Attila

7

In the afternoon heat and silence, amid the gluttonous buzzing of the gathering flies, the solitary soldier of Rome hacked brushwood from the surrounding forest and piled it up in the centre of the stockade. He built a great pyre over the brushwood with the uprooted staves of the stockade, and dragged the bodies of his slain men onto it. When he had lifted up the twentieth corpse he knew he could do no more that day, and he slept comatose some distance away without dreaming. The next day, aching in every fibre of his body and his soul, he managed to lay the rest of the bodies on the pyre. Last of all, his centurion.

He fired the brushwood and watched it burn as the sun went down in the west. Over Rome.

He walked away into the forest.

But some unknown god was watching over him. The god who blesses and curses in one breath.

After only a few minutes’ walking he saw something like a white shadow through the trees. He emerged into a glade filled with the last smoky rays of the sun slanting in low between the trees, and there in the beautiful light stood Tugha Ban, cropping the sweet dark grass of the glade. She still wore her saddle, but Lucius’ scalp froze when he saw an arrow buried in it.

He went over and let the wounded horse nuzzle his hand gently. He carefully raised the saddle, and his heart sang. For he saw to his unspeakable relief that the arrowhead had only just passed through the leather and then stopped. Tugha Ban in her innocence wasn’t so much as scratched. And it was only right that it should be so. What had his gentle grey mare to do with the violence and treachery of men?

He laid his arms across her broad, strong back, rested his cheek against the dense leather and gave thanks with an unsteady voice; and then he broke down and wept again. Tugha Ban looked back at his emotional outburst with some surprise, grazing her damp muzzle over his arm. Then she returned to cropping the sweet, cool grass at her feet. It was too good to miss.

After his prayers, Lucius took off her saddle, snapped the arrow off at the head, pulled the wicked iron barb through from the other side, and threw it deep into the undergrowth. He replaced the saddle and tightened the girth, looped the reins back, hauled himself up, patted Tugha Ban’s long grey-dappled neck, and pulled her gently and firmly away from the grass. She harrumphed a little crossly, and he heeled her forwards into a gentle rolling walk.

‘You and me, girl,’ he murmured. ‘Into the sunset.’

Around noon the next day, under a burning sun, he drew his sword one more time.

He rode down a narrow track and round the corner of a grove of stone pines, and there immediately before him stood three men. Momentarily they were as surprised as he was. Then they smiled lazily at each other, and moved out across the path.

‘Nice horse,’ drawled one of them, squinting up at him and grinning.

‘She is,’ said Lucius. ‘And where I go, she goes.’

‘By the giant golden balls of Jupiter, is that a fact?’

‘It is.’

‘Well well.’

‘We don’t have no horses,’ said another, coming in close on Lucius’ far side.

Tugha Ban tossed her long grey mane.

‘So I see,’ said Lucius.

All three men were sunburnt and had terrible teeth. The third one drew a dagger slowly from his belt, and ran it through his long, lank hair, grinning at Lucius all the while.

Lucius looked each one of them in the eye in turn. Then he said, ‘I’m in no mood for it. Now out of my way.’

The second bandit stepped back and also drew a dagger from his tunic.

The nearest one gave an obsequious bob of his head where he stood, not moving. ‘Most certainly we will, your eminence. Just as soon as we’ve relieved you of that nice bronze cuirass you’re wearing. And your helmet, and your sword, and your shield, and your dagger. Oh, and your horse, of course, and all the trappings and accoutrements pertaining thereto.’ He grinned toothlessly, drawing a long sword from the scabbard that hung from his back. ‘Then we’ll be out of your way in a-’

He never finished the sentence. Lucius whipped his cavalry spatha from his scabbard in the blink of an eye, jabbed Tugha Ban forward a couple of paces and slashed the blade through the air, saying with weary irritability, ‘Oh, leave me alone. ’

The bright swordblade slashed across the bandit’s throat and he tottered forwards and fell, collapsing across the rump of Lucius’ horse as he rode by. The head lolled almost free from the neck, attached only by a flap of skin, such was the skill of the blow, and blood gouted across Tugha Ban’s grey flanks. Then the corpse slithered off her rump and fell into the dust.

