The Sword of Attila

by David Gibbins

  ‘No, you idiot,’ Quintus scoffed, turning to him. ‘That’s the Agathyrsi.’

  Macrobius narrowed his eyes at them. ‘Some of this sounds familiar. What have you two been reading?’

  ‘It was yesterday afternoon, in the Latin Library,’ Quintus replied.

  ‘When you were supposed to be researching the Battle of Adrianople.’

  ‘I found this volume by Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, “Things I have done”, written in the time of our grandfathers,’ Quintus said. ‘It was the coolest book, way more interesting than those books on Adrianople. No disrespect, but the Greeks who wrote them didn’t seem to know much about battle, whereas Ammianus was the real deal. And he wrote in Latin.’

  Macrobius grunted. ‘Ammianus was a real soldier, I’ll give you that, unlike the so-called historians of our time, monks and pen-pushers who’ve never raised a sword in anger in their lives.’

  ‘He wrote that he was in the protectores domestici,’ Quintus said. ‘It was a unit modelled on the old Praetorian Guard, for protecting the emperor.’

  ‘That was early on in his career, a ceremonial posting for rich boys like half you lot. But then he went on to do some real soldiering, campaigning in Gaul and Persia under the emperors Constantius and Julian. He became the right-hand man of magister militum Ursicinus, the greatest general of modern times until Aetius. My own grandfather fought alongside Ursicanus’ son Potentias at Adrianople,’ Macrobius said gruffly, ‘standing astride his body after he had been felled and dragging it back to the Roman lines, an act that would have won him the corona civica had any officer been alive to see it. Ursicinus and Ammianus were both dismissed from the army after the Persians took Amida in Asia Minor. It was an impossible place to defend, but the emperor needed someone to blame, so he cashiered his best general and his most able lieutenant. Typical.’ He glared again at the two boys. ‘Well? What else does Ammianus say?’

  Quintus cleared his throat again. ‘I didn’t have time to get any further on the Huns, but I did see where he said that no wild beasts are more deadly to humans than Christians are to each other.’

  Macrobius glanced up at Flavius on the balcony, and then leaned forward with a hand on one knee, his voice lowered. ‘In this man’s army, whatever god, whatever idol gets you through the night, whatever steels you before a battle, is yours to worship, no questions asked. But outside the four walls of this schola, be on your guard. Repeat anything like you’ve just said, and you’ll be in trouble. I’m amazed the monks who run the libraries haven’t spotted it and put Ammianus on the scrap pile. The bishop of Rome now thinks he’s God himself, and has spies everywhere.’

  Quintius nodded thoughtfully, and then put his hand up again, his face flushed with excitement. ‘Ammianus also says that beyond the land of the Huns is the tribe of the Geloni, who flay the enemies they’ve slain in battle and make clothes out of the skin for themselves and their horses.’

  ‘I’ve heard that,’ another of the boys said. ‘My old riding master had been taught by a Scythian horseman who’d actually seen it. He said the Geloni prefer to flay a man before he’s dead, because then the skin is still alive and when you put it on it clings to you like a glove, and fits perfectly. Saves paying for a tailor, doesn’t it?’

  ‘That’s sick,’ another of the boys said.

  Marcus Cato stood forward, his eyes gleaming. ‘Quintus, do you remember that last passage from Ammianus that you read out to me in the library? About the anthropophagi and the Amazons?’ He turned to the group. ‘The anthropophagi live beyond the Geloni near the land called Thina, and they eat only human flesh. The Amazons, well, we all know about them from the Taverna Amazonica down by the Tiber, where the whores dress up as Amazons. They fight naked except for a loincloth, and are always hungry for men. They give a special discount for cadets from the schola.’

  The other boy who had spoken sneered at him. ‘You mean they give you a special discount, Marcus Cato, because you always finish your business before they even have a chance to touch you. You wouldn’t know how to pleasure a she-goat, let alone a woman.’

  ‘I’d have a crack at real-life Amazons any day,’ another said assertively. ‘If they’re hungry for man flesh, I’ll show them what a real Roman is made of.’

