Attila: The Judgement

by William Napier

  Tatullus said to blame it on the earthquake.

  Aëtius said to blame it on the power that made the earthquake.

  Around mid-morning, news spread that the outriders had come in. The Huns had been seen: they were no more than ten miles off. Eyes strained over the battlements, sweaty hands gripped shears and pruning hooks, shaking hands struggled to place a last few loose rocks on top of the jagged walls. There was no more excited cheering.

  A wild-eyed holy man began another sermon, declaiming to the women and children gathered in the great square around the Church of the Holy Apostles. The text was from Deuteronomy: ‘“The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from the ends of the earth. They shall be as swift as eagles, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand. A nation of fierce countenance, they shall besiege thee in all thy high gates, until thy mighty walls come crashing down wherein thou trustedst. And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, and the flesh of thy sons and thy daughters which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee.”’

  It was an ill-chosen text and, somewhat to the preacher’s surprise, the people promptly turned on him. Only a few days before they might have listened, and wailed, and crossed themselves, but now a woman whacked the ill-advised doomsayer about the head with the flat of her washing-paddle, and he fled howling into an alley, pursued by an angry mob who soon caught up with him and gave him a sound drubbing. Among their number, rumour had it, there was even a black-cassocked deacon or two, putting in a sandalled kick.

  Night fell again on the lonely, resolute city. Some still worked on, trying to build up the walls as best they could, but the masons all agreed they were as solid as they could be made in this short time. Only after darkness cloaked the land did they see from their walls and towers the numberless fires that burned out there in the desolate countryside. The last farmsteads, a few isolated chapels, hayricks and barns, put to the torch by men on shaggy ponies, their reins and saddle-straps decorated with scalps and skulls and severed hands.

  In one of those forlorn chapels, barely more than a hermit’s cell in the woods, with whitewashed walls, a stark stone altar at one end, and a crude little wood-panel icon hanging above it, a single holy man had lingered when all others fled. He said he would go as a martyr to heaven to be with his Christ, and spoke as if he was tired and longed only for sleep.

  Now he knelt before the altar and prayed to Christ, even as the wooden door of the chapel swung open behind him and he heard the tramping of horses and the low laughter of men. First in the doorway was a man with a dagger in his hand, gleaming yellow eyes feasting hungrily on the helpless sight before him.

  Behind him, Orestes spoke with urgency. ‘Do not delay here. This earthquake we have heard of, it will have done damage.’

  But Attila lingered, smiling.

  Finally the priest turned, and crossed himself at what he saw. Attila strode into the chapel. Orestes lowered his eyes, his hand still on the doorhandle.

  ‘You tried to assassinate me,’ said Attila gratingly to the startled priest, who was already shaking his head. But he did not kneel or plead for mercy. He only reached out and took down the little icon, and held it to his breast. Attila fixed his gaze on the bewildered priest, his eyes burning. ‘Vengeance upon vengeance. Those Roman rats would not even face me in the open field. They sent an assassin, a viper, to me in a putrid basket. Now they will feel my fierce anger, now we spare not, now all will pay for Rome’s cowardice and weakness. I rejoice that they have angered me, anger is such a sweet fire!

  ‘When I ride away south you will breathe again, Christian pig, and think that this is over. But it is not over. After I have destroyed Byzantium and laid it waste, and metamorphosed all its precious treasures into faithful mercenaries’ - he showed his teeth - ‘I will come back and find you, eunuch priest.’

  The priest shook his head. The man was mad. He made no sense. Behind him, one of his companions, a bald, fair-skinned fellow, was calling him, but he seemed oblivious, rapt in his own words and imaginings. He even trembled a little in his mad passion.

