father Attila had given her, and beneath that the fur-lined tunic and trousers made from the pelts of animals she herself had hunted in the steppe-lands of her ancestors. Her bow was swathed in leather on her back, and on her belt Flavius could see her coiled lasso, the metal blades carefully turned inwards so that only her enemy would know their lethal bite.

  Flavius turned to Arturus, who had also taken down his hood. He looked gaunt, his face framed by his beard and the long hair that fell to his shoulders, like the images of Christ that the men of the North had begun to make in their own likeness. Flavius put his hand on his sword pommel and stared at his friend. ‘Well? Have you made your decision?’

  Arturus pointed down the path. ‘We can’t stay here. The wet snow will be ice in a few hours’ time. The cold is creeping down the slopes. The ice would break the legs of horses and men alike.’

  ‘You mean you have chosen to return to war.’

  Arturus stared at Flavius, his eyes unfathomable. ‘Will you follow me?’

  ‘My men are your men, Arturus.’

  ‘You are still their tribune, Flavius. And Macrobius is their centurion.’

  ‘That is in the past. Rome has receded. The time has come to shed history. You are their dux. You are their captain.’

  Macrobius reached down and picked up a large piece of old tile from the lakeshore, part of a guardhouse that had once stood below the mines. He brushed off the snow, revealing letters stamped deeply into the surface: LEG XX. ‘Twentieth Legion,’ he muttered. Flavius remembered all of the vestiges of Roman military power they had seen across the ravaged landscape of Britain: the crumbling walls of the old fortress at Deva, the grassed-over remains of the marching fort at the head of the valley, all of it being absorbed back into the earth. Macrobius turned the tile over, paused, and then tossed it against a rock by the lakeshore, smashing it into small pieces. ‘So ends Rome,’ he said, squinting up at Arturus. ‘Now is your time.’

  Arturus stared at him. ‘Ave, centurion. As long as you wear that old felt hat, you’re a Roman milites to me. Rome may be gone, but her soldiers live on.’

  Another figure came towards them, hooded and with a staff in hand, and pointed to the circular rock where Arturus had held his council. ‘In the distant days of our ancestors, stones and stone circles had great significance as meeting places. They’re all over the place, if you open your eyes to them and know where to look.’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound more and more like a druid, Pelagius,’ Arturus said. ‘I shall have to begin calling you by your old British name.’

  ‘Not yet, Arturus. Not until you are crowned king.’

  ‘Then you may be waiting a long time, my friend. Your beard will become whiter, and will be so long it will be tucked into your belt. And anyway, remember what we believed so passionately with Aetius in Rome. The time for empires is over. The time for republics is on us.’

  ‘Ah,’ Pelagius said, crooking his finger, ‘That was Rome. But this is Britain. And I’m not talking about an empire, just a kingdom. Possibly a very small kingdom. But from small shrubs, great and strong trees may grow.’

  ‘There you go again, talking like a druid. Time you drank your mistletoe tea.’

  ‘Barbarians,’ Macrobius muttered, stomping off. ‘Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.’

  They turned and stared out over the lake. The water was a strange colour, a shimmering metallic red, tainted by the copper that had been worked in the mines on the slopes, long abandoned but still seeping red every time it rained, as if the mountain were bleeding. The view across was obscured by the mist and snow, but Flavius could sense the great walls of rock that lay beyond, rising from the far shore to the crags high above. It was said that a second giant of the mountains lurked here, in the lake: Afanc, monster of the deep, brother of Rhitta Gawr, cast down here after the two fought a titanic battle on the crags at the dawn of time. Others said that the lake was bottomless, that a stone cast into it would fall into the underworld. For the ancient Britons it had been a sacred pool, a place of offerings like the rivers and bogs that Flavius had seen them venerate throughout Britannia, watery boundaries between this world and the next. Warriors who knew that their end was near would cast their shields and swords into them, knowing that their weapons would be waiting to gird them when they themselves breathed their last and passed into the next world, ready for the battles to come.

  Arturus nodded at Macrobius, who took a long bundle from the horse’s saddlebag and handed it to him. Arturus drew a sword out of the bundle and handed it to Erecan. It was the sacred war sword of Attila, the sword of the war god, kept with them since they had taken it from the citadel of the Huns under Attila’s nose almost five years ago. It had not seen the light of day since the Catalaunian Plains, and the blade was dull grey, pitted with rust. Looking at it, and looking at the fierceness in Erecan’s eyes, Flavius wondered whether their mission to take the sword and deprive Attila of his symbol of power had changed the course of history after all. His cousin Quintus had said that when Attila had died, the new emperor in the East, Marcian, successor to Theodosius, had dreamed not of a broken sword but of a broken bow. Hun warriors had no need of a sacred symbol to propel them into battle, any more than Roman soldiers had needed a Christian cross or an eagle. He glanced at Macrobius, at the weather-beaten face, lined, grizzled, and remembered the Catalaunian Plains. Perhaps the greatest battle of all time had been decided not by the absence of the sacred sword in Attila’s hands but by Roman force of arms, by the blood and sweat and determination of men like Macrobius, bringing all the force of a thousand years of military prowess to bear on the last battle to be fought in the western empire in the name of Rome.

