B000YQHMGU

by William Dietrich

  I had not the slightest idea what I should do. I’d seen so much horror in the past year that life had become incomprehensible. I felt disconnected, drained, dreamy. Only chance had kept Skilla from killing me this time. Why? What was God’s purpose in all I had seen? I could find Aetius, but to what end? I could crawl toward Ilana, but she seemed as elusive and remote as ever. Attila’s surviving army still stood between us. I could again fight Skilla but he, too, never seemed to die. Oddly, he’d become the one warrior I felt closest to. We shared a love, battles, and a historic journey; and I wondered if, when this was over, we could stop fighting and simply share wine and kumiss in front of a hot fire, trying to remember the cocky young men we’d once been before the slaughter here.

  Was he gone forever, swept away by the Visigoths’ charge? Or hunting for me still with taut bow and arrow?

  I explored my body and was astounded to find no wounds despite my bloody clothing, and my bruises and sores. I was not equal to three-quarters of the warriors who had died and yet here I was, breathing, when they were not. Again, why? I once thought experience would solve the mysteries of life, but instead it seems only to add to them.

  So I sat with these foggy thoughts, as useless as my own broken sword, until finally I noticed a dark form weaving toward me through the dead, as if looking for a fallen companion. The task would not be easy. Inflicted wounds had been so brutal and the slain so trampled that many were past recognition. I admired this figure’s loyalty.

  It turned out to be loyalty of a different sort, however. His form became disquietingly familiar, and suddenly my exhaustion was replaced with anxiety. I stood, swaying. He stopped, the moon behind him and on my face, and spoke softly to me from thirty paces away. “Alabanda?”

  “Don’t you ever rest?” My voice quavered with weariness.

  “I’ve not come to fight you. I’m tired of killing. This day wasn’t war—it was insanity. It has destroyed my nation.” Skilla gazed out at the moonlit bodies. “Ilana needs our help, Jonas Alabanda.”

  “Ilana?” I croaked the name.

  “Attila has gone mad. He fears final defeat tomorrow and has built a pyre of wooden saddles and his richest possessions. If Aetius breaks through the wagon wall, he intends to light it and hurl himself into the flames.”

  My heart hammered at this unexpected information. Were the Huns really that desperate, or was this some kind of trick? “If Attila dies, perhaps Ilana goes free,” I suggested groggily.

  “He has chained her to the pyre.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Do you think I would come to you if I didn’t have to, Roman? You’ve been a plague to me since I met you. I came within moments of killing you yesterday, but the gods intervened. Now I know why. Only you can save her.”

  “Me?” Was this a trap? Had Skilla decided to win by guile what he’d been robbed of in repeated combat?

  “It’s impossible to rescue her,” he said. “The pyre is surrounded by a thousand men. But Attila will still take the sword for the woman.”

  So this was it. “The sword of Mars.”

  “He blames its loss for the evil that has befallen our people this day. Half the Hun nation is gone. We cannot attack anymore, that’s obvious, but we can retreat as an army, not a mob. Attila’s sword will give my nation back its heart.”

  “It is you who has gone insane!” I cried. “I don’t have the sword, Aetius does. Do you think he wants to give it back now that final victory is within our grasp?”

  “Then we must steal it, like you stole it from Attila.”

  “Never!”

  “If we don’t, Ilana will burn.”

  I looked out into the darkness, my head aching. Had I come so far, and fought so hard, only to see the one I loved consumed by flames because of victory? How could destiny be so cruel? And yet what Skilla was asking me to do was to risk sure Roman triumph for a single woman, to put into Attila’s hands the symbol he needed to rally his battered army. I had no guarantee the Huns would let Ilana go if I turned over the sword. They might simply burn both of us for amusement. Maybe this was Skilla’s way of killing me—by luring me to his camp with the promise of Ilana.

  Or maybe he truly loved her, too, loved her so much that this madness somehow made sense to him. So he thought it should make sense to me.

