watched anxiously.
‘Neither you nor your brother can swim, you say?’ said Aetius.
Theodoric could not speak.
‘He’s going to have to learn today.’
The sailors pulled up the last of the boarding planks, and the little Libyan scrambled down the side of the ship, holding on by one hand and with the other slashing through the grappling-rope that still tied them to the drowning ships.
Aetius nodded admiringly. ‘If you weren’t just a common sailor, I’d recommend you for promotion.’
The sailor flashed a white-toothed smile. ‘A gold solidus will do instead, my lord.’
Aetius regarded him steadily. Then he slipped a hand inside his cloak and produced a big gold coin. He glanced down. It showed Valentinian himself, the martial emperor, dragging a barbarian by the hair. Around the rim it read, ‘Unconquered Eternal Rome, Salvation of the World.’ He flicked his wrist and the gold coin arced and flashed in the air and the sailor caught it.
‘Don’t believe all you read on it, though,’ muttered Aetius.
At the prow of their fine new ship, a less than happy sound: Nicias wailing for his vanished alchemical chests.
‘Shame,’ murmured Aetius.
And last of all, paddling through the water like a puppy, breathless and ungainly but not actually choking or drowning, Prince Torismond, Saviour of Slaves. Theodoric threw out a line and hauled him up. After that, the slaves of the Draco came scrambling aboard the heavily laden Haifisch as well.
‘This is going to slow us up,’ grumbled Aetius.
‘We’ll sell ’em at the next port,’ said Torismond, his eyes glittering excitedly. He shook the saltwater from his hair, thrilled to have braved the sea and survived.
‘And spend all the proceeds on wine and girls, I suppose? ’
The brothers just laughed.
They watched the two ships go down amid huge, slow bubbles. Further off, what pirates were still afloat circled, exhausted, or clung to broken spars. Aetius ranged over them until he settled on the long, pitiless, expressionless face of the captain. He pointed him out to one of the Visigothic archers. The captain gazed steadily back, not moving, his pale hair plastered to his gaunt cheeks, his pale blue eyes fixed on Aetius, his lips moving with the words of some ancient curse. The archer lined up his arrow and fired, and the arrowhead hit him between the eyes. His head sank back, his arms floated out beside him, and they left him there gazing heavenwards, his mouth still open, the words of the curse still on his salt-white lips.
Some of the other pirates had begun to swim towards the captured Haifisch, their last hope, but at this they realised they would be speared in the water.
Aetius sent the lookout up to the fighting-top.
The lookout pointed in a direction just south of the sun. Aetius vaulted up onto the flydeck and called to the swimmers across the water, twenty or thirty soaked and bobbing heads, ‘Be thankful we haven’t slaughtered you in the water, as you deserve!’
The swimmers listened, agony on their faces.
‘You might drown. You might fatten a few sharks. What does that matter to us? But if you swim that way,’ Aetius flung his right arm out – ‘just south of the sun as it stands now, you just might make landfall. Let God decide.’
One struggling novice swimmer cried out, ‘How far is that?’
‘Maybe ten miles.’
Rufus murmured something. Aetius squinted again towards the horizon but could still see nothing. The lad’s younger eyes had seen it, though. ‘Maybe less,’ he called out again. ‘Maybe only six or seven.’
‘We’ll drown!’ they cried. ‘You are condemning us to death!’
‘On the contrary, I am leaving you to death – which you deserve – knowing that there is a small chance you may be reprieved. You’re in God’s hands. It’s a good, flat calm. The sun is shining. There’s blood in the water around you, and plenty of sharks nearby. You’d better start kicking.
‘Hortator! Sound the drum!’
In the silence, the slow, renewed dip of oars, the gentle splash, and the low Liburnian began to move eastwards through the small waves again, the water breaking in no more than a silver trickle round her bows. The wretched pirates watched the Haifisch depart, a sailor on board already reaching down to scrub out the barbaric name and paint over it afresh: Cygnus II. It had all happened with such startling speed, such ruthless efficiency. Then some of the more optimistic souls turned in the water, pushed their spars ahead of them and began to kick.
The master shook his head. ‘Caesar had his pirates crucified.’
Aetius grunted. ‘Caesar was a greater man than I.’
Torismond sold his slaves at Thessalonika. Aetius resented the loss of even those two hours, but there was no food or water left on board for them. The prince netted a bag of thirty solidi.
He grinned. ‘Quite a catch.’
‘And behold, I shall make you fishers of men,’ said his brother sardonically, eyeing the weighty leather bag. ‘Not quite what Christ intended though, I think?’
Aetius roared with laughter.
It was quite a pleasant voyage after that.
5
I, Priscus of Panium, heard of his arrival and rushed down to the Harbour of Julian to meet him.
He smiled at me. ‘And who might you be, old man? An aged mendicant, supplicating for alms?’ He laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘Let us talk later. I must speak to the emperor even more urgently than to my old tutor.’
‘Divine Majesty. Master-General Aetius requests an audience. ’
There was a pause and a fumbling, while Theodosius seated himself upon his gilded wooden throne, and then he was admitted to the imperial presence.
‘Aetius. So far from home.’ His voice was as frosty as a Pontic winter, with a wind blowing down out of Scythia.
‘Majesty.’ He knelt and kissed the hem of the imperial robe in formal adoratio, privately detesting the gesture, and stood again swiftly. ‘You have still no news from the field army under General Aspar?’
Startled to find himself so abruptly questioned by a mere soldier, even if he was a general, Theodosius heard himself stammering, ‘They – they have not yet engaged, no.’
‘And it is true about the VIIth at Viminacium? Entirely destroyed?’
‘Such was the judgement of God. Also… also Ratiaria, downriver. That, too, has been overrun by these wretched Huns.’
‘ Ratiaria, too? Already? The III Pannonia? How many men did that number? And the weapons factories?’
The emperor could not look him directly in the eye, those limpid grey eyes. He surveyed the mosaics on the wall to his left, desperately hoping to radiate the regal serenity of God’s viceroy upon earth. ‘The III Pannonia, too, is destroyed, and the weapons factories are now in enemy hands.’
Attila. He knew. Now he had ownership of the most important armaments factories in the East. He knew.
‘Then I come to offer you urgent military assistance. I have cohorts remaining from the Ist at Brigetio, from the IInd at Aquincum, the XVIth at Carnuntum, the IVth Scythica at Singidunum. I know all are well trained – I appointed their legates personally. I could pull them back from the Danube frontier and attack Attila’s flank as he rides south on Naissus.’
