Attila: The Judgement

by William Napier

  ‘You did it!’ Knuckles flailed around for a moment to give the easterner a thump on the back, but Arapovian was already down the steps. Knuckles’s hair was smouldering and he couldn’t breathe, so he groped his way down - just ahead of the crash of the collapsing roof, and a ferocious through-draught which cleared the smoke from the building and set the fires roaring up like furnaces. The two men were suddenly and hellishly illuminated as they descended the narrow stone steps to the dungeons, backlit by a curtain of flame. The people below, the mothers and maidens and wide-eyed infants, gazing up in terror, saw two figures descending towards them out of the jaws of the fire, blood-red and blackened from head to toe.

  They must be in hell.

  Knuckles turned awkwardly on the narrow steps, slippery with algae, pulled one of the cadavers over the raised trapdoor as best he could, and then let it slam shut over his head. They were in darkness. He groped for bolts, then stopped. No bolts on the inside of a dungeon door. He grinned in the blackness. Tosser.

  A small oil-lamp was lit, and the abject people viewed the two demons. One a huge brute with a club locked under his simian arm, the other tall and lean, cruel and clever. A woman about to wail had her mouth immediately stopped up by this one. His hand was sticky with fresh blood. She nearly vomited. He held a ringed finger to his thin, cruel lips.

  Aside from her, there were five or six more women, young mothers, one old. Half a dozen children, blubbing and snotty, and an infant fast asleep and oblivious. One old fellow, who clutched his knobbly stick as if ready to fight them.

  ‘Calm down, grandad. We’re on your side.’

  They huddled together in the airless cell, and not a word was spoken as the punishment block burned to cinders above them.

  Above the dungeon, onager missiles were still hitting the walls of the fort. For sheer joy, a kind of victory celebration, and for practice, as the Hun warlord said laughing. He rode round the ruins of the blazing fort on his little skewbald pony, Chagëlghan - he always called his horses Chagëlghan, no one knew why. His gold earrings danced, his yellow eyes shone with delight in the darkness.

  ‘I want these walls flat,’ he said.

  Later, as the first grey light of dawn was coming up, he sat his horse out on a mound to the south of the city with Orestes and Chanat beside him, stroking his grey moustaches thoughtfully. Standing before them was a captive bound in thick ropes, his hands just free enough to hold a testament.

  Attila grinned. ‘Read to me,’ he said, ‘out of that fine old book of the Christians. The words of the prophet Nahum.’

  He surveyed the devastated city as a different man might view some lovely fresco of Venus, or Atalanta in Corydon, while his trembling captive read.

  Woe to the bloody city! The horseman lifteth up the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of the slain, and they stumble upon the corpses. Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of Hosts: the gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire shall devour thee. Thy shepherds shall slumber, and thy nobles dwell in the dust; thy people is scattered among the mountains, and no man gathereth thee. Thy wound is grievous, and all who hear of it shall clap their hands: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness been visited continually?

  Attila nodded and smiled. ‘Even the God of the Christians has spoken.’

  He retrieved the precious testament from the captive and handed it to Orestes. Then he sliced his sword across the captive’s neck and the three rode on down the mound for the city. His men were already having victory horse-races in the half-ruined hippodrome. They were dressing horses in the robes of butchered priests, and carrying the crucifix itself about the circuit, Christ himself topped with a kalpak, a pointed Scythian cap. Later they would set the crucifix in the sand and make it their own totem, hanging from it severed heads, the skin peeled off and stuffed with straw. There would be feasting on slain livestock by firelight, and toasts in looted silver chalices decorated with Christian symbols, or Silenus chasing his nymphs.

  In the gloom of the single sputtering clay lamp, the two soldiers discerned another iron-bound door.

  ‘No way out there,’ said Knuckles. ‘The execution dungeon. And I don’t think we’re ever going to find the key now, do you?’

  Arapovian stepped between the women and children and knocked on the door, absurdly polite. A moment later there came an answering knock.

  ‘Eh, well,’ said Knuckles. ‘He was going to get chopped anyhow. This way, he’ll just starve to death instead. Comes to the same end, like all of us.’

  Arapovian stood before the iron door and rattled his stiletto dagger in the big lock-hole for a moment. Then he drew his brooch-pin from his cloak and knelt down and probed. Moments later, something clicked. He dragged at the doorhandle and it grated slowly open.

  Knuckles looked faintly disgusted at this showmanship. Blew a soft raspberry.

  A figure slowly emerged, blinking in the lamplight, shackled hand and foot. But for the heavy black beard, he might have been Knuckles’ younger brother.

  ‘Water,’ he rasped.

  ‘You’ll get some,’ said Arapovian. ‘You are?’

  ‘Barabbas,’ said the prisoner in a voice suggesting he hadn’t drunk water for a week. Arapovian stood back. The man’s breath was foul.

  Knuckles stepped up. ‘Don’t take the piss.’

  ‘S’true,’ said the prisoner.

  ‘So what are you, the original Wandering Jew or something? ’

  The prisoner shrugged. ‘My father’s son.’

  ‘What you in for?’

