Silence, broken only by the occasional, low bludgeoning thunderclap. The Huns were still marauding, still about their work of destruction. And they themselves were still trapped. When would it be better to surrender themselves than die here? Perhaps not much longer.
No sense of time. They slept fitfully. The families remained for the most part speechless with terror and grief. Cramped, stained, exhausted by their own trembling. Tongues sore and swelling with thirst, nostrils sickened by the stench of their own bodies. The children’s throats painful and dry as sharkskin. They sucked the damp walls, the bitter green taste of algae on their lips, until Arapovian forbade it. ‘That will kill you sooner,’ he said.
The only consolation was that the fire had not sucked the air out of the dungeon. It was foul down here, but it was enough for them still to breathe.
His heart was heavy for them. These children now fatherless, these women husbandless, this old couple with their son perhaps lying slain just outside. This noisome, putrid latrine their whole world now.
Time passed. Above, all was silence again.
‘We got to get out,’ said Knuckles.
‘Another twelve hours.’
‘How will we know?’
‘Thirty more full litanies or so.’
‘You’re joking.’
Arapovian did not reply.
‘Tell you what. Tell us about Armenia instead.’
After a long silence, Arapovian began to tell them about his homeland. He told them about his friends Jahukunian, Arutyunian and Khorenatsian, dead and buried in the earth of a land no longer theirs. He told them about the heroine Queen Paranjem, who fought the Persians under Shapur the Great when he devastated the land, and King Arshak, who was captured and blinded and imprisoned in the Castle of Oblivion for thirty years. He told them about the pagan fire temples of the Zoroastrians erected over Christian shrines, and the broad plains of Erzinjan and Erzerum, and the egrets and the francolin in the marshes, and the great monastery of Echmiadzin, the oldest in the world, they said. At last the people slept.
Thirty muttered litanies later, he and Knuckles shook the people awake, and moved towards the steps in the inky darkness.
Knuckles held his club ready while Arapovian reached up and set his sword-hilt against the trapdoor overhead. He gave a gentle push. The door sighed and fell down around his shoulders in fluttering leaves of ash. The wood was no more than a blackened parchment, a tissue-thin veil of charcoal between them and the inferno. Only the iron bands remained. He levered them back and stepped up, sword ready. Immediately outside were some charred bones. He pushed them aside with his foot, concealed them beneath smoking timbers as best he could before the families emerged.
They came up shakily into the light of day. For it was dawn. Even Arapovian was unsure how long they had been down there. Perhaps three whole days. A very Christlike resurrection, he thought grimly.
They stood and surveyed the still-smoking desolation, like some ragged band of beggars after the apocalypse. There was nothing left.
‘Sweet Mother of God,’ whispered the old man.
The fort had gone. There were only acres of ash, and a few low stretches of broken wall like rotten teeth. Nothing else. The people moved like silent wraiths through this landscape of rubble and dust and the last thin plumes of smoke, forgetting for a moment even their abominable thirst. Where the great bastions and outer walls had stood, there was only more rubble, crooked forms, cascades of hardcore. Beyond where the west gate-tower had stood, they glimpsed the remains of the town, and further off, scattered over the fertile plains, the smouldering ruins of their homes and farmsteads.
One woman gave a cry and stumbled. Knuckles steadied her and rested his huge paw on her thin shoulder and surveyed the scene. ‘Truth to tell,’ he said to her, by way of unorthodox comfort, ‘I’m beginning to get a bit narked with these Huns myself.’
‘Come on, you ape,’ said Arapovian. ‘Move out.’
‘Stop calling me an ape.’
‘When you stop calling me a Parsee.’
Knuckles sighed. ‘This is going to be fun.’
‘No,’ said Arapovian, sheathing his sword again, tightening his belt, surveying the ravaged landscape. ‘It’s not.’
He led them through the ruins, trying to steer a course free of atrocities. For amid the burnt timbers and stones, there were shapes of what had once been bodies. Tar-black and twisted, scorched and fire-maimed, as if formed out of pitch and then abandoned by some clumsy and heartless god, tossed aside still lifeless.
In desperation a mother flew to the lip of a smashed well, tearing the cloak from her back and lowering it down to see if she could reach water, to wring it out into the mouth of her child.
Arapovian stopped her. ‘It’s poisoned.’
She turned on him, eyes blazing with fury and anguish. Her child was already sick with thirst, his face a pallid mask. ‘How do you know?’
‘Even the great river is unclean, the shore choked with bodies. But I will find you water.’ He pointed south to the hills. ‘Clean water. Do not be afraid. You will live now, you and your child. The Huns have gone.’
He took the child gently from her and laid it over his shoulder and walked on through the wasteland.
They passed where the principia itself had stood, and the legionary chapel. A hole gaped in the ground.
Knuckles hawked and spat. ‘So they found the gold, then. How did they know it was there?’
Arapovian looked around. ‘The Hun warlord knows far more than that.’
‘And what’ll they do with it? They don’t look the kind for fine wines and silk undies.’
‘They’ll hire more mercenaries. Alans, Gepids, Sarmatians. ’ Arapovian walked on again. ‘They’ll buy more power.’
A thrill of uncanny horror ran through them as they approached the rubble mound of the west gate. There was still a platform standing, the bare wooden floor of what had been the first-floor guard-tower. And there was a figure still up there, legs apart, gazing out over the plain. It must be a Roman corpse, skewered on a long spear and propped there by the Huns in their whimsical humour.
Arapovian passed the thirst-stricken child into Knuckles’ arms.
‘I don’t do children,’ Knuckles mumbled in protest.
‘Stay here.’
The Armenian scrambled over the rubble and hauled himself up, his injured thigh throbbing. He could at least take the impaled corpse down. Cover it with rocks, say some appropriate words. He swung himself up onto the wooden platform and approached it.
The corpse turned.
Arapovian froze.
It was Tatullus.
Alive, yes. His eyes as flat and lightless as the dead, his forearms cut across, blood crusted over one side of his scalp. But alive. The iron-hearted centurion. He stared back at Arapovian, not seeing. Down his sunken, deep- grooved cheeks, smoke-grey, filthy, were two clear white tracks.
Gradually the centurion’s eyes seemed to focus.
‘You!’ he whispered. ‘You survived.’
Arapovian nodded and saluted. ‘Sir. Two of us, and the families from the dungeons. And the prisoner, Barabbas. Down there – look.’
Tatullus emerged with painful slowness out of his waking nightmare. He seized the Armenian’s right hand in his own. His eyes shone brightly again, though he could not speak a word. Then he let his hand drop and turned away and with an abrupt movement wiped his cheeks.
Finally he spoke, his voice slow and careful. ‘See what water you can find.’
‘The wells are poisoned, sir. But in the hills…’
Tatullus nodded, still struggling to return to the world as it was. ‘Very well, then. Have them fall in.’ He drew breath. ‘We march south.’
When they were assembled in order, two abreast, Tatullus came down. He looked at each of them in turn.
