‘Master-General Aetius, you forget yourself,’ he said crisply. ‘Soldierly braggadocio is all very well in the barracks, but you stand now before an emperor. I suggest you remember that if you truly want to help.’
Aetius was chastened. He treated Valentinian with respect and circumspection because he was so dangerous. But Theodosius deserved respect, too. He was not such a fool as some said, and his heart was good. They must work together.
‘Majesty,’ he said with bowed head.
The trembling steward returned and laid out a far larger map.
Theodosius indicated Naissus. ‘And after this?’
Aetius traced a line south, down the great imperial trunk road towards Constantinople. ‘He’ll be after the imperial stud farms of Thrace, too. You should send men out to round up the horses and drive them south, across to Asia if need be. We can’t let Attila get his hands on them.’
Theodosius looked puzzled. ‘A horde of thieving horse-rustlers are going to ride up against the walls built by my grandfather, Theodosius the Great? Ridiculous. Our walls are impregnable. All the world knows that.’
‘Attila’s ambition knows no bounds. And they now have siegecraft. Let me fall on their flanks, here.’ He jabbed the map. ‘We could ride through the mountains. If we met them there we would do great harm. Do you still have your Isaurian auxiliaries?’
The emperor nodded. ‘At Trajanopolis.’
The Isaurians were little more than Anatolian bandits, but skilled at mountain warfare.
‘The Huns have little understanding of mountains,’ said Aetius, ‘where all their speed will be useless to them. They are plains nomads only.’
‘You still imply that the field army… will be defeated by this horde of transient looters, without law or reason. Ridiculous! Never before has this happened.’
Aetius spoke one painful word: ‘Adrianople?’
The emperor compressed his lips.
‘Besides,’ added Aetius, ‘never before have they been commanded by a man like Attila.’
The steward returned, entering the room backwards until the emperor’s address allowed him to turn, and then falling at his feet. He held something in his hand. Theodosius stared at it in puzzlement. ‘Pytheas,’ he murmured in puzzlement. Then he passed it to Aetius.
He examined it cursorily: a small gold ingot, stamped with the legend of Viminacium. Looted Hun gold.
‘Attila pays well,’ said Aetius dryly. ‘Judas only got silver.’
‘Pytheas,’ repeated Theodosius softly, shaking his head.
‘He won’t be the only one. You need to clean out your Augean Stables.’
The emperor looked shaken. Aetius’ heart went out to him. Each day he reigned, this haughty yet gentle scholar must perforce learn more about the cruelty and treachery of men, and how even those he most trusted would betray him for the glamour of gold.
Theodosius made to walk away.
‘Majesty.’
He stopped.
‘Not everything will fall.’
After a while, Theodosius nodded, his back to the general. ‘Do what you think is needed.’ Then he lifted his robes and walked swiftly from the chamber.
Aetius gave orders for the traitor Pytheas to be executed. His head, hands and all the gold of Viminacium found in his room were to be sewn in a sack and delivered to Attila; no other message. At the last minute he changed his mind and called the man back.
‘On second thoughts, we keep the gold,’ he said. ‘Why enrich Attila so that he can buy more mercenaries? Put some iron in the sack with the traitor’s head and hands. And on a potsherd, write these words: ‘Yaldizh djostyara, Utulemek hasimyara.’
It was I, Priscus, to whom he dictated. I grimaced with distaste. I had heard but little of this foul language before. ‘An ugly tongue, my lord.’
‘Matter of opinion. A complex tongue in many ways, utterly unlike the languages of the civilised world. Their compound words, for instance. You know they have a word meaning, “the noise a bear makes when walking through cranberry bushes”?’
‘How ridiculous.’
‘I thought you admired Herodotus? Yet you hardly have his candour and curiosity about other peoples and cultures.’
‘Hm.’ I trimmed my nib. ‘So. These barbaric words. “ Yaldizh djostyara ” et cetera. Might I be so bold as to ask what they mean?’
‘An ancient Hunnish proverb, which I learned in my boyhood – from the uncrowned King of the World himself.’ He smiled a wintry smile. ‘It means “Gold for my friends, iron for my enemies”.’ He stood up and went to the window, hands clasped behind his back. ‘So that Attila will know clearly who his enemies are.’
‘How will we find Attila?’
‘At the end of the trail of destruction,’ said Aetius, still with a smile not entirely comforting.
‘And who will run the errand?’
‘His own. Flushed from this palace like termites. Now listen to my instructions. The Hun word for fire is “ yankhin ”.’
In the silent middle of the night, numerous slaves erupted and ran about the palace, screaming the word at the tops of their voices. Naturally almost everybody, except perhaps those who were in bed with other men’s wives, quickly emerged, bewildered and blinking, into the shadowy courtyards of the great palace complex. But here and there, one or two dashed with buckets to the nearest wells and fountains, or even over towards the Baths of Xeuxippus. They were immediately seized and, to their astonishment, interrogated fluently in their own sacred tongue by this newly arrived western general. Torture was not necessary. They soon confessed all.
Aetius’ ruse had smoked out six termites in alclass="underline" four men and two women, one of them a midwife. She might have secretly poisoned a new-born child of the imperial family, but apparently she had always worked diligently. Perhaps her woman’s tenderness had outweighed even her loyalty to the Lord Attila.
To these six, Aetius gave the task of taking back the remains of the traitor Pytheas, and the iron.
6
It was in the meadows outside the ruins of a once-great city that the six Huns expelled from the Byzantine Court found Attila’s camp. They looked about them with something approaching horror. The midwife gave a little cry of despair, strange to hear. The city should have been nothing to her. During her time in the Christian emperor’s palace, she had delivered children faithfully. Sometimes, like the others, she had sent back communications to her people about what she had discovered of palace life, defences, fortifications, but she had also begun to feel settled. Then one night her dreams had been disturbed by cries of ‘Fire!’ in her own tongue, and she had been exposed, along with the others, by running to the wells. Until then, her work was all of life new-born. Here, meanwhile, life was being destroyed.
A pall of black smoke hung over the burning city, and drifted ominously to shadow the camp of her own people. They who had once been her own people, she thought, with a sick lurch at her own treacherous thoughts. Under a black cloud of death, in his plain tent, the Lord Attila. Great Tanjou. She had made mothers in the palace with her strong hands. Meanwhile, her Great Lord had been making widows.
One of the men dropped the sack before Attila’s throne.
‘What have you brought me?’ asked the King, eyes glittering, chin resting in the cup of his hand.
‘The remains of the traitor Pytheas, the eunuch,’ the fellow replied.
‘Traitor? To whom?’
‘To the emperor, Theodosius,’ he stammered. ‘He was found out. As were we.’
‘If he was traitor to our enemy, he was our friend. No? He was a hero of the Hun people?’
The six hung their heads wretchedly. They had no refuge on earth now.
Attila delved in the sack and pulled out the potsherd. He read out the Hun proverb: ‘“Gold for my friends, iron for my enemies.” I know who sent this,’ he murmured. He looked up. ‘What was your judgement of Master-General Aetius? Did you meet him?’