  I stalled, trying to think. “If we save her, which of us gets her?”

  “That will be Ilana’s choice.” Of course he would tell me that, because I would assume she’d choose me. She was Roman. Yet what did I really know? The only word of her survival had come from Skilla himself. For all I knew she’d died in Hunuguri or had married Attila or even had married Skilla! He would tell me anything to get the sword. And yet, looking at him—this man I’d come to know too well through too many combats—I knew he was telling the truth. Knew it in my gut more than my mind. War had given us a curious comradeship.

  If I did nothing, she would die. If I acceded to Skilla’s plan, there was a good chance that both Ilana and I would die. And so no chance existed, or did it? The seed of a desperate alternative began to form in my brain.

  “I’m not even sure where the sword is,” I said as I thought. What if it now served a different purpose—to demoralize instead of empower?

  “Any fool knows where it is. We saw Aetius lift it. Where your general sleeps, there sleeps the sword.”

  “This is madness.”

  “The madness is men’s preoccupation with that old piece of iron,” Skilla said. “You and I both know it has no power beyond what superstition gives it. That relic will not change what happened here, or what must happen tomorrow. My people cannot conquer the West—there are too many to conquer. But the sword saves Ilana and it saves my kagan. It saves my own pride.”

  I looked at him, wondering how my plan could possibly work.

  “We must work together, Jonas. For her.”

  At the outer fringes of the battlefield, where the Roman armies rested, tens of thousands of surviving soldiers were sleeping as if clubbed, every fiber drained by the fight we had just been through. Thousands more wounded had been carried or had crawled here to die. Fresh troops were still coming up to the field, so universal had been the response of resistance in Gaul. The work of war went on. These newcomers were making lanes of advance through the dead by piling them like cordwood. They were bringing fresh supplies of food and water, wheeling catapults and ballistae forward, and were readying for a resumption of battle on the morrow. Others were being sent into the battlefields to retrieve spent bolts and unbroken arrows. I paused to speak quietly to a carpenter working on a catapult, and took the tool he charged eight times too much for.

  Torches lit the way to the complex of tents that marked the headquarters of Aetius. I’d left Skilla behind, telling him to lie still like one of the Hun corpses to avoid discovery. I would get the sword by persuasion or not at all; the two of us could not hack our way through an aroused Roman army. I went by myself knowing that my general would think me a lunatic. Yet didn’t I have some claim to the weapon? Could I tamper with the sword? Was a gamble any worse than renewed slaughter?

  If Aetius needed any reminding what his profession was, the night’s sounds provided it. I could hear the shriek of the wounded from all points of his headquarters compound. Trestle tables had been set up within a stone’s throw; and limbs were being hacked, set, sewn, and bound for those unlucky enough to be grievously wounded and yet still alive. It was a demons’ chorus, despite the vaunted skill of Roman surgeons. A ditch and wooden stockade had been erected around this nexus of the army, and I worried that I might be stopped from entering, ending my ploy before it began. But, no, Jonas of Constantinople was well known as the general’s aide, envoy, spy, and adviser. With my face wiped clean, I was let pass with a salute of respect from the sentries. I walked toward the sword, listening to the cries of the dying.

  What is one more dead? I asked myself. Even if it was me?

  “We thought you had
perished,” one centurion remarked with more prescience than he knew when I came to the tents. I saw Visigothic and Frankish sentries and a little galaxy of lamps in one of the tents and heard a low murmur. The highest-ranking kings and generals were still awake, apparently, debating what to do when the sun came up. Aetius would be in there, but I needed to speak to him privately.

  So where would Aetius have put the old sword? Not on the council table as a symbol of his own luck. He would diplomatically leave it aside and pay attention to the pride of the kings he’d bound to him. This triumph must be theirs as well as his. The weapon would wait in his sleeping chamber.

