The Sword of Attila

by David Gibbins

  Macrobius had come upon to the parapet beside him and was listening to the eerie howling coming from the hills in front of them. ‘I’ve heard that sound before,’ he growled. ‘It was while I was serving under your uncle on the Danube frontier twenty years ago, when the Vandals first came out of the forests.’

  ‘They’re called the Alaunt,’ Arturus said, coming up on the other side of Flavius. ‘Massive hunting and fighting dogs, trained solely to kill. Gaiseric keeps them leashed until the last moment, until their eyes are red and their mouths are foaming, and then he releases them along with the Alan warriors. When the howling turns to barking, that means they’re coming.’

  Flavius felt chilled to his core. Now he knew that the howling was a sound not of the desert, but of the northern forests, of a place where the dogs were really wolves and where those who had tamed them, the wolf-masters, came roaring with their charges out of the forest as one, bringing with them the darkness that had been sweeping over the western empire for more than fifty years now. He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to concentrate. He must not lose his nerve. He looked again, scanning the horizon, still seeing nothing. The howling had stopped, and had been replaced by a strange, unearthly silence, like the lull before a storm.

  Arturus turned to him. ‘What is your plan?’

  Flavius took a deep breath. ‘You’ll have seen the catapults and the ditch with the naphtha pots beyond the watering hole. After the pyrotechnics it’ll be a matter of archery and hand-to-hand combat. This ridge overlooks the road to the western gate of the city. It’s the route that any attacker would try to force first. From our positions on higher ground we should be able to defend the defile long enough for any who still remain in Carthage and wish to flee to get to the harbour and embark on the last remaining galleys. When the time is right we will fall back to the city walls.’

  Arturus looked back to the city walls. ‘Gaiseric will let his men rape and pillage to satisfy their need, but he will spare the lives of the leading citizens and offer them generous terms. He intends to settle in Carthage, and their tax revenue is his future wealth. But he will spare nobody bearing arms.’

  ‘You know much about Gaiseric,’ Macrobius muttered.

  ‘Gaiseric employs foreign mercenaries as his personal bodyguard. They’re safer for a king than his own men, as the loyalty of a mercenary is assured by gold. Before I took up the cassock, I was captain of his guard.’

  Flavius saw Macrobius stiffen. ‘I knew our trust in you was misplaced,’ he growled, his hand back on his sword pommel.

  Arturus put up his hand. ‘That was ten years ago, after I left the northern field army. We were a small group of Britons who made up the Cohortes Britannicus, a foederati unit, but we had been ill-used by the comes, ordered to put down a peasant revolt in northern Gaul by massacring the population and burning the land. We deserted, yes, but we had no longer been fighting for Rome. Some of us returned to join the resistance in Britain, and others went to the barbarian kings as mercenaries. I was not yet ready to return, so sold my skills to the Vandal king. And have no fear. My cousin Prasutagus had come with me into Gaiseric’s service, but the king decided that there should be no kinship loyalties among his guard and had him murdered. I may be a Christian, but I am still bound by the ancient wergild oath of the Iceni and am bound to avenge my cousin, in this world or the next. Gaiseric is no friend of mine.’

  Macrobius grunted, his hand still on his sword. There was a commotion down the line, a rustling and a whispering among the men, and then a sentry came running up and spoke. ‘There are people coming, centurion,’ he panted. ‘More refugees, visible from the left flank of the ridge. They seem desperate, running and stumbling, casting aside any belongings they have. It’s as if something just out of sight is coming behind them, pushing them forward.’

  ‘They won’t make it,’ Arturus said. ‘We must gird ourselves. The enemy is nearly upon us.’

