The Scourge of God

by William Dietrich

  Then my father summoned me with better news.

  “Your curious preoccupation with languages has finally borne fruit,” he told me, not bothering to conceal his relief and surprise. I had taken to learning the way my brother had taken to athletics, and so spoke Greek, Latin, German, and— with the help of a former Hun captive named Rusticius who had enrolled in the same school—some Hunnish. I enjoyed the strange, gravelly sound of the hard consonants and frequent vowels of that tongue, even though there had been little opportunity to put the language into practice. The Huns did not trade, travel casually, or write; and all I knew of them was exotic rumor. They were like a great and mysterious shadow somewhere beyond our walls, many Byzantines whispering that Attila might be the Antichrist of prophecy.

  My father had never seen a practical value in learning barbarian jargon, of course; and, in truth, Olivia’s Tutiline family had been put off by it as well. She viewed my interest in obscure scholarly pursuits as somewhat peculiar, and despite my infatuation I’d been frustrated that she seemed bored by my fascination with the campaigns of Xenophon, my meticulous record of seasonal bird migrations, or my attempts to reconcile the movement of the stars with politics and destiny. “Jonas, you think about such silly things!” But now, unexpectedly, my aptitudes might pay off.

  “There’s an embassy going to parley with Attila and the scholar they selected as scribe has taken sick,” my father explained. “Your acquaintance Rusticius heard of your unemployment and got word to an aide of Chrysaphius. You’ll never be the soldier your brother is, but we all know you’re good with letters. They need a scribe and historian willing to be away for some months, and have nominated you. I have negotiated some pay in advance, enough to lease a ship and resuscitate our business.”

  “You’re spending my pay already?”

  “There’s nothing to buy in Hunuguri, Jonas, let me assure you, but much to see and learn. Rejoice at this opportunity, and put your mind to practical matters for a change. If you perform your duties and keep your head attached to your shoulders, you may catch the eye of the emperor or his chief minister. This could be the making of you, boy.”

  The thought of travel on a state mission was exciting. And the Huns were intriguing, if intimidating. “What am I to do?”

  “Write what you observe and stay out of the way.”

  My family had emigrated from our home city of Ephesus to the new city of Constantinople a hundred years ago. Through trade, marriage, and government service, my ancestors had scrabbled their way into the city’s upper classes. Capricious fortune, however, always prevented our entry into the highest ranks; the Cyprus storm being just the latest example. Now I had opportunity. I would be an aide to the respected Senator Maximinus, the ambassador, and would ride with three Huns and two translators: Rusticius and a man I’d never heard of named Bigilas. We seven men and our train of slaves and bodyguards would journey to the barbarian lands beyond the Danube and meet the notorious Attila. The thought immediately occurred to me that this would provide stories enough to impress any pretty girl. The haughty Olivia would burn with regret at her rejection of me, and other damsels would seek my attention! Yesterday my future seemed bleak. Today I was responsible for helping keep the world’s peace. That evening I prayed to the saints at the Alcove of Mary for my good luck.

  Two days later I joined the party outside the city walls, riding my gray mare, Diana, and feeling dashingly equipped, thanks to the anxious and hurried investment of my father. My sword was forged in Syria, my tightly woven wool cape came from Bithynia, my saddlebags were of Anatolian manufacture, my paper was Egyptian, and my ink and pens were the finest in Constantinople. Perhaps I would see great events, he told me, and write a book. I realized he had pride in me, and I basked in unaccustomed approval. “Get us a good ship,” I told him grandly. “I believe our luck has changed, Father.”

  How little we understand.

  Our route would take us west and north more than five hundred miles, through the Pass of Succi and down the course of the Margus to the Danube, then uncounted miles beyond to find Attila. It was a reverse of the path the Huns had followed in their great raids in 441 and 443, and I was well aware that the territory I was about to traverse was a ruin. That invasion and another, farther east in 447, had devastated Thrace and Moesia and destroyed such cities as Viminacium, Singidunum, Sirmium, Ratiaria, Sardica, Philippopolis, Arcadiopolis, and Marcianopolis. Smaller raids had followed, with poor Axiopolis falling just months ago.

  Yet each winter the barbarians retreated like the tide to their grasslands. Constantinople still stood, Attila had refrained from further attacks after the promise of more tribute, and there was hope for recovery if war could permanently be averted. And why not? There simply was little left in the outlying provinces to easily plunder, and Hun losses had been as heavy as Roman. This embassy might put an end to the insanity of war.

  I reported to a villa outside the city walls where the party was being assembled, the Romans sleeping indoors and the Huns outside, like livestock. At first I wondered if this was deliberate insult or clumsy oversight, but the Hun ambassadors, Rusticius explained when he greeted me, had disdained to stay within the walls. “They believe them corrupting. They’re camped by the river, which they won’t wash in because of their fear of water.”

  This was my first exposure to their odd beliefs. I peered around the villa corner to get a glimpse of them, but all I saw was the smoke of a cooking fire. The distance was disconcerting. “It seems an odd way to begin a partnership,” I said.

  “You and I will be sleeping on the ground with them soon enough.”

