After a few moments of pleasurable munching, he called out in his most languidly authoritative voice, ‘You can’t get away, you know.’
There was a pause while the boy considered whether it was worth giving his position away just for the pleasure of answering back. But, as Lucius had guessed, he was proud and reckless. ‘And you can’t catch me, either.’
Before he had finished his sentence, Lucius was slipping from his horse and leading it by the reins as he crept forward down the row of vines.
‘I could just have my men set fire to the vineyard,’ he said.
‘Your men have gone back to the column,’ said the boy.
Lucius grinned, despite himself. The lad’s military intelligence was pretty impressive. ‘How are you going to get anywhere on your own?’ he asked. ‘Winter comes early in these mountains. You’ve no money, no weapons…’
‘I’ll survive,’ called the boy cheerfully. It sounded as if he, too, was chomping the irresistibly ripe, juicy grapes. ‘I’ve seen worse.’
‘And the Julian Alps by October, November? You’ll just stroll over those into Pannonia, will you?’
The boy paused. He was surprised that the lieutenant had read his plans so precisely. How did he know that he was heading north and home?
Lucius meanwhile had stationed his horse at the end of the row, so that its head appeared at the head of one and its rump at the next. Its middle was hidden by the vines. The boy turned and saw the horse’s muzzle appearing round the end of the row, assumed the obvious, and ducked to safety into the next one. He lay low in the sopping wet grass, under the late dark green leaves and the heavy clusters of grapes. Lucius crept towards him on foot. The boy did not stir. He bit into another grape, the purple juices exploding in his mouth. He only had to keep an eye on that horse…
Then he felt the edge of cold steel at the back of his neck and he knew that it was over. His head sank down into the grass, and he spat out the last mouthful of pulped grapes in his mouth. He felt sick.
‘On your feet, son,’ said the lieutenant. His voice was surprisingly gentle.
Attila bowed his head. ‘Fuck you,’ he said.
The lieutenant didn’t move. ‘I said, on your feet. I’m not here to kill you. I know well enough who you are: Rome’s most valuable hostage.’
The boy squinted up at him into the sunshine. ‘Up your arse,’ he said.
Something in his voice told the lieutenant he really wasn’t going to move for him, no matter what he threatened. So he reached down, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him up onto his knees, where the boy knelt in sullen silence, staring into the vineleaves before him. A drunken late-summer wasp buzzed angrily round his face, and even settled briefly on his hair, but he did nothing to swat it away.
Then the lieutenant did a very curious and unmilitary thing. He sheathed his sword again, sat down beside the boy, cross-legged in the wet grass, reached out and picked a whole bunch of shining grapes, and began to eat them as if he had not a care in the world. The boy glanced at him, and then something held his gaze.
At last, the boy said, ‘II Legion, the “Augusta”, Isca Dumnoniorum. Your father was a Gaul, though.’
Lucius nearly choked on a grape. ‘Christ’s blood, lad, you’ve got a memory.’
Attila didn’t smile. It was him, definitely. The tall, grey-eyed lieutenant with the ragged scar on his chin, who had arrested him that time in the street after the knife fight. The boy glared, but not at the lieutenant. At an imaginary image.
‘And you’re Attila, right?’
The boy grunted.
‘I’m Lucius.’
‘Sounds like a girl’s name to me.’
‘Yeah, well it isn’t, OK?’
The boy shrugged.
Lucius quelled his rising temper. ‘It’s Lugh in Celtic,’ he said. ‘Or you can call me Ciddwmtarth, if you prefer. That’s my real Celtic name.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Wolf in the Mist.’
‘Hm,’ said the boy thoughtfully, slitting a grass stem with his thumbnail. ‘Sounds better than Lucius, anyhow. S’more like a Hun name.’
‘What does Attila mean?’
‘Not telling you.’
‘What do you mean, you’re not telling me?’
The boy looked up at Lucius, or Ciddwmtarth, or whatever he was called. ‘Among my people, names are sacred. We don’t give our real names away to any old stranger. And we certainly don’t tell them what they mean.’
