The Sword of Attila (22 page)

It was the sight of the citadel itself that most riveted Flavius. A palisade surrounded it, enclosing an area at least as great as the Palatine Hill and the Old Forum in Rome. In the centre was a fortress-like structure rising above the plain, surrounded by tiers of buildings in a tightly packed mass that descended to the valley floor; in overall appearance it was as if one of the circular huts of the encampments had been recreated on a grand scale. The palisade had been built from huge trunks of cedar of a size that Flavius had only seen in the forests surrounding the gorge of the Danube near the Iron Gates; to cut and transport such timbers would have been a prodigious feat, one presumably carried out by the Danube woodsmen themselves under contract to the Huns. In a land where wood was scarce and trees were stunted, the Huns' own tradition of woodcraft was seen in the walls of the interior buildings, all built from short planks of varying breadths seamlessly mortised together, giving the flush appearance of ships' hulls that, as a boy, Flavius had watched being constructed shell first in the building yards of Portus near Rome. The weakness of the citadel was its vulnerability to fire, but the chances of an attacker getting close enough with the right artillery seemed remote indeed; the Hun strategy was one of offence, fighting wars hundreds of miles from their homeland, striking out from a base with little in its location or resources to attract an attacker intent on loot or conquest.

At the gate into the palisade Erecan leapt off her horse, dismissed her warriors and watched them canter off to an encampment nearby. Earlier, she and Arturus had fallen back from the group, talking intently, and Flavius had known that she was being told of their plan to find and take the sword. The men got off their own horses, handing the reins to waiting boys, and followed Erecan inside, past the gate guards and up a wide stairway that led to the central part of the citadel. When they were out of earshot of the guards and had reached another entranceway, Erecan stopped and turned to Flavius. ‘Arturus is your manservant, your armourer. He'll go down this passageway and await my return, and then he and I will go to the strongroom. First I will take you to the audience chamber. My father will only have a short time for you, as he is intending to ride on Parthia tonight. But he respects Aetius as a general, and he'll listen to what you have to say.'

‘I'll decide what that is when I see him,' Flavius said.

‘Don't offer him concessions of land, as Rome did to the Visigoths and the Alans. Attila will regard that as a sign of weakness. And offers of gold he is used to from the eunuchs of Constantinople. You don't want to remind him of eunuchs. He despises them, and then he will despise you.'

‘No eunuchs,' Macrobius said gruffly, hand on his sword pommel. ‘At least that's one thought I share in common with Attila.'

‘And take your hand off your sword. You'll be allowed to wear your weapons into the audience chamber, as any man who willingly lets others take his sword from him is regarded as a weakling. But to touch them will be to invite instant death.'

‘This sounds like it's going to be a bundle of laughs,' Macrobius grumbled.

Flavius glanced at him. ‘It'll be one to tell your grandchildren.'

‘Children would be a good start. Coming here isn't exactly going to increase my chances of that. Most soldiers my age are veterans with a nice plot of land and a wife, and sons already in the army.'

‘Wait until you see the gold,' Erecan said. ‘Then you'll be pleased you came.'

‘Now you're talking.'

‘When you've had your audience, I'll take you to the strongroom,' she went on. ‘Once there, we will need to work out our best route of escape.'

‘That sounds like a plan.'

‘And one last thing. Watch out for Bleda. He's loyal to his brother, but embittered after years of resentment at not having been selected for the kingship. He hates me because he took my slave mother for his own after I was born and Attila then decided to kill her, and he blames me for that. He would happily find an excuse to destroy me.'

‘Do you have anyone you can rely on?'

‘My two closest bodyguards, Optilla and Thrastilla. They've been my guards since my birth. They will come with us.'

‘All right. Let's move,' Flavius said.

Arturus and Macrobius disappeared down the passageway to the left, and Erecan led Flavius up the stairs and into a wide chamber with wooden colonnades around the walls, and with the floor and the wall spaces between the columns covered with overlapping carpets, brightly coloured and tightly woven. It reminded Flavius of the interior of Berber tents he had seen in Africa before the fall of Carthage, the dwellings of another people more at home with a nomadic than a sedentary lifestyle; to the Huns, even a citadel as impressive as this one would have none of the permanence or meaning of Rome or Constantinople, and would only be seen as a temporary capital while their king marshalled his forces for his final apocalyptic thrust westwards.

