Attila

5

‘Well?’ said Marco.

Lucius fell in beside him. ‘He got away.’

Marco nodded. ‘Thought he might.’

‘Get anything out of the captives?’

‘General Heraclian ordered us to let them flee. Said it wasn’t worth risking our necks for.’

‘Did he indeed?’

‘He did. One thing we learnt, though: they spoke good Latin. Fluent, in fact.’

Lucius frowned. ‘Why shouldn’t they?’

‘Well, they were Goths.’

Lucius reined his horse to a halt. ‘They were what?’

‘A Gothic war-band.’

Lucius stared ahead between Tugha Ban’s flicking ears. This was making less than no sense. ‘Where’s Heraclian now?’

Marco harrumphed. ‘He and the Palatine have gone on ahead, along with all the other hostages, mounted up now. In fact, we’ve lost sight of them. For some reason we’re stuck with the carriages.’

‘The fat eunuch?’

‘Gone, too.’

‘What, mounted? How…?’

‘Don’t ask. It wasn’t a pretty sight.’

‘But as far as they know we’ve still got Attila?’

‘As far as they know.’

Lucius kicked his horse forwards again and they rode on in pensive silence for a while.

Then Marco said, ‘Permission to, sir?’

Lucius nodded.

‘Well, sir, do you ever get the feeling somebody doesn’t want us to get to Ravenna?’

Lucius shook his head. ‘I don’t know what I think. I don’t know what the hell’s going on. One thing I do know: I’m glad I’m just a poor, dumb bonehead of a soldier. Not a bloody politician.’

His centurion grinned.

When it became clear to Lucius that they had lost the Palatine Guard for good, he sent two of his men on for reinforcements. They were to ride forward at all speed to the next main road and imperial cursus station, and there send out for more reinforcements. From Ravenna, if need be.

‘You think we’re going to be attacked again?’ asked Marco quietly.

‘I know we are. So do you. In fact,’ said Lucius, looking at his depleted column: forty cavalrymen, a handful of wounded, and two lumbering great Liburnian cars. ‘In fact, we are in serious trouble.’ He turned back to Marco. ‘But keep it under your helmet.’

They had ridden for about a further half an hour when the column shuddered to a halt.

The two troopers hung from a branch across the road. They had been stripped naked and then flayed. One had had his right hand cut off and stuffed in his mouth, his fingers splayed obscenely over his raw and bloody face. The other’s mouth was stuffed with his own genitals.

‘Cut them down,’ ordered Lucius quietly.

They were lowered into blankets and buried at the side of the road.

Lucius addressed his horror-stricken men, trying his best to keep the horror out of his voice and eyes. He told them they were in deep shit. He told them they were up to their eyeballs in the Cloaca Maxima. He told them he didn’t have a clue what was going on, and they might not survive at all, let alone get to Ravenna. But they must keep together, and then they’d have a chance.

‘Don’t start running,’ he said. ‘We’ve been through worse than this before.’

The men knew their lieutenant of old. They set their faces grimly, shouldered their shields, hefted their spears, and with renewed resolve the column moved on.

Attila had already stolen a mule.

He had crept into a little farmyard in late afternoon, and set the ducks quacking furiously at his intrusion. But nobody stirred. An ancient, fly-blown mule was standing sullenly in the shade of a stone barn, tethered to a fence. Attila untied the frayed old rope and began to lead the animal out of the farmyard as silently as he could. The cobbles were thick with straw, so the boy and the mule made little sound.

There was a narrow window at the end of the barn, and he could hear noises inside. Unable to resist the risk, he turned the mule alongside the barn wall and hoisted himself up on its back to peer in through the window. The scene within was lit by a slash of late afternoon sunlight coming in through the open doorway.

An older man was bucking up and down in the hay, naked but for his shirt, while underneath him lay a young girl on her back, similarly undressed. There must have been thirty years between them. Maybe they were father and daughter. Such things were known to be as common as sunshine in these remote rural parts, and the long, lazy hours of summer had to be passed somehow. The girl seemed to be enjoying it well enough, anyway, judging from the urgency of her thrusts beneath him, and from the give-away curling of her toes, and from her sweat-streaked face, and from the little gasps that came from her open mouth. The boy felt the warmth of the mule underneath him and a stir of hot longing in his belly and below, and he slid dry-mouthed and wondering from the ancient and indifferent mule and led it silently out of the farmyard. He draped the frayed rope over its withers for a rein, hauled himself up again, using a fence post for lift, and sat astride its bristly, mud-flecked back and rode away.

