Attila: The Judgement

by William Napier

  Raised up. Nearer and nearer to the high parapet of the pirate ship. The master breathed out slowly, his bafflement and fear at last turning into something else. The timbers of his beloved Cygnus were creaking and screaming, the poor vessel tearing herself apart at the seams, yet serving in her very death throes as an unexpected siege-engine for boarding the hooked Shark at their rear. He felt a surge of hope, and sudden admiration for this obdurate Aëtius. Master-General of the West, was he? Then maybe the West was in good hands.

  ‘More ballast to the fore!’

  A crazy order on a sinking ship under assault, but now the master understood. A couple of lithe, sun-blackened sailors scrambled below, leaping over the straining line of the grappling-rope and rolling the last barrels down the steepening incline of the lower deck. The prow sank further in the water, the ram stuck into the belly of the Draco grinding her down into the depths with it. The poop deck rose further.

  Aëtius grinned at the princes. ‘Think your wolf-lords can vault that now?’

  Theodoric nodded. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Then take it.’

  ‘Wolf-lords!’ The old Gothic war-cry.

  The magnificent warriors, needing no second bidding to escape the fetid and drowning darkness, driven by a powerful mix of fear and battle-fury, came buckled and armoured up the steps at a run, shining blades in hand. The pirates looked down in shock at this erupting tide of red cloaks and straw-coloured plumes. What in Hell’s name had they taken on? This was no ordinary ship. They would be lucky to escape with their lives.

  With the ships locked together in their fatal embrace, the crew of the Draco had fallen silent and inactive. At the appearance of the wolf-lords, however, they realised that the battle was on to take charge of the Haifisch, the only seaworthy ship left of the three. In an instant they were swarming over the sides of their own listing vessel and dropping down onto the foredeck of the Cygnus, now almost at water level. They tried to fight their way up, but the deck was slippery and sloped against them. Another foresight of Aëtius’. As they scrambled up, they were met by three men with drawn swords, two fair-headed adolescents and an older, grey-haired fellow with a certain look in his eyes which suggested he’d seen battle before. Soon the decks were more slippery still with Vandal blood. For a few seconds Aëtius, Torismond and Theodoric manned this second front alone, swords sweeping and thrusting, cutting down the oncoming pirates with ruthless despatch, letting the slain fall back into their scrambling comrades. Then the Visigothic archers loosed arrows in from the sides, and the pirates of the Draco knew the day was lost along with their ship. Now they understood very well the temper of those they had so foolishly chosen to attack this bright summer’s day. There was nothing left for it. They threw themselves into the sea.

  The handful of scrawny pirates on the Haifisch were similarly outfought. Accustomed to taking harmless passenger vessels for kidnap and ransom, or fat, wallowing cargo ships laden with amphorae of oil and wine, they were stricken helpless. No match for the fifty Gothic wolf-lords vaulting in over the high bulwarks, swords drawn, teeth bared, long hair flying. There was hardly a fight to be had, to the wolf-lords’ considerable disappointment. Though unable to swim, like most sailors, who superstitiously regard the skill as a kind of temptation to fate, the second crew, too, gave themselves up to the dark, still waters of the Aegean. Any who lingered were swiftly cut to pieces, their lifeless bodies following into the foaming pink brine.

  There came a strange sound from behind, like the bubbling of a drain in a rainstorm, though far greater, more sonorous. The rumbling of some vast and nameless sea creature, perhaps. It was the Cygnus at last going down, joined prow to broadside with the Draco in fatal embrace. The masts of the two ships collapsed into each other like tired lovers. The timbers creaked, the decks were washed and swamped. From below decks on the Draco, anguished cries: the pirates had not troubled to unchain their oar-slaves. And then, amid the cries of terror and lamentation, cries of desperate hope.

  Aëtius glanced around. Torismond had vanished.

