The Sword of Attila (25 page)

‘And Sangibanus?' Flavius asked.

Aetius pursed his lips. ‘I have placed Sangibanus and his Alans between the Romans and the Visigoths, but as soon as battle is joined we will close up and they will be forced back to form a reserve. They are our one liability. I offered Sangibanus a bribe of more land around Orléans for his Alans to settle as well as a place for his men in my army in return for his allegiance, after he had threatened to turn Orléans over to Attila and revive the traditional alliance of the Alans with the Huns.'

‘These are not Alans as we saw them with Gaiseric's army at Carthage,' Flavius said. ‘Macrobius and I passed Sangibanus and his men on the way up from Nîmes. The warriors who were once a tower of strength are now fat and indolent, softened by settled life and self-indulgence.'

‘Exactly what we had hoped for when we offered them land in the first place years ago. Give some enemies an easy life, and soon they are no longer a threat. But when I was forced to negotiate terms with Sangibanus, I did not yet know whether Theodoric would join us against Attila, and I needed every ally I could get. Had I known then that I could rely on the Visigoths, I would happily have kicked Sangibanus and his pigsty back to Attila.'

‘If they're to be a reserve beside the river, we could use them to bring water up to the troops,' Anagastus suggested.

‘They're too unfit even for that,' Aspar said. ‘In this heat, they'd probably collapse before they marched ten paces.'

‘I am more confident of the barbarians in the
comitatenses,
' Aetius said. ‘As I formed my army on the way here I enlisted Salian and Ripuarian Franks, Burghundians, Armorican Celts, even a few exiled Britons. Because we had no time for training I only accepted veterans, offering them enlistment in the
comitatenses
and rank appropriate to their experience, as well as the all-important payout when the battle is over. Valentinian has assured me that the gold will be available, but these veteran
milites
know well enough how far they can trust the word of an emperor when it comes to pay. I gave them five gold
solidi
apiece on enlistment out of my own purse, and will probably be making up the remainder myself when it comes time for the survivors to demand it.'

‘What are the overall numbers?' Flavius asked.

‘Almost evenly matched,' Anagastus replied. ‘Nearly thirty thousand men of the
comitatenses
and twenty thousand Visigoths, against twenty thousand Huns and thirty thousand Ostrogoths. The
comitatenses
have more infantry archers, the Huns more mounted archers.'

Aetius turned to Flavius. ‘I invited you here because you have ridden into battle with Attila, because you know the man. What is your assessment of his tactics?'

Flavius stared at the map, remembering the Huns in their homeland and imagining what their encampment would look like now on the Catalaunian Plains. He thought hard, and then looked at Aetius. ‘Attila has never fought a pitched battle like this before. Most of his battles have been clashes of movement, of an army constantly on the move overtaking and bearing down on an advancing or retreating enemy, quick and ferocious encounters with little preamble or tactical forethought. Because he has no supply chain and is used to campaigning in the barren wastes of the East where the pickings from foraging are slim, war on the hoof is a matter of necessity, not choice. Unlike many of the Goth commanders, men like our own Theodoric and Thorismud, or his Ostrogoth general Valamer, Attila did not attend the
schola militarum
in Rome or Constantinople, so he has no training in the tactics of pitched battle. He has had no need of them before; all he has needed is the whirlwind terror of the Hun mounted assault, and that has carried him this far. But now it is different.'

‘Does he have good advisers?'

‘Valamer is a competent tactician. But like most of the Goth officers who went through the
schola
at Constantinople, he is obsessed with the Battle of Adrianople. After all, it was a Goth victory, and the battle site is just a stone's throw from Constantinople itself. But Adrianople was a more close-run thing than many have been led to believe, and if Valamer does influence Attila, that obsession with Adrianople could end up being his biggest tactical weakness tomorrow.'

‘You mean the laager!' Thorismud exclaimed. ‘The wheeled fortress of wagons.'

