“We’ve defeated a finger of Attila’s army, not Attila,” the dwarf said. “Had there been any disloyalty in Aurelia, we would have failed to do even that.”
The comment hung in the air.
Sangibanus glowered. “We Alans have done more than our share already, little man. You can hear the wailing as the dead are carried off our walls. I had no quarrel with Attila to begin with, and cease to care about him if he leaves my kingdom.”
“And where does your kingdom stop?” Aetius asked.
“What do you mean? In this river valley, given to us by the emperor of Rome. We have answered his call by defending our holdings and his. Who knows what Attila will do? Maybe he will go back all the way to Hunuguri.”
The others laughed at this suggestion, and Sangibanus flushed.
“I mean, Sangibanus,” Aetius went on, “that as long as Attila threatens Rome, he threatens all of us. Including you.”
“I’ve heard this argument a thousand times. To hell with your Empire! It means my warriors die for the rich of Italy!”
“It means that failing to unite means the end of what your people migrated here to get. Rome has stood for more than a thousand years. Gaul has been Roman for five centuries.” He turned to the rest of us. “Listen to me, all of you. Your ancestors came to the Rhine and Danube and found a world of power and riches beyond all imagining. The deeper you marched into it, the more you wanted to be a part of it. The emperors have granted you lands, but only on the condition that you defend the civilization that accepted you. Now you must pay that debt. If Attila succeeds, the world will fall into permanent darkness. If he is defeated, your kingdoms become heir to a thousand years of civilization. Your choice is simple. You can fight to live as free kings in a world of promise. Or wait to be destroyed individually, one by one, your people enslaved, your daughters raped, your wives tortured, your houses burned. Are we cowards, throwing ourselves on the mercy of the Huns? Or are we the last and the greatest of the legionaries?”
There was a low rumble at this speech, most muttering that Aetius was right. There were already too many fallen cities, too many refugees, and too many stories of Hun slaughter. Now there was a chance for revenge.
“The Alans are no cowards,” Sangibanus said sulkily, knowing that Aetius had challenged his courage before every man in the room.
“Indeed they are not, as this siege has proved,” Aetius replied with seeming generosity. “Which means that I give your people the place of honor, Sangibanus: the middle of our line, in the coming battle.”
The king started. The center would undoubtedly mark some of the hardest fighting. It was also the place most difficult to flee from, or switch sides. Once placed in the center, Sangibanus could only fight against the Huns for his life.
Aetius waited. Every eye was on the king of the Alans, knowing that the Roman had outmaneuvered him with words, challenging his manhood and the reputation of his people. Sangibanus gloomily regarded the hundreds of warlords watching him. Then, swallowing, he haughtily raised his head. “The Alans will fight nowhere but the center, and I shall be in their front rank.”
A shout of acclamation went up. Now the assembled kings debated over who should have the honor of occupying the dangerous but potentially decisive right wing. That task was finally acceded primarily to Theodoric and the Visigoths.
One by one, the other kingdoms were assigned to a rough order of battle. Princes preened and boasted as their roles became known. Anthus, king of the Franks, wanted to lead the attack on the left in hopes of forestalling the claim to the throne of his brother Cloda. The veterans called the Olibriones asked to stiffen the Alans in the center. The Burgundians wanted a crack at the Ostrogoths.
“What about me?” Zerco piped up, getting a laugh.
“You will be my adviser, little warrior.”
“Let me ride on your shoulders, general, and together we will tower over Attila! He is as squat as he is ugly!” The men laughed again.
“I have a better use. You know the Huns and their language better than almost anyone. Some will be captured and others wounded. I want you to interrogate them about the condition of Attila’s army. If he is indeed regrouping his forces, it will probably be in the rolling farmland beyond the Seine where his cavalry can maneuver. But he will be assembling in a wilderness he has burned. I want to know how long he can feed his men.”
“The rest of us will give him fewer men to feed,” I boasted.
Aetius turned. “No, Jonas of Constantinople, I have a special task for you as well. Rumor persists that this war began in part because Gaiseric and his Vandals agreed to aid Attila in an attack upon Rome. So far, no word of such an attack has come, but if it does all our efforts may be in vain. We desperately need help from Marcian. I need you to return to your home by ship, with my signet ring, and try to persuade the Eastern emperor to march on Attila’s rear.”
“And thus force the Hun to retreat?” I said.
Aetius smiled. “You have a growing grasp of strategy, young man.”
I bowed. “But not the heart, general.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“You do me a great honor by showing so much confidence,” I went on. “What you wish is indeed important. But it will take me many weeks to reach Constantinople by even the fastest horse and ship, and—even if I persuade him— many months for my emperor to muster his armies and march to Hunuguri. Or to fight Gaiseric. It seems doubtful he could do so this season. So there is time, my lord, to make such a plea this winter, when the West and East can plan together. Our own battle with Attila will be decided long before then. Please don’t make me miss what I suspect will be a contest sung of for a thousand years.”
“Surely you’ve had enough blood already, Alabanda.”
“I’ve had enough for a lifetime. But more than almost any man here, I’ve seen what Attila represents. I watched him crucify a friend for no reason. He kept me from my love, humiliated my embassy, and sent men to kill me and Zerco. Let me stand in the ranks.”
