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?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, then. His name is Attila, Great Tanjou, Khan of Khans. The Lord Attila.’
The boy regarded his general oddly.
‘Remember it. You will have cause to. We all will.’
Aetius looked out again over the thousand fluttering sails. They suddenly seemed to him the saddest sight he had ever seen. Where is Africa, which was for the whole world like a garden of delights? Now these ships would never sail for lost Africa. Attila knew this, too. His brief boyhood friend. He started to say something to the startled boy about it. How he and Attila had ridden together, hunted together, across the limitless Scythian grasslands… Never such freedom, never such innocence again… Until he realised he was blathering like an old man, the boy Rufus listening, bewildered. He halted, then waved him away. The boy trotted off along the dockside.
It was better his optio should not see or hear him now. He got to his feet, no longer feeling like a young legionary of twenty. So: it had come. The final hour. Just when Rome was about to recover her African strength, with one last, mighty gasp, Attila had chosen to attack. He knew. He knew. And once the attack had started, it would not stop.
Old Theodoric had warned him that the Huns and the Vandals would form an alliance. Aetius had thought it impossible. Attila and Genseric had hated each other since boyhood, as only two tyrants can. They had been hostages together in Rome. Genseric and his brother Beric, long since killed in a ‘hunting accident’, had been quickly seduced by Rome’s pleasures. The runaway Hun boy rather less seduced. Aetius knew it all. He had learned all he could of Attila. He knew him of old.
Feeling as if his dry old heart would crack, he sent out word for the fastest ship to be prepared to sail for Ravenna.
Attila summoned Orestes. ‘Take another letter: To our Beloved Ally, King Genseric, Lord of the Vandals, Conqueror of Africa, Suzerain of the Lands of the Setting Sun… Have I missed any?’
‘Commander of the Arian Faithful?’
Attila stroked his thin grey beard. ‘I like it. Put that in, too.’
He resumed. ‘How fondly I remember our happy boyhood together in Rome, my dearest friend. How we cared for each other in our youthful loneliness, in exile in those sullen courts of empire, so far from our respective homes. And how saddened I was to hear of the death of your noble-hearted brother Beric in that cruel hunting accident.’
Even Orestes’ eyes glittered with amusement at this. Attila had to wait a few seconds before he could speak again. ‘I should have been a court jester,’ he said.
‘But to happier matters. The invasion has started. The Hun army, your loyal allies in the north, have conquered half the way to Constantinople already. The vainglorious Roman legions fall before us like grass before the scythe. Their degenerate cities are but fuel for the fire. None stands in our way. And consequently, there will be no Roman attempt upon your own empire of Africa, that rich territory that is rightfully yours by the judgement of Almighty God. May your people bless the wisdom, justice and mercy of your rule. May the glorious dynasty of Genseric prosper. May the fine sense of your sons prevail.’
‘Too much,’ said Orestes. ‘His sons are renowned idiots. One resides in a dungeon in the palace, chained up and gibbering like an ape.’
‘Ah. Yes. Change the last two lines. May the martial valour and Christian righteousness of your dynasty
