The rain pelted down and slicked their hair to their heads, and plastered their red woollen cloaks to their shoulders, and the horses’ manes clung to their withers and streamed with chill mountain rain. Puddles formed quickly on the dry summer track, at first as hard and unyielding as concrete, and then turning to yellowish, unctuous mud. Men and horses alike bowed their heads in obedience and fear and exhaustion to the superior force of the storm and the gods of the storm, and they rode on.
But Attila leant out of his carriage window and grinned into the rain.
‘Back inside, boy,’ scolded Olympian. ‘Draw the curtains.’
The boy ignored him.
Every other man in that column felt that the storm was around and about him like a raging animal, threatening to extinguish him with a single toss of its whitelight horns. But Attila knew that the storm ran through him, and that he was a part of it, and it could do him no harm. Every other man, huddled in his own private universe, felt smaller in the face of the storm: less powerful, threatened, diminished. But the boy felt stronger, greater, more powerful: one with the thunder, one with the universe. And looking at him, and seeing something of this truth in him, something unnatural, Olympian closed his eyes and crossed himself again.
Attila grinned out into the rain and into the black rain-drenched forest that closed in around them. When another terrific bolt of lightning hit the pines nearby, and sent one crashing to the ground in a cloudburst of sparks and smoke and brief flame, and the horses throughout the column had to be kicked hard and reined in tight as they skittered to left and right with white and rolling eyes, ears pressed back, and every other man there crossed himself and worked his lips again in furious prayer, Attila only gazed in rapture into the forest and upwards into the chaos of the dark and angry heavens and prayed, Astur, my father… Lord of the Storm…
Then a fork of lightning hit Beric and Genseric’s carriage immediately behind them.
As is the unpredictable way with lightning, it left the main carriage untouched but burst the leather straps that supported it, and the entire unwieldy apparatus buckled in the middle and sank down upon its axles. Then the back axle broke with a terrific crack. The terrified horses whinnied and reared and tried to break free, but they were still yoked implacably to the shattered carriage. The coachman lashed them down again and they subsided into nervy silence.
Gradually the rest of the column ahead slowed and then stopped, and the two mounted guards who rode alongside Olympian’s carriage wheeled and turned back to inspect the damage. They quickly concluded that the broken car would have to be pushed off the road into the forest, and the two Vandal princes would have to pack into the carriage ahead.
At that moment, Attila looked round and saw that Olympian was sitting forward, curiously hunched, with an arrow’s shaft and fletching sticking out of his vast belly. The eunuch was clutching his flesh bunched up around the arrow, and muttering, ‘I’ve been shot!’ Then he looked up at the boy and said, ‘I’ve been quite appallingly shot!’
‘It does look like it,’ Attila agreed.
Much of the arrow was still visible, however, and the boy reckoned that only an inch or two, including the head, had gone into the eunuch’s belly. Given his bulk, that would almost certainly make it only a minor flesh wound. He spared the poor man a glance of very momentary pity, and then leant out again. To the side of the window, sure enough, was another arrow embedded in the gilded woodwork of the carriage wall. As he watched, more arrows arced silently out of the dark forest and the rain, like eerie messengers from another world. Evidently the rain had done little to dampen their unseen enemies’ bowstrings just yet. One arrow struck a horse at the top of its leg; another went through a trooper’s throat and he reeled forward on his horse, clutching its neck and gargling blood all over its rain-sodden mane.
‘We’re under attack!’ cried a young optio. ‘From the left! Second squadron, to me!’
The eight cavalrymen turned and began to force their way into the dense forest, hacking at the low, spindly pine branches with their swords.
Lucius came galloping back alongside the column and reined in Tugha Ban furiously, her front hooves slithering forwards in the yellow mud. He was apparently oblivious of the flying arrows.
‘Dismount, you fucking idiots!’ he roared. ‘Get off your horses and use your fucking legs. We’re under attack from left and right, in case you hadn’t fucking noticed. And you lot, get this fucking thing off the road – now!’
