AETIUS, UNLIKE MOST men in their later middle age, had not gained a paunch through good wine and fine food. His corded muscles spoke of constant exercise and his brown eyes sparkled bright with vitality. In other ways he did look his age: his white hair was cropped close to hide how sparse it was, and his hawk-like nose stood out from sunken cheeks that suggested missing teeth beneath.
Hagan felt his lip curl. He longed to scratch the flesh of his forearm. He had spent a lot of time in the presence of killers but being in the same room as this butcher made his skin crawl. For a moment he felt light-headed. His gaze flicked around the room for anything that he could use as a weapon; something to stab Aetius through his scrawny chest or batter his skull in with. He knew, however, that even if he managed to do that he would not leave the villa alive: two bodyguards in full military armour stood beside Aetius’s couch. Even if they did not kill him he doubted they would let him escape.
Hagan wondered what age the Magister Militum must be now. Well over fifty winters, that was for sure. Anyone who survived that long in the upper ranks of Roman society must be very shrewd indeed. Shrewd and dangerous.
Arminius snapped to attention and gave the Roman salute.
For an instant Hagan wondered if this was not just an instinctive reaction born from many years drilling in the Roman Army. Could Arminius still in fact be in the pay of Rome? He knew of such milites arcani, secret soldiers who gathered information for the Empire and worked to further its aims. He never thought Arminius could be one, however. Then again, the line between arcani, mercenaries and spies was often a very vague one. Either way, Hagan felt no desire to salute the general himself.
Arminius relaxed then laid a large hand on Hagan’s shoulder.
‘I’m sure this man needs no introduction, Hagan,’ the mercenary commander said. ‘We both served under him for many years in Gaul, Armorica, Hispania, all over.’
‘Oh, I know who he is,’ Hagan said. ‘Though I never came this close to him with so few guards in all my years of service. He is the Magister Militum, the highest-ranking officer in the Roman Army. And he is the man who annihilated my folk and our kingdom at the battle of Vorbetomagus.’
He heard Arminius take a sharp breath at this display of disrespect. Aetius however raised an eyebrow and made a wry smile. He rose from his couch and stood before Hagan. Hagan found it a little amusing to see how much shorter this greatest of Romans was than he. Aetius tilted his head back so he still looked down his nose at the barbarian, which made him look faintly ridiculous.
‘So you really are a Burgundar,’ the Magister Militum said. He had the same nasal upper-class Roman accent that Hagan remembered. ‘Quite a rare creature to find, these days.’
‘Thanks to you,’ Hagan said.
Aetius held up a forefinger.
‘That is a truer statement than you think,’ he said. ‘If it were not for me intervening to stop them, I doubt the Huns would have left any of you alive.’
‘That’s not how I remember things,’ Hagan said, clenching his fists.
‘Easy, lad,’ Arminius said. ‘Remember this is the Magister Militum. He could have us both publicly flogged or sold to the Circus as slaves.’
‘Don’t worry, Arminius,’ Aetius said. He fixed Hagan with a glare of his dark eyes. ‘This man’s anger is understandable. If it means anything to you, I also regard what happened at Vorbetomagus as an abomination. The Huns got out of hand. They overstepped the mark and exceeded the orders they were given. They were also obsessed with settling some score with you Burgundars. You killed one of their kings. Oktar, was it? And you stole something… a magic sword?’
Hagan frowned. Then he recalled tales of a raid the Burgundars had made on a Hun encampment near the Rhine when Hagan was a child. It was around the time they had also taken the faith of the Christians. King Gundahar had attacked the Huns in the night and killed many of them. The king had said that this victory was proof the new God favoured them and there would be no turning back to the old heathen idols. The Burgundars had become very rich then as well, which was taken as further proof of God’s approval.
‘They acted as they would have in any barbarian war,’ Aetius continued. ‘They did not know the expectations or morals expected of a civilised army.’
Hagan’s jaw dropped open a little. Was this true or a trick?