  Flavius’ head was swimming. He felt delirious, and then he had a sudden revelation. He had heard that sound before. A few months earlier after reading in Polybius of the ancient prophecy that Carthage would fall once again, he had travelled south from Rome to the Phlegraean Fields, on the way visiting the tomb, long neglected and overgrown, of the great Scipio Africanus, victor over Hannibal. He had wanted to visit the cave of the Sibyl, to see for himself the source of the prophecy. He had found the cave, making his way past the crosses and candles that filled the hearth of the long-dead priestesses of Apollo, and had stood in front of the yawning chasm, listening. It was said that the wizened blackened corpse of the Sibyl still hung in the inner recesses of the cave, and that if you listened you could hear her final exhalations. He had gone away disappointed, chastened, having only heard the westerly wind from the sea whistling and hissing through the rocks. Only now he realized what it really was. It had not been the sound of the sea at all. It had been the distant sound of dogs, howling and baying. The shade of the Sibyl had been warning him. The prophecy would come true.

  He felt the cold sweat on his hands, and his heart began to pound. His mouth was dry, his breathing short. He tried to ignore the cavernous feeling in his stomach, the tremor in his hands, tried to convince himself that it was just exhaustion and the desert air and cold. Yet he knew that he was gripped by fear. He reached into the pouch on his belt and took out one of the gold coins he had used to pay the men the day before, trying to stop his hand shaking, peering at the image of the emperor: on the one side, stolid, square-faced, and on the other wearing old-fashioned legionary armour, bare-legged, breast-plated, one foot on a vanquished human-headed serpent and one hand holding up an orb with a cross. Flavius had planned to look at this coin in the moments before the battle, to remind himself of what he was fighting for – for the empire and the cross, for Rome. But all he could do was to clasp his hand around the coin to stop it from shaking, and look out and see the reality that was unfolding in front of him. He could see the refugees now, distant forms of people falling and staggering down the hillside, picking themselves up and trying to carry on, women and men dragging children along, all of them on their last legs after days of flight before a terror scarcely imaginable, baying and howling behind them. Flavius could hear the pounding of his heart in his ears. There was one difference between himself, a soldier of Christian Rome, and the legionaries who had gone before them, from the days before the amphitheatres had become holy places of pilgrimage and were still soaked with gladiators’ blood. He had never seen a person ripped to death by an animal before.

  Macrobius said something low, guttural, in the language that Flavius had heard him use before with several of the other soldiers from the Danube lands. He turned to him. ‘What did you say?’

  Macrobius looked grimly at the horizon, and then drew his sword. ‘I said in the Vandal tongue what the wolf-master is telling his men now. Unleash the dogs of war.’

  3

  The dogs came terrifyingly, silently, a silence that Flavius knew from his own hunting dogs was the silence of an animal intent only on the kill, an animal that was past needing to terrorize its prey. The first of the animals had overtaken the refugees moments before, and now he could see dozens of them streaking ahead of a rolling wave of Vandal warriors that he knew would absorb the people trying to flee them as easily as a great tidal wave engulfs all before it on its way inland. He and his numerus were themselves part of that inexorability, a brittle line of defence that stood no chance of halting the onslaught, but they would not go down without a fight.

  He forced himself to look away, turning around to make sure that everything was ready. Half a mile behind them the walls of Carthage were framed by the red glow of the rising sun, as if the city were on fire already. He wondered whether anyone was watching from the walls, or whether the sentries had fled to the last remaining ships in the harbour. Beyond the hillocks five hundred paces behind the trench he could just make out the throwing arms of the five catapults, each one winched back by a windlass against the torsi
on of the coiled rope that held the base of the arm in the heavy frame. Under each arm hung a pouch containing a clay ball filled with a combustible mixture, ready to swing out once the artillerymen had struck the retaining pin with a wooden mallet. He could see the men now, one for each catapult, holding the burning tapers that they had lit from the last residue of the cooking fire; on his command they would light the fireballs and then the naphtha in the ditch in front of them.

  They were staring at him now, waiting for his signal. All of the men in the trench were doing the same, their hands white-knuckled on their weapons, as if the entire numerus were wound tight like the catapults. He turned back to look over the parapet. The dogs were coming closer, no more than four hundred paces away, tearing ahead in their eagerness to reach their prey, a huge trail of dust rising behind them. Striding out of the dust he could see the first of the wolf-masters, the Alan warriors, immense men with furs on their shoulders, cracking the whips they used to drive the dogs forward, carrying the vicious nail-studded clubs that were their hallmark in battle. A torrent of Vandals seemed to cascade over the slope behind them, traversing the valley and running up the slope towards the trench, the dogs close enough now to be able to see their fangs and the red of their eyes. Flavius stared at the oncoming mass, gauging their speed and likely point of impact. Something was wrong. He turned to Macrobius. ‘The fireballs are meant to fall on the mass of the enemy. The dogs will be upon us before the Vandals come within range.’

