Death of an Empire (8 page)

‘Or the citizens of Tournai put up very little resistance,’ Myrddion murmured in agreement.

‘Peasants and traders are rarely skilled in the dance of death. Perhaps they threw themselves on the mercy of the attacking army.’

‘More fool them, if they did!’

As the road turned towards the walled town, another dark mound revealed itself to be a pile of dead bodies that had been flung haphazardly into one spot to spare the army from any threat of disease. Kites, crows, ravens, domestic cats and even stray dogs rose angrily from their feast and slunk or flew away from the approach of the wagons to wait until they could return to their feeding. By what was left of the dress of the ransacked and partially stripped bodies, the healers could tell that these citizens had been farmers or traders, men who had found that pitchforks and domestic knives were no match against iron swords, spears and arrows.

But of all the casualties, the children affected them the most. The lower arm of one small child lay under a heap of tangled adults, fingers already gnawed away to stumps by scavengers and its palm mutely appealing for mercy, while nearby a large bird hopped away from the belly of a young boy. Finn cursed and threw a rock at the ungainly creature, which turned one baleful, yellow eye towards him before slowly taking to the wing.

‘All creatures of the earth must eat,’ Brangaine murmured from the wagon, one hand covering the eyes of Willa, who was sucking her thumb in distress. ‘Are these dumb beasts any less deserving than us? At least the scavengers clean up the mess that men have left in this place of tears.’

As the wagons moved inexorably forward, the remains of the gates of Tournai slowly hove into view.

Timber trunks had been used to fashion a war machine that could take advantage of the only weakness in the walls of the town. Myrddion could see the large tree trunk that had been used as a
battering ram to smash the great latch open, and the remains of fires that had been set to burn the timbers and weaken the planks around the iron-braced supports. The expertise of the attackers was obvious to any eyes that understood the ruthless trade of war. Tournai’s defences had been breached by a determined, brutal and well-organised enemy.

Shattered timbers were all that remained of the huge double gates, and the healers soon found more corpses lying in untidy piles where they had perished. As Myrddion and his apprentices walked into the cramped space within the gate, it was plain that these men had tried to defend the town. Their weaponry was clearly Roman in design, but they were obviously incapable of protecting themselves against an army intent on rape and plunder. Most of the bodies were of old men or very young boys on the brink of adulthood, causing Myrddion to wonder about the fate of the able-bodied. A few black-fletched and broken arrows spoke mutely of defences that had been mounted in the stone houses closest to the wall, and Cadoc found the corpse of one boy whose ruined hand still held a slingshot.

Search as they might for any sign of life during the gruesome day that followed, the healers discovered that Tournai was a dead town, stripped of anything of value and then burned. No wounded survivors, no items of value and no hope remained after the passage of an army whose aim was complete destruction.

As the wagons skirted the city walls, Finn caught a flash of light in the trees to their right. For a brief instant, he expected armed horsemen to ride threateningly out of the lengthening shadows under the trees, as if the reflection of light on a sword blade had betrayed the presence of watchers. Then cold reason overrode his moment of panic as he realised that the army was long gone, for their tracks were quite evident in the trampled grasses, heading towards the south where, the healers had been
told, the town of Cambrai, a Frankish centre, lay open for plunder.

‘I saw something flash on the edge of the forest,’ Finn murmured softly to Myrddion. ‘Someone is still alive, but they seem keen to remain in hiding.’

Myrddion followed Finn’s pointing arm with his quick black eyes. At first the hidden survivor was elusive, but then, just when the healer was about to turn away, weak sunshine struck a reflective surface and pinpointed its position under a coppice of trees.

‘We’re being watched, master,’ Finn said reflectively, as he fumbled for his long knife under the seat of the wagon with one booted foot.

‘I see it, Finn! If this observer wants us, then he’ll find some way to approach us. I’ll not risk the women and our tools of trade to explore the forest. Every tree could hide an enemy warrior.’

The wagons creaked into movement, the groan of the huge iron-braced wheels almost drowning the sound of the horse’s hooves as they slid on the rough stone surface. The steady slap of one open flap of the wagon’s leather cover was a comforting counterpoint to the complaint of the wooden axles. With one eye on the far-off forest, Finn Truthteller urged the horses into greater effort with a deft flick of the reins.

