Attila: The Judgement

by William Napier

  A sharp thud, distant trembling, cries from down below. The stones held for now. But not for long. He sent what pedites he could spare. The wall needed baulking up behind - rubble, sandbags, anything. They were running out of materials, so he told them to take sledgehammers to the nearest barrack blocks and use what materials they could get from the ruins. He reckoned his men would sleep well enough under the open stars after this was over.

  Soon, another thud. A lot of dust. The stones were going.

  An onager missile sliced over the top of the south-west tower. There was a terrible crash and unearthly screams. Not one of the crossbowmen so much as glanced to the left. With the ram still hitting and that concentrated onager assault, that whole corner of the fort was going to go soon. And then they would be in.

  Time to reply.

  If only he had a squad of superventores - special forces, ‘over-comers’ - but they were all with the field army nowadays. Or a few cohorts of Aëtius’ superb, reformed Palatine Legion from the West. The frontier legions were expected to look after themselves. And so they would.

  But it was looking bad. The arrow-machines on the south-west tower had both been smashed by that onager strike. The planking sagged. Most of the men had been smashed, too. It was carnage up there. He looked away. The north-west tower was charcoal. What fire-arrows the archers could get in were too few, and the tortoise well protected with iron plates.

  Below galloped the commander of the ram, flailing his whip, oblivious of stray arrows. Still ordering his captives to draw back the ram and slam into the walls again, even as they were under attack.

  Sabinus would have to send men down.

  Tatullus read his mind. ‘The bear with the club will be no good. You need fast movers.’

  Sabinus nodded.

  ‘I will go,’ said a voice behind. ‘I have experience.’

  It was the Armenian again.

  ‘You have?’

  Arapovian did not deign to repeat himself.

  Malchus was desperate to volunteer, too. It seemed mad to send his best cavalry officer, but Sabinus had seen the man’s joyful ruthlessness in a fight. He loved fighting, that one. The more men he slew, the more of his own blood he shed, the more he loved it. He was a pure, grinning predator.

  One more.

  Tatullus stepped forward.

  Sabinus nodded. ‘Coronas and medals for all of you, whether you come back or not.’ He glared at them. ‘But you better fucking had. I’m short of men.’

  Small gangs of Hun horsemen were darting in towards the walls in lethal forays, letting off light, unpredictable little showers of arrows over the exposed battlements, covering fire for the ram. The three defenders bowed their heads low and ran. They didn’t need to speak. It was obvious what they had to do, and that was keep low, move fast, and do as much damage as they could. The last thing Arapovian did was unsling his beloved eastern bow and shove it into Knuckles’ bandaged hands. Then they were in close behind the low battlements, just above the tortoise, the narrow wall shivering beneath their hobnailed boots at the shocks of the ram, yells from below, and rising clouds of powdery dust. Another titanic thud as an onager bowled another long-range rock into the tower to their left, and another spray of feathered arrows clattered around them. They’d been spotted. There was the briefest pause in the iron-tipped shower, a single breath, and then they were up and rolling over the battlements and gone. The distant Hun horsemen were already galloping towards them. They would have to move at blinding speed.

  ‘Crossbow units, hit the horsemen!’ roared Sabinus. ‘Forget the ram! Take out any horsemen coming!’

  The finely trained crossbowmen, bows already primed, knelt swiftly at their niches and let fly. The bolts cut through the air and hit the approaching horsemen hard. Several tumbled. The others pulled up in dismay. One or two trained their arrows on the battlements but it was useless. They were already learning. No one shot that well, not from that distance. They began backing off. Another volley of bolts ploughed into them. A rider’s head lolled, half severed, and his horse fled.

  ‘Keep at it,’ said Sabinus. ‘Don’t let ’em get close.’

