Attila: The Judgement

by William Napier

  ‘Lose your bow, soldier!’ bellowed Tatullus angrily. ‘Draw your sword! This one’s hand-to-hand!’

  For once, Arapovian obeyed.

  The dead Hun’s horse twisted and fell, a foreleg caught between two broken stones, and rolled back screaming. Huns milled again at the foot of the mound, bewildered.

  ‘Yeah, horse-fuckers!’ roared Knuckles. ‘You’ll have to leave your girlfriends behind this time!’

  But not yet. The Huns wheeled away again into the night, accustomed only to their warrior arts of archery and horsemanship. They loosed more volleys of arrows in retreat. The arrows came over the barricade and clattered uselessly into the yard beyond. They did the same again and again, feeling not a single arrow in returning fire. But their attack was useless. They struck nothing. Even the Huns couldn’t keep up this wastage.

  ‘They’ve got to engage soon,’ murmured Arapovian. ‘It’s a matter of pride.’

  One last try. A fast gallop before them, a column of horse archers firing directly into the defensive line.

  ‘Heads!’

  Step back, duck, shields up. The arrows thumped into the big oval shields or slid over the top, again to no avail. Not a Roman was hit. They galloped away.

  Tired but jubilant legionaries set their shields down in the rubble again, lopped off the jutting arrow-shafts. Took deep breaths, wiped away the sweat.

  ‘We’re still here, you yellow-bellied horse-fuckers!’

  Now the Hun generals understood. It would have to be hand-to-hand to finish this. Their warriors rode near in the darkness, slipped from their mounts, hooked their bows onto their saddlepoints, drew their swords, and came scrambling up the rubble.

  The defenders took to the top of the ridge.

  ‘OK, boys!’ roared Sabinus. ‘Face to face at last! No quarter!’

  The Huns came up in a mass surge, without discipline now, desperate to finish it, to squeeze into the fort and have the victory - they, too, had taken plenty of casualties today. But a thousand, two thousand, were trying to squeeze through a gap held by fifty men, and their greater numbers told against them. They barely left each other room to swing their swords. And now the burning amber light of the big braziers behind the defenders showed itself of use. The defenders fought dark and silhouetted, but the attackers had to face into it. Their eyes dazzled, coppery skin shiny with sweat, arms and shoulders rippling with muscles and tattoos and elaborate hennaed runes of protection, which did nothing to protect them from those severe, pragmatical Roman pikes. Up close, the legionaries saw the barbarous magnificence of their enemies at last, magnified in the flaming darkness. Like warriors out of Homer or an even deeper past: the deep, unwritten Scythian past. The untamed warriors looked almost beautiful to them as they cut them down.

  Knuckles clapped his bronze-studded forearms together round a warrior’s shaven head and split it open like a raw egg. He turned and kicked a heavy boot into another Hun. The Hun staggered and swiped at him with his dagger. Knuckles twisted, more agile than he looked. The desperate struggle was too tight-packed for him to swing his club, so he drove it into the Hun’s face like a ram. The big easterner fell back and knocked his comrade behind him flying. Arapovian leapt forward and with two sharp thrusts skewered them both where they lay stunned amid the tumbled masonry, then fell back into line.

  Huns howled with fury, came on relentlessly. Tatullus worked like Knuckles, thusting his billhook in long, low stabs. Arapovian’s swordsmanship was as good as his bowmanship. Another wiry little Hun nearly had him with a swipe of his yatagan but Arapovian squatted down just in time and drove his sword into the man’s naked belly. He immediately stood again, kicked the corpse off the end of his blade, and drew back ready for the next one, who came on at once.

  The Hun warriors hated this fight. Too fetid and enclosed, without space to manoeuvre, with no room for the sudden spurting gallop, the extravagant caracole, the graceful arc of lethal, streamlined arrow. This was furious and filthy stuff, bloody pummelling in the shadows of ruined and alien walls, the clean air of the steppes a thousand miles away. Their horses milled behind them, uncertain. If their father Astur should cry to them out of the night sky, they would not hear him.