‘Christ, you’re an awkward bugger. And my wife says I’m awkward.’
The boy started in surprise. ‘You’re married?’
‘Soldiers can marry now, you know,’ said Lucius, with amusement. ‘Although some say it’s when we started getting married that the rot started to set in – sapped our vital and manly juices and suchlike.’
The boy was shredding the grass stem to pieces.
‘You believe, I take it,’ went on Lucius, ‘that only idiots marry? And you hadn’t thought me stupid enough to shackle myself to a woman for all eternity?’
Attila had sort of thought that, yes.
‘Ah,’ said Lucius softly, looking westwards towards the hills. ‘But then you haven’t seen my wife.’
Now the boy was embarrassed, his cheeks flushing red under his coppery skin.
Lucius laughed aloud. ‘You’ll see. Give it a few more years and you’ll be as enslaved as the rest of us.’
Not bloody likely, thought Attila, staring down at his grubby feet. Girls! He thought back to those giggling, half-clothed girls in the Vandal princes’ chambers, and how they had stirred him despite himself. And he feared that what Lucius foresaw was already coming true.
‘I’ve a son your age as well,’ said Lucius. ‘A son and a younger daughter.’
‘Among my people, if a man like you were asked what children he had, he’d say, “One son and one calamity.”
Lucius grunted.
‘What’s his name? Your son?’
‘Cadoc,’ said Lucius. ‘A British name.’
‘Is he like me?’
Lucius saw his son’s dreamy brown eyes, and pictured him creeping through the sunlit meadows of Dumnonia with his little sister Ailsa in tow. Clutching his toy bow and arrow in his grubby hand, trying to hunt for squirrels and voles, or telling his sister the names of the flowers, and which plants were good to eat.
‘Not really,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
Lucius laughed. ‘He’s gentler than you.’
The boy made a guttural sound in his throat, and tore up another fistful of grass. This Cadoc sounded like a calamity, too.
‘Well,’ said the lieutenant, getting to his feet and standing tall over the boy. He reached inside his cloak and drew out a shorter, broad-bladed sword, the kind you’d use for up-close, short-term work. Then he took the sword by the blade-end, turned it round and offered the handle to the boy.
Attila looked up, his mouth agape.
‘This was taken off you, along with your freedom,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Time you had it back.’
‘It’s, it’s… ’ the boy stammered. ‘Stilicho gave it to me. Only a few nights before…’
‘I know. I knew Stilicho, too.’
‘Did you…? I mean, what did you…?’
‘Stilicho was a good man,’ said the lieutenant. ‘And I made him certain promises once.’
Their eyes met briefly. Then Attila reached out and took the precious sword. The blade was as keen as ever.
‘You’ve looked after it,’ he said.
The lieutenant said nothing. Instead he reached down and unbuckled his scabbard belt. ‘And I expect you to do the same,’ he said, handing it to the boy. ‘I don’t know why Stilicho made you this gift. He made me a gift, too.’ He smiled distantly. ‘Both lighter and heavier than yours. I don’t understand it, any more than you do, but it meant something to him. Which still means something to me.’
The boy struggled with the belt,
until Lucius told him to turn and buckled it on for him. But it was too loose, so the lieutenant showed him how to twist the belt a couple of times to shorten it, and then it buckled good and tight. Attila slipped the sword into the scabbard, looked up and nodded.
‘It’s good,’ he said.
The lieutenant smiled. ‘Now mind how you travel,’ he said.
Attila stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
Lucius gestured impatiently towards the hills beyond. ‘Time you were off, lad.’
‘You’re letting me go?’
He sighed. ‘And I thought you were quick-witted. Yes, I’m letting you go.’
‘Why?’
The lieutenant hesitated. ‘You might be safer on your own. Not with the column.’
‘Won’t you… Won’t you get into trouble?’
The question was ignored.
‘Travel by night if you can. The moon’s only crescent now but use it when it comes up full. The country people are all right, but remember that most of the shepherds are part-time bandits as well. Or they might take fancy to you in quite another way, if you get my meaning – something a bit exotic. So steer clear of them, I would. Don’t use the sword unless you have to. Otherwise, keep it hidden under your cloak. Look poor, or even better, mad. No one bothers to rob a madman.’
