I looked at the body of old Felix. His face still carried a look of surprise, or perhaps of faint alarm.
‘Was he found in his bed?’ I asked with the slow clarity you use when addressing barbarian slaves. The old man who’d already spoken began jabbering again. I was beginning to get inside the local dialect. So long as you put out of your mind that these were in any sense the posterity of the ancients, and so long as you didn’t try to follow every single meaning, it was turning out easy enough. Certainly, it wasn’t hard to gather that he had been found in his bed. But my vague supposition that he’d shut himself in with a smoking brazier was crossed out by the news that all his windows had been left wide open.
I bent down and stared at the withered corpse. There was a mottling on what I could see of the chest, and a smell of corruption that suggested the old man had been dead for at least a day and a night. I pulled at the smallest possible area of a stained sleeve. The arm moved easily. ‘No stiffness of death,’ I muttered. These things always depend on surrounding conditions. But if he’d lasted out the morning after we left him, it would have been a surprise. I’d assume it was a broken heart. There was no value in assuming otherwise. I looked again at the dead face and pursed my lips. ‘There are mysteries in life,’ I said in Latin, ‘that are best overlooked.’ I couldn’t tell if Martin had understood my full meaning. But he bowed piously and, with Theodore, went back to praying over the dead interpreter.
It was shortly before noon when I caught up with Priscus on the southern wall. He’d been dictating in Latin to Gundovald’s secretary. Head uncovered, the boy’s hair shone very blond in the sunlight. I looked at him just a moment longer than I’d intended.
Priscus broke in with a cynical laugh. ‘If you’ve come about the dawn attack,’ he said, ‘you can rest easy that it didn’t get very far.’
‘A dawn attack?’ I asked, joining Priscus in Latin.
‘Oh, don’t look so scared, my pretty young man,’ he replied in an easy drawl. ‘Your face has gone a red that entirely obscures the leftovers of your wanking spot.’ He laughed and made a crude gesture that provoked one of my darker scowls.
It didn’t help that the blond boy behind me now let out an idiotic snigger.
‘I wouldn’t call it an attack, though,’ Priscus explained. ‘It was probably no more than an uninstructed attempt by a few dozen boys with more courage than sense.’ He waved the blond boy out of hearing and leaned carefully against the topmost stones of the wall. The wooden platform shook under our combined weight. He shut his eyes, and, as if by effort of will alone, stood up. He put a hand on my shoulder and directed me to a small huddle of barbarians who stood behind the ruined wall of what had been a house.
‘What is that?’ I asked, nodding at the crude assembly of timbers. ‘You did assure me,’ I said when I knew I could keep my voice steady, ‘that these people knew nothing of siege warfare.’
‘My dear Alaric,’ came the sneered reply, ‘if barbarians are generally ignorant, most of them aren’t stupid. Look at yourself.’ He laughed unpleasantly as I couldn’t keep a second blush from spreading over my face. ‘Look at that gorgeous little thing over there,’ he added with a nod at the boy. ‘Never assume these people aren’t capable of learning from their betters. If they really were dumb animals, we’d still have a governor in York, and the pair of you’d be running about some northern forest with your arses painted blue!’
He laughed again and went back to looking hard at what was undoubtedly a wheeled battering ram. It lacked only the covering of hides needed to protect it from fire and arrows. ‘They were lining it up against just the right stretch of wall,’ he said with an approving nod. ‘If you’d come here earlier, you’d have seen those duffers now sheltering against our bowmen picking up their dead. We’ll chase them properly off in a while. Then I’ll send a few men down to set fire to that thing. They can also recover the arrows. We aren’t exactly flush in that department.’ He coughed and spat over the wall. ‘It would help if the external ditch hadn’t been allowed to fill up with rubbish,’ he added with mild disgust.
He pointed at one of the bodies. ‘You’d have imagined, with all the talk of famine,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that these people would have looked a little more starved. I’ll grant these were the young of the higher class. But, if the others look wasted, you can’t set these numbers in motion when there’s nothing at all to put in their bellies. A bit odd, don’t you think, my dear?’
‘You thought there would be a parley,’ I said. ‘Any indication of one yet?’
As I spoke, there was the sudden blast of a trumpet from the other side of a wall. As we’d been speaking, a small gaggle of men had come in sight. The trumpet went silent, and the smallest of the men stood forward.
‘You will open the gates for the men of the Great Chief,’ he squealed in Latin. ‘You will let us take the food and precious things that may lie within your city. If not, we will break down your walls with overpowering force, and give your city over to burning and killing till not one stone stands upon another, and not one of you remains alive. We will do to you as we have done to the other cities. None shall help you.’ He went off into a long enunciation of the horrors of a sack. Fortunately, there were only three of us in hearing able to follow its chilling promises of blood and fire.
The herald stopped and arranged his features into a smile. ‘But the Great Kutbayan does not desire your lives,’ he shrilled. ‘He is ever merciful, ever forbearing to those who do his bidding. Open your gates and give what you have within them, and your lives will surely be spared.’
To my left, I heard the sudden whizz of a couple of arrows. One of these flew straight past the herald. Another brushed the neck of the trumpeter. I saw him fall to his knees, blood spraying from where the arrow had barely touched him. There was a burst of cheering from the archers as he clapped a hand over his severed blood vessel, and then fell straight forward on to an area of broken mosaic flooring.
Priscus darted along the rickety platform and slapped someone on the back. ‘Good show!’ he cried happily. He disappeared into a crowd of young tradesmen, and the choking sounds beyond the wall were smothered in cries of pleased enthusiasm. Another of the archers pulled his bow back to the chest and let fly. This time, the arrow missed by a foot. But the herald was already hurrying out of range.
‘Did I hear the name Kutbayan?’ I asked when Priscus was back beside me.
‘Such sharp ears you have!’ he said with a happy grin. ‘Though I really did assume you’d guessed that much already. I don’t think the Great Chief has caught up yet with his subjects. But I have no doubt he’ll put in at least a brief appearance later today.’ He caught the look on my face and gave a really nasty smile. ‘Yes, it will be Kutbayan himself if I’m not mistaken — Kutbayan who fed every officer in that army we sent against him feet first into the cogs of a water mill; Kutbayan who placed thin boards over all the children of Pentapolis and made the parents dance until they were pulverised like grapes in a press.
‘Do tell me, Alaric dearest, if you think suicide a really terrible sin,’ he asked with another of his cheerful grins. ‘Believe me that the fires of Hell might not compare with what the Great Chief has in mind for us. How you dispatch Martin and his family is for you to decide. But do leave little Maximin to me. I know so much about the infliction of pain, that I can make death gentler than a kiss good night.’
I gripped the rough stones of the wall and waited for the tremor in my knees to pass away. Pile horror high enough on horror, and anyone will buckle. ‘I hear you had an argument with Irene,’ I said, changing the subject.
‘The old witch tried to change my defence orders for the residency,’ he said, spitting over the wall again. ‘She’s useful to make sure that food and hot water come at the right time. But I’ll take a cane to her if she tries acting the man in every respect.’