  Their loss of confidence showed in their expressions, their movements, and the defenders punished it without pity. Knuckles’ mastery of the blunt arts of bludgeon and punch, those straps of bull’s-hide wound round his ape-like forearms, took a terrible toll. So, too, did his quick, surprising agility, like a big cat, the way a lion can be nimble for brief bursts when hunting. He gave himself a moment of space, his huge club slewed sideways, men’s brains shot from their ruptured skulls as if spat out, grey roe slithering down their comrades’ shoulders. Stumbling in the blood and slime, the Huns were filled with enfeebling disgust, panic, even claustrophobia. Where now was the glorious Parthian flight upon the open plains, wind in your hair?

  Tatullus killed two attackers with two hard thrusts, only moments apart. Knuckles cracked open another skull. A smaller Hun tried to dive in sideways and thrust his yatagan into his flank, but again Knuckles swivelled, dodged the thrust, swept his arm back and with a mighty swashing blow caught the warrior across the side of his head. The dull bronze studs thunked, the fellow saw red and dropped senseless. Knuckles moved his foot and broke his neck.

  The steep and jagged outward slope of the rubble ridge was slippery with blood, and worse. Sabinus moved carefully along behind and below his men, shouting words of encouragement. Not one of the line was down yet. My God, it’s like old times, thought Sabinus: Roman soldiers doing what they do best, standing shoulder to shoulder, pitiless, immoveable, the steel mincing-machine. Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the ridge, the Hun bodies were piling up like swine in an abattoir.

  Arapovian’s plan had been a good one; or the best they could come up with as things stood. Stab, thrust, slash. The defenders were beyond exhaustion, but drawing some infernal gallows energy from the terrible attrition suffered by their bewildered enemy. The Huns could not make headway, and their fury made them foolish. Wave after wave came up against the line of pikes ranged against them, cold as moonlight. And wave after wave fell back again, ruptured or slain. Even for these adamantine steppe warriors, this night was turning into nightmare.

  Sabinus saw Arapovian pause and look away.

  The Armenian turned back to the line, defended himself against another attack, lopped off an arm, planted his foot in the man’s chest and kicked him back down the slope. Turned his head and listened again.

  Sabinus’ heart leaped. The Armenian’s sharp ears had heard . . . trumpets! The legate turned to listen to that sweet sound. A pause. And then . . .

  He closed his eyes. It was not trumpets. It was a massive weight hitting the south gates.

  One last time he struggled up the steps to the battlements.

  They had brought one of the onagers up. It was fifty yards off, loosing boulders into the oaken south gates on a low, flat, brutal trajectory.

  He went down again, tightening his bronze cuirass about his big belly as tight as he could bear. Like dying in harness. He went steadily over to the south gates. Whumpff. The gates rocked back, the big crossbeams rattled in their braces, splinters flew. The Armenian’s idea had been a good one, for a desperate last stand. But it, too, had failed.

  But they, the VIIth Legion, how well they had failed! Could any legion have failed as gloriously as they had? Oh that one or two should survive, to tell their story to posterity. Such a story would live for generations. A night and a day they had stood firm against a whole army. And still they fought. That wasn’t bad. That must count as a kind of heroes’ death.

  The gates beside him reeled again under impact, and unmanly tears came to his eyes as he watched the last of his men fighting and dying there upon the dark, discoloured rubble of the ruptured tower. They had still not heard the onager. Part-timers, farmers, married with wives and children. He knew what they were fighting for, with ferocity born of desperation
. Not for Rome, either old or new, nor for the emperor on his gilded throne. They were fighting for the wives and children left on their farmsteads and smallholdings, or trembling down in the dungeons. The gates beside him splintered further. God have mercy on those trapped wretches down below. Only two fates possible for them now, the better of which was a life in chains amid barbarian tents.

