The Sword of Attila: Total War: Rome by David Gibbins

Author:David Gibbins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Twenty minutes later Arturus reappeared in the doorway, his hood up and his face in shadows, and beckoned them over. Flavius and Macrobius followed him under a low doorway, down a narrow flight of steps and along a passageway barely wide enough to squeeze through. At the end a chute led down to the water’s edge, a foetid smell rising from a muddy mass at the bottom. Arturus opened a creaking wooden door to the left, led them through a dark passage and opened another door into a dimly lit chamber. In the far corner a spluttering oil lamp revealed a man hunched over a mass of papers on a table. He looked up, took off his polished-crystal spectacles and peered at Flavius and Macrobius, his eyes watery but sharp. ‘Well?’ he said in Greek, looking at Arturus. ‘Should I speak in Latin or in Greek?’

Flavius put a hand on Macrobius’ shoulder. ‘Latin, for the benefit of my Illyrian friend here, masquerading as a monk.’

‘So I see,’ the man said, switching languages and eyeing them up and down. ‘If Arturus is anything to go by, you would both be fighting monks too?’

‘Flavius Aetius Gaudentius, special tribune in the service of my uncle, magister militum Flavius Aetius. This is the centurion of my old limitanei numerus, Macrobius.’

‘Ah, the limitanei,’ the man said. ‘They are much missed around these parts. Better troops for my money than the comitatenses, who never stay in the same place for more than ten minutes and never get to know the local people and their customs, and anyway are based too far behind the lines.’

Macrobius grunted. ‘I’m with you there.’

‘You must be Priscus of Panium,’ Flavius said. ‘I salute you for undertaking your embassy to Attila.’

‘Not the general view in Constantinople, I fear,’ Priscus said, getting up. ‘For reasons that are beyond the grasp of a mere scholar, I seem to be on the hit list of most of Theodosius’ eunuchs, hence my self-imprisonment in this hole.’ He was extremely tall and very ill-looking, and Flavius saw him totter as he sniffed the air. ‘I apologize for the smell. All of the sewage from this rotten carcass of a town goes straight into the river, of course, and gets swept downstream by the current, but they forget that there are little backwaters and creeks by the quays where it accumulates, especially the solid variety. But I can hardly call the city urinatores to clean it up, can I, or try to do it myself and risk one of the thugs who infest this island jumping on me.’

‘Arturus disposed of one of them,’ Flavius said.

‘So he tells me, and for that I’m grateful, but they’re like rats. Get rid of one, and ten take their place.’ He coughed violently, his whole frame racked with convulsions, and then he sat down again, wheezing and trying to recover himself. Flavius could see that he was little older than he was, but he had the sunken cheeks and sparse hair of a much older man.

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