  Macrobius held his sword at the ready. ‘Then we will deal with the dogs as they come through,’ he replied. ‘Stick to your plan, tribune.’ He turned and looked at his men. ‘Steady,’ he growled. ‘Sagittarii, tense your bows.’

  The archers every fifth man along the line raised their bows and aimed, holding their position while Macrobius lifted his hand. Flavius glanced back at the artillerymen. He had told them only to loose on his command, and he hoped they would keep their nerve. They were men he had specially recruited into the numerus for the task, veterans from the frontier limitanei recommended by Macrobius who had sworn to draw their swords and stand their ground once the onagers had sprung.

  The first of the Alaunt was only a stone’s throw away now, a lunging form bigger than any wolf Flavius had ever seen, pounding its way up the slope towards them, its dark hair bristled and flecked with foam that was slavering out of its jaws. Flavius held his sword with two hands, ready to thrust into bellies, into necks, knowing that there would be little scope for swinging or slashing. He envied Arturus his gladius, and saw the Briton in his cassock further down the parapet close to the road along which he had sent his Nubians and his mule back towards the city. The dogs were nearly upon them, a line of great hulking beasts in a dust cloud that obscured everything that was coming behind. Macrobius tensed and then dropped his arm. ‘Now!’ he bellowed.

  Flavius was conscious of the whistling of arrows just as the leading dog reached the front of the parapet and hurled itself towards them. The arrow from the Sarmatian behind him sunk itself up to the feathers in the mouth of the beast, too late to stop the animal in its death throes from barrelling into the man and ripping out his throat, a snarling, shrieking tangle of limbs and gore that writhed and then fell still in the dust. Other dogs had fallen as they ran, skewered by arrows and tumbling to the ground, but some had come too quickly for the archers to reload and aim, throwing themselves on the men with their fangs laid bare. Macrobius fell back against the rear of the trench with his sword pommel jammed into the ground and caught a dog on its point, disembowelling it as it hurtled over him. Another knocked Flavius sideways and tore its claws into his forearm, leaving four streaks of red that quickly welled up with blood. It scrambled up the side of the trench and was gone, pounding past the artillerymen and the onagers towards the walls of Carthage, the new leader of a pack that was disengaging itself from the melee and following, as if the scent of Carthage was an even greater draw than the blood and gore around it.

  Flavius dragged himself upright, his arm dripping red, and in a blur saw the heaving forms of the Alan wolf-masters coming next, followed by the Vandal horde no more than two hundred paces distant. Now was the time. He turned towards the artillerymen, raised his arm, feeling the blood spatter his face, and then dropped it. ‘Let fly!’ he yelled. The artillerymen dipped their tapers to light the fireballs and struck the retaining pins with their wooden mallets. Slowly, gracefully, the arms sprang upwards, swinging their pouches in a wide arc until the arms hit the blocking beams with a dull thud and the pouches released their missiles. The catapults burst into flames as the fireballs flew forward, their clay cracking on impact, spewing out gobbets of fire. The first one hit an Alan warrior full in the chest, igniting his furs and hair in a jet of flame, and yet still he came, staggering and pirouetting like a moving bonfire until he fell heavily into the dust. The other balls crashed among the first line of Vandals, creating a continuous wall of flame that the men tried desperately to shake off, some falling and writhing in the dust, trying to put out the fire, and others running forward blindly like human torches, shrieking and dropping their weapons as the archers behind Flavius tried to pick them off.