  For him, there would be no Thracian vineyard, nor sharp-tongued, ardent-hearted Domitilla. Three months to go. The luck of Cassandra. For these barbarians, who had destroyed his life and his peaceful old age, he let his hatred well up. Felt its coursing power burn in his veins. Hefted his sword, a short, old-style gladius. The fury and the mire of human veins. The distant fury of battle. But coming close now, in this last act, last scene of his battered old life. His own death was already in the past, written in the old book of the gods. He tightened his belt another notch around his bleeding belly. It wasn’t true that you felt no fear. Even old soldiers felt fear. But all men must die. The gates were nearly done. He looked up one last time. Make it glorious, my brave legionaries. Make it cost them dear.

  He leaned down painfully to take the shield from one of his own dead, gently unloosing the man’s stiffened fingers from the wooden grip. Stood again. When those gates finally gave way, the Huns would find one still in their path.

  The attack in the corner had slowed briefly, leaving his men standing down, stoop-shouldered with exhaustion. Ungainly stick figures lit from below by the orange brazier light. Heroes all. Beyond, the enemy had pulled back yet again, heavily bloodied, sullen, furious. And now in the stillness, the last legionaries heard what Arapovian had heard. The sound of the accursed onager hurling its rocks, and the south gates going. Soon, very soon now, they would be surrounded. Attacked from before and behind, the fort overrun through the south gate, however hard they fought here. They looked at each other, barely able to raise their heads on their shoulders. Their eyes shone. They nodded. Heroes all.

  They looked back to their commander below by the wall. He could not climb up to them any more. They knew it. He leaned close to the south wall, shield on his shoulder, short-sword drawn, face plastered with cold sweat, looking up at them.

  Only one of his men still had the spirit to speak. ‘It has been an honour serving with you, sir!’

  Sabinus raised his hand to him. To all of them. A salute to equals. The rest of the men saluted him in reply. Some of them almost smiled.

  And then the gates flew in.

  11

  THE DUNGEONS

  The last of the defenders instantly lost all formation, and broke and ran. Within moments the neat grid-pattern streets and alleyways of the fortress were overrun with screaming horsemen. They galloped in triumph, racing each other to set each barrack building alight. Cutting down any last stragglers of the destroyed legion, or lassoing them as they fled, and dragging them along behind in the dust as tortured trophies. Fires blazed up in the night, sparks and stars. The appetite for destruction seemed inexhaustible. Soon they clustered around the legionary principia. They ransacked the elegant rooms, smashed vases and glassware, dragged out tables and couches, made a huge bonfire in the centre of the colonnaded courtyard. Others roped together teams of horses to drag down the pillars and roofbeams and crash the whole building. Word had gone out from the Great Tanjou. Not a stone should be left standing. The very name of Viminacium would denote eloquent desolation for an entire empire.

  Warriors still on horseback, inseparable from their mounts, some wearing embroidered Roman curtains for cloaks around their naked shoulders, rode into the chapel and collected the last of the legionary standards to add to the fire. Then word came from the leader that there was gold beneath the altar.

  Behind VII Barrack stood the long, low punishment block, comprising a row of dank, evil-smelling cells without windows, and a narrow corridor with one doorway at the end. The building was heavily tiled, not thatched, for greater security. As if by instinct, Knuckles and Arapovian found themselves backing into it side by side, peering out for oncoming Huns.

  ‘Christ. No getting away from some people,’ said Knuckles.

  ‘The families,’ said Arapovian, jerking his head back.

  Knuckles glanced round. Aside from four or five corpses already strewn across the stoneflagged floor behind him, in the gloom at the other end of the corridor he saw a heavy iron-bound trapdoor set into the flagstones. It must lead down to the dungeons. They could still—

  ‘Jesus!’ Arapovian rarely swore, but suddenly the doorway was shadowed by a Hun horseman. He brought him down with single arrow and Knuckles finished him with his club. They stepped back into the shadows.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Knuckles. ‘That’ll bring ’em in like flies.’

