dimscrin…’
‘Discrimination.’
‘Exactly.’
Malchus lay back and stared up at the crescent moon winking fitfully through the dark canopy of the pines. The air smelt beautiful and fresh. His wounds were clean, no infection. The wine warmed his stomach. And they had survived. Life was sweet. Nearby, Tatullus could still barely speak for grief of his legion but, for Malchus, to be alive was victory. There was a tattered veil of cloud drifting across the night sky, luminous in the moonlight. The call of an owl.
‘Isn’t it magnificent?’ he said.
Knuckles belched. ‘Not bad.’
‘Not the wine, you oaf. This.’ He spread his scarred hands wide. ‘The moon, the dark heavens, the summer stars.’
Knuckles turned to Arapovian. ‘The boy waxes lyrical. Is it a fever?’
‘Of sorts. Beyond my cure.’
Malchus continued regardless, his voice a rapturous whisper. ‘This great Hunnic war that has only just begun. The sight of furious, perishing armies. A galloping black horse on a lonely plain. The sunlight glinting on spears. All of it. I love it. “Sequor omina tanta, quisquis in arma vocas”.’ He sighed. ‘There is nothing as beautiful as war.’
He was like a crazed Trojan hero out of Homer, this one. He’d die fighting, a big smile on his handsome face, his raven hair dripping sweat and blood. Then straight to the Elysian Fields.
‘You’re a fucking poet,’ growled Knuckles. ‘You better have some more wine. All poets are drunks.’
‘Don’t you think,’ said Malchus, sitting up again, ‘sometimes, that everything is beautiful just the way it is? With all the beauty and pity and horror mingled, the way the unknown gods have made it? And that really there is no evil – how could it be otherwise? And that even death is beautiful?’
‘You’re pissed,’ said Knuckles.
‘You’re how old?’ That was Arapovian.
‘Twenty-four,’ said Malchus. ‘The youngest cavalry commander on the Danube frontier.’
‘Well,’ said the Armenian, settling down to sleep, ‘there’s still time for you to believe in evil.’
They slept with their crooked arms for pillows and awoke with their cheeks wet with dew. Arapovian bathed in a nearby stream, to Knuckles’ fascination, and cleaned his teeth with a green hazel-wand. Then he shared out the bread and cheese among the people.
Stephanos ate too fast and got hiccups again. ‘Sorry,’ he said, shame-faced.
Arapovian touched him on the head. ‘You can hiccup all you like, boy. The Huns have gone now.’
Some days later, well hidden from the road, they saw passing in the opposite direction a motley family: two girls, a boy, a woman in a grimy red dress, and a man attired in a close-fitting white robe like a priest of the Church, on his chest a wooden chi-rho. All their wordly goods were packed onto a mulish-looking pony, bull-headed, deepchested, like those the Scythians rode.
The refugees came down from the woods and confronted them. The priest had been the Bishop of Margus himself. ‘But Margus is destroyed.’
Arapovian took a deep breath. ‘Viminacium, too, is destroyed. We are the only survivors.’
The man’s wife repeated, faltering, ‘The legionary fortress… destroyed?’
They nodded. She crossed herself. The Bishop muttered of the devil.
‘Where do you go now?’ asked Arapovian.
‘West. To Sirmium, perhaps further.’
‘You must report to the legate there. Your intelligence will be invaluable.’
The priest did not commit himself. He looked over the ragged women and children, the aged couple propping each other up. ‘We will take the people.’
The soldiers considered. It would be safer in the west, for now. The families, dazed and indifferent with tiredness, had no preference. They departed west, with the priest preaching to passers-by on the road of the wrath to come.
The four soldiers went south.
Within a few miles they found themselves some acceptable horses, requisitioned from a party of Illyrian merchants. The merchants didn’t argue. They rode on down the road at a canter. There would be more fighting to be done.
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
