‘What are you grinning at, you idiot?’ he gasped.
‘It’s melting,’ said Attila, still grinning. ‘It’s thawing.’
When Orestes understood what he was saying – that they had made it – they threw their arms round each other, and howled in triumph at the bare blue sky above, while more snow slithered from the branches of the silver fir above and fell upon them both. A cloak of soft white snow over their heads and about their shoulders, equally and without distinction.
Soon they came down into the thinner snow-covering of the lower slopes, which in the summer would be the higher pastures for the sleek brown cows of that country. They even found the first raw shoots of greenery, and chewed the sprigs of yarrow and salad burnet that peeped from the long-hidden grasses. But though they no longer had to fight the bitter cold at every step, there were more villages now, more people to be avoided, more dogs set barking as they passed by in silence and darkness.
After some days they passed along the ridge of hills to the north of the great lake of Balaton, and that evening they came down to its tranquil shores. Attila fixed up a wooden pole with some barbs cut from bone, and went gaffing for trout in the shallows. They baked the trout on hot stones and gorged until they could eat no more.
Later that night, as he did every night, Orestes went a little way away among the trees, knelt down, leant his forehead against a cold, mossy trunk, and prayed for the soul of his departed sister. Then he returned to the campfire, his face alight and glowing, both radiant and calm, as if he had received comfort and solace even from the cold and glittering silence of the sky.
They came to the gates of the city of Aquincum, and the bored vigiles, the nightwatchmen, allowed them entry without a word. Two ragamuffins from the country come to sell their paltry, stolen wares, or maybe themselves, who knew?
The boys, of course, had come to Aquincum not to sell but to steal. They were nearly free, but still they had the great barrier of the Danube to cross. For that they hoped they could steal a boat or a raft, or perhaps stow away aboard a merchantman bound for one of the logwood trading-stations on the other side. And for that they needed to get down to the quayside.
Aquincum was a grim little frontier town of timber and mud, with the stone frontier fort of the legion rising at one corner, near the river. The narrow streets stank of the shambles where the animals were driven in and slaughtered, of open drains, of the pigs crowded together in filthy backyards, and of the charcoal furnaces of begrimed and weary-looking coppersmiths working late.
Approaching down the cobbled street was a group of drunks. So close to their longed-for goal, the boys had grown careless. Attila especially, feeling his princely blood stirring as he got closer to his homeland, and thinking of the astonished delight that would receive him amid the tents of his people, had grown proud and reckless. So when one of the drunks bumped into him, deliberately or not, he reacted as no fugitive and secret traveller should. For he had been in this situation before.
‘Hey, you fat oaf,’ he shouted, ‘watch yourself!’
Suddenly the group of drunks didn’t seem so drunk. Rather more orderly, though the wine on their breath still stank, the five of them halted.
‘What did you say?’ demanded one.
Orestes, standing a little way behind, glimpsed a flash of something beneath the man’s coarse woollen cloak. Something like steel, something like plate armour…
Before he could stop himself, he cried out, ‘Attila!’
Whatever fumes of wine had slowed the men’s minds and made unsteady their steps, vanished in an instant.
The man wheeled on Orestes. ‘ What did you call him?’
Orestes began to back away, his face a torment of fear and guilt. ‘My master, my master,’ he groaned softly, ‘come away. Run away…’
But the older boy’s hand was already reaching inside his ragged cloak, and he knew that everything they had travailed and suffered for, over so many weeks and months, would end now, in a damp and dismal backstreet of Aquincum.
The drunks were clearly no drunks at all, but a squad of tough frontier troops who had merely thrown back a few goblets of wine to help their supper go down. Furthermore, they were led by a keen-witted optio who actually read the despatches from legionary headquarters in Sirmium, and knew that the whole of this stretch of the river was under orders to be on the lookout for a fugitive Hun boy with distinctive blue tattoos and scars on his cheeks. A prince of the royal house of King Uldin, and a most valuable hostage. A boy called Attila’s sword was only half out of his scabbard when the optio placed two meaty hands on his shoulders and slammed him back against the wall of the gloomy street.
‘You, boy,’ he rasped, ‘your name?’
Attila said nothing, his slanted yellow eyes glittering.
The optio was about to rip the felt cap from the boy’s head, when he seemed to give a slight lurch backwards.
‘Sir?’ asked one his men, moving towards him.
The optio fell backwards into his soldier’s arms, staring wildly up at the sky, black blood gushing from his gaping, wordless mouth and over his stubbled chin.
And then Attila, the bloody sword still in his hand, was running down the street, dragging an open-mouthed Orestes after him. The soldiers’ wild shouts echoed from the high walls of the dank little street, and their hobnailed sandals rang on the cobbles as they pounded after them.
The boys twisted and turned through the narrow backstreets and shadowy courtyards of the town, trying to find their way to freedom, which had seemed so close.
‘If we’re caught,’ panted Orestes, ‘you will… won’t you?’ He drew his hand across his throat. ‘I’m not-’
‘Save your breath,’ said Attila harshly.
They pressed into the shadows of a wall behind some columns as the soldiers clattered past, their lungs aflame as they held their breath tight. Once the soldiers had gone, their breath exploded outwards and Orestes collapsed to his knees.
‘On your feet,’ hissed Attila.
‘Can’t,’ wheezed Orestes. ‘Just another-’
‘What happens to runaway slaves?’ demanded Attila cruelly. ‘Hands off? Eyes out?’
Orestes shook his head. ‘Please,’ he whispered.
Attila grabbed his arm and hauled. ‘Then on your feet, soldier. We’re nearly there.’
‘Where?’
‘The quayside.’
‘How do you know which way?’
Attila eyed him in the darkness. ‘Because land slopes down to a river, muttonbrain. Now let’s go.’
They ran on, downhill through the streets wherever possible, until at last they could hear water lapping against wooden barques and wharves, and smell the damp, pervading smell of the mile-wide river. Rats scurried in the darkness. The boys slid out between two huge wooden wharves and saw the gleam of the Danube. On their side, occasional lights and torches burnt from the churches and wealthier houses of the city, but on the eastern bank and beyond… nothing. Not a light showed from the black plains out there. Overhead, the uninterrupted, silvery shimmering of the Milky Way, the brilliant winter stars of Orion’s belt, and gleaming Sirius, the Dog Star, bringer of storms, rising and burning more brightly than any earthly light.
‘There,’ breathed Attila. ‘ There.’
They slipped down to the quayside and saw not a soul about. A cat mewed on one of the tethered grain-barges where it had been ratting, and eyed them pitifully and crept away. They approached the barge. It might be big enough for them to hide aboard somewhere, under some filthy and neglected canvas, or even inside a stinking coil of sodden rope.
There came the sound of horses’ hooves in the night, and they froze. Torchlight gradually spread along the ground from round the corners, and at last, at either end of the quay, they saw troops of frontier cavalry, as many as forty or fifty men. Attila, still clutching Orestes’ arm, made to run for the wooden quayside and hurl them both into the river. But a pair of cavalrymen spurred instantly into a gallop, and one hurled a Batavian net over the boys. They stumbled and fell, struggling as helplessly as flies in a web.