  “The general has asked me to fetch maps and the great sword,” I lied. Aetius traveled with charts of the entire West, poring over them in the evenings the way a merchant might a budget. As his aide, I’d fetched them a hundred times.

  “Is he ever going to sleep?” the sentry asked, betraying his own wish to do so. He looked heartsick, like all of us.

  “When victory is final,” I replied. “Let’s hope the sword will end things.”

  I lifted the flap, peering inside for additional sentries. None. So I hesitated deliberately, knowing that an errand which might not arouse suspicion in an exhausted sentry would nonetheless puzzle a loyal fool. Something moved around the corner of the outside of the tent, small and furtive, and I was satisfied. I went inside.

  It was dark, so I lit a single clay lamp. There were the trunks and stools of his kit I’d seen many times: here his bed, there his folding desk, and there a heap of sweaty and blooded clothing. But where was the sword? I felt with my hands. Ah! It lay blanketed on his cot like a courtesan, as necessary as love. I caressed the familiar roughness of pitted metal, heavy and ungainly. How odd its size! Had gods really forged it? Was it fate that Attila had found it, giving him courage to try to conquer the world? And more fate that I had delivered it to Aetius? How life plays with us, favoring one moment and fouling the next, raising us up and then dashing our hopes. Again, the sense of it all eluded me.

  I took out the file I’d purchased and set to work.

  Shortly afterward, someone big filled the entry of the tent. “So you decided to take back what you gave, Jonas Alabanda?” the general asked softly.

  “I’ve decided to give it in a different way.”

  “I was told by a special sentry that I might want to see what you were up to.”

  I smiled. “I relied on that sentry to be on duty.”

  A small shadow emerged from behind. “I’d get far more rest if I didn’t have to look after you, Jonas,” Zerco said.

  “Please, sit.” I gestured to the camp stools as if this tent were mine. “I’m as surprised that you two are on your feet as I’m surprised I’m on mine.”

  “Yes,” said Aetius, taking my invitation. “How important all of us must be, to be so tireless. And what are you planning to do with that? Kill Attila? Are you trying to file it sharp?”

  I put the file aside. “I’ve been informed the woman that I love is chained to a funeral pyre. She’s to be burned tomorrow with Attila, if we attack and he loses the battle. A Hun told me this, and I believe him.”

  “Skilla,” the dwarf surmised.

  “I seem as bound to him as you seem bound to Attila, general, or you seem bound to Aetius, Zerco. Bound by fate. He’s a young warrior, the nephew of the warlord Edeco, who I fought in Noricum when you first encountered me and the sword.”

  “Ah, yes. A bold Hun, to have followed you so far into Roman territory. Is he the one who saluted you this day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now I have a better idea why. He wants you to trade the sword for this woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “He loves her, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you believe Attila will accept this trade?”

  “No. He will take the sword, of course, but he wants revenge for our setting fire to his palace. I’ll die if we go to his camp, and accomplish nothing.”

  The general smiled. “Then I fail to see the logic in your plan.”

  “There’s no possibility of escape from Attila’s laager. No possibility of rescuing Ilana. And for me, no possibility of life without that rescue. I’ve watched many men die for what they believe in, and now I’m prepared to die for what I believe in: her.”

  The general looked bemused.

  “I plan to ask Skilla to take her and trade myself for her life. The Huns have a word for it, konoss. A payment of debt. It’s the way families and clans settle disputes. I will pay konoss with my life for hers, and konoss to Skilla with the sword, in return for his solemn promise to care for her as best he can.”

  “Letting Attila rally his troops with this symbol, after all we did to get it here,” Zerco accused, “so one woman can be given to one Hun, instead of burned!”

  “Yes.” I shrugged. “I can’t bear the thought of her dying, not after so many others have died. Could you bear the thought of losing Julia, Zerco?”

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then Aetius spoke again.

  “I acknowledge your willingness to sacrifice, but do you really think I’ll let you take the sword for such a pointless exchange?”

  “Not take it, exactly.”

  “What then?”

