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.