South of the Danube (Completed 10/7/2015)

[Chelchal]

SOUTH OF THE DANUBE FRONTIER, EARLY 467 AD

A gray haze rose to the sky. The wind blew it to the edge of the valley, over the stockades and barriers. The acrid smell burned in mens’ nostrils.

“Where does this smoke come from?” asked a Gothic chieftain by the name of Ullibos.

“There is plague in Bononia,” answered Chelchal in the Gothic tongue, “and the bodies are being burnt.” The Goth spat.

“They should not be. Man is made in the image of God. We were meant to be put into the earth.” His fellow lords grunted in pious agreement. Chelchal stretched in the saddle of his horse.

“You can tell that to the grave diggers. They say there are too many bodies to bury and that the sooner the corpses are disposed of, the sooner this affliction shall end. Some large pyres should do the trick.” Ullibos shrugged.

“So you say. It is still winter. Spare us some of that wood so that we we may keep ourselves warm. And more food. Our people’s stomachs are half empty. Our horses’ ribs stick out from their flanks. Increase our rations, and we will obey your Augustus in all things.” The other chieftains murmured in approval, eagerly nodding their heads like so many chickens. Chelchal watched as two dirty, fair haired boys traded blows over a stale biscuit.

“The whole land is cold and hungry. We are feeding you from our larders only because our emperor is so notoriously kind hearted. His Imperial Majesty wept when he heard of your plight and commanded us to hand over what little grain we had.” Chelchal freely drew from his imagination. Truly, it was cold and the diet of the local peasants did leave much to be desired. He had seen Emperor Leo from a distance on a few occasions and remembered an elderly man with a dour face and a pinched expression. Chelchal tried to picture Leo weeping at the sight of shivering Goths. The image did not quite form inside his head. The emperor was from this region and Chelchal doubted he felt pity for barbarians who had so recently been ravaging his homeland. Likely, the sour old emperor would have been pleased to see the Goths and their Hunnic overlords shiver and starve a bit more.

Ullibos was undeterred.

“I have seen your wagons coming up the imperial roads with supplies. Flour, wine, oil, pork. Even hay for horses. They come into the camps and yet the contents never seem to quite make their way to us...only to…” Ullibos fell silent; he had said too much. Chelchal spread his hands in a conciliatory manner.

“Yes, I’m aware the Huns among you take the lion’s share of the food. I agree it isn’t fair.” Ullibos squinted at Chelchal uneasily.
“But you too are a Hun.”

“I am a Hun. But I am also a servant of the Roman state and a soldier of the emperor. It is my duty to labor in their interests.” Chelchal gestured loftily to the Roman horsemen comprising his escort, most of whom were native provincials. A signifer held aloft the labarum. Chelchal himself was dressed the part of a Roman officer. His hair was cut short rather than worn long in the Hunnish manner and a round pileus covered his head instead of a pointed cap. A spatha sheathed in its scabbard hung from his belt. Most tellingly, he wore Roman boots that no “free” Hun would ever have worn. Chelchal smoothly dismounted his horse and planted his feet steadily before Ullibos and his brother Goths. Years in the Roman army had accustomed him to walking and marching and unlike most “free” Huns, he was at ease on his own two feet.

“Let me ask you all something. There are both Goths and Huns encamped in this valley. But don’t your people outnumber theirs? Why do you stand by and let them gorge their faces while your wives and children starve?” The Goths lords looked to one another in discomfort.

“The Huns are under Dengizich. He conquered us in Pannonia and forced us to cross the Danube with him. And he is Attila’s son.” Chelchal waved a dismissive hand.
“Attila is dead. His son Ellac is dead. His son Ernakh has fled into the steppes. Their brother Dengizich is only as strong as you let him be.” Chelchal vaulted himself onto the back of his horse. He turned his head back to the Gothic chiefs.
“One other thing. Dengizich’s envoys are negotiating with the Augustus as we speak. I have received word of a treaty. The Huns will be granted lands in Thrace and Moesia to pasture their herds and flocks. They will also be granted an annual allotment of supplies from the imperial depots.”

“What about us? We Goths need farmland to feed ourselves.”

