The Sword of Attila

by David Gibbins

  Thorismud stared at the ground. ‘Black shadows are falling on the world. The threat from Attila is greater than anything we have ever faced before. We will only survive if new alliances are forged, if men who were previously enemies put aside their differences for the common good. Without that, we will be entering a dark age.’

  ‘Save a place at your mead hall for me, Thorismud. We can do much together.’

  ‘It is done. Now I must go.’

  6

  The door to the schola chamber opened and Macrobius appeared, legs apart and hands behind his back, his tunic freshly dyed red and the number of his old limitanei numerus still proudly displayed on his shoulders. Flavius glanced at the sundial visible outside the window on the side of Trajan’s market. He had run over time, as usual. He let the cadets finish writing, collected the tablets and stood up. ‘That’s all for today. Next week it’s barbarian culture.’

  A groan came up from the front row. ‘Not barbarian culture again, tribune. It’s all woad and tree-hugging and shrieking.’

  ‘Know your enemy, Marcus Duranius. And don’t worry, you won’t need to strain your eyes in the library over a book, trying to work out which way is up. For research you only need to talk to your friends. Half of you here have Goth ancestry.’

  ‘When do we get back to battles?’

  Flavius gave him a stern look. ‘The following week you’ll be receiving instructions in surveying and map-reading from Gnaeus Uago Alentius, a senior tribune of the fabri. He’s a retired officer who taught in the schola for decades and he has agreed to come in and teach you as a special favour to me, so you’re lucky. He’s a Gepid on his father’s side, with some Alan blood, so you can also question him about barbarian culture, Marcus Duranius. And he’s a rock-hard disciplinarian, so watch your mouth. Now get downstairs, drink some water from the fountain and get ready for some interesting items from Macrobius’ collection in the palaestra.’

  ‘Yes!’ Marcus Cato exclaimed, punching the air. ‘The best part of the week.’

  ‘Do we get to try them out?’ Quintus asked.

  ‘That’s for the centurion to decide. Dismissed.’

  The class quickly collected their things and filed out past Macrobius, who watched the last of them go and then turned to Flavius. ‘You didn’t tell them that this was your last day.’

  ‘My appointment to Aetius’ staff isn’t yet confirmed. But I didn’t want to leave with a flourish. After all, it’s only been six years, and Uago was here for more than thirty.’

  ‘It’s an instructor’s lot to see the departing class looking ahead, not back at you,’ Macrobius said. ‘The reward is in the quality of the officer corps you help to create.’

  ‘How’s the exercise ground been over the past weeks?’

  ‘Some daintiness to begin with in this batch among the rich boys from Ravenna, but we soon ironed that out. Being in the same class as grizzled veterans from the frontiers does wonders for them.’

  ‘Corpora sano, mens sana, centurion. I can see the effects of your training when they come into the classroom. Exhausted and battered, but sharper minds.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to getting back to my own men.’

  ‘Your appointment as centurion in Aetius’ personal bodyguard should come through with mine. It means that the old numerus will all be together again, those of us who are still alive. You’ll be at Aetius’ disposal for any task he may give you, as will I.’

  ‘That’s the best an old veteran like me could hope for. And to serve Aetius directly will be a greater honour than any decoration.’

  Flavius nodded, and put a hand on his shoulder. Macrobius was past the normal retirement age, having been in the army for more than thirty years, but he was as tough and sinewy as many men at the prime of their fitness. After Carthage, Flavius had tried to get him the corona civica for his courage in saving two of his men’s lives in the battle against the Vandals, but because the defence of Carthage had been a failure he and all of the others recommended for awards had been passed over. Two years of hard campaigning against the Ostrogoths after that had added a fresh crop of scars to Macrobius’ body, one of them a livid weal across his neck from a Saxon cleaver, and these were the only decorations that really mattered among soldiers. But Aetius had noticed them, and had rewarded the numerus as a whole by choosing them as his personal bodyguard, the greatest honour that could be bestowed on a unit. With the numerus removed from the front line, Flavius had accepted a position as instructor in battle tactics at the schola militarum in Rome, bringing Macrobius along with him to fill a vacant post in the physical training department. Over the six years since then they had seen off three classes of newly commissioned tribunes, young men still in their teens along with veterans promoted from the ranks, men who were bolstering the front-line limitanei and comitatenses units against the growing threat from the steppe-lands beyond the upper reaches of the river Danube to the east.

