The lieutenant arched his arm forward for the squadron of eight to follow him. He expected to be back in a minute or two, with that little bastard bound in ships’ hawsers if need be.
Behind them the column began to roll forward again at its painfully slow walking pace, and the nine horsemen plunged into the inky depths of the pine forest.
The storm was violent and brief, like all summer storms, and its force was already beginning to abate. The sky above was brightening, although in the gloom of the pine forest the troopers still struggled to see their way ahead clearly. The trees dripped with rain, but it was no longer falling from the sky. Every few seconds the troopers stopped to listen, or mark the tracks. The boy’s trail was slight but unmistakable on the damp, needle-covered floor.
‘How’s he going to get away? Climb a tree?’ one of the troopers chuckled.
‘Belt up,’ ordered Lucius. ‘Not a sound.’
They rode on.
After some minutes, the trees began to thin out, and through the gaps between the dark trunks they could see the sunlight breaking through the clouds, and falling on the bare limestone hills ahead.
They emerged from the edge of the forest, and there even those hardened soldiers, who between them had done service from the Wall to the sands of Africa, and from the wild mountains of Spain to the reedy banks of the Euphrates, stopped and stared with something like awe. Below them stretched a beautiful valley, green with vineyards and olive groves. Beyond it rose further ancient limestone hills, grey-gold in the breaking sunlight, dotted with sheep and small farms. Above and beyond them arose still greater peaks, even now capped with snow, and bathed in an extraordinary luminous light as it reflected off the last of the stormclouds and echoed back and forth across the vast expanse of sky. And there arced a great rainbow over the distant hills, set by Father Jove after the Flooding of the World, from which only Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha were saved.
Yet here, in the heart of Italy, it had begun to feel as lawless and dangerous as the wilds beyond the Wall.
The men and horses sat and steamed in the sun. Then one young trooper shot forth his arm and pointed. ‘There he goes.’
Lucius looked witheringly at him. ‘Well done, Salcus. I’ve been watching him for the last five minutes.’
The trooper bowed his head in shame, and the other men guffawed.
‘Game little bugger, all the same,’ said another.
The men harrumphed in grudging acknowledgement.
‘He’d have kept to the forest if he had any sense,’ muttered Salcus.
‘Shows how much you know,’ said another. ‘He’s a Hun. He’s bound to make for open country. Even forests feel like a prison to them.’
‘Then we’ve got him.’
The other nodded. ‘We’ve got him.’
Lucius had been screwing up his eyes, trying to discern the distant figure better. ‘That’s the Hun boy? I thought it was one of the Vandal princes who’d escaped. You mean it’s the one they call Attila?’
The trooper was a little taken aback by the sharpness of his officer’s reaction. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘The one who’s always escaping,’ said another.
The lieutenant’s pale grey eyes gazed out across the valley, his expression inscrutable. Far below, they could see the little figure of the boy, running desperately across the fields and between the rows of vines. Every now and then he looked back towards the troop of nine horsemen sitting up on the hill on the edge of the forest, knowing they had him clear in their sights. They could bide their time; there was no hurry. What chance did a mere boy have against nine cavalrymen?
‘Come on then, you bastards!’ he yelled angrily, bending at the waist and clutching his sides as he gasped for air, his voice high and shrill. ‘Come and get me!’ He stood straight, gave the obscene fig-sign with his forefinger and thumb. ‘What are you waiting for?’
His thin voice carried across the valley to where the troopers sat their horses, and they grinned at each other, despite themselves.
‘You’ve got to hand it to him,’ said one.
Lucius turned to his men. ‘Ride back to the column.’
His second looked puzzled. ‘Sir?’
‘It doesn’t take more than one to bring in a little shrimp like that. Now ride back to the column and inform Count Heraclian that I’m bringing him in.’
A little deflated, the troop wheeled their horses and rode back into the forest, heading north for the track. Lucius kicked his horse forward and rode on down into the rain-washed, sun-bright valley.
Once off the steepest and rockiest slopes, he heeled Tugha Ban into a fierce gallop, down through the rain- wet meadows lush with late summer flowers and ripe for the scythe, and then crashing through the vines to where he had last seen the boy. He glimpsed him up ahead, but by the time he had reached the spot the boy had ducked under the row and was into the next. Infuriated, Lucius had to gallop to the end of the row and up the next one. By which time the boy had ducked under again. The lieutenant reined in his panting horse and reflected. He leant down and plucked a fat, juicy ruby grape. Arcturus was rising, and soon it would be the harvest.
After a few moments of pleasurable munching, he called out in his most languidly authoritative voice, ‘You can’t get away, you know.’
There was a pause while the boy considered whether it was worth giving his position away just for the pleasure of answering back. But, as Lucius had guessed, he was proud and reckless. ‘And you can’t catch me, either.’
Before he had finished his sentence, Lucius was slipping from his horse and leading it by the reins as he crept forward down the row of vines.
‘I could just have my men set fire to the vineyard,’ he said.
‘Your men have gone back to the column,’ said the boy.
Lucius grinned, despite himself. The lad’s military intelligence was pretty impressive. ‘How are you going to get anywhere on your own?’ he asked. ‘Winter comes early in these mountains. You’ve no money, no weapons…’
‘I’ll survive,’ called the boy cheerfully. It sounded as if he, too, was chomping the irresistibly ripe, juicy grapes. ‘I’ve seen worse.’
‘And the Julian Alps by October, November? You’ll just stroll over those into Pannonia, will you?’
The boy paused. He was surprised that the lieutenant had read his plans so precisely. How did he know that he was heading north and home?
Lucius meanwhile had stationed his horse at the end of the row, so that its head appeared at the head of one and its rump at the next. Its middle was hidden by the vines. The boy turned and saw the horse’s muzzle appearing round the end of the row, assumed the obvious, and ducked to safety into the next one. He lay low in the sopping wet grass, under the late dark green leaves and the heavy clusters of grapes. Lucius crept towards him on foot. The boy did not stir. He bit into another grape, the purple juices exploding in his mouth. He only had to keep an eye on that horse…
Then he felt the edge of cold steel at the back of his neck and he knew that it was over. His head sank down into the grass, and he spat out the last mouthful of pulped grapes in his mouth. He felt sick.
‘On your feet, son,’ said the lieutenant. His voice was surprisingly gentle.
Attila bowed his head. ‘Fuck you,’ he said.
The lieutenant didn’t move. ‘I said, on your feet. I’m not here to kill you. I know well enough who you are: Rome’s most valuable hostage.’
The boy squinted up at him into the sunshine. ‘Up your arse,’ he said.
Something in his voice told the lieutenant he really wasn’t going to move for him, no matter what he threatened. So he reached down, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him up onto his knees, where the boy knelt in sullen silence, staring into the vineleaves before him. A drunken late-summer wasp buzzed angrily round his face, and even settled briefly on his hair, but he did nothing to swat it away.
Then the lieutenant did a very curious and unmilitary thing. He sheathed his sword again, sat down beside the boy, cross-legged in the wet grass, reached out and picked a whole bunch of shining grapes, and began to eat them as if he had not a care in the world. The boy glanced at him, and then something held his gaze.
