Hun arrows came down onto the column as soon as their charge was spotted. But with shields raised and Spangenhelms lowered, they sustained little damage. And their huge chargers, despite having galloped all day, still had the power to gallop once more, thundering over the churned and deep-scored field, divots gouged out, manes flying, lances massed and lowered.
The Huns started to buckle and fall back as the thunderous column approached, but they could only fall back on their own rear ranks. They were packed too tightly to move, pushing and panicking and crying out when the wolf-lords slammed into them. And the Visigoths drove through with such ferocity that they were soon lost to Roman view, only the occasional banner showing above their heads.
For some minutes it was impossible to say what had happened. Meanwhile the last of the frontier legions had fought themselves to an exhausted standstill. Here and there, Hun horsemen came close enough to whip the pikes out of the ground and ride in over them. The centre, the very breastplate of the Roman force, was coming apart.
‘Send in every last man!’ roared Aetius. ‘Hold that line! Keep formation at all costs! Not a man to break or we are lost!’
The last few remnants, the Batavian special forces, the Breton volunteers, and the two hundred Celts with Lucius at their head, pushed forward through the ranks and gave their last-ditch support to the exhausted and ravaged legions. A pocket of Hun horsemen had broken through, wheeled, and were charging at the Roman front line from behind, curved swords whirling. The men looked over their shoulders and cried out, knowing they were about to be surrounded and cut down, whatever they did. It was at this moment in a battle, always always, when men broke and ran to save their skins and formation crumbled, that the day was lost.
But now the Huns themselves cried out and turned again to defend themselves. Two Roman horsemen rode into them at full pelt. One actually wielded a huge billhook from the saddle, whirling the long handle over his head and slicing through men’s chests and throats, roaring and spattered with blood.
The Hun horsemen fell apart. One tried to leap over the Roman line and flee, but a huge fellow with a weighted club knocked him clean out of his saddle, then drove his face in with a single stomp of his left boot. As the Roman turned back to regain the safety of his line, he reeled. The curved spike of a chekan sliced across his skull and he fell forward, his face a thick mask of blood. The Hun warrior, an old but muscular fellow with flying long grey hair and fine moustaches, galloped in again, swinging low off the side off his horse, thighs clamped tight, and was about to swing a second time with his chekan when a lean eastern swordsman leaped to stand over the fallen club-wielder, poised askance, sword level as the desert horizon. At the last second he ducked, stood again, whirled round and sliced his sword blade though a wide arc in a single sinuous movement. The old warrior flung his head back and howled, the chekan flying out of his hand as he clutched his thigh, cut through leather and flesh to the bone. His exhausted horse slowed to an absent-minded trot as it felt its rider’s grip loosen. The easterner sprinted after him, his sword still whirling. Then he stopped abruptly, and let the old warrior ride slowly back to the Hun lines, slumped in his wooden saddle.
The easterner looked down at the fellow with the club. He was kneeling, stunned, with a second wound in his big shoulder, where an arrowhead was buried deep.
Arapovian called to him.
He looked up and grinned slowly. ‘Fuckin’ top of the world, my lissom Parsee comrade!’ Then he was back on his feet once more, laying his club on his shoulder, turning to face the onslaught yet again.
The Roman line curved and billowed, split apart and came togther again. Men fell forwards and backwards, screaming, clutching throats and chests. Many lay in the mud, dying, and many of those, even the most battle-hardened of the legions, ended their lives as they had begun: crying for their mothers. No medics came; they were all slain. None of their comrades came, either; they were all slain or fighting. The sun was sliding down the sky, and the field was mown flat like a harvest field.
Aetius crawled out from under his third fallen horse, helmet and sword both gone, and hauled himself up onto another sagging beast standing haggard, nuzzling bloody grass, desperate to eat but sickened. He stared around. His army was almost gone.
But across the field… the enemy army was thinning out. The flanks were receding. There was a huge concave bow near the centre, and the limitless depth that the horde had shown this morning, stretching back and back into the blue distance, had shrunk away. They were stretched thin and to breaking. Away in the east there was a dust-cloud burnished gold in the setting sun, so many were retreating.
Nearer, before that haze of dust, there was a gleaming serpent of armoured horsemen: the wolf-lords curving into the scattered flank of the Hun line yet again. They rolled it up. Before Aetius’ dust-blurred eyes, the Hun line folded in on itself, collapsed. The wolf-lords drove on, too tired to gallop now, only trotting, but with lances still lowered, implacable. The Huns broke and fled.
Night seemed to fall fast on that day. The sun had seen enough.
Aetius, too, had seen enough, but it was not over. His work was not done yet. Runners were too few. He must find more. He called for a wagon to be drawn up and piled with saddles and he climbed onto it. A filthy fellow passed beneath him, knelt, cleaned his sword in a rare patch of unsullied grass.
‘You, man,’ Aetius called to him. ‘Up here. Lend me your eyes.’
The fellow came up and stared north.
‘You,’ muttered Aetius.
‘I,’ said Arapovian. After a moment he said, ‘Here is an irony. Attila is piling up a wagonload of saddles like ours.’ He glanced at Aetius. ‘How emulous he is of you in all he does.’
‘What else?’
‘They’re drawing their remaining wagons into a circle, the oldest Hun tactic. But so many have fled that the circle is small. Why does he not retreat?’
‘Because he thinks we will fall on him by night and destroy him.’
‘We would if we had any men left.’
Arapovian was immediately sorry for his cruel joke. Aetius bowed his head and raised his hand to his eyes. Arapovian said softly, ‘But the battle is over.’
Aetius looked up again and out over the carnage field. ‘The battle is indeed over,’ he said. The note in his voice wrung the Armenian’s heart. ‘And both sides have lost.’
10
Attila knelt in the dust beside the dying man.
Orestes, standing behind him, said, ‘The body of the Lord Geukchu cannot be found, but he was seen fighting to the last before the Roman line. Noyan fell before the Visigothic horses.’
Attila barely reacted. His face was ashen-grey and deep-furrowed, his cheeks sunken, his eyes flat. He reached his strong hand under the fallen warrior and raised his head a little.
Chanat’s eyes fluttered. Blood continued to flow from the deep swordcut in his thigh, tight-bandaged though it was. He managed to lay his hand upon Attila’s arm. ‘Great Tanjou,’ he whispered.
Attila lowered his head and his straggling grey locks brushed the back of Chanat’s hand. ‘How far we have ridden together, old friend, first of my Chosen Men. That you were the first to meet me upon the plain of my homeland when I rode out of exile. That we rode against the Kutrigur Huns together, and forged our People into a mighty brotherhood. That Chanat the Chivalrous, the Merciful, made us turn back and fight for that forsaken village in the desert, for his great heart was greatly moved. None of this will be forgotten in the songs of the People, my brother Chanat, son of Lord Subotai, proud father of the warrior Aladar, who chose his death before the walls of Constantinople.’