The Sword of Attila (26 page)

Flavius remembered the mantra of the Goths on the eve of battle. ‘Tomorrow will be a good day to die,' he said.

Theodoric turned and looked at him, placing a hand on his shoulder. ‘My time draws to an end,' he said. ‘This battle will be my last, and soon Thorismud will take over my mantle. If you survive, Flavius Aetius, you must look to yourself. Allegiance neither to a Roman emperor nor to a Goth king will see you through to old age. If it is to be the god of war that you follow, choose your god with care.'

Flavius watched him walk away and disappear back into the tent, and then he looked to the north-east and the undulating treeless plain where they knew that Attila had his encampment. Attila would be there too, around an open fire, his lords of war intoxicated and telling tales just as the Goths were doing, his encircling laager of wagons providing a wooden fortress like the palace far off in the folds of the steppe-lands that Flavius had once visited. He remembered his time there, the scarred cheeks and piercing eyes of Attila as he had sat beside him, and for a fleeting moment he missed it, wishing that he too was over there by the fire sitting next to the emperor, seeing battle not in strategy and tactics but in the adrenalin and exhilaration of a people who had been born for war.

The clouds broke again, above the Hun lines, and for a second he thought he saw something extraordinary, a ball of white with a streaking tail reaching high into the night sky. It was blotted out almost as quickly as it had appeared, and for a moment he wondered whether it had merely been a strange effect of the moon, reflected against the clouds. But he remembered as a boy studying the course of comets with Dionysius the Scythian in Rome, and hearing the monks in Chalôns predict that this year the great comet recorded by the Babylonians would reappear. Even the men of God believed that this would augur momentous events: the birth or death of great kings, defeat or victory in battle, events that would shape the world to come.

Dionysius had scoffed at augury, and Flavius knew better than to believe in fate. But, staring across the plain, he wondered whether Attila's shamans had seen it too, or whether they were too busy reading the cracked shoulder blades of oxen beside the fires, preparing their own rituals of divination. He stared at the sky again, seeing only darkness. If it was an omen, it could only mean one thing, but he did not have to believe in augury to know what lay ahead. He had seen the preparations around him, the two sides resolutely encamped, the bleak plains ahead, the perfect killing ground.

It was an omen of war.

The wind rustled through the wheat on the plain, a whispering, haunting sound that seemed to set the men on edge, their heads rising above the flattened patches along the river bank where they had been lying since dawn waiting for the order to move. All that morning the air had been still, the heat rising inexorably until they were dripping with sweat under their armour; at least the breeze had brought them some respite. Flavius watched it now, eddying and gusting up the stalks of wheat on the slope in front of him, and yet again he scanned the ridge to the east for any signal from the scouts who had crept up there during the night, seeking concealed positions to overlook the enemy encampment on the other side. The wait all morning for a signal had seemed interminable, but at least the sun had risen high enough that it would no longer be in their eyes when the assault took place; the enemy had lost an obvious tactical advantage there, but they were probably playing the same game, waiting to see which side would draw the other into battle, all eyes on that ridge where the commanders knew that the key to any victory must lie.

Flavius felt for his
gladius
and then shifted the shoulder belt that held the additional sword he was carrying on his back, its long blade sheathed and the hilt concealed beneath a woollen cover. He took a water skin from one of the Alans who were trudging to and from the river to keep the men replenished. Sangibanus, their leader, was skulking somewhere behind, miffed at not being invited to join the council of war; but he was the least of Aetius' worries, the Alans in their present state of fitness posing no threat to world order after the battle and serving a useful purpose today as water-carriers. Aetius came up to him, took a swig from the proffered skin and then stared at the ridge himself, his eyes narrowed. ‘Walk with me, Flavius.' They made their way out of the flattened patch that served as headquarters and twenty paces or so into the wheat in front of the Roman lines, out of earshot. Aetius turned to him, speaking quietly. ‘You still feel certain that Attila will break? It has been eight hours since dawn.'

