beneath, or else, if he tried to come up again, the next lancer would be ready immediately behind to finish him off. Andronicus himself drove his lance in low, straight into a squat pony’s belly. The pony squealed and keeled over, dragging his lance from his hand as it went. Andronicus promptly pulled up and drew his spatha, his long-sword. The Hun horseman rolled and came up standing, covered in dust, half blinded, whipping round, drawing his curved sabre. The lancer behind Andronicus came past the Hun on the other side, galloping in close enough to touch him. He lowered his shield, aimed the heavy bronze boss straight for the Hun’s spinning head, and let his horse do the rest. The effect at that speed was to club the warrior headless where he stood, leaving nothing but the stump of a cadaver gouting blood from the neckhole.
It became a rout of the arrowless, fleeing steppe warriors, torn asunder by the heavyweight lancers, who were getting closer to the onagers all the time. Once there, a few well-aimed sword-strokes could do a lot of damage and buy them useful time. But in the whirling, blinding dust, the cavalrymen took too little notice of fresh Hun horsemen coming down from the ridge, quivers packed and bristling.
Suddenly the Roman column found itself falling behind, unable to pursue at such speed, and with some way still to go to reach the onagers. And then the Huns came back, deft and fast, lightweight gallopers as fast as swooping falcons, curling in on either side of the column, loosing off arrows on lethal flat trajectories – no elegant high arcs through the morning sky now – and angled to the column so as not to fly on and hit their own. The warriors held their small, deadly bows almost horizontal, shooting from the side, arrows barely visible as they spat from the bow from a mere hundred yards, fifty. They thocked into heavy wooden shields, each shield on each lancer’s left arm soon stuck with eight or ten arrows, weighing the rider down, tiring him. Soon even those strong arms began to drop, necks and shoulders became more exposed. The lancers were drenched in sweat within their coats of mail, eyes blinking furiously, straining to see.
The Hunnish horses didn’t seem afraid of the big Roman mounts masked in their unearthly silver chamfrons. Perhaps their riders didn’t allow them to be afraid. More arrows skidded off shoulder-guards or steep-sided Spangenhelms, sometimes ricocheting into softer flesh – the power behind each missile was awesome. Others hit direct and passed on, barely slowed by plate or chainmail, to bore into meat and bone. Blood gleamed on polished armour, as thin as oil on water, or trickled beneath, runnels of blood and sweat commingled.
A pair of buzzards, male and female, with two scrawny chicks to feed, circled overhead.
Andronicus pushed back his visor and left it up, raging and oblivious of pain in the chaos of the fight. He was hit in the thigh, but time enough for it to hurt later. He bellowed another order and then tightened up again, roaring round to the right, holding his long-sword thrust straight out before him like a lance. He had realised what was happening. Although they had done good damage to the arrowless riders in retreat, they were now surrounded, like hornets in a beehive. All he could see around them, their only horizon, was one vast, extended circle of galloping riders. The Huns loosed their arrows when passing through only one quadrant of the circle, so they wouldn’t hit their own men the other side. Smart. They reloaded around the rest of the gallop.
Andronicus’ men were going down everywhere, reeling in the bright sunshine, crying out, heads thrown back, lances trailing. He drove his wheeled spurs into his charger’s broad flanks and led his men to break out of the circle again. No Hun line could withstand that shock. But instead of withstanding it, the enemy simply melted away before it. The circle ebbed around them and re-formed and they were still surrounded. The Huns’ tactical agility was extraordinary. But how did they know when to re-form, when to hold fire, when to move? Who gave the order? It was uncanny. Even now, Andronicus could admire it. He had heard of the Huns. Now he saw them, and understood. No demons out of the wilderness, after all. Just awesome warriors. Perhaps the hardest that Rome had fought in all her long history.
Across the plain, on the low rise, the Hun warlord sat unmoving, like some primitive votive statue cut from basalt in the desert. He gave no orders to his whirling thousands.
