‘Where’s Galla?’ he asked.
‘The Princess Galla Placidia, to whom I assume you are referring in that peculiarly familiar style,’ said Olympian acidly, ‘has remained behind in Rome.’
‘What will the Goths do to her?’
Olympian crossed himself piously, rolled his puffy eyes up towards the roof of the carriage, and said, ‘Nothing that is not already ordained of God.’
He leant forwards and plucked back the little velvet curtains to let in the cooler mountain air.
The hillsides were covered in sheep and fattening lambs, and the occasional shepherd. One stopped and stood right in the road, gawping at the approaching column, until a couple of guards rode out and shoved him out of the way.
‘Of course, it is well known,’ began Olympian, hardly noticing whether the boy was listening to him or not. In fact, the only reason he had begun talking at all was to try to calm his own nerves, which by this time were feeling very frayed indeed, what with the soldiers, and the mountains, and the Goths.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it is well known that the shepherds of these hills are absolute beasts of men, who never take a bath from the day they’re baptised to the day they’re buried. If they ever are baptised.’ He gazed hesitantly out of the window upon the sunparched land, his hanky held tight in his fat, white, delicate hand. ‘They probably still worship goats out here, most of them.’
He settled back into his seat again. ‘“All buggers and bandits,” as they say in Rome of the country people of the Sabine Hills. Or, even more vulgarly, “sheep-shaggers”. One knows what they mean. Why, it wasn’t so very long ago that the Sabine peasants were notorious for having the barber shave not only the hair on their heads but their pubic hair as well. In public. In the market-square, before the eyes of their own wives, and other men’s wives as well! They have as much sense of shame as the animals they tend.’
The boy snickered, and Olympian glared at him.
As if to prove the eunuch’s point, however, a little further on the column passed another shepherd, standing and staring at them as if they were the first human beings he had seen in months. Perhaps they were. He stood stark naked but for a sheepskin wrap round his shoulders. His deep brown skin was like leather dried out and cracked by a desert sun, his legs were misshapen by childhood starvation or adult accident, and his eyes were wild and bloodshot. The boy thought of Virgil’s Eclogues, drummed into him by his Greek pedagogue. So much for the romance of shepherd life.
Olympian tutted.
The boy grinned. These Italian barbarians.
He looked back and saw, with some surprise, that the shepherd had jogged back to a clump of brushwood, and led out from behind it a starveling mule. He hauled himself up onto the mule and, turning it towards the valley below, he glanced back only one more time at the imperial column. Then he kicked the mule forward with some ferocity, and disappeared over the brow of the plateau.
Attila sat back and wondered.
They climbed higher and higher into the mountains, up a stony ravine, which in winter must have been a river in spate but was now only a dry riverbed, steeply banked on either side. Thornbrush clung to the crumbling slopes, and cicadas trilled in the hot summer air. Otherwise the silence and loneliness up here were oppressive. Already they felt a long way from Rome.
The boy couldn’t resist it. Gazing up at the high rocky banks either side, he murmured, ‘Good place for an ambush.’
‘Oh!’ said Olympian, quivering. ‘Oh, don’t say that!’
‘Well, you never know,’ said the wretched boy, apparently enjoying himself immensely.
‘Anyway, our man back there, Marcus, said we had nothing to fear from bandits,’ went on the eunuch, talking nervously fast. ‘We are with a column of heavily armed, professional soldiers, after all.’
‘What about a gang of ex-gladiators?’ said the boy. ‘Not slave-gladiators, I mean the professionals. A lot of them have turned bandits, so people say, now that they’re all out of a job in the arena. They’d be pretty tough opposition in an ambush, wouldn’t they?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said the eunuch. ‘You must have been listening to too many silly stories from the slaves.’ He held his hanky to his face again and mopped up the drop of sweat that had formed on the end of his bulbous nose. ‘Gladiators, indeed,’ he huffed.
But the boy was right. He always listened to the stories from the slaves, and found them a very good source of information. He liked information. It was a kind of power.
Emperor Honorius had abolished the games back in AD 404, after the self-sacrificing protest of the monk Telemachus; at the same time, he had shut the gladiatorial schools. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have occurred to either Honorius or his advisers that an unemployed gladiator, like an unemployed soldier, is a rather dangerous individual. Five thousand professional gladiators finding themselves unemployed overnight are very dangerous indeed. After their well-remunerated careers of bloodlust and carnage in the arena, it was somehow unlikely that these men would quietly settle down as good citizens, and get jobs as water carriers, fresco painters, fig merchants or whatever. Some went into the army, but most of them were too old. The army only wanted young men up to the age of twenty-one: fit, malleable and easily trained. After their years of individual heroics, gladiators, for all their toughness and predisposition to extreme violence, were regarded as poor-quality soldier material.