  Macrobius jerked his head back towards the schola entrance. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’

  Flavius stared towards the guardroom by the street, and his heart sank. ‘Tell me it’s not Livia Vipsania,’ he muttered. ‘If it’s her again, we need to beat a hasty retreat out the back.’

  ‘This time you’re lucky. It’s an old friend.’

  Flavius breathed a sigh of relief. Livia Vipsania was the very persistent mother of one of a number of girls who had been pushed in front of him as possible candidates for marriage. As a nephew of magister militum Aetius, the most powerful man in the western empire after Valentinian himself, Flavius was considered a prime catch, even though he had given away most of his inheritance as handouts to the men of his numerus so he was worth little more than his salary as a middle-ranking tribune, and he only lived in modest officer’s quarters in the barracks overlooking the Circus Maximus. He already had a girlfriend, a woman called Una, the former slave he had seen being abused and beaten by the bishop on the galley from Carthage; after narrowly avoiding murdering the bishop following a particularly savage beating, he had been persuaded by Macrobius to offer all his remaining gold for the girl, a payment that the bishop had all too readily accepted. Flavius had offered to do all he could to return Una to her own people, but she had elected to stay with him. The last thing he wanted now was to be sucked into the world of dynastic marriages and upper-class etiquette in Ravenna and Rome, at a time when the gathering war clouds over the empire made any domestic ambitions seem not just irrelevant, but irresponsible.

  They made their way into the vestibule, where a man who had been sitting in the shadows got up, threw back the hood of his cloak and embraced Flavius, who led him quickly back into the classroom out of earshot. Flavius nodded at Macrobius, who pulled the door shut behind him and stood guard, the shadows of his feet remaining visible through the crack at the bottom. Flavius turned to the newcomer. ‘Arturus!’ he exclaimed, holding the man by the shoulders. ‘I thought you were supposed to be in Parthia. I hadn’t expected to see you for months.’

  Arturus slumped on a chair, taking the cup of water that Flavius passed to him. It was not the first time that he had seen Arturus looking the worse for wear after returning from an intelligence mission for Aetius, but this time he looked older, the first wisps of grey in his beard and hair, the skin of his face deeply tanned and cracked around his eyes. He looked thin, almost emaciated. ‘You need food,’ Flavius said, looking at his friend with concern. ‘Come with me to my quarters, and Una will rustle something up.’

  Arturus shook his head. ‘Later, I promise. There are more urgent things now.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Arturus leaned forward. ‘I travelled east from Persepolis to Ctesiphon, disguised as a wine merchant. At Ctesiphon I spent four months in a dungeon for daring to ask whether I could sell my wares to the emperor’s agents, as a way of getting into the palace. One of those months I spent staked out in the desert sun every day. Even the best intelligence agent can put a foot wrong, and now I know t
hat nobody in the Sassanid empire even mentions the word palace, let alone the name of the emperor. But after being released and recovering, I took some of my wine from where I had stored it to my captors, who admired its quality and passed on the word to the palace. The short of it is that I was invited into the domestic quarters and then the royal dining chamber, where, after being plied with my own wine to test it for poison, I spent a day and a night serving it at a great imperial feast, listening to everything I could. The good news is that a small family wine concern in Hispania Tarraconensis is about to get a surprise order and become very rich indeed. The bad news I’ve just conveyed to Aetius.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Arturus gave him a grim look. ‘The Sassanids will not countenance an alliance with either the eastern or the western Roman Empire against Attila. The Huns are their enemy, but they prefer to meet them on their own terms in their own territory, on desert ground with which their troops are familiar and where they believe that a Roman ally inexperienced in those conditions would only be an impediment. They believe that they can contain any attack from Attila in the bottleneck of the old Parthian frontier to the north, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea south of the Caucasus Mountains. They also believe that Attila has no intentions on Ctesiphon and that his eye is firmly set on the West, so that any attack on Parthia would only be play, stoking up his warriors and whetting their appetite for the real war of conquest he has planned against the West. Judging by all of the other evidence that Aetius’ agents have gathered, I think the Sassanids are right.’

