The Scourge of God

Now the battle was well and truly joined along miles of front, great tides of men surging back and forth under the singing arc of uncountable arrows. There was no hope of any one man controlling the fury that followed. It was the havoc of horse and foot, spear and arrow, sword and biting teeth. Whole companies seemed to be swallowed, and yet as soon as they disappeared in the slaughter, fresh companies pushed ahead.

The Ostrogoths charged us Romans again and then again and then yet again, surging up the ridge to try to take the advantage. Each time they had to clamber up a slope slick with blood and thick with the bodies of their comrades, a hedgerow of stiffening limbs and broken weapons. The Gepid king, Ardaric, went down with a spear wound and was carried away, delirious; and the ambitious Cloda the Frank sank somewhere in the carnage, his corpse deliberately trampled by the hooves of his brother’s steed. Each time the Ostrogoths charged, the disciplined legions made them come through a wave of javelins. Hundreds of Goths grunted and went down with each volley. The Goths clawed and spat and stabbed at us, but the loss of the ridge crest was proving catastrophic to them. Too many warriors were dying, and Attila’s right flank was weakening. What if Aetius could begin to squeeze them upon the Hun center, as he hoped?

But the sun was still high; fresh Ostrogoths kept appearing, their numbers seemingly as endless as grains of sand.

We Romans could not be dislodged, but neither could we advance. Men were staggering from exhaustion after each attack, chests heaving, the blood running down their limbs in bright sheets. During pauses they let their shields slump to the ground and crouched behind them for a while in an attempt to recover and to keep from being shot.

I found myself back with Aetius and was given the horse of a dead centurion. Mounted once more, I could better see the battle, but reunion with our general was not entirely reassuring. Clearly he was now growing as frustrated at this failure to break the Ostrogoths ahead of him as Attila had been frustrated at failing to crack our center. “We have to fold them and we can’t!” he muttered. “This fight may finally be settled elsewhere.” He glanced worriedly down the rest of the line.

Indeed, now Attila displayed his talents as a tactician. On the right of our forces, far to the south, Theodoric and his Visigoths had accomplished what we’d hoped. In a great, heroic charge their cavalry had hurled themselves on the Vandals, Rugi, Sciri, and Thuringi. It was like a snowy avalanche against sapling timber, a great barbarian nation charging against lesser or less-numerous ones, and our right wing seemed destined to crumple their left. Again the price was terrible, a generation of warriors falling to the remorseless scythe of arrows, but then the lances of the Visigoths struck home and their foes were hurled backward toward Attila’s laager. So swiftly did Theodoric and his men advance, crying for revenge for Berta against the Vandals, that they rode far in advance of our center. A dangerous gap began to open between them and the rest of our army.

Attila saw this and charged into it, leading his Huns against the Visigothic flank.

It was as if Theodoric’s men were a charging, snarling dog, suddenly brought up short by a chain. The Huns struck the side of their advance like a shock of lightning, pouring in a volley of arrows at brutally short range and then riding over the fallen to cut at the Visigoths with their swords. The Visigothic charge faltered, the retreating Hun allies turned, and suddenly Theodoric, the spear tip of his people, found himself in a sea of enemies.