I did not answer.
After crossing the plains at an exhausting canter, our horses flecked with white foam and drooling at the bit, we rode up into the cooler foothills of the Haemus Mountains and then higher, where there was still edelweiss growing among the rocks. We found water for our mounts, a runnel clear as crystal from a rock spring, and they whickered and drank deep and raised their heads again, refreshed. We had the finest white Cappadocian horses from the imperial stables - magnificent, though I say so myself - and the master-general and Theodoric and Torismond rode at our head. It was no great force to turn and face a numberless horde of the enemy on our heels, but we could at least move very fast.
Behind us were over a million of the devil’s own horsemen, so they said. Well, rumour always multiplies enemy numbers by ten. Aëtius had estimated Attila’s fighting force to be a hundred thousand, which was still the greatest number that Rome had faced in seven centuries, since the days of Hannibal. And how had the strength of Rome herself fared in those seven centuries? Not well.
As for our chivalrous mission to rescue an empress, Aëtius kept his head bowed and did not speak of it. She whom he had not seen for . . . fifteen years, was it? Many battles and campaigns ago. That was how he measured out his life, in battles, not years. Too many battles ago he had kissed her, on a balcony overlooking the Golden City of Jerusalem. But that was many battles ago, and in another world.
We rode into deep pinewoods and the light grew dim and green. The horses harrumphed nervously, their hooves crunching over dry needles. The men patted their necks for comfort, none too comfortable themselves. Both horses and riders were creatures of the open plains. Woods meant darkness, witchcraft and ambush.
Towards evening, having ridden as fast and far as we could into the falling darkness, we were looking for a clearing to camp in when Torismond said he had seen a leopard, high in the trees.
‘There are no leopards in these mountains,’ Aëtius assured him.
‘Alexander the Great hunted lions in the mountains of Greece,’ said the youth stubbornly.
‘That was many centuries ago, brother,’ said Theodoric.
‘Don’t fret,’ said Aëtius. ‘You will meet with dangers enough without leopards.’
As we lay that night beside the fire, one of the wolf-lords stepped forwards, driving before him at the end of his spear something he had captured, creeping around the outskirts of the camp. No leopard, but a crazed bird-catcher. We regarded him with curiosity.
He had only one blackened stump of a tooth, and bright beady eyes darting to left and to right and missing nothing. His bare feet were glued with feathers as if he were turning into a bird himself, and he wore a straw hat garlanded with faded summer flowers.
‘And you are?’ growled Aëtius.
The bird-catcher began to babble at once, speaking extraordinarily fast, like one who has not spoken with another living soul for months and years.
‘I was a missionary of Christ, one of the missionaries of St John Chrysostom sent out upon the eastern steppes to minister to the heathen there in their feathers and skins and preach them the gospel.’ He grinned, showing his blackened stump, shiny with saliva in the firelight. ‘But my friends would say, if I had any, they would say that I was driven mad out there by the indifference of the trackless, Christless wilderness. For you know that there is no law of heavenly love out there.’
‘What tribes did you preach to?’
‘Ostrogoths, Monoglots, Monopeds, Huns, Hasmodaeans, Amazons with only one tittie—’
Aëtius rolled over to go to sleep. ‘The man’s insane.’
‘And now I trap my feathered brethren for meat and for feathering my own feet,’ continued the bird-catcher. The princes and their wolf-lords continued to regard him, this antic figure in the firelight, fascinated, half-amused.
‘And you see, of all the birds that I tear gently from their gluey lime-white perches there on the tree and drop into my capacious basket, wrynecked and for ever after songless and silent, I sometimes take one that appeals to me and my curious whims and I let him go with his song intact and his neck unbroken. It is a fancy of mine. So may it be with you, my noble warriors, in the hands of the Great Catcher, as you ride out into the Christless wilderness against that terrible enemy whose hearts would turn you to stone if you could but see them. For though even the freed bird shall end in a basket all the same in time, yet do not despair, for not all are killed outright, not all lose themselves in the nighttime of my capacious osier basket. Some fly free and sing still. May you do the same, little brothers, for the Truth is nothing but all the little deeds of kindness that man to man or trapped bird ever did.’