No survivors crowded the roads. No terrified peasants clustered around the wagons for an illusion of comfort. The cleared farmlands were fecund with growth, but every wooden dwelling had been looted before being gutted by fire. Even the dead became commonplace as their remains swelled in the sunshine. Sickened, Myrddion gave the order that they should push on to whatever lay ahead, leaving the bodies to be absorbed back into the earth whence they had come. Three men could never hope to bury so many.

The healers travelled for three days, finding game wherever they could in the dark shadows of the forest. Although hunger was
beginning to hollow their bellies, Myrddion was not yet sufficiently desperate to hack half-rotted meat from the corpses of beasts that the marauders had placed in streams to foul the water and poison what remained of the local citizenry.

On the fourth day, as they crossed a narrow bridge, the healers saw Cambrai before them. The town had been warned of the approach of the enemy, so the devastation was less obvious outside the solid rock walls that protected the city. Terrified by the smoke from burning Tournai, the peasants had begged for shelter within Cambrai’s defences. The walls possessed a cyclopean strength, for the Romans who had built the city had learned to trust nothing and no one in this brutish country. The legions had brought order and prosperity to Cambrai, but ambitious kings now squabbled over the proceeds of peace.

Once again, the travellers saw the evidence of the burning of the enemy dead, as at Tournai, but the patch of scorched earth here was larger in size, the charred remains less scrupulously honoured and the mute possessions of dead warriors less carefully sifted. Myrddion gathered that Cambrai had resisted her rapists, and guessed that the enemy had taken time to ensure that she paid terribly for her impudence. Long before they reached the shattered gates, the stench of swollen corpses, burned meat and hot, cracked stone warned the healers that there would be nothing left alive within.

‘Our watcher is still with us,’ Finn Truthteller hissed as he caught a glimpse of telltale sunshine reflecting on metal at the edge of the tree line.

‘Aye,’ Myrddion murmured. ‘He’s been keeping pace with us for days, but he’ll approach when he’s good and ready.’

Finn Truthteller stared at his master with the intensity of a mature warrior who is faced with an enigma. Master Myrddion was so young, barely old enough to take a sharp knife to his
beardless cheeks, but the lad possessed that rare quality of inscrutability, coupled with the patience of wild things that wait on the edges of dark places for any unwary animal or man who intrudes on their domain. Observing his master’s raven hair, and the black eyes that seemed to trap the light so effectively, Finn could understand why King Vortigern had been prepared to sacrifice a younger Myrddion to appease the gods and the spirits of the earth. Sometimes, Myrddion frightened Truthteller with those obsidian eyes that saw everything and revealed nothing.

Impatiently, the warrior flexed his stiff shoulders in rejection of such superstition. His master was clever beyond measure and old beyond his years. If the lad could wait to discover what threat the forest sheltered, then so could he, a grown man and a wounded soul whom only Myrddion had tried his best to heal.

‘The town appears to be intact, but the smell is vile. If the Huns are the enemy, they leave nothing alive to betray it.’

‘But Cambrai resisted. So let’s see the worst. Perhaps someone still lives!’ Myrddion pulled his leather satchel onto his shoulder as Finn flicked the reins on the flanks of the horses.

Cambrai could have been Tournai’s twin. The gates had been ripped apart by battering rams and fire, and a great slaughter had taken place within the narrow streets that led directly to the gates. On this occasion, the enemy hadn’t bothered to pile the citizens into mounds, but had looted them where they fell. Even so, Myrddion could imagine the desperate last battle fought in the alleyways and narrow twisting lanes of the town as old men, boys, and even women had used whatever makeshift weapons were to hand. For the victors, the sacking of Cambrai had been hard won. Every street, no matter how narrow, had been taken with the loss of many men, while the defenders appeared to have perished trying to slow the inexorable advance. As Finn and his master picked their way through the smashed wood, burned stones and
heaped bodies, they found the smell of the dead and rotting corpses so nauseating that they were forced to tie cloths across their noses and mouths.

‘Who were the people who defended this place?’ Myrddion asked Finn Truthteller, struck as he was by the height, the breadth of shoulder and the greying yellow hair of many of the corpses that lay near the inner gates.

