Orestes’ leg throbbed with its new, twisted form, but it did not yet give him agony. Despite the broken bone jutting out like a malignant lump under the skin, the terror and excitement of their flight somehow dulled the pain. For now.
‘We must go on,’ said Attila. ‘Follow me.’
Beyond the orchard was a stony cart-track, and then the dense reeds along the river’s edge. Cavalrymen from the fort were spreading out all along the track, blocking all approaches to the river.
The two boys crouched at the edge of the orchard and peered out through the long grass. There was no moon, but even the winter stars seemed cruelly bright.
‘We’re trapped,’ moaned Orestes. ‘And the boat’s just there, near that broken-down old landing-stage.’
Attila stared at him.
‘Just there,’ said Orestes, indicating the place with a jerk of his head. ‘I found it.’
‘You found a boat?’ said Attila. ‘And you still came back for me?’
Orestes shrugged, embarrrassed.
Attila gazed across the misty river. Once they were back on the windy plains, he thought, there would be no manacles for either of them. Nor would he permit his friend to be hobbled, as most of the Huns’ slaves were: the tendons in the heels were cut to stop them running away. But this Greek boy – he would be treated differently.
He slipped away and came back a few moments later with a stout-looking stick which he handed to Orestes.
‘When you can,’ he whispered, ‘run for the boat.’
‘Run?’
‘Well, hobble or whatever.’
‘But they’ll see me. Where will you be?’
‘In the river.’
‘Can’t they follow you in? Can’t they swim?’
‘Are you joking?’ said Attila. ‘Some of those Batavian cavalry units can swim a horse across a river in full armour. But…’ He looked around desperately. ‘Well, whatever.’ And he was gone.
He made his way along the edge of the orchard, and then down a filthy-smelling drainage ditch that ran to the river. The soldiers in their winter cloaks were still spread out along the frosty cart-track, looking uncertain, their orders vague. Somewhere the white-haired officer was riding around in a rage, but the chain of command seemed chaotic.
Attila drew in a deep breath, leapt from the ditch and ran.
He ran straight between two startled horsemen and on into the reeds, slowing horribly as his feet were sucked down into the oozing mud. He hallooed as he stumbled on.
The horsemen shouted and galloped after him, but they, too, were slowed down in the thick reeds and the clinging, viscous mud. The boy felt a rope whistle past his ear and fall with a sigh into the reeds. He grinned and struggled on, knee-deep in mud. No one could throw a rope as well as a Hun.
He felt gravel under his feet, and the reeds thinned out, and he hurled himself forwards into the freezing river.
Orestes watched as the horsemen on the track all made for the place where Attila had dived in. They gathered in a useless knot, leaving the track unguarded. He hobbled to his feet, clutching the stout stick in both hands, his broken leg dragging behind him. Clenching his teeth to keep his agony silent, he hauled himself over the cart-track like the sorriest cripple in the empire, and on into the reeds beyond. He wasn’t seen.
Dragging himself through the ooze of the mud was harder. With his whole weight on only one foot he sank deeper with every step, and the stick sank deeper still. He cursed his bad luck for having fallen from the wall. But he dragged himself onward, his lungs aflame as if he had just run five miles. Every muscle in his body ached. Even his neck ached terribly – he couldn’t understand why – but he went on.
Upriver, there was no sign of the Hun boy but for a stream of bubbles on the surface. No more than a diving otter might make in the black, starlit waters.
At last Orestes got to the boat and hauled it down to deeper water. He pushed off, utterly exhausted, with the single oar and with the stick on each side. Then, almost collapsed in the bow of the boat, which was dangerously low in the water, he began to paddle, a stroke each side of the bow, like a barbarian in a dug-out canoe on the Rhine.
He didn’t know what he was supposed to do next. His head spun, his limbs burnt, his eyes were almost blind with sweat and dizziness. He heard shouts from the bank, and heavy splashes, and knew he had been spotted, and that the cavalrymen were dismounting and diving in, or ordering their own boats upriver, or even plunging in on horseback like true Batavians, as the Hun boy had said.
Then he was aware of another sound, and looking blearily down he saw two hands appear on the gunwale of the boat, then two arms and a soggy top-knot, and then a round head with yellow, glittering eyes. With a great gasp and heave, as if he still had as much energy and strength left in him as ever, Attila was up over the side of the rocking boat and into the back.
‘Give me the oar!’ he shouted, grabbing it from the startled Orestes, and he began to paddle furiously, one side then the other.
Dark shapes bobbed on the river upstream: the heads of men and horses. Downstream, near the fort, showed the black hulls of the legion’s river fleet. But they were too slow. The boys were already in midstream and crossing fast.
Attila knew it. ‘Here’ he said, tossing the oar to Orestes, who took it with weariness but without complaint. To Orestes’ astonishment, Attila got to his feet, and began dancing like a lunatic in the stern of the dangerously unstable little boat. He shook his fists and tossed his angry head at the speechless soldiers staring from the bank and the river.
‘You fucking arseholes! You thick, Roman bastards!’ he screamed. ‘You useless fucking scumsucking motherfucking sad-arsed abortions of men! You haven’t got a hope in hell of catching us, you steaming sacks of mule-shit! Come and get us if you can, you fucking Roman wankers! Astur piss on you all!’ He stopped jigging for a moment and turned, raised his tunic and bared his buttocks at them. Still there came no sound from the soldiers or their open-mouthed officers.
He resumed his taunting. ‘You couldn’t run a bath, you couldn’t invade a fucking Corinthian brothel, you feckless big-nosed cunts! You dog-breathed turds of the devil! You try swimming after us and you’ll sink to the bottom like lead weights, shitbrains! Come on, try and get us! Come on! Arseholes!’
He whirled to face Orestes, grinning with insane delight, his eyes aflame with a burning, furious madness. In the darkness, Orestes couldn’t see the soldiers’ faces, but he saw that their dim shapes had stopped dead in the shallows, still mounted. He could imagine their expressions.
Attila turned back again. ‘Losers! Abortions! Scumsuckers! Pigfuckers! You’re all going to rot in hell! Rome’s going to fall! We’ll be back, and there’ll be nothing left of your rotting fucking empire but a heap of blood and rubble!’ He wiped spittle from his mouth on his ragged sleeve. ‘And fuck your emperor, and his sister, too! Fuck him right up his scrawny chicken arse!’
Almost choking with lunatic laughter, he sank down in the stern of the boat. He leant his head back, raised his fists at the stars and cried one last time, ‘Fucker-r-r-s!’
At dawn, a company of the Palatine Guard arrived at Aquincum.
‘You have the Hun boy held captive,’ rasped their commander, a lieutenant with half his face collapsed and shapeless from injury. ‘Where is he?’
‘Dismount and salute when you address your superior officer!’ roared the colonel, red with rage.
In answer, the Palatine lieutenant simply held out a sheet of parchment with the imperial seal on it. The colonel lost his confidence at that moment.
‘The Hun boy,’ repeated the lieutenant.
‘He… he’s escaped,’ said the colonel.
The Palatine looked at him in disbelief. ‘Escaped? From a frontier fort?’
‘He had an accomplice. What do you want him for, anyway?’
‘No business of yours.’
The colonel looked away over the river, quite calm now, in the face of his impending punishment at the edge of the sword. ‘He has gone away across the Danube, back to his people.’