weapons. My men will cut you down before you appear.’
After a moment’s hesitation, Arapovian sheathed his sword.
The people came slowly out of the woods and stood upon the rocks, abject, with heads hung low. Trained on them were two hundred arrows.
Stephanos hiccupped again.
The warlord looked them over, singling out the three soldiers for special scrutiny. At last he said gravely, ‘I am the Lord Chanat. You Romans slew many of my men.’
Tatullus nodded, his hand on the pommel of his sword. ‘We did. And we will slay many more in the next battle.’
Chanat pondered deeply, in no hurry. At last he declared, ‘You Romans are not all women. You are a Khan?’
‘I’m a centurion.’
‘A leader of men? Or a herder of women and children? ’
‘Leader of men, usually,’ growled Tatullus. ‘Leader of eighty.’
‘That is good.’ He nodded. ‘You will join us. You will be a commander of Huns.’
Tatullus looked taken aback. Then he set his face again. ‘I am a Roman. I fight only for Rome.’
‘Your empire is destroyed.’
Tatullus smiled very slightly, his teeth clenched. ‘Not yet it isn’t.’
‘Then I will kill you.’
‘You can try.’
Chanat made a strange noise, shucking his teeth. It would be wrong, by every tenet of the warrior code, to slay a man this heedlessly and magnificently brave.
He turned his attention to Arapovian, standing a little further back on the rocks, his hand not far from the hilt of his sword. ‘You. You are an Easterner.’
Arapovian did not reply.
‘Answer me, fool.’
But it was clear that Arapovian would not deign to speak to a Hun, though his life depended on it. He picked a burr fastidiously from his cloak.
‘Stiff-necked easterner,’ growled Chanat. ‘You must be a Persian traitor fighting for the Romans.’
At that, Arapovian could not keep silent. He drew himself to his full height and looked angrily down on Chanat. ‘I am an Armenian naxarar of the noblest birth. My name is Count Grigorius Khachadour Arapovian, the son of Count Grigorius Nubar Arapovian, the son-’
Knuckles intervened, jerking his head. ‘He is, too.’
‘And you,’ said Chanat, turning on him. Knuckles wished he’d kept quiet. ‘It is my belief that you are the brute who killed the Lord Bela on the bridge.’
‘I can’t say I ever found out the sav-the gentleman’s name, your mercifulness. But frankly, at the time, he wasn’t behaving too favourably towards me, neither.’
Chanat tugged his reins and half-turned his horse. ‘It is well,’ he snapped. ‘It is war. Now be silent.’ He looked them over one last time, trotted back, surveyed the women and children, and then made a typically abrupt decision. ‘This time, you may live. Next time, we will kill you.’
As he walked his horse away, he tossed the vinestick over his shoulder to clatter again upon the road.
‘And you can have that back!’ he called, laughing. ‘I am not so old as to need it yet!’
It was a fine story that night at the Hun campfire.
‘Magnanimous,’ said Attila.
‘Indeed,’ acknowledged Chanat solemnly. ‘I did not even demand one of the women for my tent.’
‘Old Chanat, your heart is as tender as a young lamb’s.’
‘Alas, but I fear my loins will not easily forgive my tender heart. Some of those Roman women weren’t so ugly.’
Still dazed at their escape and the terrifying randomness of Hun clemency, the refugees camped that night well up in scattered pinewoods. It was good that it was summer. In these hills, winter would have killed them by now. Still, Arapovian allowed them a small fire. The women and children, though hungry, all slept.
They were draining the last of the Armenian brandy, heavily watered, which Arapovian had managed to conserve through everything, when he heard a footfall nearby. The faintest padding footfall in the dry needles. He raised his forefinger.
Knuckles frowned and shook his head.
Arapovian drew his dagger.
And nonchalantly into the firelight stepped Captain Malchus.
Knuckles growled, ‘How in the name of Cloacina, goddess of Rome’s sacred shit-pipes, did you…?’
Malchus grinned. His face and arms were a terrible mess. He had sewn up his own wounds again with horsehair and a bone needle. They could see the holes, clotted with dried blood.
‘Take more than that to finish me,’ he said. He sat cross-legged by the fire. ‘I’ve been tracking you. Good show when you met the Huns. I saw it all from the clifftop. It was me who set the raven off its ledge. Sorry about that.’
They stared at him a while longer, as if to ensure he was no ghost.
At last Arapovian said, ‘I don’t understand how you survived outside the fort, when the Hun charge ran you down.’
Malchus reflected. ‘Imagine,’ he said. ‘You’re one of two hundred horsemen galloping at a single man. How are you ever going to know which one of you killed him in the rush? If any of you?’
They shook their heads. Tatullus was stirring and awakening again.
‘What you do is, you drop just before they hit you. It’s all in the timing.’
‘And then two hundred horses gallop over you.’
‘That bit is playing with dice, I admit. You do like you’re back in your mother’s womb.’ He mimed a curled foetal position, wincing at his cuts. ‘Plus arms round your head. You know no horse likes to trample a living creature, not even those bullock-headed Hun brutes.’ He grinned again. ‘Well, maybe I was lucky. My legs got a bit bruised, but otherwise – here I am. And look.’ From a leather saddlebag he pulled a decent-sized flagon of looted wine, some very stale but edible bread, and some goat’s cheese wrapped in lime leaves.
‘Christ be thanked,’ growled Knuckles, grabbing for the wine.
Arapovian was faster. He set the flagon by his side. ‘Medical usage first. Those cuts need dousing and re- sewing. ’ He began to strop his dagger-blade, eyeing Malchus’ gruesome wounds.
Malchus looked indignant. ‘What do you mean? They’re fine.’
‘They’re rubbish,’ said Arapovian.
Later Malchus took a long drag on the bottle and passed it to Knuckles, wincing again at his fresh stitches.
‘I thought you took a vow,’ said Tatullus from the shadows where he lay on his side.
‘It got cancelled,’ said Knuckles. ‘By unforeseen circumstances. ’ He took a huge glug.
Arapovian guarded the bread and cheese for the children’s breakfast tomorrow. He eyed Knuckles’ considerable belly. ‘You won’t starve without it.’
They drank more from the welcome flagon.
Knuckles yawned and belched. ‘Name of Light. That wine’s gone straight to my lord and master. Wonder where the nearest whorehouse is?’
‘You’d have to pay a month’s wages for it, you would,’ said Malchus. ‘State of you.’
‘Look at you,’ said Knuckles. ‘While I, on the contrary, left many a broken-hearted lady behind me in Carnuntum, so fond had they grown of me and my hugely proportioned charms.’
Malchus snorted with incredulity. Even Tatullus managed a faint smile.
‘I was, to be honest, a most cock-witted lad in my youth,’ reflected the hulking Rhinelander, taking another huge glug of wine. ‘Give my own granny for a piece of skirt, I would. But with age comes wisdom. Perhaps I will endure tonight with neither fuck nor suck.’
Arapovian looked scornful, banking up the woodfire. ‘Well, you’d better not sleep too near me.’
Knuckles raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. My lord and master has some dimscrim…