  Malchus, Tatullus and Arapovian had dropped down onto the ridge of the tortoise on their hands and feet, knives between their teeth. The Hun commander spotted them immediately and came galloping round, flailing his whip. Malchus and Tatullus managed to prise off a couple of the big iron plates from the crest of the tortoise and send them slithering to the ground. Then they followed, rolling down the steep side away from the oncoming Hun horsemen, protected from incoming fire by the tortoise itself. They hit the earth oblivious of bruises and came up again like cats. The Hun commander promptly lashed out with his whip and caught Tatullus round the neck. The centurion simply gripped the rawhide, slashed it through with his sword, unwrapped it from his throat and tossed it back. The Hun warrior gave a strange howl.

  Arapovian was at the end of the ridge, crouched down, gripping the edge of the planking and rolling over. He landed on the rump of a Hun driver’s horse. The Hun felt his horse buckle, wondered what had hit him. Then someone grasped his hair from behind and pulled his head back, and he felt the warm gush of blood down his bare chest as his throat gaped open. Arapovian rolled off the horse, ducked under a wild blow from another warrior, and brought his dagger up hard into the Hun horse’s belly. The agonised creature reared up, screaming. Tatullus appeared at the back of the tortoise, then Malchus, too, swords slashing, and all hell broke loose.

  Out on the plain, the stone-faced leader himself was coming, with a couple of hundred warriors bristling with lances and swords. The three defenders had about half a minute to finish the job before they were as good as dead. And that was impossible.

  ‘Crossbow volley at the main body coming in, on my command,’ said Sabinus, his eye steady on the approaching horsemen. ‘And any man who takes out the warlord with the fancy sword gets an extra biscuit for his dinner.’

  He waited. Sweat beaded on furrowed brows, dripped down noses. Clenched knuckles whitened. They were almost at the ram. Sabinus stood immobile. Sweat dripped onto oiled bowstocks, gleamed there like dew.

  ‘Steady your aim,’ said Sabinus. ‘And . . . fire!’

  Eight bolts raked into the close-packed horsemen and each one found a target. Sabinus kept his eyes so closely fixed on the grey-haired warlord that he thought he saw him bare his teeth like a wolf. Then the warlord raised a brazen arm and hazed his men back out of range again. He even seemed momentarily nonplussed. Behind their retreating hooves they left eight of their comrades stone dead in the dust.

  Sabinus grunted with satisfaction.

  The savages were indeed learning.

  Then screaming started inside the tortoise.

  Sabinus saw with approval that the three had managed to loosen some of the iron plates, and so gave the order, ‘Fire it up.’ The pedites began rolling small flaming tar barrels over the battlements onto the ridge of the tortoise, trying to hit it where the iron plates had gone. A barrel smashed down onto the ridge and broke open. Spars scattered, and flaming tar spattered down the sides.

  It was a start.

  Sabinus turned his crossbow unit back to the drivers behind the ram. ‘Take ’em when you can.’

  In the mêlée, two Hun warriors broke cover, then arched back, crying out, their backs stuck with bolts. Their horses reared and panicked.

  ‘Reload and aim.’

  ‘Sir,’ nodded his optio.

  They had dropped a net over the wall above the ram so that the three comrades could scramble back to safety once they had done their work. If they were still alive. Now a Hun warrior came galloping in between the tortoise and the wall, ducking down low and flat along his pony’s back, and with a circus rider’s skill vaulted from his horse onto the net. He scrambled towards the top, a knife in his teeth.

  Sabinus nodded. ‘Take him.’

  The fancy rider dropped back, dead.

  Across the plain, the formation of r
iders had gone very wide, and there were a lot more of them. A thousand were coming in now. Open-spaced, galloping, circling, determined not to let their ram fail in its task.

  ‘Tubernator, call our three back.’

  The bugle went to his lips.

  ‘Sir,’ said the optio, ‘the rope’s still not cut.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Inside the tent-shaped tortoise, which was beginning to fill with smoke, Arapovian was astraddle the beam itself, hacking alternately at a big Hun horseman coming at him from below and at the thick suspension ropes of the ram. The point of the Hun’s lance pierced the Armenian’s thigh and he cried out. He slipped his leg back and took cover behind the ram, hanging by one arm, still hacking wildly at the rope. The thing was fraying slightly but no more. In the distance, the faltering note of a bugle, and the thundering of hooves. A lot of hooves.

