B000YQHMGU

by William Dietrich

THE BATTLE OF

  NATIONS

  XXIII

  THE SECRET STOREROOM

  Aurelia was a walled Roman city that stood in the path of any armies marching through the lowlands of Gaul. Situated on the Loire River, it was the heart of Rome’s most fertile province. If the Huns could occupy it, they would have a strategic capital from which to dominate western Europe. If the Romans could hold it, their defense would be simplified.

  Attila hoped that treachery would deliver the city. Sieges were costly; betrayal cheap.

  It was one of the ironies of history that the Alan tribe that had come to control Aurelia, and the Loire, were distant cousins of the Hun. They now were part of that patchwork confederacy of Roman, German, and Celtic peoples that made up the Western Empire. The tribal migrations that had upended the region two generations before had settled into an uneasy coalition of chieftains, generals, and opportunists who had carved out spheres of influence. Each tribe owed nominal allegiance to the Empire, and yet each enjoyed a measure of independence, because that empire was weak. Each tribe had been placed by the emperor to check its neighbor. The barbarians depended on Rome, envied Rome, disdained Rome, feared Rome, and yet thought of themselves as newly Roman.

  If the Visigoths were the most powerful tribe, the Bagaudae, Franks, Saxons, Armoricans, Liticians, Burgundians, Belgicans, and Alans each had territories and armies of their own. Two months before the Hun armies marched, emissaries had come to Aurelia to sound out the king of the Alans, the wily Sangibanus. Attila was coming with the greatest army the West had ever seen, the king was warned. Sangibanus could fight for the Romans and be destroyed, or join the Huns and remain a king, albeit a vassal.

  It was a grim choice, made worse by the fact that Sangibanus’s own belligerent warriors had no intention of submitting to anyone. Worse, if the king’s treachery was discovered before the Huns arrived, Aetius might make an example of him. Yet to fight Attila was to risk annihilation.

  “You cannot sit out this war—you must choose,” insisted the young and rising Hun sent to persuade Sangibanus. “You can rule under Attila, or you can die under the Romans.”

  “My people won’t follow me to the Huns. They already flatter themselves that they’re Romans and Christians. No one wants to go back to the ways of our grandfathers.”

  “They need not make the choice. You must, for their safety. Listen, I have a plan so that even the gate guards need not choose. Here is all you have to do . . .”

  The Hun’s name was Skilla.

  “A child to see you, bishop.”

  “A child?”

  “He doesn’t have the manners of one. Or any manners at all, as far as I can see. He says it’s about the safety of the church. It’s really quite peculiar.”

  “This is a bold child.” Bishop Anianus looked thoughtful. “He insists on keeping his head covered. Were he an assassin—”

  “Bertrand, I am the easiest of all men to kill. No one need send a child to do it, in a cape. They could assault me in the street, stampede a wood cart across me, drop a brick from a parapet, or poison the daily sacrament.”

  “Bishop!” But of course this was true. If this visitor was strange, their own bishop was stranger. He had the habit of disappearing for weeks at a time as hermit and pilgrim, talking in his own way to God. Then he would suddenly reappear as if never absent. He visited the sick and lame without fear of contagion, gave penance to murderers and thieves, and conferred with the powerful. In an increasingly lawless world, he represented divine law. His piety and good works had made him not only popular but also a leader.

  “But they don’t harm me because it is God’s will,” Anianus went on. “And it is His will, I think, that I see this mysterious visitor. These are strange times, and strange people are afoot. Demons, perhaps. And angels! Let’s see which he is.”

  Their visitor had overheard. “Too ugly to be an angel and too charming to be a demon,” he proclaimed, pushing back his hood. “Of strangeness, I will confess to.”

  Bertrand blinked. “Not a child but a dwarf.”

  “An emissary from Aetius, bishop. My name is Zerco.” The bishop’s face admitted surprise. “Not the usual representative.”

  “When I’m not representing my master I amuse him.” Zerco bowed. “I admit to being unusual but not useless. Not only am I a fool by profession, but I came through the gates with Burgundian refugees. No one notices a halfling if there are children all around.”

  “I thought it was the business of a fool to be noticed.”

