The invaders laid waste the lovely valley of the Moselle, which Ausonius had once so rapturously praised, with its handsome villas amid lush meadows, its valley sides thickly planted with green vines, its bargemen transporting bales of cloth and casks of wine, shouting out to the laughing girls dressing the vines as they passed. At Augusta Treverorum the citizens showed spirit merely by shutting the gates, but Attila had his men drive forward at spearpoint women and children captured from the surrounding farms and villages, and threatened to slaughter them all unless the citizens of the town opened the gates and treated with him. The gates were duly opened to save innocent lives, at which the Huns slaughtered them all anyway, captives and citizens alike. At Mediomaurici there remained not a building standing except the solitary little chapel of St Stephen.
Often they came to towns and cities already deserted, and then the Kutrigur Huns galloped forward with particular alacrity, like hounds on the traces, putting their hunting and tracking skills to use. Almost always they found the absconded citizens, huddled in terror in a nearby stretch of forest, and put an end to them there.
After two or three weeks of wreaking havoc all down the Moselle, Attila and his horde left behind them a two-hundred-mile-long valley of the dead.
In all this destruction they met not a breath of opposition, yet all the time Attila himself grew more and more silent, solitary and withdrawn. He also became increasingly superstitious, never tiring of consulting Enkhtuya for signs and portents, and demanding to know when the Western Roman Army under Aetius would be marching north to meet them. Every night there were strange ceremonies in his tent, with fur-clad shamans beating deerskin drums to summon the ancestral dead, and antlered sorcerers dancing with rattles, flagellating themselves, wailing nasal incantations. The future was descried in the foam of boiling water, the entrails of chickens, sticks flung at random; by scapulimancy from signs read in the heat-cracked shoulderblades of cattle, and from the gyrations of smoke from burning incense. The portents were always good, but the Great Tanjou looked more and more like a man haunted by some vast and nameless sorrow.
Someone sang,
‘Turn back, turn back, my mad master,
For things are not as they seem,
My dreams are awakened to nightmare,
And all the world is a dream.
‘Such are the wages of vengeance,
Such is anger’s yield,
My master with all his sad captains
Lying silent in the field.
‘Kites and crows his companions,
His banner a banner of blood,
All treasures, all holy things
Lost in the flood.’
Attila did not silence the singer. He only bowed his head. So let it be.
From the Moselle, Attila’s army swung west through the dark and dense Carbonarian Forest: the country of the Batavians, of ghoul-haunted birchwoods and fens, stagnant ponds, thick mosses, dripping ferns, and foul-smelling bogs which could suck down a horse entire and close over its last pitiful struggles in silence as though it had never been.
One night as they lay encamped in that haunted country, Orestes heard his master crying out in terror. He ran into his tent with his sword drawn, and saw to his horror that Attila was rolling on his pallet, eyes wide and mouth foaming, yet apparently still asleep, unable to see. Orestes thought the King had gone mad. He dropped his sword and, seizing his shoulders, tried to shake him back to sense. The next thing he knew was an agonising pain in his side. Attila had stabbed him.
Orestes sat back, clutching his ribs. The wound was not deep but it bled badly. Gradually the king regained consciousness, staring wild-eyed. Orestes drew his hand up from his side, his fingertips wet and red. He held them before Attila. Attila stared at him, the wild light going from his eyes, reason returning, and with it that depth-less sorrow. How haunted he looked. He drew his arm across his spittle-flecked mouth and stared up at Orestes, panting.
‘I dreamed,’ he whispered, almost inaudibly, his voice a dry and exhausted croak between gasps, ‘I dreamed that you had turned against me, that you came into my tent to kill me, saying that I was mad, for I had vowed in my madness to slaughter my way into heaven.’
Orestes said nothing, pressing his side to stop the bleeding. Attila seemed oblivious of his hurt. At last, the Greek said that his Lord should sleep now, and went to find a comrade to bandage him up.
As he left the tent, he glanced back. Attila sat up on his furs, staring around, lips working, seeing nothing.
The next city the Huns came to was Rhemi, all but abandoned like the rest. Bishop Nicias had refused to desert his post, however, seeing the threat of death as any true Christian should: nothing but a portal to eternity. With him there remained a handful of Gallo-Roman knights, too young to have wives or children and so perfectly contented to die likewise, but adamant that they would not flee before the heathen invaders.
The weather turned bitter, and there were flurries of snow. The great host of Attila remained outside the city, but Attila himself, having heard of this holy man’s stubbornness, rode on through the narrow streets with a small company of his favoured warriors and Chosen Men. They were wary of ambush, but none came. They emerged into the main square of the city, with the fine facade of the cathedral on the eastern side, facing the Basilica, and the splendid baths and the portico of the marketplace along the other two sides. Attila sat his horse and stared around. A cold spring wind blew through the square, and the horses stamped their hooves. The ghostliness of the depopulated town was eerie and unreal. Even more so the little group across the square from them, on the steps of the cathedral, a Christian priest and eight youthful knights, gazing back at them, silent and unafraid.
‘What is this?’ roared Attila with sudden anger.
‘Welcome to our city,’ Bishop Nicias called back. ‘I believe you have travelled far.’
Such mocking insouciance enraged Attila all the more. The eunuch priests of that pale, etiolated, defeated Christian god were not supposed to face death as fearlessly as his finest warriors. They were supposed to kneel and plead and whimper, before having their heads snatched back and their pallid, lamb-like throats briskly cut. Attila drove his heels into the flanks of his skewbald pony and cantered across to them. His warriors instantly fanned out and nocked arrows to their bows, training them on the little group on the cathedral steps. It could still be a trap. A hundred soldiers might lie in wait inside that stern grey cathedral.
Attila reined in fiercely before the nine, his sword hanging loosely from his right hand.
‘Do you not fear me, eunuch priest? I will shortly slay you where you stand.’
Bishop Nicias looked mildly puzzled. ‘Well, first, I am no eunuch, having all my parts intact, as the Good Lord made me.’ At this wretched jest, his accompanying knights actually smiled. Attila shot them furious looks. ‘Second, why on earth should I fear you, just because you are about to part my spirit from my mortal flesh? It will only free my soul to fly heavenwards and be with my Christ. Death is the fate of all men. It is your fate, too, great Lord Attila.’
Attila gazed at him intently. ‘Do you truly not fear death, old man?’
‘Truly not. But I know you do. Which is why I have remained behind here, on the steps of my cathedraclass="underline" to invite you to throw down your sword, and enter in, and be baptised in the name of Christ. I am here in the hope of saving your immortal soul.’