Chanat’s hand tightened a little on Attila’s arm. Then he was gone.
After a few moments Attila rose, stripped to the waist and dropped his bone jerkin to the ground like a thing of trash. He poured a handful of dust over his grey locks, unsheathed his sword, unbuckled his scabbard-belt, slashed the scabbard away from the leather belt and let it drop into the dust. He buckled the belt back round his waist and thrust the naked sword through it. Then he looked around the crude wagon laager.
‘We die here,’ he said. ‘Beside our brother Chanat.’
King Theodoric’s bloodied and trampled body lay on a pyre of splintered timbers. His two sons kept vigil and wept. Some said that the King had been ridden down by the Huns, others that in the furious thick of the fight his own wolf-lords had trampled him. But that was all one now. Amalasuntha had been truly avenged. The Visigothic column, driving into the enemy again and again, had finally broken through to where the three sons of Genseric sat their white horses beneath the banner of the Black Boar, horrified to find that thousands of their own, finest Vandal horsemen had been unable to protect them. The three sons, Frideric, Euric and the idiot Godric, he who had been so briefly married to the Princess Alamasuntha, were roped up, dragged back to the Gothic lines and beheaded. Their heads would be salted and despatched to Genseric in a sack.
As he lay dying, Theodoric had whispered, ‘That is justice. That is Gothic justice for that tyrant among men. Now the spirit of my beloved fair-haired girl will sleep easy in the Courts of Heaven.’ Tears and blood mingled in his white beard. He closed his eyes, and his breathing slowed. Then he laid a great bloodstained hand on young Theodoric’s head. ‘This life is a sigh between two secrets, the sparrow’s flight through the mead-hall beset by night. But Gae? a Wyrd swa hio scel – Fate goes ever as fate must. You, my son, will be a great king of my people. Rule wisely and well, as befits a Visigoth. Torismond’ – he touched his head – ‘you will be a great servant of your brother, and a great man among men. The Lord bless you and keep you. Love your mother and care for her in her last years. As I have loved you, with all my heart.’ His hand slipped down, his head sank back and his breathing stilled.
Long after sunset the wolf-lords’ torches blazed for their dead King, and Aetius came and held a torch, too. They lamented Theodoric and lauded him.
‘Lord and lavisher of rings,
From his golden hoard, on the funeral road.
Bravely he bought them, hardily hoarded them,
Grimly he guarded them, against the eastern kings.
A Lord among men, high his renown,
Let pyre take him, fire enfold him,
Furled in the flames, our king of men!
Heavy our hearts with the mighty memory of him,
Silenced our laughter but fluent our tears,
No torcs will they wear now, our loveliest maidens,
Silver not shine on them, brooch not bedizen them,
Oft and repeatedly, in sad paths of exile,
Deeply will mourn for him, the people’s defender, Bereft they will walk, soft they will talk,
Bowed under woe, high spirits quenched,
Many a spear, dawn-cold to the touch,
Laid down at morning, harp swept in mourning,
Warriors shall not wake to that sorrowful dawning,
The raven wings dark over doomed hills,
Tidings of the eagle, how he rode and made war,
Numberless his enemies, countless the slain,
Lord of the wolf-lords, he harrowed the dead!’
‘A great pyre is burning,’ said Orestes.
Attila turned away from the distant orange glow, not wanting to see. ‘It is as the sorceries said. The enemy’s commander is slain. Aetius is dead.’
But word soon came that it was Theodoric. Aetius still lived.
Attila gripped the messenger’s arm fit to break it. ‘You are sure of this?’
‘He was seen at Theodoric’s pyre.’
Attila’s expression was fathomless. Thus were sorcerers’ prophecies fulfilled.
Nearby, a little-regarded person sat cross-legged in the corral as if at a Hun feast, rather than the worst killing-field in his people’s history.
‘Here is another prophecy for you, my master,’ he said. ‘No man will ever understand a prophecy aright, until it comes to pass. You understand a prophecy only as you understand your own life: looking backwards.’
Attila said not a word, but walked away from that sing-song, tormenting voice. He climbed up on a wagon, drew his bare sword, and stood for a long time staring south through the night: towards the burning pyre of that much-loved, noble-hearted king, laid out on his hide shield amid the prayers of his Christian priests, surrounded by a forest of lances.
It was like the pyre of an ancient hero of legend. Flames wrought havoc in the hot bonehouse, the bone-lappings burst, ribs fell like timbers into the fire. The sons watched their father’s body consumed without flinching. Their sister and father were together again.
As the pyre cracked and fell in a huge blaze of sparks, Torismond looked around for Aetius. Now that his father was gone, he wanted to be near the master-general. But Aetius had slipped away.
He had walked out alone onto the darkened battlefield, nothing but a knife in his hand. Everywhere there came to his ears the groans of the dying. Small groups of surviving Romans soldiers worked tirelessly among them, trying to stretcher them in. But there were many, many more wounded than unscathed. They would be working all night. He would come back soon and work with them. In final exhaustion he might find solace. For the groans burned into him like hot daggers, each one an accusation. Some of the dying called for God, some for their mothers, some for death. Of the three, only death the ever-faithful came to them.
And for what? It had taken the united forces of all of Rome and the Visigothic nation to stop him, the Scourge of God. And that is all they had done. They had not defeated him. They would never defeat him. You might as well try and defeat the wind. As for what men remained to Rome, Aetius had silenced an optio who tried to give him the numbers. He knew them already. Half the Gothic wolf-lords lay dead upon the field. Seven or eight thousand had laid down their lives for Rome. Of the twenty-five thousand in his own army, who had borne the brunt of the Huns’ attack, he doubted if five thousand were left standing. The Herculian and Batavian legions were effectively no more. The Palatine Guard had indeed fought to the last man, guarding the army’s left flank on that hill, the Huns pulling back only when all the Guard were dead and they saw their own horde in full retreat. The superventores were wiped out. The Augustan Horse, barely eighty left… Was it any consolation to know that, however many they had lost, the Huns had lost three times, four times as many?
He stopped beside one of his dead. No, it was no consolation. Captain Malchus had one arm completely severed; his face was a staring mask of blood. Aetius covered that face with a corner of his cloak. The Visigothic wolf-lord Jormunreik lay prone, his right hand still gripping his axe. Aetius reached out and touched his head, just once, wordlessly. He had seen cows touch a dead calf thus, just a gentle nuzzle, and he understood why. And here lay that great hulking brute of a Rhinelander, Knuckles. Aetius remembered the first time they had met, on the road to Azimuntium. Knuckles, son of the Rhenish whore Volumella. Aetius knelt by him and ran his hand down over his face, closing his eyes. ‘No son of a whore,’ he murmured. ‘Bravest of the brave.’
11
Another man moved across the battlefield, too, carrying a bare sword. He cared not. He muttered to himself, of Rome, and of China, moving among the dead. They were all gone into a world of light. Was it not so? Angelic work, then. He did not smile. Eternity’s work.