The best-looking ones were snapped up by some of the wealthier ladies of Roman society, to be their ‘personal assistants’, ‘litter bearers’, or even, in one instance which caused great hilarity among the city’s satirists and literary salons, her ornatrix, or ‘hairdresser’. The word was of the feminine gender, but was now peculiarly applied to male hairdressers, who had become fashionable of late. They were mostly eunuchs, of course, or else interested strictly in boys. Upon hearing of the gladiator-hairdresser, the satirists sharpened their goose-quill pens. Soon there were circulating little squibs about how strange it was that an ornatrix should be required to attend upon his mistress in her private chambers only after having stripped naked, oiled himself all over, and performed vigorous weightlifting and strengthening exercises in the gym with his membrum virile.
But the laughter died on their sophisticated faces when they learnt that the great majority of the gladiators had taken to the hills to become bandits.
‘Remember Spartacus,’ said the pessimists.
‘Yes, and look what became of him,’ said the optimists. ‘Crucified along with his men all along the Appian Way.’
‘Yes,’ said the pessimists, ‘but only after they’d wiped out two Roman legions.’
‘Ah,’ said the optimists. ‘Well, yes . . .’
Which was why Olympian was so disturbed by this wretched barbarian boy’s suggestion that they might be ambushed. As the eunuch well knew, this was a real possibility.
In general, however, the bandit gangs of the Sabine Hills and beyond were not reckoned to be any great threat, but operated as cowards, attacking lonely, isolated farmsteads, or wealthy merchants foolish enough to travel without a decent armed escort. Whoever they were, it was inconceivable that they should have the temerity to attack a fully escorted imperial column, even in these remote hills.
3
FIRST BLOOD
The first arrow struck Marco in his upper arm.
‘Fuck!’ he roared, looking down. The arrow had punched almost through his tricep and out again. He ordered his optio to snap off the haft, and push the arrowhead through and out the other side, while he clenched his teeth furiously on the leather strap of his reins and bit down. Another arrow whistled over his head as their horses skittered, and the optio struggled to tie the tourniquet tightly above the wound.
His lieutenant came galloping back. It was Lucius, the grey-eyed British lieutenant.
‘First blood, centurion,’ he called cheerfully. ‘Good man!’
‘Yeah, unfortunately it’s my blood, sir.’
Another arrow fell short and clattered over the rough ground at their horses’ feet. Lucius squinted up. There was nothing in the silent air but the trill of the cicadas, nothing to be seen up on the ridge but the blue sky beyond. Not a plume of dust, not a scuffle.
‘We’re being ambushed by . . . what? A solitary six-year-old boy? What in the Name of Light is going on?’
Marco shook his head. ‘No idea, sir. Feeblest ambush I’ve ever been in.’
The column had come to a halt, even though it was in a narrow defile. No more arrows came. There was no need to panic.
‘When you’ve finally stopped bleeding—’ said Lucius.
‘Stopped already, sir,’ interrupted Marco, patting the tourniquet. ‘Tight as a virgin’s—’
‘OK, Centurion, I get the message. Now ride on up to the Palatine vanguard and ask Count Heraclian, respectfully, what he wants us to do.’
Marco soon returned. ‘He suggests you’re in a better intelligence position than he is, sir.’
Lucius stared at him. ‘He wants me to give the orders?’
‘Seems so, sir. He also suggests that you and your Frontier Guard ride at the head of the column from now on.’
‘Jesus the Jumping Jew.’ Lucius turned away. ‘Master-General Heraclian,’ he said under his breath, ‘you are one useless pile of mule-shit.’ He turned back. ‘OK, Centurion, we ride on. At the end of this defile, when we come to that stand of cork oaks there - see? - you and me and First Squadron turn sharply back and ride round to the left and see what we can see. How’s that for a plan?’
‘Tremendously complex, sir, but it might just work.’
‘OK, you cheeky bastard. Ride on.’
As they rode, Marco gave the silent signal to the first troop of eight cavalrymen to be ready to split off from the column and climb the slope to the left. At the given moment they did so, without Lucius needing to bark a single word of command. The horses strained to get them up the steep slope, their heads held low and their nostrils flared, until at last they reached the summit, and reined in and stopped, and looked away across the blank escarpment.
Nothing. Not even a plume of dust.
‘What the fuck is going on, sir?’
Lucius squinted across the plain. At last he said softly, ‘What kind of bandit gang, Centurion, launches probing, reconnaissance attacks, to test the strength of its chosen target? Not even a volley, just a few well-aimed arrows, and then has the discipline to retreat and vanish before the enemy can counter?’
‘None that I know of, sir.’
Lucius scanned the hazy horizon again with eyes almost closed.
‘Gladiators?’ said another, younger trooper, wide-eyed Carpicius, all boyish excitement and dread. ‘Turned bandits?’
‘Gladiators,’ snorted Ops, a bull-necked Egyptian decurion in his early forties, due for retirement soon but as tough as any in the legion. His real name was Oporsenes, but Ops suited him better. ‘Don’t give me fuckin’ gladiators. Gladiators, sunshine, is a bunch of actors with swords in their hands. They’re just celebrity fuckin’ murderers, they are.’
