She is in residence at the convent there.’
‘The empress?’ Malchus whistled. ‘The Huns are all over this plain. From what I’ve heard, they’re operating in at least four different battle groups.’
‘At least,’ said Aetius. ‘We’ve already met one of them – only a thousand men or so. Yes, they’re everywhere. And,’ he smiled grimly, ‘they are no more favourably disposed towards us than before.’ He turned back and raised his hand. ‘Column: fast trot!’
As an officer, Malchus rode just behind Aetius, on his shield side. Tatullus rode behind him, and Knuckles and Arapovian brought up the rear. The wolf-lords whispered among themselves, and soon it was known throughout the column that these four were the sole survivors of a terrible battle with the Huns, which had seen over a thousand Romans slain. Some of the Visigoths could not help glancing round at Knuckles and Arapovian and seeing those ragged wanderers with new respect. The wolf-lords admired nothing so much as valour in battle.
Knuckles nodded back at them. ‘Got a biscuit?’
One of the wolf-lords grinned and rummaged in his saddlebag and threw him a hunk of stale bread. Knuckles caught it in his huge paw and began to gnaw it with a certain awkwardness as he trotted.
‘So I got a noble heart then, have I?’ he rumbled, spraying crumbs at his companion beside him.
Arapovian rode looking straight ahead, aquiline features expressionless. ‘Accept the compliment graciously, and do not expect me to repeat it.’
‘I don’t do graciously,’ said Knuckles, ‘son of a whore like me.’
‘I believe,’ said Arapovian, ‘though I do not understand it, that you are almost as proud of your ancestry as I am of mine.’
Knuckles snorted with laughter, and breadcrumbs flew out of his nose.
Azimuntium was a town of less than a thousand souls, though its numbers were now swollen with terrified refugees. Thick walls ringed it round, built into the jagged bedrock, and a steep cobbled ramp led up to the stout wooden gates. Once the column was within the gates, a great cheer went up from the people, as if we were come as liberators. Little did they know. Aetius could not look them in the eye. Our mounted column snaked up a narrow cobbled lane to the Upper Town, high-battlemented gatehouses marking the way. It was a fine defensive site.
The Lord of Azimuntium, Ariobarzanes by name, met us at the entrance to the courtyard of his tumbledown palace. He was a weak old man in a less than spotless gabardine, supported on a vine-staff, crouched in the wooden gateway with an ancient hound at his side.
‘The empress is in the convent,’ he said. ‘She is finishing mass.’
‘There is no time to finish mass,’ said Aetius. ‘We ride out immediately.’
‘She left strict instructions.’
Aetius cursed under his breath. Then he ordered lookouts posted on the walls.
‘The enemy are near,’ said Ariobarzanes.
He turned sharply. ‘How do you know?’
‘Ask any of the refugee shepherds in the town.’ He waved a hand knotty with purple veins. ‘Shepherds without sheep – the Scythian heathen have taken them all. May the Lord of Hosts defend us.’
And cold steel, thought Aetius.
‘We also hear they have razed Philippopolis.’
Aetius said softly, ‘The entire city?’
Ariobarzanes tilted his head. ‘The entire city. The Flower of the River Hebrus. The waters of the river ran red, and the savages hung the body of the bishop naked from the walls.’ His watery eyes searched Aetius, and his voice trembled. ‘I tell you, Christendom has never before faced an enemy such as this. They will raze the world flat.’
‘He who lives longest will see the most.’
And they were standing there, kicking their heels while the empress finished saying her Kyrie and her Agnus Dei. It was madness. He sent his new centurion, Tatullus, to demand entrance to the convent. Tatullus returned, saying that his way had been barred by nuns.
‘Nuns,’ breathed Aetius. ‘In the Name of Light!’
Frustrated, he went down to the Church of Saint Jude, with a long, low hospital building behind. In the gloom, a very tall, thin old man with an unkempt beard was striding about, ordering the shutters to be thrown open and pots of fresh flowers to be brought in. ‘End of summer, but anything you can find!’ his voice boomed down the room.