“We are not negotiating with you. We are negotiating with Dengizich.” Chelchal’s tone was harsh and flat. “In the past, the Huns enslaved your ancestors and forced them to yield up their grains and crops to feed themselves.” The two blonde boys had stopped fighting. The victor hungrily licked crumbs from his fingers as the loser wept in the cold soil. Chelchal pointed to them. “Now that his horde will be fed with Egyptian wheat, Dengizich has no need for you. You can only eat at his pleasure...yet you will be useless mouths to him. Think on that the next time you see your children put mud in their mouths to satisfy their hunger.” Chelchal rode away with his escort.

[Alwyn]

An excellent start with vivid images! Your descriptions use details very effectively, providing authenticity as well as information about the characters and the cultures they are living in, such as Chelchal's boots. I especially like the part where Chelchal tries to imagine the emperor weeping over starving Goths. I look forward to seeing your story continue.

[Chelchal]

***

Chelchal’s horsemen rode through a wall of smoke as they crested the valley’s lip. They passed wooden stakes and caltrops the Roman army had placed around the valley’s rim. Dengizich lacked his father’s terrifying speed and tactical acumen. By the time he had crossed the frozen Danube and sluggishly made his way this far, Roman engineers working feverishly had placed field fortifications in a vast circle around the valley to block him from reaching Bononia. Before long, Chelchal’s horsemen rode past a second ring of stockades which marked a Roman encampment. Outside in a small field, archers fired double recurve bows into dummies made from twists of straw. Chelchal noted approvingly the bows were were modeled on the Hunnish type, painstakingly copied down to the last ear lathe. Nearby, Illyrian cavalry recruits in scale and lamellar armor, with plumes streaming from their conical helmets, swerved past a tall post and filled the air with the low whistle of javelins.

The camp’s entrance was defended by soldiers drawn from the Legio I Flavia Pacis, clad in mail cuirasses. Chelchal hoped they were not in a peaceful mood, despite their unit’s name. A rhythmic din of hammers rang in men’s ears. Blacksmiths from Bononia and the local villages had been rounded up and pressed into service making spearheads and arrowheads. More men swarmed between the orderly rows of tents, rushing to and fro. Tension blanketed the camp. The soldiers’ faces were blank, but they moved with nervous, restless energy. No able bodied man could be seen standing still.

Chelchal made his way to the center of the camp, dismounting before the tent of Anagastes, comes rei militaris of the field army in Thrace. A heavily armed guard opened a flap to let him in.
Anagastes stood over a table with outspread arms, holding down a map with fraying edges. He did not look up as Chelchal walked in.

“The cheap swine in Constantinople did not even see fit to give me a proper map. I had to buy this one from a local merchant. How he made me haggle for it! When Dengizich’s barbarians burst forth, he’ll be wishing he gave it away, that is, if he even lives that long.” Chelchal smiled at this bit of mild hypocrisy. They too, were barbarians after all.

“Comes,” Chelchal addressed Anagastes respectfully, “the Goths in Dengizich’s army grow restless. To say the least.” The two men spoke in the simple Latin of the army. Like Chelchal, Anagastes was a barbarian, but a Goth rather than a Hun. In the confusion of the present age, this had ceased to be a matter of wonderment. It was no longer unusual that a Goth and a Hun should be serving the imperial cause against their own kind. Anagastes wore a wolf fur cloak over mail. From his service in Syria, he had developed a fondness for Eastern clothes that he displayed with his wide, Persian style trousers of red wool and embroidered silk. His head was bare and his pale blonde hair reached almost to his shoulders in the Gothic style. Anagastes was prone to explosive rages, but he appeared calm to Chelchal at the moment. He finally looked up to hear the rest of Chelchal’s report.

“Have they noticed the movements of our army?”

“If they have, they have not reacted to them.” Chelchal tried not to stare at Anagastes’s bushy white eyebrows. “The barbarians are haphazardly scattered in camps throughout the valley floor. The camps are dispersed from one another and Dengizich has not made them put up defenses.” When the Romans managed to trap Dengizich in the valley, he quickly ran out of food and demanded supplies from the Roman envoys sent to negotiate with him. In their usual tactful way, the ambassadors agreed, but claimed it would be easier to feed Dengizich’s army if it were broken up into smaller bands rather than concentrated in one place. The fool had agreed with alacrity.