Lucius did not even spur Tugha Ban into a trot. He walked on, leaving the two men staring after him, knowing they would not come.

All that hot afternoon he rode on. He felt nothing, except for the bandit’s blood crusting over and drying in the hairs on his bare right arm. He didn’t even stop to wash, or to clean his sword before resheathing it, or to sponge Tugha Ban’s flanks clean. He cared about nothing any more.

The sky was filled with blood, and none of it was innocent. The grey dusk fell, and still he rode on west. Tugha Ban slowed her pace in puzzlement as they rode on into the night. But, as her rider showed no sign of stopping, she ambled on. The moon rose behind them, and the air grew chill, even in late summer, for they were still in the Appenine mountains. Once, once only, they heard the call of wolves in the high mountain passes to the north. A tremor ran over his mare’s withers, a tremor of primeval and instinctual fear. They rode on.

They emerged from a deep-sunken track onto higher ground, and there in the moonlight stood a man upon a rock. He stood quite silent, haloed only by the pale moonlight, like some figure out of myth. The broken-hearted lieutenant reined in his horse and stopped. Ready for any new horror or revelation that might come out of the darkness of this world or the world beyond.

The horseman and the man upon the rock stared at each other in the moonlight upon that lonely mountain road, and the only sound was the slow, deep breathing of the horse. The man upon the rock was dressed in a long robe of coarse wool, perhaps grey, perhaps brown, for all colours were indistinguishable in the moon’s grey light. The robe was belted at the waist with a rope sash, and a large hood was drawn up round his neck, but his head was bare. His hair was long and unkempt, and his beard straggled down over his chest almost to his waist. He held a long staff topped with a bare wooden cross of the simplest, most spartan design. His eyes glittered in the moonlit night and they never left the eyes of the broken-hearted lieutenant, who returned his gaze with eyes similarly unwavering. The man or hermit or lunatic never stirred an inch. In the gentle night air only the heavy hem of his tattered robe stirred a little and then stilled again. The moon-shadow of this silent messenger with his staff and his cross fell across the mountain road, jagged and broken up by the rough stony ground, but still clearly visible for what it was: a man holding a cross. His feet were as firmly planted as his staff.

It seemed that many minutes passed in the silent night as the two men, two refugees from the world of men, looked deep into each other’s souls and said nothing. Finally the stillness was broken, though not the silence. The ancient man on the rock raised his skinny arm and touched his fingertips first to his heart, then to his lips, and then to his forehead. Then he held his arm outstretched, so that he reached out into the empty space over the soldier’s head, and he carved another invisible cross in the empty air. He let his hand drop, and the soldier and the man or hermit on the rock looked at each other a while longer, with no words spoken. At last the lieutenant turned and looked ahead down the moonwashed road, and dug his heels gently into the flanks of Tugha Ban, and rode on.

That night he felt unspeakably weary, as if another ten or twenty years had been added in one hour to his bones. For the second night running he fell asleep in his bloody clothes, rolled up in his horse-blanket under a creaking holm oak, the stars glimmering through the spearhead leaves, his mouth tasting of dust and betrayal and blood.

He awoke close to dawn with those last stars fading from the sky, and he went down into the valley to the river’s edge to wash. He stripped naked and went into the icy water from the mountains and stood up to his waist, then plunged in over his head, resurfacing gasping and shaking his streaming black locks, scraping his eyes clear of the water and opening his mouth to its purity. He closed his eyes and raised his arms to the clear early-morning sun still orange on the horizon, and in his mind he climbed to the portals of heaven and begged Isis and Mithras and Christos and the imperturbable gods to cleanse the blood away. He kept his eyes tightly closed, as if afraid that when he opened them and gazed back upon the mortal world, he would find only that he stood in a river that was a sluggish rusty brown, for ever polluted with dust and betrayal and blood.

He submerged himself again and again in the icy water, rubbing his hands and face, his arms and his chest until they were red and glowing with the cold.

Then he stepped back to the bank, took hold of Tugha Ban’s reins and led her gently into the icy water. She whinnied as it streamed around her belly, throwing her head up crossly and baring her teeth. But he held her tight and pulled her in deeper, until the pure mountain water coursed right over her back and washed her clean and dapple-grey again. They returned to the bank, and both shook themselves dry as best they could. Lucius dressed again, and saddled Tugha Ban, and mounted. He buckled on his scabbard-belt and shoved his sword round to his right side. Then he sat for a while and considered.

