by Barry Sadler
Ch'ing reined his horse up, raising his eyes to the sky, shading them with his hand. Attila looked up to see what Ch'ing Li was watching. Ch'ing pointed with an inch long manicured fingernail. "There, do you see them?"
Attila searched the sky. "See what?"
Ch'ing Li pointed again. "The birds the storks are leaving the city. There is our answer."
He then told Attila of the story of Lu Kuang who conquered Turkestan for Fu Chien. In February 384, he brought the city of Ch'iu tz'u under siege. The city resisted him furiously, repelling all his attacks until he was in a state of desperation. That night he had a dream in which a golden image flew over and out of the city. Kuang said to his men, "This means the Buddha and the gods are deserting them. The Hu shall perish."
Attila understood that Ch'ing Li was drawing a parallel between the dream of Lu Kuang's flying Buddha and the storks which were leaving Aquileia. Then it hit him, and for the first time in weeks, he smiled, then laughed. This was what he needed to inspire his men for one last great assault.
That night, seers read the burned cracked shoulder bones of sheep for omens, all of which were favorable. Then he had the horde gathered, rode to a ridge top and looked out on the thousands of faces.
He spoke, giving them the message of the gods, "The storks who build their nests in the gables of the houses of Aquileia are leaving and taking their young with them. You know that storks are birds which have the gift of prophecy. They are leaving because the city is doomed. It is ours if we will but take it. On the morrow watch the skies and heed the message of the birds. When they fly, we attack!"
At dawn the entire Hun force was waiting, seventy thousand eyes watching the skies over the city for the storks to fly. Donatus had his siege machines ready several large battering rams and a hundred and fifty platforms of his own design.
The new platforms were ones which could be carried piecemeal, dragged behind riders to the wall, then manhandled into position until they joined together one section on top of the other to make a structure high enough to reach the top of the walls. Then they would assault directly over across a small drop bridge device which would also serve to protect those on the structure until they were ready to cross over.
On the ground he also had several hundred large shields covered with hides from which the Hunnish archers could be protected from counterfire from the walls. With these to give support to the assault force on his portable castles, they should be able to get over and into the city without unreasonable losses.
For the rest there were over five hundred ladders ready. With these preparations, the defenders would be hard put to deal with them all at the same time.
Ch'ing pointed to the sky. Two small white specks were circling the rooftops, then they headed due south. Then another three, then several more pairs. The storks were leaving.
Attila pointed to the birds. "Now!" he cried. "Now is the time. Give me the city and all that is in it is yours!"
The Huns rushed forward; the entire army moved against walls. Mindless of losses, they hurled themselves at the walls, hurling ladders against the barrier. Nothing would stop them. Not cauldrons of boiling pitch or water, not arrows, spears or pikes. Four thousand died in less than thirty minutes, but the portable castles were put up and the bridges dropped. Huns scrambled over the bridges to take the parapets. Behind them came the next wave like ants on a stalk of cane. They poured up and over.
When the first castle dropped its bridge, Attila knew the city was his. It took nearly an hour before his men managed to fight their way to the gates and drop them to give his cavalry an opening to charge through into the interior of Aquileia. Once that was done, there was no stopping them. It took four days and nights for the Huns to be sated as they took their revenge on those who had resisted them.
They stabled their horses in the temples of the Christians. No one was safe from them, not children or crones. The screams of women filled the skies and echoed from the walls of burning buildings. The men who were not of noble family were herded back to slave pens or killed. The rich could always be ransomed for a profit.
The city was put to the torch and walls torn down before they finally left, their wagons heaped high and heavy with the spoils of their victory.
Only Ch'ing was not pleased or even satisfied. The more plunder and slaves they acquired, the slower they would be able to move. He begged Attila to at least kill the captives, but even this reasonable request was denied. Attila could not tell his men to give up those which would show them a profit, and the others were needed to haul the baggage.
Attila was satisfied with his handiwork. He had restored his faith in himself. Other cities were taken but never with the devastating results and punishment he inflicted on Aquileia. Now, by the time he reached the city, its citizens had already run off, taking with them everything they could carry. But there was always plenty left behind.
Ch'ing kept after Attila to quit wasting time on looting, but the sight of the wagons of gold was too much. Attila couldn't get himself to bypass a city with full coffers. The taste of wealth he had taken from Aquileia was too great. From that one city he had acquired two thousand pounds of gold and six of silver.
Attila was full of his own power. He knew there was nothing that could stop him now; he would have it all.
Before he reached the Appenines and could enter the South, Aetius began his counterattacks, striking at the rear of the Hun columns, using the same whiplash tactic favored by them.
Where he hadn't been able to spare the men to guard all the passes in the Julian Alps, he could cover the narrow gorges of the Appenines. When the Huns were busy with the sacking of cities, he sent fast riders ahead of them, carrying the torch, to burn every field and orchard that could give the Huns food. Livestock that couldn't be driven away was slaughtered.
Best of all was that Emperor Marcian had finally decided that Constantinople was not going to be attacked and had sent reinforcements to land at ports where they would be in front of the Huns.