  Flavius turned to Arturus. ‘Are you sure about this?’

  Arturus nodded and shrugged. ‘After all, it’s a cavalry sword, too long for us. We fight as foot soldiers, as pedes. It’s deadweight.’

  ‘Too right,’ Macrobius muttered. ‘Give me an old-fashioned gladius any day. The equites have always been overrated.’

  Arturus put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Spoken like a true milites, my friend.’ He turned to Erecan. ‘Anyway, the decision is not mine.’

  Erecan hefted the sword, looking at the dull gold bands around the hilt, and then spoke in Greek. ‘I am sending this to my father, so that it can lie alongside him in its rightful place in the underworld.’

  Arturus bowed slightly and they all stood back. Erecan took the hilt in her left hand, let the tip trail on the ground behind her and then aimed with her other hand out into the lake. With a harsh cry she leaned back and hurled the sword over her head, sending it cartwheeling high into the air and
then down beyond their line of sight, in the swirl of mist. They heard it slice into the water and then it was gone, leaving barely a ripple. She turned, clambered back up to the path and took the bridle from Macrobius, jumping on the back of the horse and patting its neck, leaning close to its ear and talking softly in the language of her people. The horse stomped and snorted, and she sat upright, took the lasso from her belt and snapped it above her head, the rope swirling and coiling in the falling snow, and then pulled it up and tucked it back away. ‘When my father found that sword, he knew he would become a lord of war,’ she said. ‘After that, they called his army a whirlwind. Follow me into battle and you will see why.’

  Flavius caught the glint in her eyes. He had seen exactly that look before, far away on the harsh plains near the Maeotic Lake, riding alongside Attila as he thundered forward with his bowmen towards the Parthian prisoners. He felt suddenly lightheaded, as if he were living for the moment, for a sign like the glint of a freshly whetted blade that battle was in the offing, that the enemy was near. He turned to Macrobius. ‘Are you ready, centurion?’

  Macrobius pointed at the men waiting ahead of them. ‘Just thinking of our boys. Whether they’ve had enough food. Can’t march an army on an empty stomach.’

  Flavius cracked a smile. ‘You will have seen to it.’

  Macrobius took a deep breath, nodded, and then took out his battered old helmet and rammed it onto his felt cap. ‘Forward, milites,’ he said, marching ahead along the path towards his men. Flavius lingered for a moment, staring at the smashed tile on the ground in front of him, remembering all of those Roman soldiers who had gone before. ‘Forward, legionarii,‘ he said under his breath.

  Erecan reined up her horse and looked down at him. ‘Where is she?’

  Flavius looked up at her, bemused. ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘You keep touching that stone around your neck. A woman must have given it to you.’

  Flavius realized that his finger was hooked around the jet necklace that Una had given him. He let go of it, tucking it quickly back under his tunic, and peered at her. ‘She is with God.’

  Erecan gave him a determined look. ‘Then you must find another woman.’

  ‘No,’ Flavius said. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I mean she’s spreading the word of God, among her own people.’

  Erecan looked unimpressed. ‘Can she use a sword?’

  Flavius thought for a moment, peering up again. ‘She can run. Very fast, and for a very long time.’

  ‘Then we have use for her. When this next battle is over, you must go and get her.’ She pulled her horse around to follow Macrobius, and then turned back. ‘And she can bring God with her if she wants. We could use all the help we can get.’

  She galloped away and Arturus came up beside Flavius. He was carrying the helmet that Aetius had given Flavius when he had been appointed tribune, and that Flavius had given to Arturus when they had crossed the sea to Britain. A gilded helmet had no place on the head of a foot soldier who was no longer fighting for Rome; out here, it was a helmet fit only for a king. Flavius remembered when he had first met Arturus, striding up the African desert dressed in a monk’s cassock, a man who had foresworn fighting and earthly pleasures for a life of contemplation, who had turned his back on his people as the barbarians were sweeping in. He smiled to himself at the memory, seeing the battle-hardened warrior-king in front of him now. ‘Are you ready?’

  Arturus put the helmet on and took a deep breath. He unsheathed his sword and pointed it down the valley. ‘To war.’

  Author’s Note

  The following pages provide a brief historical companion to the novel, including an account of the late Roman world in the West, the administration of empire, Christianity, St Augustine and Pelagius, and the Roman army in the fifth century AD, and end with a summary of the historical and archaeological sources for the novel.

