Pendragon and Merlin's Tomb

by C J Brown

  11

  Attila the Hun

  As the first snow of winter fell, the barbarian horde began the final leg of their journey. Ten thousand men and two thousand expendables marched east toward Verona on a journey that would take three days. There were small hamlets along the way, none, however, worth sacking.

  At the head of twelve thousand souls, the king of the Hun tribe, Attila, sat perched on his draft horse. Trained to transport the king, the breed of horse that was normally used to drag and plow the fields had a strong back and thick legs. Attila’s stables were filled with draft horses bred expressly for one of the heaviest men in all of Germania.

  Attila was impatient. A fowl mood hung around him as the soldiers got underway. Sitting bare-chested, high on his beast, he didn’t care that he presented himself as the obvious target of any archer hiding behind the tree lines. His dreadlocks, thick and long, fell past his shoulders and covered some of the ink and scars that decorated his sunburnt skin. Each drawing and every scar told a story about his life and the history of his tribe.

  Before Attila, the Huns were nomadic, roaming from one land to another, picking up different groups as they moved. Mostly rejects of communities, people who could not belong in more established towns, joined these nomadic travelers. Over time, the population of the migratory culture grew and resources to provide for their lifestyle dried up rapidly wherever they went.

  To the farmers and merchants along the way, the Huns were like locusts, damaging the crops everywhere they went. Gradually, the Huns were detested and fought off everywhere they went. Organically, they grew from roamers to marauders. As marauders, they organized under a King and became soldiers. The increased ability brought with it a heightened sense of greed. The greediest of all tribal leaders, Attila pointed to the lands south of the Alps and questioned why the Romans had more wealth than his people. And he told them that the gods did not approve.

  “I am the chosen one,” he had claimed to his people. “The gods have chosen me to lead our people south and harvest their crops, eat their food, wear their clothes, and live like them. Follow me. Fight with me. And we will fulfill the command of the gods.”

  Every address he gave his people, the message was the same until men, women, and children, motivated by greed, saw Attila as the only one who could satisfy their longing while fulfilling the command of the gods.

  Now, at the height of his rule and at the cusp of victory, this was to be the journey that finally led to the success that he desired. Twenty thousand men waited for him and his ten thousand. It was a sizable army that had taken a lifetime to build, and would now be able to vanquish the northern legion in the east. From there, marching down to Rome would be child’s play, Attila believed.

  As he inched closer to Verona, his army, five men wide and two thousand ranks long, stretched a league behind him. Catapults and weapons, pulled by thousands of men, moved slowly, making the short distance between the two towns a three-day affair.

  They ate while they marched, and stopped only to sleep between the hours of midnight and dawn. No camps were erected for rest. They slept on the road where they stopped, then arose and continued marching. Not a second was wasted. The gods’ will was at hand.

  As they marched, Attila prepared his mind for battle. He envisioned one face—the man he would battle to the death. It was a face he had dreamt about for a decade. It was the face of the man who had slain his wife and children and made Attila a king without a bloodline. It was the face of Rome’s greatest general and the man who should have been the emperor—Uther Pendragon.

  Revenge had fueled Attila’s plans. When he first developed the idea of sacking Rome, it was purely because he assumed that it would be Uther on the throne by the time he got there. But since then, Uther had been cheated out of the throne. He couldn’t change his objective, and in fact, vanquishing the vain and foolish Lucius would be easier, he thought.

  “Riders approaching, my lord,” Bishkar shouted, breaking his train of thought.

  Attila exited his dream and focused on the road ahead. Dawn had shed enough light to be able to see a full league down the straight path.

  “Continue moving,” Attila replied. Inside, he wondered what news the riders brought. They were one of theirs. The colors waving above them promised that much. Attila believed that it was news from Adolphus. A pragmatic man when he needed to be, he determined that this would not be good news as Adolphus would have waited to share good tidings. This was a warning of some sort.

  “My lord—”

  “Sire!” Attila shouted. “I am not your lord. I am your king.”

  The man on the horse shook himself out of the sudden daze the loud and booming voice had placed him.

  “A thousand apologies, sire. The road is long and I had to move swiftly to reach. I am not from your tribe.”

  “In time for what?”

  “General Arthur asked me to deliver a message.”

  “Who is General Arthur and why do I care about his message?”

  “Arthur, son of Uther, general of Germina Maxima, protector of the Limes Germanicus, servant of the emperor Lucius is the sender of the message and you should care about the message because, in his kindness, he wishes to spare the life of the army behind you. Twelve thousand men, is it not?”

  Attila was not liking this messenger who had a strange arrogance that permeated his pale skin and slapped Attila in the face. Before Attila could respond, another of the riders behind the lead, led a horse toward the front and handed it to one of the Huns. It carried two bloody sacks on both sides of the saddle.

  Attila looked at it, his nose pointed a shade above the horizon, his jaws clenched in anger. For as greedy and vindictive as he was, Attila was not a foolish man. He was a brilliant tactician, second only to Uther in his prime. By the shape of the carpetbags, he could tell what it was.

