The Judgement

5

In a bowl in the hills, a few dozen stragglers huddled. Six or seven families, children and toddlers, dogs, a goat kid, a single handbarrow laden with household goods, kitchen utensils ill-chosen in panic for saving. They lit no fire. They had heard of the terror visited on Margus, and had fled from Viminacium at dusk. Fled from the wrath to come. At Margus, the rumours said, the savages had slaughtered everyone. Every living thing. Dogs and cats, priests and sheep, babes in arms and ancients in their beds. Blood flowed in the gutters. The earthen backstreets were churned to rust-coloured mud.

One refugee from a farm, his bloody arm wrapped in filthy bandages, had come to Viminacium and spread the news. Some had counselled retreat within the walls of the fortress, but the refugee laughed, a horrible, weak laugh. ‘Not with these ones,’ he said. ‘We’d be no more than live bait to a wolf.’

‘With a whole legion to protect us?’

The refugee shook his head. ‘That legion is finished. History. Poor bastards.’

They fled into the hills.

Now it was a chill summer night, but they lit no fire. The fire of Margus away to the west still burned. It would be their own beloved town of Viminacium next, their houses and homes. Now they had nothing but their own families and a few pots and pans. The people could not even look at each other for sorrow. Above them the pure white stars wheeled. All was silent. They prayed and waited for nothing to happen. Only silence and the night. Please God.

In answer there came a distant rumbling. Horsemen. The pagan horsemen.

Mothers clutched their hands over infant mouths. A man pushed the goat kid roughly to the ground and hauled a bag over its head. The rumbling came closer. Many horsemen. They were ascending into the hills all around. The people looked up at the dark rim of the bowl where they lay hidden, eyes wide with terror. Above them the stars shone down. The moon was behind clouds but the vagabond people were brightly lit by starlight.

And then against the starlit nightsky, dark shapes arose. Horses tramped their forefeet and their nostrils steamed. Their riders pulled up their reins and looked down.

The rim of the bowl filled with the silhouettes of the pagan horsemen, spiky with bows and spears. The people below them, trapped and unarmed, groaned low. Mothers clutched infants to their breasts as if that might save them. Some buried their faces in their cloaks. Very young children began to cry, sensing their parents’ terror.

After an agonising time, the line of horsemen parted and a single figure came riding down the slope towards them. The people’s groans died away and they waited. The horseman stopped beside them. He was naked to the waist even in the cold night. His cheeks were deeply grooved and blue with ritual tattoos. He looked over them. Then he spoke, his voice deep and hoarse.

‘See how your army protects you. See how your emperor loves you.’ He shook his head.

One or two of the refugees dared to look up.

‘The army that did not protect you will be destroyed. Your emperor, too, and his empire, will be destroyed. All that you love, will be – must be – destroyed. It is written. But you.’ He shook his head again, and those who dared to look thought they saw him smile. ‘You I will not destroy. Now go your ways. Flee away south. Or east, west, north, it matters not. But remember: I am coming.’

He pulled his horse round and galloped away up over the rim of the bowl, and in seconds every one of his warriors had vanished after him.

The people stared at each other.

The stars shone down.

In a tent of the Huns, a captive from Margus stood blindfolded with his hands roped behind his back. He wore the close-fitting white gown of a priest of the Church and a wooden chi-rho on his chest.

He felt strong hands seize his blindfold and tear it off.

He blinked.

By firelight and the single torch in the tent he saw several barbarian chieftains. Before him, a half-naked savage wearing his hair in a topknot. Big gold earrings danced against his cheeks. The man’s arms and chest were scarred and tattooed and very strong.

The man smiled and, to the priest’s astonishment, spoke in perfect Latin.

‘You are a Christian priest, yes?’

He nodded.

‘You drink the blood of your god and eat his flesh,’ said a strange little man at the back of the tent.

It was Little Bird the shaman. He shook his head and his beribboned topknot danced. ‘What a barbarian you must be.’

The warlord signalled and another of his warriors raised the tent flap. Seated outside by a low campfire were a woman in a grimy red dress and three children, two girls and a boy.

‘And this is your family? The boy’s name is Theophilus, as is yours.’

The priest swallowed. ‘I do not know them.’

‘And three times Peter denied Christ.’

The priest was even more astonished. A savage who spoke Latin and alluded to Holy Scripture.

‘Even the devils in hell believe in God, and tremble.’ The warlord smiled. It was not a smile to comfort anyone. ‘You are not only a priest, you are a bishop. The Bishop of Margus.’

He shook his head. ‘I, I…’

The warlord reached out and put his big right hand round the priest’s throat. He rested it gently there.

