The Judgement

18

Aetius moved swiftly with his new and unexpected civilian army. He divided them into citizen companies, and immediately an esprit de corps seemed to spring up within each of them. He appointed half of them to man the Walls, and the rest as reservists at four stations behind, ready to fill any gaps at short notice. Their missiles were stones and rubble, their weapons any iron tool they could lay their hands on – spade, hoe or pruning hook – but their expressions were soldierly and grim.

‘This will be a crude fight,’ Aetius told them. ‘But that’s fine, since you will be crude fighters.’ They gave a great, self-laudatory cheer. ‘You will be up on the Inner Wall. The two lower walls before you will be undefended, and the savages will come pouring over them like a tide. How will you react? I’ll tell you how you’ll react: you will empty your bowels at the sight.

‘Then there will be a man climbing up the wall to reach you and kill you. He will have a shield on his back, a spear, a sword and a dagger, and he will have killed many, many men before you. He will have their flensed skulls decorating his horse, and he will mean to have yours likewise. There will be constant arrow-fire coming in from his comrades beyond, and they are perhaps the finest archers in the world. But you will be standing above him, behind strong stone battlements, some of which you have built with your own bare hands.’ Another cheer, a little more sober than before. ‘You are protected by the wall. He is not. You must kill him. Strike once and once only. Beat him back, dash him down, brain him with your first, measured blow. Then duck back for cover. The Palatine Guard will be among you, and you will obey their every order. You need no more training. Now go to your stations and do your duty.’

Then suddenly this least martial of cities, this religiose New Rome with its ceaseless liturgies and tangled theological debates about the true nature of the Tri-une Christ, was an excited hubbub of brazen trumpets and marching hobnailed boots. Theodoric said the Byzantines were turning into Spartans. It was an extraordinary feat, and no one seemed to know who was responsible.

Tatullus said to blame it on the earthquake.

Aetius said to blame it on the power that made the earthquake.

Around mid-morning, news spread that the outriders had come in. The Huns had been seen: they were no more than ten miles off. Eyes strained over the battlements, sweaty hands gripped shears and pruning hooks, shaking hands struggled to place a last few loose rocks on top of the jagged walls. There was no more excited cheering.

A wild-eyed holy man began another sermon, declaiming to the women and children gathered in the great square around the Church of the Holy Apostles. The text was from Deuteronomy: ‘“The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from the ends of the earth. They shall be as swift as eagles, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand. A nation of fierce countenance, they shall besiege thee in all thy high gates, until thy mighty walls come crashing down wherein thou trustedst. And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, and the flesh of thy sons and thy daughters which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee.”’

It was an ill-chosen text and, somewhat to the preacher’s surprise, the people promptly turned on him. Only a few days before they might have listened, and wailed, and crossed themselves, but now a woman whacked the ill-advised doomsayer about the head with the flat of her washing-paddle, and he fled howling into an alley, pursued by an angry mob who soon caught up with him and gave him a sound drubbing. Among their number, rumour had it, there was even a black-cassocked deacon or two, putting in a sandalled kick.

Night fell again on the lonely, resolute city. Some still worked on, trying to build up the walls as best they could, but the masons all agreed they were as solid as they could be made in this short time. Only after darkness cloaked the land did they see from their walls and towers the numberless fires that burned out there in the desolate countryside. The last farmsteads, a few isolated chapels, hayricks and barns, put to the torch by men on shaggy ponies, their reins and saddle-straps decorated with scalps and skulls and severed hands.

In one of those forlorn chapels, barely more than a hermit’s cell in the woods, with whitewashed walls, a stark stone altar at one end, and a crude little wood-panel icon hanging above it, a single holy man had lingered when all others fled. He said he would go as a martyr to heaven to be with his Christ, and spoke as if he was tired and longed only for sleep.

Now he knelt before the altar and prayed to Christ, even as the wooden door of the chapel swung open behind him and he heard the tramping of horses and the low laughter of men. First in the doorway was a man with a dagger in his hand, gleaming yellow eyes feasting hungrily on the helpless sight before him.