  The slaves of the Cygnus, meanwhile, were swarming after the Gothic swordsmen to the safety of the abandoned Haifisch. Then came the sailors, then Aëtius and Theodoric, and finally the master himself, kneeling only to kiss the decks of his dying ship in time-honoured tradition, before abandoning her to the seas.

  Slaves were emerging above deck on the half-drowned Draco and rolling over into the water. Theodoric watched anxiously.

  ‘Neither you nor your brother can swim, you say?’ said Aëtius.

  Theodoric could not speak.

  ‘He’s going to have to learn today.’

  The sailors pulled up the last of the boarding planks, and the little Libyan scrambled down the side of the ship, holding on by one hand and with the other slashing through the grappling-rope that still tied them to the drowning ships.

  Aëtius nodded admiringly. ‘If you weren’t just a common sailor, I’d recommend you for promotion.’

  The sailor flashed a white-toothed smile. ‘A gold solidus will do instead, my lord.’

  Aëtius regarded him steadily. Then he slipped a hand inside his cloak and produced a big gold coin. He glanced down. It showed Valentinian himself, the martial emperor, dragging a barbarian by the hair. Around the rim it read, ‘Unconquered Eternal Rome, Salvation of the World.’ He flicked his wrist and the gold coin arced and flashed in the air and the sailor caught it.

  ‘Don’t believe all you read on it, though,’ muttered Aëtius.

  At the prow of their fine new ship, a less than happy sound: Nicias wailing for his vanished alchemical chests.

  ‘Shame,’ murmured Aëtius.

  And last of all, paddling through the water like a puppy, breathless and ungainly but not actually choking or drowning, Prince Torismond, Saviour of Slaves. Theodoric threw out a line and hauled him up. After that, the slaves of the Draco came scrambling aboard the heavily laden Haifisch as well.

  ‘This is going to slow us up,’ grumbled Aëtius.

  ‘We’ll sell ’em at the next port,’ said Torismond, his eyes glittering excitedly. He shook the saltwater from his hair, thrilled to have braved the sea and survived.

  ‘And spend all the proceeds on wine and girls, I suppose? ’

  The brothers just laughed.

  They watched the two ships go down amid huge, slow bubbles. Further off, what pirates were still afloat circled, exhausted, or clung to broken spars. Aëtius ranged over them until he settled on the long, pitiless, expressionless face of the captain. He pointed him out to one of the Visigothic archers. The captain gazed steadily back, not moving, his pale hair plastered to his gaunt cheeks, his pale blue eyes fixed on Aëtius, his lips moving with the words of some ancient curse. The archer lined up his arrow and fired, and the arrowhead hit him between the eyes. His head sank back, his arms floated out beside him, and they left him there gazing heavenwards, his mouth still open, the words of the curse still on his salt-white lips.

  Some of the other pirates had begun to swim towards the captured Haifisch, their last hope, but at this they realised they would be speared in the water.

  Aëtius sent the lookout up to the fighting-top.

  The lookout pointed in a direction just south of the sun. Aëtius vaulted up onto the flydeck and called to the swimmers across the water, twenty or thirty soaked and bobbing heads, ‘Be thankful we haven’t slaughtered you in the water, as you deserve!’

  The swimmers listened, agony on their faces.

  ‘You might drown. You might fatten a few sharks. What does that matter to us? But if you swim that way,’ Aëtius flung his right arm out - ‘just south of the sun as it stands now, you just might make landfall. Let God decide.’

  One struggling novice swimmer cried out, ‘How far is that?’

  ‘Maybe ten miles.’

  Rufus murmured something. Aëtius squinted again towards the horizon but could still see nothing. The lad’s younger eyes had seen it, though. ‘Maybe less,’ he
called out again. ‘Maybe only six or seven.’

  ‘We’ll drown!’ they cried. ‘You are condemning us to death!’

  ‘On the contrary, I am leaving you to death - which you deserve - knowing that there is a small chance you may be reprieved. You’re in God’s hands. It’s a good, flat calm. The sun is shining. There’s blood in the water around you, and plenty of sharks nearby. You’d better start kicking.