Immediately the soldiers obeyed. The horses were cut loose from the shattered carriage and reined in by fresh cavalrymen called up from behind. An arrow thumped into Lucius’ leather saddle just below his thigh, but he reached down and snapped it off without even looking down. He tossed the shaft contemptuously aside and continued to bellow commands. From the front of the column and Count Heraclian came no sign of life at all.
The broken carriage was levered and poled off the side of the road, where it crashed heavily into the trunk of a tall pine and fell still.
‘You two buggers,’ Lucius yelled at the startled Vandal princes, ‘get in the car in front!’
Beric and Genseric, huddled in their cloaks, ran forward to join the next carriage.
Lucius wheeled his horse again and glared into the rain from under the brow of his helmet. ‘Jesus, what a farce. They’re only bandits, for Christ’s sake. Fucking amateurs.’
‘Under attack again!’ yelled Marco, reining to a violent stop beside him. ‘I don’t fucking believe this.’
‘Me neither,’ Lucius shouted.
‘Remnants of the last lot?’
Lucius shook his head. ‘These are no ex-soldiers. They’re firing from both sides.’
Even as he spoke, arrows were slamming into shields and carriage walls around them, but the two soldiers ignored them.
‘Anyone would think,’ said Lucius, ‘that somebody didn’t want us to get to Ravenna.’
‘Is Count Heraclian…?’ asked Marco.
Lucius pushed himself up in his saddle and craned to see if there was any sign of decisive action from the front of the column yet. He sat down again. ‘Jupiter’s balls,’ he breathed with exasperation. ‘What we have here is, in technical army parlance, a bunch of fucking amateurs. And we’re running around like ants on an anthill.’ He reined his horse round angrily again and started bawling fresh orders.
‘OK, you, Ops, get twenty men, on fucking foot, and get into those trees and slot those bastards. And you there, Trooper Shit-for-Brains, dismount the rear two squadrons and do the same on the right. I don’t want to see any more arrows coming out of that forest there by the time I count to ten.’
The tough-looking trooper and two more squadrons quickly formed up on foot.
‘Come along then, ladies!’ he addressed them cheerfully. ‘Playtime in the woods. Anything you find alive, cut its guts out and hang ’em off the nearest tree.’
He and his men vanished into the trees, and soon there came loud cries and screams from the forest. Another bandit gang was indeed being despatched.
Lucius rode back and stared in at Olympian and Attila.
‘Is it bandits again?’ wailed Olympian. ‘And ex-gladiators too?’
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ growled Lucius. ‘I’m quaking in my boots. Fucking amateurs.’ He glared angrily down at the eunuch and Attila from his skittish horse. ‘Trained soldiers attack a marching column from one flank only. Fucking amateurs attack from both sides simultanously.’ He leant over and spat. ‘And why do you think that might be?’
Olympian groaned that he had no idea. The boy thought for a moment and then said, ‘Because they might just as likely be shooting across into each other.’
‘But, my good man,’ wailed Olympian indignantly, scarcely able to believe his ears that this conversation about military tactics was taking place, while he had an actual arrow embedded in his person, and was actually bleeding, slightly. ‘But, my good man, I am wounded!’
Lucius flung ope
n the carriage door and leant in. ‘One in the gut, eh? Lift your robe up.’
‘I couldn’t possibly countenance such-’
Lucius leant forward and nicked the eunuch’s robe open neatly with his swordpoint. The head of the arrow was in fact buried only half an inch into the eunuch’s rolls of flesh, and the barbs were visible under the skin.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Shallow breaths – stop the arrowhead going in deeper. And clench your teeth.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said,’ repeated Lucius – he reached forward, grabbed the arrow just behind the head with his fist, and gave it a sharp tug; with an unpleasant slurping sound, the arrowhead came free of the eunuch’s stomach and Olympian began to bleed profusely – ‘clench your teeth. Ah well, too late now. It’s out anyhow. Get some pressure on that wound, and we’ll clean you up when we get out of this bloody ruckus.’
But Olympian had fainted.
