“We’ll still run them down,” he grimly told his men.
“They’re carrying too much,” agreed Tatos.
The Hun horses were whipped downhill in a ragged line, the warrior’s bows still strung, swords bouncing against their thighs. They watched their quarry pause a moment on the bridge, as if to break or block it. Then the fugitives seemingly gave up and rode across, leaving the Roman road to ride through a gap in the trees on the far side of the stream and struggle directly uphill. They were desperate now, Skilla guessed, leaving the track in hopes of losing their pursuers in broken country. It was a foolish and fatal move because his men would not slacken, not when their quarry’s scent was like the spoor of a wounded stag.
His men need cross only one more bridge, and they had them.
The attack of the Huns had come as a complete shock to us three escapees but not at all to our prisoner, the wily Eudox-ius. After crossing the Danube and riding southward toward the Alps, we had foolishly assumed that our circuitous route had been successful, and we had slackened our pace, giving our tired horses some rest. Yet even when the passes to Italy seemed almost in sight, I still didn’t dare light a fire or abandon habitual caution. I’d taken the risk of purchasing some charcoal when we crossed the Danube, and its heat had since kept us alive. I believed it gave no smoke.
Until that morning.
Ever since we’d escaped Attila’s camp, Eudoxius had been doing anything he could to attract attention. It raised too many questions to gag him, so he’d spoken Greek at every opportunity. He had offered medical care to the endless parade of the sick and crippled that any traveler encounters. One by one he had plucked silver and gold rings off his fingers and left them on boulders or logs in the remote hope a pursuing Hun might spot them, and it was only in the foothills of the Alps that Julia furiously noticed that his fingers had become bare. The doctor had listened for pursuit every night when his head touched the ground. He had not so much seen or heard Skilla as felt him, I think— felt as if an arm were reaching for him as he sank under water. The closer we drew to the Alps, the more his hopes perversely rose. Finally, it was my last charcoal fire that was our undoing. We warmed our dinner and I kicked it out, but the dirt locked in the heat and quiet coals remained. Late at night when Julia had nodded from exhaustion, Eudoxius stretched his bonds enough to reach a fallen fir bough damp with dew. At dawn, he slipped the branch onto the embers before the rest of us stirred and smoke began to roll upward. Julia finally jerked awake, shouting, but by the time Zerco kicked the limb aside and kicked our prisoner, it was too late. Shortly afterward, we heard the yip of the Huns.
Now we were desperate. Unable to break the old timbers of the bridge, we’d abandoned the Roman track and were climbing through trees. Eudoxius thought we were trying to hide.
“Better to give yourselves up,” he counseled as I clutched him like a sack of wheat across the front of my mount, wondering for the hundredth time if his potential value to Aetius was worth his trouble as a captive. “Trying to hide is as ineffectual as a child covering his eyes in hopes of not being seen. The Huns will find you. I’ve seen them shoot out the eye of a stag at two hundred paces.”
“If I die, you will too.”
“You won’t know the arrow is coming until it is through your breast.”
I punched him in frustration and he swore.
“Leave me and the sword and maybe the Huns will break off their pursuit,” he tried. “I’ll trade you your life for it.”
“The sword I might abandon,” I said. “You, I’ll keep as shield.”
Given time and a tool more effective than the old iron sword, we might have sabotaged the bridge. It was obvious no repairs had been made in a generation, and the rotting timber deck had been patched only crudely by the rare traveler charitable enough to care about who came after him. Gaps revealed the white water below. Yet even as I pondered the possibility, the Huns began spilling down the slope behind like a brown avalanche. This forced me to look ahead, and what I saw inspired me.
“Where the devil are you taking us,” Zerco gasped as our two horses struggled up the mountainside, gravel skittering.
“We can’t outrun twenty or thirty men forever,” I replied. “We have to stop them.”
“But how?” Julia cried. An arrow, fired from so great a range that it wobbled, rattled into the trees.
“See that slope of rubble and talus above the bridge? If we can jar it loose, we can send down an avalanche.”
“And ourselves with it,” Zerco predicted. But what choice did we have?
