one corner, near the river. The narrow streets stank of the shambles where the animals were driven in and slaughtered, of open drains, of the pigs crowded together in filthy backyards, and of the charcoal furnaces of begrimed and weary-looking coppersmiths working late.
Approaching down the cobbled street was a group of drunks. So close to their longed-for goal, the boys had grown careless. Attila especially, feeling his princely blood stirring as he got closer to his homeland, and thinking of the astonished delight that would receive him amid the tents of his people, had grown proud and reckless. So when one of the drunks bumped into him, deliberately or not, he reacted as no fugitive and secret traveller should. For he had been in this situation before.
‘Hey, you fat oaf,’ he shouted, ‘watch yourself!’
Suddenly the group of drunks didn’t seem so drunk. Rather more orderly, though the wine on their breath still stank, the five of them halted.
‘What did you say?’ demanded one.
Orestes, standing a little way behind, glimpsed a flash of something beneath the man’s coarse woollen cloak. Something like steel, something like plate armour…
Before he could stop himself, he cried out, ‘Attila!’
Whatever fumes of wine had slowed the men’s minds and made unsteady their steps, vanished in an instant.
The man wheeled on Orestes. ‘ What did you call him?’
Orestes began to back away, his face a torment of fear and guilt. ‘My master, my master,’ he groaned softly, ‘come away. Run away…’
But the older boy’s hand was already reaching inside his ragged cloak, and he knew that everything they had travailed and suffered for, over so many weeks and months, would end now, in a damp and dismal backstreet of Aquincum.
The drunks were clearly no drunks at all, but a squad of tough frontier troops who had merely thrown back a few goblets of wine to help their supper go down. Furthermore, they were led by a keen-witted optio who actually read the despatches from legionary headquarters in Sirmium, and knew that the whole of this stretch of the river was under orders to be on the lookout for a fugitive Hun boy with distinctive blue tattoos and scars on his cheeks. A prince of the royal house of King Uldin, and a most valuable hostage. A boy called Attila’s sword was only half out of his scabbard when the optio placed two meaty hands on his shoulders and slammed him back against the wall of the gloomy street.
‘You, boy,’ he rasped, ‘your name?’
Attila said nothing, his slanted yellow eyes glittering.
The optio was about to rip the felt cap from the boy’s head, when he seemed to give a slight lurch backwards.
‘Sir?’ asked one his men, moving towards him.
The optio fell backwards into his soldier’s arms, staring wildly up at the sky, black blood gushing from his gaping, wordless mouth and over his stubbled chin.
And then Attila, the bloody sword still in his hand, was running down the street, dragging an open-mouthed Orestes after him. The soldiers’ wild shouts echoed from the high walls of the dank little street, and their hobnailed sandals rang on the cobbles as they pounded after them.
The boys twisted and turned through the narrow backstreets and shadowy courtyards of the town, trying to find their way to freedom, which had seemed so close.
‘If we’re caught,’ panted Orestes, ‘you will… won’t you?’ He drew his hand across his throat. ‘I’m not-’
‘Save your breath,’ said Attila harshly.
They pressed into the shadows of a wall behind some columns as the soldiers clattered past, their lungs aflame as they held their breath tight. Once the soldiers had gone, their breath exploded outwards and Orestes collapsed to his knees.
‘On your feet,’ hissed Attila.
‘Can’t,’ wheezed Orestes. ‘Just another-’
‘What happens to runaway slaves?’ demanded Attila cruelly. ‘Hands off? Eyes out?’
Orestes shook his head. ‘Please,’ he whispered.
Attila grabbed his arm and hauled. ‘Then on your feet, soldier. We’re nearly there.’
‘Where?’
‘The quayside.’
‘How do you know which way?’
Attila eyed him in the darkness. ‘Because land slopes down to a river, muttonbrain. Now let’s go.’
They ran on, downhill through the streets wherever possible, until at last they could hear water lapping against wooden barques and wharves, and smell the damp, pervading smell of the mile-wide river. Rats scurried in the darkness. The boys slid out between two huge wooden wharves and saw the gleam of the Danube. On their side, occasional lights and torches burnt from the churches and wealthier houses of the city, but on the eastern bank and beyond… nothing. Not a light showed from the black plains out there. Overhead, the uninterrupted, silvery shimmering of the Milky Way, the brilliant winter stars of Orion’s belt, and gleaming Sirius, the Dog Star, bringer of storms, rising and burning more brightly than any earthly light.
‘There,’ breathed Attila. ‘ There.’
They slipped down to the quayside and saw not a soul about. A cat mewed on one of the tethered grain- barges where it had been ratting, and eyed them pitifully and crept away. They approached the barge. It might be big enough for them to hide aboard somewhere, under some filthy and neglected canvas, or even inside a stinking coil of sodden rope.
There came the sound of horses’ hooves in the night, and they froze. Torchlight gradually spread along the ground from round the corners, and at last, at either end of the quay, they saw troops of frontier cavalry, as many as forty or fifty men. Attila, still clutching Orestes’ arm, made to run for the wooden quayside and hurl them both into the river. But a pair of cavalrymen spurred instantly into a gallop, and one hurled a Batavian net over the boys. They stumbled and fell, struggling as helplessly as flies in a web.
They were dragged to their feet and struck sharply across the face for good measure.
The commanding officer, evidently senior, with cropped white hair and a brutal, unflinching stare, ripped Attila’s cap from his head and ran his stubby fingers over the welts of the boy’s tattooed cheeks.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Attila. You have come a long way.’
The boy spat in his face. The officer instantly struck him, so hard that his head spun round and he reeled back. But he did not fall. The officer was surprised. Such a blow would have felled most grown men. When Attila’s head had cleared enough for him to see again, he stepped back in front of the officer and stared him in the eye.
Wiping the spittle from his face, the officer nodded at Orestes. ‘And who’s he?’
Attila shrugged. ‘No idea. Just some hanger-on. Pain in the arse.’
Orestes said nothing, but as he was dragged away by two guards his eyes never left the sullen, unsmiling figure of Attila.
‘Give him a good kicking and throw him out of the city gates,’ said the officer. He paid no further attention to Orestes. All his attention was on Attila, and all his thoughts were of imperial gratitude, of speedy promotion, of donatives of silver and gold and finest Samian ware…
‘Manacle him hand and foot,’ he said at last, ‘and bring him to the fort. No more beating – I want some answers from him. This one knows more than he lets on.’
Orestes lay gasping in the mud for some time, he didn’t know how long. When he tried to stir, he ached all over. His arms and shoulders felt bruised to the bone, and one flank hurt deeply every time he took in a lungful of air. His buttocks almost cramped with pain, his legs, his feet… Even the roots of his hair still stung, where he had been wrenched about by the guffawing soldiers.
Worse than all this, his heart ached with loss. Attila had been everything to him. He had never felt so utterly alone in his life.
At last he crawled to his feet and walked slowly away from the city, to the open fields alongside the river. The river was so wide, so dark. He could never swim it. He limped on through the night until he came to a creek. And there among the reeds and the nodding bulrushes, miraculously, tied up to a half-rotting landing-stage, was an
