The Scourge of God

What I remember of the night before the great battle is not fear and not sleep but song. The Germans were great singers, much louder and more demonstrative than we quiet and methodical Romans; and as regiment upon regiment, division upon division, and army upon army marched up to take the places that Aetius assigned them, settling down to a restless night on the grassy plain, they sang of a misty and legendary past: great monsters and greater heroes, of golden treasure and bewitching maidens, and of the need for each man to convince himself that on this night, of all the nights of his life, it was necessary to conquer or die. If dead they would pass to an afterworld, a jumbled mixture of the pagan great hall and Christian Heaven, and take their places in a pantheon of heroes and saints. If they survived, they’d live free of fear. As the words lifted to summer’s great starry night, the air warm and still humid from the thunderstorms that had dissipated, song built on song into vast resolve, giving our soldiers courage.

The Huns sang as well. In the aftermath of their invasions they have been remembered as virtually inhuman, I know: an Eastern plague of such unworldly ferocity that they seemed to belong to Satan or older, darker gods. Or, as Attila called himself, the Scourge of God. Yet while I knew they had to be defeated, I also knew them as people: proud, free, arrogant, and secretly fearful of the civilized world they had hurled themselves against. Their words were hard to catch from such a distance-overladen as the songs were by the Germans’ singing nearby-but its hum was strangely softer and sadder, sung from deep within their squat frames.

The Hun songs were of a home they had long left, of the freedom of the steppes, and of a simplicity they could not regain no matter how hard and far they rode. They sang for a time already gone, no matter who won this battle.

The Romans were quieter at first, trying to sleep or, giving up on that, sharpening their weapons and wheeling into place hundreds of ballistae that would hurl bolts capable of cutting down a dozen enemies at a time. Their habitual discipline was silence. But near dawn of this shortest of the year’s nights, the mood caught some of them as well. They finally sang, too, choosing new Christian hymns. Bishop Anianus had followed us from Aurelia; and now I watched him walk among these rude soldiers, dressed like a simple pilgrim, blessing and confessing the believers and offering encouragement even to those who had not yet been won by the Church.

The sun rose as it had set, red through smoldering cloud.

It glinted in our eyes, and Aetius ordered his generals and kings to brace our disorganized ranks in case the Huns used the light at their backs to charge while we were relatively blinded. But the enemy was no more ready for combat than we were. Such numbers had never been assembled for a battle; and there was considerable confusion on both sides as men were moved first here, then there, grumbling about the anxious waiting as the sun climbed higher and hotter. There was a small stream that tantalizingly ran between the armies, but it was within bowshot of either side so none dared venture there. Instead, women passed down the ranks with skins and jars of water drawn from the captured river in our rear.

The men drank thirstily, sweating in their armor and pissing in place until, by the time it was noon, the battlefield already smelled like a privy.

“When will it start?” we grumbled.

The plans of the two sides were opposites of each other.

Attila placed himself and his Huns at the center of his line, clearly hoping to use his cavalry, the fiercest of his forces, to split our army in two.

Attila’s Ostrogoths with King Valamer were on his right, facing our Roman left, as were his battered Gepids and the rebel Bagaudae. Cloda, the Frankish prince who wanted the crown, would there face his brother, Anthus.

The Rugi, Sciri, and Thuringi tribes allied with the Huns were, in turn, on Attila’s left. These were stiffened by a force of several thousand Vandals who had come to kill Visigoths.

Aetius, in contrast to Attila, put his best troops on either wing and, as promised, Sangibanus and the Alans in the center. “He does not have to win. All he has to do is hold,” Aetius said. This force was stiffened by fresh troops as yet unblooded, the Liticians and the Olibriones. What the old Roman veterans lacked in youthful vigor they more than made up in experienced determination.

Theodoric and his Visigoths formed the Roman right flank. They were the most powerful cavalry we had, arrayed against the Rugi, Sciri, and Thuringi.