‘You were a strange missionary,’ murmured Theodoric.
‘A shadow missionary, preaching the Fallen Christ.’
The bird-man glanced at him quickly and then went on, ‘Our stories are not completed in this world. There remains something far beyond, never to be known or named by the stumbling tongues of men. He who thinks he has it by the tail, and owns its name, is drowned in ignorance. Yet it abides. And even when in the latter days, which may be coming soon, the scroll of the world is rolled up and cast into fire, and the light of the sun is snuffed out like a candle, and all the universe comes to its natural and inborn doom, that Being will still abide, brooding on in all its eternal majestic solitude, as before the world was made.’
‘Peace now, go,’ muttered Aëtius beneath his blanket, pretending to be asleep but in truth hearing the fool’s words, for they had a kind of compelling power. But the bird-catcher had more to say before we slept.
‘In each man’s heart lies his own truth, and there is no shaping it with eloquent words and reasons to fit your own more neatly. There was a bird’s nest, a lark’s nest, a little thing unregarded, and I trod on it unawares, and hearing the sound I looked down and saw a little mess of nest and blood and feathers and tiny sodden shapes of baby birds unborn. A little thing. It was then Christ died in me, never to rise again.’
Some of the wolf-lords looked hard at him. This was blasphemy. But the fool was oblivious.
‘Those broken eggshells. The wind in the trees. The pitiless sky. Nothing changed. Nothing mattered. No solace came to me or bird. I scraped the remains of the eggs and tiny birds from my boots - for I wore boots in those days like a man - and heaped them up and scattered earth on them and blessed them, and then I walked on, and Christ no longer walked by my side. Never again. From that day to this I am no Christ-worshipper nor missionary of St John Chrysostom, sent out into the wilderness to baptise the Scythian heathen, but only a bare lone man, a birdman, a madman.
‘And one day before very long now, I too will perch on a branch and be caught and trapped by one far greater than me, the oldest and the greatest god of all, his capacious osier basket unfillable and forever hungry for all eternity, no matter what goes in. Death is a portal, to be sure, but a portal to what?’ He smiled and winked conspiratorially. ‘Some doors go nowhere.’
Then they tired of the madman and, believing that his ominous words would bring them bad luck in this dark and forbidding place, on this uncertain mission already compromised and humiliating, they drove him away at spearpoint into the woods and commanded him not to return. He went whistling into the darkness like a bird at dawn.
12
THE PASS
The bird-catcher’s words cast a pall over the next day. As we rode up higher into the mountains for the pass that would take us down to Azimuntium, safely away from the open plains where our enemy in countless thousands once more hunted and laid waste, several of the wolf-lords already wore bronze cuirasses under their long red cloaks, and tall, gleaming Spangenhelms nodding with flaxen plumes. The air was heavy and ominous, and we almost prayed for a rainstorm to relieve it.
We rode higher and higher, the country becoming lifeless and bare, only a few last twisted and stunted trees sheltering straggling sheep, then only thorns and faded brown heath. In the deep rocky chasms, the trick
le of dark streams and ferns and mosses hiding from the light. We rode along one of these narrow, sunless defiles, its high, gloomy walls hung with sphagnum moss and hart’s-tongue fern, thinking of ambush. But Aëtius did not fear ambush, not in the mountains. This was not the Huns’ terrain. They would be fools to ride here, steppe warriors raised on the limitless plains.
The column of Visigothic wolf-lords rode uneasily nevertheless, spears held lightly under their right arms, looking silently about them. They had seen dark things, these mountains of Thrace, home to mysteries since ancient times, where Orpheus was rent apart by his screaming maenads. As they rode down the narrow defile, the horses also silent and oppressed, picking their way carefully among the boulders and the rockfalls, hooves slipping sideways on slate-grey stones, the rain began to fall from the leaden sky and make the way yet more treacherous. The sky was a great iron lid on the world, and big raindrops struck silver-bright on gleaming Spangenhelms, running in droplets down over the steep helmed sides and down noseguards and aventails, over stubbled and unshaven cheeks, brushed away, soaking into neckcloths, beading on scarlet woollen cloaks, trickling over mailed and plated shoulders. The riders sweated, despite the steely rain. Not a living creature did we glimpse. The rain came down more heavily.
