7
Catastrophe followed hard on the heels of the small success of unmasking the spies. A brief and bitter communication came to the Imperial Court from Adrianople.
The Eastern Field Army under the command of General Aspar, Magister Militum per Thraciam, leaving from Army headquarters at Marcianopolis, engaged the Huns on flat country near the River Utus. Overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers, however, and the speed and ferocity of the enemy, as well as their unexpected mastery of both artillery and the heavy cavalry charge, the six legions and all their auxiliaries were destroyed. General Aspar himself continued to fight with utmost gallantry on foot after his horse was killed under him, but eventually he, too, was slain.
It is believed that the Hunnish army is continuing to advance south.
In Constantinople, there was outright terror at the news. Now there was nothing but a few centuries of the Palatine Guard, and scattered auxiliaries down at Trajanople and Heraclea, to stand between them and this demonic army of a million heathen horsemen. Who ate children’s flesh, they said, and drank bat’s blood mixed with wine. Some citizens fled across the Bosphorus to Asia Minor. Others prayed for twenty hours a day to the Holy Mother. All were infected with panic, as contagious as the plague.
Theodosius begged Aetius for Western aid, and the general duly wrote again to Ravenna. But he warned that there would be little time and that, now Valentinian knew of the Huns’ power, he might prefer to keep his legions for his own protection: frontier legions as well as field army.
The reply soon came by sea. There was to be no aid. Theodosius’ curses rained down on his cousin’s head.
‘He will fall on us soon now,’ he said. ‘This Attila, God’s punishment upon us. Yet in what have we so sinned? I do not know.’ He gave a deep sigh: the sigh of the foredefeated. ‘First he will devastate all of Moesia and Illyria, Thessaly and Thrace, and then he will fall upon this city. We cannot stand against him with only a few hundred ill- trained auxiliaries and the Guard. We will have to negotiate.’
‘We still have the Walls,’ said Aetius.
‘Not all of us are behind the walls.’
‘True,’ said Aetius. ‘In the provinces, the people must shift for themselves. But the city will be saved. And there will be recompense, I promise you. When Attila turns westwards against Rome, he will not meet with such easy victory.’
‘You do not understand,’ said the emperor haltingly. ‘Not all the
… imperial family is behind the walls.’
Aetius frowned. ‘The Princess Honoria?’
Theodosius smiled mirthlessly. ‘No, she is still in my sister Pulcheria’s charge. I mean… the Empress Eudoxia.’
The empress. Athenais. He had not allowed himself to think of that name for years.
‘She is in Jerusalem?’
‘Would that she were. No, she is visiting the convent at Azimuntium.’
‘I do not know it.’
‘A small hill-town near the Pontine coast, of ancient Thracian origin. Indeed, it is proposed by some of our most eminent mythographologists that the site may in fact be etymologically cognate with that of the Homeric-’
‘In the path of Attila?’
The emperor’s voice dulled again. ‘In the path, as you say, of Attila.’
‘Why was I not informed of this before?’
‘Your services were needed here – as indeed they still are. The Holy City must needs be defended even more than…’
‘Even more than the empress.’
‘Do not speak with such quick judgement,’ cautioned Theodosius, his voice low but his gaze again fixed on the general. ‘I know you, Gaius Flavius Aetius. You think yourself a man of very different mettle from mine. But an emperor’s choices are never easy, especially in time of war.’
Aetius bowed his head a little.
‘We have intelligence that the empress remains safe in the convent of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, Virgins and Martyrs, behind the considerable walls of that venerable hill-town. But the country round about is lawless, and the Huns draw closer daily. She will require an escort. I cannot spare the Imperial Guard, but I thought perhaps your
… rubicund friends from Gothia?’
Aetius smiled at the emperor’s feline words. To a man like Theodosius, the Goths would for ever be the barbarous immigrants who had caused the disaster of Adrianople, seventy years before.
‘Very well,’ said Aetius. ‘I will take my wolf-lords.’
‘You will be back in one week.’
Aetius bowed.
He was on the brink of departure when more news came. Two Hun ambassadors had arrived from the camp of Attila.
The emperor’s eyes lit up. ‘You see, we can negotiate! The empress will be safe. They wish to make peace.’
‘They do not wish to make peace. They come only to reconnoitre. This is a trap of Attila’s. Do not trust him. Blindfold the ambassadors, do not let them see the Walls, do not let them near anyone, do not let them speak except in a closed cell.’
But the emperor was no longer listening, his whole being flooded with relief. Theodosius hated war, with a fierceness more usually found in men who have experienced the crimson foulness of the battlefield themselves. For in truth no man dies well who dies in battle. And hating war, he had already sent out emissaries to find the approaching barbarians and their terrible king, and sue for peace. What could he offer them? Land? Their own kingdom south of the Danube? The whole province of Moesia, even? So far, none of the emissaries had returned, but now he revealed this new twist to the general. Voices were soon raised.
‘The emissaries have not returned, Eternal Majesty, because their crow-pecked corpses are even now hanging from trees all along the Egnatian Way!’
Aetius’ anger was barely controlled. In the West, as a letter from that good general Germanus had informed him, many of the lesser troops were already beginning to desert from the Roman side. News of the destruction of the Eastern Field Army on the Utus had already reached distant ears, and now the Western Field Army was also ebbing away. Terror, as Attila observed, is a powerful weapon; and very cheap. If only the Western legions could be embarked forthwith, Aetius urged, and sail for the East, the very mission itself might steady them. Galla Placidia had tried to persuade her son of this very policy, but Valentinian and his advisers were set against it. The Western Army must remain for the defence of the West. Germanus wished his commander well, and trusted that the Huns in the East could still be resisted. Aetius wrote back that for now he would have to trust in walls, not men.
Theodosius remained cold in the face of Aetius’ temper, and spoke of how all men in their hearts love reason.
Aetius paced, and clenched his fists unreasonably.
‘Is a man rational when in love?’ he cried. ‘A woman when she is defending her child against some wild beast, armed only with her own rage, fighting off a ravening lion with her bare hands, or a puny knife she has snatched from the table? And she will triumph, too, for she fights for everything that she loves, whereas the lion fights only for his dinner, and will soon slink cowardly away.’
‘You have seen this?’ asked Theodosius, wide-eyed.
Aetius suppressed a spasm of irritation. At times the learned emperor could be the stupidest of men. ‘I speak in a figure, Your Majesty. Reason does not reign supreme.’
