PART II
The City of Gold
1
Attila was talking with his generals when Orestes stepped forward and passed him something. A fine kidskin parchment, rolled up and sealed with an impressive wax seal.
Geukchu peered at it. ‘And this is the Western Emperor’s own seal?’
Attila nodded. ‘Identical.’
The wily old general was full of baffled admiration. ‘How?’
‘Information is precious.’ For their amusement, he recited what the sealed roll said from memory.
To my Beloved Brother in Christ, Emperor of the Eastern Romans, Theodosius, Greetings
It is with heavy heart that We must refuse your request for aid at this unhappy time, and make fast our own borders against the hordes of Scythia. All our forces are required for our own defence. We have trust in the Lord that you will repel this barbarous incursion alone. To do so is indeed your bounden duty, since it was your own forces from Viminacium which first stung Attila and his fearsome warriors into attack.
Your faithful Valentinian.
‘How do we know this request was ever made?’ objected Geukchu.
Attila smiled. ‘We know. And we know that this response will anger even mild-mannered Theodosius. Not least because it’s half-right. Those insults sting us most which contain a grain of truth. It was Valentinian’s folly to order our punishment, but it was Theodosius’ cavalry from Viminacium that responded. And look what befell them. Oh that I could see Theodosius’ puny rage for myself!’ Tears of mirth glimmered in his wolfish eyes. ‘Siege-engines, our mercenary friends, regiments of my beloved horse-warriors – those are fine and powerful weapons. But so, too, are information, misinformation, confusion, dissension, terror.’ He smiled, his eyes roving towards the scrolled letter one last time. ‘Poisonous weeds in the golden meadow of Rome.’
‘And so this Theodosius will have no help from the West?’
‘None.’
‘Not even from the gallant Master-General Aetius?’
Attila’s face darkened at the name. ‘Not until the East is laid waste from the Euxine Sea to the Adriatic, and from the Danube to the Golden Horn.’
Sicily: the naval harbour at Messina. The square red sails flapped and batted from the yardarms in the stiff summer breeze. It was a good week to sail, at the start of the campaign season. Though in his fifties, on mornings like this Aetius still felt like a fresh young legionary of twenty. The gentle swell of the blue Tyrrhenian Sea, out beyond the massive grey harbour walls, and an inward swell of optimism and hope. The weather was good for a week. Today he would oversee the last of the stores and provisions, and increase the ammunition loads. There would be no heavy swell to dislodge it in the holds. In the night the men would board, along with two thousand horses: powerful chestnut Cappadocians, beautiful, high-stepping Moorish greys. Tomorrow, two hours before dawn, they would weigh anchor and sail on the soft night breeze. In two days’ time, Rome would be taking Carthage. Again. Sons of Scipio.
After he had been summoned back by Galla Placidia from his pleasant enough exile at the Court of the Visigoths, and his interminable games of chess with good old, irascible King Theodoric, Aetius had learned with horror of Valentinian’s vaunted punitive expedition. Executed ruthlessly enough by the VIIth Legion at Viminacium, being nearest to the impertinent Hun encampment, and yet a monumental folly. He had waited a while for the hammer to fall. But none came. Instead, there was good intelligence from the Danube frontier that the entire confederation of Huns and associated tribal peoples had moved away north. The expedition had worked. Valentinian was triumphant. Aetius was sceptical. He waited further developments, but there were still none.
So with some misgivings, he resumed his plans for renewed war with the Vandals, with the hated King Genseric, and the recapture of the crucial African grainfields. Africa. He had always loved the very word. In Mauretania there were still lions and elephants and giraffes. And the golden wheat-growing river valleys of Tunisia, and the vast irrigation works, olive groves up to a hundred miles inland. Rome must win Africa back. Half a million tons of grain a year used to come into Ostia from that vast province, that peaceful, highly civilised province, with its twelve thousand miles of legionary roads, kept under law and order by just one legion. Primitive, rain-sodden Britain had required four!
Aetius had seen with his own eyes the magnificence of Roman Carthage. The huge hexagon of the outer harbour handling six hundred ships a day, the beautifully proportioned inner circle, the marble monuments of Admiralty Island…
Yes, Rome must win Africa back.
The optio came to a halt and saluted before the general, who was seated at his outdoor wooden desk. The general looked up and shielded his eyes from the white Sicilian sun. For once he looked quite cheerful. Those bleakly penetrating grey-blue eyes seemed to have an almost Mediterranean sparkle in them. The wide, set mouth, turned down at the corners almost with bitterness, seemed today to be animated by something approaching a smile.
‘Speak, boy.’
‘Orders from Ravenna, sir. The emperor commands your immediate return.’
Aetius set his elbows on the desk, interlaced his fingers, rested his chin on his knuckles, and gazed out over the vast harbour of Panormus. Over a thousand ships riding at anchor in and beyond the harbour walls. Twenty thousand men under arms in the camps around the town. His very finest legions: the Batavi, the Herculiani, the aggressive Armigeri Propugnatores, as well as crack cavalry units like the Cornuti Seniores, the Armigeri, the lightning-fast Mauri Alites. Only the finest of them all, the Palatine, was missing, stationed near Ravenna as the imperial bodyguard, on Valentinian’s command. Wasted.
Swarms of slaves wheeling handbarrows of provisions and armaments up the narrow, cross-ridged gangplanks to the full-bellied supply ships. An angelic chorus of white gulls in full cry. Genseric in Carthage, on the back foot. At least one of his sons confined with insanity, so they said. The precious grainfields of Africa once again within Rome’s grasp. The best opportunity for a generation.
‘May I ask why?’
‘Invasion, sir. In the north. Attacks on the Danube station.’
His heart plummeted. Icy depths. He knew, he knew, he did not want to know.
‘And what of the Danube fleet? The frontier legions, depleted as they are?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I… It’s a major invasion, they say.’
‘How major?’
‘I don’t know, sir. A barbarian horde.’
Aetius studied the optio ’s face, his ruddy, sixteen-year-old candour. Vitulasius Laetinianus was his ludicrous name. The general called him Rufus.
‘Teutons?’
‘Scythians, sir. Steppe warriors.’
‘Many?’
‘I don’t know, sir. The emperor is most urgent. The fortress at Viminacium has already been wiped out.’
At this impossible news, Aetius relaxed a little. Clearly the message had got garbled in the panic. Fear always exaggerated, so ‘a barbarian horde’ might equally mean all of a few hundred scrap-merchants.
‘Viminacium is a legionary fortress, boy,’ he said evenly. ‘Only a Roman legion with siege-engines could take it.’
‘The message says that it has fallen, sir. To the Scythians. Their leader has sent further insults to the emperor in the East, saying that the Byzantines have dishonoured the grave-mounds of his people.’
‘Grave-mounds?’
‘Sir. Saying that the empire must apologise, beg his forgiveness, make obeisance, pay reparations. Words of limitless arrogance.’
‘He has a sense of humour. Which grave-mounds?’
‘On the north banks of the Danube, sir. On the Hungvar.’
Aetius rested his hand on the basalt paperweight on his desk. Papers flicked in the sea breeze. ‘You do not know the barbarian leader’s name, do you, boy?’