The Scourge of God

Aetius had lived half a century now, and for much of that time he had replaced his absence of military power with bluff, the tattered tradition of “inevitable” Roman victory, and shrewd alliances with whatever tribe he could persuade, pay, or coerce to oppose the menace of the moment. His was a lifetime of hard battles, shifting alliances, truculent barbarians, and selfish emperors. He had beaten the Franks, beaten the Bagaudae, beaten the Burgundians, beaten usurpers, and beaten the politicians in Italy who constantly whispered and conspired behind his back. He’d been consul three times, and, because he ran the army, ran the Western Empire in ways the Emperor Valentinian scarcely understood.

Yet instead of getting easier, each victory seemed more difficult. The moneyed sons of the rich bought their way out of the army, the poor deserted, and the barbarian recruits boasted more than they practiced. The relentless discipline that had marked Roman armies had eroded. Now he feared that the most dangerous enemy of all was casting a baleful eye in his direction. Aetius knew Attila, and knew how the angry, truculent youth he had once played and scuffled with had become a crafty, aggressive king. Aetius had been sent to the Huns as a boy hostage in 406 to help guarantee Stili-cho’s treaty with the tribe; and later, when his own fortunes were low in the political circus that was the Empire, he had fled to the Huns for safety. In turn, when Attila needed employment for his restless horde, Aetius had used them against Rome’s enemies, paying generously. It had been a strange but useful partnership.

That was why the fool Valentinian had written him the latest dispatch.

Your requests for more military appropriations, which increasingly sound like demands, are entirely unreasonable. You, general, of all people, know that theHuns have been our allies more than our enemies herein the West. It is your skill that has made them a toolinstead of a threat. To pretend now that the Huns represent danger goes against not only all experience butalso your own personal history of success. The needsof finance for the court in Italy are pressing, and nomore money can be spared for the frontiers of the Empire. You must make do with what you have . . . .

What Valentinian didn’t understand is that all had begun to change when King Ruga died and Attila and Bleda succeeded him. The Huns had become more arrogant and demanding. It changed even more when Attila murdered Bleda and turned the Huns from marauders to imperialists. Attila understood Rome in ways that Ruga never had, and he knew when to press incessantly and when to make a temporary peace. Each campaign and treaty seemed to leave the Huns stronger and Rome weaker. The East had already been stripped as if by locusts. How long before Attila turned his eye west?

The weather today matched the general’s mood, a gray pall with steady rain. The drizzle showed all too well how the fortress leaked, and rather than properly repair stone buildings that were two and three centuries old, the garrison had patched them with wood and wattle. The trim precision of the old fort’s layout had been lost to clusters of new huts and wandering pathways.

“The men of the Twelfth are nonetheless ready for anything,” the tribune went on.

That was prattle. “This isn’t a fortress-it’s a nest.”

“General?”

“A nest made of twigs and paper. Your stockade is so wormy that it’s ready to fall over. Attila could punch through it with his fist.”

“Attila! But the king of the Huns is far away. Surely we don’t have to worry about Attila here.”

“I worry about Attila in my dreams, Stenis. I worry about Attila in Athens or Lutetia or Tolosa or Rome. It’s my job and my fate to worry.”

The tribune looked confused. “But you’re his friend.

Aren’t you?”

Aetius looked somberly out at the rain. “Just as I am friend of the emperor, friend of his mother, friend of Theodoric at his court at Tolosa, and friend of King Sangibanus at Aurelia. I am friend of them all, the one man who binds them together. But I trust none of them, soldier. Nor should you.”

The officer blanched at this irreverence but decided not to challenge it. “It’s just that Attila has never come this way.”

“Not yet.” Aetius felt every moment of his fifty years.

The endless rides on horseback, the hurry to every point of danger, the lack of a proper home. For decades he’d loved it.