After some time, slow and dreamlike, as if unable to believe his own actions, he slipped down off the horse again. He unbuckled his scabbard-belt and walked back to the river’s edge. He held the belt by one end, whirled it round his head, and threw the whole thing, sword and all, into the deepest water. It sank immediately. He picked up his shield by its rawhide rim and hurled it in after. He did the same with his bronze cuirass and his expensive, crested helmet. Then he turned back and pulled his spear from the ground, and sent it hurtling high into the air. It crested and curved and fell, entering the deep, dark water in virtual silence, and was gone. Left in only his hobnailed sandals, white linen tunic and leather jerkin, the lieutenant mounted Tugha Ban again, wheeled her and rode on down the mountainside.

At about the same time, some miles to the north, Attila awoke to the same early sun. He sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked around him at the fresh morning world, as bright as a sword-blade with dew, and he grinned. Then he rolled lazily to his feet and took a look around.

There was a farmstead nearby, at the edge of the trees on a warm south-facing slope. He left his mule tethered to a low branch and crept silently over to it. The shutters were wide open, and a dense male snoring came from the gloom within. He stepped silently into the lower room, which served as a barn, and waited patiently for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then he grinned with satisfaction. On a peg on the wall opposite hung a good length of strong rope, and leaning in a corner was a long-handled billhook with a decent-looking curved iron head.

The boy noosed the rope with a slipknot and nodded with satisfaction. It would do fine. He looped it over his head and left shoulder, so that his sword was still readily to hand on the right. Into the opposite side of his belt he tucked a pruning knife. He stole a flat scythestone that he found on a bench, and a hessian sack. Then he hefted the billhook, and grinned with satisfaction at the weight of it. He went back outside and remounted his mule, hefted the billhook across his right shoulder, and rode on down the mountainside.

In the mountains they had known nothing of what had gone on in the wider world. But as soon as Lucius came down into the plains and the rich farmland of the Tiber valley, he saw the devastation that the Goths – the real Goths – had wreaked in their righteous anger. Farmstead after farmstead was burnt to the ground. Golden fields of ripe corn, ready for the harvest, had been trampled into the mud by the hooves of a hundred thousand horses. Entire orchards had been slashed and burnt, livestock slain or herded into the Gothic column and driven off. The landscape was deserted. The country people had gone. He saw only stray dogs whimpering and cowering amid the burnt-out cottages, crows and kites circling and feeding on the carcasses of cattle and sheep.

As he neared Rome, he passed the occasional ragged group by the roadside. An entire family, huddled around a single handcart, looking up at him with round, empty eyes. He felt his heart swell in his ribcage with pity, but he could do nothing.

And then he came in sight of the city on the seven hills, and he saw the vast army of the Goths encamped about. Like all barbarian peoples, the Goths made no distinction between soldier and civilian. When they marched, the whole tribe marched: men, women and children all together in their covered wagons. And when they camped, they spread like a vast nation, as now across the fields outside Rome. The city of a million people was surrounded and cloaked around by a dark shadow of a hundred thousand Goths. And Rome was starving.

Lucius sat and considered for a while. And then he rode forward.

The Gothic army camp was undefended. There was no Roman force left in Italy that would dare to face them. All that stood between them and the glittering treasures of Rome were the walls and gates of the city itself.

Alaric, that shrewd Christian king of the Gothic people, had sent messengers to the imperial court and to the Senate in Rome some days ago, pointedly lamenting the death of his noble opponent, General Stilicho, and then demanding four thousand pounds of gold in return for his withdrawal from Italy. The Senate had responded with foolish contempt. ‘You cannot defeat us,’ they said. ‘We are many more in number than you.’

Alaric sent back a curt message, of the kind beloved once by the Spartans, and now by the tough Germanic peoples. ‘The thicker the hay,’ he said, ‘the more easily mown.’

And he increased his demands. Now he wanted all the gold in the city, and all the silver, and the handover of all slaves of barbarian blood. The demands were outrageous, and the Senators said as much. ‘What then will we be left with?’ they asked indignantly.

