Line after line of Hun cavalry went down, and to continue this close-quarter mismatch was madness. The barbarians broke to retreat and re-form, even as still more horns and drums sounded and Attila’s left wing began to advance toward Theodoric and his Visigoths on the right. If they could not break us at one point, then maybe at another!
Now the battle was well and truly joined along miles of front, great tides of men surging back and forth under the singing arc of uncountable arrows. There was no hope of any one man controlling the fury that followed. It was the havoc of horse and foot, spear and arrow, sword and biting teeth. Whole companies seemed to be swallowed, and yet as soon as they disappeared in the slaughter, fresh companies pushed ahead.
The Ostrogoths charged us Romans again and then again and then yet again, surging up the ridge to try to take the advantage. Each time they had to clamber up a slope slick with blood and thick with the bodies of their comrades, a hedgerow of stiffening limbs and broken weapons. The Gepid king, Ardaric, went down with a spear wound and was carried away, delirious; and the ambitious Cloda the Frank sank somewhere in the carnage, his corpse deliberately trampled by the hooves of his brother’s steed. Each time the Ostrogoths charged, the disciplined legions made them come through a wave of javelins. Hundreds of Goths grunted and went down with each volley. The Goths clawed and spat and stabbed at us, but the loss of the ridge crest was proving catastrophic to them. Too many warriors were dying, and Attila’s right flank was weakening. What if Aetius could begin to squeeze them upon the Hun center, as he hoped?
But the sun was still high; fresh Ostrogoths kept appearing, their numbers seemingly as endless as grains of sand. We Romans could not be dislodged, but neither could we advance. Men were staggering from exhaustion after each attack, chests heaving, the blood running down their limbs in bright sheets. During pauses they let their shields slump to the ground and crouched behind them for a while in an attempt to recover and to keep from being shot.
I found myself back with Aetius and was given the horse of a dead centurion. Mounted once more, I could better see the battle, but reunion with our general was not entirely reassuring. Clearly he was now growing as frustrated at this failure to break the Ostrogoths ahead of him as Attila had been frustrated at failing to crack our center. “We have to fold them and we can’t!” he muttered. “This fight may finally be settled elsewhere.” He glanced worriedly down the rest of the line.
Indeed, now Attila displayed his talents as a tactician. On the right of our forces, far to the south, Theodoric and his Visigoths had accomplished what we’d hoped. In a great, heroic charge their cavalry had hurled themselves on the Vandals, Rugi, Sciri, and Thuringi. It was like a snowy avalanche against sapling timber, a great barbarian nation charging against lesser or less-numerous ones, and our right wing seemed destined to crumple their left. Again the price was terrible, a generation of warriors falling to the remorseless scythe of arrows, but then the lances of the Visigoths struck home and their foes were hurled backward toward Attila’s laager. So swiftly did Theodoric and his men advance, crying for revenge for Berta against the Vandals, that they rode far in advance of our center. A dangerous gap began to open between them and the rest of our army.
Attila saw this and charged into it, leading his Huns against the Visigothic flank.
It was as if Theodoric’s men were a charging, snarling dog, suddenly brought up short by a chain. The Huns struck the side of their advance like a shock of lightning, pouring in a volley of arrows at brutally short range and then riding over the fallen to cut at the Visigoths with their swords. The Visigothic charge faltered, the retreating Hun allies turned, and suddenly Theodoric, the spear tip of his people, found himself in a sea of enemies.
