‘Nope. You’re sailing east to Constantinople, under my command. Just fifty of you and your horses. The rest of your wolf-lords can head back to Tolosa. There’ll be no more room aboard. Ship’s only small.’
Torismond swallowed.
‘Be ready.’
Aetius commandeered two naval ships, a fast Liburnian, the Cygnus, and a round-bellied cargo ship which would do for a horse-transporter.
The two princes, the sons of Thunder, were there with their fifty as ordered.
‘Some in Massilia said we’ll never get through. They said the Vandals were the masters of your Mare Nostrum now,’ said Torismond.
Aetius eyed him. ‘By “some in Massilia”, I assume you mean a bunch of Cretan sailors, drunk in a whorehouse?’
Torismond said nothing.
‘We’ll get through,’ said Aetius.
The wind was steady but not strong enough to whip up too big a swell. Torismond and Theodoric both looked sea-green at times on that first day, but managed not to vomit. The horses were calm in the following transport ship.
How good it was to sail. To be moving towards some appointed destination at last. Aetius stood at the prow of the Cygnus, heart racing, thinking of all the glorious works and days of man. The lethal underwater ram surged forward through the low swell, the sea arching back over it in slow curls. Slaves strained at the oars down below the fly deck, great firwood oars kept white and smooth with pumice and the scouring salt-waves. Aetius could hear their leathery creak in the thole-pins, between the beats of the hortator ’s hammer on the drum. Just below him hung the iron anchor, dripping, still trailing weed from Massilia. The immense red-and-white-striped sail hung from the topspar, catching a strong north-westerly and bellying out in the wind. Salt spray dashed in his face, dried and crusted on his cheek. He inhaled deeply. Now that he had decided upon a course of action, there was no stopping him.
The princes came to him.
‘Sir,’ said the quietly spoken Theodoric respectfully, ‘we are only fifty. The Huns number many thousands.’
Aetius nodded. ‘Half a million, rumours say. When rumours give you numbers, always divide by ten.’
‘So they still outnumber us a thousand to one.’
‘You’re a Visigothic Pythagoras.’ Aetius grinned. ‘I’m not expecting you to defeat Attila on your own, boy.’ He cursed himself inwardly for calling the prince a boy, and vowed not to do it again. Theodoric was no boy. ‘Our first task is to… liaise with Emperor Theodosius, make our peace, offer him our services. We’ll wait for news of the Eastern Field Army, and be ready to move fast.’
‘You mean you expect their field army to be destroyed? ’
Aetius said nothing.
‘And their generals with it? So you’re going to have to take command?’
‘What, no fighting?’ cried Torismond.
Now he was still a boy. For him, fighting meant fun.
‘Oh, there’ll be fighting,’ said Aetius. ‘Never you worry.’
At twilight, the rowers stood down to eat and sleep, curled up like dogs beneath the benches, and the second batch took their place on the blistering oars. The hortator ’s relentless beat continued, his hourglass running. Master-General Aetius himself had given the order to make all speed for the east.
The second day the wind came on stronger, the light ship bucking and rearing. Cat’s claws raked over the surface of the sea, and spray flew back from bow-waves half the length of the ship. The huge sail, much repaired, snapped back and forth as the wind grew unsteady and they altered course to meet it. Behind them the sky was darkening over Gaul.
Aetius knelt down beside Torismond, who was sprawled on the deck beside the mainmast, clutching it in both arms, vomit staining a shirt-front finely embroidered by his beloved mother.
‘Storm coming,’ said Aetius cheerfully. ‘Summer storms are always the worst.’
A little cruel, but the plain truth. The lad would get inured to the sea either fast or not at all. His elder brother, meanwhile, Prince Theodoric, had donned his royal gold fillet, despite the sailors’ looks and muffled jeers, wearing it as if to remind the insolent sea of his royal blood and his direct descent from the divine Odin and Nerthus, the Earth Mother. He paced the length of the ship ceaselessly, jaw clenched, hands behind his back, a rigid regal bearing, saying nothing. As terrifed as his younger brother, clearly, but determined to master it. He was quite a fellow. One day he would be a great king.
Torismond looked ghastly.
Aetius said, ‘You really would rather face a whole army of screaming Huns, wouldn’t you?’
The prince nodded, still embracing the mainmast like his first love. ‘Christ, yes.’
The ship lurched sideways. He bowed his head.
‘Head up. Watch the horizon. Slow, deep breaths.’
Torismond struggled to comply.
‘You’ll have to let go of that, too. Sail coming in – look.’
‘Oh, Christ.’
‘Whoever. But I never saw any god come to rescue drowning sailors yet.’
They reefed the mainsail into the standing yard and tightened it. The wind still gusted hard into the reduced sail, the long, lean dromond lightening in the water, raised up, the rowers’ efforts almost superfluous, the ship doing eight, ten knots, a breathtaking speed. Aetius prayed for still more speed. Attila would not be slacking; that barbarian tide sweeping down across the East, to break upon the walls of the New Rome.
The big rudder swung across its breach, the master steadied it, the ship surged forward again, almost planing up the smooth obisidian back of one driven wave before crashing into the next, trying to outrace the approaching storm – hopeless, of course. The timbers creaked, and two rowers below were released for emergency caulking. The horse transporter lagged behind them, almost out of sight. Broader-beamed and heavier, she wallowed through the swell, making slower, steadier progress. The horses would survive.
A lonely black-backed gull passed overhead, heading inland for Italy, shelter from the storm. Aetius grimaced and threw his red woollen cloak about his shoulders. The wind began to whistle in the halyards and clewlines, and a fine rain slanted in from the west.
The ship’s master approached. ‘We could take shelter soon enough at Olbia. Going through the straits of Bonifacium in this wind will be dangerous.’
‘We go on through the straits, and never mind Olbia. We keep going. No shelter till we reach Syracuse.’
Attila would not be seeking shelter from any storms, nor slowing in his advance on Constantinople. Nor could they.
The master gave orders for the sail to be reefed in further, the rowers to row their hardest. The bosun bellowed, ‘Blister your butts and bust your guts if you want to escape a whipping and eat salt-meat tonight!’
Visibility was declining all the time. It was no more than two hundred yards when the lookout in his tiny crow’s-nest swaying from the mainmast said he could see land ahead to port. It was the dark and jagged outline of Corsica. Somewhere through the mist and mizzle to starboard, lay the gentler shape of Sardinia. Between them were the straits of Bonifacium.
The hortator doubled his beat and they rowed through the straits at the double, swift as an arrow cutting through the water. It was the only way to avoid being swept off course and onto the lethal submerged rocks around the islands. Eventually they came through, pulled round to the south-east, and felt the storm blowing up over the islands behind them. It wasn’t getting any better. The master looked once more enquiringly at Aetius, to see if he would allow them to take shelter. But he did not respond. He had given his last word. They would push on, through storm and surge, whatever.
The lookout was called down from the fighting-top: any worse and he’d be thrown clear into the sea and lost. He scrambled gratefully down. The sails were reefed right up into double swags from the yard, the bull’s-hide stormshields were shipped over the oarports, and the slaves down there, already soaked and salted like herrings in brine, rowed like furies before the storm. It was going to be a bad business, this one. The heavy pewter clouds seemed to suck in the sunlight. ‘Mare Nostrum’ indeed, thought Aetius sourly. Everything is against us now: the
