‘ Taken for a slave,’ growled Lucius. ‘Not slave-born.’
‘Not slave-born, no. Nobly born,’ said Aetius quickly.
Lucius harrumphed. Cadoc still smiled. Then he said, ‘The sisters who weave the web weave in many tricks and turnarounds. The Greek boy
…’
‘Orestes. He still rides with Attila, too. The Four Boys. Today we are all together again.’
‘To play together on a wide and windy plain, as of old.’
Aetius could feel his eyes begin to swim. How desperately sad was life. Not boyhood: boyhood was sweetly ignorant. But how sad to grow to manhood. He steadied himself by telling them once more that they were most welcome.
Lucius’ only response was to ask where he and his knights should fight. Aetius said that they might choose. He had no jurisdiction over men of such valour.
‘Very well,’ said Lucius, heeling his horse forward. ‘But first we must speak with Attila.’
‘You…?’
Between the astonished lines of the opposing armies, two men rode out from the Roman lines across the divide between them, walking their horses slowly and unhurriedly. One was a fine old fellow with long white hair, wearing a gold fillet, and a middle-aged, mild-looking fellow followed just behind.
Ready to greet them, the Huns drew back their bows.
The old fellow scanned the Hun lines until he saw who he wanted, and rode straight over to him. Hun bowstrings creaked. The Great Tanjou came forward a little on his pony. The pair stopped. Eyes met fearless eyes.
‘I know you,’ said the King of the Huns.
‘Since you were a boy you have known me,’ said the old man, and his voice was strong and bitter and unafraid.
The Great Tanjou glanced at the other man, then back at the leader.
‘Once I saved your life in the backstreets of Rome,’ said Lucius. ‘Once I saved your life in a vineyard. Once I saved your life on a lonely plateau in the mountains of Italy. My men died rather than hand you over to your enemies.’
‘Who turned out to be Romans, too.’
‘Who turned out to be Romans, too,’ the Celt agreed, almost with impatience. ‘Did I save a boy’s life, only to bring all this’ – he waved his arm wide – ‘this destruction down upon the world?’
‘Eternity’s work!’ snarled Attila. ‘Every man has his burden to bear. You have yours. I have mine.’
Lucius’ voice shook with anger. ‘If ever you owed a man anything, you owed your life to me in those days, Attila. No more than a friendless runaway, you were then.’
The king flinched, stormclouds moving over his ravaged face.
Another man approached: the bald-headed Greek. He regarded the two closely, and then a smile flitted over his habitually expressionless features. ‘Well, well,’ he said softly.
‘This battle,’ demanded Lucius roughly. ‘How many men will die? How many widows will you make?’
‘Many tens of thousands!’ cried Attila. ‘Yet still far fewer than the Romans have made in their twelve hundred years of tyranny. You are a fool to be here, old Lucius. This day will be cruel beyond imagining. But I remember you. Stay here and when the battle is concluded, I may reward you with gold – though doubtless you are too noble of soul to be interested in mere gold.’
Lucius did not honour this with a reply.
Attila’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘Then drop your spears and depart, you and your Celts. No one is interested in you any more, neither I nor Rome. Go back to your miserable, fog-bound island, if you have any sense. You are worthless here. What has your little island kingdom to do with Rome, or Rome with you?’
‘Much,’ said Lucius. ‘Britain may be an island, a sweet green island. But no man is an island.’
Attila leaned forward and spat. ‘For myself, and my People, and this great battle before us,’ he said, ‘the die is cast.’ His lips curled at the bitter allusion, and he added in a low voice: ‘By a King of Kings from Palestine
Two Empires were sown;
By a King of Terror from the East,
Two Empires were o’erthrown.’
The second Celt instantly responded, his voice still quiet but his every word clear: ‘When the wise man keeps his counsel,
The conqueror keeps his crown;
One empire’s birth was Italy,
The other was his own.’
Attila glared at him, jerking his reins up to his chest as if for protection. ‘What is that?’ he rasped. ‘What is that you say?’
Cadoc only smiled politely and said no more.
Instead, Lucius said, ‘He is a remarkable one for poetry, my son. I taught him much – old rhymes, verses, even snatches of ancient prophecy, supposedly!’ He gave a curt laugh, sceptical or ironic, it was impossible to say. ‘And do you know, he remembers every word. It is a gift of my people.’ He looked Attila in the eye, and then Orestes. ‘ Every word. ’
Attila’s horse was restless beneath him, side-stepping, champing at its bit, sensing his agitation. ‘Speak that verse once more. Repeat it to me,’ he rasped. ‘Speak!’ There were stormclouds over his face again, and beside him Orestes, too, seemed strangely perturbed. But father and son had already pulled their horses round and were walking back to the Roman lines.
‘Speak!’ Attila roared after them. ‘Damn you, brown-eyed poet!’
All along the Hun lines, his warriors levelled arrows at the backs of the departing riders, but Attila swept down an angry arm, and their bows were lowered.
Ahead of them, the distant Roman lines began to shimmer in the rising summer heat. Attila’s yellow, wolfish eyes seemed to shimmer, too, those ancient, glittering eyes which had seen all and known all and found no rest or contentment in all the world. Those eyes shimmered as if even he were deeply moved. The gallant Celtic war-band would soon meet its death here on these lonely Gallic plains, loyal unto death to an empire whose days were done, trampled beneath the hooves of two hundred thousand of his warriors. Had not Astur willed it long ago? ‘ Yet hard is the Gods’ will, My sorrows but increase, And I must weep, beloved, That wars will never cease’: an ancient song that someone he once knew used to sing to himself. And then it came to him, who it was who used to sing that ancient song to himself, softly, by firelight, in Italy long ago.
Then let it begin.
Or let it all fall.
Twenty or thirty yards off, Lucius reined in, turned sideways in his saddle, and spoke to Attila one last time.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘your baggage wagons are burning. ’
Attila glanced back, and instantly began lashing his horse into motion, sorrow transformed into howling rage. From a mile or two behind the Hunnish horde, thick black smoke was roiling up high into the morning air.
9
Aetius had used his Batavian special forces, his superventores, exactly as they were supposed to be used, skilfully and in secrecy.
The single century of lightly armoured men had skirted the hill as soon as its possession was consolidated by the Palatine Guard, well-dug in around the summit. They had crawled along a drainage ditch, well wide of the Hun lines, running down to the river that formed Attila’s supposedly safe right flank. Safe enough from major attack or cavalry, true. But the Huns wrongly supposed their own fear of deep, strong rivers to be universal, and their focus was elsewhere.
The Batavians came across the river as swiftly as crocodiles across the serpent Nile, breathing through hollow reeds, swimming strongly. They slithered up through the sedge of the far bank, dripping like watery ghouls, duckweed stuck to their lightweight leather cuirasses. Their backpacks dripped, too, but the contents were still as dry as desert sand, triple-wrapped in oilcoth. They crept along the riverbank until they reached the baggage wagons.
The great high-wheeled Hunnish wagons were entirely unprotected by warriors, although crowded on top of them were old men, women and children, gazing southwards, munching strips of smoked meat, eagerly waiting for the battle to begin. On the nearest wagon, the superventores noted, chuckling to themselves, one old woman was even making the best use of this tedious time before the fight by doing sewing repairs to a leather jerkin.