At about the same time, some miles to the north, Attila awoke to the same early sun. He sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked around him at the fresh morning world, as bright as a sword-blade with dew, and he grinned. Then he rolled lazily to his feet and took a look around.
There was a farmstead nearby, at the edge of the trees on a warm south-facing slope. He left his mule tethered to a low branch and crept silently over to it. The shutters were wide open, and a dense male snoring came from the gloom within. He stepped silently into the lower room, which served as a barn, and waited patiently for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then he grinned with satisfaction. On a peg on the wall opposite hung a good length of strong rope, and leaning in a corner was a long-handled billhook with a decent-looking curved iron head.
The boy noosed the rope with a slipknot and nodded with satisfaction. It would do fine. He looped it over his head and left shoulder, so that his sword was still readily to hand on the right. Into the opposite side of his belt he tucked a pruning knife. He stole a flat scythestone that he found on a bench, and a hessian sack. Then he hefted the billhook, and grinned with satisfaction at the weight of it. He went back outside and remounted his mule, hefted the billhook across his right shoulder, and rode on down the mountainside.
In the mountains they had known nothing of what had gone on in the wider world. But as soon as Lucius came down into the plains and the rich farmland of the Tiber valley, he saw the devastation that the Goths – the real Goths – had wreaked in their righteous anger. Farmstead after farmstead was burnt to the ground. Golden fields of ripe corn, ready for the harvest, had been trampled into the mud by the hooves of a hundred thousand horses. Entire orchards had been slashed and burnt, livestock slain or herded into the Gothic column and driven off. The landscape was deserted. The country people had gone. He saw only stray dogs whimpering and cowering amid the burnt-out cottages, crows and kites circling and feeding on the carcasses of cattle and sheep.
As he neared Rome, he passed the occasional ragged group by the roadside. An entire family, huddled around a single handcart, looking up at him with round, empty eyes. He felt his heart swell in his ribcage with pity, but he could do nothing.
And then he came in sight of the city on the seven hills, and he saw the vast army of the Goths encamped about. Like all barbarian peoples, the Goths made no distinction between soldier and civilian. When they marched, the whole tribe marched: men, women and children all together in their covered wagons. And when they camped, they spread like a vast nation, as now across the fields outside Rome. The city of a million people was surrounded and cloaked around by a dark shadow of a hundred thousand Goths. And Rome was starving.
Lucius sat and considered for a while. And then he rode forward.
The Gothic army camp was undefended. There was no Roman force left in Italy that would dare to face them. All that stood between them and the glittering treasures of Rome were the walls and gates of the city itself.
Alaric, that shrewd Christian king of the Gothic people, had sent messengers to the imperial court and to the Senate in Rome some days ago, pointedly lamenting the death of his noble opponent, General Stilicho, and then demanding four thousand pounds of gold in return for his withdrawal from Italy. The Senate had responded with foolish contempt. ‘You cannot defeat us,’ they said. ‘We are many more in number than you.’
Alaric sent back a curt message, of the kind beloved once by the Spartans, and now by the tough Germanic peoples. ‘The thicker the hay,’ he said, ‘the more easily mown.’
And he increased his demands. Now he wanted all the gold in the city, and all the silver, and the handover of all slaves of barbarian blood. The demands were outrageous, and the Senators said as much. ‘What then will we be left with?’ they asked indignantly.
Again the reply was laconic. ‘Your lives.’
Nevertheless, although in the open field there was none to stand against Alaric and his horsemen, the barbarian king knew he had no skill in siege warfare. Rome might withstand them for months, and the besiegers, as is so often the case, would soon be every bit as trapped, malnourished and diseased as the besieged. So, instead, Alaric turned his men away from the walls and made down to Ostia, the port of Rome, where the great grain-ships came from Africa and Egypt. And they sacked Ostia, and laid it waste, and burnt the massive grain-houses, and sank the huge, clumsy ships in the harbour. And Rome began to starve.
Alaric returned to camp outside the walls of Rome and waited for the inevitable surrender that must come soon.
The tall, fair-haired warrior leant on his spear outside his tent and shielded his eyes from the sun. Across the shimmering fields came a man, unarmoured, unarmed, on a fine grey horse. Little plumes of dust arose from the horse’s hooves as it trod delicately down towards the Gothic encampment.
Lucius looked neither to left nor to right. Over his head he could feel the sign that the hermit on the rock had made in the mountains by moonlight. His heart was as steady as his hands. He walked on between the first felt tents of the Goths, towards the walls of Rome.
More and more spearmen emerged from their tents to stare. Some of them called out angrily, some hesitated, some even laughed.
‘You have a message for us, stranger?’
‘What is your business?’
‘Speak, man.’
Lucius rode on through the camp. Outside these tents, the wives of warriors sat cross-legged before campfires, stirring pots or nursing infants at their breasts. Children ran about in the dust, or stopped to stare at the strange man on the grey mare. One little boy ran across almost under Tugha Ban’s hooves, and Lucius reined in to let him pass unscathed, then rode forwards again. At last the road ahead was blocked by four mounted men who lowered their spears towards him.
‘ Hva? at waetraeth? ’
He drew up in front of them. They eyed him easily, unafraid, their spears held loose but firm at their sides. Their blue eyes never wavered. These were no bandits who could be brushed aside with a swordstroke. Besides, he had thrown his sword away.
‘Do you speak Latin?’
The horseman to his right nodded. ‘Some.’ He swiped his hand over his mouth. ‘Enough to tell you to depart.’
Lucius shook his head. ‘I’m not departing. I have business in Rome.’
The horseman grinned. ‘We too.’
Another horseman, his mount restive and his eyes burning at this Roman’s impertinence, pulled up tightly on his reins and said angrily, ‘ Tha sainusai methtana, tha! ’
The warrior to the right, with the easy smile but the firm and steady eyes, leant forwards. He rested his muscular forearms, banded with bronze arm-bands, on the pommel of his saddle, and said conversationally, ‘My friend Vidusa here is growing angry. He says you must go. Otherwise…’
‘I am unarmed.’
‘Then we will pull you from your horse and knock your teeth out. But you will not ride into Rome through this camp without-’
‘I will ride into Rome,’ said Lucius, his voice quiet and steady. ‘I have business there that cannot be denied.’
A sound of furious galloping approached, and Lucius’ back and neck shivered with readiness for the cold bite of sword-blade or arrowhead. But none came. Another warrior skidded to a halt at his side. From the way the first four sat up and looked respectfully into the far distance, Lucius judged that the newcomer was a nobleman. He glanced to his left. The new arrival wore cross-gartered trousers, and was naked to the waist. His biceps bulged as he wrenched back the reins. His hair was long and fair and his eyes burnt keenly into Lucius’. He wore no sign of his rank, but the air of authority and power was unmistakable. He bellowed at his four inferiors and they answered sheepishly. They lowered their spears. The newcomer then turned his attention fully on Lucius. His Latin was basic but adequate.