The families straggled behind them, the old ones the slowest of all.
‘Faster!’ rasped Tatullus. He’d hoped to be through the pass in an hour, but it would take them two.
There was a widening in the pass, tumbled rocks to left and right, and a small stand of trees up a scree slope, before the gap closed up again and ahead of them was an even darker and narrower stretch of the road. Arapovian scrambled up into the trees to find the watersource and refill a couple of flasks. He re-emerged almost at once, flasks unfilled, standing on a rock, looking back over them blankly.
‘What is it, man?’ hissed Tatullus. ‘Move it!’
Arapovian’s expression remained blank, but he held his right hand out for stillness.
They stilled.
Then he said, ‘Into the trees, all of you. Now.’
The children scrambled up quickly enough and ran on into the green shadows, but the old ones needed hauling.
Knuckles crouched behind a clump of undergrowth and told the children to do the same. ‘Not a sound, now,’ he growled.
They crouched close around him, eyes wide with fear.
The last up over the rocks was the old man. Even as Tatullus pulled him up by his bony, shaking arms, he could hear what the Armenian had heard. The scuffle and clop of many, many hooves approaching.
Above them the raven cawed again. Arapovian pictured its black eyes bright with malice. The old man cried out softly and turned. The hoofbeats were very near now. The riders were only walking their horses, but they were mere seconds away round the corner. Tatullus lifted the old man bodily by his wrists, his scrawny arms straining in their sockets, and his knobbly vinewood walking-stick fell from his hand and clattered over the rock to the road below. Tatullus threw the quailing old man over his left shoulder and glanced back in despair. The stick lay at the edge of the track, brightly varnished, its grip still warm. But already he could smell the horses’ sweet aroma on the cool air…
‘No time!’ whispered the Armenian from the trees.
Tatullus strode up the rock and into the darkness of the covert. He dumped the old man behind the thicket and crouched.
Immediately below them appeared the riders. They were Huns.
They reined in and looked around with a puzzled air. Some were already unslinging their bows. Hunters like these did not miss many signs.
Under the trees, the little party were as still as statues.
At the head of the Huns, a war-party of a couple of hundred, rode their leader, an old man with long slate-grey hair and long moustaches, finely combed and oiled. He might have been in his sixth or even seventh decade, yet his chest and arms were still very strong. He sat his horse and bunched his reins in his fists on his saddle as his deep-set eyes roved around, and his nostrils seemed to quiver.
His gaze fell on the vinestick. He walked his horse over and gazed down. Then he slipped from his saddle, retrieved it and touched the knobbly grip to his cool cheek. Still warm.
He nimbly stepped halfway back up the rock, swivelled and leaped back on his horse, the vinestick still in his hand. He rested it over his shoulder like a spear and sat his horse again and waited.
The two hundred horsemen were utterly still and silent. The only sound was the caw of the raven overhead. Under the trees they barely breathed.
And then one of the hungry children hiccupped.
It was the boy Stephanos. Knuckles’ huge hand shot out and clamped over the boy’s mouth. The boy’s eyes flared wide but he didn’t struggle.
Down below, the Hun leader remained still. Perhaps he had not heard. Perhaps…
Then very slowly he turned his head towards them. And smiled.
Moving as silently as a cat, Arapovian stepped back and searched behind them. But it was as he thought. The little wood backed into a dark, damp cliff, which rose, uninterrupted, for three or four hundred feet. They were trapped. ‘Well,’ he whispered, and drew his sword. ‘So be it. Here we die. For the sake of a child’s hiccup.’
He heard the Hun warlord speak.
‘Come forth! All of you. Young, old, the ancient who lately lost his vinestaff. And do not show me your weapons. My men will cut you down before you appear.’
After a moment’s hesitation, Arapovian sheathed his sword.
The people came slowly out of the woods and stood upon the rocks, abject, with heads hung low. Trained on them were two hundred arrows.
Stephanos hiccupped again.
The warlord looked them over, singling out the three soldiers for special scrutiny. At last he said gravely, ‘I am the Lord Chanat. You Romans slew many of my men.’
Tatullus nodded, his hand on the pommel of his sword. ‘We did. And we will slay many more in the next battle.’
Chanat pondered deeply, in no hurry. At last he declared, ‘You Romans are not all women. You are a Khan?’
‘I’m a centurion.’
‘A leader of men? Or a herder of women and children? ’
‘Leader of men, usually,’ growled Tatullus. ‘Leader of eighty.’
‘That is good.’ He nodded. ‘You will join us. You will be a commander of Huns.’
Tatullus looked taken aback. Then he set his face again. ‘I am a Roman. I fight only for Rome.’
‘Your empire is destroyed.’
Tatullus smiled very slightly, his teeth clenched. ‘Not yet it isn’t.’
‘Then I will kill you.’
‘You can try.’
Chanat made a strange noise, shucking his teeth. It would be wrong, by every tenet of the warrior code, to slay a man this heedlessly and magnificently brave.
He turned his attention to Arapovian, standing a little further back on the rocks, his hand not far from the hilt of his sword. ‘You. You are an Easterner.’
Arapovian did not reply.
‘Answer me, fool.’
But it was clear that Arapovian would not deign to speak to a Hun, though his life depended on it. He picked a burr fastidiously from his cloak.
‘Stiff-necked easterner,’ growled Chanat. ‘You must be a Persian traitor fighting for the Romans.’
At that, Arapovian could not keep silent. He drew himself to his full height and looked angrily down on Chanat. ‘I am an Armenian naxarar of the noblest birth. My name is Count Grigorius Khachadour Arapovian, the son of Count Grigorius Nubar Arapovian, the son-’
Knuckles intervened, jerking his head. ‘He is, too.’
‘And you,’ said Chanat, turning on him. Knuckles wished he’d kept quiet. ‘It is my belief that you are the brute who killed the Lord Bela on the bridge.’
‘I can’t say I ever found out the sav-the gentleman’s name, your mercifulness. But frankly, at the time, he wasn’t behaving too favourably towards me, neither.’
Chanat tugged his reins and half-turned his horse. ‘It is well,’ he snapped. ‘It is war. Now be silent.’ He looked them over one last time, trotted back, surveyed the women and children, and then made a typically abrupt decision. ‘This time, you may live. Next time, we will kill you.’
As he walked his horse away, he tossed the vinestick over his shoulder to clatter again upon the road.
‘And you can have that back!’ he called, laughing. ‘I am not so old as to need it yet!’
It was a fine story that night at the Hun campfire.
‘Magnanimous,’ said Attila.
‘Indeed,’ acknowledged Chanat solemnly. ‘I did not even demand one of the women for my tent.’
‘Old Chanat, your heart is as tender as a young lamb’s.’
‘Alas, but I fear my loins will not easily forgive my tender heart. Some of those Roman women weren’t so ugly.’
Still dazed at their escape and the terrifying randomness of Hun clemency, the refugees camped that night well up in scattered pinewoods. It was good that it was summer. In these hills, winter would have killed them by now. Still, Arapovian allowed them a small fire. The women and children, though hungry, all slept.