“Good. What did you tell them about the smoke? Anagastes had ordered numerous fires to be set around the valley to screen the movement of his forces.

“Dengizich did not even mention it when I saw him. The Goths were a little more curious. I told them we were burning plague victims. They did not press the matter.” Anagastes lips pressed together tightly and he looked down at the map again, his blue eyes boring into the papyrus.

“We have fed the enemy enough so they do not starve, but not enough to truly give them strength. Their horses are weak from lack of grazing. They cannot see our soldiers concentrating against them. Dengizich has grown complacent, so we will have the element of surprise. And yet...it is not enough.” Anagastes glanced upwards, his eyes flashing with anger.

“That vainglorious fool Basiliscus is assembling a huge army in Greece at his leisure, while we are left to scrape the remnants from his boots in order to fight the Huns.” Rumor had it that Basiliscus was to lead a massive expedition against the Vandals in Africa. His chief qualification was that he was Emperor Leo’s brother in law. “It’s not completely hopeless,” continued Anagastes. “Besides sending his bucellari under Ostrys to help us, Aspar bribed Theodoric Strabo to send some of his own tribesmen. The emperor has sent his son in law Zeno with the Excubitors, axe wielding Isaurians. They’re rough men, good for killing at close quarters. But even if we combine them with our regional forces...should Dengizich’s army, half starved as it is, fight uphill through the barriers, we would barely have enough men to hold them back, if even that. But an attack, unless everything goes exactly our way at exactly the right moments, could be a disaster.”

“The Goths and Huns in Dengizich’s army have little love for one another,” Chelchal replied. Anagastes snorted.

“That’s not saying much. I like you, Chelchal, better than most Goths I’ve fought either against and alongside. Aspar may be the Magister Militum who raised Leo to the Imperial Dignity, but he and the Emperor hate one another. Since both want to succeed our beloved Augustus, Zeno hates Basiliscus though to be fair, so does everyone else. As for our squint eyed friend Theodoric...he’d be ravaging the land alongside Dengizich the moment we stop paying him subsidies.” Puppets and masters, Chelchal reflected to himself, though even the masters could get tangled in the strings. It was whispered that Anagastes himself thirsted for the consulship, along with the attendant glory and prestige. For all the present danger, here was his chance to get it.

“Perhaps,” ventured Chelchal diplomatically. “But for now, we all serve the same master and he pays us, feeds us, and clothes us. The Goths squirming under Dengizich’s fist cannot say the same thing. And they grow weary of it. If we watch closely, I believe a solution to our dilemma will present itself.” Anagastes rolled up the map and handed it off to an orderly.

“So here we are, a Goth and a Hun in Roman service, plotting and scheming against Goths and Huns. I suppose I have my own reasons for doing so.” Chelchal nodded. Everyone knew how Anagastes’s father Arnegliscus had died fighting Attila some twenty years earlier. Fate now pitted their sons against one another.

Chelchal’s memory went back to a time many years ago when he had just ceased to be a boy but was not yet a man. Attila was not universally loved even among the Huns. Chelchal recalled how the elders of his tribe, the Akatzir, plotted against the great king. They met Roman spies in the their yurts. The womenfolk even sewed a crude labarum by candlelight without comprehending its meaning. Better to serve a master far away than the tyrant close at hand, the elders had reasoned. In the end, their own chieftain, Kuridach, betrayed their plans to Attila. Chelchal could still remember the Akatzir chiefs writhing as they were impaled on stakes, pink bubbles foaming from their lips. His father’s head dipped into a leather skin filled with his own blood. The smell of dew and earth as Chelchal fled on a mare in the dead of the night. Kuridach’s cowardice did not save him. Attila deposed him and placed a new chieftain over the rebellious tribe. His own son, Dengizich.

“As do I, Comes.”

[McScottish]

Intriguing and exciting, I can't wait to see more; long live...an Emperor, whomever he may be.

[Diocle]

“As do I, Comes.”, a great story lying behind the present, a past that doesn't want to go away, an unburied pain feeding a deep hate, a divided loyalty, a dark age, made of too many plots to understand them all, an age in which everyone is conspiring against friends and enemies, even the tribal relationships and their bonds are now so much stretched that they can break at any time, all this heralded at the beginning by the gray haze rising to the sky, and by "The acrid smell burned in mens’ nostrils."