  The Alans ahead of the fire stowed their whips and advanced holding only their war clubs, terrifying weapons hewn from a single limb of oak, embedded with iron spikes that glinted in the sunlight. The nearest one charged directly towards Arturus, who stood on the parapet with his hood down and his gladius held ready. Flavius saw the artillerymen advance towards the ditch in front of the catapults, their tapers ready to ignite the naphtha and create a barrier of fire behind the surviving men of the numerus to allow them to retreat. He was aware that arrows had begun to whistle overhead from the Vandal ranks, some clattering harmlessly over the parapet and others finding their mark. Macrobius turned to him, his chainmail dripping with entrails from the dog, and together the two men turned and bellowed down either side of the trench. ‘Fall back! Fall back!’

  The order came too late for the men to the left of Flavius. An Alan had appeared on the parapet, an immense man, his forearms almost as thick as his club, and with a single swing he took off one man’s head and then swung the weapon back around into the belly of another, the impaled head crushing against the man’s chainmail as the blow broke his back, causing a gush of blood and innards to fall down his legs. The Alan moved down the trench, still swinging, the men desperately scrambling out of his way, the surviving archers turning and shooting at point-blank range into the man’s chest and head, filling him with arrows until one through his forehead finally felled him, his body juddering to his knees and toppling forward among the carnage he had created around him.

  Suddenly there was an Alan in front of Flavius, a vast shape silhouetted by the fire that was still raging along the Vandal line behind him. Flavius remembered what Arturus had told him in the moments before the battle, fulfilling his promise to tell them how to fight the Alans: Do not fall back. Hold your ground and evade the first swing. Then, while his arms are high in the air and he is vulnerable, spring forward and thrust your sword into his heart. The Alan roared, his teeth sharpened like those of his dogs, his yellow hair tied back and streaming behind him. But Flavius seemed to hear nothing, to see nothing, to be caught in a moment that seemed to expand infinitely, something he had heard about, but not believed, from those who had faced life or death like this in battle before. And then he was conscious of the rush of the club as it bore down on him, sweeping low to catch him by the legs. He leapt upwards as the club missed him and swung high up to the right, until the Alan was holding it above his head, the momentum tilting him back, his eyes wide open with rage as he realized his own vulnerability. Flavius imagined he could see the man’s heart pounding under his heaving sternum and he thrust his blade in, driving it hard, feeling it crunch through his backbone and come out the other side. He held it there, every muscle in his body tensed, smelling the stink of sweat and adrenalin, feeling the heart flailing against the blade until it shuddered an
d stopped. The man coughed a torrent of blood and fell against him, the club dropping backwards and his arms hanging limp and lifeless.

  Flavius heaved the body aside, put his foot on the chest and pulled out his sword. Macrobius had picked up the bow and quiver from the dead archer behind them and was shooting as fast as he could over the parapet. The Vandals had broken through the carnage caused by the fireballs and were seconds away now. Flavius looked left and right along the trench, seeing only corpses. Macrobius loosed the last of his arrows, grabbed his sword where he had driven it into the ground and pulled Flavius around. ‘They are all dead or gone,’ he bellowed. ‘You have done your duty. Now we must join the survivors.’ He dragged Flavius down into the trench and up the other side, towards the waiting artillerymen. As he did so Flavius saw that the Sarmatian lying closest to them was still alive, his mouth moving and his hand gesturing. Flavius dropped his sword and pulled him onto his back, but as he did so an arrow flew through the man’s neck and head, spraying Flavius with blood and pitching them both forward. Macrobius wrenched them apart, the man’s eyes now wide open in death, and together the two men stumbled over the ditch just as the artillerymen dropped their tapers into it and the naphtha erupted in a wall of flame.

  Flavius halted for a moment, stooping down and panting hard, feeling the heat on his back, conscious of Macrobius and Arturus rounding up the artillerymen and pushing them forward, seeing other survivors from the numerus running ahead past the burning onagers over the open ground to the east. Good. He would be the last man to leave. He had upheld his honour, his word to his uncle Aetius a few weeks before in Rome, and had not abandoned his men. He stared at the blood dripping down his forearm, seeing his engorged veins, feeling his heart pounding. He had felt something else, not just pain and fear, but a huge sense of exaltation. He had killed a man in battle for the first time. In that moment he knew what the Greeks meant by kharme, battle lust, and why men yearned for it. It felt good.