Attila: The Judgement

by William Napier

  His sarcasm was lost on the fellow, who loved nothing more than discussing theology, and explained with animation, ‘Well, firstly, the barbarous enormities of the Irish.’

  ‘The barbarous ... ?’

  The deacon nodded vigorously. ‘Enormities. Of the Irish. And then, following the Second Council of Ephesus, and the considerable progress made there on the issue of homoousion and homoiousion, they will be discussing the heretical teachings of Nestorius - the Christotokos rather than the Theotokos, of course. Harsh was his own treatment of the Arians and the Novatianists, as you know, but against Nestorius himself, that great thinker Theophilus of Alexandria will be urging the strictest anathemas.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Aëtius broke a bread roll. ‘Well, that’s good to know.’

  ‘But there will be other, more heterodox voices present,’ said the young churchman darkly, ‘including both Philoxenus of Maboug and Zenobius of Mopsuestia.’

  ‘And we do not approve of Zenobius of ... ?’

  ‘Zenobius of Mopsuestia!’ he cried, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth in his sudden fury. ‘That ... that ...’ But he could not find the appropriate words to describe Zenobius of Mopsuestia.

  Truly, thought Aëtius, there is no hatred like the hatred between fellow-believers. After Arius’ death, didn’t his great theological enemy Athanasius spread the news that he had died in a public lavatory?

  The young deacon drank a little wine, then resumed more calmly, ‘It is to be hoped that the final Ekthesis of the Council will find that the difference of the Divine Natures is in no way altered by Union, but rather that the properties of each Nature are preserved in one single - one Prosopon and one Hypostasis - with various monoenergist and monothelite qualifications, naturally.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Aëtius munched his roll. ‘And isn’t that precisely what Christ himself spent so much time teaching? Rather than preaching about the poor, and brotherly love and so forth?’

  At last Aëtius’ sarcasm dawned on the deacon and he glared at him. Aëtius smiled politely, rising from the bench. ‘Excuse me. I must go and talk to someone more interesting.’

  He went and squeezed in between the princes. ‘Truly,’ he murmured, ‘the Church must be under the protection of God. It would never have survived this long otherwise. ’

  The next day, Aëtius and his retinue saddled up and rode soberly out of the east gate back to their encampment. They would have to face the Huns alone, outnumbered by as much as ten to one. He reined in and looked at his twenty-five thousand men. ‘It is not enough,’ had said Theodoric himself.

  ‘Then why in hell’s name does he not join us?’ growled Aëtius. He yanked his reins savagely and rode on down into the camp.

  ‘We ride out today?’ asked Germanus.

  Aëtius shook his head.

  ‘But why should we delay? All of northern Gaul is burning.’

  Aëtius said nothing for a long time. Then he gazed back towards Tolosa. ‘I cannot tell you why, but we must wait. Just one more day.’

  The men grumbled and ate little that evening and slept badly. Waiting was the worst. Every campfire made them think of another burning building, another blazing town, and in the ruins of each blood-orange fire they saw shapes of the Devil’s horsemen, trailing catastrophe in their wake.

  Aëtius, too, had a feeling of impending horror, but he knew he must await it. Evasion was impossible. And as sure as the sun rising, the following morning brought horror, and the horror brought with it a sort of salvation. When he understood, he wished salvation had come otherwise.

  6

  AMALASUNTHA

  A messenger turned off the road into the camp, stiff and cold from his night ride.

  He had come at the gallop from Narbo. Princess Amalasuntha ...

  Aëtius raced back to Tolosa, and straight to the royal quarters of the palace. Even as he approached, he could hear a terrible, bull-like roaring.

  A ship had come in from Carthage. It bore a small party of Gothic maids, and the princess. She had been expelled by Genseric, who had become suspicious that she was a witch trying to put his son Euric under a spell, and then eventually convinced that she was planning to kill both her husband and her father-in-law. She, an innocent girl of no more than sixteen summers.