‘Precisely,' Flavius said. ‘If our scouts are right, Attila has shown his limitations by going to the opposite extreme from the fluid, mobile warfare in which his warriors rule supreme, opting instead this time for the fortified compound behind wagons that allowed the Goths at Adrianople to resist repeated Roman assaults and then sally forth. But we too have learned from Adrianople, and that is precisely
not
to make the same mistake again: not to make frontal assaults on a hot day against a wagon laager, wearing down our men with exhaustion and casualties to the point where they can be overwhelmed by a force erupting from the compound.'

‘So instead you surround them and starve them out,' Thorismud said.

‘And you force him to sally forth, to send out his mounted archers in lightning attacks in an effort to keep up the morale of his men and to erode ours,' Anagastus said. ‘But by maintaining our defensive line in strength, we resist his attacks and keep our line unbroken, and his casualties mount up higher than ours.'

‘Our
sagittarii
in the
comitatenses
use bows that have a greater range than the Hun cavalry bow,' Aetius said. ‘I have made a special study of them at the butts on the Field of Mars in Rome with the emperor Valentinian, who exercises his fascination with archery whenever he allows himself out of the clutches of that eunuch Heraclius. If we can reach high ground and rain arrows down on the laager, then we might win the day.'

Anagastus stood back, put his hands on his hips and shook his head. ‘This is still going to be a battle won mainly by attrition. We have been talking about a scenario where Attila has already been forced back into his laager, and for that to happen we still have to confront his army in open battle and drive the Huns back over that ridge. It may just be a bump in the ground, but for many men tomorrow that ridge will seem like an insurmountable mountain.'

‘We do have one crucial advantage,' Aetius said. ‘We can keep our supplies coming, and he cannot. If we can avoid outright defeat and hold a stalemate for more than twenty-four hours, then his army will begin to suffer. Attila has depended on foraging as his army has made its way east, whereas we can still call on the military stockpiles in the diocesan and provincial capitals. When I was a young candidate in officer school we were taught that the three pivots of battle were strategy, tactics and supply, and this could be one of those battles where that third pivot is decisive. I must go now to meet my quartermasters.'

‘And we go to feast,' Thorismud said, rising from his chair, the two Goths beside him doing the same. ‘In your absence, I ask that Flavius Aetius take your place in the tent we have laid out as a mead hall.'

Aetius nodded at Flavius, who turned to Thorismud and bowed. ‘I would be honoured to attend king Theodoric and feast alongside his sons and captains.'

The two Roman
comitatenses
commanders got up. ‘The sun is near its zenith,' Anagastus said. ‘Tomorrow will be a long day, the longest of the year so far.'

‘The longest of our lives, for those of us who see it through,' Aetius said, reaching for his helmet. ‘
Milites,
we have had our last council of war. The next command I issue to you will be on the battlefield. I will be riding at the head of the
comitatenses,
and King Theodoric will be at the head of the Visigoths. Relish the sight of two bitter enemies joined together to fight the greatest foe that any of us have ever faced. My command will be to engage the enemy, to fight to the last drop of blood to vanquish Attila the Hun.'

Four hours later Flavius sat in the improvised mead hall of the Visigoth king, having downed his fourth cup of watered-down wine in a toast and eaten his fill of roast boar and venison. He knew that for some here the drinking would go on until dawn, that their engagement with battle would be in a drunken haze, but he was determined to rise with a clear head and not be debilitated by the dehydration that came from too much wine. Such reasoning seemed far from the minds of Thorismud's companions, who were passing along an ancient aurochs' horn embellished with gold, each of them downing its contents in one, the horn being filled to the brim with ale for each new drinker from a wooden keg. At the head of the table Theodoric was sitting next to an ancient uncle he had brought along as his adviser, a silvery-haired man with skin like leather who bore more scars than all of the rest of them put together. It was said that he had fought against the Romans more than seventy years before at the Battle of Adrianople, and he had been regaling Theodoric and those closest to him who could hear above the boisterous noise with tales of wars of the past, of battles where myth and reality seemed intertwined. Flavius could hear him now, his low, deep voice incanting in the old Gothic dialect of the East, telling of a battle he had fought somewhere in a mountain fastness of the North:
Hand to hand we clashed, in battle fierce, confused, prodigious, unrelenting, a fight unequalled in accounts of yore. Such deeds were done! Heroes who missed this marvel could never hope to see its like again.

