One woman gave a cry and stumbled. Knuckles steadied her and rested his huge paw on her thin shoulder and surveyed the scene. ‘Truth to tell,’ he said to her, by way of unorthodox comfort, ‘I’m beginning to get a bit narked with these Huns myself.’
‘Come on, you ape,’ said Arapovian. ‘Move out.’
‘Stop calling me an ape.’
‘When you stop calling me a Parsee.’
Knuckles sighed. ‘This is going to be fun.’
‘No,’ said Arapovian, sheathing his sword again, tightening his belt, surveying the ravaged landscape. ‘It’s not.’
He led them through the ruins, trying to steer a course free of atrocities. For amid the burnt timbers and stones, there were shapes of what had once been bodies. Tar-black and twisted, scorched and fire-maimed, as if formed out of pitch and then abandoned by some clumsy and heartless god, tossed aside still lifeless.
In desperation a mother flew to the lip of a smashed well, tearing the cloak from her back and lowering it down to see if she could reach water, to wring it out into the mouth of her child.
Arapovian stopped her. ‘It’s poisoned.’
She turned on him, eyes blazing with fury and anguish. Her child was already sick with thirst, his face a pallid mask. ‘How do you know?’
‘Even the great river is unclean, the shore choked with bodies. But I will find you water.’ He pointed south to the hills. ‘Clean water. Do not be afraid. You will live now, you and your child. The Huns have gone.’
He took the child gently from her and laid it over his shoulder and walked on through the wasteland.
They passed where the principia itself had stood, and the legionary chapel. A hole gaped in the ground.
Knuckles hawked and spat. ‘So they found the gold, then. How did they know it was there?’
Arapovian looked around. ‘The Hun warlord knows far more than that.’
‘And what’ll they do with it? They don’t look the kind for fine wines and silk undies.’
‘They’ll hire more mercenaries. Alans, Gepids, Sarmatians. ’ Arapovian walked on again. ‘They’ll buy more power.’
A thrill of uncanny horror ran through them as they approached the rubble mound of the west gate. There was still a platform standing, the bare wooden floor of what had been the first-floor guard-tower. And there was a figure still up there, legs apart, gazing out over the plain. It must be a Roman corpse, skewered on a long spear and propped there by the Huns in their whimsical humour.
Arapovian passed the thirst-stricken child into Knuckles’ arms.
‘I don’t do children,’ Knuckles mumbled in protest.
‘Stay here.’
The Armenian scrambled over the rubble and hauled himself up, his injured thigh throbbing. He could at least take the impaled corpse down. Cover it with rocks, say some appropriate words. He swung himself up onto the wooden platform and approached it.
The corpse turned.
Arapovian froze.
It was Tatullus.
Alive, yes. His eyes as flat and lightless as the dead, his forearms cut across, blood crusted over one side of his scalp. But alive. The iron-hearted centurion. He stared back at Arapovian, not seeing. Down his sunken, deep-grooved cheeks, smoke-grey, filthy, were two clear white tracks.
Gradually the centurion’s eyes seemed to focus.
‘You!’ he whispered. ‘You survived.’
Arapovian nodded and saluted. ‘Sir. Two of us, and the families from the dungeons. And the prisoner, Barabbas. Down there – look.’
Tatullus emerged with painful slowness out of his waking nightmare. He seized the Armenian’s right hand in his own. His eyes shone brightly again, though he could not speak a word. Then he let his hand drop and turned away and with an abrupt movement wiped his cheeks.
Finally he spoke, his voice slow and careful. ‘See what water you can find.’
‘The wells are poisoned, sir. But in the hills…’
Tatullus nodded, still struggling to return to the world as it was. ‘Very well, then. Have them fall in.’ He drew breath. ‘We march south.’
When they were assembled in order, two abreast, Tatullus came down. He looked at each of them in turn. Finally he came to Barabbas in his shackles.
‘The granary thief.’
Barabbas shuffled and looked at the ground.
‘Fall out.’ Tatullus drew his sword. ‘Now kneel.’
Before the eyes of the horrified women and children, he raised his sword. But he could not bring it down. A stronger arm than his restrained him. It was Knuckles. They looked each other in the eye a long time. Finally the centurion’s arm relaxed. Knuckles let it go.
The Rhinelander picked up a heavy rock and shoved the prisoner’s feet apart. Barabbas closed his eyes. Knuckles smashed the rock down and broke the chain. Then he pulled him up and stretched his hand-shackles over a stump of wall. Smashed that smaller chain likewise. Barabbas pushed the iron bracelets back up his arms and rubbed his sores.
‘Now go and sin no more,’ said Knuckles sardonically.
The granary thief stumbled away into the wasteland, cradling his broken chains to his chest.
They traversed the scorched farmlands and passed through the desolate orchards, scanning the horizon for horsemen all the while. But they saw none. The firestorm had moved on south. They went up into the hills, where they found a clear stream in a shallow valley. The soldiers filled and refilled their leather flasks, passing them round, making the people drink slowly. The effect, especially on the children, was miraculous. Like hunted harts in the mountains, thought Arapovian. One moment exhausted, tongue lolling, foaming with sweat. He had seen them thus, watched and waited, holding his horse back in the thickets, cradling his spear. The exhausted hart would bend, drink, look up, drink more. And then, as if reborn, would leap forward, cantering uphill, and the hunt would be on again.
One small boy wiped his mouth and passed the flask on and looked up at him. ‘I’m Stephanos,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry.’
They rested all day in the green valley, hidden beneath a stand of grey alder trees, re-bandaging their wounds. Later the three soldiers went hunting and brought back gamebirds and some early wild plums, not very ripe but edible in small quantities, and at last the people ate. They also set horsehair snares and in the morning took fresh rabbit with them.
They crossed the hills.
Two days later they came down through woods and saw below them the road south to Naissus. Either side of it rose higher and higher hills, and beyond them were bare mountains. This was the Succi Pass: a long, narrow, five-mile way through the Haemus range.
Tatullus shook his head. ‘We can’t risk it.’
‘Nor can we travel over the mountains,’ objected Arapovian. ‘We three could, but not with the families, and without supplies.’
It was true. The children were weak and fractious with hunger. Twice they had come to isolated hamlets in the hills and found nothing: no people, no food, no livestock, nothing. They ate stewed nettles, yarrow, the skinny white roots of wild parsnip, and caught occasional game. But it was never enough, not for twenty of them, on the move all day.
‘The barbarians will have gone south,’ rumbled Knuckles. ‘Why should they turn back again?’
‘They probably won’t,’ said Tatullus. ‘But if they do…’ They all knew what fate awaited them if they met the Huns on the road. ‘We could leave the families here and go on over the mountains ourselves.’
They glanced over the hollow-eyed people, waiting for their decision as patiently as cattle.
Tatullus sighed. ‘Very well. Through the Succi Pass we go. Let’s make it fast.’
Each of the three took an infant on his shoulders and trotted. The rest of the people kept up as best they could, but still the soldiers frequently had to pause and wait for them to catch up. The sun rose high in the sky, yet the pass felt dark and cold and ominous. The further they progressed, the more threatening and precipitous the dark slate cliff faces rising on either side. There was no escape except forwards or back. High overhead, a raven left its perch and circled cawing.