  ‘Real Roman, or real Goth?’ another said. ‘You should remember your lineage, Julius Acer. And last I heard, real Goths only get it up when they’re chasing a retreating army of bare-arsed eunuchs.’

  ‘Watch what you say,’ an older optio growled. ‘Half of us here are Goths and combat veterans, and we know what it’s like to spill blood on the field. If you want a demonstration, you can bare your arse to us on the Field of Mars after the schola. That is, if you’re not too busy being chased by Amazons.’

  ‘Enough,’ Macrobius bellowed, barely suppressing a smile. ‘Save it for the exercise ground. As for flesh-eaters and skin-flayers, I can’t vouch for that. But I can vouch for Amazons. And you wouldn’t be taking a crack at them, Julius Acer, they’d be taking a crack at you.’ He turned and carefully picked up an object from the table, a blackened, congealed mass that looked like a coil of long-dead snakes. ‘Anyone recognize this?’

  Quintus stepped forward, peering. ‘It’s a whip. A very old whip.’

  ‘Good.’ Macrobius stood with his legs apart, showing the object around so the others could see. ‘It is said that this war whip was carried by a Scythian princess who fought alongside Scipio Aemilianus at the siege of Carthage, and that her use of it broke the will of the Carthaginian Sacred Band. For almost six hundred years it passed down through the generations of the Scipio family, and now it’s one of the prized possessions of the schola armoury. The princess had ridden with the Berber tribesmen in the desert, and had learned from them how to embed razor-sharp slivers of obsidian near the tip of the whip, as you can see here. She left it with Scipio when she returned to her people, but she took the idea with her and ever afterwards the warriors of her tribe have been armed with steel-tipped whips. She never married, but her son, said to have been fathered by a Gaulish prince who had also been with Scipio at Carthage, became the first great warrior king of the people who were to call themselves the Huns, the ancestor of Mundiuk and Attila.’

  The cadets stared silently at the whip, their banter forgotten. ‘So these will be used against us in battle?’ Quintus said, reaching over and touching one of the obsidian blades, drawing a drop of blood.

  ‘I myself have only seen them at a distance, when a Hun unit joined the flank of the Ostrogoth line before Aquileia, the first action of my numerus after we returned from Carthage,’ Macrobius said, puffing his chest out. ‘All we could see was a silvery shimmer above the heads of our soldiers caused by the polished steel blades reflecting in the sun, but it was enough to put the fear of God into some of the foederati among our line who had seen the Huns ravage their homelands. Those closer to the action said that while the front rank of the Huns engaged our troops with swords, the next rank used whips to draw forward our men in the second row, lassoing them around the neck and dragging them into the melee, throwing our front line off balance. The Huns then leapt forward and finished them off with the sword, except for those, that is, who had already had their throats cut or been decapitated by the blades on the whips.’

  ‘Can the whips be parried?’ Marcus Cato asked, his voice wavering.

  Macrobius snorted. ‘They come as fast as a scorpion’s tail, too fast to see. All you can do is pray to whichever god tickles your fancy that you are not the one chosen, and try to press forward to within thrusting range. But they are skilled at using the whips at close range too, cracking them high in the air so that the tip coils round viciously at neck level, slicing into our soldiers even when they are on top of them.’

  He picked up the second weapon on the table, a bow, and held it out to show the cadets. ‘Some of you may rue the day that you first saw one of these. This is a Hun bow, taken from a Goth by the men of my numerus in a skirmish in the northern fore
sts of Gaul eight years ago. It’s composite, made from three different elements laminated together. The inner surface is a wood said to come from a stunted tree of the steppes, and the outer surface a wood the barbarians call iwa or yew and we call baccata, a strong and flexible evergreen. In between these is a continuous length of ivory said to come from the tusks of long-dead elephants of gigantic proportions found by the Huns along the edge of the Frozen Lake to the north. Because only the Huns know the source of the tusks, it’s impossible for our fabri to replicate the laminate. These three elements give the bow its incredible strength.’

  To make his point he placed the bow between the ground and the edge of the table and then leapt on it, an action that would have snapped a normal Roman bow but that left him bouncing off and the bow intact. Marcus Cato stooped over and picked it up, handing it back. ‘Why the strange shape?’ he asked, pointing at the asymmetry of the bow, the upper recurve larger than the lower and the grip placed below the centre and at an angle.