We came out of the trees at the base of a cliff that loomed high above the ravine that the bridge spanned, casting the stream in shadow. Following the cliff base, we climbed along a rubble slope until the loose shale became so thick that all vegetation ended. The horses began slipping as if on ice. Far below, we could see the Huns riding down to the crossing.
“Zerco, truss this damned doctor like a sacrificial goat. Julia, come with me!” I grabbed a stout pine pole lying amid the rubble and we slid partway down the talus slope, zigzagging to a point above the span.
The Huns were like ants, bunched at the bottom, pointing up to where they spied us. One was angrily ordering the others further, and his posture and gestures were all too familiar. Skilla! Would I never be rid of my rival?
I saw what I was looking for. A rock larger than the others had slid down the talus and was perched precariously upright at one end, wedged in place by smaller rocks around it. I planted the pole under, using a stone as a fulcrum. “Help me push!”
Julia pressed desperately.
The Huns, leading their ponies, began filing over the bridge.
“I can’t do it!” she shouted.
“Throw your weight against it!”
“I am!”
And then a smaller ball of energy sprang down the slope and hurtled onto the pole. Zerco! The dwarf’s impact, his weight multiplied by speed, was just enough. Even as the lever snapped, the rock sprang high enough to topple forward; and as it did other rocks broke loose and began sliding like a ruptured dam.
Zerco started to slide with it, his wife catching his tunic. For a moment she swayed at the edge, about to tip.
I hauled at them, retreating upward. “We have to get out of the way!”
Now the hillside was roaring, beginning to slide in a sheet. We clambered to the cliff pass, grabbed solid rock, and turned. What a sight!
We’d triggered a major avalanche. Falling stone smashed into falling stone, rupturing the delicate equilibrium of the mountain. Dust was hissing upward in a geysered plume. The rumble grew in volume, at first inaudible to the Huns below and then so loud that it overcame the sound of the rushing water. The barbarians looked up, staring in stupefaction at the lip of the cliff. A spray of talus burst over and arced down.
They turned their horses and ran.
Now hundreds of tons of rock were sluicing over the precipice like a stone waterfall, and when they struck the bridge there was an eruption. Planks kicked skyward as if catapulted. Aging beams exploded into a spray of splinters. The avalanche punched through the bridge as if it were paper, taking two Huns and their horses with it, and then the plume of rubble hit the torrent with a titanic splash. Bridge bits rained down.
We climbed to the top of the talus, where Eudoxius was, and looked back. I was jubilant. It was as if a giant had taken a bite out of the mountain. A haze of dust hung in the air. Below, the middle of the bridge had disappeared.
The surviving Huns had reined in on the far side of the stream and stared upward, quiet at the damage.
“It will take them days to find another way around,” I said with more hope than knowledge. “Or at least hours.” I patted Zerco. “Let’s pray Aetius got your message.”
XIX
THE ROMAN TOWER
The guard tower of Ampelum overlooked the junction of two old Roman roads, one going west to the salt mines around Iuvavum and Cucullae, the other south to Ad Pontem
and the mountain passes beyond. The tower was square, fifty feet high, crenellated at its crest, and topped by a tripod-hung kettle in which oil could be lit to send signals to distant towers like it. The fire had been lit many more times than help had ever arrived, given the depleted nature of imperial resources; and so this garrison, like so many, had learned to depend on itself. Rome was like the Moon: ever present and far away.
Around the tower’s base was a wider fortification of stone walls eight feet high, enclosing a courtyard with stables, storerooms, and workshops. The dozen occupying Roman soldiers slept and ate in the tower itself, relying on cows stabled on the ground floor to provide some warmth. This animal heat was supplemented by charcoal braziers that gave the air a stale haze and, over the centuries, had stained the beams black.