  ‘So how does this affect Aetius’ plans?’

  ‘If an alliance with the Sassanids is out of the question, the only other way of making up sufficient numbers to confront Attila will be to turn to Theodoric and the Visigoths.’

  ‘His son Thorismud was just here. He left before you arrived.’

  ‘I managed to collar him on the street as I came in. He knows who I am, as he once saw me when he was a boy and I was a mercenary in Gaeseric’s service, visiting the Visigoth court. He told me he will not go to Aetius directly, but he will bring up the matter with his father in Tolosa at their council of war.’

  ‘You must not let word of this leak out. Valentinian’s eunuch Heraclius knows how much the Visigoths detest him, and he will do anything to sabotage plans of an alliance between Rome and the Visigoths, even if the consequences doom the western empire.’

  ‘Heraclius is the main reason why Aetius no longer brings Valentinian into his confidence on intelligence matters,’ Arturus said. ‘The emperor’s predilection for eunuchs, as with Theodosius in the East, is turning him into little more than a figurehead, leaving the magister militum holding the real reins of power, but also creating a dangerous vacuum that Heraclius and the eunuchs in the East could fill. Thorismud understands this, and before the council meets he will only bring up the question of an alliance privately with his father, Theodoric.’

  Flavius pursed his lips, and shook his head. ‘I know my uncle well, and I also know Theodoric, a distant kinsman of my Goth grandfather who I met when Thorismud took me to the Visigoth court when were together at the schola. They are both men of reason, but they are also warriors who would be reluctant to stand down. The winds of war from the East will have to be strong indeed to sway them from their animosity.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve come here and why I am telling you this.’ Arturus reached into his tunic and pulled out a wooden tube containing a scroll. ‘That’s confirmation of your appointment as a special tribune in Aetius’ service, and of Macrobius as a centurion in his bodyguard. You now answer directly to Aetius. He has another plan, and it involves both of you.’

  Flavius felt a frisson of excitement. ‘Tell me what I have to do.’

  ‘First, we need to go tomorrow morning to see your old instructor Uago, to look at some maps. After that, we need to play it by ear. Valentinian and his retinue are in town, and Heraclius’ agents will finger any officer who doesn’t go to the palace to pay their respects. If we have to go to the court it should be no more than a distraction from our true purpose, which should see us leave the city by next sundown, on a mission from which we might not return.’

  Arturus stood up and shrugged off his cloak, revealing the tunic and insignia of a tribune of the foederati, the wolf emblem of the numerus Britannorum attached to his shoulder. Flavius put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Aetius has reinstated your commission. It’s been long overdue.’

  Arturus slung the cloak over his shoulder. ‘It’s no more than a smokescreen. I’m less conspicuous walking around Rome in this uniform than I am in the cloak of a spy.’

  Flavius went to the door, opened it and looked at Macrobius. ‘When you finish with the cadets in the palaestra, go to Una and ask her to lay out my weapons and equipment. Then go to your quarters and do the same.’

  Macrobius stared at him, his eyes gleaming. ‘I knew something was afoot! Arturus has never before come to the schola so openly to find you.’

  ‘I’ll know more tomorrow. Meet me at my quarters at midday.’

  ‘Ave, tribune.’

  ‘And Macrobius.’

  ‘Tribune?’

  ‘Do you have anyone to say goodbye to?’

  ‘Only the girls in the taverns down by the Tiber. They humour an old veteran like me, one who Rome has never paid enough to start a family. Who is barely paid enough for a visit to the tavern.’

  Flavius grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Well, you’d better go there this evening. I have to say my own goodbyes, too. We may be out of Rome by tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Ave, tribune, with pleasure. But before that, to the palaestra.’

