The Sword of Attila (13 page)

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.

Flavius had looked on dispassionately. His mind had strayed to Una once the sword-play had begun, and it had taken him a few moments to register the accident. He remembered his own first shocks as a young man, watching as men of his
numerus
were ripped apart by the dogs before Carthage, feeling stunned by his own first kill. Quintus had suffered the cruellest of blows, killing his best friend in practice combat, but Macrobius had been right to respond as he did, and Flavius would not be seeking his cousin out. Either Quintus would go to pieces, another reject from the
schola,
or the experience would make a man of him, would toughen him up, his ability to ride it through strengthened by a drive to uphold the honour of his family, of Flavius himself, who he knew had been watching, of their uncle Aetius, of a Rome imbued with glory and honour and military virtue that they all desperately hoped to rebuild. He glanced up at the statue of Trajan again and turned back to the door. It was time to go.

That night Flavius lay with Una on the sands beside the mouth of the river Tiber, watching the moonlight dance across the ruffled surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea. They had ridden down from Rome that afternoon on Flavius' horse, through the dilapidated town of Ostia and past the canal that led to the octagonal harbour of Portus, and now they were on the great stretch of sand near Antium that extended south as far as the eye could see. Fewer ships came up the Tiber now than in the days of Flavius' youth, the fall of Carthage having cut off the trade in African grain and oil, and the last vessel of the day had left hours ago, their solitude since then broken only by a few fishermen who had come and cast their nets during the early evening but who had left as soon as darkness set in.

Flavius propped himself up on one elbow as he took some grapes from the food they had brought with them and drank from a flagon of wine, and watched Una as she lay with her eyes closed stretched out on the blanket beside him. She was long-limbed, taller than he was, with high cheekbones and tightly curled black hair, and even among the people of Rome, used to slaves and soldiers from all quarters of the world, she raised eyebrows as she passed through the streets and the markets, more beautiful in Flavius' eyes than any of the pasty-looking girls from noble families who were endlessly paraded in front of him as suitable prospects for marriage.

Una was not like the black-skinned slaves he had seen sold as exotica in the markets of Rome, slaves said to have come from far-off lands to the south of the great African desert, nor like the Nubians and Berbers who had thronged into Carthage in the city's final days; instead she was from an African land to the east where the river Nile rose in the highlands overlooking the Erythraean Sea, a place that she called Ethiopia. She had told him that on the high plateaus of her homeland the girls would run between villages carrying messages and news, effortlessly covering thirty or more miles in a day, further even than a day's route march for a soldier, and that when they came down from the thin air of the uplands to the plains and the desert below they could run even further and faster. He had seen it for himself on the many occasions he had brought her from Rome to run on these sands, and she had done so again this evening, Flavius cantering and galloping alongside her while she covered miles and miles, her breathing barely quickened and her legs seeming to float above the sand. Afterwards they had made love and swum in the sea, and her skin still glistened with the water that left the taste of salt on Flavius' lips, a cleansing taste that for a few precious hours made the machinations of Rome and the venality of the emperor and his court seem a distant irrelevance.

She opened her eyes and sat upright, pulling up her robe against the first chill of the night, and stared out to sea, saying nothing. Flavius drew himself alongside her, dragging over the flagon and taking another draught, feeling the warmth of the wine in his belly. ‘What are you thinking?' he said, wiping his lips and passing her the flagon.

She took it, raised it to her lips and then put it down again. ‘I was thinking about Quodvultdeus, the Bishop of Carthage.'

‘Why think about that monster in this place? He nearly beat you to death on the ship back from Carthage. If Macrobius hadn't held me back, I would have killed him with my bare hands.'

She was silent for a moment, and then spoke quietly. ‘You must remember what I'd been through. After the slavers kidnapped me from my village in Ethiopia I spent two years working for a Nubian whoremaster, caged up with other girls in wagons that travelled from oasis to oasis waiting to service the men of the camel caravans when they came in. I had already learned of Christianity from the followers of the monk Frumentius who had first brought the new religion from Alexandria to my people, and it became my salvation; knowing of the suffering of Jesus and the two thieves on the crosses gave me the strength to carry on. When Bishop Quodvultdeus rode by one day, pointing to me and two of the other girls, giving the whoremaster a purse of gold, I thought that Christ himself had answered my prayers, and I fell down on my knees and worshipped him. Later, when he led us in prayer, entrancing us all with his messianic eyes and deep voice, he used to say that we were the holy innocents, that those who would abuse us and vent their fury on us were really paying us homage, as Herod did when he wreaked his fury on the Christ child. It was only much later, after far too long under his spell, that I realized he was no messenger from Christ but a venal and cruel man who had bought us to satisfy his own desires, when he wasn't occupied chasing boys around the cloisters in Carthage.'

‘Quodvultdeus, “What God Wants”,' Flavius muttered, flinging a stone into the surf. ‘If a man like that thinks he's what God wants, then we're better off without a Church.'

‘I never lost my faith,' Una continued, ‘because the Christianity taught in my land is not the Christianity of Rome. I never saw Quodvultdeus as an intermediary to God, just as one who seemed in my fevered imagination to have been sent by God to bring my deliverance. Once I saw through him I saw the truth of the Church he represented, a hollow vessel created by men to satisfy their own ambitions and cravings, as far from God as he is from the courts of the emperors.'

Flavius pursed his lips, looking out to sea. ‘The last I heard, Quodvultdeus had set himself up as the Bishop of Rome's special inquisitor in Neapolis, leading a squad of thugs house by house to root out so-called heretics who don't believe that the Bishop is already up there sitting in judgement alongside Christ himself.'

Una shuddered, clutching her robe closer around her. ‘That's only two days' ride from here. The closer he gets, the more I want to leave. I'm conspicuous enough in Rome as it is, but the methods he uses to extract confessions will lead to someone pointing the finger at me.'

Flavius peered at her. ‘You often go out quietly in the night, and don't return until dawn. I've never asked questions, but I've guessed.'

Una reached out and put a hand on his arm, squeezing it, and then drew back under her robe. ‘You may as well know now. We meet in the catacombs, under Rome and along the Appian Way. There are secret places, known only to a few.'