There is all I love here: a physical writing made of sensorial perceptions and human feelings, like the cruel scene of the two children contending some bread. There is the great history, but there is also the feeling that what we know as great history has been made by men and women, real as real are that bread and that acrid smell.

Welcome back Chelchal, I'm already bound to your story!

[Chelchal]

***
The Huns were a dour folk. A group of them sat around a fire drinking fermented mares’ milk in morose silence, staring at their feet while the light flickered off their scarred faces. Curved leather caps slid over the foreheads, almost covering their eyes, making them appear even more downcast. This did not mean they were tranquil. A Hun was prone to erupt from his drunken silence into an abrupt bout of violence. A hindquarter of mutton was skewered over the fire.

Every so often, a Hunnish woman would emerge from a yurt to rotate the meat over the fire and then just as suddenly disappear back into the rounded tent. Juice and fat sizzled and smoked as they dripped off the meat into the flames.

One Hun played softly on a long lute his people called a komuz, singing in a low murmur that could be barely heard over the chirping of crickets. Slender, yet sturdy steppe horses were tethered all around the nearby yurts. From time to time, they broke their docile silence with a gentle neighing. Their ribs were gaunt from lack of fodder. The more the Huns drank, the more they descended into brooding introspection. Feared by all, hated by all, they only survived, let alone triumphed, by dint of their own ferocity. It was a precarious existence. From their Chanyu Dengizich down to the lowliest outrider, it was the secret hope of every Hun in the horde that the Emperor would give them land so that for once, they could enjoy an easy and contented peace.

The snapping of twigs and crinkle of dead leaves under their boots announced the arrival of Ullibos and his band. The Huns looked up and regarded the Goths with cold, languorous contempt, but said nothing. The Goths too had been drinking. Their breaths reeked of mead and Ullibos swayed slightly, less from the wind, and more from horn he had recently emptied down his throat. He stepped towards the fire, his nostrils flaring.

“It smells good.” The Hunnish woman came out once more, a scowl stretched across her face.

“You go away now,” she snapped in shrill, heavily accented Gothic. “We give you bones later.”

“No,” Ullibos shook his head, “I’m hungry. I want some of this” He drew a spatha from his scabbard and prodded the roast of mutton. “And I want it now.”

The voice of the komuz player faded into the darkness as he and his fingertips fell silent. Only the wind and the crickets made themselves heard now. It was a cold night but sweat beaded on Ullibos’s brow as he licked his cracked lips nervously. The Huns exchanged glances. Too late, they realized the Goths wore mail and boiled leather under their cloaks. A Hun leapt up to run to his horse, only to collide with a Goth who blocked his path. The Hun uttered a low, wheezing groan and the point of a sword appeared out of his back in a dark, wet triangle. For a moment, there was a terrible silence. Then the Hunnish woman screamed and the campfire erupted into paroxysm of fury and blood.

“Kill the Huns, kill all the Huns and their whelps,” howled the Goths as they unsheathed their swords and charged in a drunken mass, their terror mixing with despair and rage. Fingers and hands fells to the ground in bloody clumps as the Huns put up their arms in a futile attempt to ward off the lethal blows. Hunnish horses screamed and reared.

A Goth leapt onto the back of one, wielding a blazing torch. He raced through the camp, cackling and howling with delight, as he swerved the horse and lashed out his arm to set yurts ablaze. The clash of steel and the screams of men and horses brought Goths from their tents and Huns from yurts and all rushed to draw their swords or string their bows.

More of Ullibos’s men grabbed horses by their reigns to mount them and spread the word to their folk in the nearby camps. Kill, the Huns, kill the Huns, the Goths chanted to one another. Fresh columns of smoke and fire rose into the night, and a mighty struggle between the two races began.

[Chelchal]

Thank you old friend. You are right to describe the story the way you do. Dengizich feels wronged because he is nit being treated with the same fear and respect as his father; the Goths under him feel wronged because they are hungry; Chelchal and Anagastes feel wronged by their families' losses to Attila; the Romans feel wronged because these nasty, shabby barbarians are threatening their peace of mind.

When men feel wronged, they feel they have the right to punish, and when they feel they have the right to punish, men do terrible things.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

This is a very effective story of hatreds and rivalries.