Erecan pushed her way through two more sets of doors, and then pulled a final set inwards, standing aside while Flavius made his way forward. He was inside another colonnaded chamber, but instead of being enclosed, this one was open to the elements, a large circular aperture in the roof drawing out wisps of smoke from a smouldering fire in a stone hearth below. On either side of the entrance were two huge Goth mercenaries, both carrying axes, and beyond the hearth Flavius could see a Hun warrior, presumably Bleda, his hair streaked with grey, cross-armed and glaring at them, the birth scars on his cheeks livid in the firelight.

The doors slammed shut behind him, and Flavius took another step forward. Beside the Hun warrior he could see another figure, seated on a wooden throne, slouched to one side, with his moustache and sloped forehead clearly visible. He too bore the birth scars on his cheeks, and he was drinking from a golden tankard and eating meat off a bone, and staring across the hearth at him.

Flavius had reached his destination.

It was Attila.

Flavius stood in front of the hearth in the audience chamber, trying to keep his posture relaxed as Attila and his brother stared at him. ‘My name is Flavius Aetius Gaudentius, tribune of the Roman army, nephew of Aetius of the same name,
magister militum
of the western armies. I come before you on his behalf.' Bleda leaned over and spoke close to Attila's ear in the guttural language of the Huns, his body tense and his fists balled. Attila replied to him and Bleda swung away, his face contorted with rage, pacing behind the throne. ‘My brother wishes to kill you on the spot,' Attila said, his voice deep and sonorous. ‘He thinks that an envoy who does not represent an emperor is not an envoy at all, and is an insult to the court of the Huns.'

Flavius had already decided how to play it with Attila. There would be no talk of concessions, no offers of gold. They would talk as men and as soldiers, not as negotiators. ‘I come representing Aetius because he is the only general on earth who is a worthy opponent to Attila. Valentinian is a weakling, served by eunuchs. I would not dishonour myself by agreeing to represent such a man. You can tell this to your brother Bleda, warrior to warrior.'

‘My brother understands every word you say. We were as well schooled in Latin and Greek by scholars brought here by my father as any of the Goth princes who were sent to Rome.' He took a mouthful of meat, chewed and swallowed it, tossed the bone into the hearth and contemplated Flavius, wiping his hands on his tunic. ‘We don't like eunuchs either. Bleda especially doesn't like them. Any he finds he uses for pig-sticking practice in the field.' He glanced up at Bleda, who grunted, his face slightly less ferocious. Attila turned again to Flavius. ‘So, what do you want?'

‘I bring you a gift.' Flavius began to open a satchel that was hanging from his side, having previously been stored inside his backpack, but he was immediately pounced on by one of the Goth guards, who twisted his arm painfully behind his back and put a knife to his throat. Attila watched in amusement and then waved his hand, the Goth releasing him. ‘My bodyguards are touchy about weapons,' Attila said. ‘The last three Hun kings were assassinated in this very chamber, including my father, Mundiuk.'

‘It's not a weapon,' Flavius said, nursing his arm. ‘It's a book.'

Attila grunted, his interest piqued, and waved his arm again. The Goth backed off and Flavius unwrapped the package in the satchel. It was a small leather-bound codex with vellum pages, a gift from Uago on his passing out from the
schola
twelve years earlier. Along with the
gladius,
it had been his most prized possession among the belongings that Una had taken from his quarters and left with Macrobius, and with nowhere else to store it, he had decided to bring it along to annotate during their voyage. Their conversation with Priscus on the island about Attila's interest in geography had prompted the idea that it might be a suitable gift, a way of keeping Attila occupied while the others were attempting to enter the strongroom. He walked forward, bowed slightly and passed it over. ‘It's a pocket-book compilation of maps of the known world, based on Ptolemy but incorporating later additions, including a more detailed image of Britannia, for example. I thought you might use it to trace your conquests.'