‘Do not lie to me again, or I will squeeze your soul out of your gullet.’

‘He will, you know,’ put in Little Bird helpfully. ‘I’ve seen him do it.’

‘You are the Bishop of Margus, and this is your family. She is your wife, or perhaps your concubine. The children are your seed.’

The priest wept. ‘Mine is the family of Christ. I do not have a family. Leave them be.’

The warlord squeezed, briefly.

After the priest had sucked in air and staggered to his feet again, mopping the tears from his eyes, the warlord recommenced.

‘You know her.’ He raised his voice. ‘She is your concubine, your whore. You disdained to marry her.’

Hearing those words the woman looked up. The warlord glanced back, caught her expression of fury, and smiled.

The priest’s shoulders sagged and he hung his head.

The warlord released him.

‘Now listen to me,’ he said. ‘As your god redeemed you, so you can redeem your family. You will go to your emperor in Constantinople, the Calligrapher. I will give you a horse.’

The bishop was looking out at his family again. The warlord signalled and his warrior dropped the tentflap.

‘You must attend,’ he said.

The bishop raised his eyes and looked at him.

‘It is no great task, but you will remember my words. This is a job for a bishop, smooth-tongued and proficient in diplomacy as you are.’

The bishop shivered at his tone.

‘You will ride south down the imperial trunk road for Naissus.’

‘My lord,’ he stammered, ‘do not send me, I implore you. The hills are full of savages.’ The warlord showed his teeth. ‘Of… of bandits, of brigands. I might be killed by Roman detachments, even, reinforcements, uncertain, bewildered-’

‘There are no reinforcements coming.’

‘Or by common cutpurses, bears, wolves-’

‘Life is uncertain,’ admitted the warlord genially.

‘Then why me? Why not send your own?’

‘Because life is uncertain.’ His yellowish eyes glittered with amusement. ‘They might be killed by common cutpurses, bears, wolves.’ More harshly he added, ‘Besides, my warriors are fit for better things than running mere errands.

‘Now, this is your task. You will wear a cloak I give you. My men in the hills about will not molest you: the word has gone out. You will have a good horse – good enough for a Christian bishop, anyway. In Naissus you will report directly to the city prefect. His name is Eustachius. Of course you know him well; he is your cousin.’ The warlord enjoyed his captive’s amazement. ‘You will tell him that Margus is laid waste, but nothing more, and demand immediate escort to Constantinople. There you will demand audience with the emperor.

‘You will speak to him directly, and none other.

‘You will tell him that he has insulted the Hun people. You will tell him that his armies have assaulted and slaughtered our innocents. They have trampled on the grave-mounds of our ancient kings, they have looted our burial grounds.’ The warlord’s voice grated with cold anger. ‘And you will say to the emperor these words from me:

‘“If you ignore me, oppose me or attempt to deceive me, I will destroy you. If you do not admit your guilt in regard to the descration of our burial mounds and the massacre of our people, I will destroy you.”’

‘My lord,’ stammered the messenger, ‘I cannot say these words in person to His Divine Majesty. His anger will be terrible.’

‘His anger will be nothing to mine. Say them. Say them just as I said them to you, word for word. The emperor in his perfumed palace will hear you. He will not destroy you, but if you fail me I will destroy you and your seed for ever. Just as I will destroy him and his empire: every wall, every stone, every man, woman and child left within. Understand me. Look into my eyes. Do I look to you like a liar?’

The priest could not speak.

‘Say to the emperor that if he does not render to me half his empire by way of recompense, I will destroy him.’

‘Half… the empire?’

‘Your ears work well. Of course, I will destroy him anyway, but he need not know that yet. And you can add for him the old Roman motto “ Nemo me impune lacessit – no man insults me with impunity.” Suitable, no?’

The bishop said nothing.

‘I will know if and when you have delivered this message in full, and correctly. If you do, you may return here and be reunited with your family. And then, if you have any sense, you will flee far from this empire doomed to fall. If you do not return – in twenty days – your family will be crucified, the whore and the children both.’

The bishop groaned.

The warlord struck him. He reeled backwards. With his hands tied behind his back he could not wipe his mouth so he licked and leaned aside and spat the blood that welled from his split lip.

The warlord’s voice grew fiercer. ‘How often in your life have you had a chance to redeem your entire family from death by a single act of great bravery? Never. Am I right? Of course I am. You are a provincial priest of a mean frontier diocese. Your family were mere yeoman farmers, slow sons of the soil with clay for blood.’

He looked away.