  “In less perilous times. But there are agents of Attila in Gaul as well as agents of Aetius, and I’d prefer not to meet them. I bring you greetings from the general and a warning that Aurelia is in the path of the Hun. Aetius wants to know if the city will hold.”

  “The answer to that is simple. It will hold if Aetius will come.”

  “His army has temporarily retreated to Limonurr in hopes that, by offering such proximity and support, Theodoric will bring his Visigoths. If Aurelia can buy my general time while he rallies the western tribes—”

  “But what are the Visigoths going to do?”

  “I don’t know. An able friend has been sent to urge them to join us, but I’ve had no word of his success or failure. My assignment is to know what Aurelia is going to do.”

  Anianus laughed. “Everyone is waiting for everyone else! Surely there is a parable about such meekness, but I can’t remember it now. Yet what choice do all of us have? If the Huns succeed, the Church is finished before it has properly begun, and I will be roasted as a preview of eternal punishment. I know more of Attila than you might expect, halfling—enough to have taken the time to learn Hunnish! There is no question what I intend to do: resist, and resist with all my breath. But the king has shut me out of his councils. His soldiers don’t want to submit to the yoke of a new empire, but neither do they want to die for nothing. Every man is asking if the next man is constant, and none has the courage to be the first to step forward. The Franks are feeling out the Alans, the Alans the Burgundians, the Burgundians the Saxons, the Saxons the Visigoths and the Goths, I suppose, the Romans! Who, besides Aetius, is going to stand?”

  “Let it start with you and me, bishop.”

  He smiled. “A man of peace and a dwarf? And yet isn’t that the message, in essence, of our Church? Of taking a stand against evil? Of belief in the face of fear?”

  “Just as you know something of Attila, I know something of you. People sang your praises the closer I came to Aurelia, Bishop Anianus. They will unite behind you if Sangibanus allows it. But Aetius fears that the king of the Alans has no faith in him or anything else and will sell himself to the Huns.”

  Anianus shrugged. “I am bishop, not king. What can I do?”

  “I will listen to Sangibanus, but I need the eyes and ears of your priests, nuns, and prelates to find out what is really going on. If there’s a plot to betray the city we need to learn of it and stop it, and convince the Alans to hold until Aetius comes.”

  Anianus looked sober. “If he doesn’t, Attila will kill us all.”

  “If you give up Aurelia and put Attila in a position to win this war, he will kill the entire Empire, bishop, and with it the Church. The world will go dark, and men will live like beasts for the next thousand years. I, too, know more of Attila than most men, because I’ve played the fool for him. One thing I always remember: I’ve yet to make him laugh.”

  If the Huns had an emissary in Aurelia he was well hidden, but the news from the east was grave. An ever-growing flood of refugees was pouring into the city. Mediomatrica had been entered on the eve of Easter, its inhabitants slaughtered and its buildings burned. Durocortorum was destroyed when its population fled. Nasium, Tullum, Noviomagus, Andematunnum, and Augustobona went up in flames as Attila’s vast army split into arms to sustain itself. The bishop Nicacius was beheaded, and his nuns raped and speared. Priests were crucified, merchants flayed until they revealed the hiding place of their valuables, children
enslaved, and livestock slaughtered. Some Aurelians were already fleeing toward the sea. Yet the news produced grim determination as well. In the depth of despair, some people were finding courage. Aurelia was bitterly divided—as Axiopolis had been, far to the east— on whether to resist or surrender.

  In the end, Zerco’s discovery depended on luck. A boy assisting a new unit of hastily organized militia had gone to the city’s weapon shops and had curiously slipped through a narrow passageway briefly revealed by a shifting of shelves. Inside, the boy glimpsed a glittery cache of weapons and armor. The youth always prepared earnestly for the sacrament of the Sabbath, but always had difficulty during confession to find some sin with which to practice penance. It was hard to be venial enough to occupy the confessional’s time when you were only eight! He finally remembered to confess his trespass, and it was the room’s very existence that caught the priest’s ear. He thought the hidden cache of weaponry peculiar enough to mention to a prelate, who in turn remembered the bishop’s request to report anything unusual. Anianus mentioned it to Zerco.

  “It seems strange to lock armor away.”

