Lucius felt every muscle in his body burning, and could scarcely believe he could still muster the strength to raise his sword-arm. His hands trembled uncontrollably with strain, his eyes were blurred and stinging with sweat and dust. He had long since thrown aside his heavy shield. They could only hold back one more onslaught, he knew. A second would destroy them all.
Then it came.
His men dragged themselves to their feet for the last time, uncomplaining, unsurprised and in silence, too exhausted even to give the battle-cry. They fought with astonishing ferocity, with the fury of despair, of men who know they are going to die. In such a mood, a man can take a wound which would bring him to the ground in any normal circumstances, and yet fight on. So, yet again, the Goths’ charge broke against the ranks of Roman swords and spears, what few remained, and they were forced to a standstill at the stockade; where, yet again, it came to a grim exchange of grunting blows, of wounds taken and wounds received and no quarter given on either side. Again, to the exhausted relief of the soldiers, the Gothic line fell back to regroup once more. Their retreat was slow and stumbling, the ground strewn as it was with the corpses heaped up in stark and scarecrow attitudes. A slain Gothic warrior sat in the dust bolt upright, facing the stockade where he had died. His severed head lay in the dust close by. Another lay cloven from the crown of his head to his belly, his intestines dragged out over many yards of ground where they had been caught by the hooves of passing horses. The air stank with the odour of spilt blood and of the ruptured bellies and bowels of men and horses.
An eerie silence fell over the battlefield as the dust settled between the two opposing warbands. Lucius saw to his despair that, although many Goths had fallen, many remained. They formed up three ranks deep, curving round to left and right; soon they would come again, and this time they would triumph. It would be a victory dearly bought, but it would be a victory none the less. All for the strange and glittering-eyed boy from the steppes of Scythia, who even now, to Lucius’ disgust, was sauntering round the perimeter of the stockade, whistling to himself and taking scalps.
The Gothic warlord sat mounted and still on his black horse to the far right of his ranks. He surveyed the chaos of the battlefield with apparent serenity.
Lucius looked around. Crates was on his knees in the dust, cradling his stump of an arm. Lucius called out to him, and the lithe, clever little Greek looked up at him very slowly, his mouth hanging open as if he were an idiot, all his sharp, sardonic wit drained from him with his lifeblood. And then, like a moment from a nightmare, his eyes still fixed on his commanding officer, Crates slumped sideways and fell dead into the dust.
Young Salcus lay dead nearby, a spear driven through his skinny ribs and deep into the ground below. And there lay Ops, too, Ops Invictus, Ops the Unvanquished from Caledonia to Egypt, from Syria to the banks of the Danube. But he was vanquished now, at last, in the very heart of Italy, arrows bristling from his great mound of a belly like a porcupine’s quills. Marco sat hunched, tawny with dust from head to foot as if he had been perversely anointed, his hands clutching his side. Surely not Marco, too… In a panic, Lucius called his name. Marco looked up at him and then down again. He said nothing. Slowly and painfully he clambered to his feet, one hand still clutching his side, and came to stand near his commanding officer. Marco wouldn’t be so easily beaten.
They were the only two men still standing. They and the boy. The boy, of course, the cause of all this mayhem, was still standing. Nothing could destroy him. Naked to the waist, sword in hand, top-knot tied and decorated with a plait of horsehair, his whole body thickly pasted with blood and sweat and dust – and none of that blood was his own, Lucius felt sure, not a drop of his own wild blood had been spilt. The boy eyed Lucius evenly across the corpse-strewn arena of the stockade, drew his sword-blade swiftly through the folds of his filthy, ragged tunic, which still hung from his belt, further garlanded with ragged and gory hanks of human scalp. And then he grinned.
The stockade was breached in three places, and the carriages were no more than a heap of ashes. There were three of them left to fight, and a hundred horsemen were about to ride in and slay them. They were finished. And the boy grinned.
Lucius looked at the ranks of standing men across the plateau. ‘You gods,’ he whispered, but with deep and bitter accusation. ‘ You gods.’
The Gothic warlord raised his gauntleted hand for the last time.
Here they came now. The rear, untried ranks of horsemen were mounting up. The walking wounded were retiring to the shade and coolness of the forest edge, but the rest were riding forward. They would fight on horseback now. They would simply ride in and slaughter the last remnants of this troublesome century.
Here they came.
Beside him, Marco looked up. ‘To the otherworld, sir,’ he said.
‘To the otherworld.’
The horsemen did not even break into a gallop. No more than twenty yards from the stockade, the Gothic warlord raised his hand again and they came to a halt.
‘What the hell are they playing at?’ growled Marco. ‘Come on, you bastards!’ he yelled at them. ‘Come on! What are you waiting for?’
The ranks of tall, plumed horsemen sat their horses and didn’t stir.
Then their leader heeled his horse and rode forward, just as he had only yesterday evening, many lives and deaths ago. He stopped near the stockade, turned his long ashen spear deftly in his right hand, and drove the head deep into the ground in front of him. His sword remained in his long scabbard. For a moment he bowed his helmeted head, and when he raised it again, Lucius saw to his astonishment that his eyes were bright with tears.
He spoke quietly, but they heard his every word.
‘The battle is ended. The boy is yours. We will no longer fight against those who fight so bravely. We salute you, our brothers.’
As one, the horsemen raised their right hands, empty now of weapons.
Then they turned and rode away. The dust settled behind their thundering hooves, and the plateau was silent.
In a daze, Lucius wandered out onto the battlefield, Marco close behind him.
After a while Marco called, ‘Man alive here, sir.’
Lucius went over. The warrior was badly wounded, blood bubbling from a hole in his chest. Marco stooped over him and tore off the warrior’s helmet. He had cropped dark hair and, now they looked closely, his eyes…
‘Never saw a Goth with brown eyes before.’
The man begged for water, his voice grating with thirst, but Marco said they had none. Instead he demanded, in the Gothic tongue, ‘ Hva? ata wair? an? ’
The man closed his eyes, ready to die.
‘Get off him,’ Marco growled at his unseen, immortal adversary, gliding over the battlefield in his long black robes. ‘A minute more.’ He shook the dying man roughly, and demanded again, ‘ Hva? ata wair? an? Who are you?’
The man’s eyelids fluttered and he groaned. ‘Don’t understand. Speak Latin.’
His brain reeling, Marco did so.
The soldier gasped, ‘Batavian cavalry, second ala, Roman auxiliaries, the Danube station.’
‘Not Goths?’
The soldier smiled faintly. ‘Not Goths.’ Blood frothed from between his cracked lips.
‘Why? Who sent you?’
‘We were waiting for orders… The boy…’
But the dying soldier’s mind was already dimmed, and his inner eye saw nothing but the light beyond, and the outstretched arms of his wife, standing in the sunlit fields across the wide river.