Again the reply was laconic. ‘Your lives.’

Nevertheless, although in the open field there was none to stand against Alaric and his horsemen, the barbarian king knew he had no skill in siege warfare. Rome might withstand them for months, and the besiegers, as is so often the case, would soon be every bit as trapped, malnourished and diseased as the besieged. So, instead, Alaric turned his men away from the walls and made down to Ostia, the port of Rome, where the great grain-ships came from Africa and Egypt. And they sacked Ostia, and laid it waste, and burnt the massive grain-houses, and sank the huge, clumsy ships in the harbour. And Rome began to starve.

Alaric returned to camp outside the walls of Rome and waited for the inevitable surrender that must come soon.

The tall, fair-haired warrior leant on his spear outside his tent and shielded his eyes from the sun. Across the shimmering fields came a man, unarmoured, unarmed, on a fine grey horse. Little plumes of dust arose from the horse’s hooves as it trod delicately down towards the Gothic encampment.

Lucius looked neither to left nor to right. Over his head he could feel the sign that the hermit on the rock had made in the mountains by moonlight. His heart was as steady as his hands. He walked on between the first felt tents of the Goths, towards the walls of Rome.

More and more spearmen emerged from their tents to stare. Some of them called out angrily, some hesitated, some even laughed.

‘You have a message for us, stranger?’

‘What is your business?’

‘Speak, man.’

Lucius rode on through the camp. Outside these tents, the wives of warriors sat cross-legged before campfires, stirring pots or nursing infants at their breasts. Children ran about in the dust, or stopped to stare at the strange man on the grey mare. One little boy ran across almost under Tugha Ban’s hooves, and Lucius reined in to let him pass unscathed, then rode forwards again. At last the road ahead was blocked by four mounted men who lowered their spears towards him.

‘ Hva? at waetraeth? ’

He drew up in front of them. They eyed him easily, unafraid, their spears held loose but firm at their sides. Their blue eyes never wavered. These were no bandits who could be brushed aside with a swordstroke. Besides, he had thrown his sword away.

‘Do you speak Latin?’

The horseman to his right nodded. ‘Some.’ He swiped his hand over his mouth. ‘Enough to tell you to depart.’

Lucius shook his head. ‘I’m not departing. I have business in Rome.’

The horseman grinned. ‘We too.’

Another horseman, his mount restive and his eyes burning at this Roman’s impertinence, pulled up tightly on his reins and said angrily, ‘ Tha sainusai methtana, tha! ’

The warrior to the right, with the easy smile but the firm and steady eyes, leant forwards. He rested his muscular forearms, banded with bronze arm-bands, on the pommel of his saddle, and said conversationally, ‘My friend Vidusa here is growing angry. He says you must go. Otherwise…’

‘I am unarmed.’

‘Then we will pull you from your horse and knock your teeth out. But you will not ride into Rome through this camp without-’

‘I will ride into Rome,’ said Lucius, his voice quiet and steady. ‘I have business there that cannot be denied.’

A sound of furious galloping approached, and Lucius’ back and neck shivered with readiness for the cold bite of sword-blade or arrowhead. But none came. Another warrior skidded to a halt at his side. From the way the first four sat up and looked respectfully into the far distance, Lucius judged that the newcomer was a nobleman. He glanced to his left. The new arrival wore cross-gartered trousers, and was naked to the waist. His biceps bulged as he wrenched back the reins. His hair was long and fair and his eyes burnt keenly into Lucius’. He wore no sign of his rank, but the air of authority and power was unmistakable. He bellowed at his four inferiors and they answered sheepishly. They lowered their spears. The newcomer then turned his attention fully on Lucius. His Latin was basic but adequate.

‘You are Roman? Answer.’

‘I was.’

The newcomer frowned, his horse curvetting skittishly in the dust. The warrior wrenched the reins so fiercely that its head was pulled round almost to touch his legs, and the skittishness subsided.

‘Was?’ he rasped. His voice was deep, hoarse with dust, but powerful. ‘Can a man change his tribe? Can Roman become not Roman? Can Goth become Saxon or Frank? Can man disown father and mother, even people? Answer.’