  A nod to Bishkar told the apprentice what he needed to do. Bishkar had been by Attila’s side ever since they had started on the quest to quash Rome. He bided his time with respect to Adolphus’ esteemed position in the tribe but knew that one day it would be his turn to lead the armies of Attila and perhaps take over from the man who had no heir.

  Bishkar dismounted from his steed and took possession of the horse he recognized to be Adolphus’. The bags, seeped in crimson emanated a stench that only attracted vultures and maggots. It was putrid, and now clear what was inside would be disturbing. Bishkar hoisted the bag off the horse’s left and threw it on the ground, then untied the rope that secured it. An arm and a torso fell out. Maggots populated most of the contents of the package, still too young to fly.

  The second package on the other side of the saddle contained the rest of the person including the head. What was still recognizable, identified the body to the king—General Adolphus. Anger erupted within his chest as he considered revenge upon the riders who had delivered the message.

  Bishkar could see the thoughts that swirled in his king’s head and knew that that would not be the best way to go. Before Attila could say anything, Bishkar rose to the occasion and dispatched the riders from the king’s sight.

  “You have delivered your message. Leave now. We have no response to your master.”

  The riders understood that even a moment’s hesitation would determine the fate of their lives and turned their horses and took to the wind.

  “Bishkar!” Attila boomed. “Dispatch a dozen riders to follow those men and see where they go. The rest of you, resume the march!” he shouted.

  “Yes, sire.”

  “And when you are done, bury the remains of our friend. I shall continue marching forward. Join me when he is in the ground.”

  It wasn’t until the winter sun was at its zenith when Bishkar returned to his king’s side and reported that Adolphus had been buried and a stone placed as a marker for the location. Many of the Huns had been buried in the same way, as it wa
s the nomadic way. Dying en route was not a rare event.

  12

  Into the City

  The legion loyal to Lucius arrived in Verona to find the city burned to the ground and the forest beyond scorched. The townsfolk told of invading hordes and no Romans to protect them. Arriving at the garrison, the men found thousands of decaying and burnt corpses stripped of their clothes.

  It was easy to deduce that the legion had been decimated by the invading horde who had then stolen all the valuables. Fresh snow the night before made it difficult to track which direction the horde proceeded to. Riders were sent to villages and hamlets just south of Verona only to be told that no horde was seen. But a horde of ten thousand men, it seems, were encamped in the seaside town of Patavium, in the southeast.

  “That must be the horde that did our work for us,” the commander chided to his lieutenant.

  “Should we go and thank them?” the lieutenant replied, jokingly.

  “The two men looked at each other, realizing that they would return to Rome as heroes of the empire and be rewarded for vanquishing the emperor’s enemies. They just had to word their report correctly. By neglecting to tell the emperor of the horde, they would be the heroes.

  ***

  Within eight days, the men of Felix Fortis, on foot, and the men of Gemina Maxima, by sea, assembled in unprecedented numbers just twenty leagues from the imperial city of Rome. Uther Pendragon was now on his tenth day of capture. Not a morsel of food had passed his lips. He feared an attempt to poison him. On the third day of his capture, he had grown accustomed to the fast. After the eighth, he had lost his vigor and energy. But he knew that his fate would not be relegated to the men who served obsequiously to the usurper.

  Lucius only had one full legion at his disposal and he had sent that one to deal with Arthur. In the city, he had five thousand Praetorian Guards to protect him—all had sworn allegiance to him, and him alone—not the throne. In the days after arresting Uther and finding out that an essential cog to his plan could not be found, he realized that the army was at a disadvantage. Only the news of the legion in Verona alleviated his concerns. But still, he thought, the time to kill Uther was not yet at hand.

  Lucius praised himself when holding court, telling whoever would listen that he had gotten the best of Uther and his men. His rule over Rome was now certain and secured. All the while, Titus looked upon him, knowing deep in his heart that all was not well.

  Until he could see Uther’s body laying on the granite of the palace alongside his wife and his son, nothing was certain. Titus knew that Igraine had allies in the provinces and Arthur was not as easily killed as Lucius thought he would be. He tried to relay that concern to the emperor, but Lucius was too buried within his own fantasy to see that all was not yet in the clear.

  ***

  On the night of the black moon, precisely a fortnight after they had vanquished the invading barbarians, Arthur stood at the head of ten thousand men.

  “We are about to commit the gravest of crimes. A legion of Rome has never entered the city in three hundred years. If we are caught, every last one of us will be killed. Our families will be sold into slavery, and all the wealth we have acquired will be forfeited by the emperor,” Arthur began.

  On this dark night, the heir to the Pendragon legacy was dressed in black. No armor and no greaves. Just a black tunic and a black cape to shield him from the cold.