He rode on down the valley into a wide champaign country, through tall grasslands and meadows still bright with the last flowers of the year, crown daisies and mayweed, centaury, yarrow and feverfew.

He should have sensed them; or he should have taken note of what his senses told him. But now he was away from the column and free at last, with nothing between him and his far, beloved homeland – so he thought. It made him careless, light-hearted, light-headed. He even whistled as he rode.

He should have noticed his sullen mount’s ears flicking back and forth. He should have heard the muffled sounds of pots and pans clanging, should have smelt the woodsmoke, and the unmistakable smell of a camp of men and horses. But he rode down through the meadow with his legs hanging loose and his hands loose on the rope, whistling like the boy he was. When he rode round the end of the copse he saw before him a camp of some two hundred men. Tents, campfires, horses tethered to stakes. And no more than a hundred yards between them.

One of the men happened to look up from where he was kindling his campfire, and stared. He stood up and stared some more. Then he turned to his comrades lounging near the tent.

‘Well, would you look at that?’ he said.

They looked, and saw at the far edge of the meadow, the tousled-looking boy with the unmistakable slanted eyes and the blue tattooed scars on his cheeks. They scrambled to their feet in an instant.

‘The lamb walks straight into the lion’s jaws,’ said another.

They grinned.

Then they scrambled fast for their horses as they saw the boy wheel his ancient mule round and urge it forward into a trot as hard as he could.

He wouldn’t get far. But they didn’t want to lose him again.

Lucius was becoming more anxious with every mile they covered, though he betrayed nothing to his men. Now the sun was going down, and they still hadn’t struck camp. The terrain was difficult. They had passed through dense woods, and emerged onto a flat but rocky plateau, surrounded on three sides by dark forest and on the fourth by a steep drop into the valley. It was no place for a secure camp, but if they went on they’d be in deep forest again. The light was failing fast, and his men were exhausted. So, for that matter, was he.

Halfway across the plateau, he raised his hand and called a halt. Something had caught his eye in the trees ahead, maybe half a mile away. Marco stopped beside him.

‘See anything?’

‘No, sir.’

They stared a little longer. They were about to move forward again when an unlikely figure emerged from the shadows of the trees and came trotting furiously towards them. No more than trotting, but there was an urgency to it all the same. The mount was an ancient, dusty mule, and the boy who clung to its bony back was jolted around like a rag doll. But he clung on with fierce determination, kicking his heels into the mule’s skinny flanks all the way.

‘Can’t shake this one off even if we wanted to,’ growled Ops close behind. ‘He’s like a nasty dose of Syrian clap, he is.’

As the boy drew closer they could see the fear in his eyes. He came to a panting halt before them at last, his mule wheezing beneath him as if it were about to expire where it stood. The boy twisted round to look back into the trees. He could see nothing. He turned back and collapsed, gasping, along his ungainly mount.

‘Back so soon?’ said Lucius. ‘What’s up?’

The boy hauled himself upright. His face was streaked with grime and sweat. ‘They’re coming this way.’

‘Who?’

Attila shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But it’s me they want.’

‘ You? ’

‘I don’t know why.’

‘Me neither,’ growled Ops.

‘Shut it, Decurion,’ said Marco. ‘Have you had that arm of yours stitched up yet?’

Ops shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. ‘Will soon, sir.’

Marco shook his head. It was a standing joke in the century that, while Ops was quite happy to face a line of howling Picts and not flinch, he hated needles.

Marco turned back to Attila.

Shielding his eyes from the setting sun, the boy looked up at the two grim-faced Roman officers in their tall, scarlet-plumed helmets. ‘I thought I might be able to outride them, but…’

Lucius shook his head, smiling at the thought. That mule couldn’t outride a lame tortoise. ‘Not a chance. They’d track you, anyway.’

The boy lowered his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, almost whispering.