  ‘Theft from the granary.’

  ‘Tut tut. You haven’t got a clue what’s been going on, have you?’

  The prisoner shook his shaggy head miserably. ‘I thought I could smell smoke. Fire?’

  ‘Some.’ Knuckles turned to Arapovian. ‘You got to laugh. Everyone else gets the chop. The one prisoner due for the chop walks out just fine.’

  ‘As wiser men than we have previously observed,’ said Arapovian, ‘the humour of Heaven is more often ironical than benevolent.’

  ‘You took the words right out me gob.’

  Arapovian rested the tip of his dagger against the prisoner’s neck. ‘I do not understand why, but it seems that, like your gospel namesake, you are destined live in others’ stead. You go with us. But one moment of foolishness and I will kill you. You think you are hard, but I am harder.’

  ‘He is, too,’ confirmed Knuckles, jerking his head. ‘He looks like some Persian Royal who’s spent his life in baths of asses’ milk. But he’s not.’

  ‘Armenian,’ said Arapovian.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Knuckles. ‘East is east.’

  Something thumped onto the trapdoor above their heads. A burning beam.

  ‘Shit,’ said Knuckles.

  ‘You have more oil?’ asked Arapovian.

  A woman shook her head.

  ‘Then snuff the lamp for now. We must wait a long time.’

  The people tried to sleep. Arapovian recited softly to himself the litanies of his religion in the ancient tongue. Knuckles snored, clutching his beloved club to his chest like a child clutching its doll. The fire roared dimly above them.

  After what he thought must be many hours, Arapovian crawled through the darkness and up the narrow steps to the trapdoor. There was a pause and then he gasped.

  Knuckles was awake and heard him. ‘Don’t tell me. It’s hot.’

  Arapovian returned.

  ‘Never touch an iron-bound trapdoor that’s been in the floor of a blazing building all day,’ Knuckles said helpfully, ‘even if you are Parsee fire-worshipper. You’ll give yourself a nasty burn. Even my granny could have told you that, bless her whorish old heart.’

  ‘Hold your tongue, you ape,’ hissed Arapovian.

  ‘Don’t call me an ape.’

  ‘Don’t call me a Parsee and I’ll think about it.’

  Knuckles sighed.

  Arapovian squatted, nursing his burn
ed fingertips, feeling like a fool. An unaccustomed feeling for him, and one he did not appreciate. He looked upwards in the pitch blackness. If those bands got any hotter they’d start to glow in the dark. The wood on the upside must surely be charring down. Then the door would fall in, and they’d be done for.

  The terrified families stared around sightlessly in the darkness. The old man said, ‘Have the invaders gone?’

  ‘No,’ said Arapovian. ‘The legion has gone. We are all that is left.’

  Shock, then slow sobs as the terrible news sank in. The cell was full of widows and orphans.

  The old man reached out in the dark and clutched the Armenian’s arm. ‘Will we live? Our children?’

  Arapovian gently loosed his grip. There was a long silence. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘If the trapdoor holds, then . . . maybe.’

  The fire roared louder.

  Soon, in the gloom there was a dull red glow. The iron bands of the trapdoor were growing red hot. Oozing through the gaps round the edge of the trapdoor, sizzling, came runnels of melted fat. The odour of roast pork. Arapovian hoped the women and the children would not understand what it was.

  ‘Pray,’ he said. ‘All of you.’

  12

  FLIGHT

  Silence, broken only by the occasional, low bludgeoning thunderclap. The Huns were still marauding, still about their work of destruction. And they themselves were still trapped. When would it be better to surrender themselves than die here? Perhaps not much longer.

  No sense of time. They slept fitfully. The families remained for the most part speechless with terror and grief. Cramped, stained, exhausted by their own trembling. Tongues sore and swelling with thirst, nostrils sickened by the stench of their own bodies. The children’s throats painful and dry as sharkskin. They sucked the damp walls, the bitter green taste of algae on their lips, until Arapovian forbade it. ‘That will kill you sooner,’ he said.

  The only consolation was that the fire had not sucked the air out of the dungeon. It was foul down here, but it was enough for them still to breathe.

  His heart was heavy for them. These children now fatherless, these women husbandless, this old couple with their son perhaps lying slain just outside. This noisome, putrid latrine their whole world now.

  Time passed. Above, all was silence again.

  ‘We got to get out,’ said Knuckles.

  ‘Another twelve hours.’

  ‘How will we know?’

  ‘Thirty more full litanies or so.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  Arapovian did not reply.

  ‘Tell you what. Tell us about Armenia instead.’

  After a long silence, Arapovian began to tell them about his homeland. He told them about his friends Jahukunian, Arutyunian and Khorenatsian, dead and buried in the earth of a land no longer theirs. He told them about the heroine Queen Paranjem, who fought the Persians under Shapur the Great when he devastated the land, and King Arshak, who was captured and blinded and imprisoned in the Castle of Oblivion for thirty years. He told them about the pagan fire temples of the Zoroastrians erected over Christian shrines, and the broad plains of Erzinjan and Erzerum, and the egrets and the francolin in the marshes, and the great monastery of Echmiadzin, the oldest in the world, they said. At last the people slept.