‘You should go now. Naissus is two days distant, and the capital another ten. So you will need to hurry to be back here in twenty days and collect your prize.’ He laid his hand on the man’s shaking shoulder, almost gentle again. ‘You will need to ride fast. Understand?’

The bishop controlled himself and nodded.

The warlord turned to his warriors. ‘Find him a horse.’

As he departed, the priest looked back. ‘My lord, I still do not know what name I should give.’

‘Attila. My name is Attila.’

Orestes watched him at the doorway to the tent. Great Tanjou. He remembered the day when the two of them had come back to the camp of the Huns, a small and humbled people, before Attila took them in his fists and remade them. And when Attila dug into the grave-mound, grubbing into the very bones of his father, Mundzuk, with a common spade. Now he preached the desecration of the Hun grave-mounds as a pretext for war. Yet Attila was no hypocrite. That was not the word.

One law for the lion and the ox is oppression. That was Attila’s creed, or something like it.

Attila said, ‘Let them use their own to pass on messages of disaster, to issue threats to their emperor.’ He took his place cross-legged at the fireside. ‘Let them use their own cursus to pass on my words.’

Orestes murmured, ‘Like the time we let those Turcoman bandits steal our gold. Heavy wagons of Chinese gold.’

An old warrior with long, greying hair regarded him. It was Chanat. ‘Tell the tale.’

Orestes smiled thinly. ‘We let them drag it over mountain passes, across fast-flowing rivers on rafts, across parched gravel deserts. A terrible journey back to their steppeland home. We trailed them all the way. They never knew. And when they had kindly transported all that Chinese gold for us, safely back to the northern steppes, we fell on them by night and slew them all.’

‘And took back your gold?’

Orestes nodded. ‘And took back our gold.’

Chanat munched happily on his leg of mutton. He liked this story. ‘Will this emperor indeed render up to us half his empire? Is he such a woman? They say he wears perfume, and boots studded with pearls.’

‘I don’t doubt he does,’ said Attila. ‘But as for handing over half his empire, if he does not, I will destroy him. And if he does,’ he smiled, ‘well, I will destroy him anyway. And then… Rome.’

‘And then…?’

‘Ah. Then.’

They fell silent. Chanat drank. Memories of China.

‘Whatever else he does, Theodosius will call on the West for aid,’ said Attila. ‘But no aid will come.’

Orestes frowned. ‘The Roman boy, this Master-General, Aetius.. .’

‘I remember him. He would ride to the rescue of any fallen damsel, even Theodosius. But he will not come. I have other plans. Constantinople has strong walls, but the strongest legions remain in the West. Aetius’ own legions are the finest. We could take on both empires at once, but it is easier to divide and rule, as the Romans used to say when they colonised new lands. Divide and destroy, I say.

‘We concentrate first on the East. Soon enough, Theodosius will send out a message by sea to Ravenna. Also to his field army at Marcianopolis, and perhaps to the legionary forts at Sirmium and Singidunum to attack our flank. Such messages will be… disrupted.’

‘At sea?’

‘The Vandals are masters of much of the Mediterranean now. King Genseric.’

Orestes stared. ‘One of the brothers also held hostage in Rome in your boyhood.’

‘With his sleek ships in that fine harbour of captured Carthage. What irony there.’

‘He is your ally now? I did not know this.’

‘He is not my ally, he is my servant.’ Attila grinned. ‘But he does not know this.’ He took a deep draught of koumiss.

‘You should sleep,’ said Orestes. He had been awake all night, talking, the bloodlust of Margus still coursing in his veins.

Attila ignored him. Orestes laid his hand on his shoulder. No other man could have done this. Attila shrugged him off.

Finally he said, ‘Such dreams I have nowadays. You have no idea. Such dreams…’

‘Such dreams,’ echoed Little Bird from the back of the tent, shaking his head sorrowfully.

Orestes did not know if they were good dreams or bad, if his friend awoke in the cold midnight raging with dreams of world conquest or trembling from other visions altogether.

‘I do not sleep,’ said Attila. ‘I cannot sleep.’

Two more warriors stepped into the tent, Aladar, son of Chanat, and one of the Kutrigur Huns.

‘Another of the Chosen Men is dead,’ said Aladar.

The Kutrigur warrior nodded. ‘You seek the Lord Bela. I saw him go down into the water. One of the Romans, a brute of a man, fell on him and dragged him off the bridge, drowned him.’

Attila gazed at the messenger. First eager Yesukai, doomed to die young. Now Bela, one of the four steadfast brothers.

The king said not a word, made not a sound, but in a single, explosive movement smashed his wooden cup to the ground. Little Bird whimpered. No one else moved.

‘His body?’

