The judgement ath 3, p.5
The Judgement ath-3, page 5
part #3 of Attila the Hun Series
The priest could not speak.
‘Say to the emperor that if he does not render to me half his empire by way of recompense, I will destroy him.’
‘Half… the empire?’
‘Your ears work well. Of course, I will destroy him anyway, but he need not know that yet. And you can add for him the old Roman motto “ Nemo me impune lacessit – no man insults me with impunity.” Suitable, no?’
The bishop said nothing.
‘I will know if and when you have delivered this message in full, and correctly. If you do, you may return here and be reunited with your family. And then, if you have any sense, you will flee far from this empire doomed to fall. If you do not return – in twenty days – your family will be crucified, the whore and the children both.’
The bishop groaned.
The warlord struck him. He reeled backwards. With his hands tied behind his back he could not wipe his mouth so he licked and leaned aside and spat the blood that welled from his split lip.
The warlord’s voice grew fiercer. ‘How often in your life have you had a chance to redeem your entire family from death by a single act of great bravery? Never. Am I right? Of course I am. You are a provincial priest of a mean frontier diocese. Your family were mere yeoman farmers, slow sons of the soil with clay for blood.’
He looked away.
‘You should go now. Naissus is two days distant, and the capital another ten. So you will need to hurry to be back here in twenty days and collect your prize.’ He laid his hand on the man’s shaking shoulder, almost gentle again. ‘You will need to ride fast. Understand?’
The bishop controlled himself and nodded.
The warlord turned to his warriors. ‘Find him a horse.’
As he departed, the priest looked back. ‘My lord, I still do not know what name I should give.’
‘Attila. My name is Attila.’
Orestes watched him at the doorway to the tent. Great Tanjou. He remembered the day when the two of them had come back to the camp of the Huns, a small and humbled people, before Attila took them in his fists and remade them. And when Attila dug into the grave-mound, grubbing into the very bones of his father, Mundzuk, with a common spade. Now he preached the desecration of the Hun grave-mounds as a pretext for war. Yet Attila was no hypocrite. That was not the word.
One law for the lion and the ox is oppression. That was Attila’s creed, or something like it.
Attila said, ‘Let them use their own to pass on messages of disaster, to issue threats to their emperor.’ He took his place cross-legged at the fireside. ‘Let them use their own cursus to pass on my words.’
Orestes murmured, ‘Like the time we let those Turcoman bandits steal our gold. Heavy wagons of Chinese gold.’
An old warrior with long, greying hair regarded him. It was Chanat. ‘Tell the tale.’
Orestes smiled thinly. ‘We let them drag it over mountain passes, across fast-flowing rivers on rafts, across parched gravel deserts. A terrible journey back to their steppeland home. We trailed them all the way. They never knew. And when they had kindly transported all that Chinese gold for us, safely back to the northern steppes, we fell on them by night and slew them all.’
‘And took back your gold?’
Orestes nodded. ‘And took back our gold.’
Chanat munched happily on his leg of mutton. He liked this story. ‘Will this emperor indeed render up to us half his empire? Is he such a woman? They say he wears perfume, and boots studded with pearls.’
‘I don’t doubt he does,’ said Attila. ‘But as for handing over half his empire, if he does not, I will destroy him. And if he does,’ he smiled, ‘well, I will destroy him anyway. And then… Rome.’
‘And then…?’
‘Ah. Then.’
They fell silent. Chanat drank. Memories of China.
‘Whatever else he does, Theodosius will call on the West for aid,’ said Attila. ‘But no aid will come.’
Orestes frowned. ‘The Roman boy, this Master-General, Aetius.. .’
‘I remember him. He would ride to the rescue of any fallen damsel, even Theodosius. But he will not come. I have other plans. Constantinople has strong walls, but the strongest legions remain in the West. Aetius’ own legions are the finest. We could take on both empires at once, but it is easier to divide and rule, as the Romans used to say when they colonised new lands. Divide and destroy, I say.
‘We concentrate first on the East. Soon enough, Theodosius will send out a message by sea to Ravenna. Also to his field army at Marcianopolis, and perhaps to the legionary forts at Sirmium and Singidunum to attack our flank. Such messages will be… disrupted.’