Chelchal seems to have been successful in his machinations - I'm intrigued to discover what happens next.

[Dude with the Food]

I'm really starting to enjoy this.

[Chelchal]

***

Zeno and Ostrys sprinted into Anagastes’s tent, their armpits acrid with sweat.

“Comes, get up!” bellowed Ostrys. Anagastes awoke with a start and tumbled off of his mattress.

“The barbarians are attacking one another. The camps are aflame” explained Zeno in breathless gasps. “I saw this with my own eyes. And I could hear the savages hacking one another to pieces. Our soldiers are all awake and awaiting your orders.” Anagastes sat at the edge of his mattress and blinked the sleep out of his eyes. He wriggled his feet into his boots as an orderly rushed off to grab his armor .

“Are our soldiers positioned against each camp?” Aspar counted off his fingers. “Flavia Pacis, Aspar’s bucellarii, the Excubitors, Strabo’s tribesmen?”
“Yes comes,” nodded Ostrys, “but in position to defend against an attack, not to begin one.”

“No matter.” Anagastes lifted his arms so that his orderly could slip his lamellar cuirass over his tunic. “We cannot let this opportunity slip between our fingers. It is just as Chelchal foresaw. We must act now, while Dengizich’s horde is tearing itself to pieces.” He stood and tossed the wolfskin cloak over his shoulders. “We must storm all the camps as quickly as we can. Start with the ones closest to the forces under your own command. Infiltrate them first if you can. Kill everyone capable of bearing arms against us. Find Chelchal and Strabo’s Goths and tell them to do the same. By the time the enemy realizes what is happening, well…” Anagastes placed his polished helmet onto his head and smiled.

[Chelchal]

***

“Don’t get too close to them,” a Hunnish chief instructed his kinsmen as they untethered their horses and strung their bows. “Ride back and forth and rain them with arrows. The Gothic worms will die or submit, just as they always have in the past.” An oxcart leading a column of covered wagons squeaked and groaned as it came to a halt in front of some nearby yurts. It was driven by a pair of haggard looking Roman soldiers, bundled up and shivering from the cold.

“What are you doing here? Who let you into our camp?” roared the chieftain in his barbarous pidgin Latin. One of the oxcart drivers, a Thracian, answered in rustic Latin that itself would have been barely intelligible to a high born Roman.
“We are bringing more supplies.”

“At this time of night? Amidst this commotion?” The soldier shrugged.

“We do what we are told. Unless we want to be whipped, we do not question why.”

“Then offload your parcels and get out of my sight.” Cloaked men leapt out of the wagons and scurried past the Hunnish horsemen. The chieftain wheeled his mare around and brought it before one of the cloaked Romans.

“Hey you! Get back to your wagon before we cut your throat.” The man did not deign to respond. Instead, he withdrew a double headed axe from his cloak and swung it over his head between the mare’s eyes. The beast screamed and collapsed onto its knees. Before the Hun could lurch to his feet, the axman dealt him the same fate as his horse. All around them, men flung off their cloaks to reveal the glittering scale armor of the Excubitors, screaming Isaurian war cries. In their shock, the Huns were cut down before they could aim their bows. The Excubitors butchered horses and riders alike. A wounded Hun managed to clamber onto his horse and started to ride away. An Excubitor hurled his axe in the Frankish manner. The axe buried itself into the Hun’s back. His corpse slid off the saddle into the dirt as the panicked horse ran off into night.

[Diocle]

A clash of Civilizations, three peoples: Huns, Goths and Romans, involved in a fight without quarter, each one with its own objective, each one moved by hatred, each one asking for enemy blood.
Great page, as vivid and unforgettable it's the first scene, the sound of the lute, the meat over the fire and then Ullibos the Goth, you can almost perceive by yourself the scent of the roasted meat on fire, and then, hissed by a woman, the the extreme insult: "We give you bones later.” No, enough is enough, the insult against hunger, against the dignity of a man and of a whole people, needs to be washed by blood, indeed it asks for blood, and in fact blood shall flow in rivers, and the author tells us that while they fight and kill, Huns, Goths and Romans are dreaming, they are dreaming of peace, just some land to live in peace till the end.

Interesting story Chelchal, interesting story .. so distant in space and time and so close and actual.