At Mediolanum and Ticinum, only the priests and clergy were put to the sword. Attila found it was taking too much time to slaughter the entire populations and they were beginning to have a hard time feeding their own without having thousands of starving slaves to hinder them. Attila began to feel with a sense of urgency that perhaps Ch'ing had been right again.
Casca was given command of a troop of light cavalry, one of those sent to the front of the Hunnish forces to burn fields and slow down the Hun advance. The plunder they carried in their wagons was the best ally of Rome, for the Huns slowed to little more than a snail's pace in their advance. All of this Casca and Aetius used to good advantage.
Near Tricinium, Casca and his horsemen entered a village whose people had died, not from the swords of the Huns, but from an enemy even more terrifying: plague.
Casca's men refused to enter the village or even dismount. Leaving them on the outskirts, Casca rode in alone to see if anyone still lived. The streets were littered with bodies, many lying in their own excrement where they had literally shit themselves to death. All had the look of bodies grown old before their time, wrinkled skins, sagging flesh and swollen tongues.
Only the dead were left. Casca wiped the dust from his face as he searched door to door, but there was no one there. If there had been survivors, they had already left.
The heat of the day parched him He stopped and drank from a pot of water on a doorstep. It felt good to cut the dryness of his mouth. He looked for another two hours without finding anyone, then headed back to his men.
Casca was only a hundred yards away from them when he felt a stabbing in his guts a cramp that doubled him over. He stumbled into a wall to hold himself up. One of his men started to help him but was held back by the others.
They were afraid to move another foot closer. Casca felt his bowels let loose at the same moment his stomach emptied itself on the dirt. He pitched forward to the street writhing in the dust in pain as his guts tried to tear themse
lves apart. He rolled in his filth, unable to stop the pain; his face was flushed, his tongue swelled to where it threatened to choke him, forcing its way partially out of his mouth. He bent at the waist then jerked straight out in spasms he was unable to control.
His men were helpless to do anything. They watched him in his agony for half an hour; finally he was still. They knew he had died of the plague. Whipping their horses, they raced from the village, leaving him there with the rest of the dead.
It was night when the leading element of the Hun main force neared the village. Attila was pushing; he needed to make up time. He didn't plan on stopping for another three hours yet.
Ch'ing was riding beside him as they entered the dead place. In the shadows they saw several bodies lying still in contorted positions. Ch'ing called for a torch to be lit and brought it to him. Raising it above his head, he carefully dismounted and moved over to get a look at the corpses.
Holding the torch down, he saw the face of a man in the uniform of a Roman centurion. Hissing between his teeth, he called Attila to him. He pointed to the face with the swollen tongue lying in a pool of dried vomit.
"This," he whispered to Attila, "is the man from the walls of Orleans, the one who led the attack on our rear at the fields of Catalonia. I remember him because of the scar on his face. See how it runs from his eye to the corner of his mouth." Ch'ing chided himself for being foolish and even considering the remote possibility that this was the foreigner who had served the Emperor Tzin over a hundred years ago. That man was obviously and most certainly dead.
Attila poked the body with his sword, pricking the cheek. There was no doubt about it, the Roman was dead. "What killed him?"
Ch'ing moved away from Casca to examine several other bodies. He hissed and backed away, covering his face with his hand. "Plague," he hissed. "They have all died of the plague."
Attila didn't waste any time; he was back on his horse and riding away before Ch'ing could drop the torch and get to his own mount. They moved away from the village as fast as their horses would take them, leaving the rest of the column to catch up when they could. Attila was not going to stay near any place where the sweating death was waiting.
The Huns took a wide detour, but several of them couldn't resist going into the village to see if there was anything worth taking. They found food and drink still sitting on tables; this was worth the risk. They had been short of food for days and hid the loaves of bread and wine beneath their tunics. Several of them drank from the village well and filled their waterskins with the cool fluid not knowing they were filling them with death.
Within two days a thousand of Attila's warriors had died of the sickness and more were showing symptoms.
Attila kept the sick away from him, leaving them in their own wagons with orders to stay away from the rest of the force.
Now they turned their faces back to the north away from Italy. Aetius picked this time to make an attack in force. He struck at the extended lines of the Huns with the reinforcements sent him by Marcian. They kept up a constant harassment of the Huns, freeing several thousand captives.
With the plague in front of him, Aetius hitting his flanks, and more of his men falling to the disease every day, Attila was faced with some hard choices.
Ch'ing was angry; once again Attila wouldn't listen to him. He would agree with everything he said, then go ahead and do things his way. There was no dealing with a mind like that.
Attila knew that he couldn't take Rome now. All he wanted was a way out before the plague struck him, too.
The Senate in Ravenna picked this time to once more interfere with Aetius and the conduct of the war. They convinced the Emperor to send a delegation to the Hun King and ask for peace.
