Marco turned stiffly and sat down, his head dropping. He felt he had no strength left in his powerful neck.
‘Marco, not you too.’
‘It is time, sir,’ said the centurion. ‘It was time for a lot of us today.’
It was the wound in his side. He had ignored it, as he always ignored his wounds. ‘Either they go away,’ he used to say, ‘or you do.’ Until now, he had always got the better of them. But this one was different. His whole body ran cold, and his limbs trembled.
Lucius cried out his name, and ordered him to stand. ‘On your feet, soldier!’ He could almost have struck him in his sudden rage.
‘Just a few minutes more, officer,’ said Marco. Farewell, warm time. Hail, cold eternity. He could no longer see. ‘May the gods keep you,’ he whispered. ‘It has been good to serve with a man like you.’
Then he rolled onto his side and curled up on the ground, smiling gently to himself. That great muscled, battle-scarred body, curled up like a baby in the womb. As at my beginning, so at my end. He breathed almost silently now, hands clutched to his stomach, blood seeping afresh from under his tunic. Lucius stood over him, utterly at a loss, speechless with anger. Marco stopped breathing. The blood stopped seeping.
Attila turned away, puzzled at himself, unable to watch, unable to listen. He walked away over the battlefield to find his mule.
Lucius sank to his knees with a howl, and dragged at his centurion’s broad shoulders. He raised up his body, cradled his grizzled head in his lap, and wept.
Attila came back a few minutes later, leading his mule by its frayed rope. Lucius was still kneeling in the dust beside his centurion.
The boy stood near him for a while, and then he said quietly, ‘I’m going now.’
Lucius nodded.
The boy hesitated a while longer, then he said, ‘Rome’s all done, like I said before. You should get back to Britain.’
Lucius said nothing. He knew of nothing worth saying. And he suddenly felt that words of Latin, the language of Rome, would stick in his throat like fishbones.
‘Your homeland,’ said the boy with a strange urgency.
Lucius nodded. His homeland. His heartland. Then he said, in the language of his own people, ‘Mae hiraeth arnath Britan. My heart is longing for Britain.’
The boy knew nothing of the Celtic language, but there was no need. He understood every word from the longing with which the lieutenant spoke.
Still he hesitated. Then he said, ‘I owe you my life. I will not forget.’
At last Lucius turned round. ‘Do not forget,’ he said quietly. ‘In the years to come.’ He watched the boy scramble up onto his mule, without a trace of tiredness, as if the morning’s desperate fighting had been nothing to him but a stroll in the meadows. ‘Ride safely, young one.’
Attila nodded. ‘I’ll survive.’
The ghost of a smile passed over Lucius’ face. ‘I don’t doubt it.’
The boy kicked the mule’s bony flanks and it lurched forwards stiff-legged away over the plateau, northwards and into the trees.
Lucius watched him go for a long time.
7
THE LONG JOURNEY HOME OF THE BROKEN-HEARTED LIEUTENANT
In the afternoon heat and silence, amid the gluttonous buzzing of the gathering flies, the solitary soldier of Rome hacked brushwood from the surrounding forest and piled it up in the centre of the stockade. He built a great pyre over the brushwood with the uprooted staves of the stockade, and dragged the bodies of his slain men onto it. When he had lifted up the twentieth corpse he knew he could do no more that day, and he slept comatose some distance away without dreaming. The next day, aching in every fibre of his body and his soul, he managed to lay the rest of the bodies on the pyre. Last of all, his centurion.
He fired the brushwood and watched it burn as the sun went down in the west. Over Rome.
He walked away into the forest.
But some unknown god was watching over him. The god who blesses and curses in one breath.
After only a few minutes’ walking he saw something like a white shadow through the trees. He emerged into a glade filled with the last smoky rays of the sun slanting in low between the trees, and there in the beautiful light stood Tugha Bàn, cropping the sweet dark grass of the glade. She still wore her saddle, but Lucius’ scalp froze when he saw an arrow buried in it.
He went over and let the wounded horse nuzzle his hand gently. He carefully raised the saddle, and his heart sang. For he saw to his unspeakable relief that the arrowhead had only just passed through the leather and then stopped. Tugha Bàn in her innocence wasn’t so much as scratched. And it was only right that it should be so. What had his gentle grey mare to do with the violence and treachery of men?
He laid his arms across her broad, strong back, rested his cheek against the dense leather and gave thanks with an unsteady voice; and then he broke down and wept again. Tugha Bàn looked back at his emotional outburst with some surprise, grazing her damp muzzle over his arm. Then she returned to cropping the sweet, cool grass at her feet. It was too good to miss.
After his prayers, Lucius took off her saddle, snapped the arrow off at the head, pulled the wicked iron barb through from the other side, and threw it deep into the undergrowth. He replaced the saddle and tightened the girth, looped the reins back, hauled himself up, patted Tugha Bàn’s long grey-dappled neck, and pulled her gently and firmly away from the grass. She harrumphed a little crossly, and he heeled her forwards into a gentle rolling walk.
‘You and me, girl,’ he murmured. ‘Into the sunset.’
Around noon the next day, under a burning sun, he drew his sword one more time.