‘My name is Lucius,’ he said. ‘I am from Britain.’

‘Britain,’ repeated the newcomer. ‘It rains.’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Often. Always. But grass is green. Answer.’

Lucius nodded. ‘Grass is green.’

The warrior grinned suddenly from under his bushy moustache. He sliced his hands at the walls of Rome. ‘After Rome burns,’ he said, ‘we come to Britain. We graze our horses where grass is green.’

Lucius shook his head. ‘The grass of Britain for my people. Our land.’

The warrior’s grin vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. He rode in alongside Lucius and stared at him closely. ‘You not afraid, Was-Roman?’

Lucius shook his head again. ‘Not afraid.’

‘Why not afraid? We kill you. Answer.’

Lucius remembered the words of the Greek philosopher: ‘How marvellous it must be for you to have as much power as a poisonous spider.’ But Lucius was not a man to borrow another man’s words. He spoke his own words, simple and true.

‘I am not afraid, because I am not your enemy. You will not kill me. I will ride into Rome. I have business there. Then I will sail home to Britain.’

‘Where the grass is green.’

‘Where the grass is green.’

The warrior stared into Lucius’ eyes a little longer. Lucius returned his gaze without blinking.

‘You are strange, Was-Roman,’ said the Goth at last.

‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Lucius.

Then the warrior wheeled away and threw his arm out wide to his men, roaring at them in the Gothic tongue. They parted, and Lucius rode on between them.

Several hundred yards separated the perimeter of the Gothic camp from the walls of Rome, well out of missile range for both. Lucius rode up under the shadow of the Porta Salaria and shouted for entrance. No questions were asked, and there was only a brief delay before the door in the centre of the great oak gates was opened. He dismounted and stepped through it, leading Tugha Ban behind him. He wondered why it had been so easy, but when he saw the guard on the gate he wondered no more. He was starving. His eyes were hollow and red, and his hair had fallen out in clumps from his white scalp. Spittle had dried and crusted round his mouth, and his lips had almost shrunken away with starvation. In such a condition, a man can barely think straight. The city was in a desperate situation.

Lucius led his horse up the street, and everywhere there was the stench of starving, unwashed and, even worse, unburied bodies. He saw people huddled along the edges of the streets or in the shadows of the darkened alleyways, sometimes holding out a clawed hand in beggary. He stopped only once, when he came upon the body of a child in rags, no more than four or five years old, its face of parchment, eyes rolled up in its head, flies settling already around the shrunken lips and the flaking nose. The child would be the same age as his own…

He bowed his head sorrowfully and could walk no further. He let go of Tugha Ban and leant down and gathered the dead child up in its rags. He covered its face – it was impossible to say even whether it was a boy or a girl – and laid the featherlight bundle at the side of the road, brushing away the flies and hiding the drawn, ashen face with a corner of ragged cloak. It was not enough, it was never enough, but it was as much as he could do. Then he and Tugha Ban walked on.

The whole city lay under an ominous silence, except for perhaps a long-drawn-out, barely audible sigh as it settled into enervation and death. The bodies of the dead were everywhere, and the clouds of breeding flies. It was still August, and in this heat Disease would soon make his appearance, close on the heels of his beloved bride, Starvation, and add to the manifold miseries of Rome.

Lucius and Tugha Ban walked for half an hour through the starved and haunted streets, the huddled groups of the dying sometimes stirring and chattering as they passed, eyeing with glittering, half-mad eyes the plump, grass-fed flanks of Tugha Ban. Lucius patted her on the nose.

At last they came to the Palatine Hill and the gates of the Imperial Palace. The guards here looked better fed. He demanded entrance, saying he came from Count Heraclian, from the column that had been despatched to Ravenna earlier in the month, and he gave the correct passwords. There was a long delay, and then at last he was admitted. He insisted on an audience with Princess Galla Placidia, saying that he had a confidential message for her from Count Heraclian himself. He was told to wait, and he waited for two hours. He waited until the evening. And then they said that the Princess Galla would receive him.

‘Look after my horse,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I’ll be coming back for her.’

They gave him their word.