Flavius nodded. ‘Attila is a cunning tactician, but he is not a patient man. He will order his troops to the assault before you do,
magister militum.
'

Aetius took another swig, wiped his mouth and handed the skin back to Flavius. ‘All right. We shall continue to wait for the signal from the scouts. We can hold out for another day if need be.'

‘Attila will not wait that long. He has no stockpiles of food as we do. To delay for another day he would have to send men out foraging, weakening his force and making him more vulnerable. He has no choice but to attack today.'

Aetius nodded and went back to confer with his two
comitatenses
commanders, Aspar and Anagastus. The disposition of their forces was based on intelligence received earlier from scouts about the spread of the enemy below the other side of the ridge and the likely order of battle. When the time came they would lead their two armies up the northern flank of the slope to confront the Ostrogoths under Valamer, as well as Attila's Huns in the centre, while to the east the Visigoths were ranged against the Gepids under Ardaric. Flavius recalled Aetius' negotiations the day before with Theodoric and Thorismud to ensure that the two Goth armies did not meet in battle. It was wisdom that might have escaped a lesser commander than Aetius, one without his political nous and good judgement born of his own Goth background; he knew what made his people tick. Modern generalship, Flavius had realized, was a far more complex business than it had been at the time of the Caesars, when there had been a rigid chain of command and the legions were rarely allied in battle with a force as powerful as themselves, particularly one that had been their sworn enemy only a few weeks before.

The Visigoth king and his sons were not with Aetius, but were in their own separate headquarters with their chieftains half a mile to the south. That too had been a careful strategy on the part of Aetius, underlining a promise he had given to Theodoric that he would be an equal ally in the field, not a subordinate. By keeping the Visigoth commanders away from his
comitatenses
staff he had also avoided flare-ups that could easily have arisen between former enemies and destroyed in an instant their chances of success in the coming battle. Aetius was playing a balancing act on many levels, yet even so in this waiting game it could only be a matter of time before the Visigoths questioned his strategy, potentially launching an independent attack of their own and disastrously weakening his plan. Flavius could guess what was running through Aetius' mind, why he had taken him aside and questioned him again about Attila. The sooner the Huns attacked now, the better.

He looked at the expanse of wheat on either side, a wavering sea of gold that held more than fifty thousand men poised for battle, the largest army ever fielded by Rome in the western empire. For a brief moment he felt overwhelmed, as if the crucible of battle were in his hands alone. Aetius had made him his special adviser because of his first-hand knowledge of Attila, and had appointed Macrobius and the rest of the
numerus
as his personal bodyguards. It was a huge honour, but also a daunting responsibility. What if he had been wrong? It was he who had advised Aetius not to make a pre-emptive assault but to wait until the Huns themselves were charging, to meet them head to head on the ridge, to fight a bloody battle of attrition and hope to win the day there; a pre-emptive charge might find Attila's bowmen ranged below ready to pour a deadly storm of arrows into the Romans and Visigoths and force them back over the ridge, weakening them and making them less able to resist the Hun assault that would inevitably follow. It was a tactic that Flavius had seen Attila deploy in Parthia three years before, goading the enemy into an assault over a desert ridge and meeting them with a fixed line of Hun archers.

Flavius remembered the great sword, and holding it for the first time with Arturus in the strongroom of Attila's palace. If he were right today, the legacy of that extraordinary adventure might not only be the absence from Attila's hands of that sword, that potent symbol of Hun kingship, but also what Flavius had learned riding alongside him in the mock battle in the Hun stronghold, absorbing knowledge of the great warrior's strengths and weaknesses that could now be brought to bear against him this day on the Catalaunian Plains where the fate of the western world would soon be decided.