  I suppose their invisibility was fitting. I’d hoped for some immediate panoply that would give me recognition among my peers in the city, but there had been no announcement of our embassy. This mission, it seemed, was a quiet one. Chrysaphius was unpopular for the payments to Attila, and no doubt he didn’t want to call attention to further negotiation. Better to wait until we could announce some kind of success.

  So I went inside the villa to meet our ambassador. Maximinus, the emperor’s representative, was examining lists of supplies in the courtyard, his head exposed to the sun and bright birds darting among the climbing roses. He was one of those physically blessed men who would rise by appearance even had he lacked ability. His thick white hair and beard, piercing black eyes, high cheekbones, and Grecian nose gave him the look of a marble bust come to life. He combined this handsomeness with the care, caution, and slow gravity of the diplomat, his voice deep and sonorous. When he was a thousand miles from Constantinople it would be his bearing alone that would convey the might of the Eastern Roman Empire, he knew; and he told me once that an effective diplomat was also an effective actor. Yet Maximinus had the reputation of being able as well as dignified and intelligent as well as connected. His greeting was gracious, without presuming friendliness or warmth. “Ah, yes, Jonas Alabanda. So you are to be our new historian.”

  “Secretary, at least.” I gave a modest bow. “I make no pretense at being a Livy or Thucydides.” My father had coached me not to put on airs.

  “Sensible modesty. Good history is as much judgment as fact, and you’re too young to make judgments. Still, the success of a mission often hinges as much on how it is reported as what it accomplishes. I trust you intend to be fair?”

  “My loyalty is to you and to the emperor, ambassador. My own fortune depends on our success.”

  Maximinus smiled. “A good answer. Maybe you have a talent for diplomacy yourself. We’ll see. Certainly we have a difficult task and need to support one another as much as we can. These are perilous times.”

  “Not too perilous, I hope.” It was an attempt at a small joke.

  “You’ve lived your life inside the walls of Constantinople. Now you’re about to experience the world outside them. You will see things that will shock you. The Huns are brave, gracious, cruel, and unpredictable—as clever as foxes and as wild as wolves. And the omens of recent years have
not been good, as you know.”

  “Omens?”

  “Remember the killing winter of seven years ago? The floods six years past, the riots in the city just five years back, the plague a mere four, and the earthquakes just three? God has been trying to tell us something. But what?”

  “It has not been a lucky time.” Like everyone, I had heard the speculation from priests and prophets that this wretched string of woes foretold the biblical end of time. Many believed that the Armageddon the Church constantly expected was at last on the horizon and that the Huns represented the Gog and Magog of religious lore. While my hardheaded father derided such fears as superstitious nonsense—“The more ordinary a man, the more certain that his time must be the culmination of history”—the constant assaults on the Empire had given Constantinople an atmosphere of foreboding. One couldn’t help but be affected.

  “All that misfortune is combined with Attila’s victories, crippling tribute payments, the loss of Carthage to the Vandals, the failure of the Sicilian expedition to get it back, the quarrels with Persia, and the refusal of the Western Empire to come to our aid. While Marcianopolis was burning, the celebrated general Flavius Aetius preferred to sit in Rome, leaving Moesia to her fate. So much for the promises of Valentinian, emperor of the West!”

  “But the earthquake damage has been repaired,” I pointed out with the optimism of youth. “The Huns have retreated....”

  “The Huns know our weaknesses better than any nation, which is why you and I can never afford to be weak. Do you understand what I’m saying, Jonas?”

  I swallowed and stood straighter. “We represent our people.”

  “Exactly! We come not with strength but with the wit to manipulate a people simpler than ourselves. I’m told Attila is a great believer in prophecy, astrology, omens, and magic. He claims to have found the great sword of the god of war. He thinks he is invincible until someone convinces him otherwise. Our job, with no weapons and no tools, is to do that convincing.”

  “But how?”

  “By reminding him how long Rome and Nova Roma have prevailed. By reciting how many chieftains have been smashed, like waves, upon the rocks of Rome. It will not be easy. I hear he is aware of the vision of Romulus, and that is just the kind of thing to give barbarians courage.”

  “I don’t think I recall the vision of Romulus.” I was less familiar with the legends of the West.

  “Pagan nonsense. Still, I suspect Attila is crafty enough to use it to his advantage. The legend is that Romulus, the founder of Rome, had a dream in which he saw twelve vultures over the city. Soothsayers have long contended that each bird represents a century and that Rome will come to an end at the end of the last one.”

  “Twelve hundred years? But—”

  “Precisely. If our historians have counted correctly from the city’s founding, the prophecy calls for Rome’s end in just three years’ time.”

  It was a strange party that set out to reach Attila. Maximinus I have already described. Rusticius was more acquaintance than friend, but an earnest and well-meaning fellow who greeted me warmly. He was in his thirties, widowed by the plague, and, like me, viewed this mission as rare opportunity for advancement. He’d been captured by the Huns while on a trade mission from his native Italy and ransomed by a relative in Constantinople. At school, he had shared tales of his life in the West. Since we were natural allies and I felt somewhat in his debt, we immediately decided to share a tent. Though not particularly quick nor a leader, Rusticius was consistently good-humored and accepted new situations with equanimity. “Had I not been captured I would not know Hunnish, and had I not known Hunnish, I would not know you or be on this embassy,” he reasoned. “So who but God is to say what is good and what is bad?”