  ‘Bag up the trapdoor at the end,’ gasped Arapovian. ‘With those bodies.’

  Knuckles scowled. ‘I don’t take orders from you, you Parsee bastard.’

  Arapovian ignored him. There was a group of plumed and feathered warriors coming down the alley, stained bloody in the torchlight. They had seen the riderless horse, the dark shape on the ground.

  ‘Do it now. Hide the trapdoor. When they come stampeding in over our corpses, they might not find it - the families might yet survive. The dead and the living both walk free in their own way from these unbelieving savages.’

  ‘Christ in a crib,’ growled Knuckles. But, grumbling about being no slaughterhouse slave, he began to haul the bodies down the passageway, the flagstones slathered in gore, and stacked them over the iron door like saltfish. Thump, thump of meat. He wondered about the families, women and children and toothless ancients, down in the pitch darkness of those foul dungeons. The airless terror, the unknowing. Yet they might survive.

  He surveyed the stack of bodies. ‘Can’t we hide under ’em?’ he suggested.

  ‘No time,’ said Arapovian, and slashed out with his sword.

  The building was surrounded. The two men fought again side by side like demons in the protection of the narrow doorway. Copper faces, bodies, torchlight, bared teeth, a muscular neck before them decorated with severed ears on a thong. Arapovian beheaded him. Nearby they could hear the battering of someone trying to break through the walls, but the building was strongly built: men held for execution often try to escape. Likewise on the roof, warriors tearing off the heavy baked tiles found only more thick crossbeams beneath. The confusion was atrocious, the Huns’ desperation to be in and finish this job making them careless. Knuckles swiped one aside with his studded forearm, caved another face in with his club. Behind the milling crowd, another Hun still mounted loosed an arrow at them and succeeded only in killing one of his own in the crush. It was absurd, but they could not get at these last two. One waved a squat pickaxe, howling and almost dancing with frustration. Arapovian slashed at him, and Knuckles continued to use his club like a fist to defend the narrow doorway, punching out, smashing heads, caving in chests. Warriors howled execrations, tore at each other in their frenzy to kill these two trapped men, these standing insults to their victory.

  ‘Collapse the roof!’ called a Hun commander calmly from behind. He sat back on his horse, indicating his meaning with a wave of his hand. ‘Then fire it. Bring up that handcart there. The rest of you, fall back.’

  Frenzied or not, the painted savages obeyed in an instant. Then they ran the flaming handcart across the doorway and tipped it inwards. Knuckles and Arapovian leaped back as blazing bales tumbled into the blocked corridor amid roiling clouds of smoke, and their lungs began to constrict, their eyes to redden and water and go blind.

  Geukchu nodded with grim approval. ‘Let the fire take them. A fine cremation for two such mighty heroes of the empire. A warrior pyre.’

  Arapovian squatted back, his arms held out as poor shields before his face. They were piling more blazing bales onto the roof. The timbers began to burn.

  ‘You know something?’ roared Knuckles. ‘Rome’s city firefighters, they never eat roast pork. Can’t stand the smell. Exact
ly the same as roast human.’

  Arapovian shuffled in the dense smoke. ‘We need to clear the dungeon door again.’

  Knuckles didn’t move.

  ‘Fine. Stay here and roast.’

  Knuckles made a noise like frustrated bear and lumbered after the impossible Armenian.

  Choking on smoke, hair singed, coursing with sweat and deafened with the roar of the flames, they recommenced the foul work. Dragging corpses from the pile was worse when you pulled an arm or a leg and the body didn’t come with it. By the time they had cleared the trapdoor the smoke was impenetrable.

  ‘Can’t see a fuckin’ thing,’ rasped Knuckles. ‘But I bet you need a bath.’

  Silence.

  ‘Parsee?’

  Still silence. Then the creak of the heavy iron trapdoor.