  ‘Hortator! Sound the drum!’

  In the silence, the slow, renewed dip of oars, the gentle splash, and the low Liburnian began to move eastwards through the small waves again, the water breaking in no more than a silver trickle round her bows. The wretched pirates watched the Haifisch depart, a sailor on board already reaching down to scrub out the barbaric name and paint over it afresh: Cygnus II. It had all happened with such startling speed, such ruthless efficiency. Then some of the more optimistic souls turned in the water, pushed their spars ahead of them and began to kick.

  The master shook his head. ‘Caesar had his pirates crucified.’

  Aëtius grunted. ‘Caesar was a greater man than I.’

  Torismond sold his slaves at Thessalonika. Aëtius resented the loss of even those two hours, but there was no food or water left on board for them. The prince netted a bag of thirty solidi.

  He grinned. ‘Quite a catch.’

  ‘And behold, I shall make you fishers of men,’ said his brother sardonically, eyeing the weighty leather bag. ‘Not quite what Christ intended though, I think?’

  Aëtius roared with laughter.

  It was quite a pleasant voyage after that.

  5

  YANKHIN

  I, Priscus of Panium, heard of his arrival and rushed down to the Harbour of Julian to meet him.

  He smiled at me. ‘And who might you be, old man? An aged mendicant, supplicating for alms?’ He laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘Let us talk later. I must speak to the emperor even more urgently than to my old tutor.’

  ‘Divine Majesty. Master-General Aëtius requests an audience. ’

  There was a pause and a fumbling, while Theodosius seated himself upon his gilded wooden throne, and then he was admitted to the imperial presence.

  ‘Aëtius. So far from home.’ His voice was as frosty as a Pontic winter, with a wind blowing down out of Scythia.

  ‘Majesty.’ He knelt and kissed the hem of the imperial robe in formal adoratio, privately detesting the gesture, and stood again swiftly. ‘You have still no news from the field army under General Aspar?’

  Startled to find himself so abruptly questioned by a mere soldier, even if he was a general, Theodosius heard himself stammering, ‘They - they have not yet engaged, no.’

  ‘And it is true about the VIIth at Viminacium? Entirely destroyed?’

  ‘Such was the judgement of God. Also . . . also Ratiaria, downriver. That, too, has been overrun by these wretched Huns.’

  ‘Ratiaria, too? Already? The III Pannonia? How many men did that number? And the weapons factories?’

  The emperor could not look him directly in the eye, those limpid grey eyes. He surveyed the mosaics on the wall to his left, desperately hoping to radiate the regal serenity of God’s viceroy upon earth. ‘The III Pannonia, too, is destroyed, and the weapons factories are now in enemy hands.’

  Attila. He knew. Now he had ownership of the most important armaments factories in the East. He knew.

  ‘Then I come to offer you urgent military assistance. I have cohorts remaining from the Ist at Brigetio, from the IInd at Aquincum, the XVIth at Carnuntum, the IVth Scythica at Singidunum. I know all are well trained - I appointed their legates personally. I could pull them back from the Danube frontier and attack Attila’s flank as he rides south on Naissus.’

  ‘And if Attila should turn on the West?’

  ‘Attila will turn on the West. But not yet. He will wish to neutralise the East first.’

  The master-general spoke with such energy and conviction, as if he had been waiting all his life for this moment, this final confrontation. Theodosius understood then, with distaste, that Aëtius actually enjoyed all this . . . this war business. It gave him his sense of purpose and destiny.

  ‘More importantly,’ resumed Aëtius, ‘I have - with the Emperor Valentinian’s permission, of course - the core of the Western Field Army still stationed in Sicily, waiting for orders to sail for Africa. Two thousand horses and twenty thousand men, in peak condition, under command of my good general Germanus.’

