Attila

by William Napier

  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 Bàn 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.


  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.