  7

  Half an hour later Flavius stood outside the classroom on the balcony overlooking the palaestra, a rectangular courtyard surrounded by colonnades and spread with sand to soak up the blood. It was only twelve years since he and Thorismud had fought each other to exhaustion here, wrestling and sword-fighting and practising with every barbarian weapon they could lay their hands on, and yet now Flavius was overseeing his last class himself. It was in the palaestra and on the Field of Mars outside the city that the instructors made their final choice of those suitable for commissioning as tribunes, weeding out cadets with any traits that they knew would earn them the disrespect of their men in the field. Hesitation, even fear, could be forgiven, especially among the younger candidates; arrogance and blinkered thinking could not. This might be his last day in the schola, but Flavius knew that it should be no different from the rest, that he was going to have to try to forget Una and Arturus and focus a keen eye instead on the dozen or so officer-cadets whom Macrobius would soon be leading out onto the sand.

  He glanced beyond the palaestra at the upper drums of the great marble column that rose from the Forum of Trajan beyond, at the bronze statue of the revered emperor himself who seemed to stare down directly at him. Here, within the four walls of the schola, he felt cocooned from the corruption and sleaze of the court of Valentinian outside, as if that gaze from on high were bathing the courtyard in the purity of its vision. Sometimes he felt that if he were to stare at the statue for long enough he would be drawn back in time, that he would be able to go down and open the doors to the street outside and join the throng of legionaries who were depicted on the column, marching in step with them through roaring crowds to lay their booty at the foot of the emperor before following him to yet more conquests and victories beyond the frontiers. It was a vision of Rome that had sustained him as a boy growing up among these monuments, and one that could still seduce him, despite everything he now knew about the hollowness of imperial power and the darkness ahead that seemed to offer little chance of a triumphant return to the glories of the past.

  He was jolted back to the present as four slaves appeared on the palaestra ground carrying a wooden trestle table, followed by Macrobius with a wrapped bundle of weapons which he rolled out on the table top. This afternoon’s practical was to be their final class on th
e weapons of their enemies. Last week it had been the throwing nets of the Suebi, said to have been based on those used by the velationes in the days of the gladiators, something that not even Macrobius could master; today he would be on firmer ground with the weapons of the Huns. From here they would go for three months’ intensive training on the Field of Mars, leading infantry and cavalry numeri in mock battles, learning the basics of artillery and field engineering from the catapult men and the fabri, and finishing with the route marches and endurance tests that would determine the final selection. In the class that morning Flavius had been less harsh than he might have been following their obvious indulgence in the taverns the night before, remembering his own last night of freedom before the drill centurions of the Field of Mars bawled their orders and locked them inside for the duration.

  They came trooping out now, a dozen boys and veteran cadets, and formed a loose semi-circle in front of Macrobius, squinting and shading their eyes against the sun. Macrobius glanced up at Flavius, who nodded, and then he glared at the class. ‘Welcome to the daylight. This should roast the last of the wine out of you. Who can tell me about the Huns?’

  There was silence for a moment, and then Quintus put his hand up and stepped forward. ‘They live east of the Danube and north of the Maeotic Lake, near the Frozen Ocean, and they are a race savage beyond parallel.’

  He paused, and Macrobius stared at him. ‘Well? Go on.’

  Quintus cleared his throat. ‘They are of great size, but low-legged, like shaggy two-legged beasts. At the moment of their birth they are slashed across the cheeks three times, giving them scars for life and meaning the men can’t grow beards. They roam wild about the grasslands, sleeping under the stars or in rude tents, and on campaign they live in wagons like the Goths.’

  Marcus Cato put his hand up as well. ‘And they eat the half-raw flesh of any animal, merely warming it up by placing it between their own thighs as they ride or on the backs of their horses,’ he said, adding enthusiastically, ‘and they wear round caps with ear flaps, and leggings of calf-hide, and tunics made from the skins of small mice intricately sewn together, and armour made of small bronze plates knitted into their tunics, said to have been copied from the warriors of the land of Thina itself. And they cover themselves in blue woad.’