The Sword of Attila Read Online Free

his ways in war, to know how to destroy him. Your army will travel faster than the news of its coming. Only when the rivers run red with the blood of Hun warriors and their lifeblood is extinguished will your conquests cease.’
    The shaman limped up to the horse, his arms stretched out in front of him; then, finding the reins, he held them and raised his sightless eyes towards the rider. ‘What will you name him?’
    Mundiuk stared at the sword, the sword that bore an ancient name in their language, a name that few had ever dared speak, and then stared at the boy again.
    You will bear the name of the one who scarred you. You will become one with him.
    You will not just be a leader in war.
    You will be the god of war.
    He raised the boy high, and bellowed out the name.
    â€˜Attila.’

PART ONE

CARTHAGE,
NORTH AFRICA
    AD 439
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1
    A dog howled, a strange, unearthly sound that pierced the still air of the morning and echoed down the barren valley between the desert and the sea. The man on the parapet stood up, his cloak wrapped around him against the cold, thankful for his sheepskin boots and the woollen trousers and tunic that he wore under his chainmail, and listened hard. Sound travelled far across the treeless African hills, but this was close, no more than an hour’s march away. He glanced at the men trying to sleep in the trench behind him, restless, uneasy, as if the dog were entering their dreams, and for a moment he wondered whether he too were in a kind of netherworld, his senses numbed by cold and lack of sleep. But then the howling began again, not just one dog but several, an eerie crescendo that rose and wavered like a gust of wind, and then died away again. This time he knew it was real. He felt a sudden chill down his spine, not of cold but of something else, and quickly clapped his hands together and stamped his feet. He knew that many of the men would be awake now, their bleary eyes watching him, the night sentries spaced down the line looking to him for orders. He must keep his nerve.
He must not show his fear.
    â€˜Pass the word along. The cities of Africa Proconsularis to the west have fallen. Bishop Augustine is dead. The army of the Vandals is coming.’
    The soldier who had brought the message paused to catch his breath, his face pinched with cold and his eyes bloodshot and exhausted beneath the rim of his helmet. Flavius stopped clapping his hands and stared at him, his mind struggling to take the news in, and then nodded, watching as the man stumbled over the forms of men still sleeping in the trench towards the next sentry, repeating his message in a hoarse whisper.
The western cities have fallen.
Flavius clapped his hands again, trying to control his shivering. The daylight hours were tolerably warm, but the African night in early spring was still bitterly cold, keeping him awake for the brief time he had allowed himself to lie down and try to get some sleep. He climbed the rough earthen side of the parapet they had piled up the evening before and stared out to the west. Hippo Regius had been the last bastion on the African shore before Carthage, the ancient city whose western walls loomed out of the mist less than a mile behind him. For almost six hundred years Carthage had been in Roman hands, the centre of the wealthiest province in the western empire. And now even Bishop Augustine had forsaken them. Eight years ago, when the Vandals had taken his bishopric of Hippo Regius and made it their stronghold, there had been rumours that he had starved to death during the siege, but his fate had never been confirmed; now they knew it was true, that he had finally abandoned his earthly city for the City of God, the only place where he could find protection against the coming onslaught.
    Above him the sky was reddening, streaked with the sunlight that was just appearing over the horny-tipped mountain to the east of Carthage. The air still smelled like the night, damp,