  ‘Fire the fucking thing!’ bellowed Sabinus at his pedites in frustration. He was going to lose three good men for nothing. Three very good men. Those thousand horsemen would be here in seconds. Already the first, wild arrows were clattering against the walls. Sabinus ran from the guardroom to the battlements. One of his men offered him his shield but he brushed it aside. Another arrow clattered nearby. Absent-mindedly he picked it up and snapped it across a burly thigh. ‘Fire it now!

  ‘Pedites, get more tar barrels up here. I don’t give a fuck if there’s arrows, man! Of course there’s arrows, we’re in the middle of a fucking siege. Now get ’em up here! Crossbow squadron, to me.’ He ducked down, the low battlements barely sufficient to shield his bulk.

  The eight men crouched likewise.

  ‘I want everything that moves in and around that tortoise, except our three men, stretched out in the dirt. You hear me?’

  Bows were cranked. They stood, aimed, fired, and crouched again in one clean, swift movement.

  ‘Now you, pedites! Get those tar barrels fired up and over the side.’

  The arrows thickened to an iron rain. One of his crossbowmen lost a cheek. Another started to help him down the steps.

  ‘He hasn’t lost his eyes, and you’re needed here on the wall, soldier! Let go of his hand!’ He said to the wounded man, more gently, ‘Good work, soldier. Now get to the hospital and have that stitched. The whores will go crazy for the scar.’

  The deserted south-west tower shivered again.

  ‘Load up.’

  He was like a rock, this legionary legate who swore like a common trooper. Nothing seemed to make him afraid. The men cranked back their bows.

  A good thing they thought him a rock. Sabinus knew well enough he was as scared as any of them. But a better actor. That’s why he kept his hands gripped into fists: to stop them shaking. He grinned and punched a man on the shoulder. ‘Kill ’em all.’

  He stood up again, hitching back the straps of his bronze cuirass on his bullish shoulders, impervious to arrows.

  ‘Loose the rest of the tar barrels! There’s got to be more than that!’

  The pedites sweated blood. Fire-arrows ignited more tar. The off-side of the shell was burning steadily.

  He turned and watched the wild long-haired rider down below, screaming barbaric verses.

  ‘I want him dead. That one, the poet.’ He hawked and spat. ‘No fucking poet besieges my fortress.’

  Again in a swift and perfect rank they stood, stepped forwards, clocked their target through the lethal oncoming arrow shower, fired, and dropped back. None of them was hit.

  Sabinus squinnied through the embrasure. ‘Biscuits all round,’ he grunted.

  Three bolts missed. One hit the Hun’s horse. Three hit the warrior in the thigh, one in the side, one in his shoulder. He and his horse screamed in unison, a hellish duet, horse rearing, forelegs paddling in the air. The warrior wrenched it savagely down, blood running in a thin trickle from the bolt-tail in its muscular haunch. He pulled round and shouted, flailing his whip left-handed, his right arm across his chest, hand clamped over his shoulder, fingers reddening. But the bolt had already broken in and leaked blood into his lungs, and his voice was wild and weak and desperate.

  ‘Kill them! Draw back the ram! Astur will utterly destroy all the earth in the day of his fierce anger! Work, slaves!’

  But he was mad. There were no slaves left to obey him.

  ‘Second volley,’ said Sabinus. ‘Take him this time.’