He rode down a narrow track and round the corner of a grove of stone pines, and there immediately before him stood three men. Momentarily they were as surprised as he was. Then they smiled lazily at each other, and moved out across the path.
‘Nice horse,’ drawled one of them, squinting up at him and grinning.
‘She is,’ said Lucius. ‘And where I go, she goes.’
‘By the giant golden balls of Jupiter, is that a fact?’
‘It is.’
‘Well well.’
‘We don’t have no horses,’ said another, coming in close on Lucius’ far side.
Tugha Bàn tossed her long grey mane.
‘So I see,’ said Lucius.
All three men were sunburnt and had terrible teeth. The third one drew a dagger slowly from his belt, and ran it through his long, lank hair, grinning at Lucius all the while.
Lucius looked each one of them in the eye in turn. Then he said, ‘I’m in no mood for it. Now out of my way.’
The second bandit stepped back and also drew a dagger from his tunic.
The nearest one gave an obsequious bob of his head where he stood, not moving. ‘Most certainly we will, your eminence. Just as soon as we’ve relieved you of that nice bronze cuirass you’re wearing. And your helmet, and your sword, and your shield, and your dagger. Oh, and your horse, of course, and all the trappings and accoutrements pertaining thereto.’ He grinned toothlessly, drawing a long sword from the scabbard that hung from his back. ‘Then we’ll be out of your way in a—’
He never finished the sentence. Lucius whipped his cavalry spatha from his scabbard in the blink of an eye, jabbed Tugha Bàn forward a couple of paces and slashed the blade through the air, saying with weary irritability, ‘Oh, leave me alone.’
The bright swordblade slashed across the bandit’s throat and he tottered forwards and fell, collapsing across the rump of Lucius’ horse as he rode by. The head lolled almost free from the neck, attached only by a flap of skin, such was the skill of the blow, and blood gouted across Tugha Bàn’s grey flanks. Then the corpse slithered off her rump and fell into the dust.
Lucius did not even spur Tugha Bàn into a trot. He walked on, leaving the two men staring after him, knowing they would not come.
All that hot afternoon he rode on. He felt nothing, except
for the bandit’s blood crusting over and drying in the hairs on his bare right arm. He didn’t even stop to wash, or to clean his sword before resheathing it, or to sponge Tugha Bàn’s flanks clean. He cared about nothing any more.
The sky was filled with blood, and none of it was innocent. The grey dusk fell, and still he rode on west. Tugha Bàn slowed her pace in puzzlement as they rode on into the night. But, as her rider showed no sign of stopping, she ambled on. The moon rose behind them, and the air grew chill, even in late summer, for they were still in the Appenine mountains. Once, once only, they heard the call of wolves in the high mountain passes to the north. A tremor ran over his mare’s withers, a tremor of primeval and instinctual fear. They rode on.
They emerged from a deep-sunken track onto higher ground, and there in the moonlight stood a man upon a rock. He stood quite silent, haloed only by the pale moonlight, like some figure out of myth. The broken-hearted lieutenant reined in his horse and stopped. Ready for any new horror or revelation that might come out of the darkness of this world or the world beyond.
The horseman and the man upon the rock stared at each other in the moonlight upon that lonely mountain road, and the only sound was the slow, deep breathing of the horse. The man upon the rock was dressed in a long robe of coarse wool, perhaps grey, perhaps brown, for all colours were indistinguishable in the moon’s grey light. The robe was belted at the waist with a rope sash, and a large hood was drawn up round his neck, but his head was bare. His hair was long and unkempt, and his beard straggled down over his chest almost to his waist. He held a long staff topped with a bare wooden cross of the simplest, most spartan design. His eyes glittered in the moonlit night and they never left the eyes of the broken-hearted lieutenant, who returned his gaze with eyes similarly unwavering. The man or hermit or lunatic never stirred an inch. In the gentle night air only the heavy hem of his tattered robe stirred a little and then stilled again. The moon-shadow of this silent messenger with his staff and his cross fell across the mountain road, jagged and broken up by the rough stony ground, but still clearly visible for what it was: a man holding a cross. His feet were as firmly planted as his staff.
It seemed that many minutes passed in the silent night as the two men, two refugees from the world of men, looked deep into each other’s souls and said nothing. Finally the stillness was broken, though not the silence. The ancient man on the rock raised his skinny arm and touched his fingertips first to his heart, then to his lips, and then to his forehead. Then he held his arm outstretched, so that he reached out into the empty space over the soldier’s head, and he carved another invisible cross in the empty air. He let his hand drop, and the soldier and the man or hermit on the rock looked at each other a while longer, with no words spoken. At last the lieutenant turned and looked ahead down the moonwashed road, and dug his heels gently into the flanks of Tugha Bàn, and rode on.
That night he felt unspeakably weary, as if another ten or twenty years had been added in one hour to his bones. For the second night running he fell asleep in his bloody clothes, rolled up in his horse-blanket under a creaking holm oak, the stars glimmering through the spearhead leaves, his mouth tasting of dust and betrayal and blood.
