Attila: The Judgement Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  PART I

  Chapter 1 - MARGUS FAIR

  Chapter 2 - MARGUS FALLS

  Chapter 3 - THE VII

  Chapter 4 - TENS OF THOUSANDS

  Chapter 5 - MERCY AND TERROR

  Chapter 6 - THE TORTURE SHIP

  Chapter 7 - THE TOWERS

  Chapter 8 - THE RAM

  Chapter 9 - THE BOILER BOYS

  Chapter 10 - LAST STAND

  Chapter 11 - THE DUNGEONS

  Chapter 12 - FLIGHT

  PART II

  Chapter 1 - INTELLIGENCE

  Chapter 2 - POLITICS AND WITCHCRAFT

  Chapter 3 - TO THE HOLY CITY OF BYZANTIUM

  Chapter 4 - THE SHARK AND THE DRAGON

  Chapter 5 - YANKHIN

  Chapter 6 - THE CRUCIFIED

  Chapter 7 - PEACE AT LAST

  Chapter 8 - THE EMBASSY

  Chapter 9 - ORESTES

  Chapter 10 - THE VIPER

  Chapter 11 - THE BIRD-CATCHER

  Chapter 12 - THE PASS

  Chapter 13 - AZIMUNTIUM

  Chapter 14 - THE EMPRESS

  Chapter 15 - THE CAPTIVE

  Chapter 16 - THE SOLITARY CITY

  Chapter 17 - THE WALLS

  Chapter 18 - A HOLY MAN

  Chapter 19 - THE REFUGEES

  Chapter 20 - THE GREAT SIEGE

  Chapter 21 - NIGHT AND RAIN

  Chapter 22 - ST BARBARA GATE

  Chapter 23 - THE SICKNESS

  Chapter 24 - BLOOD AND GOLD

  PART III

  Chapter 1 - DEATH OF AN EMPRESS

  Chapter 2 - THE END OF TIMES

  Chapter 3 - LUCIUS THE BRITON

  Chapter 4 - THE TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION

  Chapter 5 - THE RIDDLE OF THE WOLF

  Chapter 6 - AMALASUNTHA

  Chapter 7 - AURELIANA

  Chapter 8 - THE CATALAUNIAN FIELDS

  Chapter 9 - THE HARVEST FIELD

  Chapter 10 - LORDS AMONG MEN

  Chapter 11 - THE MAD KING

  Chapter 12 - THE GOD WHO THUNDERED

  Chapter 13 - THE DEATH-BED

  Chapter 14 - DEATH OF A TRAITOR

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Praise for the Attila series

  ‘[A] rip-roaring account of the boyhood of Attila the Hun, a tale jam-packed with epic set pieces, bloody battles, a fair bit of history and the requisite lusty interludes . . . [a] gripping novel’

  Daily Mail

  ‘William Napier has a genius for making the blood-dimmed chaos of ancient history into the very stuff of thrilling narrative’

  Tom Holland, author of Rubicon and Persian Fire

  ‘He brings the fifth century back to horrible life and convincingly sets up the major players of the time for the turmoil that will have the world rocking on its axis . . . Attila’s a winner’

  Sunday Sport

  ‘William Napier’s rattling good yarn . . . Napier tells a great story, complete with smells and sounds, and lots of gore. The battle descriptions are particularly good . . . I couldn’t put it down’

  Big Issue

  ‘The final novel in the brilliant Attila trilogy ... is packed full of action, battles, politics and great characters. Gripping from first to last’

  Huddersfield Daily Examiner

  William Napier is the author of three previous novels. He lives in Dorset and travels widely. Attila: the Judgement is the third novel in the Attila trilogy.

  Attila: The Judgement

  WILLIAM NAPIER

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  An Orion ebook

  An Orion paperback

  First published in Great Britain in 2008

  by Orion

  This paperback published in 2008

  by Orion Books Ltd,

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette Livre UK company

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © William Napier 2008

  The right of William Napier to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

  in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of the copyright owner .

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  eISBN : 978 1 4091 1674 5

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  By William Napier

  Julia

  Attila: The Scourge of God

  Attila: The Gathering of the Storm

  Attila: The Judgement

  LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  Characters marked with an asterisk were real historical figures. The rest might have been.