To call the garrison “Roman” was to stretch the historic meaning of the term. It had been ages since legions consisted primarily of Latins marching out of Italy. Instead, the army had become one of the Empire’s great integrating forces, recruiting men of a hundred conquered nations and training them under the common tongue. Slowly, the universality of language, custom, and armament had slipped away, and so what manned the tower now was a collection of mountain farm boys and recruited vagabonds, all under the command of a gruff decurion named Silas who originated in the marshes of Frisia. One soldier was Greek, one Italian, and one African. Three were Germanic Ostrogoths, one a Gepid, and the other five had never ventured more than twenty miles from the fortress and thus were simply inhabitants of Noricum. While these men owed nominal allegiance to Rome, they principally guarded themselves, plus a few villages in surrounding valleys from which they extracted provisions and a few coins in taxes. Travelers passing the crossroads were required to pay a toll. When reminders from the clerks in Ravenna became insistent enough, a small portion of this levy was shared with the central government. The soldiers did not expect, and did not receive, anything in return. They were responsible for providing their own food, clothing, weapons, and any material needed to repair the guard tower. Their reward was permission to levy taxes on their neighbors.
Still, these men had at least nominal allegiance to the idea of Rome: the idea of order, the idea of civilization. I hoped they represented refuge. Our destruction of the bridge several miles back had delayed but not necessarily stopped the Huns. A Roman garrison might force Skilla to give up and go home.
“What the devil is that?” greeted the commanding decurion Silas, who had come to the gate and, after observing that four of us were crowded on two exhausted horses, was peering at Zerco.
“An important aide to General Flavius Aetius,” I replied, reasoning it would not hurt to exaggerate the truth.
“Is this a jest?”
“His wisdom is as tall as his stature is short.”
“And that sack of grain across your saddle?” He looked at the trussed and gagged Eudoxius, who wiggled to communicate outrage.
“A traitor to Rome. Aetius wants to question him.”
“An aide, a traitor?” He pointed to the woman. “And who is she, the queen of Egypt?”
“Listen. We’ve important information for the general, but need help. We’re being pursued by a party of Huns.”
“Huns! This is a joke. Any Huns are far to the east.”
“Then why are four of us on two horses while our other grows Hunnish arrows?” Zerco piped up. He slid down from his mount and waddled over to the Roman captain, peering up. “Do you think a man as big as me would stop in a sty like this if I weren’t in dire peril?”
“Zerco, don’t insult our new friend,” Julia interjected. She too dismounted. “I apologize for his rudeness. We’re being chased by Attila’s men, decurion, and only the collapse of the bridge below saved us from capture. Now we ask your protection.”
“The bridge collapsed?”
“We had to destroy it.”
He looked as if not certain whether to believe anything we said, and to dislike us if he did. “You’re with him?” The commander nodded from Julia to me.
“It’s this rude one who is my husband.” She put her hand on Zerco’s shoulder. “He’s a fool and sometimes makes jokes that others don’t find humorous, but please don’t mind. He’s taller in spirit than men twice his size, and it is true, he serves the great Aetius. Do you know where the general is?”
The soldier barked a laugh. “Look around you!” The tower was mossy and cracked, the courtyard muddy, and the stabled animals thin. “I’m as likely to see Aetius as I am Attila! There was a report he was in Rome or in Ravenna or on the Rhine, and even a report he was coming this way, but then there was also a report of a unicorn in Iuvavum and a dragon at Cucullae. Besides, he never stays anywhere for long. With winter coming on, he may retire to Augusta Treverorum or Mediolanum. If you’re to reach him, you need to move quickly before the passes are snowed in.”
“Then we need food, fodder, and another horse,” I said.
Which means I need a solidus, a solidus, and another solidus,” Silas replied. “Let’s see your purse, strangers.”
“We have no more money! We’ve escaped from Attila’s camp. Please, we have information that Aetius needs to hear. Can’t you requisition help from the government?”
“I can’t get anything myself from Rome.” He looked at us and our meager possessions dubiously. “What’s that on your back?”
“An old sword,” I said.
“Let me see it. Maybe you can trade for that.”
I considered a moment, and then climbed down and unwrapped it. Black and rusty, it looked like it had been pulled from the mud. Which it had. Only the size was impressive.
“That’s not a sword, it’s an anchor,” Silas said. “It wouldn’t cut cheese, and looks too big to swing. Why are you carrying that piece of scrap?”
