Attila

by William Napier

  Lucius and Marco stood side by side on the earthen rampart, straining to see into the forest beyond.

  ‘They’re there,’ said Marco softly.

  ‘You can see them?’

  ‘A flash of something. They’re watching and waiting.’

  ‘Why didn’t they attack earlier? They just sat and watched us throw up our defences.’

  Marco grunted. ‘Such as they are.’

  ‘So it’ll be a night attack?’

  ‘Darkness usually favours defenders, as does twilight. Maybe that’s why they’re waiting.’

  ‘Attack at dawn, then.’

  ‘I reckon.’

  Then Lucius’ blood ran cold. The last of the sun was slanting in low across the rocky plateau, the trees beyond almost black in the failing light. And the Gothic horsemen were riding out of the forest.

  But it was no attack. Not yet. It was an embassy.

  There were three of them. They rode tall, high-spirited horses, and each held a long spear in his right hand, a fluttering pennant just below the spearhead. They carried no shields, but their burnished steel breastplates caught the dying rays of the sun, and their tall, conical helmets with their flowing horsehair plumes made them look still taller.

  Both officers thought: against two hundred of them, like that? We’ve got no chance. But both had the tact to keep silent.

  The three horsemen rode fearlessly up to the edge of the circle, and the one in the lead nodded to Lucius.

  ‘This is your command?’

  ‘It is,’ said Lucius evenly.

  Their leader’s horse, a leanly muscled young black gelding, circled skittishly in front of them, mettlesome and full of fire. His gait was high-stepping, free-floating, as if he had Spanish or Berber in his bloodline, though the Goths usually rode the shaggy, enduring horses of the plains.

  The warlord spoke again, his Latin excellent. ‘Hand the Hun boy over to us, and the rest of you will go free. Resist, and none of you will live to see tomorrow’s sunset.’

  Lucius turned to Marco. Marco summoned Ops, who came shambling over from the fireside.

  ‘Hear that, Decurion?’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘What do the men say?’

  Crates, the wiry little Greek who served as the century’s doctor, sitting cross-legged by the campfire sharpening his dagger on a whetstone, spoke up for all of them. ‘Tell him to go fuck himself,’ he called.

  Lucius grinned and turned back to the Gothic horseman. ‘The answer is: go fuck yourselves.’

  The horseman was unperturbed. He said quietly, ‘You will regret that.’

  Lucius kept his eyes locked onto the eyes of his enemy. ‘Maybe. And maybe not.’

  The three tall horsemen wheeled their mounts and rode back into the forest.

  Lucius sat with his men. Attila sat close by.

  Crates the Greek was gouging at the dust with his knife. He said, his usually sardonic voice softened with puzzlement, ‘Goths don’t skin people alive. Of all the barbarian peoples, they’re the ones with the greatest sense of honour. They don’t raze villages flat, they don’t perform human sacrifices.’ He shook his head.

  Lucius glanced at Attila, but he was saying nothing, his gaze inscrutable.

  Marco, who had done service on the Danube earlier in his career and knew the Gothic peoples well enough, nodded in silent agreement. ‘One of our blokes, when I was out in Noricum with the Legio X “Gemina”, getting seven different kinds of shit kicked out of us by those tall, gorgeous horsemen with their long blond hair—’

  The rest of the men guffawed.

  ‘Well, one of our blokes there, he got caught by a Gothic war-band, hunting across the river. He came back alive OK. But you know what had happened?’

  The men settled back to listen, the threat of tomorrow temporarily forgotten. Marco always told a good tale.

  ‘This bloke, he was a young optio, not an ounce of common sense in his body. But he’d read a lot of books, and even sitting in camp down by the river he’d be talking poetry and philosophy and suchlike. Rest of the men sitting round stuffing their faces with lentil stew and farting at him from time to time, but he’d chatter on anyhow, regardless. So this one time he goes out hunting on his own - wildfowling - needed some duck, too many lentils playing havoc with his guts - and he gets caught by this Gothic warband. So they form up in a ring around him like they do, spearheads straight at his throat. And he told us he’d read about this Greek philosopher, who’d been threatened with execution by some tyrant - I forget his name. And this Greek philosopher, in true philosophical style, he sneers at the tyrant, “How marvellous it must be for you to have as much power as a poisonous spider.” The tyrant had him executed anyway. But you have to admit, the philosopher went to hell with a certain style.

  ‘So now this Gothic war-band has our bloke surrounded, not a cat’s bollock of a chance, all on his own out there. And their leader says something about how he has strayed into their kingdom and domain, and the penalty for that must be death. And this young bookworm of an optio sits up proud in his saddle, and comes out with the very same line: “How marvellous it must be for you to have as much power as a poisonous spider.” Straight to their faces. There’s deathly silence as the twenty horsemen goggle at this bit of gross impertinence to their chieftain. And then bugger me if they don’t all fall about laughing. They laugh so much they look like they’re going to fall out of their saddles. Then the leader raises his spear, and the rest do the same, and he rides up and claps our daft young optio on the back, and demands that he comes back to their tents and gets rat-arsed with them on some very dodgy Gothic mead. Which he duly does, not appearing to have much choice in the matter. Next morning he feels like he’s been hammering his head against a wall all night. But he and this Gothic warband are now pretty much blood-brothers for life.’

