B000YQHMGU

by William Dietrich

  The German girl yelped and disappeared.

  I turned to the dais and Attila’s bed, ready to cleave him in two. It was empty. I whirled. I couldn’t see the kagan and Ilana anywhere. I began to cough.

  Now the wood of the walls was igniting. The heat was a roiling wave, pulsing at me.

  “Ilana!”

  No answer. Attila’s bed ignited, and from its light I saw a hole in the floor leading down into a passageway. Even as I spied it, its entrance burst into flame.

  With a whoosh, the rafters overhead ignited. I had to retreat.

  I plunged through the flames again to get to the main entrance, ignited, dropped, and rolled. Flames sputtered out even as more pain seared me. Then I staggered toward the front door of the hall, dizzy and coughing. There were shouts and the sound of horns outside the barred main entry. I was still dragging the heavy sword and still wore the Hun helmet. What should I do? The whole point of my escape had vanished in the smoke. I’d lost what I’d really come for: not a sword but a woman. Yet Ilana had sacrificed herself to give me time. Save the Empire, she had told me. So had Zerco.

  Heartsick at what I must do, I unbarred the door. “The Romans are attacking Attila!” I shouted in Hunnish. Soldiers pushed past me. “Get water to save the kagan!” In the smoke and confusion, no one looked past my helmet and cloak. “He told me to protect the sword!”

  With smoke pouring into the darkness and a hundred voices shouting at once, they let me stagger past. Out in the courtyard, all was chaos. Huns were galloping in through the gate to lend help even as the slave women were streaming from the barracks to seek refuge outside the stockade walls. I joined their current, clutching the weapon to my chest. It bumped as I ran. Then I grabbed the reins of a horse that a rider had momentarily abandoned and swung on, looping his lariat around the guard of the sword to hang it from my back. I looked around. Attila’s palace was in flames. Ilana was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the kagan.

  There was no going back.

  So I galloped hard for the Tisza, my heart a stone, my throat burning from smoke, my mind in shock. How I had failed! First I’d lost Rusticius and now Ilana. The fire was mercy if it killed her quickly, I told myself. What Attila would do to her if they had survived by disappearing down that hole, I didn’t want to guess.

  The entire Hun camp was in chaos. Many, seeing the fire, assumed they were under attack. Half-naked warriors burst from their dwellings with drawn swords or half-strung bows, looking for enemies. Mothers shooed children like tides of mice. Horsemen galloped wildly, passing each other in the confusion. I, looking simply like one more crazed and furious Hun, was able to sprint for the river without being challenged. My mount and I crashed into the Tisza, the spray like milk under the moonlight, and we let the current carry us downstream away from the lurid light of the fire.

  My horse gained its footing, we splashed onto land, and then galloped across dew-wet grass to the rim of dark trees where the dwarf was supposed to be waiting.

  I was nearly in the cover when my stolen pony reared away from some figure lunging with a spear. Before I could react the weapon rammed home in the horse’s breast and my mount went over, crashing to earth and pinning one of my legs. Caught! The great iron sword dragged me down. My attacker loomed over the dying horse and another, a scuttling child, was coming with a long knife. Perhaps, given our failure, it was just as well. I tensed for a thrust and then realized who was attacking.

  “Zerco! It’s me!” I cried in Latin. “Julia!”

  The dwarf stopped and his wife paused. She had yanked the bloody spear out of my dying horse and had lifted it to plunge it into my torso, but now she looked down in surprise. “Dressed like a Hun? And where’s Ilana? This was not the plan.”

  I let my head slump back, my voice thick. “I couldn’t save her. Attila grabbed her after we started the fire.” Tears came, welling on my face.

  “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  Zerco was fumbling at me. “But you’ve got the sword.”

  I shoved the dwarf away. “To hell with the damned sword!”

  The dwarf came back, cutting the lariat from around my neck and dragging the weapon free. “This is what is important, Jonas Alabanda. This, and what I’ve stolen as well. I am sorry about your woman, but this will save many women. Many, many women.”

  “What have you stolen?”

