The centurion grinned. ‘The lad’s got spirit, you’ve got to admit, sir.’
The lieutenant looked back at the boy, his right hand resting easily on the pommel of his sword. He didn’t trouble to draw it, and when he smiled his eyes were as cold as ice.
‘Drop it, son,’ he said quietly.
Attila returned his gaze for a moment. Then he sighed, straightened and dropped the knife at his feet.
The lieutenant turned to his men. ‘You, Ops, Crates, tie him up, arms behind his back.’
Still kneeling in the dust, Borus saw the boy being tied, and he relaxed, and felt his legs trembling, and then he stretched out his arms and fell, and lay in the dirt. His head was throbbing. He rolled half over. His mouth felt bitter, metallic, and his back felt strangely cold. He was bewildered. His eyelids kept drooping, he didn’t know why, and his limbs ached and tingled. He prayed. He could feel his heart hammering beneath his ribs – or fluttering, rather, like a bird trapped and panicking in a bone cage. He gazed into the stars above and prayed to every god he could name. His eyesight blurred, and it seemed to him as if every star was growing into a radiant circle of light. He prayed to Mithras and to Jupiter and to Isis and to Christ and to the very stars themselves.
The stars looked silently down.
‘And you,’ the lieutenant called to Borus, ‘get home to your wife. That wound needs seeing to.’
Borus didn’t stir.
One of the soldiers went over and knelt beside the fallen man and touched his fingertips to his neck. Then he stood up again. ‘He’s dead, sir.’
‘Why, you little-’ roared a man in the crowd, ‘I’ll-’
Two soldiers blocked his way with crossed spears, and one knocked him sharply back with a kick to his midriff.
But the crowd’s mood had turned ugly and belligerent.
‘You murdering swine!’ screamed an old woman.
‘Slit his dirty neck!’
‘String him up! Look at him, the little demon, look at that look in his eye! He’ll kill us all, give him half a chance!’
Several women in the crowd crossed themselves. A man clutched the bluestone he wore round his neck to ward off the evil eye.
The lieutenant regarded his captive. ‘You’re popular,’ he murmured.
The boy glared up at him with such unabated ferocity that even the lieutenant was momentarily nonplussed. Then he demanded his name.
The boy ignored him.
‘I asked you,’ repeated the lieutenant, leaning down, ‘ what is your name? ’
Still the boy ignored him.
From the angry crowd, a voice cried, ‘He said his name was Attalus or some such.’
‘Attalus, son of Turda, son of Arse-Lick,’ cried another.
For the first time, the lieutenant noticed the blue scars on the boy’s cheeks, eerily visible in the sidelong torchlight.
‘Not…?’ he wondered softly. He turned to his men. ‘Lads,’ he said, ‘I think we could be in for a little donative.’ He turned back to the boy. ‘Strip.’
The boy didn’t stir.
The lieutenant nodded, and one of his men stepped forward, gripped what remained of the boy’s tattered tunic at the neck, and ripped it down to the waist.
The crowd gasped. They had never seen anything like it.
The boy’s back was decorated with the most fantastic swirls and curlicues, weals and welts, some made by needles and blue ink, some more cruelly cut in with a knife and then sewn up with a horsehair in the wound to ensure that the scar remained bold and prominent. It was the way of the Huns.
Not Attalus. Attila. The fugitive.
Princess Galla Placidia would be grimly pleased at his recapture. She seemed to have a strange obsession with the boy.
‘Well done, lads,’ said the lieutenant. ‘And the rest of you,’ he said, raising his voice again, ‘disperse. Or we’ll make you – which will hurt.’
The crowd sullenly and reluctantly began to move away. One of them walked over to Borus and covered his face with a cloth.
The lieutenant asked him if he knew the dead man. He nodded.
‘Then you’ll see to his corpse,’ he said.
He turned back to his troop. ‘Right,’ he barked, ‘back to the Palatine. On the double.’
‘Word of advice,’ said the lieutenant affably as they marched back up the hill, the boy’s arms trussed tightly behind him like spatchcock chicken. ‘Next time you’re on the run, try not to attract so much attention to yourself by killing someone.’
The boy said nothing.
‘Lucky for you we came along when we did, anyhow. They’d have torn you limb from limb.’
At last the boy spoke. ‘They wouldn’t have got close.’
The lieutenant grinned. After a while he said, ‘And the man you put down?’
‘Self-defence.’
The lieutenant nodded. It was clear enough.
‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ the boy blurted out.
The lieutenant saw in some surprise that the boy’s eyes were bright with tears – not such a tough nut as he made out.
The lieutenant nodded again. ‘It’s OK, son. It happens. You did well to defend yourself.’
The boy tried to rub his nose with his bound arm, but couldn’t reach. If he sniffed the lieutenant would hear him, and he didn’t want that.
They marched left into the Vicus Longus and began the long ascent towards the Palatine. At one point they passed the scarecrow preacher again, and the boy glanced at him with consternation and almost with fear.
‘Nutter,’ said the lieutenant.
‘Are you a Christian?’ asked the boy.
The lieutenant grinned. ‘We’re all Christians now, son. Much good may it do us.’
At last the drunken mob were beginning to thin out for the night. They made way when they saw a squadron of Frontier Troops approaching, looking on curiously from the doorways and the alleys at the strange, small, spiky, half-naked captive bound with rope.
‘I’d untie you if I thought you wouldn’t try to escape again,’ said the lieutenant, a little more gently.
‘But I would.’
‘I know you would.’
‘And I’d succeed, too.’
‘It’s possible.’
The boy looked up at the lieutenant, and for a moment something like a fleeting smile passed between them.
‘So… you were trying to get home?’
The boy didn’t answer. Instead, surprisingly, he asked a question. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘my dad was a soldier before me, from Gaul originally. But I served in the Legio II “Augusta”, in Britain, at Caerleon. You won’t have heard of it.’
‘I’ve heard of it,’ said the boy. ‘It’s in the west of the province, a frontier fortress to keep down the Silurian tribes.’
The lieutenant laughed with astonishment. ‘How in the Name of Light do you know that?’
The boy ignored the question. ‘What were you doing in Britain?’
The lieutenant began to wonder if he should be talking quite so much. There was something about the lad that was… unusual.
‘Well, my mother was a Celt. My father married her over there. So I guess I’m half and half. But we’re all Celts under our Roman skins, or so we like to think. We – me and the lads here – served over there until just recently. Then-’
‘Then the emperor called the British legions home? Because Rome was in such trouble?’
‘Hold your horses,’ said the lieutenant easily. ‘Rome’s no home of mine. My home’s Britain. And anyway Rome’s not done yet. We’ve dealt with worse than Goths before. Remember Brennus and his Gauls? They sacked Rome itself. And Hannibal? And the Cimbri?’
‘But what’s wrong with the Palatine Guard defending Rome? There’s thirty thousand of them out at the camp.’
‘Jove’s balls, you really do know it all, don’t you? Well, you know what we Frontier Troops think of the Palatine Guard back in Rome. A little… soft, shall we say. Too many hot baths and too little real fighting.’
‘Is there still fighting in Britain?’
‘More and more these days,’ said the lieutenant sombrely. ‘The Picts are always raiding in the north, and now we have the Saxon pirates to contend with, all along the eastern and southern coasts. And our Count of the Saxon Shore is about as much use as a paper bucket. So yes, Britain has its problems, too. But from now on’ – he spoke with uncharacteristic hesitancy – ‘they’ll… they’ll just have to fend for themselves.’