  Marco paused. Then he said more seriously, ‘Point is, that’s the kind of people the Goths are. They’re warriors and they have that old Germanic heroic code. You know? They don’t skin prisoners alive, like the little Greek here says, and they don’t slaughter whole villages of women and children. I’m not saying it’s because they’re tender-hearted, exactly. It’s more because, as warriors, they’ll only draw their swords against a worthy opponent - in other words, another man with a sword in his hand. You’ll never hear about any Gothic atrocities, unlike with some tribes I could mention.’

  There was an awkward silence. The soldiers resisted turning to look at Attila. Still he remained impassive, listening to every word as he gazed into the orange firelight.

  Lucius stood up. ‘OK, ladies. Enough learned talk for the night. Time to get some kip. It’ll be dawn in a few hours, and tomorrow’s going to be a long, hard day.’

  Marco and Lucius stood a while longer on the rough earthen rampart and looked out into the silent darkness.

  ‘What are our chances do you reckon, Centurion?’

  Marco took a deep breath, and when he answered he was uncharacteristically indirect. He said, ‘Another thing I know about the Goths is that when they charge they cry, “Ride to ruin and the world’s end!” So who fights harder, a man with a healthy dread of death or a man with no fear of death at all?’

  His lieutenant brooded.

  ‘I even learnt a bit of Gothic poetry,’ said Marco.

  ‘You never cease to amaze me, Centurion.’

  Marco went over it in his head, and then he said, his voice soft and guttural with the ancient Germanic sounds:

  ‘“Hige sceal þe heardra,

  Heorte þe cenre,

  Mød sceal þe meara,

  þe uns mahteig lytlað.”’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning:

  “Heart shall be harder,

  Will shall be stronger,

  Fight shall be fiercer,

  As our strength fades.”

  ‘That’s the old, heroic Gothic soul for you.’

  ‘Very heroic it is, too.’

  Marc
o straightened. ‘But then, look at us. Look at what we’re facing, now and in the hard years to come. Are you telling me there’s any other way of looking at the world that makes sense? The world being what it is?’

  Lucius was silent. After a long time he said, ‘No. It makes sense.’

  The two men looked into the implacable darkness and spoke no more. It seemed to them as if all speech and all longing, all love and loyalty, bravery and sacrifice, might vanish and be swallowed up in that profound darkness, and nothing come out of its depths but more darkness yet.

  A shiver ran down their spines. A voice began to speak close behind them.

  ‘“Our mother the earth, there on the birch tree!

  Amber-dark butterfly, that gave us birth!

  As we go singing over endless plains,

  Riding our lives away, shadows on the steppe.

  Here she comes now, plumed with white horsehair,

  Dressed for the sacrifice, our mother the earth.”’

  Lucius turned then, but he knew who it was. The Hun boy stood close behind them, a blanket over his shoulders, his teeth gleaming in the darkness.

  ‘But of course,’ said the boy, ‘the Huns have no poetry. It’s a well-known fact. They are the most barbaric of peoples. The people who are born on a smoking shield, the people who shoot arrows in search of the gods.’

  His eyes held them for a little while longer. Then he walked silently away, back to the centre of the camp, and lay down and closed his eyes.

  Marco shook his head, looking over to where he lay. ‘That boy . . .’

  ‘I know,’ said Lucius. ‘Something about him, isn’t there? Something special.’

  Marco nodded. ‘And the Goths know it too. Why are we waiting? What are we fighting for? Who are we fighting for?’

  ‘Damned if I know.’ Lucius laid his hand on Marco’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Centurion. We need some sleep too.’

  Marco grimaced. ‘Yeah. Long day tomorrow.’

  6

  DRESSED FOR THE SACRIFICE

  They came out of the forests to the east with the rising of the sun, knowing their enemies would be blinded by that sun. Their striped and serrated and many-coloured pennants fluttered proudly from their lofty ashen spears. Their long diamond-shaped shields were decorated with every kind of heraldic device, with every totemic animal that haunted the fierce imaginations of these warlike people and their measureless forests of the north. Outlined on their great shields were the shapes of bear and wolf, boar and the huge, shaggy European bison, each one circled and embossed in barbaric bronze. Long plumes of flaxen horsehair swayed from the peaks of their high, quartered helmets, and their fearsome longswords in their scabbards hung glittering from their sides. They sat tall and proud on their horses, and their horses raised their forelegs as they trotted forwards, champing eagerly at their bronze bits.

  They rode in perfectly ordered array - no howling tribal charge for them. At a distance of some two hundred yards, well within bow-range, they pulled up their reins and halted. Their horses high-stepped skittishly where they stood. Their leader rode forward from their ranks. It was the warlord who had spoken to Lucius last night. He wore a bronze face-mask beneath his helm, making him appear as metallic and terrifyingly impassive as an Olympian god. Even his horse wore a chamfrain, a beaten bronze visor.