It was Marco who replied, leaning down a little to the boy’s level, his bear-like growl softened for once. ‘Sorry’s got nothing to do with it, lad. You’re our responsibility, and any bunch of marauding barbarians, begging your pardon and all that, that wants to get their hands on you, is going to have to come and take you. Without our permission. Is that understood?’

The boy nodded. ‘Understood.’

Marco straightened his back again. ‘So. How many of them?’

The boy had finally got his breath back. ‘Two hundred? Maybe twice as many horses, and fresh-looking.’

Once again, Lucius admired the boy’s military eye. But the situation was desperate. It would take the Goths only a matter of minutes to saddle up, don their armour and ride out after him. He turned to Marco.

‘I know, I know,’ said the centurion.

Lucius wheeled back and roared at the column. ‘Century, dismount! Packs off, spades out, picks at the ready. There’s work to do.’

Even after eight years of service, he could still be impressed by the speed and stamina of his men. Soon they had gouged a circular trench out of the ground deep enough to trip a horse and rider, and thrown up an earth-and-stone rampart within. They left only a narrow opening, wide enough for a single mounted man. Exhausted, caked with sweat and dust, every muscle in their bodies burning, they set to beating the rampart solid with the flat of their spades, and putting up a rough but effective stockade on top. Not a man complained. Not a man went slow. Not a man stopped for water till the work was done. Even Ops, with his wounded arm and his face still pale with blood-loss, slaved as hard as the rest of them. Even that skinny new lad Salcus set to with a will. And Marco as well. Lucius looked them over, and thought of the two hundred Gothic horsemen coming their way. And for the sake of this one inscrutable boy, all their lives would be spared. But he and his men had a job to do, and not a man here would shirk it. He knew them well enough. The Caligatae: the Boots, the Iron Hats, Marius’ Mules, the Poor Bloody Infantry. He wouldn’t swap his century – what was left of his century – for any other band of men in the world.

He scanned the treeline continually, but there was still no sign of their attackers. What was taking them so long?

‘Use the wagons, too,’ said a voice.

Lucius looked round. It was the boy.

He frowned. ‘I don’t usually take tactical advice from twelve-year-olds, but…’

‘Fourteen.’

‘Whatever.’

Lucius considered again. Then he started giving orders for the two carriages to be dragged into the defensive circle.

The boy interrupted again. ‘On their sides. You need to tip ’em over.’

Lucius growled, ‘You’re beginning to try my patience, boy.’

But Attila was unperturbed. ‘Leave ’em upright and it’s the easiest thing in the world for your enemy to come in close under cover, lasso them, hitch them up to a team of horses and just trundle them away on their own wheels. And then your circle’s wide open. Tip ’em over on their sides and they won’t budge.’

Lucius harrumphed. ‘It’s not the Roman way.’

The boy grinned. ‘No, it’s the Hun way. Oh, and tip ’em over with the wheels on the inside, so they can’t use ’em for climbing.’

So Lucius barked further orders, and soon the two great gilded carriages were roped up to teams of straining horses. With a lot of creaking and cursing, and then an almighty crash, they toppled over into the dust. Lucius had to admit they made a useful extra barrier round about one-third of the circle. And with only forty men to defend the perimeter, they needed all the extra help they could get.

They drove the horses in through the narrow gateway, along with the boy’s rickety stolen mule, tethered them in the centre, and closed the gap off with a further rank of bristling staves. Lucius had a quiet word in Tugha Ban’s twitching ear, and she settled down on her hooves and lowered her head to sleep.

Silence settled over the circle of men.

A few had gathered enough kindling to light a couple of small campfires, and they sat cross-legged in the flickering orange firelight, taking careful swigs of water and mouthfuls of ground-up hardtack. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had left. None of them felt much like leaving the circle to do a bit of twilight hunting. The sun was almost gone, and darkness was settling over the face of the world. The little summer birds were already sleeping with open eyes in the forest, and in the valleys below the cattle were settling into silence for the night.

Lucius and Marco stood side by side on the earthen rampart, straining to see into the forest beyond.

‘They’re there,’ said Marco softly.

‘You can see them?’

‘A flash of something. They’re watching and waiting.’

‘Why didn’t they attack earlier? They just sat and watched us throw up our defences.’