  The Late Roman World in the West

  Almost six hundred years have passed since the time of Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage, my first novel in this historical series. From being a fledgling republic flexing her muscles in the Mediterranean, Rome had become the centre of the greatest empire the world has ever known, her influence stretching from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Bay of Bengal and from the edge of the Sahara to the northern tip of Britain. At the centre of it all had been the army, Rome’s pillar of strength as the centuries rolled on, as dictators became emperors and the empire wavered under corruption and personal ambition, as the barbarian pressure on the frontiers became too much to contain and as the populace came under the sway of a new religion. A crucial turning point came during the reigns of the emperors Diocletian and Constantine the Great at the end of the third century and through the early fourth century AD. Diocletian reformed the army, making it less easy for potential usurpers to persuade soldiers to rally to their cause and also making it more effective on the frontiers, and split the empire administratively in two; Constantine officially adopted Christianity as the state religion and moved the main imperial capital from Rome to the new city called Constantinople, formerly the Greek colony of Byzantium, on the Bosporus.

  The period of the late Roman Empire in the West refers to the century and a half following these emperors and up to the fall of the last western emperor in AD 476. The first half of this period was a time of revived prosperity and security as the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine took positive effect. A visitor to Rome would have seen a city grander than it ever had been before, with magnificent new basilicas, including St Peter’s. But the second half was another matter altogether. No amount of strategic flexibility, treaties and concessions could contain the barbarian threat from the Rhine and the Danube frontiers, and a rupture in the fabric of empire was inevitable. In AD 376 at the Battle of Adrianople a combined eastern and western Roman army was defeated by the Goths, who then moved inexorably forward through Greece and Italy until they sacked Rome itself – a devastating psychological blow from which the West never truly recovered. Despite able commanders, the Roman army was hamstrung by weak emperors more concerned with deploying the army to bolster their own security than using it to defend the frontiers. Other barbarian armies followed the Goths, from Vandals to Saxons, the former marching through Gaul and Spain and the latter forcing the final Roman withdrawal from Britain. The stage was set for the extraordinary historical backdrop to this novel, a story of tragedy and inevitability but also of courage and military prowess against the odds that puts the achievements of the late Roman army alongside those of its illustrious forebears of earlier centuries.

  By the decade beginning in AD 430, the time of the opening of this novel, Rome was a changing place. A significant proportion of the administrative classes now had some barbarian ancestry, a result of pacified Germanic chieftains sending their sons to Italy to be educated, Germanic mercenaries in the army rising to high rank, and intermarriage. Although people were living in more fear than ever of barbarian invasion, the ethnic distinction between Roman and barbarian was becoming blurred. Stilicho and Flavius Aetius, the two most able Roman military commanders of the fifth century AD, were respectively of Vandal and Goth ancestry, and many among the common soldiery had ancestors who had been mortal enemies of Rome in the forests beyond the Rhine and the Danube only a few generations before.

  Significant changes in lifestyle and material culture were also taking place. Scrolls were being replaced by codices – books as we know them today; togas were being discarded in favour of trousers and tunics. The old monetary system based around the silver denarius had been replaced by a new gold standard in the form of the solidus, with silver and base-metal coinage no longer having such widespread acceptance as a result of debasement and economic instability. The city of Rome, no longer the capital of the empire, was changing in appearance too. At the time of my first novel, set in the second century BC, the Colosseum, the Pantheon and the imperial palaces had yet to be built; by the fifth century AD they were already monuments of the past, the
last gladiatorial display in the Colosseum having taken place in AD 386 and the palaces now being secondary to the new imperial capitals at Constantinople in the East and Milan and Ravenna in the West. The buildings that were to survive – temples and law courts and amphitheatres – often did so only because they had been converted to places of Christian worship. The fifth century thus saw the beginnings of a new order, but it was one that was to come crashing down before the world that we would recognize as medieval really took hold; and behind that descent into darkness lay one barbarian warlord more than any other, the fearful figure of Attila the Hun.

  Administration of Empire

  The first emperors liked to claim that they were merely caretakers of the Republic, that the title princeps was just another version of the old emergency title dictator assumed by Julius Caesar to tide the Republic through the civil wars. This of course was a fiction; after Augustus, ancient Rome was never again a republic. But the main administrative institutions of the Republic did survive, particularly the Senate, and the devolved form of provincial management established in the late Republic provided a blueprint for the empire. The success of this system in the new provinces depended on empowering the native elite – encouraging them to take up administrative roles in the towns and to see the attractions of Romanization. If we think of the great monuments around the Roman Empire, of the amphitheatres and aqueducts and basilicas, few were actually ordered and funded from Rome; many were the result of competitive munificence among the Romanized native aristocracy, men keen to bolster their prestige and secure election to office. In a province such as Britain the majority of people living a Roman lifestyle were natives, with retired soldiers making up the only sizeable immigrant population, one integrated through marriage – and those veterans were not always Romans themselves or even from Italy. This system proved an effective means of maintaining peace and prosperity in the provinces, encouraging enough wealth generation to sustain a high rate of tax and providing the basis for its collection through the development of towns and road networks.