‘At sea?’
‘The Vandals are masters of much of the Mediterranean now. King Genseric.’
Orestes stared. ‘One of the brothers also held hostage in Rome in your boyhood.’
‘With his sleek ships in that fine harbour of captured Carthage. What irony there.’
‘He is your ally now? I did not know this.’
‘He is not my ally, he is my servant.’ Attila grinned. ‘But he does not know this.’ He took a deep draught of koumiss.
‘You should sleep,’ said Orestes. He had been awake all night, talking, the bloodlust of Margus still coursing in his veins.
Attila ignored him. Orestes laid his hand on his shoulder. No other man could have done this. Attila shrugged him off.
Finally he said, ‘Such dreams I have nowadays. You have no idea. Such dreams…’
‘Such dreams,’ echoed Little Bird from the back of the tent, shaking his head sorrowfully.
Orestes did not know if they were good dreams or bad, if his friend awoke in the cold midnight raging with dreams of world conquest or trembling from other visions altogether.
‘I do not sleep,’ said Attila. ‘I cannot sleep.’
Two more warriors stepped into the tent, Aladar, son of Chanat, and one of the Kutrigur Huns.
‘Another of the Chosen Men is dead,’ said Aladar.
The Kutrigur warrior nodded. ‘You seek the Lord Bela. I saw him go down into the water. One of the Romans, a brute of a man, fell on him and dragged him off the bridge, drowned him.’
Attila gazed at the messenger. First eager Yesukai, doomed to die young. Now Bela, one of the four steadfast brothers.
The king said not a word, made not a sound, but in a single, explosive movement smashed his wooden cup to the ground. Little Bird whimpered. No one else moved.
‘His body?’
‘Never found.’
Attila’s eyes searched the ground splashed with koumiss, muttering. ‘Drowned. What an end for my warrior Bela.’
Bela of the bull-neck and the bull-torso. The strong and silent, slow-witted, immovable Bela. Loyal unto death, like all his Chosen Men.
Chanat said, ‘The brothers will have their revenge, my lord.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ growled Attila.
Aladar took a deep breath. ‘And Candac is also gone.’
Clever, cautious, round-faced Candac.
‘Then find him. Find his body. He will be given full and honourable-’
‘No, Great Tanjou. He is gone. I saw him go.’
Attila’s scowl was ferocious. Two deep vertical grooves between his brows, his forehead furrowed deep and dark. Three ancient parallel scars just visible, fine and white. His traitor’s mark. His voice was soft and low, always the worst.
‘Not deserted,’ he said. ‘Not my Candac, not my Chosen Man. He would not desert me.’
‘I saw him ride, too, my master,’ said Little Bird, nodding furiously. ‘He rode away north and gone, all wordless into the wilderness.’
Attila’s bewilderment erupted into violence.
Little Bird yelped and scuttled to the darkest side of the tent, where he squatted down and wrapped his arms over his head like a monkey.
Orestes ducked under the wooden stool that the king was flailing wildly, smashing to splinters against the shuddering tentpost. He seized his arm. It was not seemly for a great man to show such passion. Attila froze and looked at Orestes as if unable to recognise him. His blazing eyes were filled with madness. Orestes returned his gaze steadily. Attila gradually grew calm again, dropped the remains of the stool at his feet and turned away.
‘Explain,’ he said eventually. His shoulders seemed to sag. ‘Explain to me the desertion of my Chosen Man, my beloved Candac.’
‘My lord,’ said Aladar gravely, ‘I cannot. Except that…’
‘I heard him speak,’ said Chanat.
Attila looked back.
The old warrior regarded his king gravely. ‘I saw him surveying the killing-field of Margus, and the mounds of dead bodies, and the deeds of the Kutrigur Huns, our brothers-in-arms: taking scalps, debauching the slain, having their usual enjoyments.’
The Kutrigur warrior, messenger of Bela’s death, remained impassive at the tent door.
‘Terror is a fine weapon,’ said Attila. ‘And very cheap.’