  “You aren’t the only man who has been busy tonight. I paid a visit to the Greek doctor who would betray the Empire.” He grinned fiercely. “He decided to accompany us, trussed like a pig.”

  “We’re taking Eudoxius when we failed to kill Attila?” This was madness atop madness. “Our diversion failed!”

  “If Gaiseric is allying with Attila, my master Aetius needs to know about it. He’ll be best convinced by the traitor himself. Besides, the doctor’s absence might confuse the Huns even more. Perhaps they’ll think him a double traitor, secretly in league with Rome. It might slow their plans, if your fire hasn’t already done that.”

  I shook my head in frustration. Nothing was happening as I expected. Stripped of the encumbering weapon, I managed to kick myself free of the horse and dragged myself away. I felt raw: shot, burned, bruised by the fall, exhausted from being awake most of the night in that stifling jar, and devastated by the loss of Ilana. Half a mile away, I could see people running, backlit by the flames of the kagan’s palace. “And is what we’ve stolen worth Ilana’s life?”

  “A million women’s lives, I hope.” The dwarf rested the sword on his shoulder like a pole. It was nearly twice as long as Zerco was high. “This sword will be seen as a sign from God. It will help rally the West. I understand your sorrow, but we still have a chance. The Huns are in disarray, and Ilana didn’t know which way we’d flee. And if she somehow still lives, this sword may be her only hope.”

  Suddenly I saw it. “We can trade it for her!”

  Zerco shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. Don’t torture yourself with temptation. This sword goes to Aetius.”

  “To hell with Aetius! This piece of iron is all Attila cares about! The Huns will give anything to get it back!”

  “How long do you think any of us, including Ilana, will live once you stop to parley with the barbarians? Have you learned nothing in all your months here?”

  He was right, but I was stubborn. “They have their own honor.”

  “Which must now be avenged for the murder, or attempted murder, of Attila. And you want to walk back into their camp with his stolen sword?”

  I opened my mouth to argue and then closed it. The dwarf was right. Escape was insult enough, but we’d risked everything by violating the chamber of Attila. This would not be forgiven. Ilana had courageously gambled and lost. Just as I’d lost her.

  “If she lives your only hope is to defeat Attila,” the dwarf went on, “and the best way to do that is to take this sword to Aetius. Come, the horses are waiting.” He began dragging the sword toward the trees.

  I felt I couldn’t move. “I failed her, Zerco,” I said miserably.

  My tone made the dwarf stop. Finally he came back and pressed the old weapon into my hands. “Then make up your failure, Jonas. The last thing Ilana would want is for you to be found at dawn standing foolishly in a meadow, her sacrifice in vain.”

  The sky was beginning to blush. So we mounted the horses and rode hard, desperate to be well out of sight by full daylight.

  Eudoxius, bound to a saddle, was gagged, his eyes glaring furiously. I’d expected that Zerco might have stolen my own mare, Diana, but the dwarf said that would have aroused too much suspicion: both when he took the horse and when she was found missing. Diana’s presence, in contrast, might confuse the Huns enough to think that I died in the fire. So the dwarf had instead stolen Arabians. Julia and Zerco shared the same mount, Eudoxius was on the next, and I on a third. The fourth we let go again, for Ilana was not there to ride it.

  XVII

  PU
RSUIT

  It was startling how the witch Ansila has been right, Skilla thought. Fortune had given him a second chance after all.

  After his combat with Jonas, the Hun had been so humiliated that he wanted to drown himself in the Tisza. It was terrible enough that the Roman had bested him. But he’d been saved by a woman! The reprieve had meant other warriors treated him like a ghost already dead but somehow still annoyingly among the living, a reminder of rare defeat. Skilla burned for revenge and the recapture of his honor, but Attila wouldn’t allow a combat rematch. And mere murder would not erase his shame. A stab in the back was the mark of a coward. So until war came, there was no opportunity to prove himself, and war was an agonizing six months or more away. Every waking moment became a torment, and every dream a nightmare, as Jonas recovered with Ilana as his nurse. So finally Skilla went to the Hun witch Ansila and begged her to tell him what he should do. How could he regain his old life and eliminate the cursed Roman?