Then the pass widened. We came round a broader turn and a light wind blew in our faces and there opening before us was a lake surrounded by bare rocky mountains, its pewter surface stippled with rain. The cliffs on our left broke down into massive tumbled boulders, while on our right they ran along the lake shore, the water lapping almost to the foot of the cliffs but for a narrow gravel spit. On the other side of the lake were more green hills and then crueller mountains beyond.
Aëtius sat his horse and took it all in.
‘A majestic scene,’ pronounced Prince Theodoric.
Aëtius smiled indulgently. ‘But I can smell horses.’ The prince looked puzzled.
‘Many horses, and not ours. The smell of them blowing over to us across the lake. Look at your own, how her nostrils flare.’
‘I thought that was at the water. It’s long since they drank.’
‘Well, don’t let them now. Time enough to drink after. Ready your lances.’
He ordered Jormunreik and Valamir to climb up to their left and scout. A few minutes later they came scrambling breathlessly down again, reaching for their armour even as they gave their report.
Yes, many horses. And many men.
‘How many?’
‘A few hundred,’ said Valamir, tying his long hair back into a ponytail and setting his tall steel Spangenhelm back on his head, ready for the fray.
Aëtius rubbed his unshaven chin. He doubted Attila himself was here. One of his generals would be leading. ‘This was no ambush. A scouting party, that is all. An accident of fate.’
‘A misfortune we shall face with direst fortitude,’ said Theodoric, sitting very straight in his saddle.
The lad was becoming more ridiculous by the moment, but still Aëtius did not mock him. He had been young himself once. ‘A misfortune for them,’ he said. ‘Poor, lightly-armed scouting Huns, suddenly running into a column of Gothic wolf-lords in these desolate mountains. They are doomed.’
The princes looked cheered at the thought. I was very anxious about it, myself.
‘Doubtless they were only mapping passes through the mountains. A surprise for us. But a good soldier should not be surprised at surprises.’ He ordered the two wolf-lords back on their horses, then rode out of the end of the pass and down to the lakeshore. And there, across from us to our left, was a milling horde of Huns, arrows to the bow.
Ahead of us across the lake, at the far end of the cliffs beyond the narrow gravel shore, was the second group. He looked back. Very well, then, three groups. Behind us, on the cliffs under which we had just passed, dismounted Huns lay in wait, spiky with bows. Others had rolled big boulders to the edge of the ravine and were waiting patiently for our flight. Retreat would be nothing but self-slaughter.
Aëtius did not hesitate. Already the party of Huns up on the cliffs were turning their arrows towards our defenceless backs, and over to the left the second group was doing likewise. There was one way to go, with shock and force. A small figure on a skewbald pony was at the head of the group before us, below the cliff face, still, watching. Then he raised his arm and dropped it, and the Hun arrow-storm began, slicing through the rain. Arrows and rain crosshatched, making a cage in the air.
Aëtius ordered me to ride in the centre, then twisted in his saddle and yelled to the column, ‘Shields on your backs! Spears couched low! Fast trot, keep formation. Full charge only when I give the order. Forward!’
The wolf-lords were no fools, and few had not strapped their shields across their backs already, seeing that the heaviest arrow-fire would come from behind. Then the column was trotting forward into the lake shallows, a Teutonic-style attack column of the kind they knew best, four abreast and twelve deep, with myself jostled unpleasantly in the middle, speechless with fright. This was not appropriate work for a Clerk-in-Consistory. No wider front was possible as we were squeezed between the steel-grey lake on the left and the black, shining cliffs on the right, the left-hand files riding their horses up to their bellies in the cold water, the right brushing their knees against the rockface. Arrows fell through the rain but to no avail: our shields were stuck like pin-cushions but our backs doubly protected by both shield and armour. We kept in tight formation.