  Zerco thought. “Saved for an elite unit, perhaps?”

  “For when? After the city has fallen? And that’s not the only peculiar thing. The boy said all the helmets and shields and swords looked alike.”

  Now this was intriguing. The tribesmen who had settled in Gaul retained individual taste in weaponry. Every man had his own armor, every clan its own colors, every nation its own designs. Only the thin and depleted Roman units managed by Italians retained a uniformity of equipment. Yet Roman troops were far away, with Aetius.

  “Perhaps it is innocent or a boy’s imagination. But I’d like a look at this storeroom, bishop. Can you get me in there?”

  “That’s the province of the marshal, just as the altar is mine.” He considered. “But I might send an altar boy to fetch Helco, the youngster who made his confession. Someone of your stature, in a vestment, might just get close enough. . . .”

  “An altar boy I shall be.”

  Zerco was helped by the confusion the approach of the Huns had caused. Men were assigned to the armory at morning and reassigned to a tower by noon, and then posted to the granary at dusk and a well by midnight. Private arms were being sold, donated, and redistributed. As a result, a small altar boy with a concealing hood, sent by the bishop to find another lad, did not cause much notice at first. Zerco spied a narrow opening behind the regular armory storage, and when eyes were turned tried to slip inside.

  But a guard challenged him. “Hold up, boy. That back there is not for you.”

  “The bishop has sent me to fetch Helco. The captain said to look there.”

  “The captain of the guard?”

  “Ask him if you must. But Anianus is impatient.”

  The man scowled. “Stay until I come back.”

  Once the guard left, Zerco didn’t pause. There was a tight twist in the rocky corridor and a wooden door with a heavy lock. The dwarf had brought a hammer and chisel, and with a bang, the lock parted. If he was caught, his means of entry was the least of his worries.

  The room was dark, so the dwarf lit a candle to reveal the gleam of steel and leather. It was much as Helco had described, except the boy had omitted a crucial detail.

  “Roman!” There was enough Roman armor to equip a troop of cavalry, yet no Roman troops would come to Gaul unequipped, and none would report to Sangibanus before reporting to Aetius. This was for barbarians, but why? And why was this equipment kept secret? Because any men wearing it would be assumed to be Roman. . . .

  Zerco heard voices and snuffed out the candle, melting into the shadows. He discarded the hood and took out the signet medallion assigned him by Aetius, in hopes it would make the guards hesitate long enough for the dwarf to remind them that Anianus knew where he was.

  The corridor filled with approaching light and then the broken doorway filled with men and oaths. There was the guard who had challenged him and a second, older, grizzled soldier, probably his captain, angry at the broken lock. These two put their hands to the hilt of their swords. A third man, shorter and stockier and with a brimmed hat concealing his face, stepped up behind them. They came inside with a torch.

  Zerco, his discovery inevitable, stepped out. Even as he displayed the medallion, the dwarf could see the third man’s eyes widening.

  The stranger spoke in Hunnish. “Little mouse!”

  It was Skilla.

  “That man is a Hun!” Zerco cried in surprise.

  The guard captain shook his head. “We warned you not to come here.”

  Skilla spoke to the Alans in Latin, his accent thick. “I know this dwarf. He’s an assassin, kidnapper, and thief.”

  “I’m an aide to Aetius and Anianus! Harm me at your peril!”

  “If allowed to speak to your bishop,” Skilla warned, “he will mislead him.”

  “He’s not going to speak to anyone.” Blades were drawn. “Listen to me! This is a trick to betray your city—”

  A sword swung with a whistle, narrowly missing. Zerco hurled his hammer at Skilla’s head, but the Hun knocked it away, scoffing at the attempt. The dwarf dropped and tried to scuttle, but blades clanged against the stone floor, blocking his way. So he somersaulted backward instead, knocking over a rack of spears and shields to slow his tormentors. The men laughed. This was play!

  “The Huns are going to enslave you!” the dwarf warned from the darkness.

  A spear sailed at the sound of his voice and nearly pinioned him. “Come out, little mouse,” Skilla called in Hunnish. “The cat is here to eat you.”

