HAGAN FROWNED. IT felt as though the ground had begun to tremble beneath his feet. What at first sounded like thunder continued rolling, getting ever louder by the moment. He looked at those around him but saw only similar mystification to his own on the faces of the young men around him.
‘Cavalry,’ Childeric said. ‘Lots of it. They’re going to charge us.’
An uneasy murmur went through those around Hagan. Everyone glanced around.
‘Where are they coming from? I can’t see them,’ Gunderic said. His voice was high-pitched and Hagan was surprised. Was his old friend panicking?
If so, he could not blame him. Hagan’s own heart gave a flutter at the thought of facing a charging horse. Pressing into a mass of men locked in the shoving battle of the shield wall was one thing, but standing up to the weight and power of a galloping horse with its thrashing hooves and a mounted warrior on its back was another thing altogether.
‘Easy, lads,’ Childeric said. ‘Calm yourselves. Horses are not stupid creatures. If we hold our shield wall with spears to the fore no horse in its right mind will charge into such a sharp hedge. Cavalry are just an annoyance. Have no fear and stand fast.’
Mollified a little, Hagan and the others tightened their grips on their spear shafts, their knuckles turning white.
‘You all know the orders,’ Childeric shouted. ‘Stand firm. Hold the shield wall. There was a time, the time when our ancestors fought the Romans, when we would have gone charging straight into them, stark naked, howling and screaming like madmen.’
Some of the older men around him nodded.
‘The Romans learned that all they had to do was hold a shield wall,’ Childeric said. ‘Keep their discipline and hack, stab and take one step forward, in unison. Repeat. Until they were at the far side of the battlefield and we were all dead. We fought as individuals instead of an army. But we’ve learned too. Now we know that if we stick together and hold our shield wall, then we will win. Remember that lads: hold your position and support the men in front and beside you. Never mind what’s happening on down the line. If everyone does that we will all see the sunset tonight.’
The thundering of hooves grew ever louder until it drowned out even the blaring of the Roman horns.
‘It sounds like there are a lot of them,’ one of the others said. Hagan could hear a slight tremor in his voice.
Then came a strange sound like a great wind or a whooshing made by a huge bird flapping its wings. Among it were whistles and odd howling.
‘That way!’ the youth beside Hagan shouted.
He was pointing to their right, where a line of thick forest flanked the sides of the two opposing armies. Hagan turned to look. It was as if a wall of dark smoke was rising from the tree line. As it passed the tops of the trees, the leaves and branches waved and buckled while the great noise transformed into a loud swishing like the flow of a fast-moving river.
‘Arrows!’ Childeric said. ‘Shields up!’
Without need for thought, the warrior training he and the others had gone through so far told Hagan to drop to one knee and raise his shield above him towards the sky.
Once in position, the reality of what was happening entered his mind. He could scarcely believe so many arrows could fly at once. He waited for long moments, crouched in the shade, teeth clenched, listening as the whooshing of the falling arrows got ever closer.
Then came a thunderous rapping, as if a madman were using his shield and the others around him to batter out a crazy tattoo. Hagan’s shield bucked and rattled. His eyes widened as the iron head of an arrow burst through the back of it, sending wooden splinters flying.
A new fear gripped Hagan’s heart. What was the cavalry up to while the Burgundars crouched under their shields, unable to see what was going on? Were they advancing all the while, about to wade into the Burgundars’ ranks while their shield wall was down?
The manic drumming on their shields eased as the last of the arrows rained down. Hagan rose to his feet and looked around. There seemed to be arrow shafts everywhere: sticking out of the ground like newly sprouted twigs, embedded in the faces of the Burgundar warriors’ shields and, for those not fast enough to get under cover, in their torn flesh.
A young warrior near Hagan writhed in agony. He had been careless, leaving his left leg outside the protective circle of his shield. Now an arrow transfixed his ankle, skewering it to the ground. There were multiple others injured too. One warrior had been struck right through the neck and he lay still and unmoving, his face a ghastly shade of white, his eyes staring at something an impossible distance away in the sky.
The old folk of the tribe said there were three mighty, uncanny women who governed the fates of all people. They sewed a tapestry that told the story of everything in the known world. Each man’s life was represented by a thread. It were these women who decided the length of that life and who it interacted with by where in the tapestry they embroidered it. When they cut the thread, that life was done. It was their power that directed everything. All was deliberate and deliberated.
Bishop Ulfius said this was all heathen nonsense. Looking around, Hagan could not but help agree with Ulfius. There was nothing planned about this carnage. He felt a thrill of horror at the sheer randomness with which the arrows had distributed death and injury among the Burgundar horde. If the Three Mighty Women were responsible here their beneficence was haphazard and arbitrary.
Hagan looked to where Godegisil was, isolated and alone away from the rest of the Burgundar army. He and the rest of the champions who had left the shield wall, experienced as they were, had been swift to raise their shields and were now emerging, unscathed, from beneath them. With relief Hagan saw Godegisil stand up, sweep the arrows from his shield with a contemptuous swipe of his bloody sword and scream his defiance towards the Romans who stood a little way off, watching.
The corner of his eye caught movement and Hagan turned back towards the forest line that ran along the flank of both shield walls. A great rushing noise – the combined thudding of horse hooves and the screaming of war cries, burst from the darkness beneath the trees.
A moment later horsemen exploded from the dark undergrowth. They were clad in scale mail. They wore very tall, fur-rimmed helmets. They did not bear the expected lances of the Roman cavalry, instead each rider bore a bow. Their hair was a uniform black and their eyes appeared longer and more narrow than those of most men Hagan had ever seen. Their faces were twisted into screaming masks of hatred.