The boy nodded.
‘Shake,’ said the lieutenant.
The boy held out his hand.
‘Your sword-hand, dummy.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
The boy held out his right hand, and they shook.
‘How do I know you might not stab me in mid-shake? You’re no real friend of Rome, are you?’
Attila grinned.
‘Right,’ said Lucius, ‘now bugger off. I never want to see you again.’
‘Me neither,’ said the boy. He grinned up at the tall lieutenant again, one last time, shielding his eyes against the sun. Then he turned away and started to jog-trot down the rows of vines and into the field beyond. At the last minute he turned and called back, ‘I’d go back to Britain if I were you! Rome’s all done!’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Lucius called back, waving him away. ‘Watch out for yourself.’
The boy ran up through the neighbouring meadow and over the crest of the hill and turned back and waved one last time and was gone.
Lucius walked back to his horse, remounted and rode back towards the forest.
5
CLOACA MAXIMA
‘Well?’ said Marco.
Lucius fell in beside him. ‘He got away.’
Marco nodded. ‘Thought he might.’
‘Get anything out of the captives?’
‘General Heraclian ordered us to let them flee. Said it wasn’t worth risking our necks for.’
‘Did he indeed?’
‘He did. One thing we learnt, though: they spoke good Latin. Fluent, in fact.’
Lucius frowned. ‘Why shouldn’t they?’
‘Well, they were Goths.’
Lucius reined his horse to a halt. ‘They were what?’
‘A Gothic war-band.’
Lucius stared ahead between Tugha Ban’s flicking ears. This was making less than no sense. ‘Where’s Heraclian now?’
Marco harrumphed. ‘He and the Palatine have gone on ahead, along with all the other hostages, mounted up now. In fact, we’ve lost sight of them. For some reason we’re stuck with the carriages.’
‘The fat eunuch?’
‘Gone, too.’
‘What, mounted? How…?’
‘Don’t ask. It wasn’t a pretty sight.’
‘But as far as they know we’ve still got Attila?’
‘As far as they know.’
Lucius kicked his horse forwards again and they rode on in pensive silence for a while.
Then Marco said, ‘Permission to, sir?’
Lucius nodded.
‘Well, sir, do you ever get the feeling somebody doesn’t want us to get to Ravenna?’
Lucius shook his head. ‘I don’t know what I think. I don’t know what the hell’s going on. One thing I do know: I’m glad I’m just a poor, dumb bonehead of a soldier. Not a bloody politician.’
His centurion grinned.
When it became clear to Lucius that they had lost the Palatine Guard for good, he sent two of his men on for reinforcements. They were to ride forward at all speed to the next main road and imperial cursus station, and there send out for more reinforcements. From Ravenna, if need be.
‘You think we’re going to be attacked again?’ asked Marco quietly.
‘I know we are. So do you. In fact,’ said Lucius, looking at his depleted column: forty cavalrymen, a handful of wounded, and two lumbering great Liburnian cars. ‘In fact, we are in serious trouble.’ He turned back to Marco. ‘But keep it under your helmet.’
They had ridden for about a further half an hour when the column shuddered to a halt.
The two troopers hung from a branch across the road. They had been stripped naked and then flayed. One had had his right hand cut off and stuffed in his mouth, his fingers splayed obscenely over his raw and bloody face. The other’s mouth was stuffed with his own genitals.
‘Cut them down,’ ordered Lucius quietly.
They were lowered into blankets and buried at the side of the road.
Lucius addressed his horror-stricken men, trying his best to keep the horror out of his voice and eyes. He told them they were in deep shit. He told them they were up to their eyeballs in the Cloaca Maxima. He told them he didn’t have a clue what was going on, and they might not survive at all, let alone get to Ravenna. But they must keep together, and then they’d have a chance.
‘Don’t start running,’ he said. ‘We’ve been through worse than this before.’
