Connor said nothing, knowing that the exuberant little priest would not be able to resist explaining himself. He looked back down the column to where Lucia walked with some of the other women. Montevarius’ daughter was looking straight ahead, obviously deep in thought. Connor whished that he were walking beside her now. She was still very reserved with him but had at least started to talk again – never about the past and seldom about anything of substance, but she was at least no longer completely shunning him. The freezing Alpine nights had necessitated that they huddle together for warmth, and so Lucia had become used to his presence. Whether there was anything more to it than that he did not know. Sighing, Connor looked ahead. He could not walk beside Lucia now because his place was either to scout or to be in the front of the line with the warriors, and evidently the priest. Connor had made the mistake of engaging Rufus in a theological discussion. He did not realize that in so doing he had kicked over a hive of bees. He caught the sidelong glances of his comilites – his brothers in arms. These men had proven they were willing to fight to the death by his side, but no one was going to help him out of this one.
“What is simple is more likely to be true,” Rufus continued. “What is more simple? That God is one or that one is three different things at the same time? Let me ask you this – is God everywhere?”
Connor considered his answer, knowing this was a semantic trap of some kind. Most of the Visigoths were Christians, but they were of the Arian creed. This creed was rejected by the official Church, but still the most widespread heterodoxy in the Imperium. Titus Vestius had been a specialist at finding and debating anything the Church considered heretical; but the importance of the Arian distinction had never struck Connor as being as crucial as it evidently seemed to others, and he had learned the refutations half-heartedly. He had only broached the subject with Rufus to pass the time and get his mind off of his under-filled belly and aching feet. At this stage in his life he had no intentions of changing anyone’s mind. But now he was paying for his lack of preparation.
“Of course God is everywhere,” Connor said, an edge of exasperation in his voice.
“If he is everywhere, then why would he be everywhere in three different aspects?” Rufus pounced. “At the same time? That is dizzying, and – with all due respect, sir – ridiculous. And the Romans and Greeks pride themselves on the logic! How is that logical?”
“The Gospel of John says ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God,’” Connor said. “Later in the book Christ says ‘I and the Father are one.’”
“He also says ‘I am returning to my Father who is greater than I’ and dozens of times he is called a begotten son or even liked to call himself the ‘Son of Man,’” Rufus rebutted. “That’s all in the same book.”
Connor did not like to lose, but it had been an hour of this. In addition to his empty stomach and sore feet he would soon get a hoarse voice for his troubles.
“I guess one of the reasons why this never seemed like a problem to us – I mean to my people in my country – was that we were already used to the idea of gods and forces having a triune nature,” Connor said, trying to drop any hint of an attacking tone.
Rufus eyed this change of tactics suspiciously.
“Amongst my people, spiritual power is often symbolized in triple spirals or in triangle shapes. The gods of my people often have triple manifestations or three aspects. For example, the goddess Bhrigid appears in three capacities – the Maid, the Mother, and the Crone. Bhrigid the Maid is a goddess of love, sex, joy, and life. The Mother brings bounty and fertility, protects and keeps, brings order and growth and fosters us as children. The Crone is wisdom, healing, and prophecy. Bhrigid is each of these things at once, according to the Druids of my kind. I guess for these reasons when we hear of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit it seems natural to us.”
Rufus blinked at him, then quickly rallied.
“There you see? Pagan thinking makes the swallowing of the Great Confusion easier. And your churchmen dare call us heretics?”
Connor sighed again, looking around at his companions – almost all baptized Christians, but few amongst them without amulets for luck or who did not make signs to avert the Evil Eye when the situation called for it; few who did not fear thunder or pour libations to their dead. To say nothing of all the men they had killed – in battle and out – and perhaps not just men; but how many rapes, how many innocents enslaved or worse? If there was no change in the way a man lived, could he really claim that he had a change in faith? And what of he, himself, Connor thought; remembering the burning of the bacaudae houses and the dead eyes of unarmed Lorentius. He patted his horse’s neck – Merridius’ horse, he remembered – and walked on.
