Death of an Empire (19 page)

Like many-headed monsters, the armies snapped at each other in a chaotic series of individual battles where friend and foe alike were both confused and confusing. German fought German and Visigoth fought Ostrogoth. Myrddion became dizzy with the vast scale of the battle and was unable to see any pattern behind the tangle of foot soldiers and cavalry.

Captus was wiser in the ways of warfare. Patiently, he explained how Attila’s numerical advantage was dissipated through the tactical and strategic superiority displayed by Aetius and Merovech on the battlefield. Under the expert tutelage of the captain of his guard, Myrddion saw the ebb and flow of the heroic contest through more educated eyes. He was particularly impressed with the intimidatory dourness and discipline of the Roman troops, who did not give an inch, regardless of how many warriors were thrown against them.

The day was long and hot, and Myrddion couldn’t imagine how men could fight effectively under the weight of their armour. Even from a distance, the healer could tell that the Hun momentum had gone. The Visigoths had fought them to a standstill, and as the first long rays of the afternoon began to slant over the battlefield the Hun army wheeled and retreated, heading for the safety of Attila’s encampment. As they headed northeast along the slopes of the ridge, they left drifts of dead and dying men and horses in their wake. The carrion birds came as they always did, called by the strange telepathy of their kind, to feast on the detritus of war. As he saw the ungainly bodies of vultures and the sleek, black shapes of ravens settle onto the mounds of dead, Myrddion stirred himself at last.

‘Send out the men, Captus. We must start to move the living out of this charnel house and into my hospital tents. Gods . . . there are so many of them that I don’t know where to start.’

The carthorses, as well as the guard’s destriers, were soon pressed into service to bear those who still lived to Myrddion’s tents, while Vechmar, Myrddion and Cadoc began their preparations to perform surgery as soon as the patients arrived.

But very few men were alive. Those who had fallen during the morning had mostly bled to death by the time Myrddion’s searchers reached them. Enemy and allied warriors were all the
same to the young Celt, and some Hun warriors were transported back to the hospital tents. Captus was kept grimly occupied killing wounded horses and he was soon awash with blood. Every step the searchers took was through puddles of viscous gore until they despaired of finding warriors who could be made whole.

Then, as the last bloody rays of sunlight lit the huge plain, Childeric rode through the havoc of the battlefield with scant concern for the bodies that were trodden beneath his destrier’s hooves until he found Myrddion, spattered with the paint of his craft.

‘Come, Myrddion! As you foretold, King Merovech is sorely wounded and is like to die, even with your skills. But I will not sleep well unless we try to save him. Besides, he is calling for you.’

‘Very well,’ Myrddion said sadly. ‘But it will take me some little time to reach him.’

‘You can ride behind me. Merovech has no time.’

Pausing only to sluice his body with clean water and to snatch up his familiar satchel, Myrddion left the tent. He was half naked, wet and glistening like a pale, sleek seal. Childeric extended his armed hand and Myrddion took it, and with an agile twist of the prince’s shoulders the healer found himself elevated onto the rump of Childeric’s destrier. He barely had time to grasp the prince’s sword belt before Childeric thrust his heels into his horse’s flanks and the huge beast leapt away in the direction from which it had come.

From horseback, the battlefield was even more ugly and bloody than Myrddion had imagined. The stench made his gorge rise and he was a man who was familiar with the reek of blood, entrails and body waste. Blood had soaked into the earth, forming a gross, red mud that had fouled the combatants, tangled their feet and weakened their straining leg muscles.

When Childeric pulled his horse to an abrupt halt and the two
men dismounted, they found the king of the Salian Franks lying on the bare earth, propped up on a saddle, with several red cloaks padded behind his head to assist his breathing. Merovech looked unchanged, especially facially, for his eyes were still reckless and somehow happy, while his mouth was turned up in a smile, even though a trickle of blood ran down his chin. Myrddion knelt beside the Frankish king and pulled aside his mailed shirt, which must have risen up above his waist as he delivered an overhead blow to an enemy, for the wound was beneath the narrow steel rings.