Marco grunted. ‘Such as they are.’

‘So it’ll be a night attack?’

‘Darkness usually favours defenders, as does twilight. Maybe that’s why they’re waiting.’

‘Attack at dawn, then.’

‘I reckon.’

Then Lucius’ blood ran cold. The last of the sun was slanting in low across the rocky plateau, the trees beyond almost black in the failing light. And the Gothic horsemen were riding out of the forest.

But it was no attack. Not yet. It was an embassy.

There were three of them. They rode tall, high-spirited horses, and each held a long spear in his right hand, a fluttering pennant just below the spearhead. They carried no shields, but their burnished steel breastplates caught the dying rays of the sun, and their tall, conical helmets with their flowing horsehair plumes made them look still taller.

Both officers thought: against two hundred of them, like that? We’ve got no chance. But both had the tact to keep silent.

The three horsemen rode fearlessly up to the edge of the circle, and the one in the lead nodded to Lucius.

‘This is your command?’

‘It is,’ said Lucius evenly.

Their leader’s horse, a leanly muscled young black gelding, circled skittishly in front of them, mettlesome and full of fire. His gait was high-stepping, free-floating, as if he had Spanish or Berber in his bloodline, though the Goths usually rode the shaggy, enduring horses of the plains.

The warlord spoke again, his Latin excellent. ‘Hand the Hun boy over to us, and the rest of you will go free. Resist, and none of you will live to see tomorrow’s sunset.’

Lucius turned to Marco. Marco summoned Ops, who came shambling over from the fireside.

‘Hear that, Decurion?’

‘I heard.’

‘What do the men say?’

Crates, the wiry little Greek who served as the century’s doctor, sitting cross-legged by the campfire sharpening his dagger on a whetstone, spoke up for all of them. ‘Tell him to go fuck himself,’ he called.

Lucius grinned and turned back to the Gothic horseman. ‘The answer is: go fuck yourselves.’

The horseman was unperturbed. He said quietly, ‘You will regret that.’

Lucius kept his eyes locked onto the eyes of his enemy. ‘Maybe. And maybe not.’

The three tall horsemen wheeled their mounts and rode back into the forest.

Lucius sat with his men. Attila sat close by.

Crates the Greek was gouging at the dust with his knife. He said, his usually sardonic voice softened with puzzlement, ‘Goths don’t skin people alive. Of all the barbarian peoples, they’re the ones with the greatest sense of honour. They don’t raze villages flat, they don’t perform human sacrifices.’ He shook his head.

Lucius glanced at Attila, but he was saying nothing, his gaze inscrutable.

Marco, who had done service on the Danube earlier in his career and knew the Gothic peoples well enough, nodded in silent agreement. ‘One of our blokes, when I was out in Noricum with the Legio X “Gemina”, getting seven different kinds of shit kicked out of us by those tall, gorgeous horsemen with their long blond hair-’

The rest of the men guffawed.

‘Well, one of our blokes there, he got caught by a Gothic war-band, hunting across the river. He came back alive OK. But you know what had happened?’

The men settled back to listen, the threat of tomorrow temporarily forgotten. Marco always told a good tale.

‘This bloke, he was a young optio, not an ounce of common sense in his body. But he’d read a lot of books, and even sitting in camp down by the river he’d be talking poetry and philosophy and suchlike. Rest of the men sitting round stuffing their faces with lentil stew and farting at him from time to time, but he’d chatter on anyhow, regardless. So this one time he goes out hunting on his own – wildfowling – needed some duck, too many lentils playing havoc with his guts – and he gets caught by this Gothic warband. So they form up in a ring around him like they do, spearheads straight at his throat. And he told us he’d read about this Greek philosopher, who’d been threatened with execution by some tyrant – I forget his name. And this Greek philosopher, in true philosophical style, he sneers at the tyrant, “How marvellous it must be for you to have as much power as a poisonous spider.” The tyrant had him executed anyway. But you have to admit, the philosopher went to hell with a certain style.