  Aëtius* - Gaius Flavius Aëtius, born 398 in the frontier town of Silestria, in modern-day Bulgaria. The son of Gaudentius, Master-General of Cavalry, and himself later Master-General of the Roman Army in the West

  Aladar - Hun warrior, son of Chanat, one of Attila’s eight generals

  Amalasuntha* - only daughter of King Theodoric of the Visigoths

  Andronicus - captain of the Imperial Guard, Constantinople

  Arapovian - Count Grigorius Khachadour Arapovian, an Armenian nobleman

  Ariobarzanes - Lord of Azimuntium

  Athenaïs* - married to the eastern Emperor Theodosius II, and re-named Eudoxia

  Attila* - born 398, King of the Huns

  Bela - Hun general

  Cadoc - a Briton, son of Lucius

  Candac - Hun general

  Chanat - Hun general, father of Aladar

  Checa* - first wife of Attila

  Chrysaphius* - a Byzantine courtier

  Csaba - Hun general

  Dengizek* - eldest son of Attila

  Ellak* - son of Attila

  Enkhtuya - a Hun witch

  Galla Placidia* - born 388, daughter of Emperor Theodosius the Great, sister of Emperor Honorius, mother of Emperor Valentinian III

  Gamaliel - an aged, well-travelled medical man

  Genseric* - King of the Vandals

  Geukchu - Hun general

  Honoria* - daughter of Galla Placidia, sister of Valentinian

  Idilico - a Burgundian girl

  Jormunreik - Visigothic wolf-lord

  Juchi - Hun general

  Knuckles - baptised Anastasius, a Rhineland legionary

  Leo* - Bishop of Rome

  Little Bird - a Hun shaman

  Lucius - also Ciddwmtarth, a British leader of his people

  Malchus - a captain of cavalry

  Marcian* - eastern Emperor, 450-457, married to Pulcheria

  Nemesianus - a wealthy man of Aquileia

  Nicias - a Cretan alchemist

  Noyan - Hun general

  Odoacer* - a Gothic warlord

  Orestes* - a Greek by birth, Attila’s lifelong companion

  Priscus of Panium* - a humble scribe

  Pulcheria* - sister of Theodosius II

  Romulus Augustulus* - the last emperor

  Sabinus - Legionary Legate of the VII at Viminacium

  Sangiban* - King of the Alans

  Tarasicodissa Rousoumbladeotes* - Isaurian chieftai
n, also known as Zeno

  Tatullus - First Centurion of the VII at Viminacium

  Themistius* - an orator

  Theodoric* - King of the Visigoths, 419-451

  Theodoric* - Visigothic prince, eldest son of King Theodoric

  Theodosius* - eastern Emperor, 408-450

  Torismond* - Visigothic prince, son of King Theodoric

  Valamir - Visigothic wolf-lord

  Valentinian* - western Emperor, 425-455

  Vigilas* - a Byzantine courtier

  PART I

  The Fury

  1

  MARGUS FAIR

  The southern banks of the Danube, AD 449

  A morning in early summer. The great river meandering slowly through the rich Moesian plains and eastwards to the Euxine Sea. A patchwork of ploughland and meadow, and further away from the town, blossoming orchards and copses of ancient woodland. The smaller River Margus flowing down northwards from the hills to join the majestic Danube.

  Darting over the surface of the water, the bright green metallic flash of damselflies, and columns of tiny waterflies rising and falling in the warming summer air. Willows along the banks of the river and alders beside the damp streambeds. Black poplars releasing their fluffy white seeds in clouds, landing and revolving and floating on downstream. Minnows flashing and darting in shoals, trout in among the brown boulders, beautiful grayling. Nodding kingcups reflected in the water, and the meadows all around scattered with the yellow of marsh marigold and yellow flag. No sound but the wind rustling the reeds, or the single peep of a duckling as it raced over the water back to its mother, beating its stubby little wings to no effect.

  Riverine nature so peaceful and serene on this morning in early May, that for a brief moment you might think yourself back in Adam’s Eden, long before the Fall.

  And then the shadow of a heron over the waters, cruising in silent and low, its cold and passionless yellow eyes swivelling downwards in search of prey.

  Come closer to the little town of Margus with its ancient walls and its cathedral tower with its solitary iron bell, and you hear the sound of human bustle and chatter. There are naked children laughing and splashing in the shallows, brown and shiny as pebbles, mischievously opening the sallow-wood fish-traps and letting the fish swim free. There is laughter on the roads, and then in the meadows stretching up to the walls of the town itself, laid out in many colours and resounding with the languages of many different peoples - the great and celebrated Margus fair.

  A vast, rowdy, polyglot encampment, teeming with energy, enterprise and greed. Open-sided canvas tents and pied awnings and stalls of carved and painted wood. People buying and selling with clacking tongues and a whole grammar of gestures and winks and hand signals. Buyers slowly producing worn leather purses from inside their robes, and sellers biting coins to test their worth - plenty of bronze coins around that have been washed with arsenic to make them pass for silver. Fur merchants from the far north, from beyond the Roman Empire, selling bearskin and marten, beaver and sable. Bright-eyed songbirds whistling in their osier cages. Everywhere the savour of smoking fish and roasting meat, and girls selling slugs of wine straight from the barrel in wooden cups. More elaborate inns and taverns under canvas. Pickpockets, of course, preying on the drunk and unwary, and women looking for husbands or at least money, walking light-stepped and lazy-eyed, swaying their hips between the groups of men.