  But there was worse ...

  The expelled and humiliated party was on its way. A column of wolf-lords rode out to escort them home.

  Never would Aëtius forget the glimpse he had of the girl as he looked down from an upper window of the palace. He saw her being helped down from the carriage, and remembered how he had seen her only two years before, a flash and a blur of long fair hair and laughing smile, as she threw her slim arms round her father’s great hoary head and covered him in kisses. And now ...

  There was wailing and grieving as in a Greek tragedy. The elderly Queen Amalfrida looked near to collapse as she leaned on one of her six sons, speechless with sorrow. Another son turned away, unable to look, at once broken-hearted for his sister and burning with a rage for vengeance. And old King Theodoric himself took his daughter in his arms and wept, and held her to his great chest, but very gently. For her head was wrapped in bandages stained with blood: her ears and nose had been cut off by Genseric in punishment for her imagined sorcery.

  As in Greek tragedy, sorrow followed on the heels of sorrow, like hounds in a slavering pack. The sweet princess, hardly understanding what had befallen her or why, a pawn in a great game played between cruel god-kings or gods, developed a fever as she lay in her bed, and within hours they were saying that her blood had become poisoned by infection. She died the following day, her mother holding one hand and her father the other, begging her parents not to sorrow, and giving her blessings to them and to her brothers and to all her father’s people.

  None was cruel enough to whisper that perhaps it was a blessing. The queen was speechless with grief, but the King’s voice was heard throughout the palace, his agony all the greater because he felt he himself was to blame. His revenge would be terrible.

  He cried out in the old Gothic as he took his daughter’s body in his huge arms and clutched her to his chest, and all those who heard closed their eyes and turned away.

  ‘Me jarta, O me jarta,’ he lamented. ‘My heart, oh, my heart,’ his own great heart almost cracking in remorse. ‘May God forgive me. She was my all, my heart, my soul, she was my dawn, my evening sun, my lamp, my stay, my staff, her mother’s daughter, my only comfort. How I loved her. My tongue is too weak to tell.’

  At last he laid her down, and the girl’s mother and father clung to each other by her silent bedside and wept until they could weep no more.

  Soon the whole of Tolosa was in uproar, with everywhere the sound of horses’ hooves and tramping men. Aëtius asked for one last audience with the King. He was denied: ‘The King is busy with preparations for war.’

  Aëtius pushed the guard aside, burly as he was, and strode into Theodoric’s council of war. With him round the table stood his two eldest sons, Theodoric and Torismond, and his two wolf-lord commanders, Jormunreik and Valamir. The rest looked up at Aëtius’ entrance, silent and grim-faced, but Theodoric did not. The fact that Aëtius’ darkest warnings about Genseric had turned out to be true did not endear him to the King, far from it. They only compounded the warring guilt and anger in Theodoric’s breast.

  He growled, ‘My heart is set, Roman. We sail for Carthage tomorrow.’

  ‘You cannot.’

  Theodoric exploded into fury, a fury all the more terrible because it was half grief. The table shuddered under his great thumping fist, and then he strode round to Aëtius and roared in his face, ‘Do not come between me and my wrath, Roman! Do not involve me and my wolf-lords in your puny squabbles with your enemies! We have a nobler cause by far. Which is to lay Vandal Africa waste from Tingis to Leptis Magna, and leave nothing behind but a desert of the dead. None shall reckon our vengeance for what that accursed Genseric did to our daughter, but it shall be a vengeance vi
sited on him and his seed and his people a thousandfold - ten thousandfold. The very name of Vandal shall be wiped from the earth, and I will slay all his sons and daughters before him, and I will gut that accursed cur of a king with my own sword and hang his still-breathing body from the towers of his burning capital, to watch over his kingdom’s final cataclysm.’

  Aëtius did not flinch and his voice was low. ‘My heart breaks for you and your sweet daughter, friend Theodoric. Do not doubt it. Nor would I come between you and your wrath or your righteous vengeance.’

