The Sword of Attila Read Online Free PDF Page A

good as the soldiers of the Caesars, and that even then it had been the frontier auxiliaries, like the modern
limitanei,
who had done the brunt of the soldiering.
    In the three weeks before their forward deployment to this ridge Flavius had joined with the men as a common soldier while Macrobius had trained them, relentlessly marching them in the African sun, leading them on practice reconnaissance missions miles into the wasteland to the south of Carthage; they had used Numidian guides to teach them how to find water and a semblance of warmth at night, something Flavius himself had signally failed to do over the past few hours. He remembered all the training, all of the exercises, and slapped his hands together again for warmth, looking along the crest of the ridge where they were dug in. Beyond the dip it was cut through by the road to Carthage, the route an attacker would have to take from the west. Half of his men were dug in on one side and half on the other, and behind them he could just make out the shallow ravine with the water hole and the cooking fire, the wispy smoke from breakfast preparations curling above the rise. The smaller the unit the easier it was to keep an eye on the men, he thought wryly to himself, and the easier they were to feed; there was something to be said for the size of his command.
    He watched as Macrobius worked his way towards him beside the trench, running his finger along the men’s sword blades, licking his finger when it drew blood, leaving the blade unsheathed to be sharpened when it did not. Despite Flavius’ inexperience, he knew that Macrobius respected him for volunteering for the forward unit when none of the other officers in the garrison would do so, and in turn Flavius respected Macrobius for seeming to care nothing that Flavius’ uncle Aetius was
magister militum
of the western Roman empire, second in power only to the emperor Valentinian himself. Out here, on the front line, old-fashioned patronage and family connections were of no consequence, and all that mattered was whether a soldier had the courage to stand his ground and fight to the death for the man beside him. Flavius had begun to understand that nurturing this quality among his men was more important than all of the tactics and strategy he had learned in the
schola militarum
in Rome, and that his success as the leader of a small unit like this in the little time he had would depend on listening to Macrobius and heeding his advice.
    Macrobius returned to him, wiping his hand on his jerkin and blowing his nose into the dirt with his fingers. ‘If this was a training exercise, I’d crucify them,’ he grumbled. ‘More than half of their swords had spots of rust on the blades. If the edge is dull, they may as well use the flat of the blade for all the good it will do them.’
    â€˜All of the remaining oil had to be used for cooking last night, and without a good oiling the blades rust in hours,’ Flavius said. ‘Where’s the farrier?’
    â€˜With the
optio
at the fire. He’s setting up the grinding stone now. I’ll see that the men sharpen their blades when they go for breakfast.’
    Flavius jerked his head towards the southern end of the parapet, where he could see the messenger returning. ‘Have you heard the news?’
    Macrobius nodded grimly. ‘A straggler first brought it in about an hour ago, while you were asleep. They’ve been coming in from the west over the past few hours, mostly Numidian slaves who can barely string two words of Latin together and are too shocked and exhausted to tell us much. We need to find someone with authority who can give us good intelligence.’
    Flavius put on his helmet, stepped up to the highest point of the parapet and stared over the ridge. Refugees had been trickling in from the west ever since the
numerus
had deployed to this place, survivors of the towns and cities that had fallen to the Vandal army all