‘Never found.’

Attila’s eyes searched the ground splashed with koumiss, muttering. ‘Drowned. What an end for my warrior Bela.’

Bela of the bull-neck and the bull-torso. The strong and silent, slow-witted, immovable Bela. Loyal unto death, like all his Chosen Men.

Chanat said, ‘The brothers will have their revenge, my lord.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ growled Attila.

Aladar took a deep breath. ‘And Candac is also gone.’

Clever, cautious, round-faced Candac.

‘Then find him. Find his body. He will be given full and honourable-’

‘No, Great Tanjou. He is gone. I saw him go.’

Attila’s scowl was ferocious. Two deep vertical grooves between his brows, his forehead furrowed deep and dark. Three ancient parallel scars just visible, fine and white. His traitor’s mark. His voice was soft and low, always the worst.

‘Not deserted,’ he said. ‘Not my Candac, not my Chosen Man. He would not desert me.’

‘I saw him ride, too, my master,’ said Little Bird, nodding furiously. ‘He rode away north and gone, all wordless into the wilderness.’

Attila’s bewilderment erupted into violence.

Little Bird yelped and scuttled to the darkest side of the tent, where he squatted down and wrapped his arms over his head like a monkey.

Orestes ducked under the wooden stool that the king was flailing wildly, smashing to splinters against the shuddering tentpost. He seized his arm. It was not seemly for a great man to show such passion. Attila froze and looked at Orestes as if unable to recognise him. His blazing eyes were filled with madness. Orestes returned his gaze steadily. Attila gradually grew calm again, dropped the remains of the stool at his feet and turned away.

‘Explain,’ he said eventually. His shoulders seemed to sag. ‘Explain to me the desertion of my Chosen Man, my beloved Candac.’

‘My lord,’ said Aladar gravely, ‘I cannot. Except that…’

‘I heard him speak,’ said Chanat.

Attila looked back.

The old warrior regarded his king gravely. ‘I saw him surveying the killing-field of Margus, and the mounds of dead bodies, and the deeds of the Kutrigur Huns, our brothers-in-arms: taking scalps, debauching the slain, having their usual enjoyments.’

The Kutrigur warrior, messenger of Bela’s death, remained impassive at the tent door.

‘Terror is a fine weapon,’ said Attila. ‘And very cheap.’

Chanat did not argue. ‘Our brothers-in-arms,’ he repeated boldly and bitterly. ‘Our comrades riding with us in the great and glorious conquest of this mighty Empire of Rome. I saw Candac standing among the flames, and I saw him drop his bow to the ground and not retrieve it. He watched them, the Kutrigurs, about their business, their exotic deeds and their violations, with the chieftain of the Kutrigurs, Sky-in-Tatters himself, among them. And I heard the Lord Candac say – I thought to me, though he did not turn his head – I heard him say, “This is not the treasure I fought for.”’

There was a moment of silence. Then, ‘Why did you not tell me this earlier?’

‘You would not have heard this earlier.’

Old Chanat.

‘Ach,’ murmured Attila. One soft, sad syllable. There was no more to be said.

After a while his warriors rose and retired from his tent. Even Orestes stepped after them, leaving him to his dreams.

Proud tempers breed sad sorrows for themselves.

Orestes searched for Little Bird but he was nowhere to be found. Like Candac, he had gone into the wilderness, though not for ever, only for a little while. He would never desert his master, come what may. He would always go with him through the storm and to the very gates of Hell, joking as he went.

In the hills to the south, looking out over the smouldering ashes of Margus, seated cross-legged upon an outcrop of pale moonlit limestone among the yellow rockroses, was an outlandish, beribboned creature. He wore a string decorated with tiny bird and animal skulls around his neck, and a torn goatskin shirt decorated with little black stick men.

A solitary girl fleeing south, a shepherdess, stumbled on him and gave a cry of terror but he never stirred, never even noticed. She fled onward.

For all his years he still had the face of a child, the colour high and hectic in his broad cheeks. A small fire of sticks burned at his feet and he threw strange seeds into it and leaned forwards to inhale the smoke.

His attention was fixed far beyond the ruined town. He saw turning stars and balefire and black night, and he felt afraid. He rocked back and forth and stirred his hands in the air. He saw his noble master, Lord Widow-Maker, Great Tanjou, Khan of Khans, drawing black night down over the world like a tent to cover and smother all. Not only the hated empire of Rome but the Hun people, too, would be caught in it, would suffocate and die under that dark sky heavy with hatred. He whimpered. The tent of the world twisted and became a monster made up of blood-red flame and black night, which would turn and devour them all.