  ‘That is good, or I would strike you out of my way with my own fist.’

  ‘But if you ride against the Vandals, and we ride against the Huns, our forces are divided. Remember the wolf with one jaw.’

  Theodoric glowered at him, but the passionate old man was thoughtful for a moment, his chest still heaving.

  ‘They were Vandal ships at Constantinople,’ continued Aëtius, still quietly. ‘The Huns and the Vandals are in alliance. They mean to divide the world between them, and this is only the start. I give you my word, when we ride north against the Huns we will find Vandal horsemen fighting alongside them. And I also give you my word that, when we have defeated the Huns and wiped out the name and seed of Attila, Rome will be your ally until death, and we will ride against Vandal Africa together.’ He dared to seize Theodoric’s thick, gold-banded wrist. ‘Brothers-in-arms, riding together till ruin and world’s end.’

  An ancient Teutonic phrasing, this last. It worked on Theodoric’s very soul. At last he turned back to his council.

  ‘It sickens my stomach and wrings my heart not to ride out in vengeance this very day. But there may be wisdom in what our Roman friend says. Vandals may already be fighting with the Huns. What say you?’

  The four at the table looked at one another.

  She was buried in a coffin of solid gold, in the most beautiful mausoleum in the Cathedral of St Mary the Virgin in Tolosa. Aëtius thought he had never seen such deep and sincere mourning among the ordinary people for the death of a princess. It was as if the sweet girl had been the daughter of all the Visigoths, and they remembered the sunlight she spread wherever she went.

  Her mausoleum was inscribed with a verse in both Gothic and Latin. It read,

  Hic Formosa iacet.

  Veneris sortita figuram

  Egregiumque decus

  Invidiam meruit.

  Here lies Loveliness.

  Hers was the beauty of Venus,

  And hers the envy of heaven

  For a gift so rare.

  7

  AURELIANA

  They rode out north the next day, banners fluttering, spearpoints gleaming. There was not a moment to be lost. They had delayed too long already. All of Gaul would soon be overrun.

  Aëtius could not help glancing back. It was a proud army. But did a sweet and innocent young girl have to be tortured half to death so that the Romans and the Visigoths could come together? Did God truly fulfil his purposes that way?

  Now the resolution of the wolf-lords and their aged king was grim indeed. Theodoric had given orders that three thousand of his finest should be stationed down at Narbo, ready to repel any Vandal attack by sea, and another two thousand remain upon the strong walls of Tolosa. The rest rode north: fully fifteen thousand of the finest barbarian warriors in Western Europe. Together with the legions they numbered forty thousand. They rode at the fastest trot they could without tiring their horses beyond fighting speed.

  The land rose to the central mountains of Gaul between Aëtius’ horse’s nodding ears. He had always known in his heart that one day the Visigoths would ride with Rome. Those noble horsemen from the distant steppes, with their mighty ashwood spears, their Spangenhelms with nodding flaxen plumes, and their finely combed hair which shone like the burning sun. These things were written from the first dawn.

  In order that they should not be outflanked or harried from behind, there was one more city Attila’s forces must take before they could ride on south: Marcus Aurelius’ city, fair Aureliana on the Loire, below the hills. For here was stationed Sangiban, the wiliest of Alan warlords, supposed Roman ally, and his force of several thousand horsemen.

  The wanderings of the Alans, a people of Iranian origin, were almost as epic in nature as the wanderings of the Huns; and many times the two peoples had fought each other, as many times they had allied together, their friendship like the shifting sands of Khorasan. How an Iranian war-band came to be guarding the city of Aureliana for Rome is a story too complicated to be told here. But it is written in the chronicles.

  Attila had expected the city to surrender promptly to his vastly superior numbers. The Alans were known for their taste for survival rather than for heroic death in battle. But, to his surprise, as the vanguard of the numberless Hunnish horde approached the city there came reports that the citizens of Aureliana and their Alan protectors had closed the gates of the city and were preparing for siege.