‘They were in the employ of Rome,’ he said.
‘Of course they were,’ the magister said. ‘What age are you now?’
‘I believe I have lived through twenty-nine winters,’ Hagan said. ‘What’s that got to do with anything.’
‘Twenty-nine? So you must have been fifteen when we attacked Vorbetomagus, yes?’
Hagan nodded.
‘Well, when I was fifteen I achieved the role of tribune. It’s a minor status on the Cursus Honorum but important enough that I could be used as a hostage. Within a few years I was sent to the court of King Uldin of the Huns, Oktar’s predecessor. It was a dark time then. Rome was on her knees because of the damned Goths. The last thing she needed was the Huns attacking her as well. So I was sent there as guarantee of a peace agreement, an assurance that we would not attack them and they would not attack us. I’m sure life wasn’t easy for you after Vorbetomagus, but can you imagine what it was like for me when I was that age? Living every day treated like an honoured guest, but knowing that if the winds of politics changed direction you would be killed – and believe me, the Huns are very creative when it comes to killing people in the most cruel and painful manner.’
‘You expect me to feel sorry for you?’ Hagan said. His upper lip curled again.
‘No,’ Aetius said. ‘I don’t care what you feel about me. I am merely trying to give you some context, some background so you can get a better understanding of things. I am not one of those Romans who think all barbarians are stupid. I know different. I have lived among barbarians and they are perhaps ignorant, but not stupid. It was when I lived with the Huns that I saw what an effective fighting force they were. Huns are born in the saddle. They can ride and shoot a bow as soon as they can walk. They move faster than the wind and cover vast distances. It only made sense that we Romans should employ that strength against our own enemies rather than have it deployed against us. When I returned to Ravenna I urged the Senate and the Emperor to use the Huns as mercenaries and I was right. With their help we’ve driven back the Goths, put down any number of rebellions and driven back a whole horde of barbarians desperate to get inside the Empire and plunder our wealth.’
‘You sound like you admire them,’ Hagan said.
‘I respect them,’ Aetius clasped his hands behind his back. ‘I do not underestimate them. As any good general should of his foes. I know what they are capable of. You saw that yourself at Vorbetomagus. We were only there to bring you into line, not annihilate the whole nation. Once defeated you were to have been offered foederati status and become a client state of Rome. We need soldiers for the Army and you would have provided a buffer against other barbarians who wanted to cross the Rhine. The Huns, however, decided instead that they would try to kill every man, woman and child. They managed to slaughter perhaps twenty thousand of you. It was shocking. If I hadn’t managed to stop them there would not be a single Burgundar left alive today. Including you.’
‘Am I supposed to be grateful?’ Hagan said. His eyes narrowed. ‘And now your great allies have turned against you.’
Aetius sighed. He looked at the floor, then with his hands still clasped behind his back, paced four paces to the right, then returned to stand before Hagan. He looked up, cocking his head backwards once again. Hagan felt as though the dark eyes were boring into his own, trying to assess him, trying to probe into his very soul.
‘Yes,’ the magister said after a moment. ‘Not long after Vorbetomagus, King Ruga of the Huns died. His nephews, Bleda and Attila, took power. It is the Hun tradition that they have two rulers, usually brothers. Uldin ruled alongside Charaton. Ruga ruled alongside Oktar until Oktar was killed by your tribe. Joint power was not enough for Attila, though. He murdered his brother and now rules the Huns alone. He is an arrogant bastard. And treacherous to boot. I knew him as a child. He was always the same.’
The Magister Militum shook his head, his irritation clear. He clicked his fingers at a lurking slave bearing a tray with a wine jug and goblets, who hurried over. Aetius filled a goblet and passed it to Hagan.
‘A drink,’ he said, pouring one for himself and one for Arminius as well.
Aetius took a swig from his goblet as if trying to dispel a bad taste in his mouth.