“Scouts coming in,” someone called. Four black forms approached from over the far hill. Connor could already recognize Gaiseric and Tuldin. They had taken two young warriors with them that morning. Now they were coming back fast.
“They’re early,” someone observed surreptitiously. It was probably only the third hour past noon.
Valia stepped forward. Connor saw the concern growing on his friend’s face. Valia handed the reins of his gray horse to Henric and rested his hands on his sword belt. Connor stole a glance back to Lucia.
“What’s going on?” Valia called before Gaiseric had even reached them.
“We are well-fucked!” Gaiseric shouted, pulling up his horse. He jumped out of his saddle, waving his arms so animatedly that some of the nearby mounts nearly spooked.
“A few alae of cavalry,” Gaiseric spat, trying to catch his breath. The other three riders came up beside him. Connor looked to Tuldin, who seemed as impassive as ever but who was sweating despite the chill wind.
“Where?” Valia demanded.
“Quite fucking close, I’m afraid,” Gaiseric said. “They saw us. They gave chase. We tried to lose them, but that didn’t work.”
“Then we tried to lead them elsewhere,” one of the young scouts said. “But they were not fools. The ground is more open out there. And they didn’t have to guess that we were using the road.”
“Holy God!” Rufus breathed. Voices erupted throughout the column. The first signs of panic were close behind it.
“Silence!” Valia bellowed. “Are we not Visigoths? If the gods of the Alps did not kill us, then neither will this.”
At his command the roar was dissipated, but the fear did not.
“You say several alae,” Valia said, coming up closer to the scouts. “Can you give me a better number?”
“Five hundred,” Tuldin said.
“It’s hard to count them when they are trying to run you down,” Gaiseric said.
Valia nodded his head, then cast his gaze to his feet. Connor joined him at his side.
“I see the cloud!” a woman shouted. As one everyone looked south. An ephemeral cloud was just visible over the hill. Connor had never seen such a thing, but he knew what it was immediately – dust kicked up by two thousand pounding hooves.
“How long do we have?” Connor asked quietly.
“Ten, fifteen minutes,” Gaiseric said.
Behind them all was chaos. People were screaming. In the crowd, several groups of people were collecting their children and even some of their belongings, preparing to flee. It was madness – anyone could see there was nowhere to run.
“Visigoths!” Valia shouted. Bred and trained to lead, his voice bellowed, sounding off the rocks and quieting the din. “Look at me. We have come this far. Are we out on a tour? Are we on a pilgrimage to some sacred well? No! We are the kinsmen of Alaric and the worthy men who now make Rome tremble in fear! We have come all this way to fight. Fight the traitors and the murderers. Fight the corrupt sycophants and arrogant cowards and haters of our kind. We have come to make war. Now it seems war finds us. Well, I ask you – are you ready for war?”
Valia raised his sword as the first of the warriors cheered “yes”. He moved so that the blade caught the winte
r sun that gleamed through the gray sky. The jeweled spatha that had once been the pride of Lorentius glowed like a weapon of magic.
“Are you ready for war?” Valia cried again. More men bellowed. He cried out a third time, and this time everyone shouted – the women, the children, the sick and the injured. All screamed their assent on the top of their lungs.
Without a pause Valia pointed his sword to the north.
“There. One hundred meters away – the hill is steeper there, the land rises on either side. Our enemies will have trouble getting around us there. On my signal, pull back and dismount. Leave all the wagons where they are to block the enemy charge. Those who are whole, help those who are sick. Arm yourselves quickly and then space yourselves in formation. I want a rear-guard of twenty men. I want the horses and I want families in the middle, armed as they can be. Then the rest of us – men of the Visigoths – I want a shield wall from rise to rise and as deep as we can then make it. If they charge us they will meet iron. You know what to do. Do it!”