  The deranged rider was stuck by two more bolts, his horse likewise. He was a madman. One bolt glanced off his round iron helmet. He shook his head. His long black hair flew and scattered drops of bright red blood - Sabinus thought of Medusa. Then he flung down his whip and drew his long curved sabre. To the horror of the watchers on the wall, in his blood-madness he rode in and began to slaughter the captives tethered beneath the now-blazing tortoise. They fell apart, crying, hands held over their sliced heads. Arapovian found himself trapped between the captives roped to the ram and the insane Hun, trying to protect them as the rider tried to kill them. Arapovian cut free what captives he could who were still alive, only for the warrior to wheel round and scythe through them as they fled, riding them down. Arapovian gritted his teeth in a white fury and launched himself at another Hun driver, driving his blade straight through him. Then he was up on the beam again, slashing at the suspension ropes. At last one of the great ropes frayed and twisted and snapped, and the ram thumped down into the dust, the heavy ramshead half buried where it hit. Arapovian was thrown off the end as from an unbroken horse. He rolled smoothly, picked himself up and grimaced.

  ‘It’s done!’ roared Sabinus. ‘Tubernator, get the men back! Blow your guts out, man!’

  He turned the other way. ‘Every tar barrel over the wall. I want to see that tortoise melt down!’

  The Hun warrior was maddened still further by the defeat, dying, flailing his sabre. He rode into the walls, spurring his bloody horse. The creature turned alongside, the warrior slashed at the stonework, rode through his own shower of sparks. Someone dropped a stone on him. He reeled and stared upwards sightlessly through a mask of blood, eyes rolling back to the whites. He tottered forwards again, still in the high-fronted wooden saddle, and spurred and pulled away. An adolescent boy emerged, blackened, from under the tortoise: the last of the enslaved captives, hoping to make his escape. The warrior cut him down as he passed by without a second thought, and galloped away across the plain back to his army, still alive somehow, his body lolling, his head to one side, sabre hanging down from his left hand.

  The men on the walls fell silent.

  ‘God’s teeth,’ growled Sabinus.

  ‘By St Peter’s holy Jewish foreskin,’ agreed Knuckles.

  Tatullus and Arapovian were back on the walls by the time the tortoise, smouldering and half wrecked, tottered and sank down useless into the dust. The ram beneath it blazed. Then they realised to their horror that Malchus had not followed them. Tatullus roared an order to the young cavalry officer, who stood dazed and bloodied near the smoking wreckage, but he appeared not to hear.

  The horsemen came galloping in. Malchus had left it too late. He could barely walk. He grinned. He had lost too much blood to climb past the savaged remnants of the tortoise and vault back over the battlements.

  Arapovian reached down a futile arm, crying out to him, his face angry and already sorrowful. ‘Move yourself, man!’

  Malchus turned his head and smiled dimly up at him through a mist of blood. He raised a red forearm, and touched the flat of his sword to his bare forehead. He turned away from them and looked out across the plain.

  A barked order sounded in Arapovian’s ears, the voice of the legate, but he did not hear or understand. He was up over the wall and down the net like a cat. Malchus was oblivious. He stood alone before the fortress. No, he walked away from it. Tottering, he walked towards the oncoming horde of thousands, barely able to lift his sword.

  Arapovian dodged round the ruined tortoise and ran to him, but the horsemen were coming in faster. It was impossible.

  Ma
lchus settled his helmet more firmly on his head and waited. He would have liked to end by running towards them. Even walking purposefully would be something. But he was too tired, so he simply stood his ground. At least he was still on his feet. He took a deep breath and raised his sword above his head one last time. Then the horde came down upon him and he was gone.

  Arapovian skidded to a halt. Another few breaths and they would be on him, too, but incredibly, he seemed to pause and consider for a moment or two. He hefted his sword in his right hand, and with his left drew his fine dagger with its jewelled handle. Eyed the horde. Then he re-sheathed both, turned and dashed for the wall. The instant he did so, some of the horsemen sheathed their swords and swept their bows from their shoulders, nocked arrows and fired, faster than the eye could see. Arrows clattered into the stonework. Arapovian crawled up the net as best he could with his lanced leg. The crossbowmen above stepped forward and hit the nearest horsemen. Men howled with rage and pain, horses tumbled.