‘Three years ago Attila made a proclamation forbidding any Huns from entering service with the Roman Army,’ Aetius said. His voice was filled with bitterness and Hagan could understand why. The Romans had come to rely on the Huns for support. This must have been quite a blow.
‘Despite this provocation, we were still friendly towards them,’ Aetius continued. ‘Attila crucified his personal secretary because of a scandal and I even sent him a replacement. A good man. A Gaul. Do you know what Attila sent me in return? A deformed midget!’
Aetius ground his teeth and Hagan thought how often the fates of nations so often depended on personal spats between two powerful men.
‘Now Attila has unleashed his armies against Rome,’ the Magister said when he had regained control of his emotions. ‘He has brought the Eastern Empire to its knees and now rides west. He sweeps everyone in his path aside. No one can stop him. Now he threatens Ravenna itself.’
Hagan could not help a little smirk creep onto his lips.
‘This doesn’t surprise me. There is a saying among my folk,’ he said, ‘that a wolf can sometimes look like a dog but you should never trust him. It seems this Attila was playing a very long game. First he got you to depend on his support, then he turned on you when you needed it most.’
‘Ah! the simple wisdom of the barbarian,’ Aetius said. ‘If only it was down to just the ambitious greed of one man. Unfortunately the Emperor’s slut of a sister, dismayed at the prospect of having to keep her legs shut, also sent Attila her ring along with a plea that he come and rescue her.’
Hagan could not help but burst out laughing.
‘Yes, you may well laugh,’ Aetius said. ‘She has made Rome the laughing stock of the world. The whole reason for first the Emperor demanding the Lady Honoria remains celibate, then marrying her to a safe, reliable member of the Senate, was so no man could exploit marriage to her to set themselves up as a rival to the Emperor. Attila, of course, seized his opportunity. He insists her letter is a proposal of marriage.’
‘I see the problem, at least for you anyway,’ Hagan said. ‘Attila actually has just cause for his war. If he marries the Lady Honoria he has a legitimate claim to be Emperor. That’s quite a dowry she has brought him.’
‘It’s a mess. An embarrassment. This cannot be news to you?’ Aetius said, narrowing his eyes. ‘The scandal went through the Empire like a wildfire. The war that has resulted from it has killed thousands already.’
‘Since leaving the Army I’ve been travelling beyond the boundaries of the Empire,’ Hagan said. ‘I heard rumours of great wars going on and peoples being displaced, but war is always with us. I paid no attention to them.’
‘Yes, you were in Britannia,’ Aetius said. ‘Working for Arminius here.’
Hagan nodded.
‘How are they doing up there since the legions withdrew?’
‘Not well,’ Hagan said. ‘The Britons are making the same mistake you’ve made: employing foreign mercenaries to fight their wars for them. It’s only a matter of time before the Saxons take advantage of their paymasters’ weakness just like the Huns have done to you.’
Aetius pursed his lips as if considering whether or not to ignore Hagan’s blatant provocation.
‘We’re here guarding a delegation from Britannia requesting Roman military help,’ Arminius said. ‘They are who is waiting outside, Lord Aetius.’
‘Well, they can wait until we finish our business,’ the general said. ‘I’m afraid I’ve disappointing news for them anyway: they’ll have to look to their own defences. We have our own problems to deal with. Come: look at this.’
Aetius went to a nearby table on which a scroll of parchment was unrolled. Hagan could see that it had pictures drawn on it.
‘You are familiar with maps?’ Aetius said.
Hagan nodded. ‘We were given route maps in the army for finding our way on marches.’
‘This is a little more sophisticated than those,’ Aetius said. ‘It was drawn using the best of Greek craft and knowledge. It shows the world. Now you see this?’
He pointed to a shape drawn on the map that looked not unlike a human leg.
‘That is Italia,’ Aetius continued. ‘Rome is here near the bottom and Ravenna is near the top here. It is surrounded on three sides by the great sea we Romans call the Mare Nostrum. So if you want to invade, and you are not going to come by water, you must advance from the north. And Huns use horses, not ships. Now look here.’