  “We are a hundred paces from the palace. But that is not our objective. Our only objective is the rescue of my father—your general. Remember, he was the man who brought you into this legion. He was the man that held his tongue when the throne was usurped from him. He was the man who pledged allegiance to the city and the Empire and not to the man who pretends to be the emperor. Lucius is nobody. He is not our target. You all know what you have to do. Let us begin.”

  With that, Arthur and a dozen archers began their excursion into the city. Hiding in the shadows, they made their way to the Colosseum. The smell of blood hung in the air. Men fought and died on the mighty stages of the largest edifice known to man. It was also the best way to enter the subterranean system of tunnels and catacombs that led to the prison in the north.

  The tunnels ran alongside dungeons that smelled of death and pain. Many men groaned while others whimpered. Still, others yelled and screamed. It was the worst deprivation of the human condition Arthur had ever seen. It was the thing that made him ashamed of being Roman. If he one day ascended to the throne that was rightfully his father’s, and then his, he would knock down the dungeons and fill the edifice with a foundation to build a large library atop of it as Alexander had done in Egypt.

  Arthur moved quickly, not thinking of the distance and the peril that lay before him. His men, two legions of highly trained warriors, sworn to protect Rome, stood behind him in the shadows, waiting for a signal. All he had to do was send a red flare into the night sky and they would descend upon Rome with the fury of a wounded beast. But he knew better than to unleash that power. There was a reason no commander had ever entertained the possibility of bringing troops into the city.

  If he did so now and overthrew the emperor, someone would be able to do it again. But it wasn’t his own seat on the throne he was worried about. A throne that was up for grabs just by the might of a larger army meant that no ruler would be able to focus on the welfare of the people. That was the reason for peace and the reason for strong legions on the border.

  Arthur believed peace to be the ultimate reason for a strong army. It was also the reason that he brought the men to the gates of the city but didn’t want to use them unless he absolutely had to. For now, rescuing his father was the only goal on his mind. He would then think about reuniting with his mother, and then the three of them would plan the next steps together.

  An hour later, he found himself exactly where he had entered the underground passages. The darkness and the maze-like structure had turned him around and wasted valuable time. Arthur realized that this would not be the best path to bring his father through. He stopped to think, while one of the soldiers behind him could no longer hold his gut, and vomited in torrents.

  Thinking back, he realized where he had made the mistake and how they had circled back to the start. Now they had to increase the pace and push forward toward the prison complex. As a failsafe measure, there was a cut-off time that the men were given. In the event they did not see the flare or Arthur had not yet returned, they were to descend on the city at dawn—four hours from the time they had left—and foment an uprising. This was different from the red flare that would signal an attack on the city. Now there were only three hours left. Having the army attack while he was still in the tunnels would unleash a series of consequences that were catastrophic.

  Disregarding the discomfort of the environment, Arthur pushed forward, going through the same passages he had an hour earlier. This time he moved faster, less distracted by the sights, sounds, and smell. The men arrived at the junction where they had made the wrong turn and stopped. Looking at each other, everyone’s eyes were in agreement. They were to take the passage that led to the left. No one spoke even though they had all wrapped their faces with the cape they had brought along. It was more to shield their noses than to hide their faces.

  With the passage of the next hour, they arrived at the edge of the Colosseum complex and circumvented the junction they knew there would be guards. The Carcer Tullanium was one league from their original starting point at the south side of the Colosseum.

  “We are running out of time, my lord,” one of the archers said, grabbing Arthur’s hand and bringing the problem to his attention.

  “I know. There is nothing we can do but pick up the pace. We have to hurry,” Arthur suggested.

  By the time they reached the outer wall of the Carcer Tullanium, it was almost dawn.

  ***

  “Commander,” the archer called out.

&
nbsp; “What is it, soldier?”

  “It is dawn. There is light over the horizon.”

  Vipsanius grew concerned. He was afraid of this moment. Unlike the men under his command, he understood the ramifications of the action he was about to order.

  “We are supposed to begin the attack if the general is not back with his father. Should we begin, sir?”

  Even though the plan had already been laid out, the decision to go was now on his shoulders and he was not intent on going down in history as the man who called the attack on Rome.

  “We will begin as soon as I give the order, soldier. Not a minute sooner. Now step back and prepare to move when I give the order.”

  “Yes, Commander,” the soldier, following orders, responded. The men in the army had somehow been motivated to foment rebellion in the city they had sworn to protect.

  In the distance, Vipsanius could hear the murmur of men impatient to attack. But it no longer sounded like Roman legionnaires, but more like barbarian mercenaries with loot to pillage and citizens to capture.

  Each second that passed, the sky above began to turn a lighter shade of blue and the men grew a darker shade of red, holding their anticipation within.

  ***

  Reaching the outer wall of the underground vault, three stories below the streets of Rome, Arthur and his men came upon a company of guards. They had just reported for duty and were fresh and alert. Nothing short of a fight would have to be undertaken to be able to get past them. Being so far below the ground and having been lost twice since they began their trek, they had effectively lost all track of time but knew it was getting late. With the disorientation of fatigue and impatience with the foul conditions of the tunnels, they were distracted.