Meanwhile, all activities had been suspended for the duration of a great bison drive. As well as being an exciting diversion, if successful this would provide a welcome supplement to the Huns’ staple diet of goat-flesh and mutton. The herd had been spotted grazing near the Danubius but heading away from the river, near the famous Iron Gate gorge. The plan was to turn the herd back towards the Danubius, then stampede it over steep bluffs overlooking the water. The task of turning the herd was a dangerous privilege reserved for the boldest and most experienced. Once the bison were headed in the right direction, the main body of Huns would join in the chase, containing the herd on the flanks and at the rear.
Racing alongside the galloping bison, Aetius whooped aloud in sheer release of tension. Like boulders surfacing in a river in spate, the humps of the great beasts rose and fell above the whirling dust-pall enveloping them, while the drumming of their hoof was a thunderous tattoo. Suddenly, Aetius was aware that ahead the horizon appeared to have foreshortened. The bluffs! With the other horsemen, he peeled away to the side, while the doomed herd charged on, its vanguard now aware of the peril but, driven on by the mass of animals behind, unable to stop.
Drawing rein on the lip of the drop, Aetius watched in awed fascination as the bison hurtled over the edge in a brown waterfall, their bodies spinning and tumbling to crash far below on the beach bordering the river. Further upstream, where the bluffs gave way to sloping banks, the Huns descended to the river and galloped back to where the bison lay in heaps and windrows, many kicking feebly and uttering hoarse cries. Swiftly and efficiently, the hunters set about the task of dispatching and butchering, then loading the pelts and meat on to packhorses.
Faintly through the din Aetius heard a cry. He looked up and saw a young tribesman struggling in the water: in all the confusion and violent activity, he must have overbalanced near the edge. Then things began to happen, in a sequence which somehow, in retrospect, seemed inevitable. Attila rode into the river and urged his horse towards the Hun, who was in the grip of a powerful current carrying him into midstream. Cursing Attila for his misplaced altruism which, for obvious political reasons he himself must be seen to support, Aetius raced along the beach towards a skiff drawn up on the shingle. He dragged it to the water, jumped in, pushed off with an oar and began to row towards Attila, whose horse, with the swimmer now clutching its bridle, was trying to fight its way back to shore. But the current was too strong; the horse with its double load ceased making headway, and started to move downstream.
Suddenly, a cross-flow seized the skiff and swept it into the middle of the river. Pulling with all his might, Aetius managed to intercept the group as it was about to bob past him. Attila scrambled from the saddle into the boat, then both he and Aetius grabbed the third and hauled him over the side, leaving the horse to be carried helplessly away. Attila then picked up one of the poles lying on the floorboards and stationed himself at the stern, commanding Balamir, the young tribesman, to do likewise at the bow. ‘Keep her nose into the current,’ he called to Aetius above the noise of rushing water. ‘Our lives depend on that.’
‘Why don’t I just try to row us to the bank?’
‘Too late — the current’s got us. We’ll have to try to ride the river through the Iron Gate.’
‘Is that risky?’
Attila laughed grimly. ‘Does iron sink? Pray to your triple-headed god, my friend; no one’s yet been known to get through the Iron Gate. Alive, that is.’
The bluffs on either hand changed to towering walls of naked rock which, closing in, compressed the channel to a width of little more than a hundred paces. The river became a raging torrent on which the little boat was borne along like a twig. Fighting panic, Aetius strove to keep the bows parallel with the current; should the skiff be buffeted sideways, it would immediately start shipping water. High up on the rock face to his right, Aetius glimpsed the rotting remains of cantilevered planking — put there three centuries before to widen the road carved out of the cliff by Trajan’s artificers, he realized inconsequently. And there was the
Such fleeting observations were forgotten as an ominous booming filled the air. Ahead, fangs and ledges of rock broke the surface of the river, which was transformed into a seething chaos of whirlpools and eddies. Next moment they were in the maelstrom, fighting desperately with oars and poles to keep the boat on course and from smashing against boulders.
‘We’re through!’ shouted Aetius exultantly as they emerged, miraculously unscathed, from the boiling turbulence into a calmer stretch, where the river became a smoothly speeding millrace. But Attila pointed ahead, and Aetius saw that the river disappeared in a wall of spray. Seconds later, half blinded by spray and deafened by the crash of falling water, he gasped in horror as the skiff slid over the lip of a cataract.
Down swooped the boat in a sickening rush, to smash into the plunge pool at the bottom. It surfaced groggily, half full of water, but there was no respite for baling; plucked downstream by the savage current, the fragile craft was swept down a series of rapids. Time after time it hurtled towards rocks, disaster being averted only by the heroic efforts of Attila and Balamir, their poles bending like bows with the pressure of fending off.
Then suddenly the ordeal was over. The boat shot from the final rapid and whirled round a bend into a broad and placid reach. Thanks to a combination of nerve, luck, judgement, and the skill of the Danubian boat-builders, they were through the Iron Gate.
At their next Council assembly, the Huns unanimously supported Rua’s proposal that they provide Aetius with military backing towards his restoration.
Aetius hummed the soldiers’ song ‘Lalage’ as he made the familiar journey from the imperial palace back to his re-requisitioned headquarters near Ravenna. The meeting with Placidia had yielded all he’d planned for. Humiliated and furious, the Empress had been forced to climb down and accede to his demands that he be promoted to the rank of Patrician, and made Master of both Horse and Footsoldiers — in fact Emperor in all but name. The newly created Master chuckled to himself as he urged Bucephalus into a canter; with a huge force of Huns at his back, she’d had little choice. It would, he supposed, have been simple enough to depose Valentinian and assume the purple himself. But it was more prudent to leave that odious youth on the throne; that way, constitutional stability would be preserved, while the real power was wielded by himself.
Now he could concentrate on furthering his plans. These were simple: to take whatever steps were necessary to consolidate his position as master of Gaul, as Magnus Maximus had so nearly done before him, and Carausius had succeeded for a time in doing in Britain. With Boniface gone, his allies the Huns behind him, and Ravenna in his pocket to provide a screen of legitimacy, there was no one in the empire strong enough to stop him. Forget all that high-sounding rhetoric he’d spouted to Litorius about recovering Africa et cetera. That had been intended merely to preserve his persona of ‘Saviour of the Republic’. Actually, the empire was probably doomed; it was only blind fools like Boniface who refused to face that reality. Best to salvage what you could, before the ship of state struck the rocks.
Angrily, Aetius tried to suppress inner voices which urged a different course, the voices of his father, Gaudentius, a distinguished cavalry commander who had devoted his career to the service of the Empire; of his gentle mother from a noble Roman family which, in a cynical and degenerate age, continued to uphold the worthy standards of an earlier time; of Titus Valerius, who had left his service in disgust; of Boniface, good man and well- intentioned patriot, whose downfall and death he had brought about. ‘Rome has made you what you are,’ they said. ‘Can you then act as though you owe her nothing?’ With an effort, Aetius willed himself not to listen, and, as if obedient to his command, they fell silent. For the moment. But they would return, he knew with a feeling almost of guilty dread. As surely as the sun was going to rise next morning, they would return.
Later in the year that he became ‘Lord of the West Romans’ (as writers began to style him), the one thousand, one hundred and eighty-seventh from the founding of Rome,1 Aetius heard that Rua had died, and that Attila had succeeded to the throne of the Huns.
1 433.
PART II