Lucius looked at Attila. ‘Looks like you’ve got a job to do.’
‘You’re kidding.’
The lieutenant shook his head. ‘Just till he comes round again. Lard-arse like that will have sluggish blood – it’ll soon clot. But till then, keep your hand pressed on the wound.’ He punched the boy on his arm. ‘Tough job, I know, but someone’s gotta do it.’
And then he was away into the rain, bawling at the top of his voice to get the column organised.
Attila stared at the unconscious eunuch, blood flowing freely from the hole in his belly, and thought for a moment. Then he leant over and ripped a wide strip of silk from the bottom of Olympian’s priceless blue robe, passed it round the back of the vast, sweat-soaked waist, and tied it in front. But being silk, it was soon saturated in blood, so he made a pad from his own linen sleeve, though he didn’t think lard-arse deserved it. He ripped the robe open a little wider and bound this in a compress tightly under the silk bandage. He watched for a few moments, and, after absorbing a little more blood, the white linen showed no more sign of flow.
He dusted his hands together with satisfaction.
Then the eunuch groaned and woke up.
That wasn’t what the boy had been planning at all.
He could hear the troopers shouting in the driving rain, and another distant rumble of thunder, and he knew his chance had come. His palms were sweating and his heart was hammering in his skinny chest, but it wasn’t fear. He glanced at Olympian out of the corner of his eye, but the eunuch was oblivious of him, clutching his belly and peering out of the window anxiously. He nearly addressed an apology to the man, but decided that would be dishonest. Instead he got to his feet, seized Olympian’s great bald head and rammed it repeatedly against the wooden wall of the carriage.
Unfortunately for the eunuch, the boy didn’t quite have the strength to knock him out cold. But he felt blood trickling down the back of his neck, and a sick, chilly feeling and his head was spinning and dizzy and green spots danced before his eyes, and all he could rasp was a hoarse and confused ‘Spare my life, I pray you, whoever you are. I will recompense you profusely. The rest of this rabble are nothing to me, nothing but soldiers and slaves, but I am a very wealthy man, ranking high in the courts of Rome…’
He sank back in his seat, gasping for breath. His eyes were closed when he heard the carriage door kicked open, and the sounds of the storm came to his ears more strongly than ever. And then the door was slamming jerkily back and forth on its hinges in the wind, and he knew that the boy was gone.
One of the troopers saw the boy run for the trees, and immediately cried, ‘Man escaped!’
Lucius whipped round and gave a cry of despair. ‘Those slippery. .. OK, Marco, our attackers are cleaned up, pretty well. Keep some of them back for questioning, though. The little prince won’t get far in this weather.’ He wiped the sweat and rain from his forehead. ‘Ride to the front and inform Count Heraclian. Tell him – I mean, suggest to him – that he lead the column on. We’ll catch them up later.’
‘They’ll make good progress, I’m sure,’ said Marco sardonically. ‘The Palatine vanguard didn’t take a single hit.’
Lucius stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t mean anything, sir. Not for a simple, bone-headed soldier like me to offer interpretations of anything. I’m just reporting the facts: strange that not a single arrow went into the Palatine Guard, or Count Heraclian. All reserved for us, sir.’
They eyed each other levelly. There was no man in the world whom Lucius trusted more than his centurion. They had saved each other’s backs more times than he could count.
‘What’s going on, Marco?’ he said. ‘Why are they after us?’
‘Is it us, sir?’ said Marco. ‘Or is it those we’re guarding?’
Lucius frowned and shook his head. ‘Ride forward, Centurion.’
‘Sir.’
The lieutenant arched his arm forward for the squadron of eight to follow him. He expected to be back in a minute or two, with that little bastard bound in ships’ hawsers if need be.
Behind them the column began to roll forward again at its painfully slow walking pace, and the nine horsemen plunged into the inky depths of the pine forest.
The storm was violent and brief, like all summer storms, and its force was already beginning to abate. The sky above was brightening, although in the gloom of the pine forest the troopers still struggled to see their way ahead clearly. The trees dripped with rain, but it was no longer falling from the sky. Every few seconds the troopers stopped to listen, or mark the tracks. The boy’s trail was slight but unmistakable on the damp, needle-covered floor.