He placed a finger further up the map, to the right and above Ravenna.
‘This is the land of the Huns. It lies to the north and east of us here,’ he said. ‘Between the Danube and Don rivers. I said Attila has attacked the Roman Empire, but here is where he went.’
The Roman planted his forefinger to the left of where it had been.
‘They crossed the Rhine and sacked Divodurum, then the cities of Remorum and then Tungrorum,’ he said, moving his finger in an arc across the north of the map. ‘The loss of life has been terrible. He spares no one. Women, children, monks, nuns, bishops or priests. At the rate he’s creating martyrs the Lord will soon need to start building extra mansions in Heaven to house them all. People are starting to say the end of the world is coming.’
Hagan looked at the curved outline Aetius had drawn across the top of the map and frowned. Despite his dislike of Aetius he found himself intrigued.
‘If he wanted to attack Rome surely he should have gone straight south-west,’ Hagan said, rubbing his chin which was beginning to sprout a fashionable Roman beard. ‘He seems to be going by a very roundabout route.’
Aetius snapped his fingers and pointed at Hagan.
‘Lucky for us,’ he said, his dark eyes flashing. ‘The direct route is mountainous and very hard to take horses through. But our luck will not last. When he is done sacking Germania and Gaul and has taken everything he can in loot and plunder, he will come for Ravenna. Do you know what lies here?’
Aetius planted his forefinger at a spot directly between Ravenna and the north, directly on the path Attila would have to take to attack Ravenna.
Hagan shook his head.
‘The kingdom of the Burgundars,’ Aetius said.
Hagan frowned. He felt his previous ire beginning to return.
‘Is this some sort of joke?’ he said. ‘There is no kingdom of the Burgundars any more. You made sure of that!’
‘I forget you have been away for some time,’ Aetius said, clasping his hands behind his back. ‘You clearly are not aware then that while the slaughter at Vorbetomagus was indeed great, not all the Burgundars died that day. They were scattered to the four winds, the forests and mountains, but some survived. Gunderic, the son of your king, did great service to us in the Roman cavalry. He saved a consul’s son in action and won a medal. He was discharged from the Army with honours and requested what was left of his people be given a homeland. Given what had passed, it was the least I could do, so I granted the Burgundars a foederati treaty and resettled them in the province of Maxima Sequanorum, beside the great lake at the foot of the Alpes.’
Aetius was now standing straight-backed, chest puffed out, one hand clasped over his heart. It looked to Hagan like he was making a speech to the Senate. It added to the sense of unreality that gripped Hagan’s mind. For years he had thought there was nothing left of his kindred, that he was the last of his kind, or at least one of an ever-dwindling few dispersed across the face of the world. Now Aetius was telling him that not only had some of his people survived, they even had a new homeland, all under the leadership of his childhood friend Gunderic. For the first time in years, he felt hope spring into his heart.
Then he remembered Gunderic running away from their shield formation on that last day at Vorbetomagus, leaving them all exposed to attack so he could surrender and save himself. Hagan had witnessed it. Would the new king want reminding of that? There was something else as well…
‘Why are you telling me this? What do you want?’
Aetius’s face fell into a frown again.
‘Unfortunately it seems Gunderic is as reliable as his father,’ the Magister said. ‘Brave? Undeniably. But rash and fickle too. Before Attila made his move the Burgundars closed their borders. All Roman officials were expelled. They stopped paying Imperial taxes. They don’t send the levies for the Army they are obliged to. They expelled their bishops and priests.’
Hagan frowned. That was indeed strange. He recalled the Roman and Burgundar priests hurling abuse at each other before the battle at Vorbetomagus.
‘Perhaps my folk have finally decided to reject the Arian heresy,’ he said. In his time in the Army all public religious ceremonies were that of the Roman Church – the Faith of the Emperor. There had been no exceptions. The private religion of most of the Germanic tribes, who by and large followed the Arian version of the faith, was tolerated, though frowned upon, provided it remained private. ‘Don’t you have spies in this Burgundar country you speak of? I can’t believe it’s really closed to you.’