There was a whirlwind of activity as the plan was acted upon. The Goths had lived this way a long time – there was little inefficiency in their preparations. Men pulled mail shirts on as they ushered their children back. The women collected the horses and rushed up the hill to the narrow pass. There was no time for goodbyes, no time for pre-battle rituals. The people shouted encouragement to each other as they hustled into position. Abandoned, the wagons with all their goods and gear not needed for the fight blocked the road. In the pass, the shield wall started to form. Then all at once, the shields slammed together.
Connor cursed under his breath. The dust cloud was getting closer. He stood in the front of the shield wall – his first shield wall – beside Valia. Gaiseric was at his left. On Valia’s other side were Henric and Tuldin. Connor glanced back, but he could not see Lucia. Nearby, Rufus was praying loudly and aggressively. Connor cursed again. He had heard many stories of this type of battle – the shield wall was glorified by poets and reviled by old men, but all agreed that it was the gate of hell itself. To stand side by side with your brothers, facing death in a press of bodies and edged iron. Once the wall formed there was no further strategy, no further options. There was only luck and courage and fate. Now Connor was here. He had passed all the way through the Alps, freezing and fearing, only to die here – a hundred twenty warriors on foot against a horde of horsemen, overwhelming odds, certain death.
The dust cloud was very close. Connor thought he could hear the rumble of hooves over the shouting of his comrades, over the blustering of feigned bravado or the mewing of fear that was all around him. He had a shield and he had a mail shirt, but he did not have a helmet. How was he to survive a shield wall without a helmet – the front line of a shield wall without anything to stop a stray blade from coming over his shield and splitting his head open? He had no greaves – no protection for his legs, lest anyone sweep low and strike him down to be trampled to death or hacked to hell from above. He knew what to do – Titus had trained him, and he had been practicing with the other Visigoth warriors every day, but how could he be prepared to do it?
Then above the southern hill the first of the enemy emerged. They seemed dark – so dark under the winter sky. Their helmets were crested with horse tails or silk ribbons, some even with bird wings, horns, or animal skulls. Their mail was bright, their round or oval shields held ready. They each carried long spears in hand – still upright, but Connor knew they would level them as one, a terrible phalanx of death to punch through the meager shield wall of the defenders. Long spatha bounced against the horses’ flanks as they approached. Their horses were running, powerful muscles moving fluidly, hooves pushing the ground past underneath them. Line after line of cavalry appeared – wave after wave of mounted warriors bringing death as fast as their horses could run.
Connor did not know why, but with the sight of the advancing cavalry the fearful words in his head stopped abruptly. He no longer thought of greaves or helmet. He no longer thought of the Alps or the days of slavery. He did not think of life, or all the promises he was supposed to keep. He heard Titus’ voice in his head, as the old man had quoted: If you must fall, go forth bravely.
Connor shouted the words out loud. He lifted Archangel in the air. The force was closing in on them – it was nearly to the wagons, but Connor no longer cared. He wanted it to come. He wanted it to come faster.
“In Valor there is Hope!” Connor shouted, quoting some general from long ago. “In Valor there is Hope!”
He shouted it again in Gothic. The people around him were shouting too. Others took up his cry until it blended with the battle cry of the Visigoths in the shield wall. The cry seemed to fill the whole valley. Connor looked at his enemies as they tried to maneuver around the abandoned baggage carts. He wanted them. He wanted them on his sword. If it was going to end here, he was going to see that it ended for many of them too. Let there be no one left to hurt Lucia, no one left to celebrate his defeat. Connor was screaming wordless cries now. Beside him Rufus shouted out verses from Wufila’s Bible. Behind him the host of Visigoths was alive with defiance.
Then suddenly, Valia lowered his sword and shield. He took a step forward, breaking the shield wall. Thinking that he was initiating a charge, Connor moved to follow him, but Valia motioned for all of them to stay. He walked towards the hundreds of enemies as they reformed on the other side of the wagons. His sword was now held relaxed, and as Valia walked he slung his shield on his back. Holding formation wedged between the two rises, his followers watched as he took off his helmet and cast his blonde hair back.
