Here she comes now, plumed with white horsehair,
Dressed for the sacrifice, our mother the earth.”’
Lucius turned then, but he knew who it was. The Hun boy stood close behind them, a blanket over his shoulders, his teeth gleaming in the darkness.
‘But of course,’ said the boy, ‘the Huns have no poetry. It’s a well-known fact. They are the most barbaric of peoples. The people who are born on a smoking shield, the people who shoot arrows in search of the gods.’
His eyes held them for a little while longer. Then he walked silently away, back to the centre of the camp, and lay down and closed his eyes.
Marco shook his head, looking over to where he lay. ‘That boy.. .’
‘I know,’ said Lucius. ‘Something about him, isn’t there? Something special.’
Marco nodded. ‘And the Goths know it too. Why are we waiting? What are we fighting for? Who are we fighting for?’
‘Damned if I know.’ Lucius laid his hand on Marco’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Centurion. We need some sleep too.’
Marco grimaced. ‘Yeah. Long day tomorrow.’
6
They came out of the forests to the east with the rising of the sun, knowing their enemies would be blinded by that sun. Their striped and serrated and many-coloured pennants fluttered proudly from their lofty ashen spears. Their long diamond-shaped shields were decorated with every kind of heraldic device, with every totemic animal that haunted the fierce imaginations of these warlike people and their measureless forests of the north. Outlined on their great shields were the shapes of bear and wolf, boar and the huge, shaggy European bison, each one circled and embossed in barbaric bronze. Long plumes of flaxen horsehair swayed from the peaks of their high, quartered helmets, and their fearsome longswords in their scabbards hung glittering from their sides. They sat tall and proud on their horses, and their horses raised their forelegs as they trotted forwards, champing eagerly at their bronze bits.
They rode in perfectly ordered array – no howling tribal charge for them. At a distance of some two hundred yards, well within bow-range, they pulled up their reins and halted. Their horses high-stepped skittishly where they stood. Their leader rode forward from their ranks. It was the warlord who had spoken to Lucius last night. He wore a bronze face-mask beneath his helm, making him appear as metallic and terrifyingly impassive as an Olympian god. Even his horse wore a chamfrain, a beaten bronze visor.
Again he said that they had no quarrel with the Romans. They wished only to take the Hun boy. And again Lucius said that the boy was in their charge, and they would not hand him over. The Gothic leader nodded, returned to the head of his ranks and wheeled about.
The soldiers within the flimsy circle clenched their teeth, gripped their spearshafts still harder and raised their jaws belligerently. They looked at each other wordlessly, for no words would suffice. These were men who had drunk together, fought together, whored together, all across the empire. They had stood back to back with shields raised under a rain of arrows, or ridden out to fight mounted against raiding parties of Attacotti pirates from Hibernia, looting the coasts of Siluria or Dumnonia for slaves. They had fought Franks on the Rhine and Vandals in Spain and Marcommans on the Danube, and not one of them lacked a scar in his flesh or a scar on his heart for a comrade who’d died in his arms in battle.
The Gothic horsemen dismounted. They were going to fight on foot. Lucius and Marco exchanged looks: unusual. They formed up in strict rank and file, three deep, curving round to cover as much as two-thirds of the circle. They moved quietly, without fuss. Two hundred? thought Lucius. More like two hundred and fifty, maybe three.
Ops leant and spat, and muttered something obscene about barbarians. Salcus, the young recruit, stood nearby, milk-white.
Crates nudged him. ‘All right, lad?’
‘All right.’
There wasn’t much more to be said by way of comfort.
‘Can’t wait to get stuck in, that’s all,’ said the lad, speaking far too rapidly.
Crates managed a sardonic grin. ‘Me too.’
It would be the last time the Eighth Century, First Cohort, Legio II ‘Augusta’ ever fought together. It would be the last time they ever got stuck in. They knew that. It would be their last stand. For reasons they did not comprehend, this was where it would all end for them. A small army of Gothic horsemen had brought them to a standstill, here in the once-peaceful heart of Italy, and demanded that they hand over one of their hostages – who was no more than a boy, and a barbarian to boot! No, it made no sense. But they would go down fighting; and then, they supposed, the Goths would take the boy for themselves anyway. But they would have to pay in blood.
It was not what they had envisaged. This was not the long and happy retirement so many of them had fondly foreseen for themselves, after twenty years’ loyal service with the legion. Pensioned off with a nice bit of farmland in the mild south country of Britain, with a plump young rose-cheeked girl for a wife, with good round hips and a willing smile. Or, now that Britain, too, had been taken from them, maybe some place in Gaul, or the rich vinelands of the Moselle.
But here they were, here because they were here, and orders were orders. Anyway, they were buggered if they were going to take orders from a Goth. So, let it be. They’d never live to see retirement, as it turned out; or know gout, or arthritic hands, or the palsy, or old man’s staggers, or creep with bent and crooked back to a cold grave. They’d die here, after all, with sword in hand. It wasn’t so bad. All men must die.
The Gothic warlord alone remained mounted. He turned to look at the small, grim circle of Roman legionaries. He glanced back to salute his father, the sun, climbing slowly up the eastern sky. Then he looked out over his ranks of men. He dropped his gauntleted hand. They broke into a run.
‘Bows at the ready,’ ordered Lucius evenly.
Forty bows were raised aloft over the stockade.
The Gothic warriors were a hundred and fifty yards away. One hundred. Closing.
‘Take aim,’ said Lucius, raising his spatha.
They were fifty yards distant now, running at full pelt, knowing that the arrows would be coming soon.
‘ Fire! ’
The volley flew out into the enclosing circle of warriors, arrowheads finding their targets, burying themselves in the chests and legs of men. A few sank to their knees clutching the arrowshafts, a few more stumbled and fell full length, tripping their comrades who came on behind. More arrows glanced off the side of heavy shields or burnished helmets, or fell short and slithered into the dust. The mass of warriors came on.
‘ Fire! ’
There was time for one more volley, then Lucius gave the order to take up arms. The bows were thrown aside and men took up swords and shields, or else their spears, and held them high over the trench below. Lucius sensed a figure at his side. He started. It was the boy. He had stripped to the waist, and daubed himself from the crown of his head downwards with mud. His slanted eyes glittered in his blackened face like some forest animal’s. He had tied his shaggy hair up in a Hun-style top-knot, bound with plaited grasses, which made him look a little taller. Still, short though he was, his tattooed torso was tightly muscled and his biceps bulged as he held his short sword two-handed.
‘Back in the middle with the horses,’ Lucius ordered curtly.
The boy shook his head. ‘You’re fighting for me. So I’m fighting for you.’
And then he was away, sprinting across the circle and hurling himself at the stockade opposite.
The Goths were upon them.
Without the trench and the stockade, the fighting would have been over in minutes. But every Gothic warrior, no matter how tall, had to fight from below, stabbing his long spear upwards, while the legionaries thrust down