Along the line to the right he saw his cousin Quintus Aetius, shouting orders at the mixed
numerus
of Visigoth and Roman troops that he had honed into one of the finest shock formations in the army over the past months. Quintus was muscular and bronzed, a thick scar running through his stubble and down his neck, a far cry from the inconsolable boy Flavius had seen leaving the
schola
after he had accidentally killed his friend Marcus Cato two years ago. The others of that class were here too, those who had survived this long: one on Aetius' staff, two among the
fabri
tribunes who were overseeing camp fortification behind the lines, the rest leading cavalry and infantry
numeri
up the slopes. Flavius saw Macrobius watching Quintus too, and they exchanged a smile. For all the bravado and toughness, they both knew that Marcus Cato was with Quintus today, that with every step he took up the slope now his ears would be ringing with those words that Macrobius had bellowed at him beside the bloody corpse in the
palaestra,
that he owed it to his friend to stand up to what he had done like a man and carry the honour of Rome forward.

Flavius squinted up at the sky. The sun was lost in the haze, but the humidity was rising, and he felt a trickle of sweat down his cheek. He looked at the ridge again. Suddenly he saw something, a man in the far distance running through the wheat towards them, cutting a trail from the ridge down the slope. Another one followed, and further along he saw two more raise themselves out of concealment and wave their flags. The scouts were all supposed to remain on the ridge after the assault began to signal any changes in the enemy movement, but he did not blame the two who were fleeing, seeking relative safety in their own lines rather than certain death between the two opposing armies.

Aetius and the two generals quickly stood up, helmets on, and Flavius did the same. All along the line a huge mass of men had risen, spears and sword flashing, the
comitatenses
cavalry saddled up and mounted, the horses snorting and stomping. The head of the monastery at Chalôns who had been waiting with vestments and holy water for this moment tried to anoint Aetius, but he pushed him aside; this was no time for God. He stormed out ahead of the line, and then turned round. ‘Gird for battle,' he bellowed, and then began charging up the ridge, sword in hand. Flavius drew his
gladius
and glanced at Macrobius. ‘Are you ready, centurion?' He turned to the others of the
numerus.
‘Apsachos? Maximus? Cato? All of you men? Are you ready?'

They clashed their swords together. ‘
Ave
, tribune.'

Flavius pointed his sword after Aetius. ‘Then to war.'

At first the army surged forward with no certainty that the enemy was doing the same, their view of the Hun lines completely obscured by the ridge and with only the signals of the scouts to go on. Then one of the men who had come racing down from the ridge tore past Aetius, shouting
‘The Huns are coming, the Huns are coming!'
Aspar caught hold of him, dragging him stumbling and panting back up the slope as he questioned him, and then let him go. ‘Attila comes in a line up the slope just as we are, his infantry first,' he shouted to Aetius. ‘You were right.'

Flavius looked from side to side. The cavalry were cantering behind the infantry, ready to gallop into the melee or around the flanks. To have sent them forward on a headlong charge would have been to risk their arrival on the ridge exhausted and in full view of the Hun archers who might by then be ranged up on the other side. Attila had clearly decided the same, to keep his cavalry in reserve, knowing that his mounted archers in particular were too valuable to send ahead up the ridge, sitting targets in that moment of uncertainty as they saw that there was no cavalry charge from the Romans to counter and only an enormous wave of infantry advancing towards them. As he ran forward, Flavius felt his mouth go dry, the sign of fear and adrenalin that he had first experienced before Carthage. The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains was to be a clash of foot soldiers, battle of the most brutal kind, thousands of men surging together and fighting with sword and club and fists for possession of that ridge and control of the battlefield.

Immediately to Flavius' right the left flank of the Visigoth army was advancing under Radagaisus and Thiudimer, with Theodoric and Thorismud out of sight several
stades
further south, where the main thrust of Ardaric's Gepids was expected. One man, a Roman
milites
who had boldly run forward behind Aetius but then baulked, overwhelmed perhaps by the enormity of the army behind him and his own visibility in front of it, was weaving and staggering and straying too far to the right, ahead of the Visigoth lines; he suddenly fell to his knees and dropped his weapon, clapping his hands to his ears and curling up in a ball on the ground. Radagaisus strode up to him, his face contorted with rage, then picked the man up by his hair and lopped his head off with a single stroke of his sword, turning and holding it high so his men could see. ‘This is what happens to cowards,' he bellowed, hurling the head in the direction of the ridge, gobs of blood flicking out around it.