Finn shrugged and whistled piercingly to Cadoc to catch the attention of the scarred Celt. ‘You speak the language of a sort, Cadoc. Have you heard anything about these men who fought to the death here?’

‘I believe the defenders of this town were Franks, master,’ Cadoc replied as he drew his wagon to a halt just inside the gates where the piled corpses forced him to halt. ‘See, master! They wear red cloaks, or at least most of them seem to have done so. They have fierce moustaches, but they often leave the rest of their faces bare and their hair is allowed to grow, just like our warriors’. The Franks originally came from the north, and like all good northerners they are totally dedicated to war.’

The Celtic warrior picked his way forward over the uneven stone paving and used his booted foot to turn over the corpse of a grey-haired man who had been hacked by sword blades in a dozen places.

‘His hand is bloody to the wrist, so he must have slain many men before he was killed. His gods will honour him in the Otherworld.’

Myrddion observed that the half-naked man was indeed splattered with blood, much of which wasn’t his own. An undershirt that was too torn to be worth stealing was soaked in gore almost to the elbow, and his empty fist was still clenched as if it clutched the hilt of his sword.

‘This man wasn’t a peasant. A finger was severed to remove a
ring after his death, and something valuable was torn from his throat.’

‘Aye, master. Blood surrounds him – far more than his own body could hold. He made his murderers pay before they cut him down.’

In an action that was very gentle and respectful, Cadoc turned the slain Frank back onto his face so the birds couldn’t devour his cold blue eyes. Myrddion nodded his approval, touched that Cadoc should offer this small dignity to a man now deep in the shadows of the Otherworld.

‘Aye, Cadoc. Let him go to his gods with his eyes intact. Let him see his enemies perish, as they surely will!’

Cadoc stared up at his master, his own eyes rounded with superstition.

‘No, I don’t see their destruction, Cadoc. But such wanton carnage will not be permitted to go unpunished by the Romans. Our erstwhile masters are a dour people, even if they are now in decline. We Celts have good reason to remember how they repay blows to the face. Where are our druids? They’re dead on the bloody shores of Mona. Where are Boudicca and her daughters? Long executed, regardless of their sex or status in their land. But these invaders go too far, for they leave the good earth barren behind them. When the Romans eventually force them to retreat, where will they find shelter or food for so large an army?’

Cambrai and the atrocities enacted within its flame-scarred walls left Myrddion’s heart sick with regret. Girls no older than children had been raped, and then hacked to pieces. Their pitiful flanks, stained with their own blood, were affronts to any decent-thinking man. Even babes had not been spared, although their mothers had fought with nails and teeth when no other weapons had been at hand. Saddened, and feeling unclean, the healers carefully checked the detritus and rubble of Cambrai before
leaving to sleep outside the walls where the air almost seemed fresh.

In the weeks that followed, the healers travelled along straight, wide roads into the south: to Amiens, to Beauvais and onward towards Parigi, and in each town the same picture of violence was left as mute testimony to an enemy that showed no pity for the helpless, nor mercy to the innocent. Piles of corpses, burned crops and desecrated temples left a vast, charred track, as if a monster had dragged its hideous body across the earth, killing everything in its path with its poisonous breath.

The Hun had spared Parigi and, once the terrified citizenry had been persuaded to open the gates, Myrddion’s party replenished their supplies. While Cadoc sought out what poor fare could be purchased from the skittish traders, Myrddion questioned an old soldier who spoke some Latin.

‘The city owes a huge debt to a holy woman called Geneviève who went forward to meet the Hun, barefoot and unarmed,’ Myrddion reported to Cadoc and Finn later that evening as they settled into their campsite outside the city gates. ‘Attila admired her bravery and permitted the city to live.’

‘That’s madness!’ Cadoc exclaimed. ‘How could a commander be so ruthless on the one hand and then spare the wealthiest city in the land because of a religeuse? It makes no sense!’

‘This Geneviève is supposed to be a woman of great sanctity, while Attila is a very superstitious man, or so my soldier friend told me. Whatever the truth of the matter, Geneviève is alive and so is Parigi. We must give thanks, for tonight we have full bellies and a small supply of food for our future needs. With luck, we will have sufficient food to reach Aurelianum.’