I could see this struggle only at long distance, and made little sense of it, but the songs afterward recalled how the high king of the Visigoths, father of the mutilated Berta, his hair iron gray and his anger made of iron, spied Attila. Instead of retreating he kicked his horse toward the Hunnish king, roaring that he had found the devil himself and meant to kill him, and Gaiseric next. Attila was equally maddened by the roar of battle, urging his own horse toward his foe, but before the leaders could close, a pack of snarling Huns surrounded the Visigothic king’s entourage and cut it off, puncturing it with arrows and stabbing with swords. One, two, three, and then four arrows thunked into the torso of Theodoric. He reeled, dizzy, crying in his last moments to his old pagan gods as well as to his newer Christian one, and then spilled from his saddle where he was trampled into bloody pulp. The Huns screamed with triumph and the Visigoths broke in disorder, fleeing back to their original starting point. Yet Attila’s men were also in such disorder after charge, countercharge, and melee that he couldn’t immediately follow. Many had drifted within range of Roman artillery and crossbows, and the Huns—who Attila had so carefully conserved over the years by forcing their allies to do the hardest fighting—were dying in unprecedented numbers.
It was now that all hung in the balance. The Visigoths had retreated in disarray, their king dead. The Alans had lost half their number in the desperate center, and only the support of the Liticians and the sturdiness of the Olibriones kept them from breaking entirely. The wing of Aetius with its Franks and Saxons and Armoricans held the high ground but was still unable to advance; and Attila himself still had a vast force milling in front of us, encouraged now by the fall of Theodoric.
Both sides had scored triumphs. Which would prevail?
The two armies hurled themselves at each other again, more desperately than ever.
And then again.
And again.
Hour followed hour. The rain of arrows slackened because, as Zerco had predicted, not even Huns had an inexhaustible supply. The longer the fight went on the more they were forced to come to grips with the heavier Western cavalry, and the more grievous their own losses became. The dwarf’s forecast was proving grimly right. This was no lightning raid or standoff archery contest; this was the brutal and fundamental kind of close-quarters fighting that western Europeans excelled at. None of us on either side could fight endlessly without rest, however, and so ranks surged, battled, and then, exhausted, retired while new men took their places. The ground became pocked with bodies, then marbled, and then carpeted with a meadow of carnage such as chroniclers had never imagined. Nothing approached the cost of what some would call the Battle of Chalons, some Maurica, and some simply as the Battle of Nations. Men sensed that here was a hinge of history, the difference between darkness and light, oppression and hope, glory and despair; and neither side would give up. If their swords broke they fought with broken swords, and if their weapons snapped again at the hilt, then they rolled on the ground, grappling for each other’s throats and reaching for each other’s eyes, gouging and kicking in a frenzy of unreasoning fury. Each death had to be revenged, each yard lost had to be retaken; and so instead of slackening the battle grew ever more intense as the afternoon wore on. It was hot, a huge pall of dust hazing the battlefield, and wounded men screamed equally for their mothers and for water.
The butchered who still breathed crawled to the thread of the brook between the armies in order to drink, but the human body holds more blood than one can ever imagine. It gushed out in sheets on the ground, soaking it to capacity, and then formed rivulets that became brooks and then turned into streams, a vast tide of blood soaking across the trampled meadows. The blood finally filled the little stream that men crept toward, so that when they reached it they found only gore. They died there by the hundreds, choking on the blood of their comrades.
I threw myself into the fray like everyone else, still mounted, my sword once more sheathed so that I could use a longer spear to stab down at the Ostrogoths and dismounted Huns who’d become mixed in the swirling confusion. My weapons came up red but I have no idea who I killed or when, only that I thrust desperately as the only way to preserve my own life. All reason had left this combat, and all strategy, and it had come down to a br
utal test of will. I realized finally that it had slackened on the right flank because the Visigoths were holding back after the death of Theodoric, meaning the Huns had more ability to push against our own wing. I feared that without Theodoric’s leadership the Visigoths might abandon us altogether.
I had no understanding yet of the Visigothic heart or their desire to avenge the king. They were not withdrawing but reforming.