In the front of the enemy line, a man on a huge white charger rode forward. He was massive in frame, towering over Valia in his saddle. Like Valia he wore an elaborate helmet with cheek plates, ornate nose guard, and wide back ridge; but his was crested in black in the Roman style. Like Valia, he wore a wolf skin as a mantle. His shield was blue, with a device that Connor had seen before, though he could not think of where. Valia still approached. The cavalry leader rode forward a few more paces and then he too dismounted.
“Are they going to fight in single combat?” Connor hissed to Gaiseric. If so, why did Valia take off his helmet and set aside his shield.
“I don’t believe it,” Gaiseric said, lowering his sword, the mask of war fury dropping away from his face.
“We have to do something,” Connor hissed.
The cavalry leader cast aside his shield and sheathed his spatha. Valia sheathed his sword. With a chiding cry of joy from both men, they embraced.
Connor watched, mouth open, as the two men slapped each other on their armored backs and laughed. Now that he was dismounted and had put his sword away, the cavalry leader did not look much bigger than Valia. The general was the first to turn towards his men and make the universal sign to lower their weapons. He then unstrapped his magnificent helmet and pulled it off his head. Blonde hair tumbled down, and as he shook it out of his face Connor saw what might have been a vision of a future Valia – a few years older, a few more scars, but the familiar aspect of thoughtful confidence even bigger as the stranger smiled broadly.
“Salve, Lord Valia,” he boomed. “Welcome to Italia, little brother! It’s been a long time.”
“Salve, Lord Ataulf!” Valia cried before bear hugging his brother once more.
XXIV
“Alaric arrived outside the walls of Rome October of last year,” Ataulf said, swaying atop his white charger. “Immediately his forces seized the ports and sealed off the city. No one and nothing could get in or out.”
It was uncanny how much like his brother Ataulf was, Connor thought as he listened to them talking. It was not just their appearance, but also their voices and mannerisms. Though the elder Ataulf did seem to be just a bit prouder, a bit more confident – though before Connor had met him he would not have thought anyone could outshine Valia in these qualities. Connor wondered how much of this came from the few extra years of experience Ataulf had and how mu
ch was simply nature. While the twenty-two year old Valia was leading a small band of less than a hundred and fifty warriors, the twenty five year old Ataulf said that the alae of cavalry that now rode behind them was only a fraction of his force. Connor glanced back to the column. Together there were nearly six hundred and fifty well-armed men on horseback, positioned around the wagons and the families that moved slowly with them. It was an awesome sight to a man raised in rural Eire, where twenty men might be considered a formidable war band. With a group like this, Connor thought, he could almost go to Tara to take on Niall of the Nine Hostages.
“But what happened next was inexplicable,” Ataulf continued.
“What happened?” Connor asked, when it seemed that he was not going to immediately continue.
“Absolutely nothing,” Ataulf said, shrugging his broad shoulders. “There was no response from Honorius. No army, no envoy of peace – nothing.”
“Rome is the heart and soul of the Imperium,” Valia said. “How could the court at Ravenna not respond?”
Again Ataulf shrugged. “That is what Alaric thought. That is why he led his army there in the first place – to force action. But there was no action from the pitiful Emperor. Meanwhile, in the city itself, they had already publicly executed Stilicho’s wife Serena, and anyone else that they wanted to make scapegoat. It is rumored that as the bread rations were cut from one half to one third and the things the complacent Romans had always taken for granted and often got for free began to dry up, the Senate considered breaking the law by making Pagan sacrifices – as if the old gods would strike us all with lightening to defend the Eternal City the Emperor had abandoned. Other rumors said that as the people began to starve and disease broke out in the stinking slums that fill the city, there were even cases of crazed people eating human flesh. But I do not believe this happened – at least not at that point. We are only talking about October through November. But whether true or not, what was evident was just how quickly our armies could bring Rome to its knees. From the richest to the poorest they are privileged and dependent on the outside world for everything. Once that was cut off it took only days for things to fall apart within those impenetrable walls. ”
The Songs of Slaves Page 33