Flavius strained to listen, but a huge roar came from the opposite side of the table as the last of the captains downed his ale, dropped the horn on the bench and threw up over the ground. The rest of the men began to crash their hands on the table, drumming in unison, and the servant filled up the horn again and handed it to the same man, who tossed it back in one but held it down this time, belching and joining in the noise. Flavius saw Thorismud eyeing him and then raising his hand for quiet. ‘So, Flavius Aetius,' he said loudly, lifting his cup and gesturing towards him, the wine spilling over the side. ‘Your grandfather Gaudentius was a Goth warlord, and yet your mother is descended from Julius Caesar. Are you a Goth, or are you a Roman?'

The bellowing and table-thumping died down, and all eyes were on Flavius. He looked around, seeing the red-faced chieftains, bearded and long-haired, adorned with the neck torques and arm rings that were the badges of rank and prowess among their men, their helmets on the table in front of them. They looked the very image of the barbarians of old, the foes of the Caesars whom he had first seen as a boy on the great sculpted columns and arches of Rome. Drink had made them boisterous and bawdy, but it had also made them appear as what they really were. Some barbarians had become Romanized, men like Flavius' grandfather, but the court of Theodoric was still a court of Goth chieftains, and in this place Flavius was the odd one out. He remembered Aetius' last words before leaving the council of war. Until the rise of Attila he and Theodoric had been mortal enemies, and the men around this table would have been bent on nothing but the destruction of Romans, whether or not those Romans had Goth grandfathers. They were drunk, but that was all the more reason to be careful now in what he said.

He raised his right forearm on the table, conscious of the eyes watching him, and rolled down his sleeve, revealing the four parallel scars where the Alaunt had gouged into him twelve years earlier before the walls of Carthage. ‘I am neither,' he said, looking at Thorismud. ‘I am a warrior.'

There was silence among the men, the only noise the crackling of the fire. Then someone bellowed approval and banged the table with his fist, and the others joined in. Thorismud held up his hand. ‘You are a warrior, but who do you serve?'

The table went quiet again, and everyone watched expectantly. Flavius picked up his cup and looked at Theodoric, who was sitting impassively at the head of the table, enjoying the rowdiness of his men but not joining in. Flavius raised his cup towards the king, drank it down and then slammed it on the table. ‘I serve,' he said, wiping his lips, ‘whichever king shows the greatest prowess in battle, and whichever leads his men to victory or glorious death.'

Thorismud stared at him, his eyes unfathomable, and then brought one hand crashing down on the table, picked up his cup and raised it. ‘To our king,' he said. ‘To Theodoric, King of the Visigoths. May the god of war shine on him.' He drained his cup and the others followed suit, belching and bellowing for more. Flavius let the slave refill his cup, but he left it brimming, stood up and bowed to the king, and made his way out of the tent. In the time that they had been feasting the sun had gone down, and in the twilight he could see the fires of the Goths and the Romans flickering along the banks of the river. He walked towards the edge of the water. The low clouds broke and the half-moon shone through, causing myriad ghostly reflections on the ripples in the river and bathing the scene in an eerie light. The trees along the bank rustled, and he felt the warm breeze on his face. If battle were truly to be joined tomorrow, it would be hard fought in this heat, with thirst as big a foe as the enemy. He would need to make sure that the men of his
numerus
were well watered and had filled their skins before the order came for the advance.

He heard movement behind him, and turned to see Theodoric coming towards the river bank. He was wearing his two swords, the shorter
scramasax
on his left side and the long sword of the Goths on the right, and he held his hands on the gold and jewel-encrusted pommels as he stood by Flavius and stared into the waters. The clouds had closed up again, and the waters looked dark, forbidding, like an image of the river Styx from the ancient accounts of the voyage to the underworld. Theodoric took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, the smell of wine and the smoke of the mead hall coming off him. ‘Tomorrow, this river will run red,' he said quietly. ‘Men will slake their thirst on their own blood.'