Sangiban, watching from his horse, bellowed with anger. ‘Shoot them!’ he screamed. ‘Where are you, archers?’
But Aetius’ men could not shoot without hitting the disordered Alan footsoldiers, who were slaughtered before their eyes. Cornered, the Alans fought like lions, it was true, but without formation they were lost.
‘Herculians, move up. Take pike positions.’
It was a relief to know that those old hands would hold the line: hold it until they were cut down where they stood.
The milling Hun horsemen, their charge broken by the enemy javelins and by their own bloodlust as they paused to stab and scalp the bewildered and fallen Alans, came on again but without discipline, single vainglorious warriors hurling themselves on the line of pikes yelling, ‘Astur is Great and will prevail!’ only to be skewered and dashed to the ground. Time and again horses reared, screaming, their riders flung back, hooves scrabbling in the air, a pike-head buried deep in their mighty chests. The legionaries knew better than to admire their handiwork, promptly dragging their pikes free and butting them in the ground again. The next attack would soon come round.
‘Arrow-storm coming in!’ went up a cry from the wing. Instantly the rear-rank troops raised their shields above their heads and locked together. Arrows skidded off the bronze, thocked down into the leather and wood, and stuck there, quivering. Legionaries dropped their shields down in front of them and lopped off the arrow-shafts with their swords. Here and there a cry went up as a man was hit, too slow with his shield or just unlucky. But Aetius could judge immediately from the thinness of the cries that little damage had been done. Now came his new tactic, for he knew how the Huns would fight.
The front line had come in charging and was stuck on the Roman pikes. Meanwhile, lightly armed horse-archers were galloping back and forth behind them, intending to loose off their arrow-storm over the heads of their front-rank comrades and down onto the Romans’ rear ranks. That was their plan. But the moment they began, Aetius gave the nod and the heavy Visigothic cavalry rode out, visors lowered, shields hefted, mighty ashwood lances couched.
They galloped round the rear of the fighting lines in a gigantic sweep, through the smokescreen, and scythed into the Hun horse-archers from behind. Many of the archers barely had time to turn before that great gleaming metallic serpent, head diamond-shaped like a pit viper, cut through them and bowled them apart, wreaking havoc. Nor did they stop for one moment, cutting across in front of the main Hunnish army, round the hill, and back to their station on the Romans’ right wing. In their wake were the strewn and broken bodies of many hundreds.
While the triumphant Visigothic cavalry drew breath, the artillerymen on the hill piled in, loosing their arrows sidelong into any Huns crossing the field to engage the line of pikes. Attila must be cursing. That hill was proving pivotal, a permanent outflanking fixture. Once battle was messily engaged, no one could shoot close to their own. But from that accursed hill…
Each individual tactic of Aetius’ was paying off. The arrow-storm was weakened if not neutered by countercharge and good, old-fashioned shield discipline. The Hun cavalry charge, their horses tired before they started, was locked up against the legionaries and their implacable line of pikes. With the Visigothic cavalry and also the superb Augustan Horse and the Moors always ready to ride wide and sweep in from both left and right across the advancing enemy, it seemed that everything was going Aetius’ way. And so they fought on. Past noon, past mid-afternoon. Pedites ran with water. The Herculians dropped back, exhausted, and the Batavians took their place in the centre. The bodies of the enemy were piled high across the plain. The artillery from the hill worked on implacably. Yet the Huns kept coming.
Now it was a terrible battle of attrition. The Huns fought with ferocity but without imagination, without fresh tactics. Given that, Aetius knew grimly, it was just a matter of whether the Huns’ sheer weight of numbers would eventually triumph over the Romans’ exhaustion.
He rode behind the lines to see the wounded being bandaged and salved, the dead laid out for later burial. Already there were many there. He asked for numbers from only one legion, finding the primus pilus of the Herculians.
‘Over half my men, sir.’
‘Wounded?’
‘No, sir. Slain.’
He held the back of his hand to his mouth. All war was foul, but this was war at its foulest. A whole generation was being swept away in one day by the madness of one king.
An optio came running. ‘Sir, the Batavians are near exhaustion, sir.’
He nodded. ‘Pull ’em back. Send forward the frontier legions.’
‘And the Huns are launching fresh attacks on the hill, sir.’
Hell. That must not fall. ‘Send in the rest of the Palatine Guard to secure it.’
‘Sir.’
The twelfth hour from dawn? He reckoned so. Another four hours of daylight this long summer day. By nightfall it would be decided. And already they were stretched to breaking-point.
On the front line the battle was bloody, fierce and unrelenting. An ugly, stagnant stand-off, a process of the grimmest and goriest wastage. There was no room for the flamboyance of the wide-arcing cavalry charge now, no brilliant outflanking manoeuvres, nothing but the old moves of stab and slash, slogging it out knee deep in the reddening mud. In the melee, Knuckles, Arapovian and Malchus fought side by side as of old, protecting one another as well as holding back the Huns.
The Huns hated this hand-to-hand fighting. Their lassos were useless in the crush, their bows and arrows dead weight, and their swordsmanship poor and without order. Their small ponies, so rapid and sure-footed on the vast steppes of Asia, here only stumbled wearily over the heaps of the slain. The Romans gave no quarter. A few crossbowmen on the flanks picked off any Hun unhorsed and sent him reeling to hell.
King Theodoric came riding over to Aetius when two runners arrived at once.
‘Sir, the Palatine Guard are pinned down and surrounded on the hill.’
‘They must hold it – to the last man.’
‘The artillery boys are done for, sir. The Guard couldn’t save them.’
Yes, the arrow-firers had indeed fallen silent; the sling-machines worked no more.
‘And you? What happy news?’
The second runner, still gasping, said, ‘Sir, large numbers of the enemy seen drifting off north and west beyond the baggage wagons.’
‘Which people?’
‘Too far off to say, sir. But many, many deserting.’ King Thedoric punched his mighty fist into his palm. ‘This is going to be a close day of it, Roman.’
So it was. But there were no more tactical choices to be made. There weren’t enough men left for Aetius to make any new dispositions. They must just hold out.
King Theodoric shook his shaggy head, already pulling his horse round and moving back to the right wing. ‘It is time for the Visigoths to charge the enemy.’
‘You will leave our flank open!’ called Aetius. ‘You must hold it!’
Theodoric looked back. ‘With respect, old Roman friend, I am not, and never will be, under your command. But have no fear. My wolf-lords will finish the Hun with our charge. Your flank is safe.’
The sunlight was now behind them when the wolf-lords rode in, a single vast column of thousands of heavy-armoured horsemen. Ahead of them, a horde of many more, but already looking hesitant, indistinct, squinting into the sun. The Visigoths needed to ride wide indeed to avoid the piles of the slain. At their head rode their white-haired King, carrying no shield but only a two-headed battle-axe. Some in the Roman lines who saw him ride said he must have wanted to die.