He was escorted by four armed guards into the Chamber of the Imperial Audience, and there in regal splendour on her throne of finest Carrara marble sat Princess Galla Placidia. Close by her stood the eunuch Eumolpus.

The princess let her pale eyes settle upon him for some time. Then she said, ‘So Heraclian is safe in Ravenna.’

‘He is. Along with his beloved Palatine Guard.’ The soldier’s tone was peculiar, sarcastic.

‘Address the Throne as “Your Excellency”,’ hissed Eumolpus.

Lucius turned and gazed at him steadily. Then he turned back and looked at the princess with equal steadiness. He said nothing.

Galla was astonished, but she betrayed nothing. A princess must never betray any emotion, which is weakness; she must never raise her voice, and she must walk with a slow stateliness at all times, as if a cup of water were balanced on her head.

Besides, perhaps this filthy, tousled, bare-legged soldier, whose malodorous presence she must endure for the sake of his communication from that fool Heraclian, had sunstroke, or was weak with hunger or something. No matter. For once, palace protocol could be put aside. All she wanted to know was: ‘And the rest of the column?’

‘Dead.’

She nodded. ‘And the Hun boy?’

‘Apart from the boy. He is free now.’

She smiled. ‘As you put it.’

Lucius nodded. ‘He will be well on his way back to his people by now.’

Galla hesitated. ‘You mean… his ancestors?’

‘No, I mean his people. Out on the Scythian plains. That’s clear enough, isn’t it?’

‘Your Excellency!’ cried Eumolpus, snatching up his skirts and hurrying out into the centre of the chamber. ‘This impertinence is grotesque! I must abjure you’ – he swung round to the deranged soldier who dared to address the Imperial Throne in such a way – ‘I must abjure you…’ Uncertain of what exactly he must abjure the soldier from, he raised his hand angrily.

‘Slap me,’ said the soldier quietly, ‘and I will break your neck where you stand.’

‘Oh!’ cried Eumolpus, backing away. ‘Your Excellency! Guards!’

But Princess Galla waved the guards away. ‘Bring this man some wine.’

‘I have no need of your wine,’ said the soldier. ‘It might make me puke.’

Galla’s face began to show signs of revulsion, uncertainty and fear in equal measure. When she spoke, it was with further hesitancy. ‘What is your message, soldier?’

Lucius fixed her unblinkingly. ‘“If Satan cast out Satan,”’ he said, ‘“how then shall his kingdom stand? For then he is divided against himself.” The Gospel of St Matthew, chapter twelve, verse twenty-six.’

Eumolpus retreated to his mistress’s side, and the two of them stared at the strange, sun-maddened soldier.

Finally, Galla spoke again. Her skin and her pale red hair looked paler than ever. ‘You are telling me the boy got away?’

‘The boy got away. Heraclian and the Palatine Guard got to Ravenna. And the rest of my century – my entire century – got wiped out. By a detachment of Batavian cavalry from the Danube station, disguised as a Gothic warband.’ Lucius kept his eyes on Galla all the time, his voice rising now in volume and anger. ‘I don’t have a message for you from that scumbag Heraclian, may he rot in hell. I only came here to ask you a question. One simple question, to which I trust you will give a straight answer. Is it true that this whole disgusting business – this massacre – was merely a-’

‘Your Excellency!’ cried Eumolpus, unable to contain himself any longer. ‘This is outrageous! You, an unwashed hooligan, do not put questions to Her Imperial Majesty, and you do not -’

Lucius took two deliberate steps towards Eumolpus. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he said. ‘I want to hear an answer from the one who gives the orders, not a fucking eunuch.’

‘Guards!’ yelped Eumolpus. ‘Arrest this man!’

This time, the princess was so shaken that she did nothing to stop them. Two burly Palace Guards soon had Lucius’ arms locked up painfully behind his back, but he appeared not even to have noticed. His eyes never left Galla’s porcelain-white face.

‘If you do not answer,’ he said, as he was dragged back from the throne, ‘I will assume that my century was destroyed on your orders, as part of a plot using the Hun boy as a pawn. Am I right?’

Galla said nothing, but her lower lip trembled, and she clenched one small white fist in the palm of her other hand.

‘ Am I right? ’ roared Lucius, and his voice echoed deafeningly around the cavernous chamber like an angry missile.