  Attila cursed violently, and sent a blunt message to Sangiban and the people. ‘Since you have decided to oppose me, I will lay the city to waste and destroy you all.’

  To his surprise, the reply from Sangiban received only a few minutes later read, ‘Your reputation rides ahead of you, Great Tanjou. You would have destroyed us anyway.’

  For a moment, the old sardonic smile flitted across Attila’s face at Sangiban’s show of insolent spirit. It soon vanished. He smiled rarely these days.

  ‘Prepare the siege,’ he ordered.

  The Bishop of Aureliana was one Ananias, an ecclesiastic of the type who was as willing to carry a sword as a crozier if the battle was on the side of right. Unknown to Attila, it was he who had pressured Sangiban into replying so impertinently.

  Now he began to organise the citizens into armed bands and to fortify the city walls wherever possible. Beyond the eastern side of the city, the Hun horde, or that part of it which they could see - for it stretched for many miles, and the majority of those under Attila were in fact riding far and wide to pillage the countryside for leagues around, and would not even be required for the siege - already the Hun horde to the east of the city was busy constructing new siege-engines.

  Ananias went up the tower of one of the churches with a younger priest, and they stared out.

  The younger priest squinted hard, then said quietly, ‘Those building the engines, they are not easterners.’

  Bishop Ananias nodded grimly. ‘I see them. They are Vandals.’

  The people of Aureliana worked all night to prepare for the onslaught, but the next day broke grey and desolate indeed. Ananias came to address them. His message was short.

  ‘Our Alan friends,’ he said in his sonorous voice, ‘have deserted us. They crept out of the city last night.’

  A low groan went up.

  ‘Whether they have gone to join Attila and his heathen horde, I do not know. But let us rejoice. They did not betray us into Attila’s hands, either. The gates remain barred, the city still stands. God is with us. And so: to work.’

  The Huns did not trouble very long with the attack by the siege-engines and the onagers. Before an hour of the onslaught was up, the city’s east gates were smashed off their hinges and lying flat. In the exposed gateway, men of the city scrabbled to build new barriers, but Hun horsemen galloped in as close as fifty yards and shot them down. The open gateway was piled with the slain. It was a mockery of a battle. Other Huns simply sat their horses and waited, grinning and sharpening their knives. They would ride into this stiff-necked, barely defended city in an orderly column. What were the fools thinking of? Yet still they could see them rushing about on their simple walls: middle-aged men, young men and old, armed with fire-irons, butcher’s knives and pitchforks. They could even hear a deep, sonorous voice, a leader of sorts, shouting continual encouragement.

  In the church tower, the young priest with the good eyesight kept continual watch on the road south.

  Aëtius was riding at the front of his column, having ju
st stopped for grain. He summoned Knuckles and Arapovian alongside him. As his close guard, they too were mounted. Arapovian rode with elegance. Knuckles slumped like a sack of turnips, the fast trot jolting him terribly. He disliked horses in general, and the one beneath him in particular. The horse didn’t look too happy either.

  ‘Give me a donkey over a horse any day,’ he used to say. ‘Donkeys have brains. Horses just have nerves.’

  Aëtius wanted to know what else they had learned of the Huns in the disaster at Viminacium. Speaking as survivors.

  ‘They are the finest warriors in the world, man for man,’ said Arapovian bluntly.

  Aëtius inclined his head noncommitally.

  ‘They are hunters,’ explained the Armenian, ‘pure hunters. They have spent their lives hunting over the Scythian plains, creeping up unseen and unheard, even unsmelt, on creatures far more sensitive than us - wild horses, saiga antelope, deer. The children begin hunting fieldmice and marmot this way. Beware of any people who are great hunters, you city-dwellers, you townsfolk. You will be hunted next.’