  I explained my plan.

  They were quiet a longer time now, turning over the risk in their minds.

  “Attila must be distraught and defeated if he is planning to throw himself on a pyre,” Aetius finally said.

  “Indeed.”

  “My own army is in no better shape. My men have endured casualties on a scale none of us have ever imagined, and the havoc is threatening to break our alliance. Thorismund leads the Visigoths after the death of his father, but his brothers thirst for the kingship just as much as he does. The Visigoths who charged with such implacable fury and unbroken unity at sunset will be a divided people by dawn. Similarly, Anthus has been satisfied with the body of Cloda and fears further sacrifice. The Franks have already fought two days in a row. Sangibanus hates me for putting him and his Alans in the center. The Olibriones scarcely have endurance to go another day; they are not young men. And so on. Our horses need more water. Our war machines are short of ammunition. Our quivers are empty. All the problems that plague the Huns plague us as well. But we have one more. Attila is a tyrant, and as long as he lives he can keep his coalition of Huns and subject tribes united by fear. My power, in contrast, is simple persuasion, and only the threat of Attila has persuaded our nations to unite. Even as Attila threatens to destroy the Western Empire, he has perversely welded it together. If he’s annihilated in our attack tomorrow, our own unity disappears instantly and with it the influence of Rome. Our allies won’t need us anymore. Attila is as necessary to Aetius as Satan is necessary to God.”

  I was puzzled. “You want him to prevail?”

  “I want him to survive. Neither of us can afford an attack tomorrow. But if he withdraws crippled but with face, I have the tool—fear of the Hun—that I need to keep the West together. Two days ago, his existence was the greatest threat to Rome. Tomorrow, his absence would be the greatest threat. I’ve held this Empire together for thirty years by balancing one force against another, and it’s how I’m going to hold it now. I need him to retreat, demoralized, but not lose.”

  “Then you’ll give me a chance to try this?”

  The general sighed. “It is risky. But the sword has done what it can in my hand.”

  I grinned, dizzy with relief and fear.

  Zerco laughed at my expression. “Only an amateur fool, exhausted by battle and heartsick with love, would come up with an idea as absurd as yours, Jonas Alabanda!” He nodded, to confirm this judgment to himself. “And only a professional fool, like me, could think of absurdities to improve it!”

  XXIX

  THE LAAGER OF ATTILA

  Skilla and I struggled across a battlefield as treacherous as a marsh. The moon had set to a deeper darkness but now the sky was b
lushing in the east, giving barely enough light to illuminate the grotesque path we must take. We stepped carefully to avoid the blades, arrows, spear tips, shards of shattered armor, and bodies. On and on the havoc stretched, thousands upon thousands upon thousands. Worst were those who were still alive, twitching feebly, crawling blind as snails, or begging pitifully for water. We had none, so we passed quickly by. There were too many! By the time we drew near the Hun encampment, I was finally and forever done with war.

  Once more I had strapped the great sword of Mars on my back, but this time it felt like I was carrying a cross. Could this gamble possibly work? I was about to find again, and possibly lose forever, the one person I truly cared about. Having once escaped the lion’s den, I was walking back into it. Fool, indeed.

  Skilla had tethered his pony on the field’s edge, a dark silhouette with neck down as it munched dew-wet grass, oblivious to the historic carnage. Nearby was another horse with a form that seemed gladly familiar.

  “We will ride, not walk, to see Attila,” he said. “I brought your horse.”

  “Diana!”

  “I added her to my string after you fled.” He turned to me in the pearl gray light and grinned that familiar flash of teeth. “She’s only good for milking, but I kept her anyway.”

  Suddenly I felt a rush of a feeling of brotherhood with this man, this Hun, this barbarian, that so flooded my body that it felt disorienting. My most hated enemy had become, after Ilana, the one I felt closest to: closer, even, than Zerco. We were partners trying to save a life, instead of taking one. And yet I was planning to betray him.