Still there was nothing from the throne but an aghast silence.

‘Then I pray to God that you are punished for it,’ said Lucius, his voice quiet again but perfectly clear. ‘And that the line of Honorius die.’

At last it was too much for Galla. She leapt to her feet, all regal diginity and slow stateliness gone, and she raised her voice and cried with considerable emotion, ‘Take this man away! Have him beaten – and executed within the hour!’

And Lucius was dragged from the room.

‘So the Huns will not come?’ said Eumolpus, once the obnoxious soldier had been dragged away.

Galla resumed her seat, still shaken. ‘If what that madman has just told us is correct, the Huns will not come. The plan has failed.’

‘What must we do now, Your Excellency?’

Galla scowled in fury. ‘We must negotiate with the Goths. At first light tomorrow.’

‘And the boy? We do not know how much he really knows. If he makes it home to Scythia – unlikely, I know, but if he does – and tells his story, we will make mortal enemies of the Hun nation as well.’

Galla turned such a look on Eumolpus that he quailed where he stood.

‘Kill him,’ she said. ‘Send out orders. Scour all of Italy, and all of Pannonia beyond, to the very banks of the Danube. He must be destroyed. He must not get away. Rome itself may depend on it. Find him. And kill him.’

After ten lashes from the knotted rawhide whip, his back was streaming with blood. After thirty lashes, the flesh hung from his back in ribbons, and soon after that he lost consciousness. By the time the guards were done, the white of his ribs showed through the flesh.

He was not aware of the appearance of two Palatine officers in the cell beside him, nor of the low, urgent conversation they had with the prison guard. He did not hear them say ‘… from Heraclian’s column. .. the sole survivor… sweet Jesus… not ours to ask questions, soldier… be criminal to… No one will ever know.’

Then the two guards who had tied him up and lashed him tended him as he lay belly down for three days not moving. He tried to speak but they told him to shut up. They told him they knew who he was, and he would not be executed. He muttered that they could be put to death themselves for this disobedience. They shrugged.

They sewed up his wounds, where there remained enough skin on his back to do so, and they bathed him every hour, day and night. Sometimes the officers of the Palatine Guard came into his cell and looked him over. Not a word was exchanged. And then the officers left again. They, too, could be put to death for this.

The guards bandaged him with fine linen bandages, and made compresses of antiseptic herbs such as garlic and figwort, known to prevent the poisonous miasma that seeps into open wounds from the infected air, and turns the flesh of even the young and the healthy into a stinking pulp like rotting fruit.

He was strong. On the third day he insisted he could sit up. When he did so, some of his stitches burst apart and he began to bleed again. They bawled at him and told him what a dumb bloody idiot he was, and they laid him down again and undid the bandages and sewed him up and redressed him with fresh compresses of herbs and bandaged him up again.

He lay on his belly and complained that he was bored.

They grunted, unimpressed.

It was another week before he reckoned he was really well enough to stand. He stood there tottering in the dank cell to prove it.

‘But not to travel,’ they said.

‘Out of my way,’ he said.

‘No,’ they said. ‘We’re not seeing all that work going to waste. You’re not well enough. You need another week at least.’

He challenged the bigger of the two to an arm-wrestle to prove he was well enough. They declined. He argued with them. He argued with them for over half an hour, by which time they felt as if they were beginning to suffer from exhaustion. At last they shook their heads wearily and opened the gates of the cells.

‘And my horse,’ he said, ‘Tugha Ban. Where is she?’

The two guards looked uncomfortably at each other and then back at him. ‘You serious?’

‘Yes.’

They shook their heads. ‘You lead a horse into a city dying of starvation, and you expect to lead her out again? You’re old enough to know better than that – with respect, sir.’

Lucius stared at them. ‘The guards on the gate gave me their word.’

They shrugged.

‘Words, words,’ said one.

‘When food is scarce, so is friendship,’ said the other.

Lucius stared at them a little while longer. Then he turned away, and they watched him walk stiffly up the narrow steps into the darkened street above. There he stopped and called back softly, ‘Thank you both anyway. I owe you everything.’

‘Madman,’ they called after him. ‘Now scoot.’