He awoke close to dawn with those last stars fading from the sky, and he went down into the valley to the river’s edge to wash. He stripped naked and went into the icy water from the mountains and stood up to his waist, then plunged in over his head, resurfacing gasping and shaking his streaming black locks, scraping his eyes clear of the water and opening his mouth to its purity. He closed his eyes and raised his arms to the clear early-morning sun still orange on the horizon, and in his mind he climbed to the portals of heaven and begged Isis and Mithras and Christos and the imperturbable gods to cleanse the blood away. He kept his eyes tightly closed, as if afraid that when he opened them and gazed back upon the mortal world, he would find only that he stood in a river that was a sluggish rusty brown, for ever polluted with dust and betrayal and blood.
He submerged himself again and again in the icy water, rubbing his hands and face, his arms and his chest until they were red and glowing with the cold.
Then he stepped back to the bank, took hold of Tugha Bàn’s reins and led her gently into the icy water. She whinnied as it streamed around her belly, throwing her head up crossly and baring her teeth. But he held her tight and pulled her in deeper, until the pure mountain water coursed right over her back and washed her clean and dapple-grey again. They returned to the bank, and both shook themselves dry as best they could. Lucius dressed again, and saddled Tugha Bàn, and mounted. He buckled on his scabbard-belt and shoved his sword round to his right side. Then he sat for a while and considered.
After some time, slow and dreamlike, as if unable to believe his own actions, he slipped down off the horse again. He unbuckled his scabbard-belt and walked back to the river’s edge. He held the belt by one end, whirled it round his head, and threw the whole thing, sword and all, into the deepest water. It sank immediately. He picked up his shield by its rawhide rim and hurled it in after. He did the same with his bronze cuirass and his expensive, crested helmet. Then he turned back and pulled his spear from the ground, and sent it hurtling high into the air. It crested and curved and fell, entering the deep, dark water in virtual silence, and was gone. Left in only his hobnailed sandals, white linen tunic and leather jerkin, the lieutenant mounted Tugha Bàn again, wheeled her and rode on down the mountainside.
At about the same time, some miles to the north, Attila awoke to the same early sun. He sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked around him at the fresh morning world, as bright as a sword-blade with dew, and he grinned. Then he rolled lazily to his feet and took a look around.
There was a farmstead nearby, at the edge of the trees on a warm south-facing slope. He left his mule tethered to a low branch and crept silently over to it. The shutters were wide open, and a dense male snoring came from the gloom within. He stepped silently into the lower room, which served as a barn, and waited patiently for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then he grinned with satisfaction. On a peg on the wall opposite hung a good length of strong rope, and leaning in a corner was a long-handled billhook with a decent-looking curved iron head.
The boy noosed the rope with a slipknot and nodded with satisfaction. It would do fine. He looped it over his head and left shoulder, so that his sword was still readily to hand on the right. Into the opposite side of his belt he tucked a pruning knife. He stole a flat scythestone that he found on a bench, and a hessian sack. Then he hefted the billhook, and grinned with satisfaction at the weight of it. He went back outside and remounted his mule, hefted the billhook across his right shoulder, and rode on down the mountainside.
In the mountains they had known nothing of what had gone on in the wider world. But as soon as Lucius came down into the plains and the rich farmland of the Tiber valley, he saw the devastation that the Goths - the real Goths - had wreaked in their righteous anger. Farmstead after farmstead was burnt to the ground. Golden fields of ripe corn, ready for the harvest, had been trampled into the mud by the hooves of a hundred thousand horses. Entire orchards had been slashed and burnt, livestock slain or herded into the Gothic column and driven off. The landscape was deserted. The country people had gone. He saw only stray dogs whimpering and cowering amid the burnt-out cottages, crows and kites circling and feeding on the carcasses of cattle and sheep.
As he neared Rome, he passed the occasional ragged group by the roadside. An entire family, huddled around a single handcart, looking up at him with round, empty eyes. He felt his heart swell in his ribcage with pity, but he could do nothing.
And then he came in sight of the city on the seven hills, and he saw the vast army of the Goths encamped about. Like all barbarian peoples, the Goths made no distinction between soldier and civilian. When they marched, the whole tribe marched: men, women and children all together in their covered wagons. And when they camped, they spread like a vast nation, as now across the fiel
ds outside Rome. The city of a million people was surrounded and cloaked around by a dark shadow of a hundred thousand Goths. And Rome was starving.
Lucius sat and considered for a while. And then he rode forward.
The Gothic army camp was undefended. There was no Roman force left in Italy that would dare to face them. All that stood between them and the glittering treasures of Rome were the walls and gates of the city itself.
Alaric, that shrewd Christian king of the Gothic people, had sent messengers to the imperial court and to the Senate in Rome some days ago, pointedly lamenting the death of his noble opponent, General Stilicho, and then demanding four thousand pounds of gold in return for his withdrawal from Italy. The Senate had responded with foolish contempt. ‘You cannot defeat us,’ they said. ‘We are many more in number than you.’
Alaric sent back a curt message, of the kind beloved once by the Spartans, and now by the tough Germanic peoples. ‘The thicker the hay,’ he said, ‘the more easily mown.’
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