‘So now this Gothic war-band has our bloke surrounded, not a cat’s bollock of a chance, all on his own out there. And their leader says something about how he has strayed into their kingdom and domain, and the penalty for that must be death. And this young bookworm of an optio sits up proud in his saddle, and comes out with the very same line: “How marvellous it must be for you to have as much power as a poisonous spider.” Straight to their faces. There’s deathly silence as the twenty horsemen goggle at this bit of gross impertinence to their chieftain. And then bugger me if they don’t all fall about laughing. They laugh so much they look like they’re going to fall out of their saddles. Then the leader raises his spear, and the rest do the same, and he rides up and claps our daft young optio on the back, and demands that he comes back to their tents and gets rat-arsed with them on some very dodgy Gothic mead. Which he duly does, not appearing to have much choice in the matter. Next morning he feels like he’s been hammering his head against a wall all night. But he and this Gothic warband are now pretty much blood-brothers for life.’

Marco paused. Then he said more seriously, ‘Point is, that’s the kind of people the Goths are. They’re warriors and they have that old Germanic heroic code. You know? They don’t skin prisoners alive, like the little Greek here says, and they don’t slaughter whole villages of women and children. I’m not saying it’s because they’re tender-hearted, exactly. It’s more because, as warriors, they’ll only draw their swords against a worthy opponent – in other words, another man with a sword in his hand. You’ll never hear about any Gothic atrocities, unlike with some tribes I could mention.’

There was an awkward silence. The soldiers resisted turning to look at Attila. Still he remained impassive, listening to every word as he gazed into the orange firelight.

Lucius stood up. ‘OK, ladies. Enough learned talk for the night. Time to get some kip. It’ll be dawn in a few hours, and tomorrow’s going to be a long, hard day.’

Marco and Lucius stood a while longer on the rough earthen rampart and looked out into the silent darkness.

‘What are our chances do you reckon, Centurion?’

Marco took a deep breath, and when he answered he was uncharacteristically indirect. He said, ‘Another thing I know about the Goths is that when they charge they cry, “Ride to ruin and the world’s end!” So who fights harder, a man with a healthy dread of death or a man with no fear of death at all?’

His lieutenant brooded.

‘I even learnt a bit of Gothic poetry,’ said Marco.

‘You never cease to amaze me, Centurion.’

Marco went over it in his head, and then he said, his voice soft and guttural with the ancient Germanic sounds: ‘“ Hige sceal? e heardra,

Heorte? e cenre,

Mod sceal? e meara, ? e uns mahteig lytla?.”’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning:

“Heart shall be harder,

Will shall be stronger,

Fight shall be fiercer,

As our strength fades.”

‘That’s the old, heroic Gothic soul for you.’

‘Very heroic it is, too.’

Marco straightened. ‘But then, look at us. Look at what we’re facing, now and in the hard years to come. Are you telling me there’s any other way of looking at the world that makes sense? The world being what it is?’

Lucius was silent. After a long time he said, ‘No. It makes sense.’

The two men looked into the implacable darkness and spoke no more. It seemed to them as if all speech and all longing, all love and loyalty, bravery and sacrifice, might vanish and be swallowed up in that profound darkness, and nothing come out of its depths but more darkness yet.

A shiver ran down their spines. A voice began to speak close behind them.

‘“Our mother the earth, there on the birch tree!

Amber-dark butterfly, that gave us birth!

As we go singing over endless plains,

Riding our lives away, shadows on the steppe.

Here she comes now, plumed with white horsehair,

Dressed for the sacrifice, our mother the earth.”’

Lucius turned then, but he knew who it was. The Hun boy stood close behind them, a blanket over his shoulders, his teeth gleaming in the darkness.

‘But of course,’ said the boy, ‘the Huns have no poetry. It’s a well-known fact. They are the most barbaric of peoples. The people who are born on a smoking shield, the people who shoot arrows in search of the gods.’

His eyes held them for a little while longer. Then he walked silently away, back to the centre of the camp, and lay down and closed his eyes.

Marco shook his head, looking over to where he lay. ‘That boy.. .’

‘I know,’ said Lucius. ‘Something about him, isn’t there? Something special.’

Marco nodded. ‘And the Goths know it too. Why are we waiting? What are we fighting for? Who are we fighting for?’

‘Damned if I know.’ Lucius laid his hand on Marco’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Centurion. We need some sleep too.’

Marco grimaced. ‘Yeah. Long day tomorrow.’