‘We had spies, but they disappeared,’ Aetius said. ‘We sent a new one recently and he vanished like the others.’
‘What about merchants, travellers?’ Hagan said. ‘No place can be completely cut off.’
‘Indeed,’ Aetius said. ‘We get news through sources like that, but whoever comes in and out of the land is closely watched. One thing we have heard is that somehow the court of King Gunderic is fabulously wealthy. The Burgundars have purchased the best of weapons and armour. That makes no sense. Their kingdom was destroyed. Vorbetomagus was plundered by the Huns. They took just about everything that wasn’t nailed down.
‘We always were a hard-working people,’ Hagan said. ‘I’d say we’ve built our wealth back to what it was.’
Aetius shook his head.
‘The new land is in the midst of the mountains,’ he said. ‘There is no source of wealth from crops or trade. There are no mines apart from salt mines and they are too high in the mountains to be able to profit from their exploitation. They’ve not been to war so it isn’t booty either. No – wherever this sudden wealth came from, I doubt it was from hard work and industry.’
‘So why don’t you send the legions in to bring these rebellious Burgundars back in line?’ Hagan said with a sneer. ‘Isn’t that what you normally do?’
‘Normally, yes,’ Aetius said, seeming to take Hagan’s sarcasm at face value. ‘And it may come to that if we are forced to. But we have bigger problems to worry about right now. I can’t divert soldiers from the north unless we are sure we absolutely have to. We need every soldier for the coming fight against Attila. But make no mistake, your Burgundar friends are about to become very important in that fight. They may have cut themselves off from the world but the world is about to come crashing back in on them.’
‘What do you mean?’ Hagan said.
‘Attila will soon finish Gaul and turn south, heading for Ravenna,’ Aetius said. ‘I plan to take the army north and meet him in battle. I think we have enough troops but it will be a very close-run thing. He now has most of our damned cavalry, for a start.’
‘What’s this to do with me?’ Hagan said. His flat tone betrayed that he already knew the answer.
‘You are a Burgundar. You are one of them,’ Aetius said. ‘You can travel there. You know them. You will be welcomed back as one of their own. I want you to ask them to join us in the coming battle. Help us stop Attila.’
Hagan looked at Aetius, open-mouthed. Then at Arminius, then back to the Magister Militum.
‘First you tell me that my folk, who you and your allies tried to destroy, not only still exist but are thriving,’ Hagan said. ‘Then you want me to ask them to fight for you?’
Aetius turned down the corners of his mouth, folded his arms and nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We need them to. Rome cannot do this alone. We need every ally we can get if we are to beat Attila. So far I’ve had pledges of support from the Alans, Saxons, Armoricans and Franks, and even the God-damned Visigoths! They all can see what a threat Attila is. Your people can join this alliance. On the other hand, if they get in the way of it then we will have to remove them.’
‘I’m sorry, but you’ve got the wrong person,’ Hagan said. ‘I won’t do it.’
‘You’ll be paid,’ Aetius said.
‘Really?’ Hagan said. ‘How much? Thirty pieces of silver, perhaps?’
‘What do you want?’ Aetius said. ‘Every man has his price. Name it.’
‘Not me,’ Hagan said. Now it was his turn to fold his arms.
Aetius and Arminius exchanged looks. The magister’s face darkened.
‘You told me this was a good man, Arminius,’ he said. ‘A reliable one.’
Arminius held up his palms in a placative gesture.
‘He was a good soldier,’ he said. ‘You asked me to find Burgundars and I found one.’
Aetius glared at Arminius for another moment, then he turned to Hagan. He looked at him for a long moment.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Leave us, Arminius. You will be paid for your service. Leave us, all the rest of you except Hagan. And send in the dwarf.’