  ‘Hear me, priest!’ roared the Scythian war-lord, ‘and know how Attila punishes craven assassins! I will destroy Constantinople. I will not enslave its citizens, I will slay them, and on the ruins of the city I will build a pyramid of a million human skulls. And there is nothing you can do.’ He turned back to Orestes. ‘See how the poor Christian pig clutches this daubing of his little god, as if for protection. ’ He faced the holy man again. ‘Pray to your God? Who, this pale Christ?’ He seized the icon from the man’s grasp. The priest tried to hold it, but Attila knocked him reeling with a casual bear-cuff.

  ‘My lord,’ said Orestes again, with feeling in his voice. ‘We are wasting time here.’

  Attila no longer heard him. He stared down intently at the icon in his hands. ‘Your bleeding and tortured god, is he so powerful? He does not look so powerful to me. How many battalions has he?’ He raised his dagger. Behind him, Orestes had vanished. ‘If he is god, let him strike me dead now as I mutilate him.’ He slid the tip of the dagger under the delicate gold foil of the icon, and the priest groaned. ‘What, this is the son of god? Why does his almighty father not stop me? Is this blasphemy?’ He gouged the dagger point into Christ’s right eye - the priest howled - then his left. Then he dug it into the emaciated hanging body, blue-white and stretched in his dying agony. ‘You say this is a holy icon. It seems to me your god is very feeble.’ He pulled his dagger free and dropped the mutilated image to the floor. He smiled. ‘It seems to me you should get yourself another god, for this one, too feeble even to intervene and stop the mutilation of his only son, will surely not intervene to save the stinking city of Constantinople.’

  The priest was on his knees, retrieving the icon from the floor and cradling it, weeping. Attila kicked him hard in the ribs and sent him sprawling, retching for breath. Then he stuck his dagger under his belt, strode out into the night, vaulted onto his horse and kicked it forward. Orestes spoke no more.

  Instead Geukchu came and rode by his side, and at his other side rode the witch Enkhtuya.

  ‘The earthquake we have heard of,’ said Geukchu in a low, sinuous voice, ‘surely Astur is with us! It is as if, my lord, you had planned it all yourself.’

  But even at this stage Attila still disliked flattery, and he only murmured a couplet from some ancient Persian poem. ‘“The spider weaves the curtains in the Palace of the Caesars, The owl calls the watches in the Towers of Afrasiab ...”.’

  They rode on, and night closed around them, and in the woods behind, as if in answer to those melancholy lines, there were only the sounds of a lych-owl and of a solitary holy man weeping in his cell for the sins of all the world.

  19

  THE REFUGEES

  Aëtius stood on the walls beside Military Gate V. Near him stood the lean, ancient figure of Gamaliel.

  ‘You again,’ was all Aëtius had said sourly to him in greeting; but he had put him in charge of the nearby Emmanuel Hospital, all the same, and ordered the monks there to do his bidding. There would be plenty of work there soon enough, and this old trickster seemed to know his stuff.

  Below in the street children were playing, happily oblivious for a moment of the world and its shadows. People of all ages sat awake through the night now, huddled around fires, talking. The children sang an ancient nursery rhyme:

  ‘Tortoise, tortoise, what’s going on?

  I’m weaving Milesian yellow and yarn.

  How did your father happen to die?

  Fell off his white horses and drowned in the sea.’

  It seemed an ominous rhyme. In a sudden flash, Aëtius pictured himself dying. A sign of old age: young men never imagine they will die, but now he felt all too often the stab of a dagger or a spear in his belly, saw himself lying in a blood-soaked hospital bed, arms outstretched in supplication but slipping away, the battle still raging on the walls. He hoped this was
no foreseeing.

  Tum magna sperabam, maesta cogitabam - Then greatly I hoped, but sadly I thought.

  Gamaliel was talking about the Hun pantheon, as if delivering a lecture. He said the gods were fighting a battle among themselves by proxy.

  ‘The Hun gods fight well, and fight dirty,’ muttered Aëtius. ‘Astur and Savash and the rest. Attila believes in them as he believes in himself.’

  Gamaliel turned to him gravely in the darkness. ‘Men believe in a god who is a reflection of their own hearts. Dark heart: dark god.’

