was accustomed to it in others, and knew exactly what to expect. But Attila was fond of springing surprises.
He drew his dagger from his broad leather belt and, instead of despatching his antagonist, tossed it to him handle first. Vigilas caught it deftly.
‘Now,’ Attila said, ‘finish your work.’
I was very afraid. The two men started circling each other, Vigilas armed, Attila not. Vigilas all furious concentration, Attila smiling, bare hands held out before him as if to swat away flies. What if Vigilas should succeed? The rest of us would all be slain by his warriors – and not quickly slain, either.
Yet Vigilas was determined to try. It was his nature. A different man might have used the dagger to cut his own throat, but he circled round the king, dagger held lightly in his right hand, his left arm extended for balance, his eyes fixed like a hawk on his prey. He knew he would have only one chance. The atmosphere in the tent had the skin-tingling tension before a storm. We could scarcely breathe. When the two men suddenly burst into action, like snake and mongoose, they moved so fast I could hardly tell what had happened. I think Vigilas tried to lunge forward, perhaps at Attila’s neck, and the king moved fractionally aside – enough for the dagger to miss its target by a hair’s breadth. He seized Vigilas’ right arm, still outstretched, in his mighty hands, one hand clamped around the assassin’s wrist and the other near his shoulder, raised his own knee, and brought the arm down. When it struck his knee, the elbow was turned backwards and unable to accommodate the blow. The arm snapped in half with a sound that sickened me. Vigilas screamed, and this was a man who did not scream easily, I was sure. He reeled back, clutching his broken limb to his body, his forearm twisted away from him at a horrible angle, his elbow… I could not look.
Orestes appeared, carrying a small sack. He dropped it with a heavy thud before Attila.
‘Now,’ said Attila, retrieving his dagger from the ground and reaching for the sack, ‘here is your gold. All of it.’ He opened the sack and showed it around and, sure enough, within lay the dully gleaming gold, all fifty pounds of it. ‘Here is your reward. You may have it from me, your intended victim. Only’ – he smiled, and lifted that fifty-pound sack into the air with one hand, his arm muscles bulging – ‘you will carry it yourself back to Constantinople, without aid from man or beast.’ He set it down and looked over at Aetius. ‘Master-General, have I your assurance, as a Roman nobleman, that this sly and deceitful back-stabber will return to Constantinople as I command it, under your watchful eye?’
Aetius struggled for a moment. But this wretched plot had shamed them all, and the two conspirators were lucky to have escaped with their lives. ‘You have,’ he said.
Attila nodded. What a gesture, what theatre! How magnificently scornful he had shown himself of the Byzantine plot. Never before had we faced an enemy like him.
There was one more gesture. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Chrysaphius trying to pull himself to his feet against one of the tent-posts.
‘Ah, no,’ he said, his voice almost gentle, stepping over to him, his dagger still in his grasp. ‘For you, coward as well as deceiver, there will be no return to Constantinople.’ He took the ambassador by a hank of his hair and pulled his head back and sliced the blade across his throat. He wiped the blade clean of blood on the dead man’s fine court robes and stood again and smiled round at us broadly, his arms outstretched, his dagger still in his fist.
‘My dear friends, I think our meeting in peace and friendship is at an end, is it not?’
Behind him, Chrysaphius’ body was already being dragged from the tent, leaving behind it a shining trail of gore.
We returned to our tents without another word, our hearts full and dark.
Before we left at dawn, in the dull grey half-light, an extraordinary meeting occurred. Attila came to Aetius. I watched from the shadows.
They spoke to each other without formality, as if they were old friends. A naive observer might have thought Aetius indeed a traitor, newly allied to Attila, there seemed so little tension between them. Then the Hun grasped Aetius’ arm as if with a mix of urgency and brotherly affection, and I heard his harsh, passionate voice.
‘One of the reasons I exposed your treachery – the treachery of your master, the emperor in Constantinople last night – was to show you the rottenness of your world, your eunuch empire.’
Aetius said nothing, and did not try to pull free of Attila’s clasp. His expression was deeply troubled.
‘And your Valentinian, Emperor in the West, feeble-minded son of that bitch Galla Placidia, he is still worse. He sacrifices cockerels, he studies witchcraft.’
Aetius muttered, ‘You, too, have witches about you.’
‘I do not claim to be Christian. Aetius, your empire is tottering.’
Now Aetius resisted him. ‘The VIIth legion at Viminacium, they did not totter.’
‘They gave us a good fight.’
‘They gave you hell.’
Attila’s teeth showed in the gloom. ‘They fought like men. But for what? For a decrepit empire, a long lost cause? It is the time of new powers and other empires now. Rome’s all done.’ His grip on Aetius’ arm tightened, and I heard his astonishing words: ‘Join me.’
It was long before Aetius responded; too long. His eventual response was only to pull away, saying nothing.
‘You fool,’ said Attila. ‘You have already lost whatever it is you fight for.’ He remounted his horse. ‘Fly back to your city, fool. I am hot on your path.’
11
We rode away south that morning in anger and shame. Behind us staggered a small, broken figure, carrying his cruel sack of gold.
There was nobility in the soul of Attila, that I could see. Aetius saw it, too. But the darker traits of malice, tyranny and vengefulness were overshadowing it, and ultimately it would be extinguished. His ruthlessness and avarice would destroy him as a living human soul. It has happened many times in human history. Already his nobility and grandeur were fading before his hunger for world dominion, his furious desire to seize and master life itself – a hunger which had also driven, in different ways, Alexander the Great, and Phidias, and Euclid, and even Sophocles. But such men as Sophocles and Phidias grow wise before they grow old, and let go of their hunger, and instead of wanting to seize and master life, they fall down before it and kneel in silent wonder, understanding that they may never master or understand but only worship. Attila saw such humble wisdom only as inglorious defeat. He was ever one of the rebellious sons of God.
Attila’s hatred of Rome was like a fire, blazing up and destroying some great, majestic basilica. But when the flames have finally devoured and destroyed that basilica and laid it to ashes, the fire also dies: it has nothing left to feed on. So his hunger was devouring his own self from the inside, engendering only more and more appetite in place of his youthful pride and fire. And when there is only appetite, allied to the stubborn, implacable vindictiveness of old age, there is no telling what evils may ensue.
After only two days, Aetius halted the column towards evening and looked over his shoulder. Far behind us was the hunched, misshapen figure of Vigilas with his sack. He was no longer moving. Aetius galloped back, and I saw him lean from his horse, pull up the sack and rest it on his lap. Vigilas rolled onto his side in the road and was still. Aetius brooded a moment, then dropped the sack in the road and rode back to us. None of us uttered a word in protest. We knew it was like a gift of Agamemnon’s Greeks. Timeo Danaos… Let a peasant find it, an untold treasure, and bury it beneath an oak tree by moonlight for his old age.
Our journey back was long and wearisome, for we rode fast and relentlessly without Vigilas to slow us. We must take in the little town of Azimuntium on our way and find the empress, then retreat to safety behind the great Theodosian Walls of the capital. There at last, I observed, we would be safe.
‘Safe?’ said Aetius savagely. ‘As safe as a rabbit in his burrow, with a huge and ravening wolf just outside, his stinking breath in the very mouth of the burrow. How safe is that, do you think?’
I did not answer.