[Alwyn]

Great action and drama! I wonder if you will be entering the Monthly Creative Writing Competition.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

This continues to be very dramatic, and very well-written!

I fear there will be many deaths - I look forward to finding out who will be left alive at the end of the fight, and whether there will have been any change in the balance of power between the Huns and the Goths.

[Chelchal]

***

At another camp, Gothic elders stood on an earthen platform and tried to control the shouts and cries of their people. Men swore oaths and spread rumors to those standing next to them. A wrinkled greybeard ineffectually waved his hands to silence the clamor, which only grew louder and louder.

“The Huns tried to cut our throats as we, slept but our boys were ready for them!”

“Nonsense! I heard Dengizich’s men tried to overthrow him and he turned to our people for help. We’ll be getting the best rations from now on.”

“You’re both wrong! Dengizich tried to attack the Romans but was thrown back. Thanks to that fool, now we’ll all starve!”

A group of armed strangers jostled themselves through the crowd. The folk drew back in consternation and demanded to know their identity. The leader of the strangers smiled reassuringly.

“Brothers, we are Goths like yourselves. We came from another camp to see if you were in any danger.”

“What’s your name brother?”

“Ostrys.” The crowd shouted more questions but Ostrys ignored them. They were silenced by a strange noise. It was a piercing, ululating warble, harsh and unpleasant to the ears.

“I know that sound,” screamed a ragged Goth with an eyepatch. “It’s a Roman trumpet!”

“The Romans are here!”

“What do they want?”

“This.” Ostrys unsheathed his sword and thrust it into the ragged Goth’s good eye. His men sliced through the crowd with their spathas, cutting and hewing through the mass of flesh with methodical brutality. Women screamed and men shoved one another to flee safely. Arrows began to rustle overhead. An elder on the platform fell to his knees with a gurgle. One arrow pierced his throat while another had pierced him through the belly.

The crowd dispersed and stampeded through the camp, but Ostrys noticed his men were not following them. They were scarcely his men anyways, but Gothic tribesmen sent by Theodoric, the Ostrogoth chieftain whom the Romans called “the Squinter.” Lacking all discipline, they tore through the tents and makeshift hovels of their fellow Goths, searching for plunder and women. Goth spilled the blood of Goth as the camp descended into an orgy of looting and rape.

[Chelchal]

***

Dawn was breaking. Under the orange glow of the sky, sagatarii from Flavia Pacia sprinted through a copse along the northern edge of the valley. Nearly breathless, they took up positions along the treeline. The night’s fighting had left them exhausted. Their arms and shoulders were sore and trembling from use. In the nocturnal confusion, their centurion had been killed. Separated from his own soldiers, Chelchal had encountered them and assumed command. His own horse had been killed underneath him so he was on foot as well. Biting their lips nervously, the archers wiped perspiration from their eyes and tried to steady their ragged breaths and slow their pounding hearts before the enemy could arrive. The archers did not have long to wait. Clouds of ash and dust rose along the valley slope before them. The earth shook as nearly a thousand Huns thundered up to the valley’s rim on horseback. Weary himself, Chelchal bellowed orders in a hoarse and strained voice.

“TELA PONITE!” Many of the Huns raised up their heads to howl like wolves. It was a terrible sound that pierced through the souls of civilized men.

“HOSTES DIRIGITE!” Some of the Huns banged upon hollow drums covered with stretched hides. An ominous booming sound echoed through the valley.

“SPONTE IACITE!” The twang of bow strings and the whistle of arrows was drowned by the deafening rumble of hoofsteps. Men and horses tumbled to the ground, quickly obscured by clouds of dust. The Huns did not stop, but charged over the ranks of their own dead. Skillfully, many turned in the saddle to shoot back at the Romans in the treeline. Some of their arrows arched high, some struck the trees behind which the sagitarii ducked behind to renock their bows. Quite a few others found their mark. Many and more of the Huns died too but a great mass of them began to crest the valley’s edge, only to find the way blocked by a line of palisades that the Romans had dug deep trenches on either side of. Men and horses alike stumbled into the inner trench. Riders following close behind could not halt in time and fell on top of their comrades. Other Huns dismounted their horses and tried to climb over the palisade. The few that succeeded only fell into the outer trench, maiming themselves.