Behind him, Orestes spoke with urgency. ‘Do not delay here. This earthquake we have heard of, it will have done damage.’

But Attila lingered, smiling.

Finally the priest turned, and crossed himself at what he saw. Attila strode into the chapel. Orestes lowered his eyes, his hand still on the doorhandle.

‘You tried to assassinate me,’ said Attila gratingly to the startled priest, who was already shaking his head. But he did not kneel or plead for mercy. He only reached out and took down the little icon, and held it to his breast. Attila fixed his gaze on the bewildered priest, his eyes burning. ‘Vengeance upon vengeance. Those Roman rats would not even face me in the open field. They sent an assassin, a viper, to me in a putrid basket. Now they will feel my fierce anger, now we spare not, now all will pay for Rome’s cowardice and weakness. I rejoice that they have angered me, anger is such a sweet fire!

‘When I ride away south you will breathe again, Christian pig, and think that this is over. But it is not over. After I have destroyed Byzantium and laid it waste, and metamorphosed all its precious treasures into faithful mercenaries’ – he showed his teeth – ‘I will come back and find you, eunuch priest.’

The priest shook his head. The man was mad. He made no sense. Behind him, one of his companions, a bald, fair-skinned fellow, was calling him, but he seemed oblivious, rapt in his own words and imaginings. He even trembled a little in his mad passion.

‘Hear me, priest!’ roared the Scythian war-lord, ‘and know how Attila punishes craven assassins! I will destroy Constantinople. I will not enslave its citizens, I will slay them, and on the ruins of the city I will build a pyramid of a million human skulls. And there is nothing you can do.’ He turned back to Orestes. ‘See how the poor Christian pig clutches this daubing of his little god, as if for protection. ’ He faced the holy man again. ‘Pray to your God? Who, this pale Christ?’ He seized the icon from the man’s grasp. The priest tried to hold it, but Attila knocked him reeling with a casual bear-cuff.

‘My lord,’ said Orestes again, with feeling in his voice. ‘We are wasting time here.’

Attila no longer heard him. He stared down intently at the icon in his hands. ‘Your bleeding and tortured god, is he so powerful? He does not look so powerful to me. How many battalions has he?’ He raised his dagger. Behind him, Orestes had vanished. ‘If he is god, let him strike me dead now as I mutilate him.’ He slid the tip of the dagger under the delicate gold foil of the icon, and the priest groaned. ‘What, this is the son of god? Why does his almighty father not stop me? Is this blasphemy?’ He gouged the dagger point into Christ’s right eye – the priest howled – then his left. Then he dug it into the emaciated hanging body, blue-white and stretched in his dying agony. ‘You say this is a holy icon. It seems to me your god is very feeble.’ He pulled his dagger free and dropped the mutilated image to the floor. He smiled. ‘It seems to me you should get yourself another god, for this one, too feeble even to intervene and stop the mutilation of his only son, will surely not intervene to save the stinking city of Constantinople.’

The priest was on his knees, retrieving the icon from the floor and cradling it, weeping. Attila kicked him hard in the ribs and sent him sprawling, retching for breath. Then he stuck his dagger under his belt, strode out into the night, vaulted onto his horse and kicked it forward. Orestes spoke no more.

Instead Geukchu came and rode by his side, and at his other side rode the witch Enkhtuya.

‘The earthquake we have heard of,’ said Geukchu in a low, sinuous voice, ‘surely Astur is with us! It is as if, my lord, you had planned it all yourself.’

But even at this stage Attila still disliked flattery, and he only murmured a couplet from some ancient Persian poem. ‘“ The spider weaves the curtains in the Palace of the Caesars, The owl calls the watches in the Towers of Afrasiab…”.’

They rode on, and night closed around them, and in the woods behind, as if in answer to those melancholy lines, there were only the sounds of a lych-owl and of a solitary holy man weeping in his cell for the sins of all the world.