  He would become my closest friend on this expedition, humble and steady.

  The other translator was unknown to me and somewhat aloof: not from shyness but from self-importance, I judged. He was an older, shorter, and rather oily Roman named Bigilas, quick to talk and slow to listen, whose manner had the false sincerity of a rug merchant. This fellow, who had been a captive and done some bartering with the Huns, carried himself with an odd presumption of rank. Didn’t he know his place in the world? He even pretended to some secret familiarity with the Hun leader, Edeco, and talked to him like a comrade. Why the Hun tolerated this self-importance, I didn’t know, but the barbarian made no move to put Bigilas in his place. I found his cultivation of mystery irritating, and he in turn ignored me unless to give unsolicited advice about what I should wear or eat. I decided he was one of those people who think constantly of themselves and have no empathy for others, and I took mean satisfaction in noticing he had fondness for the grape. This man, I thought early on as I watched him drink, is trouble.

  The Huns, when I finally met them, were simply arrogant. They made it clear that in their world a man’s worth was measured by his skill at war and that any Hun had ten times the skill of a Roman. Edeco was proud, crude, and condescending. “In the time it takes Romans to pack a mule, a horse and donkey could produce a new one,” he growled the morning we left.

  Onegesh was more urbane, given his background, but left no doubt that he felt he had improved himself by trading the Roman world for this new barbaric one. Captured in battle, he had promptly defected. His choice astonished me, but he told me that he now ranked higher and had grown richer, besides learning he preferred the sky to a roof. “In the Empire, it’s all birth and patron, is it not? In Hunuguri, it’s ability and loyalty. I’d rather be free on the plains than a slave in a palace.”

  “But you weren’t a slave.”

  “To expectation? Everyone is, in Rome and Constantinople. Besides, I had no rich relatives to ransom me but only my own wits and ability. In the Roman army, I was ignored. In Hunuguri, I’m listened to.”

  Most irritating was the youngest Hun, a warrior named Skilla just a few years older than I. He had arguably the least rank of any of us and yet exemplified Hun pride. I sought him out the day I arrived and found him squatting by their fire, working on the fletching of an arrow and disdaining to even glance at me. I tried a formal but simple greeting. “Good day to you, companion. I am Jonas, secretary to the senator.”

  Skilla kept working on his arrow. “I know who you are. You’re young to go with the graybeard.”

  “As are you to go with your uncle. In my case it’s because I’m skilled with letters and know your language.”

  “How do you know Hunnish?”

  “I enjoy foreign tongues and Rusticius taught me yours.”

  “Soon the whole world will speak the words of the People of the Dawn.”

  Well, that seemed presumptuous. “Or we will live as neighbors and share Latin, Greek, and Hunnish together. Isn’t that the point of this embassy?”

  Skilla sighted down the shaft of his arrow. “Is our language all that you know?” There seemed some secret meaning in the question, but I didn’t know what it was.

  “I am schooled in many things, like classics and philosophy,” I said carefully.

  The Hun looked up for a moment to study my face and then went back to his arrow, as if I’d revealed more than I intended to. “But not horses and weapons.”

  This was annoying. “I’ve been trained with arms and animals but been educated in much more. I know music and poetry.”

  “No use in war.”

  “But of great use in love.” I’d wager he coupled like I’d seen the Huns eat: with too much speed, too little care, and a great belch afterward. “Have the Huns heard of love?”

  “The Huns have heard of women, Roman, and I have one of my own without need for music and poetry.”

  “You are married?”

  “Not yet, but I have Attila’s promise.” He finished binding his quill of feathers to the shaft and allowed a smile. “I have to teach her not to scratch.”

  “It sounds like you need the book and lyre, not the bow and arrow.”

  “The Hun use books to wipe o
ur asses.”

  “Because you can’t read and have no thoughts worth writing down.” Not the most diplomatic rejoinder, I know, but the man’s stubborn ignorance was dismaying.

  “Yet you Romans pay tribute to us, the Hun.”

  That was true enough, and it was unclear how this embassy would change that. I finally walked away, wondering what would be accomplished.

  V

  A TEST OF HORSES

  We set out on horseback, the slaves and pack mules extending the total caravan to fifteen people and thirty animals. This was considered modest for an imperial embassy, but again, our mission was a quiet one. We would of necessity be camping. The Roman system of mansionis, or inns, located twenty miles apart, had been abandoned after the devastation of the recent wars, so we would set our own ambitious pace, averaging twenty-five miles per day. The Huns would have moved faster on their own, but our Roman baggage train, with its gifts and food, could not move faster.

  “You travel so slowly that you need even more food and fodder, which makes you slower yet, and which requires yet more supplies. It is insane,” Edeco pronounced.

  “We could leave the presents behind,” Maximinus said mildly.

  “No, no,” the Hun muttered. “We will ride like Romans, and I will catch up on my sleep.”