Then Aëtius rose up in his saddle and flashed his sword in the grey air and bellowed with sudden ferocity and drove his rowelled spurs into his horse’s flanks. Our disciplined trot turned into a canter, water and gravel kicking up beneath two hundred flying hooves, spurs driving into sodden flanks, chamfrons covered in silver beads of rain and misted with horses’ breath. Then we were galloping, long ashwood spears couched low like lances, braced back against the rear horns of our wooden saddles. Two hundred yards to cover and the arrow-storm thickening, a splash to the left and a cry to the right, arrowheads thocking into shieldboards, men tumbling. But most kept low and our charge was lightning-fast, and already the nearest milling Hun archers were wavering and breaking ahead of us, fingers fumbling on their bowstrings. This was not what they had expected or foreseen, this heavy cavalry charge embarked upon so lightly, so quickly, with such dash and conviction.
In a flash the last few dozen yards were covered, there was a glimpse of sun through the thick clouds, and suddenly our galloping horsemen were coming on like spangled wraiths through the rain and flying water, blinding with sunlight, and then crashing into the heart of the Hun pack and splintering them apart, their leader on his skewbald pony rearing and turning and making for higher ground.
Lost and uncertain among these alien mountains, the Huns were taken by surprise and by the ferocity of this attack from such inferior numbers. Mounted archers of the steppes, they could not gallop free and circle and come back with a low, level volley of arrows. Trapped between lakeshore and cliff, there was no room for their usual tactics. Where was the wind on the plains, where were the wide grasslands? Here there were only tall dark cliffs and steep mountain paths and jagged rocks and heavy rain, and this bludgeoning charge. There were ponies tumbling, stuck through the ribs, and lightly armoured warriors impaled on the long ashen lances of the Gothic horsemen. Cries of men and horses mingled. Where they could, stocky ponies and their riders fell back and surged away into the low green hills in bewildered retreat before that calamitous attack. But many of the Huns were too close packed, the terrain around was too steep for easy retreat and they were beaten down by this onslaught of weighty metal and ashen spear.
The clash of arms, the bell-like ring of steel on steel, warriors flecked with drops of rain and blood, aghast Asiatic faces sliced open, stocky bodies riven through, and nowhere to move or fly, not even space to pull up an arrow and draw a bow in the impacted mêlée. The wolf-lords rose up in the saddle, drawing their great two-handled swords from their bac
k-scabbards and slicing down into the helpless throng. Over the water, the other two Hun war parties held their fire, unable to risk killing their own, stricken and motionless, watching the ghostly carnage across the pale lake.
At last the bloody skirmish was done, and all the Huns either dead or vanished. On a flat rock high above them, turning on his skewbald pony, one of the Hun warlords looked down on the victorious Gothic column. Aëtius reined in his horse and looked up at him through the thinning rain. The warlord was expressionless, his cheeks ritually scarred, his iron-grey ponytail dripping. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be. The warlord drew a short shining sword and levelled the point directly at Aëtius. Aëtius gazed back, unmoving. Then the warlord pulled his pony round, sheathed his sword and vanished into the mountains.
We rode down to the lake at last and let our horses drink. The men drank, too, leaning back in their saddles, tilting their flasks. Then they dismounted and dragged down dry brushwood from under the shelter of some trees up a nearby valley, and burned their dead upon a pyre, pagan-style, but with prayers to the Christian God. The rain slowed and stopped and the last of the day’s sun leaked through and spilled molten copper upon the placid surface of the lake, and the funeral fires reflected in the water and dark smoke drifted away over the green hills. Then the column of wolf-lords, forty-four in number, with their two princes and the fierce and now well-respected Roman general, remounted and rode up into the hills above the drifting smoke, knowing that the Hun war party might attack again at any time. There would be no sleep nor rest from riding tonight.
Attila: The Judgement Page 27