Meanwhile, Attila was concentrating his force on our left and center. The battle was beginning to pivot. Aetius and his heavy infantry were making progress against the Ostrogoths, forcing them down the slope of the ridge and across the bloody brook, bending them toward the Hun center and the laagers of his wagons. But at the same time the Alans, even braced by the stoutness of the Olibriones, were bending as well, the gap growing between them and the Visigoths on our right flank. The whole combat was slowly wheeling. The Huns were the key, and with charge after furious charge they crashed against our lines, each time driving a little deeper, their horses hurdling mounds of the dead. I found myself fighting at the junction of the Romans and the Alans, intercepting Huns who broke through the infantry ranks. I dueled with a deadly, remorseless efficiency, realizing how much the past year had changed me. Killing had no shock anymore. It had become the ceaseless business of this ceaseless day. Shadows grew long, the grievously wounded bled to death before they could crawl to any help, the field became a mire of trampled grass and bloody mud. Still it went on.
And then came Skilla.
Once more he’d spotted me. Then he fought his way to me so that here on this vast field of carnage he and I could come to a final end. The duel I should have finished in Hunuguri would now be finished here.
His quiver was empty, arrows long since spent, and he was as spattered with blood as I was, whether his own or others I cannot say. A year of frustration had lit a dark fire in his eyes; and while neither of us could control the outcome of this huge battle, we could perhaps control each other’s fate. He used his horse to butt aside a wounded legionary, the man stumbling long enough that another Hun killed him, and then he came at me, our horses snorting as they wheeled and bit. I threw my spear and missed, narrowly, and once more reached for my scabbard. Our swords rang and we twisted in the fight, trying to keep each other in sight as our tormented steeds turned, snapping; and I was as eager to kill him as he was to kill me. But for him, I would long since have escaped with Ilana! But of course we would not have escaped, the war would have come anyway, except Attila may have come with his magic sword as well. Was that part of Skilla’s frustration—that he had unwittingly become a part of strange destiny? How inexplicable the Fates are.
I was weary and past weariness by this time, as exhausted as I’ve ever been in my life. And yet Skilla came with a fresh ferocity as if none of this long battle had ever happened. I felt my wrist turning under his blows. I was sweating with fatigue and fear, waiting for him to make a mistake and yet finding none. I was making too many. Finally I parried a blow badly, my blade nearly flat to his stroke, and my spatha snapped in two.
For a moment I was stunned, looking at the stunted weapon stupidly. Then he swung again, his throat gushing a victorious “yah!” that sounded half strangled, and I avoided decapitation only by leaning so far backward on my horse that I felt its tail on my head. In desperation, I tumbled off my horse into the scrimmage below, a hell pit of churning limbs and dying men. I looked for a weapon, crawling between horse and human legs, soldiers grunting above, as Skilla cursed and tried to urge his frenzied horse after me.
I found an ax, its dead owner still gripping its haft, and yanked. It took a heave to break it free because the owner’s fingers were already beginning to freeze. Then I scooted sideways on the ground. A hoof came near and I swung at its foreleg. Skilla jerked his pony away, eyeing me but also looking around as he backed in case some other Roman came at him from behind. I stood now with the ax, planning to unhorse him as I had in Attila’s makeshift arena, kill him once and for all, and finally hack my way to Attila’s camp. I was insane with exhaustion and desperation. All I wanted was to seize Ilana and flee this madness forever. But Skilla was wary, remembering the same combat I did, and I saw him finger his quiver with regret that he didn’t have an arrow. There were hundreds around us on the ground, of course, some broken but others whole, and I grimly waited for him to reach for one, figuring that was the time to charge at his horse and kill it.
Then I was dimly aware of horns blowing at a volume not yet heard in this battle, and the song was so great and so high that it reminded me of tales of angels ascending and Joshua at Jericho. What was going on? I could see nothing but struggling men and churning dust, the light now low in the west. This long day was drawing toward darkness. Then Skilla sidestepped his horse into a gap in the fighting and bent to pluck an arrow.
I ran at him, raising the ax.
On clear ground, perhaps, I could have done it. But I stumbled on a corpse, his pony skipped out of reach of my swing, and in an instant Skilla had three arrows in his hand and was nocking one on his bow. There was no room for me to run, no shield to lift, and he was too close to hope that I could dodge. I felt defeated, and a vast regret settled on me as if I could have avoided all this if I had only done . . . what?
