Attila (19 page)

‘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
Tabula traiana
, the emperor's great rock-cut inscription showing shipping regulations for the Danube.

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.

Their savage custom is to stick a naked sword in the earth and worship it as the God of War

Ammianus Marcellinus,
The Histories
,
c
. 395

Crowning its huge timber plinth, the Sacred Scimitar glittered in the pale spring sunshine. Looking at the shining blade, Attila smiled to himself as, accompanied by his guide, a one-eyed, smiling little Greek, he rode out of the Hun camp at the start of his long journey to the north-east. Years previously, the sword had been gifted to him by a herdsman who had dug it from the ground after one of his heifers cut its leg on the sharp point hidden in the grass. Attila had laid the thing aside and forgot it until, on becoming co-ruler with his brother Bleda, he had considered its potential as a symbol to enhance his kingship. For the sword possessed a strange quality which, in the eyes of unsophisticated nomads, gave it magical powers. Though made of iron, it never rusted.
¹
When cleaned after its removal from the earth in which it had lain for unknown decades, it was as bright and unblemished as though it were fresh from the swordsmith's forge, an appearance it had retained ever since. Traditionally, his people had worshipped a naked sword stuck in the ground. The Sacred Scimitar, imbued with both ancient custom and magic power, could, Attila realized, be valuable in building his personal legend.

Attila's production of the scimitar had created an effect beyond his expectations. After a trial period, in which it was exposed to the elements and observed not to rust, it was accepted by the Huns as a manifestation of their warlike god Murduk, and deemed to bestow on its owner semi-divine status. This, Attila thought,
must give him a considerable advantage in the power struggle which he saw developing between himself and Bleda.

Since becoming king, a plan for his people's destiny had begun to form in Attila's mind: a vision of a great nation whose homeland would span the vast steppes extending between the empires of the Romans and the Chinese. In order to survive, and not, like innumerable nomad peoples in the past, flourish briefly, only to be absorbed or annihilated by the next westward-advancing wave, a nation must develop written laws, and institutions. Without these things, Attila believed, there could be no long-lasting stability. Rome had lasted for hundreds of years, China for thousands; with a viable constitution, and the energy of its teeming population productively channelled, there was no reason why the Hun Empire should not outlive them both. Was there? And who better than his friend Aetius, now ruler of the West Romans, to help him build the foundations for such an empire?

But Attila knew that his brother, unless kept in check, would compromise his vision. Jealous, vindictive, insatiably ambitious, Bleda made up in cunning what he lacked in intelligence. It was inconceivable he would co-operate with Attila in the furtherance of his plan. Therefore he must be sidelined. Two things should help to ensure that: Attila's possession of the Sword of Murduk; and, if his current journey bore sweet fruit, the immense boost his prestige could receive. If the fabled sage and seer Wu Tze were to predict favourable auguries for Attila's reign, that would confer on the king an authority decreed by Fate.

‘Callisthenes of Olbia' – it has a certain ring, you must agree. You won't have heard of me, of course. Yet. But you will, you will. And why is that? I hear you ask. The answer, my friends, is because I have decided to cast in my lot with that of one who I predict will prove to be the greatest man the world has ever seen – to wit, Attila, nephew of the late King Rua, and now joint ruler of the nation of the Huns. Lest you be tempted to dismiss my claim as mere sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, let me explain.

I am what you might call a man of business (a definition I prefer to ‘merchant') from a long line of traders settled
in Olbia, a Greek outpost city near the north coast of the Pontus Euxinus,
²
now in the Huns' domain. My family were among the original settlers when Olbia was founded, a century and more before the Graeco-Persian Wars. The place was set up with the sole purpose of commerce, in which activity it was extraordinarily successful, establishing trading links throughout the Scythian world
³
and beyond – to India and China. One of my ancestors, another Callisthenes, was chief supplier to Alexander the Great (not, I hasten to add, the Callisthenes who paid with his life for daring to criticize the Macedonian's adoption of Persian regalia and mores). He ensured a constant flow of supplies, not only for Alexander's army but for the flood of scientists, settlers, officials, and artisans that followed in its wake to consolidate his empire – the same categories of men that Attila will himself need when he implements his Great Plan.

You see, since choosing me (on account of my contacts throughout Scythia, and – though I say it myself – unrivalled knowledge of its peoples, tongues, terrain, and climate) to be his guide on his present journey to consult the seer Wu Tze, he has confided to me something of his ambitions. An Empire of the Steppes, bridging the realms of Rome and China: a virtually empty land providing a splendid opportunity for the eastern expansion of his people. What the Germans, in their drive to claim new territories within the Roman frontiers, call
Völkerwanderung
. What a man! What a vision! But to turn that vision into reality, he will need to build upon the vast network of trading links and multifarious interest groups that permeate Scythia. In other words, he will need me.

But that is for the future. This present journey of some two thousand leagues (or, if you prefer, six thousand Roman miles) to the shores of the Baikal lake, involving the crossing of six mighty rivers – the Borysthenes,
⁴
the Tanais,
⁵
the Rha,
⁷
the Bantisus,
⁸
the Yenisei, and the Lena – might seem to the ordinary traveller an immense and daunting undertaking. But to a Hun, and to a Greek acquainted with the region, it is nothing. For it follows all the way a fine and level road, greater by far than any the Romans ever made. A road a thousand miles wide and paved with grass, extending all the way from Old Dacia
⁹
to China: the Highway of the Steppes. Rivers apart, there are only two natural obstacles, the Carpathus and Imaus Mons,
¹⁰
and they both easy to surmount, both traversed by passes. Travelling light, with remounts, the round trip of four thousand leagues should take no longer than three months, four at most, for the Hun horses are sturdy and tireless, able to cover a hundred miles a day, more if ridden hard. Such a trip's only to be undertaken from May to August, the northern steppes being gripped by winter in the other months, when the cold – at least beyond the Urals – can be really terrible.

And now, preamble concluded, I, Callisthenes, a Greek of Olbia, trader extraordinary, traveller, natural philosopher (and, if you will, both an Aristotle and an Arrian to

Attila's Alexander) begin this chronicle,
The Attiliad, a Scythian Odyssey
, in the twenty-seventh year of the reign of the second Theodosius, Emperor of the East Romans.
¹¹

XVII Kalends Junii.
¹²
Today crossed our third great river, the Rha some hundred leagues above its entry into the Mare Caspium. The stream here above a mile in width, which made the crossing lengthy; but the absence of strong currents, and the abundance of shoals and banks, allowed our horses to swim over safely and in stages. As far as eye can see, gently undulating plains clothed with rich grass, and destitute of trees; yet in the bottoms of the deep ravines concealed by the undulations of the steppes, a variety of trees and shrubs – willows, wild cherries, wild apricots, and
others. For several days have noticed large mounds of earth up to forty feet in height. Ancient tombs?