  Thirty muttered litanies later, he and Knuckles shook the people awake, and moved towards the steps in the inky darkness.

  Knuckles held his club ready while Arapovian reached up and set his sword-hilt against the trapdoor overhead. He gave a gentle push. The door sighed and fell down around his shoulders in fluttering leaves of ash. The wood was no more than a blackened parchment, a tissue-thin veil of charcoal between them and the inferno. Only the iron bands remained. He levered them back and stepped up, sword ready. Immediately outside were some charred bones. He pushed them aside with his foot, concealed them beneath smoking timbers as best he could before the families emerged.

  They came up shakily into the light of day. For it was dawn. Even Arapovian was unsure how long they had been down there. Perhaps three whole days. A very Christlike resurrection, he thought grimly.

  They stood and surveyed the still-smoking desolation, like some ragged band of beggars after the apocalypse. There was nothing left.

  ‘Sweet Mother of God,’ whispered the old man.

  The fort had gone. There were only acres of ash, and a few low stretches of broken wall like rotten teeth. Nothing else. The people moved like silent wraiths through this landscape of rubble and dust and the last thin plumes of smoke, forgetting for a moment even their abominable thirst. Where the great bastions and outer walls had stood, there was only more rubble, crooked forms, cascades of hardcore. Beyond where the west gate-tower had stood, they glimpsed the remains of the town, and further off, scattered over the fertile plains, the smouldering ruins of their homes and farmsteads.

  One woman gave a cry and stumbled. Knuckles steadied her and rested his huge paw on her thin shoulder and surveyed the scene. ‘Truth to tell,’ he said to her, by way of unorthodox comfort, ‘I’m beginning to get a bit narked with these Huns myself.’

  ‘Come on, you ape,’ said Arapovian. ‘Move out.’

  ‘Stop calling me an ape.’

  ‘When you stop calling me a Parsee.’

  Knuckles sighed. ‘This is going to be fun.’

  ‘No,’ said Arapovian, sheathing his sword again, tightening his belt, surveying the ravaged landscape. ‘It’s not.’

  He led them through the ruins, trying to steer a course free of atrocities. For amid the burnt timbers and stones, there were shapes of what had once been bodies. Tar-black and twisted, scorched and fire-maimed, as if formed out of pitch and then abandoned by some clumsy and heartless god, tossed aside still lifeless.

  In desperation a mother flew to the lip of a smashed well, tearing the cloak from her back and lowering it down to see if she could reach water, to wring it out into the mouth of her child.

  Arapovian stopped her. ‘It’s poisoned.’

  She turned on him, eyes blazing with fury and anguish. Her child was already sick with thirst, his face a pallid mask. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Even the great river is unclean, the shore choked with bodies. But I will find you water.’ He pointed south to the hills. ‘Clean water. Do not be afraid. You will live now, you and your child. The Huns have gone.’

  He took the child gently from her and laid it over his shoulder and walked on through the wasteland.

  They passed where the principia itself had stood, and the legionary chapel. A hole gaped in the ground.

  Knuckles hawked and spat. ‘So they found the gold, then. How did they know it was there?’

  Arapovian looked around. ‘The Hun warlord knows far more than that.’

  ‘And what’ll they do with it? They don’t look the kind for fine wines and silk undies.’

  ‘They’ll hire more mercenaries. Alans, Gepids, Sarmatians. ’ Arapovian walked on again. ‘They’ll buy more power.’

  A thrill of uncanny horror ran through them as they approached the rubble mound of the west gate. There was still a platform standing, the bare wooden floor of what had been the first-floor guard-tower. And there was a figure still up there, legs apart, gazing out over the plain. It must be a Roman corpse, skewered on a long spear and propped there by the Huns in their whimsical humour.

  Arapovian passed the thirst-stricken child into Knuckles’ arms.

  ‘I don’t do children,’ Knuckles mumbled in protest.

  ‘Stay here.’

  The Armenian scrambled over the rubble and hauled himself up, his injured thigh throbbing. He could at least take the impaled corpse down. Cover it with rocks, say some appropriate words. He swung himself up onto the wooden platform and approached it.

  The corpse turned.

  Arapovian froze.

  It was Tatullus.

  Alive, yes. His eyes as flat and lightless as the dead, his forearms cut across, blood cr
usted over one side of his scalp. But alive. The iron-hearted centurion. He stared back at Arapovian, not seeing. Down his sunken, deep-grooved cheeks, smoke-grey, filthy, were two clear white tracks.

  Gradually the centurion’s eyes seemed to focus.

  ‘You!’ he whispered. ‘You survived.’

  Arapovian nodded and saluted. ‘Sir. Two of us, and the families from the dungeons. And the prisoner, Barabbas. Down there - look.’

  Tatullus emerged with painful slowness out of his waking nightmare. He seized the Armenian’s right hand in his own. His eyes shone brightly again, though he could not speak a word. Then he let his hand drop and turned away and with an abrupt movement wiped his cheeks.