“It’s a family relic that’s important to me.” I wrapped it back up. “A token of our ancestors.”
“Were your ancestors ten feet tall? It’s ridiculous.”
“Listen, if you won’t provision us, at least let us spend the night. We haven’t slept under a roof in weeks.”
He looked at Julia. “Can you cook?”
“Better than your mother.”
Silas grinned. “I doubt that, but better than wretched Lucius, without a doubt. All right, you will cook supper; you will fetch water; and you, little man, will carry wood. Your prisoner we’ll tie to a post in the tower and let him sputter. Agents of Aetius! The garrison at Virunum will laugh when I tell them that one. Go on, I’ll let you fill your bellies and sleep in my fort. But you’re on your way in the morning. This is a military post, not a mansio.”
If the decurion seemed a reluctant host, his bored soldiers welcomed our company as entertainment. Julia cooked a hot and hearty soup; Zerco sang them ribald songs; and I told them of Constantinople, which to them seemed no more or less distant and incredible than Rome or Alexandria. Eudoxius, his gag removed, insisted he was a prince of the Huns and promised all of them their weight in gold if they would free and return him. The soldiers thought him as funny as Zerco. They assured us that Huns did not exist in these parts or, if they did, were no doubt on their way home by now. Forts less than a day’s ride apart guarded the approaches to Italy, and we could travel from one to the next. “Sleep well tonight,” assured Lucius, “because we don’t allow barbarians in upper Noricum.”
At the gray smudge of dawn, that time when sentries finally become dark silhouettes against a barely lightened sky, just two Romans were still awake in our small outpost.
Both died within moments of each other.
The first, Simon, was at the gate and looking in sleepy boredom down the lane. He hoped that Ulrika, a local milkmaid who had udders like a cow, might make her delivery before he was called off duty to breakfast. He was thinking of her breasts, round as melons and firm as a wineskin, when a pony trotted out of the gloom and, before he could call challenge, a Hun arrow took him squarely in the throat. He gurgled as he sank numbly down, w
ondering what the devil had happened to him, and what had happened to Ulrika. It is oft remarked that a common expression on the dead is surprise.
The second man, Cassius, was at the top of the tower and was pacing back and forth to keep warm. It was a strange humming that caused him to look up before a dozen arrows hissed down like a sudden squall. Four of the arcing missiles found their mark, and the others rattled on the tower roof like hail. It was this, and the thump of his body, that woke me and the others.
“Huns!” I cried.
“You’re having a dream,” Silas grumbled, half asleep.
Then an arrow sizzled through the chamber’s slit window and banged off the stone wall.
We heard a rumble of hooves as Skilla’s men galloped to the compound wall in a rush, leaped from their pony’s backs to the lip of the wall, and then streamed over like a ripple of shadow. So far, remembering the lesson of yesterday, they had not let their voices make a sound.
They dropped lightly down into the courtyard like the softest of warnings, the quiet broken only by a dog that barked before it could be speared and a donkey startled and braying before it was brained by an ax. It took the barbarians a moment to explore the kitchen, storerooms, and stables, running lightly with swords drawn. Then, learning quickly enough that all of us were in the tower, they charged its door and found it barred. Now Roman heads were popping from the tower windows and shouting alarm. It was Silas who was the first to strike back, hurling a spear from a third floor window. It struck so fiercely that it staked the Hun it found like a tent peg.
“Awake!” he roared. “Grab your sword, not your sandals, you oaf! We’re under attack!” He stepped aside an instant before another arrow whistled through the window. It struck a beam and quivered.
I’d rolled out of my sleeping mat with loincloth and the Roman short sword I had killed Attila’s sentry with. Julia still had the spear with which she’d gutted my horse. Beyond that and the dagger I’d taken from Eudoxius, we fugitives were virtually unarmed: my skills as an archer were still indifferent. Now I ran for the rack of javelins, grabbed one, and peeked outside. It was barely light, and the Huns below were scuttling back and forth across the courtyard like spiders. One paused, looking up, and I threw. The man saw the motion and dodged. There was something familiar to his quickness. Skilla?
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