  Again he said that they had no quarrel with the Romans. They wished only to take the Hun boy. And again Lucius said that the boy was in their charge, and they would not hand him over. The Gothic leader nodded, returned to the head of his ranks and wheeled about.

  The soldiers within the flimsy circle clenched their teeth, gripped their spearshafts still harder and raised their jaws belligerently. They looked at each other wordlessly, for no words would suffice. These were men who had drunk together, fought together, whored together, all across the empire. They had stood back to back with shields raised under a rain of arrows, or ridden out to fight mounted against raiding parties of Attacotti pirates from Hibernia, looting the coasts of Siluria or Dumnonia for slaves. They had fought Franks on the Rhine and Vandals in Spain and Marcommans on the Danube, and not one of them lacked a scar in his flesh or a scar on his heart for a comrade who’d died in his arms in battle.

  The Gothic horsemen dismounted. They were going to fight on foot. Lucius and Marco exchanged looks: unusual. They formed up in strict rank and file, three deep, curving round to cover as much as two-thirds of the circle. They moved quietly, without fuss. Two hundred? thought Lucius. More like two hundred and fifty, maybe three.

  Ops leant and spat, and muttered something obscene about barbarians. Salcus, the young recruit, stood nearby, milk-white.

  Crates nudged him. ‘All right, lad?’

  ‘All right.’

  There wasn’t much more to be said by way of comfort.

  ‘Can’t wait to get stuck in, that’s all,’ said the lad, speaking far too rapidly.

  Crates managed a sardonic grin. ‘Me too.’

  It would be the last time the Eighth Century, First Cohort, Legio II ‘Augusta’ ever fought together. It would be the last time they ever got stuck in. They knew that. It would be their last stand. For reasons they did not comprehend, this was where it would all end for them. A small army of Gothic horsemen had brought them to a standstill, here in the once-peaceful heart of Italy, and demanded that they hand over one of their hostages - who was no more than a boy, and a barbarian to boot! No, it made no sense. But they would go down fighting; and then, they supposed, the Goths would take the boy for themselves anyway. But they would have to pay in blood.

  It was not what they had envisaged. This was not the long and happy retirement so many of them had fondly foreseen for themselves, after twenty years’ loyal service with the legion. Pensioned off with a nice bit of farmland in the mild south country of Britain, with a plump young rose-cheeked girl for a wife, with good round hips and a willing smile. Or, now that Britain, too, had been taken from them, maybe some place in Gaul, or the rich vinelands of the Moselle.

  But here they were, here because they were here, and orders were orders. Anyway, they were buggered if they were going to take orders from a Goth. So, let it be. They’d never live to see retirement, as it turned out; or know gout, or arthritic hands, or the palsy, or old man’s staggers, or creep with bent and crooked back to a cold grave. They’d die here, after all, with sword in hand. It wasn’t so bad. All men must die.

  The Gothic warlord alone remained mounted. He turned to look at the small, grim circle of Roman legionaries. He glanced back to salute his father, the sun, climbing slowly up the eastern sky. Then he looked out over his ranks of men. He dropped his gauntleted hand. They broke into a run.

  ‘Bows at the ready,’ ordered Lucius evenly.

  Forty bows were raised aloft over the stockade.

  The Gothic warriors were a hundred and fifty yards away. One hundred. Closing.

  ‘Take aim,’ said Lucius, raising his spatha.

  They were fifty yards distant now, running at full pelt, knowing that the arrows would be coming soon.

  ‘Fire!’

  The volley flew out into the enclosing circle of warriors, arrowheads finding their targets, burying themselves in the chests and legs of men. A few sank to their knees clutching the arrowshafts, a few more stumbled and fell full length, tripping their comrades who came on behind. More arrows glanced off the side of heavy shields or burnished helmets, or fell short and slithered into the dust. The mass of warriors came on.

  ‘Fire!’

  There was time for one more volley, then Lucius gave the order to take up arms. The bows were thrown aside and men took up swords and shields, or else their spears, and held them high over the trench below. Lucius sensed a figure at his side. He started. It was the boy. He had stripped to the waist, and daubed himself from the crown of his head downwards with mud. His slanted eyes glittered in his blackened face like some forest animal’s. He had tied his shaggy hair up in a Hun-style top-knot, bound with pl
aited grasses, which made him look a little taller. Still, short though he was, his tattooed torso was tightly muscled and his biceps bulged as he held his short sword two-handed.

  ‘Back in the middle with the horses,’ Lucius ordered curtly.

  The boy shook his head. ‘You’re fighting for me. So I’m fighting for you.’

  And then he was away, sprinting across the circle and hurling himself at the stockade opposite.

  The Goths were upon them.

  Without the trench and the stockade, the fighting would have been over in minutes. But every Gothic warrior, no matter how tall, had to fight from below, stabbing his long spear upwards, while the legionaries thrust down with their weapons in response, to deadly effect.