The Sword of Attila by David Gibbins Page A

at the
schola militarum
in Rome, bringing Macrobius along with him to fill a vacant post in the physical training department. Over the six years since then they had seen off three classes of newly commissioned tribunes, young men still in their teens along with veterans promoted from the ranks, men who were bolstering the front-line
limitanei
and
comitatenses
units against the growing threat from the steppe-lands beyond the upper reaches of the river Danube to the east.
    Macrobius jerked his head back towards the
schola
entrance. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’
    Flavius stared towards the guardroom by the street, and his heart sank. ‘Tell me it’s not Livia Vipsania,’ he muttered. ‘If it’s her again, we need to beat a hasty retreat out the back.’
    â€˜This time you’re lucky. It’s an old friend.’
    Flavius breathed a sigh of relief. Livia Vipsania was the very persistent mother of one of a number of girls who had been pushed in front of him as possible candidates for marriage. As a nephew of
magister militum
Aetius, the most powerful man in the western empire after Valentinian himself, Flavius was considered a prime catch, even though he had given away most of his inheritance as handouts to the men of his
numerus
so he was worth little more than his salary as a middle-ranking tribune, and he only lived in modest officer’s quarters in the barracks overlooking the Circus Maximus. He already had a girlfriend, a woman called Una, the former slave he had seen being abused and beaten by the bishop on the galley from Carthage; after narrowly avoiding murdering the bishop following a particularly savage beating, he had been persuaded by Macrobius to offer all his remaining gold for the girl, a payment that the bishop had all too readily accepted. Flavius had offered to do all he could to return Una to her own people, but she had elected to stay with him. The last thing he wanted now was to be sucked into the world of dynastic marriages and upper-class etiquette in Ravenna and Rome, at a time when the gathering war clouds over the empire made any domestic ambitions seem not just irrelevant, but irresponsible.
    They made their way into the vestibule, where a man who had been sitting in the shadows got up, threw back the hood of his cloak and embraced Flavius, who led him quickly back into the classroom out of earshot. Flavius nodded at Macrobius, who pulled the door shut behind him and stood guard, the shadows of his feet remaining visible through the crack at the bottom. Flavius turned to the newcomer. ‘Arturus!’ he exclaimed, holding the man by the shoulders. ‘I thought you were supposed to be in Parthia. I hadn’t expected to see you for months.’
    Arturus slumped on a chair, taking the cup of water that Flavius passed to him. It was not the first time that he had seen Arturus looking the worse for wear after returning from an intelligence mission for Aetius, but this time he looked older, the first wisps of grey in his beard and hair, the skin of his face deeply tanned and cracked around his eyes. He looked thin, almost emaciated. ‘You need food,’ Flavius said, looking at his friend with concern. ‘Come with me to my quarters, and Una will rustle something up.’
    Arturus shook his head. ‘Later, I promise. There are more urgent things now.’
    â€˜What happened?’
    Arturus leaned forward. ‘I travelled east from Persepolis to Ctesiphon, disguised as a wine merchant. At Ctesiphon I spent four months in a dungeon for daring to ask whether I could sell my wares to the emperor’s agents, as a way of getting into the palace. One of those months I spent staked out in the desert sun every day. Even the best intelligence agent can put a foot wrong, and now I know that nobody in the Sassanid empire even mentions the word palace, let alone the name of the emperor. But after being released and recovering, I took some