  Macrobius straightened up and took the bow. ‘It allows you to shoot an arrow at a greater initial velocity than you can with our bows, if you have the strength to hold the grip at that angle and take the strain it puts on the wrist and forearm. Our archers find these bows almost impossible to use without months of practice. Our bows have the edge over Hun bows in their maximum range, as it makes them better suited to lobbing arrows high and dropping them into an enemy formation, but the Hun arrow with its heavily weighted iron tip flies faster and on a level trajectory for a greater distance, perfectly suited to the Hun mounted archers who ride to within fifty paces before loosing at their enemy.’

  He picked up another bow, a more orthodox shape bearing the numerical mark of one of the sagittarii units stationed in the city, strung an arrow and aimed at a post that the slaves had placed in the centre of the palaestra with a thick slab of wood attached to it about head height as a target. He pulled back as far as he could and then released, the arrow flying forward and embedding itself in the board up to the end of the tip. He put it down, picked up the Hun bow and another arrow, this one shorter, strung it and clenched his teeth as he pulled back, the muscles and veins in his arms taut with the effort. With a grunt he loosed the arrow and it shot forward, just hitting the corner of the target but driving right through it up to the feathers, the wood split and the arrow quivering on the far side.

  He put the bow down, rubbed his right bicep and turned to the cadets, his face set like stone. ‘I’ll tell you what else Ammianus Marcellinus had to say about the Huns. He said they charge at huge speed, on horseback or on foot, bellowing and ululating and making a throat chant to terrorize their enemy, who fall back in disarray; they are then broken into smaller clusters by the Hun cavalry, who ride round and round each cluster in turn, finishing them off with their arrows. Even against an unbroken line their foot archers and infantry inflict terrific casualties with bone- and iron-tipped arrows, and with lassos. At close quarters they fight on horseback and on foot with the sword, not shying away from using their hands and even their teeth to finish off those who have survived the onslaught. Ammianus, a veteran of war against the Gauls and the Goths and the Persians, said that of the barbarians he had encountered, the Huns were the most terrible of all warriors.’

  He paused, eyeing the group. ‘Do you know why I know Ammianus’ account by heart?’

  Quintus put up his hand. ‘Because he was a soldier. Because he knew what he was talking about.’

  Macrobius gave them a grim look. ‘That’s part of it. But there’s something else. I myself have seen Huns in battle, but only at a distance. I know Ammianus by heart because we have no other eyewitness accounts, because no Roman alive has stood before a Hun onslaught and survived. Think about that.’

  They all looked sombre, and then Quintus pointed to the last weapon on the table. ‘Is that a Hun sword, centurion? Can we see it?’

  Macrobius picked up the sword, holding it by the hilt and the flat of the blade. ‘This is our final weapon of the day, and equally fearsome in the right hands. You will see that it comes from the same tradition as our swords, a long, straight blade of cavalry fashion, of the type that the Roman army chose for standard issue over the gladius as it has a longer blade more suited to mounted action. Below the diamond-shaped guard you can see how the edges of the blade begin parallel, but then slowly converge to the point, making the blade heavier near the hilt and strangely balanced, but suited to thrusting as well as slashing. It is said that the steel of the blade is tempered in such a way that it makes it stronger than our blades, using a secret technique brought from the East that our smiths cannot replicate. As a result it holds its edge longer than ours, and can be sharpened to the fineness of those slivers of obsidian embedded in the whip. It will cut through leather and slice through flesh more easily than ours, but is a more difficult sword to master, with the balance closer to the hilt and therefore requiring more dexterity and strength to deliver a powerful blow.’

  He handed the sword to Quintus, who felt its heft and eyed the blade, the others crowding around to look. Macrobius pulled out the sword he was wearing, a standard-issue Roman blade about half a foot shorter than the Hun sword, and gave it to Marcus Cato. ‘You two get to demonstrate. It’s your reward for doing your homework. Remember, use the flat of the blade.’