‘You’ve been severely injured, my lord,’ Myrddion murmured soothingly as he examined the small puncture wound in Merovech’s right side. The weapon had stabbed through the king’s shirt and heavy leather jerkin, leaving a bluish hole with puckered edges that oozed a deceptively small amount of blood. ‘How long ago did this happen?’ Myrddion’s hands eased away the heavy leather trousers that protected the king’s lower body, and he noted that Merovech winced, and then sighed, as the belt was released. The healer’s gentle fingers explored the king’s pelvis, and felt a thick swelling in the abdomen several inches below the wound.

Merovech was bleeding inwardly, and Myrddion had no idea how to stem that inexorable, invisible flow. He knew that he lacked the skills to repair internal organs that had been breached by a bladed weapon, so Merovech would soon weaken and die.

Pulling his satchel from his shoulder, Myrddion found a small horn container of powder that contained poppy seed and other painkilling ingredients. As a last resort, all that the healer had to offer was this – an anodyne against pain. Merovech understood when Myrddion asked for a little wine, and placed one bloodstained hand over the healer’s narrow fingers.

‘Can’t you offer me anything better, Myrddion-no-name? No lancing? No surgery? Never mind! In truth, my wound pains me,
but I’d as lief not sleep away my last hours. I have too much to explain to my son.’

‘If you wish, I can mix a draught that will kill your pain but still leave you conscious.’

‘I do wish. I’ll not have death steal up on me when I’m not looking. Better to face him. Aye, it’s better to fight for my last breath. Still, I would be grateful if you could relieve the pain, friend healer. It was a good day when Childeric brought you to me.’

Myrddion shook a little powder into the red wine and swirled it until the surface was undisturbed. He handed the mug to Childeric, who began to sniff it suspiciously, but Merovech gripped his son’s wrist with the last of his strength.

‘No, lad. Trust the young healer, for he’ll not kill me.’ Merovech laughed painfully, and then began to cough, a sound as hacking and raw as gravel underfoot. ‘I’m already a dead man – a Hun bastard saw to that. Let me drink his potion, and have done.’

Myrddion had no time to wait and watch Merovech die. Living men were suffering in the healers’ tents and he was looked for at the place where his skills had some value. Still, he was unable to turn away from the dying man whose spirit was almost incandescent in the torchlight.

‘Fare thee well, King Merovech. May the Mother enfold you in her warm arms and may you sleep on the bosom of your gods for as long as men remember your name.’

‘You’ve already promised me that I will live forever.’ Merovech laughed, although his mirth rang hollow.

Childeric bowed his head and wept soundlessly.

As Myrddion retraced his course through the battlefield, he saw Frank warriors slaying the last of the wounded Hungvari. He turned his face away from the bloody butchery, unable to watch the ugly realities of defeat. Still, as he picked his way through the gruesome detritus of the slaughter ground, he realised that he had
not heard a single Hun beg for his life, or weep, before blade or axe ended his agony. Perhaps these warriors are wiser than I am, for I only look for the best and the worst in men, Myrddion thought, as he came to the healers’ tent and began the bloody trade of saving lives.

The work continued through the night as the dead were dragged away to deep ditches or cleansing fires, leaving fewer survivors to be treated at the field hospital. As dawn approached, Vechmar, Myrddion, Cadoc and the servants laboured on as if that dreadful night would have no ending.

CHAPTER VII

SACRED EARTH

The horse screamed shrilly like a betrayed child, just once, as its legs collapsed and a great jet of arterial blood marred its glossy black coat. Its beautiful, dead flesh collapsed into the hole that had been dug for it, so that it lay like a useless mass of unresponsive muscle and plaited, gold-adorned mane and tail, a toy cast away by giants. The harness of a valuable destrier was laid beside it, ceremonial and heavy with gold wire and heavy embossing. Then Flavius Aetius stepped forward from the press of notables who viewed the execution with inscrutable, flat-planed faces.

‘Bane of thy master, lie here until his hand seeks your rein and his legs hunger to feel your body under him, ready and eager for battle. Though you left him, wounded and afoot in the press of battle, no blame attaches itself to you, his fleet-footed and beloved servant. Go with your lord into the abode of heroes.’

Women wailed in a chorus designed both to honour the dead and to chill the nerves of the listeners. In the Roman way, Flavius Aetius had hired peasant women and camp followers to rend their clothing and score their cheeks with their nails, so that they appeared to weep blood instead of tears. The shrill ululations of their purchased grief gave the ceremony the drama of a Greek tragedy.