  He needed a mouse hole. There was no back door and no window. A drain? He hadn’t noticed one. He looked for a spot darker than the darkness, the boots of his assailants treading heavily on the stone as they moved to corner him. And there, in the corner where wall and ceiling met . . .

  The men charged, and the dwarf leaped. He sprang past a sword thrust and clutched at the mail of the guard who had challenged him, temporarily blinding the man with a poke that elicited a howl. Then he clambered like a squirrel to the man’s head and leaped, half landing in a tight cavity. His fingers scrabbled for a hold.

  “Get him! Get him! I can’t see!”

  A hand slithered on his ankle. Zerco kicked, connecting with something hard, and pulled himself upward with all his might, wriggling up a passageway as narrow as a pipe. “Boost me up!” someone cried.

  He could hear an arm thrashing behind him. “He’s like a damned rabbit. It’s too small! There’s no way I can follow.”

  “What is that hole?” Skilla asked.

  “Who knows? Probably a vent, to give air.”

  “Can he get out the other way?”

  “There are grates on the outside to keep out animals. He can’t go anywhere, but we can’t get him, either.”

  “Maybe if we boost up a dog . . .”

  “Why bother,” Skilla said. “Aren’t men working to reinforce the walls? Get some stones and a hod of mortar. We’ll seal him in and have no corpse to explain.”

  Even as they worked, Skilla felt cursed by the dwarf. The little man was grotesque and scuttled like a spider, and he seemed tied to every moment of the Hun’s torment by Jonas and Ilana. The witches had told him forest legends of squat and scabrous gnomes from the German woods who plagued ordinary men with magic and tricks. The annoying Zerco was one of these, Skilla believed, and sealing him in a stone tomb would be a gift to the world.

  The warrior watched impatiently as the guards clumsily bricked. How Skilla hated it down here! No Hun liked crowded, dark, or confined spaces; and these underground passageways that the Romans had built were all three. He was proud of having been assigned the mission of conspiring with Sangibanus—it was a mark of his uncle’s growing trust in him, despite his setbacks—and he knew success would eventually bring him overdue recognition, and Ilana. But the past week in Aurelia was almost more than he could bear. It was never quiet in the cit
y. His senses were battered with noise, color, crowds, and ceaseless clanging. How he longed for the countryside! But soon Sangibanus would betray his own capital and Aurelia would fall. Soon the Huns would be masters of everything, and the clever men who made life complicated would be no more.

  The king of the Alans dared not simply surrender his city, Skilla knew. His own warlords, who distrusted their cousin Huns as much as they distrusted Romans, might turn on him. Sangibanus could not convince them of the West’s weakness without seeming a coward. Nor could he simply organize a party of traitors to overwhelm the sentries at his own gate. If too cowardly to fight Attila, he was also too cowardly to murder his own soldiers, because the chance of betrayal and civil war was too high. So instead Skilla had offered a different way. With Roman armor and a persuasive Aurelian officer, a party of Huns could seize the gate with a minimum of bloodshed, holding it open just long enough for other Huns to gallop through. With that, the battle would be over before it began, and no one—including King Sangibanus— need die.

  Now they had to act more quickly than planned. If Zerco had found this hidden armory, who else might know? Aurelia must fall before the dwarf was missed.

  XXIV

  THE GATE OF AURELIA

  There are few things more difficult, Zerco supposed, than listening to men brick up your tomb. He tried to laugh at his predicament, just as he had tried to laugh at his entire bizarre life. How he’d wanted to be an equal in the councils of the big people! His humor was a mask for his bitterness about his own ugliness, of course—just as it covered up his astonished wonder that he could marry a woman as fine as Julia or have a friend as promising as Jonas. Now he would pay for pride and ambition! Sealed in a little catacomb without the mercy of oblivion. Should he back out before they finished and hope for a quick death instead of torture? Or stay out of reach and suffocate instead? For a little man who depended on agility and wit, the latter seemed a particularly pathetic way to die. Yet life had taught the dwarf to keep hoping. He was a freak who advised generals and consulted with bishops. So perhaps it was not time to wiggle backward to certain death but to squirm forward. Even as the final stone was wedged into place, Zerco was climbing the steep incline of his tunnel to find where it led.