Attila took the volume, opening it carefully and turning the pages. ‘But not, I see, incorporating the latest work carried out by the cartographic department of the
fabri
in Rome.'

‘You know I'm unable to bring you that. But this was based on the latest intelligence when it was created by that same department at the time I was a candidate in the
schola,
twelve years ago.'

Attila opened a page and stared at it intently, tracing his finger over the map and then shaking his head. ‘Ptolemy got the land to the north-east of the Danube all wrong, and the mistakes have been repeated on maps ever since. The Maeotic Lake is further east, and the great ice sheets much further north. I myself have not seen them, but Bleda and my father as young men went to the edge of the ice and encountered a race of hunters who live in snow huts, bringing back walrus ivory. One day I should like to go north too.'

‘There is much of the world still to conquer.'

‘To conquer or to explore. We Huns are not people who claim ownership over land. These steppes belong to the eagle and the wolf, the northern ice sheets to the great white bear.'

‘That's what makes you so dangerous,' Flavius replied, calculating his response. ‘The Romans conquer to occupy territory, building frontiers and forts, expending manpower and resources on it. For the Huns, to conquer means to go to battle. All of your manpower and all of your resources are put into one cataclysmic clash with an enemy. It is why Attila has become the most feared name across the world.'

Attila looked at him shrewdly, his legs apart and one hand on his knee. ‘So, Flavius Aetius Gaudentius, nephew of
magister militum
Aetius. Why have you really come here?'

Flavius stared him in the eye. ‘I have come here on behalf of Aetius to challenge you to battle.'

‘To challenge me to battle.' Attila wiped his nose and glanced at Bleda. ‘That's a new one. I don't recall any of the eunuchs offering me that as a concession, or that gangly scholar Priscus and his tribune friend from Constantinople.'

‘That's because they were representing an emperor, not a general. I come to you not with offers of concessions, but with an offer of war. It may not be this year, or next year, but it will be soon, at a place of your choosing. The mother of all battles.'

‘The mother of all battles,' Attila repeated slowly, eyeing him. ‘I couldn't have put it better myself.' Flavius remembered too late that the expression had come from Priscus, who had quoted it from Attila himself. He suddenly felt on a knife-edge, not daring to look at Bleda. Priscus and Maximinus had left under a cloud, and if Attila guessed that he had been in contact with them, things might go wrong very quickly. He tried not to look tense, but his heart was pounding and he could feel the sweat trickling down his back.

Attila narrowed his eyes. ‘There were two others with you. Who are they?'

‘My centurion, Macrobius, and my manservant and armourer, a Gaul from Armorica. Your daughter is taking them to find a grinding wheel in your armoury. Our swords need sharpening.'

Attila thought for a moment, grunted, and then got up, putting the book carefully aside and walking towards a shuttered window in the side wall of the room. ‘I'm told that in Rome and in Constantinople the military
scholae
include dioramas for mockups of battles,' he said. ‘Well, here's my playground.' He pushed open the wooden shutters and led Flavius out onto a balcony, into the blazing light of the sun. Flavius shielded his eyes, blinking against the glare, and began to make out features that they had seen on the way in, the surrounding cliffs with the steppe-land above, the road leading out to the palisade and the entrance formed by the ravine.

From this height atop the citadel he could appreciate the immensity of the bowl, at least a mile across, with their position commanding views in all directions. Attila opened his arms expansively. ‘When I exercise my warriors, we play war games for real. From my last excursion against the Persian Empire we have a thousand captured Parthians, infantry and cavalry, fully equipped and armed. If they survive until sundown, they gain their freedom. If my warriors fall to their arms, that is their lot. I can ask my men to recreate any battle I choose, using the flat land of the plain to the east or the undulating land to the west. Sometimes I watch it from here alone, sometimes with my daughter, sometimes with my commanders. Today, I will go down and join them.'

He turned and bored his eyes into Flavius. ‘Let me see what a nephew of Flavius Aetius Gaudentius is made of. Ride with me.'