William Napier: Attila

What did the Romans know of this? All men beyond the frontier were mere barbarians to them, and Roman curiosity stopped at their own frontier walls.

Here in Rome, this son of the Sons of Astur was deemed little better than a slave or a spoil of war. He thought of the wide plains of Scythia and his heart ached with longing for his homeland, for a sight of the black tents of his people, and for the great herds of horses moving slowly through the thigh-deep feathergrass. Among them was his beloved white pony, Chagelghan – well named, for she was indeed as fast as lightning: chagelghan in the language of the Huns. When he was back on the plains, he would mount her barebacked and unbridled, with only his legs’ strength and his fists in her thick white mane to hold him, and they would ride for unbounded miles over the steppes with the feathergrass whipping past his knees and her haunches, the wind in her mane and his hair. Here, in this bitter and withering empire, everything was stifled and bounded, every parcel of land was owned, every horse branded, every straight, unblinking road paved and named, every field and vineyard fenced off – and these Romans had the stupidity to think themselves free! They no longer knew what freedom was.

But he would have his freedom again. His parting gift to Rome would be the blinded eyes of that great emperor; and then he would escape. They would send out soldiers to search for him, he knew. He knew his own value. They would send out whole armies to prevent his escape. But they would never find him once he was out in the mountains and the wilds, no more to human eyes than a ghost or a shadow.

The boy didn’t breathe. He pressed further back into the darkness and made himself invisible. One of the elders of his tribe, a solitary and often silent elder called Cadicha, had taught him how. Cadicha had travelled for many long years in the endless wildernesses of Central Asia, and seen many strange things, and knew how, so it was said in the tribe, to make himself appear like a gust of sand in the wind, or a single solitary tree. Cadicha taught the boy what to do. He pressed as far back as he could into the shadows of the niche. Against his bare shoulder he could feel the cold marble of the pediment, surmounted by yet another pompous marble statue of some defunct hero of Rome. His fingers were sweaty round the coarse rope handle of his dagger. He could smell the salt-sea smell of the rope, damp with his sweat.

He was small for his age, more like a boy of seven or eight than one on the verge of adolescence; his people had always been scorned for their small stature. But what did they know, those enfeebled Romans with their cold sneers of superiority, or those long-limbed, flaxen-haired Goths? Look at his people’s horses: smaller than any other breed in Europe, but hardier by far. They could carry a man for an hour at full gallop and not tire.

He still didn’t breathe, and he closed his slanted eyes, lest they should glitter like a cat’s from the darkness.

The guards talked on, within a few paces of him.

Some guards they were. Old and tired and half deaf and ready to fall. Very like the city they guarded. They were talking now of his people, and of how Rome had defeated the barbarian army of Rhadagastus only with the aid of barbarians. How Stilicho, master-general of the Roman forces, had joined forces with another barbarian tribe to win his victory: this tribe called the Huns.

One of the guards snorted. ‘Half animal, they are. Eat nothing but raw meat, wear only animal skins, and their victory rites after a battle… You think the arena looks a mess after a triumph, but you don’t want to be one of their war-captives, I can tell you.’

‘No greater power in this world than to be so feared,’ said the other guard.

‘Well, aren’t you the philosopher tonight.’

The second guard stared out over the moonlit palace courtyard, and then said softly, ‘Well, we shall see them for ourselves tomorrow, at General Stilicho’s triumph.’

‘Emperor Honorius’ triumph.’

‘I do beg your pardon,’ came the mocking reply. ‘Yes, of course, the emperor’s triumph.’

There was silence for a while, and then one of them said, ‘Do you remember that night on the Rhine?’

‘Of course I do,’ said the other. ‘How could I ever forget it? You saved my poxy life, didn’t you?’

‘Don’t start thanking me for that again.’

‘Wasn’t going to.’

‘Anyway, you’d have done the same for me.’

‘Don’t be so sure.’

The two old soldiers grinned at each other, but their grins soon faded.

Yes, they remembered that night on the Rhine. In the last days of December, when the river froze solid, and the barbarian hordes came galloping across the moonlit ice as if they were coming into their kingdom: Vandals and Sueves, Alans, Lombards, Goths, Burgundians. Yes, they remembered that night, and all the nights and the weeks and the months that came after.

The first guard bowed his head at the remembrance. ‘I thought I saw Rome go down in flames that night.’

They brooded.

‘Is the story of Rome finished?’

The other shrugged. ‘It’s been a long story,’ he said. ‘And it could yet have one almighty firestorm of a final chapter. The fall of Rome would outshine the fall of Troy as the sun outshines a candle.’

‘We’ll have a place there, too,’ said the other, ‘and die deaths as glorious and heroic as the death of Hector himself!’

They snorted with derisive, self-mocking laughter.

Then one said, ‘Come on then, old Trojan.’ And wearily the two comrades-at-arms, now relegated to the status of lowly palace guards, with their stiff old joints and their scars that still ached on frosty nights, moved slowly on down the corridor, their sandals slapping softly on the marble tiles.

The boy relaxed, eased himself away from the cold marble and breathed again. The moment the guards had turned the corner out of sight, he crept out of the niche and scuttled along in the shadows towards the other end of the corridor.

There in the pale, washed light of the moon stood an imposing bronze statue of Caesar Augustus himself, a great brawny arm commandingly outstretched, wearing the plate-armour uniform of a general of four hundred years ago. His eyes shone in the moonlight, his painted black eyes with their unearthly gleaming whites. Round the base of the statue were carved the words ‘ PIUS AENEAS ’. For were not the Caesars direct descendants of the legendary Founder of Rome himself?

By dawn tomorrow, Augustus would look very different: with his knife the boy would turn that cold gaze blind.

He scrambled swiftly onto the pediment, and then, feeling as if he was in some strange dream, began to climb up the bronze figure. He clenched the knife between his teeth and, reaching up, managed to grab hold of one of Augustus’ larger-than-life-sized hands. He braced his bare feet against the statue’s legs and hauled, stretched up again and hooked his left arm round the emperor’s neck.

He froze. The guards were coming past again.

They couldn’t be. They had done their dozen circuits of the courtyard, as regular as the wheeling stars, in true Roman fashion, and now they should be moving on to another of the palace’s countless courtyards. In his urgency he must have miscounted.

He kept as still as the statue itself while the guards passed beneath him, both looking sombrely down. They didn’t see him, hunched there on the imperial giant like a malignant incubus. And then they were gone.

He leant back and, gripping the statue with both thighs and one arm, took the dagger in his right hand and eased the blade under Augustus’ alabaster right eyeball. A little scraping and levering, and it popped out cleanly. He caught it deftly with his knife-hand as it fell, the size of a duck egg, and dropped it inside his tunic. Then he turned his attention to the left eyeball, again slipping the thin blade in and easing it ‘And what do you think you are doing?’