THE FIRST THING Hagan noticed was the change in the level of noise. In the short time he had been in the forest the battle – what there had ever been of it – had ended. The meadow was now littered with the corpses of Burgundar warriors. They lay alone or in heaps, each body skewered by two, three, sometimes multiple arrows. Huns rode around at a lazy pace, picking off at will the few survivors who ran this way and that across the battlefield.
Not all the bodies were warriors. There was a swathe of corpses of women and children lying near the walls of the city, the casualties of the hail of arrows the Huns had shot to incense the Burgundars into breaking their shield wall. The bodies continued here and there right up to the gate, marking the trail of where the panicking crowd of watching families had fled towards the safety of the city walls.
His mother and brother would be inside Vorbetomagus somewhere. If he was to find them he had to go in. Yet with mounting dread he saw black columns of smoke were already roiling into the sky from behind the city walls. Buildings were burning.
The gate of the city was not closed. Hun horsemen clattered in and out of it and Hagan wondered how he might get in. Then there came a break in the incessant coming and going. Hagan slipped out from the cover of the trees and ran towards the gate. He only got halfway when something on the ground caught his eye.
He recognised the brown-yellow cloak because he had worn it many times when he was a boy. He had always hated it. The colour was like mud and the wool coarse and made the skin on his neck itch. When he had grown too big for it, it had been the turn of his little brother, Raknar, to wear the dreadful thing.
Hagan swallowed. The cloak was wrapped around the body of a small boy of about Raknar’s age who lay face down in the dirt. Three Hun arrow shafts went through the garment and into the back of the child. Blood had seeped into the wool of the cloak, but not that much.
Hagan dropped to a crouch beside the body. He pushed it half over so he could see the face. It was Raknar. His eyes were wide and stared, unblinking, though mud stuck to them, his visage twisted in testament to the agony and terror that had filled his final moments of life.
Choking a cry, Hagan looked around, already knowing what further horror would lie not far away. A few paces from his brother’s corpse was the body of a woman. She too lay face down, if that could be said for one who had no face. The woman’s head was little more than a horrible pulp of bones, hair, blood and brains. The hoofprint of a Hun horse was visible on what remained of the back of her skull. Hagan recognised her dress and her cloak, however. There was no doubt it was his mother.
They had not made it even as far as the city gates. The Huns had cut them down as they ran for safety.
Through the fog of horror Hagan noticed something. Around his mother’s neck were the links of a necklace. Godegisil’s words from the night before resurfaced in his memory and without thinking Hagan crouched down and lifted it, tugging it free of the bloody mess. As he did so he noticed that his mother’s blood was still warm. Perhaps if he had got here a little sooner he could have saved her.
Or died with them, the voice inside his head told him.
He stood up again, looking at the amulet that dangled from the end of the necklace. It was gold and had a strange horse inscribed on it. Above the horse flew a bird. His mother had snatched it from the man who had raped her and at the same time given life to him. Now it was the only link he had to either of them.
For a moment Hagan felt totally empty. Then a rime-cold anger filled the depths of his guts. He looked around, no longer caring if the Huns spotted him. He wanted them to see him, he wanted them to attack. There was nothing left for him now. Nothing to fight for. Nothing to protect. He would try to kill as many of these hateful bastards as he could before they took his life as well.
A discarded spear lay nearby. Hagan grabbed it and ran through the gatehouse and on into the city beyond. The scene that greeted him was even more horrific than the battlefield outside.