‘Huns!’ Childeric shouted. ‘Fucking Huns!’
For the first time that day the older warrior seemed excited. His eyes were wide and his voice raised in pitch.
Horns started blasting frantic signals among the Burgundar ranks.
‘Turn and face them,’ someone nearby relayed the meaning of the horn blasts. ‘Right wheel. Put a shield wall in front of them.’
‘Right wheel!’ Gunderic shouted.
Hagan scowled. There was no need to repeat the order. Gunderic just wanted to look like he was the one in charge.
The horsemen swarmed onto the battlefield in what looked like an endless stream from the tree line. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. Hagan’s section of the Burgundar army began to turn around to face them. Men crashed into each other in the panic. One of the young warriors stumbled and a whole line of them fell over each other.
The discipline, training and experience of most of the war horde held. Despite the desperately short time they had to complete the manoeuvre, the Burgundars still managed to rotate half their front rank through a quarter circle to confront the oncoming cavalry.
Hagan and the others now found themselves facing charging horsemen. They were still three ranks back but he still felt a cold chill at the sight of the onrushing beasts and their terrifying riders.
The front rank of the Burgundars locked their shields together and lowered their spears. Almost as one they tensed every fibre of muscle in their bodies in anticipation of the coming attack. The ground thrummed beneath Hagan’s feet from the beating hooves.
‘Brace!’ one of the older warriors nearby shouted.
The second and third ranks of men moved one leg back and put their shoulders to the backs of the men before them.
The horsemen were perhaps thirty paces away.
Hagan tensed his thighs, braced his shoulders and clamped his teeth together, every nerve strained to the point of snapping, as he waited for the inevitable impact.
Twenty paces away and charging straight towards the Burgundar shield wall in one long line, the Hun horsemen were close enough that Hagan swore he could smell the horses’ breath. Despite what Childeric had said, it looked like these Huns were indeed about to charge directly into the Burgundar shield wall. They were fifteen paces away. Then ten. Then…
Nothing.
Hagan looked up. He saw a blur of movement. Instead of one long line the riders had somehow swerved just before hitting the shield wall and now they rode in every direction, a swirling mass of horses and men. They all raised their bows, arrows notched. How they were steering their mounts Hagan had no idea.
‘Down, you fools!’ Childeric shouted from Hagan’s right.
Hagan’s eyes widened as he realised what was happening. He dropped into a crouch, getting behind the shelter of his shield even as the horsemen unleashed another torrent of arrows, this time from mere paces away. Again his shield rattled and bucked from many almost simultaneous strikes. He heard cries and screams of pain from those around him.
As soon as the arrow storm ceased, Hagan surged to his feet again, along with those around him. Except not all of them rose. This time the Hun arrows, fired at such short range and so unexpectedly, had taken a much heavier toll.
Hagan felt dismay claw at his courage as he saw how many warriors around him now clasped at arrows that impaled their flesh. Others lay silent and unmoving in the mud, their bodies riddled by arrow shafts. To his further terror, he saw that there were now gaps in the front ranks of the shield wall.
He shouted but the sound that came out was incoherent yelling. Others were crying warnings too and men were already rushing to fill the spaces.
With astonishing speed and horsemanship, the swirling mass of riders before them somehow formed into two columns that made straight for the gaps in the Burgundar shields. Just before the riders made it into them, the Burgundars in the front rank slammed their shields together to close the holes.
Hagan blew his cheeks out with relief. If the horsemen had managed to get among the Burgundars it would be the end for the warriors on foot.
Somehow the horsemen pounding towards the shields managed to swerve away from the bristling line of spear points levelled at them. Their skill was incredible. It was as if the horses and men were one, and the whole horde could all read each other’s thoughts.
‘How do they do that?’ one of the other youngsters said. ‘How can they stay mounted, steer their horses and shoot all at the same time?’
‘They’re Huns, lad,’ Childeric said. ‘They are born in the saddle.’
Hagan had heard of the Huns. They were a people who had burst onto the Roman Empire from the east. Their depredations of the peoples from their far homeland all the way into Scythia had caused untold thousands to flee their path, causing an endless churn of nations within the world. They killed everything in their way and anything they did not understand they destroyed. He had heard his father and others talk of the Huns with hushed respect. With a chill of fear he realised this was who their opponents were to be that day.
‘Hold firm, boys,’ one of the warriors in the front rank shouted over his shoulder. ‘They can’t get at us if we keep our formation.’
Horns sounded from the forest the Huns had first emerged from. Hagan looked and saw there were a group of six mounted men, their horses stationary, watching the proceedings. Gold and silver glinted from their bridles and the manes of their horses. Hagan judged these could only be the Hun commanders. Two of them bore great horns. At the sound of their signal the charging horsemen all whipped around again, almost as one. They began to ride along the Burgundar shield wall.
As they passed, the Burgundars hurled throwing axes, spears and darts at them. Several of the horsemen were brought down to cheers from the Burgundar warriors. The horsemen swung around the corner created in the Burgundar shield wall when half of it turned to face the new danger from the forest at their side.
‘Where are they off to now?’ Childeric said.
Hagan felt some relief as the Huns went charging past his part and down the rest of the shield wall. Perhaps they were withdrawing?
As they charged, the Huns raised their bows and sent another volley whooping into the air. Hagan and those around him flinched then stopped, realising this arrow storm was not coming in their direction.
‘What are they shooting at now?’ one of the young lads near Hagan said.
The answer came in a rising wail of first fear, then agony. It was much higher-pitched than the cries that had come from the warriors hit by arrows previously and Hagan felt a thrill of horror as he realised where it came from.
‘The women and children!’ he shouted. ‘They’re attacking the women and children!’