  ‘Then whose god is true?’ said Aëtius.

  ‘Whose heart is true?’

  Another was brought to him in the night, led by Prince Torismond, looking distinctly amused. It was the Cretan alchemist, Nicias.

  Aëtius growled, ‘I thought you were in Antioch, or Alexandria.’

  ‘I was,’ said Nicias woundedly, ‘collecting together another set of alchemical equipment - and very costly it was, too. Then I returned here to experiment upon the, ah, pre-mortem dismemberment of tunny by alchemical means.’

  ‘You’ve been blowing up fish?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘You alchemists are strange.’

  Nevertheless, the man of science assured him that, after further unplanned experimental outcomes - Aëtius noticed that Nicias still had no eyebrows to speak of - a happy conclusion had finally been reached, when a large tunny was simultaneously exploded and incinerated, while still in the water.

  ‘A miracle to behold, I’m sure,’ said Aëtius. Not without some misgivings, he gave Nicias permission to station his wretched firepots and God knew what else on the towers of the Gate of St Barbara, overlooking the entrance to the Golden Horn. He could take command of the single artillery machine there, and hit anything that moved. Vandal warships, ideally.

  ‘Oh, and if you see any ships bringing Western legions to help us, let me know.’

  Nicias looked puzzled. ‘Is that likely?’

  ‘It is not. Now scram.’

  The alchemist scuttled off.

  ‘The next thing we hear,’ said Aëtius, ‘he’ll have burned the imperial palace to the ground.’

  Torismond grinned.

  The sun came up on the third morning after the earthquake, and the autumn mist gradually cleared from the country around. But away to the west there was a section of the horizon that did not clear. That was not mist but dust.

  They were coming, in their countless thousands.

  Along the walls, Aëtius saw to his horror, the empress herself was processing with some of her ladies’ maids, talking to the soldiers, doubtless wishing them well and the blessings of Christ upon them; all grace and comfort. But this was no time for such things. This was a time for hot fire and cold steel. Aëtius marched over to her.

  ‘Your Majesty, I must insist that you return to the palace immediately. This is no place for you now. Besides,’ and his voice was harsh, ‘you’re getting in the way of my men.’

  She regarded him evenly, no fear in her eyes. But then she had never seen the Huns fight. There would be fear soon enough, with all hell unleashed.

  ‘Master-General,’ she said, ‘you govern your little domain here like an Oriental despot.’

  Even now, she was playing with him. He felt his anger rise. This was no time for games. She had no idea how bad the situation was. She knew nothing. He swore foully and said that if she didn’t get off his walls he’d throw her off himself. At last she reacted, her eyes wide with astonishment and even disgust, and seconds later she and her retinue were hurrying back to the steps and down into the city.

  Behind her he roared again, this time to his troops: ‘Bar all the gates! You’ve got five minutes!’

  ‘Sir,’ said Tatullus, pointing, ‘there are still refugees coming in ahead of them. Look.’

  Aëtius looked. Against the long, low terracotta horizon that was the Hunnish horde and their siege-engines, there came a few dozen last stragglers hurrying across the plain. Behind them, catching the eastern sun, arose a gigantic cloud the colour of old blood, and in its midst the watchers on the walls saw the huge shapes of what they most feared: siege-engines.

  They must lock everything down. This would be terrible, a battle they must win, with all of Asia cowering helpless behind them, dependent upon them. But they could not possibly win. Not alone. Aëtius knew that, Tatullus knew it, all the men knew it. The fate of half the world was in their hands, and they would fail it. But they would go down fighting in fury.

  Yet here were refugees from the outlying villages, humble peasants, fleeing to the Walls for shelter from the coming storm. Stumbling in cracked earth, a few pitiful possessions hauled in sacks, mothers clutching infants, children trotting, so weak and undefended, glancing back into the mouth of hell. Asses heavily laden, usually such wise and philosophic creatures, bellowing and cantering, their big eyes terror-stricken, eyes rolling back to the whites.