‘How’s he going to get away? Climb a tree?’ one of the troopers chuckled.
‘Belt up,’ ordered Lucius. ‘Not a sound.’
They rode on.
After some minutes, the trees began to thin out, and through the gaps between the dark trunks they could see the sunlight breaking through the clouds, and falling on the bare limestone hills ahead.
They emerged from the edge of the forest, and there even those hardened soldiers, who between them had done service from the Wall to the sands of Africa, and from the wild mountains of Spain to the reedy banks of the Euphrates, stopped and stared with something like awe. Below them stretched a beautiful valley, green with vineyards and olive groves. Beyond it rose further ancient limestone hills, grey-gold in the breaking sunlight, dotted with sheep and small farms. Above and beyond them arose still greater peaks, even now capped with snow, and bathed in an extraordinary luminous light as it reflected off the last of the stormclouds and echoed back and forth across the vast expanse of sky. And there arced a great rainbow over the distant hills, set by Father Jove after the Flooding of the World, from which only Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha were saved.
Yet here, in the heart of Italy, it had begun to feel as lawless and dangerous as the wilds beyond the Wall.
The men and horses sat and steamed in the sun. Then one young trooper shot forth his arm and pointed. ‘There he goes.’
Lucius looked witheringly at him. ‘Well done, Salcus. I’ve been watching him for the last five minutes.’
The trooper bowed his head in shame, and the other men guffawed.
‘Game little bugger, all the same,’ said another.
The men harrumphed in grudging acknowledgement.
‘He’d have kept to the forest if he had any sense,’ muttered Salcus.
‘Shows how much you know,’ said another. ‘He’s a Hun. He’s bound to make for open country. Even forests feel like a prison to them.’
‘Then we’ve got him.’
The other nodded. ‘We’ve got him.’
Lucius had been screwing up his eyes, trying to discern the distant figure better. ‘That’s the Hun boy? I thought it was one of the Vandal princes who’d escaped. You mean it’s the one they call Attila?’
The trooper was a little taken aback by the sharpness of his officer’s reaction. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘The one who’s always escaping
,’ said another.
The lieutenant’s pale grey eyes gazed out across the valley, his expression inscrutable. Far below, they could see the little figure of the boy, running desperately across the fields and between the rows of vines. Every now and then he looked back towards the troop of nine horsemen sitting up on the hill on the edge of the forest, knowing they had him clear in their sights. They could bide their time; there was no hurry. What chance did a mere boy have against nine cavalrymen?
‘Come on then, you bastards!’ he yelled angrily, bending at the waist and clutching his sides as he gasped for air, his voice high and shrill. ‘Come and get me!’ He stood straight, gave the obscene fig-sign with his forefinger and thumb. ‘What are you waiting for?’
His thin voice carried across the valley to where the troopers sat their horses, and they grinned at each other, despite themselves.
‘You’ve got to hand it to him,’ said one.
Lucius turned to his men. ‘Ride back to the column.’
His second looked puzzled. ‘Sir?’
‘It doesn’t take more than one to bring in a little shrimp like that. Now ride back to the column and inform Count Heraclian that I’m bringing him in.’
A little deflated, the troop wheeled their horses and rode back into the forest, heading north for the track. Lucius kicked his horse forward and rode on down into the rain-washed, sun-bright valley.
Once off the steepest and rockiest slopes, he heeled Tugha Ban into a fierce gallop, down through the rain-wet meadows lush with late summer flowers and ripe for the scythe, and then crashing through the vines to where he had last seen the boy. He glimpsed him up ahead, but by the time he had reached the spot the boy had ducked under the row and was into the next. Infuriated, Lucius had to gallop to the end of the row and up the next one. By which time the boy had ducked under again. The lieutenant reined in his panting horse and reflected. He leant down and plucked a fat, juicy ruby grape. Arcturus was rising, and soon it would be the harvest.
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