Aetius was fit to be tied when he found out that Pope Leo had agreed to meet with Attila. With him would be the ex-counsul Avienus and the ex-prefect Trygetius, two of those who had interfered with his plans every time they got a chance. If it had been anyone other than the Vicar of Christ, he would have stopped it. But there wasn't any way he could fight the church.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A tremor started in his right leg, stopped, then started again. The shaking moved up his body into his chest where the heart gave one tentative beat, then one more. He coughed. Out of his mouth came a green slime that flowed out under its own power. Sweat poured from every pore. The trembling increased until his whole body was shaking uncontrollably.
Casca opened one sticky eyelid, then the other. It took several minutes before he could focus them. The trembling began to ease but he was weak, terribly weak. It was hard to breathe; his chest felt as if bands of steel were wrapped around it, trying to cave in the bones. It took four hours before he was able to get to his knees, then slowly to his feet, to stand wobbling on trembling legs that threatened to go out from under him at every moment.
Casca's stomach tried to turn inside out, but there wasn't anything in it, only the vile taste of the green phlegm that had drained from his mouth. Staggering over to the wall, he dropped the bucket in and laboriously hauled it back up. He stuck his whole face, in the water, sucking in the fluid, then poured the remainder over his head. He was still alive. His body had rejected the cholera baccili.
He was still disjointed in his mind and wandered through the village until his legs wouldn't hold him up anymore. Stumbling into an open doorway in the dark, he saw a bed and fell into it, unaware that he was sharing it with the corpse of a woman three days dead.
When he woke the next morning, he was barely able to rise. But after finding his face buried in the breast of the corpse, he found the strength to get the hell out of there.
The sun stung his eyes. He had to keep them half clenched to be able to see. He went back to the edge of the village; naturally, there was no sign of his men but he did see the marks of many horses on the ground. From the shape of the hoof prints, he knew that a large party of Huns had been this way, but the tracks didn't run on through, they must have turned back.
Casca moved on to the road, head aching with what, had he not known otherwise, he would have sworn was the grandfather of all hangovers. After walking about five miles he heard a thin whinny coming from some brush. Going to inspect, he saw that his horse had gotten its reins snarled in the limbs while trying to eat.
Well, finally, he thought, a little damned luck for a change.
He freed the horse, climbed on the saddle, and headed back for the road. He knew there was a spring located only about ten miles away. There he would be able to clean off some of his filth, and by then perhaps be able to eat something from his pack.
At the spring he did the best he could with himself but thought the odor of the sickness was probably going to be with him for some time. But he did get the worst of it off and felt better when he was able to eat a little cheese and a few olives, which aided in quelling many of his stomach's protests.
He slept again, this time until the next dawn. Rising, he moved his horse to where it could find some grass to eat.
He wondered how things had been going since he had gotten sick. He didn't blame his troop of cavalry for getting out of the area. He just wished he knew this part of the country better. Saddling his horse again, he headed back to the road, hoping to make a connection with a Roman scouting party before he ran into any Huns.
He heard a thin distant sound in his mind ... a droning, then a tinkling of bells. Thumping the side of his head a time or two to try and clear out the sounds didn't help much. It just gave him another headache and the bells kept getting louder. He had just about decided that he had lost his mind when he saw horsemen approaching him from the south. He pulled over to wait, trying to make out if they were Romans or Huns.
The rider bore an olive branch in front of him. A messenger of truce going to parley with someone. He waited until the rider was even with him, and then said, "Would you mind telling me what the crap is going on here and where you come from? Don't you know there's a war going on?"
The messenger was from the court of Ravenna, a young officious man who took his duties very seriously. And this crude and foul smelling centurion addressing him didn't look like any that would ever be invited to dine at the palace.
"I," he began, speaking through his nose, "I am part of the escort of the most holy father, Pope Leo, on a mission of state."
Casca didn't like the young man very much and he still felt a little ill. He grumbled to himself, if that snotty little bastard doesn't watch it, I'll put him in a state, a state of shock when he pulls my foot out of his ass.
"Who did you say? Pope Leo?"
"The bearer of the olive branch asserted that was so. When Casca tried to pump him as to just why the Pope would be this far out in the boondocks, he received only a snotty, "Ask him yourself if you dare."
The sound of the bells and chanting became noticeably louder. The papal party was just a few hundred yards away.
"I will ask him, you little faggot," he countered.
A squad of ten richly accoutered papal guards were in the lead. Behind them came a double line of fifty monks on foot swinging censers and chanting. Several of them had bells in their hands. Behind them came a horse drawn litter covered with gold leaf. In it was the most Holy Father Pope Leo, the Vicar of Christ on earth. Casca whistled between his teeth.
The Pope was dressed in full regalia, wearing his high crown and robes of silk embroidered with gold and silver threads. Jewels were formed into crosses on his cape. On his ring finger, he had a ruby big enough to buy half of Persia.
Casca shook his head. "I always thought that Christians were supposed to like being poor."
He really didn't want to have any dialogue with the Pope if he could avoid it, so he pulled up alongside the decurion in charge of the mounted escort. "What's going on here?" he demanded.