bruised grey, threatening heavy rain. Some Huns rode forward in their fury and began to hack at the wooden carts with their swords, howling. Others punctured the wine barrels with their spears and lay on the ground with their mouths open beneath the crimson spouts. Then missiles started raining down on them – stones, bits of twisted iron, horseshoes, anything. Barely armoured as they were, and few wearing helmets, since they were riding in to slaughter unarmed civilians, several horsemen reeled in their saddles, skulls cracked, blood coursing down into their eyes. Others leaped off their horses and kicked in doors, dragging out the occupants and butchering them in the streets. It was to be a foul fight.
Behind them, more Huns were still trying to get into the city, packing ever closer and closer. Bishop Ananias directed operations as best he could from the bell-tower of the cathedral. The Huns had thus far made so little progress through the city’s narrow streets that his runners were able to transmit messages freely. Once more he sent for word from the lookout priest, and once more the reply was ‘Nothing’. Inside the cathedral, women lit candles, pale imitations of the devouring Hun fires already roaring in the city’s suburbs, and the air was filled with the sounds of prayer and lamentation.
The fight was becoming desperate. The sturdiest citizens had appeared on the streets with their fire-irons and pitchforks, more frightened of huddling in their cellars and waiting to be slaughtered than of fighting out in the open streets. But this was a mistake, for as soon as the Huns saw moving living targets they unslung their bows and punched them full of arrows.
With every street blocked and every house barricaded, the barbarian horsemen’s progress was slow and painful, and their longing to be free to gallop and shoot and cut down was frustrated at every turn. They yelled brutal taunts and savage war songs, dragged people from their houses by the hair and slit their throats, lassoed the wagon blockades and tried to haul them free. But it was slow and dispiriting work.
Then there came a new sound over the roar of the flames and the cries of the people. The church bells were ringing: a moving dust-cloud had been seen on the far horizon.
Attila ground his teeth. ‘They cannot have ridden this far so soon. This cannot be the Romans.’
‘It is, Great Tanjou. And with them…’ Even Orestes hesitated.
‘ Speak. ’
‘And with them ride the Visigoths.’
Attila’s roar filled the tent. A wooden stool flew and smashed into the mainpost. He strode outside and surveyed the view. His men were crowded round the pent-up gates of Aureliana. Behind lay a low ridge of thickly wooded hills. The silver river gleamed. There was no room to breathe. No room anywhere.
‘That city’ – he pointed with his spear – ‘that city… I will return… that city…’ He was jabbing the air now, his mouth working, his face livid, beaded with sweat. Orestes was already untethering their horses. ‘That city, I will not only lay it waste, I will torture its every citizen, every man, woman and child, I will have daughters murder their fathers, mothers their sons. Their bodies will hang crucified all along the road from here to…’ With a mighty heave he hurled the spear into the air where it arced and sank to the ground and stuck fast. ‘To Tolosa!’
Orestes mounted.
Attila wiped the spittle from his beard. ‘Pull them back,’ he said. ‘We cannot fight here.’ His barrel chest heaved, he clutched his side. ‘I cannot breathe!’
The moment the Roman and Gothic banners were perceived in the wind, the mood in the city changed. The bells rang from church to church, spreading like birdsong through a wood in springtime, and the great cathedral bell rang out over all of them. The Huns in the streets stalled and looked around, bewildered, as word gradually spread that they were to retreat. Some ignored the order and pushed on into the city. None of them survived. The citizens, newly fired with confidence and anger, struck them down and slew them wherever they found them.
Then came the sound of Roman trumpets and bugles giving their sharp, precise commands, and the Huns were suddenly fleeing in a drunken panic with the citizens at their heels. When the tattooed warriors emerged again from the East Gate, which they had entered not an hour or two previously, it was to see their vast host already disappearing over the low hills to the north under the threatening sky. They remounted and galloped after, but a great serpent of gleaming armour cut between them and their comrades, and the would-be sackers of Aureliana were put to the sword, one and all.
The Romans reassembled their column on the outskirts of the city, and rested and watered their horses. The citizens brought them provisions, and Bishop Ananias spoke with Aetius, and also with Theodoric.
‘“And lo, I shall smite them with the sword,”’ roared the old King, ‘“and the heathen shall flee before me into the hills!”’
Ananias nodded. ‘Thus spake the Lord of Hosts.’
‘You fought well, my lord Bishop,’ said Aetius. ‘But turn your attention from the Scriptures just for a moment. Your Majesty, did you see the banners of the enemy riders on their left flank as they fled?’
‘The banners of the heathen,’ rumbled Theodoric, ‘barbaric ensigns, covered with the runes of savagery and unbelief.’
‘Among them, the Black Boar.’
Theodoric gasped and clutched his beard.
‘Genseric’s sons are here.’ Aetius nodded coolly. ‘Frideric, Euric and Godric.’
Theodoric was already turning his horse and digging his heels in, but the princes rode in either side of him and calmed him.
A scout rode up.
‘Have your skills improved?’ snapped Aetius.
‘Sir, they ride north-east. At least some of the horses look lean and sickly.’
‘Hm. Another job for the Moorish Horse.’
Victorius appeared.
‘Centurion, spread out the map.’
Tatullus knelt on the dry ground and spread out a huge campaign map, made of the thickest rolled vellum and taller and wider than the height of a man.
‘Listen closely, Moor. Ride east and then north with fifty of your best men. Ride as fast as you ever have ridden. Overtake the Huns, but be on your guard for their outriders – they range far. Here, at Melodunum’ – he pointed with his staff – ‘and also here, at Augustabona, there are vast horrea, granaries. The locals will direct you to them. The Huns must not get to them. You understand? Burn them to the ground, then circle back and find us again. The Huns won’t catch you, not with them on their half-starved ponies and you on your fine Berber horses.’
‘And what of fodder for our fine Berber horses?’ said Victorius.
‘They’ll be well fed from our supply lines south. It’s not a problem; we’ve got it covered. You know that a full marching legion of five thousand men needs eight thousand pounds of grain a day, plus six hundred pounds of fodder for its auxiliary cavalry. A full cavalry division needs a whole lot more. And you think nomads like the Huns will have planned ahead for provisions? They’ll never find pasture enough, not in cultivated Gaul.’ The cool grey eyes scanned the horizon. ‘Sometimes military victory lies in details, not in heroics. Attila and his horde in Gaul are going to starve.’
The Mauretanian grinned, and without another word stretched out his arm and galloped forward. Fifty men surged after him, swinging east, wide of the retreating horde.
Aetius looked at the map again. ‘The nearest flatlands north-east,’ he said. ‘The valley of the Marne?’
Tatullus nodded. ‘Catalaunia.’
‘The battle of the Catalaunian Fields,’ murmured Aetius. ‘Sounds good.’
8
The Huns retreated from Aureliana, barely able to believe that they had fled before the long-awaited Roman Army. The skies darkened further and it began to rain. Their horses would not move fast enough. They hung their heads low, their flanks were tightly drawn in and their haunches jutting and bony. There was never enough grass,