Another flight of arrows came in and Andronicus crouched low in his saddle, his face buried in his horse’s coarse mane. Sometimes that rough, sweet horse-smell comforted him, in the stables at the end of a hard day’s training or, better still, a hunt. But not now. All comfort was far from him now. An arrow clanged on his shoulder and cut his neck open. His sweat stung in the wound. His linen soutane was sticky with blood.
Too many of his men were fallen, and the column’s coherence was lost. The day, too, was lost. The sun was well past noon, and sinking, its light beginning to shine from behind the stone warlord on the crest and his innumerable ranks of warriors, to burn cruelly in the eyes of the Roman lancers and their comrades on the doomed walls of Viminacium. The judgement of the sun was plain.
From those walls came the desperate, far-away sound of the recall. Andronicus could have laughed. Some hope. ‘Come and get us, friends,’ he muttered, finding his mouth was full of blood.
Now mere isolated individuals, some cavalrymen tried to pull their mounts round and head back to the fort, but they were picked off one by one. Others milled vacantly. Andronicus twisted in his saddle and looked around, and another arrow cut across his back. Had he been sitting straight it would have killed him. There was only one thing left to try. There would be no return to the fort for them. He gave one last, desperate order, spraying blood. ‘Free charge for the onagers!’ He gritted his teeth. Think of it as a suicide mission. Never give up hope. Die in the attack.
The onagers stood impassively, a hundred yards off still, thickly surrounded by Hun horsemen, arrows nocked. He spurred his horse forward with a last fury. Crazy. To take out those onagers and do any lasting damage, many men would be needed, with leisure time to spare. Not like this.
One blood-boltered fool flailing his sword in the air. It seemed to him now, out on his own, with his men trailing wounded or dead behind him, that the Huns were waiting for him, with a true warrior curiosity as to how profound his courage might be. How would he die? Like a man, after all?
Andronicus galloped on, sword stretched out before him, arm shaking, the sun in his eyes. If it is with all dying men as they say, he saw his own family before him when he died, arms outstretched to embrace him, and not the searing sun.
The Huns said among themselves that he died bravely, that leader of the iron horsemen. Later that night, stripped of his armour, they would lay him on a pyre with their own dead, and send him to the otherworld in the care of his gods whose names they did not even know.
A long way back, a single Roman lancer had obeyed the recall and broken free of the Hun circle uninjured. Sabinus ordered the south gates open. But the Huns’ murderous impudence knew no bounds. A single copper- skinned warrior, clad in nothing but fur and feathers, came galloping in fast and low on a filthy little piebald, slewed in hard virtually under the heavy charger’s thundering hooves, drew his bowstring back into his chest and loosed an arrow. Travelling all of five yards, it smacked into the lancer’s face, punched through and came out the back of his helmet. The heavy horse continued to canter forwards, its dead rider lolling. The little horse warrior of the steppes pulled up to inspect his handiwork, and from his fellows an admiring cheer went up at this deed of battlefield daring. As if it was mere sport to them, even as many of their own tribe lay dead around the walls of the fort. All men must die. Why not die gloriously, in battle? War was much like a hunt over the steppes, and the best hunters always make the finest soldiers.
Tatullus bestrode the battlements, ordering his crossbowmen to take the Hun rider out, but they couldn’t hit him. They were few now, and very tired. Their crossbows trembled in sweaty hands, their arm muscles ached atrociously, their tired eyes blurred. The rider kept galloping, turning. He even punched his fist at them. Obscenely the dead rider, the arrow stuck through his head, still lolled in his wooden saddle when his horse trotted in through the gates.
‘Get him down,’ said Tatullus, ‘and close up.’
‘Sir?’
Tatullus glared at him. No, there would be no more coming back.
The gates began to close.
‘Another man coming in!’ came a call from the walls.
Hell.
But not one should be lost out of fear. The gates would stand open for any who came. Tatullus sent a runner to the guard-tower.
Sabinus was hit, but he would not have anyone know it. His side was heavily padded with linen bandages, which he hoped would soak up the blood. But every time he shouted an order, he bled more. He could feel his face whiten and sweat. His ears rang as his blood pressure dropped. Let me not faint, he prayed. He pleaded. Not for himself but for his men and the honour of Rome. Let those of us who still live and breathe, heroes every one – after
