‘We owe your people all thanks. Back to Cilicia?’
The chieftain’s eyes glimmered. ‘Back to banditry.’
Aetius grunted. ‘Mind you don’t get caught.’
There were also the four: last remnant of the VIIth legion. He eyed them.
‘You put us in your close guard,’ said Knuckles, reading his thoughts. ‘Besides, I’m no Easterner, anyhow. Dodgy, slitty-eyed lot, they are, sell their own grannies for a bunch of grapes.’
Arapovian snorted.
Aetius regarded the other two, Tatullus and Malchus. They looked resolute.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘jump aboard. But don’t expect any peace and quiet back West.’
PART III
The Last Battle
1
Aetius and his few companions arrived in an autumnal Ravenna to find the city in the throes of terminal panic. Riding up from the port of Classis along the causeway over the marshes, past stagnant pools and stands of bog willow, they emerged into the streets of the sprawling suburb of Caesarea to hear rumours of distant, calamitous wars, omens of apocalypse, and everywhere intimations of things coming to an end. People said that statues had been seen weeping real tears, oysters opened welling with blood, and from empty churches at night came the sound of many voices lamenting. They had heard the steely clash of weapons from the clouds, there had been numerous earthquakes, and the ghosts of ancient emperors were haunting the sacred palaces. In Rome itself, Bishop Sebatius had gone to pray at the tomb of St Peter and been granted a terrible revelation…
Aetius listened, unimpressed. Nearby, another bearded and wild-eyed millennial doomsayer ranted from the steps of a church, claiming that only days ago, while Valentinian was out hunting, two wolves had started up from nowhere under the emperor’s horse, and he almost fell to the ground. The wolves were speared and killed, and when they were cut open, their bellies were found to be full of severed human hands.
Aetius snorted. ‘This emperor doesn’t go hunting.’ He glared around at his men, walking behind his horse. ‘Anyway, we have problems enough without wolves full of severed hands. You’re under orders to silence any idiot prophet you come across.’
Knuckles hefted his club and went over to talk to the wild-eyed doomsayer, shouldering his way through the crowd, which parted promptly before him. The prophet argued a little, until Knuckles dropped his club on the fellow’s bare toes, at which he howled and limped away, talking of demon wolves no more.
They made for the palace, asking for news as they went.
Yes, Ravenna had heard of the Huns’ retreat from Constantinople, but didn’t that simply mean that the barbarian hordes would now be on their way here? Aetius didn’t reply. Instead he tried to ascertain what was left of the Western Field Army, but the only replies he got were of lightning bolts from a cloudless sky, and a wolf-cub found in the heart of the Imperial Palace, and tales of the long-foretold awakening of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.
He kicked his horse onward. ‘I need to find my General Germanus,’ he muttered.
The news from the imperial court was no better. A chamberlain said that the emperor was… indisposed. Imperial finances were in disarray, and the last revenue had been scant. Ever since the loss of the African grainfields, taxation had been less than ‘The legions?’ demanded Aetius.
‘The Field Army remains encamped inland of the city,’ said the chamberlain. ‘But its mood, alas, without pay for these few months, is sadly… restive. Winter is approaching, and I fear numbers are less than they were.’
‘And Her Majesty Galla Placidia?’
The chamberlain lowered his eyes. ‘I regret to say that Her Majesty is dying.’
He found her in a darkened chamber, seated upright on a high-backed wooden chair beside an iron brazier, swathed in white woollen blankets. She was clearly very weak, yet she knew him immediately. He sank to his knees before her.
‘On your feet, General,’ she said, her voice no more than a dry whisper. ‘The rest of the empire is on its knees. At least you should stand upright.’
He promptly stood again. How he loved this old battle-axe. She might be dying but her mind and her tongue were as sharp as ever.
‘And I’ll try not to die in your company,’ she added. ‘There might be talk.’
‘The emperor?’ he dared to ask.
She waved her hand, saying not a word, but the meaning was clear. The emperor was mad.
‘So,’ she whispered, ‘Attila has gone north.’
‘For now.’
‘The Western world stands on the brink.’ She fixed him with her watery green eyes. ‘And the Empress Athenais – Eudoxia?’
He was startled. How her mind flitted. Perhaps she was losing her sharpness after all.
‘You loved her,’ said Galla.
No. She was not losing her sharpness.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, after a struggle. ‘But I was needed elsewhere.’
She gave the slightest nod. ‘You still are. Stop him, Aetius. With all your might. With all our prayers. You must stop him. Christendom depends on it.’ She held out a skeletal hand, and he understood and passed her the cup of water by her side. She drank and he set it down again for her.
‘This is a time of waiting,’ she said, ‘to see where he will strike next. But we know, do we not? We know he will come.’
She gestured to him to sit down.
‘It is twelve centuries from the founding of Rome. You know it. And it has been held, since before Cicero and Varro, that the twelve vultures who appeared to Romulus when he founded the city signified the twelve centuries Rome would endure. This is borrowed time.’
She breathed slowly. ‘Has the fratricidal death of Remus at last come back to destroy Rome? The shedding of his brother’s blood was the price Romulus paid for Rome’s twelve centuries of glory. They say Attila slew his brother, too – for all of a dozen years of glory. Perhaps now both debts are being called in. The first city was called Enoch and it was built by Cain. The murderer. Perhaps all cities and empires are founded in blood; and in the end that blood must be paid for.’ She closed her eyes, the lids leaf-thin, fluttering. ‘I cannot see the future, Aetius, but it must be… re-made. Rome may not be the future. But Attila and his pure spirit of destruction must not be, either.’
She opened her eyes again. ‘Some of the wise say that it is only the old world that is dying. A new world is being born. Well, ask a woman how painful childbirth can be. As one of Euripides’ women says: “I’d rather stand in the line of battle than lie again in childbed.”’ She smiled weakly.
‘I have heard,’ said Aetius, ‘that the harvests were poor, and weather-watchers say we have an exceptionally hard winter ahead.’
‘Which will hurt Attila more than us.’
He grunted. ‘You should have been a general. That’s good insight.’ He stood again. ‘With your leave, Your Majesty, I must check troop numbers, find my general, Germanus.’
‘I can tell you,’ she said.
He laughed aloud. ‘You really would have been a good general.’
‘Hm. Wrong gender.’
She drew painful breath and then told him. The Rhine and Danube frontiers had been pretty much stripped bare. She herself had given the order, via her son. The East had no army left to speak of, and every last decent