Myrddion raised his eyes skywards and allowed the gentle morning breeze to cool his feverish, gritty eyes. A river lay just beyond the field with a village huddled on its bank, but few farmers and bucolics had come to gawk at the proceedings. The air was too charged with grief, distrust and despair for ordinary men to choose to become involved. The long grasses soughed and whispered in the light wind, twining with the sounds of the mourners to emphasise that the earth, and all things that lived upon it, felt the loss of this great king.

To the right of the felled horse, another huge grave pit had been carved out of the sod. Four times the size of a normal grave, this pit had been dug with much labour and even greater respect, for it was no ordinary man who would lie under the heavy summer sun of the Catalaunian Plain.

As the wailing of the mourners increased in tempo and volume, six warriors carried to the graveside a litter draped with heavy woven wool that had been hastily dyed a rusty black. Thorismund paced before the bier, his pace measured and solemn, his face harsh and suddenly older, as if his youth had been squeezed out of him by an invisible clenched fist. His armour gleamed with polish and ornamentation, his helm was so bright that it dazzled in the noonday light, and his hair was plaited, greased and noble with clasps of silver and electrum. Round his neck was the torc marking his status as a prince of the Visigoths and across his brows was the new band of his kingship. Yet, vital and strong as he was, Thorismund presented a pale imitation of regal power. The corpse of his father, Theodoric of Hispania, still radiated the inscrutable, magnetic aura of a god. Under his cleaned and fabulous armour, never used in the realities of combat, Myrddion knew that the king’s body was smashed and broken by the hooves of his own cavalry, but none of this damage was visible on the still face. Chance, or some last instinct for survival, had caused Theodoric to
curl onto his front as the war horses swept over him, smashing his skull and driving his face into the mud of the battlefield. Now, washed and perfumed, his features were almost unmarked, so that Theodoric could be sleeping on the heavy black litter on which he lay. As in life, his face spoke of secrets and careful control, so that Myrddion sought in vain for a trace of the personality that fired those angular features.

With a respect so deep and palpable that no man doubted its truth, the six Visigoth lords lowered the bier into the pit before abasing themselves on their knees so that their foreheads touched the earth. Then, careless of the dirt that marked their knees, their faces and their hands, they stood up and stepped away from their master to take up positions at the edge of the grave pit, still on guard, although their king had departed for a place where they could neither follow nor protect him.

Aetius approached the edge of the pit and ceremoniously tore the neck of his tunic with a strong, gnarled hand. This simple gesture, so common to mourners from one side of the Middle Sea to the other, was imbued with more than the respect due to a dead ally. With his accustomed deliberation, Aetius honoured Theodoric as a Roman warrior, the highest praise the general could give.

‘Look your last on Theodoric of the Visigoths, king and man, gone to his gods so that Attila would fail in his ambitions. The priests tell us that Fortuna demands a price for any great victory, and Theodoric was the cost of our success, struck down by cruel chance after he saw that the conflict was all but won. Our strong right arm is gone! Our kingly, noble adviser has gone! Our greatest ally has been sacrificed to spare us from the Hungvari. Ave, Theodoric, man and king! Ave!’

The oratory was stirring and the Visigoth lords responded with a resounding cry of triumph and grief, but Myrddion turned away to avoid any eye contact with Aetius across the yawning grave pit
that lay between them. The general could not have seen the healer in the ranks of mourners, even if he had cared sufficiently for Myrddion’s reaction to seek him out. But the young man feared that his traitorous face would attract the general’s eyes. And he couldn’t fool Aetius.

Myrddion knew that Aetius’s fine words were only for show. Yes, without Theodoric and the Visigoths, all of Gaul would have fallen to Attila. Sheer numbers had turned the tide on the Hungvari. Yes, Theodoric had been a clever strategist and a brilliant fighter, and he had defeated the horde again and again as Attila tried to find a means of escaping from Aetius’s trap. But, like Theodoric, Myrddion understood that Aetius cared nothing for the Visigoth king, except that his death caused a problem. Thorismund lacked his father’s cool intelligence and reasoned patience, but the young man had proved himself to be a hero.