“He’s trying to spare the men’s horses for the battle.”
Anthus put his helmet back on. “The battle is here, now, if he would just come to it! I’ve got the enemy’s butt in my face! Not Huns, but other vermin.”
“Gepids, lord,” one of his lieutenants said. “Hun vassals.”
“Yes, King Ardaric, a worm of a man hoping for a scrap of Hun favor. His troops look like they’ve crawled from under a rock. I’m going to put them back.”
“Aetius would prefer that you wait,” I repeated.
“And Aetius is not a Frank! It isn’t his homes that are being burned! It isn’t his brother who has gone over to Attila! We wait for no man and fear none. This is our land now.
Half my men have lost families to these invaders, and they starve for vengeance.”
“If Attila turns—”
“Then I and my Franks will kill him, too! What about it, Roman? Do you want to wait another day and yet another, hoping the enemy will go away? Or do you want to fight him this afternoon, with the sun at our backs and the grass as high as the bellies of our horses? I heard you boast you’d cut your way to your woman! Let’s see it!”
“Aetius knew you wouldn’t listen to me,” I confessed.
“Which means he was sending you to battle!” He grinned, his eyes glinting beside his nose guard. “You’re lucky, Alabanda, to taste war as a Frank.”
Ram’s horns were lifted to begin the call. Heavy Frankish cavalry trotted forward, each kite-shaped shield bearing a different design and color, their lances thick as axles and tall as saplings. The knights’ hands were gloved in dark leather, and their mail had the leaden color of a winter pond.
Their helmets were peaked, and the cheek guards were tied so tightly against chins that those who shaved in the Roman fashion had white lines pressed into their faces. Barbarian long hair and beards, I realized, served as padding.
As I joined them a hundred smells assaulted me—of horseflesh and droppings, dust and sweat, high hay and tim-othy, honed metal and hardwood shafts. War is a stink of sweat and oil. It was noisy in a cavalry formation, too, a vast clanking and clumping as the big horses moved forward, men shouting to each other or boasting of their prowess in war or with women. Many of the words had the high, clipped sound of men under tension, afraid and yet master-ing their fear, waiting for the charge they’d trained their whole lives for. They were as different from the Huns and Gepids as a bull from a wolf: tall, thick-limbed men as pale as cream.
Only a minority of the Franks could afford the expense of horse and heavier armor. Thousands more were paralleling the wedge of horsemen by loping on foot across tall grain.
Their mail shirts ended at thigh instead of calf and their scabbards rocked and banged against their hips. These would take the Gepids on the ground.
Our foe was an undifferentiated mass of brown ahead, bunched against a slow but deep pastoral stream at which they’d paused to drink. Half had already waded the chest-high water to join Attila’s main force to the east. Half were on the near bank closest to us. I saw that Anthus was not just hotheaded but a tactician, whose scouts had told him of this opportunity. The enemy formation was divided by deep water.
“See?” the king said to himself as much as to anyone.
“Their cursed bowmen won’t want to risk crossing to our side. Their distance will give us an edge.”
Now the enemy seemed to be milling with indecision like a disturbed ants’ nest, some urging a quick retreat across the creek, which would turn it into a protective moat, and others a braver fight with the oncoming Franks. Attila’s orders to regroup had been obeyed with bitterness by warriors used to driving all before them. And now their foes had come to them: not the rumored vast army of Aetius but just a wing of eager and reckless Franks who’d pushed too far ahead!
We watched King Ardaric, marked by his banners of royalty, ride off looking for Attila, apparently wanting the Hun to tell him what to do.
It was just as Anthus hoped. “Charge!”
I had expected more fear, but what drunken pleasure to join them! The sheer power and momentum of the Frankish cavalry was intoxicating, and never had I felt more alive than when galloping ahead with this stampede of knights.
The ground shook as we pounded, and there was a great cry on both sides as the distance closed, the Frankish horse and the more numerous Gepid infantry hurriedly forming a line.
When we neared, they shot and threw, a heave of javelins meant to swerve our charge. There was a curling wave as some of our foremost horsemen collided with this bristle and fell, skidding into the Gepid ranks. Then the rest of us crashed over and past them, shredding the enemy line, the Franks spearing and hacking all the way to the bank of the river before turning to take the survivors from behind. The violence of the attack was a shock to the Gepids, who had become used to having their victims flee. The big Frankish swords cleaved enemy spears and helmets in two, even as Gepid infantry desperately speared the flanks of Anthus’s horses, spilling some of his knights on the ground where they could be overwhelmed. For a perilous moment the Gepids vastly outnumbered us, but then Frankish foot began swarming in support, pouring into the edges of the fight with great cries amid a cacophonous beating of drums.
For long minutes it was pitched battle that could have gone either way. I used my horse to butt and unbalance the Gepid infantry, striking down with my sword, but I also saw Frankish nobles swallowed by the maelstrom. Then the fury of the Franks began to tell, Gepid courage began to break, and the enemy was pushed to the water. There they realized their peril. The bank was steep and if they slid down it they couldn’t properly fight, so their choice was either to abandon their comrades and swim for safety or be speared or shot by Frankish bows where they stood. They began shouting for help to their comrades on the far bank. Some plunged in to come to their aid while others called for withdrawal before it was too late. It was chaos, and the Gepid generals, accustomed to being under the domineering thrall of Hun warlords, seemed at a loss whether to counterattack or withdraw. As more and more Franks came up to the battle, the beleaguered Gepid troops became packed and they panicked.
A regiment of Huns rode up on the far side and began firing arrows in support, but, as Anthus had hoped, distance and the melee of combat made the volleys ineffective. The Hun archers killed as many Gepids as they did Franks. Had the horsemen crossed upstream and circled to the Frankish rear, they would have had better effect, but they were loathe to be cut off from Attila.
Yet the Gepids on the far shore were equally reluctant to abandon their kinsmen by retreating. They fed themselves piecemeal into the fray, plunging into the water and wading or thrashing slowly across, some picked off by arrows, some simply drowning. The survivors clambered up the Frankish side to try to stiffen the barbarian line even as it was dis-solving. This prolonged the fight but did not change it. Our cavalry chewed huge gaps in the Gepid formations, swords and axes hewing down at the tangled footmen and grinding them under hoof. Meanwhile, Frankish infantry exploited the gaps to take the Gepids from the side and rear. The fight began turning to a rout, and then the rout into slaughter. Attila’s henchmen broke to plunge back into the river, desperately pushing, and Frankish archers tormented them from the bank. As each invader tried to save his own life, most died in a waterway that had turned red.
Our victory won on the western shore, a few of Anthus’s cavalry splashed across to continue the pursuit; but now the enemy had the advantage of a high bank and greater numbers, and these impetuous Franks either died or were forced to a quick retreat. Finally the Gepids themselves drew back farther, both sides temporarily disengaging from the embat-tled river, and this preliminary battle died. Raggedly forming, the shattered rear guard of Attila’s army shambled up and over the far hill. The supporting Huns, mustered from Attila’s main force, rode back and forth on the crest as if to continue the fight, but finally thought better of it. The day’s shadows were long, the western sun was in their eyes to blind bow aim, and they could see the shine of other Roman formations coming up in support of the Franks. Better to wait for the morrow, when Attila could bring his full might to bear.
They turned, and vanished from the crest.
I caught my breath. My arm ached from the shock of striking shield, helmet, and yielding flesh. My sword was red and myself, miraculously, unhurt. I looked back at the carpet of bodies, thousands of them, and was appalled to realize that this was only a beginning. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen battle corpses, of course, but the sheer number sobered me. The bodies lay still and strangely deflated.
There was no mistaking the dead.