The men knew their lieutenant of old. They set their faces grimly, shouldered their shields, hefted their spears, and with renewed resolve the column moved on.
Attila had already stolen a mule.
He had crept into a little farmyard in late afternoon, and set the ducks quacking furiously at his intrusion. But nobody stirred. An ancient, fly-blown mule was standing sullenly in the shade of a stone barn, tethered to a fence. Attila untied the frayed old rope and began to lead the animal out of the farmyard as silently as he could. The cobbles were thick with straw, so the boy and the mule made little sound.
There was a narrow window at the end of the barn, and he could hear noises inside. Unable to resist the risk, he turned the mule alongside the barn wall and hoisted himself up on its back to peer in through the window. The scene within was lit by a slash of late afternoon sunlight coming in through the open doorway.
An older man was bucking up and down in the hay, naked but for his shirt, while underneath him lay a young girl on her back, similarly undressed. There must have been thirty years between them. Maybe they were father and daughter. Such things were known to be as common as sunshine in these remote rural parts, and the long, lazy hours of summer had to be passed somehow. The girl seemed to be enjoying it well enough, anyway, judging from the urgency of her thrusts beneath him, and from the give-away curling of her toes, and from her sweat-streaked face, and from the little gasps that came from her open mouth. The boy felt the warmth of the mule underneath him and a stir of hot longing in his belly and below, and he slid dry-mouthed and wondering from the ancient and indifferent mule and led it silently out of the farmyard. He draped the frayed rope over its withers for a rein, hauled himself up again, using a fence post for lift, and sat astride its bristly, mud-flecked back and rode away.
He rode on down the valley into a wide champaign country, through tall grasslands and meadows still bright with the last flowers of the year, crown daisies and mayweed, centaury, yarrow and feverfew.
He should have sensed them; or he should have taken note of what his senses told him. But now he was away from the column and free at last, with nothing between him and his far, beloved homeland – so he thought. It made him careless, light-hearted, lig
ht-headed. He even whistled as he rode.
He should have noticed his sullen mount’s ears flicking back and forth. He should have heard the muffled sounds of pots and pans clanging, should have smelt the woodsmoke, and the unmistakable smell of a camp of men and horses. But he rode down through the meadow with his legs hanging loose and his hands loose on the rope, whistling like the boy he was. When he rode round the end of the copse he saw before him a camp of some two hundred men. Tents, campfires, horses tethered to stakes. And no more than a hundred yards between them.
One of the men happened to look up from where he was kindling his campfire, and stared. He stood up and stared some more. Then he turned to his comrades lounging near the tent.
‘Well, would you look at that?’ he said.
They looked, and saw at the far edge of the meadow, the tousled-looking boy with the unmistakable slanted eyes and the blue tattooed scars on his cheeks. They scrambled to their feet in an instant.
‘The lamb walks straight into the lion’s jaws,’ said another.
They grinned.
Then they scrambled fast for their horses as they saw the boy wheel his ancient mule round and urge it forward into a trot as hard as he could.
He wouldn’t get far. But they didn’t want to lose him again.
Lucius was becoming more anxious with every mile they covered, though he betrayed nothing to his men. Now the sun was going down, and they still hadn’t struck camp. The terrain was difficult. They had passed through dense woods, and emerged onto a flat but rocky plateau, surrounded on three sides by dark forest and on the fourth by a steep drop into the valley. It was no place for a secure camp, but if they went on they’d be in deep forest again. The light was failing fast, and his men were exhausted. So, for that matter, was he.
Halfway across the plateau, he raised his hand and called a halt. Something had caught his eye in the trees ahead, maybe half a mile away. Marco stopped beside him.
‘See anything?’
‘No, sir.’
They stared a little longer. They were about to move forward again when an unlikely figure emerged from the shadows of the trees and came trotting furiously towards them. No more than trotting, but there was an urgency to it all the same. The mount was an ancient, dusty mule, and the boy who clung to its bony back was jolted around like a rag doll. But he clung on with fierce determination, kicking his heels into the mule’s skinny flanks all the way.
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