Chanat did not argue. ‘Our brothers-in-arms,’ he repeated boldly and bitterly. ‘Our comrades riding with us in the great and glorious conquest of this mighty Empire of Rome. I saw Candac standing among the flames, and I saw him drop his bow to the ground and not retrieve it. He watched them, the Kutrigurs, about their business, their exotic deeds and their violations, with the chieftain of the Kutrigurs, Sky-in-Tatters himself, among them. And I heard the Lord Candac say – I thought to me, though he did not turn his head – I heard him say, “This is not the treasure I fought for.”’
There was a moment of silence. Then, ‘Why did you not tell me this earlier?’
‘You would not have heard this earlier.’
Old Chanat.
‘Ach,’ murmured Attila. One soft, sad syllable. There was no more to be said.
After a while his warriors rose and retired from his tent. Even Orestes stepped after them, leaving him to his dreams.
Proud tempers breed sad sorrows for themselves.
Orestes searched for Little Bird but he was nowhere to be found. Like Candac, he had gone into the wilderness, though not for ever, only for a little while. He would never desert his master, come what may. He would always go with him through the storm and to the very gates of Hell, joking as he went.
In the hills to the south, looking out over the smouldering ashes of Margus, seated cross-legged upon an outcrop of pale moonlit limestone among the yellow rockroses, was an outlandish, beribboned creature. He wore a string decorated with tiny bird and animal skulls around his neck, and a torn goatskin shirt decorated with little black stick men.
A solitary girl fleeing south, a shepherdess, stumbled on him and gave a cry of terror but he never stirred, never even noticed. She fled onward.
For all his years he still had the face of a child, the colour high and hectic in his broad cheeks. A small fire of sticks burned at his feet and he threw strange seeds into it and leaned forwards to inhale the smoke.
His attention was fixed far beyond the ruined town. He saw turning stars and balefire and black night, and he felt afraid. He rocked back and forth and stirred his hands in the air. He saw his noble master, Lord Widow-Maker, Great Tanjou, Khan of Khans, drawing black night down over the world like a tent to cover and smother all. Not only the hated empire of Rome but the Hun people, too, would be caught in it, would suffocate and die under that dark sky heavy with hatred. He whimpered. The tent of the world twisted and became a monster made up of blood-red flame and black night, which would turn and devour them all.
6
THE TORTURE SHIP
Sabinus took a cup of wine after all. It wouldn’t make him slow on a night like this, only steady his nerves.
His palms sweated. He calmed his breathing.
Around the battlements he could see the white, strained faces of his men. Down below, the restless cavalry horses were tethered. The cavalrymen resting again, seated in the dust, helmets cradled in their laps. Little campfires burning. No one spoke.
They prayed that it would come soon.
Some already harboured fantasies of hearing the sound of distant hooves and drums, and the cry going up from the south towers overlooking the road east to Ratiaria and Marcianopolis, ‘They’re coming! The field army’s coming! ’
But no such cry came.
From the walls they could see fires in the hills: villages aflame. They could hear the high calls of nightbirds, the bark of a dog-fox. But a terrible feeling of aloneness. As if they were the only living men left on earth, surrounded by darkness and by the forces of darkness.
No one else even knew. The rest of the empire slept peaceful and oblivious tonight. Not one shepherd, not one wandering tinker refugee, had got through to Naissus of the Five Roads or to Ratiaria, with its vast weapons factories, to report the incursion, it seemed. No help was coming for this fight they faced against tens of thousands of savages, streaming down again from the valleys where they had lain hidden. Under Sabinus’ command, no more than two thousand at best, many of them rustic auxiliaries. Properly armoured, equipped and trained, he had all of five hundred men.
Wisps of cloud across the moon, a thickening mist on the river, a terrible unease. Only a few hours ago he’d been sitting doing the legionary accounts. That seemed a long time ago now.
A cry in the night. The legate started, strained his ears. Sounds were getting muffled by the rising mist. Screams still coming from Margus? No, that was impossible. Margus was ten miles distant. Only the cry of a bird, a night-heron over the darkening river.
He turned to speak to Tatullus by his side and then froze.
