Free The Sword of Attila by David Gibbins Page B

will tell you once we are on the ship. We must go now.’
    The captain of the galley beckoned them forward urgently. A fat cleric pushed ahead, a bishop to judge by his robes, dragging a sack that clunked with precious church metal in one hand and with the other pulling along a slave girl by her neck. She was tall, an African, but unusual, with curly black hair and bruised cheeks, and as she was hauled by she gave Flavius an unfathomable look. He had seen enough battered slave girls in his time to think he was immune to feeling any emotion, but the sight of this girl being dragged along by a sweaty cleric with his bag of loot repulsed him. He knew it was the last thing that should concern him now, and he tried to put it from his mind as Arturus mounted the gangplank and went on board. Flavius waited until the last of his men had followed, and then stepped up the plank after Macrobius. He thought for a moment, then turned and ran back past the sailor who was unlashing the plank from the quayside, squatted and pressed his hand against the old Punic stone of Carthage for the last time. As he looked down he saw something in a crack between the blocks, a corroded silver coin, and prised it out, seeing the head of a goddess on one side. He flipped it over, staring at it, and then shoved it into the pouch on his belt. He turned and ran back up the gangplank, jumping onto the galley deck just before the men began to haul the plank on board, then looked back to see only the discarded water skins and food peelings that were the last residue of the Roman army on the shores of North Africa.
    The captain cast off and the galley edged away from the quayside, the oarsmen having sat down on the benches and flexed themselves in preparation for the task to come. Those few of the
numerus
who were still fit and able had taken a place alongside them at the oars, and the rest were sprawled along the central deck and in the bows. A Greek
iatros,
a physician who had been among the few civilians to leave with them, was already leaning over the first of them, his bronze scalpel poised to scrape away pulverized flesh and his sponge soaked with seawater to cleanse the wound. The girl with the curly hair stood up to help, but was pulled violently down by the bishop and made to massage his neck. The captain bellowed an order, and the first sweep of the oars took the galley out into the centre of the harbour and towards the narrow passage on the eastern side that led through the city wall to the open sea. The sounds of the conquerors were echoing across the city: yelled orders, the occasional word in a guttural language heard clear across the still morning air, the baying and barking of the dogs. The Romans had embarked with little time to spare, and Flavius knew that they would not be free until they had passed under the line of the city wall and out of range of any Vandal archers who might have reached the harbour gates in time.
    The oars swept again, and the captain leaned on the steering oar to point the galley towards the passage. Flavius made his way among his men to the bows where Arturus was sitting, and knelt alongside. He was still running on adrenalin, and he felt jittery, his eyes darting everywhere looking for the enemy, as he turned and peered anxiously at the constriction ahead where he knew they would be most vulnerable. One of the men pointed back towards the acropolis of the city. ‘You can see them now. On the platform.’
    Flavius shaded his eyes and peered. The soldier was right. There was a stream of men along the edge of the massive masonry platform that rose above the city, the site of the old Punic temple to Ba’al Hammon and now a great basilican church. He could see one man standing apart, hands on his hips, staring out over the harbour and the sea, as if towards Rome itself. At that moment Flavius knew that he was looking at Gaiseric, that he was seeing a barbarian king for the first time. He felt a chill course