  The kind of decision kings and emperors make every day, thought Aëtius bitterly. Which innocents shall I condemn to death this morning? Whom shall I damn and whom shall I save?

  The first horse-warriors were minutes away, galloping with all savagery. They would fall on the refugees like scythes.

  Already some of the refugees were outside the bolted gates, wailing for entrance, but there was no help for them now. Some lay in despair where they fell, in the very shadows of the walls, and never stirred again.

  ‘Let them come,’ said Aëtius quietly. ‘There is room for all.’ He remembered the mad bird-catcher in the woods. Room for all, in death’s capacious basket. ‘Open the gates!’

  ‘But, General, the enemy are—’

  He was already striding towards the steps himself. ‘Get that gate open, and bring me my horse. Wolf-lords, to me!’

  In a moment the thick crossbar was raised and the massive iron-banded gates were being dragged back. Aëtius vaulted onto his white horse and it reared up, champing at the bit. Behind him the wolf-lords mounted likewise, their horses packed together, jostling, shields and scabbards clanging, short cavalry bows clamped in their right hands, reins in the left.

  The empress was watching from the bell-tower of the nearby Church of St Kyriake. Then she looked away, as if no longer able to bear the danger, or the evidence of what kind of man he was.

  Aëtius and the column of a mere forty-four streamed through the middle wall and then the outer, over the hastily lowered drawbridge and away onto the plain, looping out round the dumbfounded refugees like sheepdogs rounding up the flock. Immediately the people picked themselves from the dust, barely able to believe such a redemption, and hurried over the drawbridge into the welcoming arms of the city. The wolf-lords formed a galloping circle, their ancient steppe-warrior formation as if written into their blood, lowering their bows outwards towards the red cloud away to the west. Before it they could already see the nearest ranks of horsemen. The wolf-lords themselves were now well within range of a volley from those lethal, high-sprung Hunnish bows. But something had happened. The Huns had slowed and stopped. Somewhere their leader had brought them to a halt, as if to take in the poignant scene before him.

  Attila grinned. What a scene of bravery and manliness! What touching salvation for these wretched, earth-grubbing peasant-farmers, as they stumbled gratefully within the Walls. Let them stumble. The Walls would come down soon enough anyway, and the refugees have to face the terror of the Huns all over again. And then there would be no salvation for them, and their skulls - large and small, one and all - would soon take their place in the biggest pyramid of human bones the world had ever seen. So Astur’s justice would be done, and all mankind would tremble.

  Aëtius slowed, too, seeing what had happened. It did not surprise him. He ordered his wolf-lords to range up and save their energies. Away to the north more figures arose from the earth itself. In dusty travel-stained garments, like creatures out of the apocalypse, more refugees who had been sheltering unseen down in the Lycus valley came running to
wards the open gates with stricken faces. It seemed that Attila would let them all pass. His games.

  Attila sat his horse and watched from less than an arrow’s range. The dust they had raised fell and drifted among their horses’ hooves with the gentle breeze, and the army of the Huns for the first time became visible. It was indeed numberless as the stars.

  The watchers on the walls looked out over it and knew that they were to die soon. Some groaned and turned away. The citizen bands, especially, looked ready to desert the walls altogether, but the Palatine Guard marched among them and rallied them, saying to trust in God and the Walls.

  Beside Attila sat the witch Enkhtuya, her teeth and mouth stained red with berry juice. Many of the Hun horses, too, beside their usual charnel decorations, had their pale manes and tails and fetlocks stained berry-red for this titanic battle, as if they had already waded deep in blood. They champed and stepped high at this abrupt interruption of their advance, as if even they were touched with bloodlust. But Attila, at that moment at least, was touched by something else. Curiosity, perhaps. A little sardonic shadow of a smile as he watched his old friend, companion of his boyhood, the light to his shadow, Aëtius, moving among the fleeing crowds, helping them home.