Like any other soldier, Ops had nothing but contempt for gladiators, unemployed or not. Overpaid sex symbols, nancy-boys, showy individualist fighters who wouldn’t last five minutes on a real battlefield, where the mutual loyalty and trust between you and your men was what kept you all alive. Not fancy bladework in front of a roaring crowd of thousands.
‘OK, men,’ said Lucius, wheeling his horse round again. ‘Back to the column and ride on, eyes skinned. This isn’t over yet.’
‘What on earth is going on?’ whispered Olympian as the column rumbled forwards again. ‘We can’t be under attack, can we?’
‘Looks like it,’ said the little barbarian, settling back comfortably in his seat. ‘Pretty disciplined attack, too, I’d say.’
Olympian turned his fear into scorn. ‘Oh, so you’re a military expert, too, are you now? Closely acquainted, no doubt, with the military treatises of Aeneas Tacitus, Frontinus and Vegetius?’
The boy eyed the eunuch and nodded evenly. ‘Yes, I’ve read them,’ he said. ‘And that anonymous one, De re militari, which shows you how to drive a boat using paddles powered by oxen. Interesting idea - be good for attacking up-river. Do you know it?’
The eunuch gaped at him like a dying mullet.
Attila smiled and closed his eyes. ‘They’ll be attacking again soon,’ he promised. ‘Better say your prayers.’
They climbed out of the gully and onto a high, barren plateau. Perfect for a hit-and-run cavalry attack on a heavy, slow-moving column. But the outriders Lucius had posted - Heraclian, for some reason, hadn’t got round to it - reported no sign of life except lizards and cicadas. And the ground was far too hard and rocky to leave any decent trail signs.
They crossed the plateau in tense silence, the Frontier Guard riding in the van, the Palatine Guard in the rear. Then they began to drop down again, into a vast natural amphitheatre of grassland. The track itself curved away, round and down the flank of the hill, the terrain rising steeply to the left and falling away just as steeply to the right.
Lucius called a halt.
There was no sound but the soughing of the wind in the dry grass.
Ops growled something. Lucius told him to be quiet.
He was thinking of the day Hannibal slaughtered the Romans at Lake Trasimene, ambushing them side-on when they were in marching file, unable to turn round into battle-order, pinned against the lakeside. He was thinking how good a place this would be to launch a similar ambush. To their left a steep ascent, and to their right an even steeper descent. There was no way they could get themselves into decent formation on this slope.
Then Marco said, ‘There are horses coming. That way, over the rise.’
‘Shepherds?’ suggested Lucius. ‘Goats?’
‘No, horses. Men on horses.’
They listened. Lucius could hear nothing. The tension was unbearable. A soldier’s desire to get stuck in, as Lucius knew, often made him attack too early. There was nothing worse than waiting for the enemy - especially for an unseen, uncounted enemy.
But Marco was no novice. He nodded again. ‘They’re coming.’
‘How can you hear that?’ said Lucius.
‘I can’t. But our horses can.’
He was right. Their mounts were skittish anyway, smelling their riders’ sweat and fear. But there was something more than that on the wind. Their ears twitched back and forth, and their nostrils flared to pick up the scent of their approaching kind.
Lucius leant forward and spoke into the flicking ear of his fine grey mare. ‘What is it, Tugha Bàn? Trouble ahead?’ He sat back, oblivious of his centurion’s sceptical stares. ‘I think you’re right.’
He squinted up the slope to their left. Then he signalled to Marco to give the general order to dismount. ‘And that means the Palatine, too - if Master-General Heraclian doesn’t mind. So ride back and tell them to get off their fat arses.’
‘We’re not going to ride on down?’
‘At our speed? With those wretched, overweight carriages?’ Lucius shook his head. ‘We’ll be cut to pieces if we stay mounted.’ He slid to the ground and fingered the pommel of his sword. ‘We’re going to have to fight.’ He stood and scanned the steep slope again and the shimmering heat haze above. ‘Where are those fucking outriders?’
Marco said nothing. They both knew where the outriders were by now.
And they both knew what it meant when a troop of cawing rooks took flight and arose from the oak forest below them and flew away down the valley. Rooks are clever. They don’t fly away at the approach of horses, or sheep, or goats. But they fly at the approach of men, and they can tell a man armed with a bow from a man without. When rooks take flight, trouble is coming.
Marco drew his sword and touched its edge.
Lucius had them line up two deep to the left of the column, facing uphill.
‘That’s quite a climb,’ muttered Marc
o.
‘Certainly is,’ said Lucius. ‘Hope you’ve been doing your exercises.’
Marco hawked and spat. ‘Yeah, yeah.’
But he knew his officer was right. His officer was generally right, he had to admit it. Lieutenant Lucius was OK. In a situation like this, if they were about to be ambushed from above - and they were - the best thing to do was, as so often in warfare, the thing the enemy would least expect: counter-attack uphill.
Marco glanced up, and there they were. He gave a low whistle. Counter-attack uphill and with a lot fewer men. Jumping Jesus.
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