architecture. The strategic city on a ford of the Garumna had long dominated southwestern Gaul, and when the Visigoth king Athaulf agreed to give up Iberia and send the Roman princess Galla Placidia back to Rome in return for new lands in Aquitania, Tolosa became the natural capital. The barbarians did front the old Roman walls with a ditch and dike, but inside the city it was as if a poor family had moved into a fine house and added tawdry touches of their own. The stone and brickwork was old and patched, the streets were pot-holed and poorly repaired, paint was older than the inhabitants, and dwellings of stucco and marble had additions of timber, daub, and thatch.
Yet under the great barbarian king Theodoric—who had reigned so long, thirty-six years, that most of his subjects had known no other king—Tolosa throbbed with activity. As Roman culture had been layered upon Celtic, so now was German tribal culture layered upon Roman; and the result was a fusion of pagan artisan, imperial bureaucrat, and barbarian warrior that had given the city an energy it hadn’t seen for a hundred years. Traders and farmwives bawled in half a dozen tongues from the crowded marketplaces, Arian priests ministered to thick crowds of illiterate tribesmen, and children chased each other through the streets in numbers not seen in living memory.
Their ferocity was still there, however, and it was this ferocity that Aetius hoped I could somehow help harness. The Visigoths were as haughty as Huns and as regal as Greeks.
They were as famed for the long lances of their heavy cavalry as Attila’s men were for their bows; and the palace guards looked like mailed, bearded giants, their pale eyes glinting from beneath the brow of iron helmets like bright, suspicious jewels. Their legs were like tree trunks, their arms like thighs. When the tips of their long swords rested on the chipped marble floor, the pommels came to their chests. Here were men who should have no fear of Huns.
Why weren’t they riding with us?
Perhaps they hesitated because their ancestors had been put to flight by the Huns three generations before. Had the Visigoths journeyed across Europe only to be faced with this peril once again? Would they at last make a stand? Or become vassals of Attila? I had to convince Theodoric that survival was with Aetius and the hated Romans.
My arrival had already been promised by correspondence from Aetius. A Visigothic captain helped stable my horse, gave me watered wine to quench my thirst, and finally escorted me to Theodoric. There was a courtyard in the palace, familiar enough except that its fountain was dry because no one could be found with the skill to repair it, and its plants dead because no barbarian could be bothered to keep them alive. Then we entered the reception hall beyond. The old Roman standards and symbols of office were long gone, of course, the pillars hung now with the bright shields and crossed lances of the Goths. Banners and captured tapestries gave color atop faded paint, and the marble floors were obscured by rushes that had been strewn to catch the mud of barbarian boots. High windows let in a crosshatch of light.
Nobles clustered and gossiped behind a railing that separated Theodoric’s carved wooden throne from petitioners and courtiers. A single aide stood by to make notes—could the fifty-six-year-old king read?—and the monarch’s crown was a circlet of simple steel. His hair was long, his beard gray, his nose curved, and his expression set in a permanent frown. This was a man used to saying no.
Theodoric beckoned me forward through the wood railing to stand where we could talk without being overheard. I bowed, trying to remember the formal manners of Maximinus, my diplomatic mentor, and marveling at the odyssey that had brought me here. “I bring you greetings, King Theodoric, from your friend and ally Flavius Aetius. Great happenings shake the world, and great deeds are needed.”
“General Aetius has already sent me such greetings a hundred times in missives this winter,” the barbarian replied with a deep, skeptical voice. “The greetings always come with tidings, and the tidings with requests. Is this not so, Hagan?” He turned to his scribe.
“The Roman wants us to fight his battle for him,” the scribe said.
“Not for him,
“I have heard this talk from Aetius before,” the king replied. “He is a master at playing on the fears of the tribes.
Always there is some dire peril that requires us to muster our armies for Rome and shed
Nor can he explain why Attila should be my enemy. I have no quarrel with the Huns.”
This would be difficult. “The world has changed, sire.” I recited what Theodoric already knew: the plea of Honoria, the accession of Marcian in the East, and the claim of the Frankish prince Cloda in the north. He listened impatiently.
“And then there is the matter of the Greek doctor Eudoxius,” I tried.
“Who?” The king turned in curiosity to Hagan.
“I think he is referring to the man who stirred up the Bagaudae in the north,” the scribe said, “an intellectual who led a rabble.”
“In the revolt that Aetius crushed a few years ago,” I added.
“Ah, I remember this Greek now. What about him?”
Theodoric asked.
“He fled to Attila.”
“So?”
“He persuaded Attila to send him as embassy to Gaiseric in Carthage. It was when Eudoxius came back from the Vandals that the Huns decided to march on the West.” At these words something moved in the shadows, jerking as if startled. It was a shrouded figure, I realized, listening from an alcove. Who was that?
“Gaiseric?” Theodoric’s gaze narrowed at mention of the Vandal king. “Why is Attila talking to the Vandals?”
“An equally pressing question, sire, is why are the Vandals talking to the Huns?”
I had at last struck a nerve. Attila was distant, and the Roman emperor Valentinian impotent, but Gaiseric and his haughty Vandals were the one group the Visigoths truly feared. They were a powerful tribe of Germanic origin like themselves, lodged in Africa, and no doubt they coveted Aquitania. I could see that this news had a powerful effect.
I remembered hearing that the Vandals had humiliated the Visigoths by rejecting and mutilating Theodoric’s daughter.
“Gaiseric is marching with the Huns?” he asked.
“Perhaps. We don’t know. We only know that to wait and do nothing is folly.”
Theodoric sat back on his throne, fingers drumming as he thought. Gaiseric, whose warriors were the equivalent of his own. Gaiseric, who alone matched Theodoric in age, longevity of rule, and list of bloody victories. Gaiseric, who had shamed him as no man ever had by scarring Berta, his beloved child. He squinted at me, this young Roman before him. “What proof do you have of what you say?”
“The word of Aetius and the favor of God.”
“The favor of God?”
“How else to explain my possession of the sword of Mars? Have you heard of this relic? I stole it from Attila himself and carried it to Aetius. It is reputed to be a sword of the gods that Attila has used to arouse his people. Now Aetius is using it to rally the West.”
Theodoric looked skeptical. “That’s the sword there, on your belt?”
I smiled at this opportunity to cite more evidence, and lifted out the knife I had taken from Eudoxius. “This is a dagger I took from the Greek. For the sword, imagine something a hundred times larger.”
“Humph.” He shook his head. The hooded figure in the shadows, I noticed, had disappeared. “The Huns are advancing on Aetius, not the Visigoths,” Theodoric insisted.
“What proof do you have of Vandals? I want to know about Vandals, not Huns.”
I hesitated. “Eudoxius himself told me that Gaiseric had pledged to make war with Attila, meaning the Huns and Vandals are one. Gaiseric hopes Attila will crush you.”
“Yet how do you
“We captured the doctor. I was captive in the Hun camp, and when we made off with that sword we took the
