his name.
He struggled up. ‘Orestes?’
The shadow nodded.
‘You came back.’
‘Yes.’
The shadow against the stars was perched precariously on the tiny ledge, squatting like a goblin. One hand clutched one of the bars; the other held a thick length of wood.
‘You need a crowbar, you muttonhead,’ said Attila. ‘You can’t shift iron with wood.’
‘People don’t just leave crowbars lying around, you know,’ hissed Orestes, indignantly. ‘It was all I could find.’
He set the thick log between two bars and began to lean his weight back against it, his body stretched almost horizontally out from the wall of the fort, thirty feet or more above the ground. Nothing. He collapsed back against the bars.
‘Here,’ said Attila, ‘try this end one.’
Orestes changed his grip and tried again, and this time it shifted slightly. The mortar setting gave in a little cloud of dust, and the bar fell on its side.
‘Now use that bar on the others,’ said Attila.
‘I know, I know,’ said Orestes.
He had managed to break off two more bars when they heard soldiers unbolting the door.
‘Quick, the other bar!’ cried Orestes.
Attila twisted painfully and managed to pass it up. The first door-bolt was shot. Orestes stood the bar upright in its place as the second bolt was shot.
‘Get down!’ hissed Attila, and he flung himself back onto his pallet and closed his eyes.
The door swung open and the soldiers looked in. They saw the little runaway hooligan asleep, sleeping like a baby. At the window, two boyish hands clutched the bars and a knotted rope, but the soldiers saw nothing. The door was closed and bolted again.
One more bar was wrenched free, and then Orestes could just slither in to the cell. He took the rope from Attila and tied it to the one remaining bar.
‘Will that hold?’ asked Attila.
‘It’ll have to. Here, kneel down.’
‘My ankles first, you fool. No one ever runs away on their hands.’
With a harsh twist of the bar in his ankle manacles, Attila’s feet were free. Then Orestes did the same for his wrists.
He grimaced and rubbed his bruised flesh. ‘Right. Time we left.’
It was the loose bar left carelessly on the window ledge that did it. Attila got down safely, but Orestes swung a little too much in his descent. The rope grazed over the ledge, nudged the loose bar and set it rolling across the the stone. It dropped with a loud, echoing clang – inside the cell.
In a trice the soldiers were back at the door and shooting the bolts. The door was flung open, and they stood open-mouthed at the sight of the empty pallet and the window with four bars missing. Then they sprang into action: they ran to the last standing bar, and slashed the rope knotted round it.
Orestes fell fifteen feet. Attila heard his bones break. He heard the crack quite clearly in the still night air, and he heard his friend scream.
‘Run!’ cried Orestes. ‘To the river – run!’
But Attila grabbed him and hauled him to his feet. He looped Orestes’ left arm over his own shoulders, and together, hobbling, not running, they made for the shelter of the reeds down by the silent river.
Behind them they could hear the creaking of the wooden gates of the fort. The soldiers were coming after them.
‘Leave me,’ gasped Orestes as he stumbled at Attila’s side. ‘Run!’
The older boy ignored him. He did not look back – he might stumble and trip. He dragged Orestes on down through the meadows beyond the town to the misty riverside. He could hear horses close by as they harrumphed their astonishment and displeasure at being pulled from the stables and galloped so hard at this peculiar hour of the night.
They came to an orchard and ran panting into its shadows. The branches were bare, and last year’s sere and yellow leaves strewed the ground; the grass was long and damp. They fell against a treetrunk and let their lungs suck in the cold night air as quietly as they could. They could hear the shouts of men through the trees.
Orestes’ leg throbbed with its new, twisted form, but it did not yet give him agony. Despite the broken bone jutting out like a malignant lump under the skin, the terror and excitement of their flight somehow dulled the pain. For now.
‘We must go on,’ said Attila. ‘Follow me.’
Beyond the orchard was a stony cart-track, and then the dense reeds along the river’s edge. Cavalrymen from the fort were spreading out all along the track, blocking all approaches to the river.
The two boys crouched at the edge of the orchard and peered out through the long grass. There was no moon, but even the winter stars seemed cruelly bright.
‘We’re trapped,’ moaned Orestes. ‘And the boat’s just there, near that broken-down old landing-stage.’
Attila stared at him.
‘Just there,’ said Orestes, indicating the place with a jerk of his head. ‘I found it.’
‘You found a boat?’ said Attila. ‘And you still came back for me?’
Orestes shrugged, embarrrassed.
Attila gazed across the misty river. Once they were back on the windy plains, he thought, there would be no manacles for either of them. Nor would he permit his friend to be hobbled, as most of the Huns’ slaves were: the tendons in the heels were cut to stop them running away. But this Greek boy – he would be treated differently.
He slipped away and came back a few moments later with a stout-looking stick which he handed to Orestes.
‘When you can,’ he whispered, ‘run for the boat.’
‘Run?’
‘Well, hobble or whatever.’
‘But they’ll see me. Where will you be?’
‘In the river.’
‘Can’t they follow you in? Can’t they swim?’
‘Are you joking?’ said Attila. ‘Some of those Batavian cavalry units can swim a horse across a river in full armour. But…’ He looked around desperately. ‘Well, whatever.’ And he was gone.
He made his way along the edge of the orchard, and then down a filthy-smelling drainage ditch that ran to the river. The soldiers in their winter cloaks were still spread out along the frosty cart-track, looking uncertain, their orders vague. Somewhere the white-haired officer was riding around in a rage, but the chain of command seemed chaotic.
Attila drew in a deep breath, leapt from the ditch and ran.
He ran straight between two startled horsemen and on into the reeds, slowing horribly as his feet were sucked down into the oozing mud. He hallooed as he stumbled on.
The horsemen shouted and galloped after him, but they, too, were slowed down in the thick reeds and the clinging, viscous mud. The boy felt a rope whistle past his ear and fall with a sigh into the reeds. He grinned and struggled on, knee-deep in mud. No one could throw a rope as well as a Hun.
He felt gravel under his feet, and the reeds thinned out, and he hurled himself forwards into the freezing river.
Orestes watched as the horsemen on the track all made for the place where Attila had dived in. They gathered in a useless knot, leaving the track unguarded. He hobbled to his feet, clutching the stout stick in both hands, his broken leg dragging behind him. Clenching his teeth to keep his agony silent, he hauled himself over the cart-track like the sorriest cripple in the empire, and on into the reeds beyond. He wasn’t seen.
Dragging himself through the ooze of the mud was harder. With his whole weight on only one foot he sank deeper with every step, and the stick sank deeper still. He cursed his bad luck for having fallen from the wall. But he