  Theodosius turned aside and touched a handsome polished wooden cabinet as if for reassurance. ‘And why should I trust you in bringing such a powerful force into the heart of our domain?’

  ‘Majesty?’

  ‘We are not wholly ignorant, Master-General Aëtius - despite the fact that we are known for our love of learning, ’ he added sarcastically.

  ‘I sense mistrust.’

  ‘You sense aright.’

  ‘Then let me speak plainly. Your enemy is Attila, King of the Huns, and none other. Not your cousin Valentinian, nor Galla Placidia, nor I. Do not look for your enemy among your own. Your enemy is far cleverer and more ruthless than any of us. He is also cleverer than you, Majesty, though he has read fewer books.’

  The emperor compressed his lips and stared hard and unblinkingly at Aëtius. What he saw before him, though he was no great judge of men, was a blunt and unlikeable soldier, without learning, refinement or even common courtesy; but an honest man, for all that.

  ‘We have learned,’ he said, ‘that there were detachments from the Herculian Legion fighting alongside the Huns at Viminacium.’

  ‘Bogus! Do not believe it!’ Aëtius smacked his fist into his palm, his eyes burning, and began pacing the room impertinently. ‘I knew it!’ he said with peculiar exaltation. ‘The fight has already begun! The fight of intelligence.’ He wheeled on the emperor and barked at him as if he was one of his lieutenants. ‘Who brought you this information? ’

  Theodosius had already lost his chilly composure, despite himself. ‘My . . . my chamberlain. One Py—’

  ‘Search his room.’

  Theodosius hesitated, then spoke to a steward.

  Aëtius continued pacing; it was most disconcerting. He snapped at another steward to bring him a map. The steward fled.

  ‘You said Naissus?’ said the emperor with some puzzlement. ‘But Attila will be destroyed by the field army before he rides down on Naissus.’

  ‘Well,’ said Aëtius, inclining his head, ‘just suppose that he is not. Heaven forfend that so great a disaster should befall, of course, Your Majesty, but we must prepare for even the darkest eventuality.’

  ‘God is with us.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. But “Trust in God, and keep a good hold on your sword,” my father, Gaudentius, always said.’

  Theodosius crossed himself. ‘Ever since we heard of the fall of Viminacium, the bishops and people have given themselves up to ceaseless intercessions to the Holy Mother.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said the uncultivated general, pacing about, his hands clasped behind his back, clearly not listening. The steward returned, trembling like a rabbit, and laid the map on the marble-inlaid table. Aëtius took one glance at it and turned to bellow at him. ‘Not a map of the city, you arse, a map of the empire - from here to the Danube! At the double!’

  Again the steward fled.

  ‘He is not a soldier in your command,’ protested the emperor.

  ‘Damn right he’s not, he’s too bloody useless.’

  Theodosius rose to his feet, his eyes burning with indignation. Tall, though of feeble build, he suddenly appeared a much more imposing figure.

  ‘Master-General Aëtius, you forget yourself,’ he said crisply. ‘Soldierly braggadocio is all very well in the barracks, but you stand now before an emperor. I suggest you remember that if you truly want to help.’

  Aëtius was chastened. He treated Valentinian with respect and circumspection because he was so dangerous. But Theodosius deserved respect,
too. He was not such a fool as some said, and his heart was good. They must work together.

  ‘Majesty,’ he said with bowed head.

  The trembling steward returned and laid out a far larger map.

  Theodosius indicated Naissus. ‘And after this?’

  Aëtius traced a line south, down the great imperial trunk road towards Constantinople. ‘He’ll be after the imperial stud farms of Thrace, too. You should send men out to round up the horses and drive them south, across to Asia if need be. We can’t let Attila get his hands on them.’

  Theodosius looked puzzled. ‘A horde of thieving horse-rustlers are going to ride up against the walls built by my grandfather, Theodosius the Great? Ridiculous. Our walls are impregnable. All the world knows that.’