  Further off, the warm ripe smell of livestock in wooden corrals. Cattle dealers and sheep sellers communicating in their secret language and occult numbers, with barely discernible nods and winks for deals. And the air everywhere filled with greetings and curses, jests and lewd remarks, the high piping cries of excited children, the cackle of geese, and a single screaming monkey in a cage. From the land of the Nubians, so the monkey-seller said, without any great conviction. The monkey reached out its paw and pulled the hair of unwary bystanders. And all this ripe human chaos under the supposed regulation of a handful of frontier troops from the towering legionary fortress of Viminacium, ten miles east.

  There was a girl there, a gentle, dreamy girl with a hare-shot lip, because a hare had walked across her mother’s path when she was pregnant with her. So they said. She carried a yoke of wooden pails and sold goat’s milk by the cupful, but she was not in truth a bold or assertive seller and she made little money. She too frequently gave cupfuls of milk away to hungry-eyed, plaintive children pestering her. When she returned at the day’s end, her mother would scold her for not having sold enough, accusing her of daydreaming her days away. And scold her even more for not having found a husband to take her off her poor old mother’s hands.

  She disliked jostling crowds, and was drawn to the edge of the fair where the gaudy tents and stalls gave way to open meadows, and then the low line of the hills to the west, and the jut of Mons Aureus, the mountain of gold, with its fabulous mines. The vaults of Viminacium were full of gold, so they said. When it was transported down the great imperial trunk road to the emperor in Constantinople, it went with an escort of a thousand men. And the emperor . . . the girl always imagined him as made of gold himself, seated on his high throne covered in gold leaf, like a statue, immobile, unapproachable. A living god.

  Now she lingered shyly before an old woman’s canopy of grubby canvas supported on gnarled staves.

  ‘Come you in, girl, come you in. It’s a lover you’ll be wanting at your age!’

  The old woman grinned and bobbed about among her strange wares, performing almost a little dance, her white hair in a tight bun, her ringed fingers fluttering. The old woman was no witch, no purveyor of instruments for cruelty, malice and revenge, but only a fortune-teller. A preacher had earlier that morning come out of the town to stand by her tent and preach on the text ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, but the people only scowled at him and passed on, leaving the preacher impotent and the old woman alone and unlynched.

  The girl hesitantly set down her pails and the old woman took her hand and drew her in. Within the shadows of the tent there were animals’ feet and tails, and strangely shaped stones like seashells, long dyed feathers of heron and bustard, tufts of multicoloured rags tied round sticks topped with small brass bells, leather pouches of herbs, bottles of dubious liquor. Then something else caught the girl’s eye, something very beautiful, which she took at first for a mirror. A little vanity such as rich ladies use to admire themselves when they are carried to dinner in their gilded litters, through the grand wide streets of great cities. Jewelled ladies with their white-chalked faces and forearms and little flattering mirrors.

  The old fortune-teller knew at once what she wanted and bobbed over and retrieved it. It was a strange box made from hinged coloured glass, held together with silver wires. It would be very costly and the girl had no money but for the few desultory coppers she had earned so far that morning. But the old woman brought the coloured glass box out into the sunshine anyway and passed it to her without mockery.

  ‘Look into it,’ she said. ‘Hold it up to the light. Some see the world as it is, though in many pretty colours. But some, who have the gift, see the world as it will be.’

  The girl hesitated. She didn’t know that she believed in such things. Not really. Besides, who has the strength to see their own future? Especially a poor goat-girl with a scold of a mother and a hare-shot lip?

  The woman nodded encouragingly. ‘Look, child. The future may yet be sweet, and you have the gift.’

  Somewhere in the distance there was a boy crying out from the river, drawing up his boat. Yelling, screaming about something. Running towards the fair. It was all the excitement no doubt, nothing more.

  So the girl held the little box of coloured glass up before her face and opened one of the delicate little hinges. It was the deep red glass that she held up to her eyes, and she looked through and shuddered. Because she saw the world as if covered in blood. The mountain of gold to the west was a mountain of blood. The screaming of the boy running up from the river
grew louder, closer. She saw the straggling meadows leading away along the river bank, groups of people carrying their baskets, pushing their handbarrows, coming through the long grass towards the fair on this gentle summer day. And beyond that, the low line of hills still catching the morning sun, but all red, all clouded red. The future.

  She felt the old woman tugging at her sleeve, heard her saying something, and was about to tear her eyes away from this ghastly vision, this world of a blood-red future, when a movement in the far distance caught her eye, and instead of lowering the evil box she continued to stare through its red haze.

  Rising up over the crest of the low hills to the west, she saw a line of horsemen. Banners in the breeze and spears against the sky.