  Ansila was an ageless crone who lived like a burrowing animal in a clay cave, paved with straw and beamed with tree roots in the riverbank. She remembered much of the past and saw far into the future, and every warrior both feared her and bribed her, for visions. A gold-studded bridle and bit, looted by Skilla during the raid on Axiopolis, was the fee he paid for her prophecy. He went to her at midnight, squatted morosely as she built up her fire to heat sacred water, and then watched impatiently as she scattered herbs on its surface and looked into the steam.

  For a long time nothing seemed to happen, the prophetess standing motionless over her iron pot, her lined face and gray hair wreathed in the vapors. Then her pupils dilated and her hands began to tremble. She recited her message in a singsong rhyme, not looking at him but at things impossibly far away:

  You will not have to wait long,

  For your frustration to be gone,

  Young warrior.

  The one you hate is tempting fate.

  He will light a fire that will bring desire,

  And steal what will ultimately heal.

  On a darkling field you will have met,

  When the greatest fire is not yet set.

  She staggered back from the steam, breathing deeply, her eyes shut. Skilla waited for explanation, but there was none. The closeness of the cave made him giddy.

  “Steal what, Grandmother? What fire? I don’t understand.”

  Finally she peered at him, as if remembering he was there, and gave a crone’s grin of missing teeth. “If you understood life, little fool, you could not bear to live it. No man could. Be thankful you’re as ignorant as a goat in its field, for you’re happier because of it. Go now, be patient, and prepare for everything to change.” She turned from him in dismissal, grasped the bridle, and tottered across the cave to secrete it in a chest. Later, she would trade it for food and clothing.

  For a week Skilla had stewed in frustration, confused by the prophecy and waiting for some obvious sign. Had Ansila been wrong? Had he wasted the bridle? Then Jonas set fire to the kagan’s house, trying to kill Attila, and Ilana had been caught. In a single night of flame and confusion, everything had changed.

  No bodies had been found in the ruins of the great house. Attila himself had escaped with Ilana and his third wife, Berel, who had been sharing his bed that night. The king had pushed the two women beneath his bed through a hole that led to a tunnel specifically constructed to keep him from being cornered. It had been too dark and smoky for the king to be certain just who had attacked, but Guernna said it had been the young Roman.

  Ilana, battered from Attila’s beating of her in his early rage, claimed Jonas was kidnapping her. “I was trying to save the sacred sword when you awoke,” she said in the gray ash of morning, her high chin failing to control the quaver in her voice. “He was trying to steal it and me.”

  None believed this, and yet it provided a plausible excuse for what was to come next. Attila’s chiefs had assembled by the smoking ruins, several murmuring that the Roman girl should be crucified or worse. Their king had a different idea. The loss of the sword deeply disturbed his superstitious spirit. This was a message, but what? To reveal misgiving would be to invite a usurper, but to fail to keep alive every opportunity for the sword’s recovery would be to tempt fate. Better to use the loss to spur on his warriors, and use the woman until he got the sword back.

  “It seems the god of war is testing us,” he told his followers. “First he allows us to discover the sword in a common field, meaning for us to find it. Then he steals it away just as easily. Do we deserve his favor? Or have we become soft as the Romans?” His warlords looked down in embarrassment and resentment. All had heard Attila’s warnings of decay many times. Was this finally a sign of divine disfavor?

  “Now we will become hard again,” Edeco vowed, “hard like Mars.”

  “What do we know?” Attila asked. “Is the Roman here?”

  “His horse is here.”

  “Which means nothing.” He thought. “The war god is revealing our proper direction. He wants us to march to wherever the sword is and wrest it back.”

  “But the Romans will have it!” Onegesh exclaimed. “They will use it against us!”

  “How can they use what they do not understand? This is my talisman, not theirs.”

  Edeco looked glum. “I would rather they not have it.”

  “So let’s get the woman to tell us where he went,” Onegesh said.

