Free The Sword of Attila by David Gibbins Page A

captain. ‘You have ten minutes, no more. The Vandals will have broken through and be here within the hour.’
    â€˜Ave
, tribune.’ The captain turned to where his crew were manhandling boxes and crates up the gangplank onto the galley, a wide-beamed single-decker with spaces for thirty oarsmen and the men of the
numerus,
if they could fit among the crates on the narrow deck that ran above the spine of the hull between the benches. The vessel was docked on the edge of the rectangular harbour opposite the eastern channel that led out to sea, their escape route. On the other side of the quay was the land-locked circular harbour, once home of the war galleys of the Carthaginians and then the headquarters of the Roman grain fleet. Drawn up against the edge of the harbour were the remains of four Roman war galleys, their bottoms staved in and their oars smashed. Flavius glanced at Arturus. ‘At least once we’re at sea the Vandals won’t be following us in a hurry.’
    Arturus tied up his saddlebag and then looked at the harbour. ‘Don’t count on it. There’s a myth that because the Goths failed to cross the Bosporus at Constantinople after the Battle of Adrianople sixty years ago, the sea is the barbarians’ Achilles’ heel. But they were inexperienced in the ways of the Mediterranean then, and more intent on going west than east. When they reached the southern tip of Greece and then Italy in their great migration, it was not so much ignorance of the sea that prevented them from going further south as the fact that they could see no point in it; they wanted land, not to become pirates. Gaiseric is different. He understands that the sea is not a barrier but a route, that the Mediterranean is a battleground that any barbarian intent on Rome ignores at his peril. Among the mercenaries from Britain who stayed with Gaiseric after I left his service was a former artificer of the channel fleet, the
classis Britannica,
who knew how to build the flat-bottomed boats favoured by the sea peoples of the North-West. It was boats of that design that allowed Gaiseric to cross between the Pillars of Hercules, between Spain and Africa. And you can be sure that once he and his Vandals take the harbours of Carthage they will quickly assert themselves on the Mediterranean. Raiders on land will become raiders by sea. Remember, I know these barbarians. I have seen them with my own eyes, I have fought alongside them, in the mountains and plains of the north, in the forests, on the steppe-lands many
stades
to the east far beyond the reach of Rome.’
    Flavius eyed him. ‘You have travelled far, Arturus.’
    â€˜I have been to dark places.’
    Arturus turned to the Nubians, delved into his cassock and gave each man a small pouch of coins, and then stroked the mule’s nose, reaching up and whispering into its ear. He slapped its haunch and raised his hand in farewell as the mule trotted behind the two Nubians away from the harbour and towards the eastern gate of the city.
    â€˜Where will they go?’ Flavius asked.
    â€˜Some place where men like them are not enslaved by men like us,’ Arturus said. ‘I have advised them to travel east beside the great desert to Egypt, and then south along the course of the river Nile to the kingdom of Aksum. It is the first Christian kingdom in the world, founded even before Constantine the Great had his revelation and converted the Roman Empire. If they reach Aksum safely, they may find sanctuary and freedom.’
    â€˜And you? Why do you not join them?’
    Arturus heaved the saddlebag onto his shoulder. ‘Because I swore an oath that I would take these works of Augustine to safety in Italy.’
    â€˜Are they for the libraries of Rome? There at least the monks of the
scriptoria
will preserve them as the word of God, and not deface and destroy them as they are doing to so many of the great works of the pagan past.’
    â€˜I