  Quintus grinned at his friend, and the two walked into the centre of the palaestra in front of the target pole and squared off. They began by gently clashing blades and parrying, slowly circling each other. ‘Come on,’ yelled the boy who had been bantering with Marcus Cato. ‘Put some elbow into it.’ Marcus Cato gave him an annoyed look, spun round under the Hun blade and whacked Quintus hard on the buttocks, making him stagger sideways under the weight of his sword. ‘So much for Hun weapons!’ the boy guffawed. ‘If the weighting’s all wrong, what’s the point of having harder steel and sharper blades?’

  Quintus picked himself up, grimaced exaggeratedly and grinned, and then they squared off again, slowly circling each other. Suddenly he swung his sword at Marcus Cato’s midriff, pulling it back at the last moment as Marcus Cato raised his sword to parry the blow. Seeing Quintus’ swing fail, Marcus Cato raised his sword behind his head to deliver his own blow, but instead of recovering, Quintus had let the momentum of the swing bring him round again, turning nearly full circle on the spot. Too late, Marcus Cato realized that Quintus’ initial swing had been a feint, designed to make him raise his guard and expose his midriff, and too late Quintus realized that his sword had righted itself and was now swinging at Marcus Cato edge-on. In the split second of his realization he tried to pull the blade back again, but the momentum this time was too great. The blade sliced through Marcus Cato’s tunic and halfway through his torso, cutting so quickly that for the first second there was barely a trickle of blood from the wound.

  There was a gasp from the others and then a horrified silence as Quintus pulled the blade out. Marcus Cato staggered back, his arms falling to his sides, letting the sword drop. He stared at Quintus uncomprehendingly, and then he toppled sideways like a falling statue, his head hitting the ground with a thud and his eyes glazed open, his mouth drooling. With a slurp his bowels fell out of the gaping wound in his side, a slithering mass in lurid colours, exposing his severed backbone. He convulsed violently, his arms juddering and his mouth foaming. A terrible sigh emerged from him as the blood gushed out over the sand, and then he was still.

  Quintus dropped the sword and put his hands over his face, shaking and moaning softly. Macrobius immediately marched over to him, picked up the sword, wiped the blood on Quintus’ tunic, pulled down one hand and thrust the hilt back into it. Quintus continued sobbing, almost doubling over, and Macrobius slapped him hard on the face, making him reel back with the sword dragging behind him. Macrobius pulled him up by the collar and pointed at the body. ‘You see that?’ he snarled, looking around. ‘I’m talking to all of you. That’s called death. If you’re going to use a sword, you’d better get used
to it. Now, we will make our salutations. Marcus Cato Claudius, you have helped to make a better soldier of Quintus Aetius Gaudentius Secundus, who now will always have you with him when he goes into battle, will have the honour of your name to uphold as well. Marcus Cato Claudius, salve atque vale. Now, all of you are due for your induction in the Field of Mars this evening. Make a bad impression by arriving teary-eyed, and then for the next three months you’ll wish you were where Marcus Cato is now. I want to see you with all your kit lined up in full marching order outside the front entrance of the schola in half an hour. And that goes for you too, Quintus Aetius. Go now.’

  Two of the others, veteran cadets, went on either side of Quintus and walked him away out of sight under the balcony, followed by the rest. Macrobius picked up his own sword, gathered the weapons in the leather roll and walked off towards the armoury on the far side of the palaestra. The slaves who had brought in the table then reappeared with a cart and a sack of sand, wheeling it towards the body. They emptied the sand in a pile, heaved the body onto the cart and then used a shovel to scoop up the innards, pouring them into the sack and throwing it on top of the body. They spread the sand around, leaving it for a minute to sop up the blood before shovelling it on top of the body, finishing by sprinkling a fresh layer of sand on the ground and raking it out with another tool. Two of them wheeled the cart away while the other two carried off the table. A moment later one of them dashed back out and pulled up the target pole with the split wood and the arrows, running with it out of sight. The scene was as it had been before Macrobius had arrived, as if stagehands had removed the props in a theatre after a play, the statue of Trajan still presiding from his column and the only evidence of what had happened the hint of a stain in the sand.