  They eyed her. Ilana said nothing.

  “No,” Attila finally said. “I am not going to damage this woman for what she probably doesn’t know. She’s better used as bait. All know how much the Roman who must have the sword desires her. Guernna said he leaped the flames to try to follow.” He pointed to Skilla. “I also know the longing of our own young hothead. So nothing has changed except this test. This fire is a sign that the Hun must return to the open sky. My survival is a sign that Mars still finds me worthy. Any sword that has been through the fire is stronger for it. So now we plan in earnest. This girl goes in a cage. This hothead finds where the sword has been taken and gets it back—or, when we find the Roman, we trade the woman for the sword.” He looked pointedly at Skilla.

  “There will be no trade because the Roman will be dead and I will bring the sword back to you!” Skilla cried. And, elated that Ansila’s promises seemed to be coming true, Skilla took thirty men and rode out in pursuit.

  He followed the Tisza southward to the Danube, reaching it in two and a half days of hard riding, but there was no trace of Jonas. The ferrymen in their canoes swore they hadn’t seen any fugitive. Villagers didn’t report any strange travelers. The best hunters in the group could find no trail or sign.

  Skilla was anxious. Was he about to be humiliated again?

  “Maybe he is so slow we’ve gotten ahead of him,” a warrior named Tatos, one of Skilla’s closest friends, suggested.

  “Maybe.” Skilla pondered. “Or maybe so fast that he slipped across on a log or a stolen boat, or even swam the river with his horse. It’s not impossible. Nor is it impossible he drowned.” That would be a bitter theft, he thought. “All right, two will search downriver, one on either bank. Two more upriver. Five of you will cross here and ride toward the Pass of Succi, questioning every person you meet and offering a reward for the Roman. But I don’t think he came this way. He has another purpose in mind.”

  “What?”

  “My guess is he’s gone another direction.”

  “East?” asked Tatos.

  “That takes him farther from everywhere he knows.”

  “West?”

  “Eventually, perhaps.But not at first, because he’d risk running into our patrols. I say north first, but not forever. The Germans would never hide him from us—they know better than that. My guess is north and then west . . . west to Aetius.” He tried to remember the maps of that area he’d seen. The Huns didn’t have the knowledge to draw maps, but they had learned to read them. How strange that an enemy would tell you the way to his home
land! “If we follow the Danube to the old Roman provinces of Noricum and Raetia, far up the Danube valley, we may intercept him. Tatos, return to Attila with word of what we’re doing and see if anything more has been learned in the camp. The rest of us will ride northwestward, toward the great bend of the Danube. I’ve ridden with Romans before and know well how slow they are. We still have time.”

  So they set out, and when Tatos rejoined them five days later he had intriguing news. “The dwarf and his wife are gone, too.”

  “The dwarf?”

  “The fool, Zerco. He’s disappeared.”

  Of course! The jester had not just help nurse the Roman in his hut, the pair had become conspirators. Not until they lived together had Jonas shown the boldness to set fire to Attila’s palace. How much of what happened had been the fool’s idea?

  “And something even stranger, Skilla. The Greek Eudoxius has disappeared, too.”

  “Eudoxius! He’s no friend of Zerco.”

  “Or of the Roman.Unless he’s been playing a double game.”

  Skilla thought. “Or they have taken him prisoner.”

  “Perhaps as a hostage,” Tatos said, “or for the Romans to torture.”

  “It’s clear, then. They’re riding for Zerco’s old master, the Roman general Aetius. So we ride toward news of Aetius, too. Anyone who sees them will remember a dwarf, a woman, a Roman, and a Greek doctor. They might as well be a traveling circus.”

  Our quartet of fugitives rode ever deeper into the barbarian world. Zerco’s plan was to travel a great arc into Germania, going first northwest and then southwest, striking the Danube again somewhere between Vindobona in the east and Boioduram to the west. He said we would cross the river into the relative safety of Noricum, that province north of the Alps still partly under Roman control. From there we could learn the whereabouts of Aetius or go on to Italy.