There came the sound of drums.
There was a stir among the men on the north-west tower. They were pushing forward to see something. Sabinus strode over.
The crossbowmen and artillerymen parted for him. Tatullus trod close behind. There was that hulking brute Knuckles again, both his great bearlike arms and huge fists tightly wrapped round with bull-hide strips studded with lethal bronze studs, and dragging a crude club, like some troglodyte Hercules.
‘Where’s your pike, man?’ demanded Sabinus.
‘Down below, sir. I got an eye on it, don’t you worry. But I lost me last club back on the bridge at Margus, so I been makin’ meself a new one. I like a club, sir, when it gets up close and personal, like. It don’t rust and get caught in your scabbard, it don’t break or get stuck in somebody’s guts, it never gives up on you. You keep a firm grip on it and it won’t let you down. I always swear by a club, sir, when the fightin’ gets messy.’
Knuckles’ club had a special adaptation. Stuck on the end was a great lump of lead solder which one of the smiths had done for him earlier. Most men would have had difficulty even lifting the thing.
‘Once, sir, I had to put a mare out of her misery and me good old club did a clean job of it in one go.’
Sabinus didn’t doubt it.
A flicker of something caught his eye. He looked out over the river and something was wrong. It was on fire.
Out of the darkness still came the sound of drums. Deep, booming barbarian drums.
The night glowed, a flame-red mouth opening up in the darkness, long streaks of reflected flame licking along the surface of the slow-moving river. Then a ship came gliding out of the thin mist.
A galley, wreathed in flames. One of the galleys of the Danube Fleet, captured from God knows where. Gliding downstream like some infernal ghost-ship, sailing into dark eternity unmanned. Silent but for the crackling of the flames and the collapsing spars and showering sparks. Yet there were humans still aboard. Hanging from the masts and yardarms, strangled, dangling, obscene, as if still dancing amid the flames that licked at the soles of their feet, hung the naked bodies of massacred soldiers. They festooned the ship like hellish decorations. Fire danced from their crucified limbs. Their hair flamed. The ship came gliding past, close enough to the north wall of the fort for them to see the victims’ blistering skin, their melting faces.
Sabinus gripped the wall.
‘God’s teeth,’ muttered Knuckles, ‘that’s worthy of a show in the arena, that is.’
Tatullus had his vinestick in his hand in a flash, and struck Knuckles such a blow across the back of his head as would have cracked the skull of a lesser man. Knuckles gasped and reeled and staggered, more bow-legged than ever, his eyes rolling up to the whites before collapsing against the low battlements of the wall. Shaking, in a cold sweat, he sucked in deep lungfuls, gradually letting the pain recede and his vision return.
Tatullus never raised his voice. There was something in this iron-cold centurion that chilled even Sabinus. ‘Those were your comrades you see tortured and crucified below you, soldier. Talk of them with respect.’
Knuckles, still hanging onto the battlement as if it were a rock in rapids and he were a drowning man, pale and nearly sick with the blow, managed a slow nod. ‘Sir.’
Other soldiers gathered from along the walls to stare aghast. Some had their arms round each other’s shoulders as the torture ship passed by. Four of them stood in a line, silent witnesses to the spectacle, like gladiators summoning esprit de corps before the coming doom. Two brothers, their father and their uncle. Local boys, part-time farmers, the VIIth in all its glory. Soon they would be fighting for their lives.
Another spar on the ship came crashing down to the deck in a flurry of sparks, another piece fell free and sizzled out in the black water. But even that sound was muffled by the mist and the night.
Now they would at last be tested, perhaps beyond endurance. They would fight for themselves and each other, for their families and their farmsteads. They had never even seen Rome or Constantinople. The emperor was far away, the empire a thing of the mind. Today they would fight merely for survival. No reinforcements.
The torture ship passed on eastwards, its ghastly light dimming into the darkness. They imagined it finally drifting down through the shadowy gorge of the Iron Gates, reduced by then to a smoking, blackened wreck, to be dashed to pieces there in the whitewater narrows. Bits of peat-black timber and spar washing up on the strand at Ratiaria. Blackened bones.
