Aetius summoned the Armenian. ‘Screw up your eyes, Easterner. Tell me you can see the Great Tanjou, and tell me he looks worried.’
‘I see him,’ said Arapovian. ‘We have met before, remember?’
‘And tell me he looks worried.’
Arapovian grimaced. ‘I have read more expression in the cliffs of Elbrus.’
Aetius grunted. ‘Drop an arrow on him?’
‘Too far. Besides, the last time I tried to shoot him, I got this.’ He dragged up his sleeve and showed the general the scar.
Aetius laughed. ‘You tried to shoot Attila?’
‘He rides at the front of his men, without fear. It was an order of Sabinus, the legate at Viminacium.’
Aetius looked grim again. ‘That Sabinus was a good man. Now, back to the tower.’
He remained alone and brooded a moment on the assassination attempt. Treacherous and underhand though it was, it might have worked. Even now, as the siege began, if they could but hit Attila, weaken him in any way, the faith of his myriad hordes in his god-given power would begin to falter. That was their best hope. To defeat such an army as this in open battle… It was not possible, not with what few forces were left.
The fall of everything he believed in was very close now. It gave him desperate strength. He began to tour the other towers again, to inspect the artillery units, to rally them. His exhaustion and sleeplessness meant nothing to him. There was no point in saving himself. For what? For the nothing that was to come?
20
As Attila approached the Golden City at long last, the Walls rose higher and higher before him, like a monstrous triple wave of stone. Of course, he knew the details, the measurements, and he had planned his attack minutely. But seeing the Walls in the flesh, as it were, even he fell silent for a while.
Riding beside him, Orestes observed that, whatever the earthquake damage might have been, the walls and even more crucially the towers had been fully repaired. There were no major cracks to be seen, no promising crevices running from battlements to foundations.
‘And there’ – he pointed at the brickwork around the Gate of St Romanus – ‘that tower must have fallen half away; you can see where it’s new-built. Yet it’s as strong as ever again. We should not have delayed.’
Attila stopped and turned on him. ‘You question my choices, you accuse me of delay, even of cowardice?’
Orestes was unimpressed. ‘I question our delay in attacking. We have made our task harder.’
Whatever Attila might have growled in response was lost, as Aladar abruptly pulled his horse back and it reared. ‘Arrows coming in!’
It startled them, the arrow-shower from the wolf-lords, even though it fell short. Attila ground his teeth and they fell back further. Then he wrenched his horse round in a fury, the poor beast almost rupturing its neck, its mouth cut by the bit.
It was time. The late-afternoon sun was falling behind them in the west, beginning to glare red into the eyes of the defenders on the walls.
‘Bring up the engines!’ he bellowed. ‘Either side of the valley! I want the wall there down by dark! Tonight, Byzantium burns!’
The key defensive artillery units would be on the gate-towers overlooking the low-lying Lycus valley: Military Gate V to the north and, beyond it, the Charisius Gate, which led out to the cemetery, for which reason it was also known dryly among the people of the city as the Polyandriou Gate: the Gate of Many Men. For many men passed out of it. All men, in time.
South of the valley was the Gate of St Romanus, and south of that was Military Gate IV. These would be the crucial points from which the Hun siege-towers might be attacked and destroyed as they approached, before they could do serious damage. Aetius took his stand on Military Gate V, sending the wolf-lords below to man the Walls, telling them that they would see any missiles coming in well enough. ‘So make sure you duck.’
The engines on the broad platforms of the two gate-towers were the best he could find. Less crucial towers, especially towards the Blachernae Palace, had been left without artillery. Here at the weak point of the Lycus valley was where the fighting would be fiercest. Each gate-tower had two multiple arrow-firers, two small but powerful onagers, and a finely made transverse-mounted sling which could hurl rocks, balls or even those wretched new- fangled firepots if need be.
Half a mile off, the siege-engines were coming, drawn by captured slaves. Dispensable flesh. Hun horsemen galloped around them, flailing their long whips. Attila knew how short of manpower his enemy were and so, predictably, he was attacking on as broad a front as possible. There were as many as twenty siege-towers moving slowly and inexorably towards the walls, and half-sheltered behind them, there were rams under steep, protective wooden tortoises.
A deep, coarse voice called up from the walls below: ‘Permission to speak to the master-general!’
Aetius stepped over to the battlements and glanced down. It was that brute Knuckles. He’d managed to arm himself with a club with a great lump of lead solder stuck on the end.
‘At Viminacium, sir, the enemy had fixed up their engines without wide enough skirts to protect the wheels. They might not have learned.’
Aetius squinted into the falling afternoon sun. Yes, they had learned. He nodded down to the big Rhinelander. ‘Ready with your club, man. You’re going to need it.’
He stepped back, speaking quietly to the artillerymen. They were no fighters, but they were quick and deft with their machines. The engines rolled nearer. They waited, a kind of silent screaming in their ears. A young lad wiped his upper lip. Sweat glistened there again almost immediately. Behind them, the city was eerily still, the streets and forums deserted, everyone indoors, crouching, huddled, praying. Even the emperor himself, God’s anointed, was crouched and praying, too.
On the wall in front of Aetius stood a bowl of water, calm as a millpond. The machines rumbled nearer. The horizon was dark with horsemen. The sun shone steadily, indifferently, upon all. This curious battle between these tiny creatures on the surface of the earth. And then a flash of sunlight on the bowl. Aetius glanced down, not breathing. It flashed again. Not on the bowl. Glancing off the water, as it rippled in response to some mysterious subterranean disturbance.
The artillerymen were suddenly terrified, hands shaking, mouths open, staring around wildly.
‘Oh, no, not again,’ muttered one of them, his voice low and desperate. ‘Not another quake. It will destroy us.’
But the general was eerily calm. He summoned Tatullus.
‘You see any animals panicking, Centurion? Any horses stampeding out there?’
Tatullus’ hard eyes scanned the plain below. ‘No, sir.’
‘As I thought. Relax, men. Look to your machines. Centurion, spread the word. It’s no second quake. On the other hand, don’t relax too much. It means the Huns are mining under the walls.’
Tatullus started.
‘No time for theatricals, Centurion,’ said Aetius dryly. ‘Get running now. Bowls of water all along the battlements. We need to know where the bastards are tunnelling in. These’ll tell us every time they knock out a pit prop and there’s another rockfall.’
He called a runner over. ‘To the northern Walls. Bring back half the Isaurian auxiliaries with their leader. Zeno. At all speed!’
The runner ran.
To another messager he gave orders for the heaviest weights that could be found dragged up onto the walls at intervals. Marble column drums, if possible.
One of the siege-engines was very close to them now, and another just south of the valley was approaching the moat.