There was a single middle-aged woman bustling about to do his bidding, and two plump older men standing in one corner arguing. In another stood three of the Visigothic wolf-lords, their wounds from the skirmish in the mountains freshly bandaged, looking uncomfortable. In one of the eight narrow beds along the wall lay an old peasant, eyes glazed, mouthing to himself, and in another was a tired-looking woman, having recently given birth, her newborn at her breast. Sickness always made Aetius feel uncomfortable and he moved to leave, but something about the commanding old man held his attention. He frowned.
‘You, man,’ he called out. ‘I remember you.’ The old man turned and regarded Aetius vaguely. ‘I remember your face. But it was… many years ago. What is your name?’
‘I thought I might be of use here,’ said the old man with airy evasiveness. ‘I came to Azimuntium to examine some remarkable old texts in the synagogue here, you know, dating from the time of the Maccabees-’
‘Do not play games with me. Where have I seen you before?’
‘I have been around a bit,’ he continued, still airy. ‘In an empire of a hundred million souls, a few second meetings are not unlikely. All is for the best, et cetera. Now, where did I put that ewer?’
Aetius stepped up to him and held him. ‘ Your name.’
The old man looked fractionally down at him, he was so tall. His eyes were deep-set and serious now. ‘My name is Gamaliel.’
Aetius stared. ‘It was you who came to the camp of the Huns, with that British officer, in search of his son. It was you. Spinning tall tales of how you once knew Aristotle.’
‘I am a citizen of the world.’
‘But that was years ago, decades ago. You’ve hardly aged – well, not much. How old are you?’
‘Older than you and younger than Methusaleh,’ said Gamaliel blithely. ‘Nuts and berries, nuts and berries. But I eat very little. Now, madam, please will you open those shutters?’
At this, the two men arguing in the corner approached.
‘Forgive us for interrupting,’ said one. ‘We are trained medical men on our way back to Constantinople.’
‘Seeking shelter here from the rumoured horsemen of the steppes,’ said the other. ‘Though not afraid, we are careful.’
‘Not a good place to seek shelter,’ muttered Aetius, still half lost in memories of his own boyhood. ‘They’ll be here before we finish yakking.’
One of the men regarded Aetius with alarm, but the other drew in breath and addressed Gamaliel.
‘As a strict Pneumatist of the Alexandrian school, founded by the revered Athenaeus of Attalia, in Pamphylia, as I’m sure you know, himself a pupil of the stoic Posidinius of Apamea, a purist of the noblest standing, in the face of multifarious insults and contumely from those wayward and contemptible Episynthetics, those magpies of medical learning, led – or should I say misled? – by that scoundrel Leonidas of Alexandria-’
Gamaliel who had begun his examination of the ailing peasant, but the two learned doctors followed him over.
‘Your point being?’ interrupted Gamaliel, a little testily.
‘My point being, my dear man,’ said the doctor, ‘that this demand of yours that the shutters be opened, on, I take it, grounds of fresh air, is, I’m afraid, woefully ill-advised. Such fresh air might be fatal to a man in this one’s condition,’ he indicated the old peasant, ‘although with brief perscrutation I can see that he will shortly be in the grave, come what may. However, since we must abide by our Hippocratic oaths until that melancholy end, I refer you to the teachings of the Alexandrian Pneumatists, who have made it very clear that the pneuma – that is, the vital breath – being not the whole soul, but rather only the potentiality of it-’
Another woman brought in a jug of late flowers. Nearby, Prince Torismond appeared and was saying something to Aetius about a large dust-cloud to the north.
‘-a compound,’ continued the erudite man of science, ‘of varying proportions of air and fire, the vehicle of cosmic sympatheia, and in truth quite unlike that preposterous agglomeration of indivisible Democritean particles hypothesised by the Peripatetic Atomists… The pneuma, I say, is the seat of corporeal vigour, from which flows the