He pulled to kill me.
And then suddenly a wave of Huns spilled into us like an avalanche, crashing into the flank of his pony, and the shaft went wide. The Hun warriors were in disarray, their eyes wild and their voices hoarse, yelling warning even as they scooped up their fellows and carried them away from us like a retreating wave. They were fleeing, and a cursing Skilla was helplessly caught up in their panic.
Pushing against the Huns, I saw, was a stormy wall of my own cavalry, a scrambled mix now of Roman and Visigoth and Frank and Alan, yelling themselves hoarse as they rode over Huns too slow to escape. I ran myself, sideways, to get out of the path of careening horses. Now all the horns were blowing, Roman and Hun alike, and the whole field seemed in vague motion from west to east, as if we were on a plate that had been tilted. The battle was sliding off toward Attila’s camp.
I found a mound of dead and clambered up on it to see what was going on. What I observed stunned me. The Visigoths had not broken from the battle, as I had feared. They had rejoined it. But this time they came in an unstoppable wave under Theodoric’s son Thorismund, and their charge was carrying all before it like a flood from a dam. Here was revenge for the death of their king and the mutilation of their princess! Many Huns were still fighting furiously, others were ridden under, but tens of thousands were retreating to the wagon laagers that Attila had arranged as crude forts, taking refuge there.
They were whipped.
The sun was glimmering on the western horizon. “Advance!” Aetius was roaring as he rode among us. “Advance!”
Had the old iron sword worked? Was this to be the final destruction of Attila?
I went forward with the others, but for most of us it was more a stagger than a charge. We had been ferociously fighting for the day’s full second half; the battle had become an apocalypse of death; and it was hard to merely lift a weapon, let alone wield it. The Huns were in no better shape. Yet when they reached the wagons they reached water, and it revived them enough to take up their bows and fill the sky with defensive arrows. Our own bowmen and war machines were out of range, and so when this black rain fell out of the dusk none of us had any missiles to return or the stomach to go further. Not even me, who wanted Ilana. I was astonished to be alive, drunk with fatigue, and unable to fight longer. We retreated out of range of the Hun arrows, the battered armies separating by a mile again, and collapsed in the charnel house that was our field of victory. The sun was gone, and darkness seemed a blessing. So I found a skin of water on a slain legionary, drank, and faded into exhausted oblivion.
XXVIII
THE SWORD OF MARS
I came to my senses some hours later. The moon had come up to illuminate the field of the dead. The butchered
stretched as far as I could see, farther than any man had ever seen: None would recall any battle as huge and horrible as this one. Who could stand to count? No one ever tried to bury them all. We instead fled from this place when it was all over, letting nature reclaim the bones.
It was an eerie, haunted night, the moans of the wounded creating a low keening and their anguished crawling producing scuttling noises like small animals or insects. Dogs long abandoned by their masters in the summer’s invasion came to eat at the edges of the carnage. So, I was later told, did wolves, their eyes gleaming in the moonlight. Howls and snarls lilted at the edges of the armies.
It had taken the entire world, it seemed, to stop Attila, and even now none of us was certain he had been stopped for more than an evening. He had retreated, yes, but would he ride out of his laager again on the morrow? Alternately, could Rome sustain another assault on his wagons? An entire generation had been half wiped out in a single long afternoon and evening, and the cost of this battle would be remembered and whispered for centuries. Never before had so many died so quickly.
It was not just men but horses, thousands of them, too. By the moon I could see the corpses of soldiers and animals formed curious patterns: lines, crescents, and circles that marked where the fighting had been the fiercest. It was like the design of an intricate, macabre carpet. Some of those who survived were wandering the field looking for friends or loved ones, but most on both sides had simply collapsed in exhaustion so that the dead were swelled by vast numbers of the sleeping and unconscious. There was already the stench of blood and piss and shit. By tomorrow’s noon there would be the smell of rot as well, but for now our army nested among the fallen.
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