A few of the Huns lassoed the tops of palisade posts and tied the ropes to their horses. They whipped the beasts, urging them to strain against the posts and pull them down. More Huns hurled themselves into the inner trench. Paying no heed to the cries of their injured kinsmen, they frantically began chopping at the base of the palisade with spades and axes. Halted against the barrier, the Huns became an easy target. Invigorated by fear and rage, the sagatarii fired volley after volley into swarm of milling, desperate barbarians. Unable to move and packed closely together, the Huns and their mounts were cut down by the score from Roman shafts. Other Huns were skewered by arrows as they made futile attempts to struggle over the top of the palisade. The rest of the Huns turned to fire their own bows at their tormentors. The screams of men and horses mingled with shouts and curses as the Hunnish chiefs urged their men onwards.

A sudden ripping noise tore across the sky. From the far end of the valley, soldiers manning scorpions and ballistae discharged their bolts into the the enemy throngs. Arching over the heads of Chelchal’s men, the bolts tore through the Hunnish ranks with terrible carnage. Horses panicked and bolted, trampling their fallen riders beneath their hooves. A party of Huns brought up torches and managed to set several sections of the palisade aflame. They reacted with shouts of triumph. The posts were dry and kindled quickly. Burning pieces of wood collapsed into the trenches, crushing the wounded men and horses that had fallen within. Ignoring the groans and cries for help from their brethren, the waiting Huns rushed through the gaps. Men and horses alike attempted to leap across the trench to newfound safety. Some succeeded. Others fell and were crushed underfoot. More sections of the palisade toppled over. Heedless to the arrows and scorpion bolts that still fell upon them, the Huns jostled one another aside in their frenzy to escape. Enough broken bodies and smoldering wood piled up in the trenches so that improvised pathways could be made. At last, the surviving Huns finally broke through and fled.

[Diocle]

The slaughter! But .. who are the good boys here? The Romans I should say, .. but .. does it exist and where is it, in war, the side of the good boys? Or is it just a matter about who is the best in killing the others? Anyway, we should consider that Goths and Huns were "invaders", so, it's right using any escamotage to kill them all .. but .. the way chosen .. those grey bearded men slaughtered as animals .. who are the bad guys in this story?

Anyway it's a deep pleasure reading about Huns killed by bows!


Too many "but" in my mind, Chelchal, and this is good! Great page, I love the stories in which many "but" and doubts arise.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

I have to agree with Diocle - this is getting very messy, in the sort of way these things do. I think it's probably reached the point where I don't feel any side is "the good guys". (Sorry, Diocle.)

This is very nice descriptive and atmospheric writing.

[Chelchal]

Chelchal turned to see a small group of Roman cavalry ride up to the copse to where the archers were positioned. Anagastes was one of the riders. His helmet and wolf pelt were gone, his Persian trousers torn and soiled, and a dirty bandage was wrapped around the top of his head. He tried to dismount his horse and nearly fell down from the effort. Anagastes staggered to his feet and pointed at the fleeing multitude of Huns.

“He’s getting away! Dengizich is with them, damn you, and he’s getting away!” Chelchal open his lips dumbly but no words would leave his dry and dusty mouth. Anagastes’s cheeks were flushed and he trembled with rage.

“Don’t just stand there! Send your men to cut them off!” Chelchal looked around. Aside from the those that had just rode up, there were no other horses present. Opening his mouth, he found his voice once more.

“Comes, we have pressed our attack to the limit. There are no more reserves to spare. Every last man has been committed.” Anagastes parted his lips to respond and then his face froze. He lurched forward with a gurgling moan and sank to his knees before falling to the ground. Foam gathered around his lips as he began convulse and twitch uncontrollably. The two other cavalrymen acted quickly. One grabbed a leather strap and thrust it into Anagastes’s mouth so he would not bite through his tongue. The other thrust moss and dirt under the general’s head to soften the blows as it banged rhythmically against the ground. Some of the archers gazed at the epileptic fit in horror and wonder. Chelchal turned his gaze back to the burning palisade. Drained of all strength and energy, the Romans could only watch as the last of their foes escaped.

[Chelchal]

From what I understand, the Romans broke agreements with the barbarians whenever it was to their advantage to do so. But "civilized" peoples are always more sly and cunning than the "barbarians" they affect to despise.