My words drew approval from the assembly. A personal grudge the tribesmen understood.
“I admire your courage,” Aetius said slowly, “and know too much of your cleverness to believe that serving as a common soldier is all that’s on your mind.”
I shrugged. “Attila still imprisons the woman I love, general. I intend to kill him, cut my way through to her, and beg her forgiveness for having left her.”
Now there was laughter and shouts of encouragement. “You fight for love, not just for hate?” Aetius asked.
“I fight for the idea of a good, simple life.”
Theodoric abruptly stood. “As do we all!” he thundered. “Let the boy ride with us for his woman, as I do for my daughter! Let him ride with me!”
“For our women!” his chieftains cried.
Aetius lifted his hands for quiet. “No, Theodoric, I think I’ll keep him with the legions,” he said with a smile. “He fights for himself, but something tells me that Alabanda was sent to us for other reasons and that his full usefulness is not yet revealed.”
One hundred miles to the east, Attila’s vast train of wagons had been halted for two days. Ilana didn’t know what this meant. The sun was near its summer’s peak, and the fields were hot and hazy from the dust of countless thousands of horses and driven livestock, spilling across the rolling Catalaunian Plain of Gaul. Ilana had never dreamed the world was so big until she’d been driven like a penned animal across it, and now she wondered if she was coming to its end. Augustobona, called Troyes by its more recent inhabitants, was to the south, her driver had told her. Durocatalauni, the place the Franks called Chalons, was to the north. Or rather, had been. Columns of smoke marked where each had existed.
The driver’s name was Alix, he had lost half a leg to a battle with the Byzantine Romans, and now he earned his keep by being a teamster in the kagan’s train of captured plunder, wives, and slaves. The thousand-mile trek had turned his initial contempt for the caged wou
ld-be murderess into something closer to pity. Ilana was bruised from the constant jouncing, filthy from the weeks of dust, thin from being fed only table scraps, and stiff from being confined in a cage. She spoke little, simply watching as they trundled across the famed Rhine, wound through wooded mountains, and now came to this open country reminiscent of Hunuguri. Only when they stopped did she begin to grow dimly curious. Had Attila finally found a place he liked enough to stay? Had Jonas and Zerco escaped somewhere ahead? Were the Huns finally near the fabled ocean?
Probably not, Alix told her. There had been a battle ahead, and the Huns were falling back to gather their strength.
This was intriguing news.
Ilana had thought it her fate to rock hopelessly westward forever, but now more and more wagons were arriving to make a vast laager of wagons, surrounded by another that was bigger still. Regiments of Huns were beginning to congregate. Something in the tempo of invasion had changed.
Then Attila himself arrived, with a thundering contingent of warlords.
As always, his arrival caused an eruption of excitement. He traversed the broad front of his forces like the wind, dashing from one wing to another, sending back an endless stream of looted treasures; captured food; jars of wine; stolen standards; pillaged church relics; kidnapped women; shocked slaves; and the ears, noses, fingers, and cocks of his most prominent enemies. He was the Scourge of God, punishing the world for its sins! He played the role like an actor. He could laugh at an efficient massacre, weep for a single dead Hun, and impose his will on his lieutenants by rages so complete that his eyes rolled and blood gushed from his nose. Now, with news that Aetius had marched to the relief of Aurelia, he had come to this cavalry ground of open, rolling hills. So the Romans had marshaled their forces, winning over even the reluctant Visigoths. Then so would he! All would be decided on a single great and bloody day, and when it was over he would either be dead or king of the world.
Never had he felt such excitement.
Never had he felt such foreboding.
That night, with his thousands of campfires an infinite mirror of the heavens overhead, he disdained most food, drank sullenly, and then, unexpectedly, sent for Ilana.
“Clean the girl, dress her, and make her beautiful. Then bring her to me.”
She came at midnight. Her hair had curled after its washing, its darkness gleaming like wave-washed stones on a moonlit beach. Her gown was red silk, captured from the Romans, brocaded with silver and girdled with gold chain studded with rubies. A larger ruby the size of a goat’s eye was at her throat, and her sandals were silver. Under threat of death if she demurred, rings of slain matrons had been slipped onto each of her fingers, and the heavy earrings she’d been made to wear hung like trophies. Her eyes were lined with lampblack, her lips highlighted with red ochre, her skin had been scrubbed and moisturized with lanolin-rich sheep’s wool, and her breath purified by chewing mint leaves. The woman who had crouched in her cage like an animal just hours before now stood stiffly, like a child bewildered by fine new clothes. She’d no more choice in this dressing up than in being imprisoned, and it seemed equally humiliating.
“Kneel before your kagan,” he ordered.
Eyes lowered, cheeks blushing with anger, she did so. To refuse would only result in her being pushed down by Attila’s guards. From the corner of her eyes she looked for even the feeblest of weapons. Ilana had no illusions that she could kill Attila, but she knew that he or his guards would kill her, if she tried. That would be release, wouldn’t it? Did she have the courage? But there was nothing to even threaten him with.
“Do you wonder why I brought you here?”
She looked up. “To your tent or to Gaul?”
“I could have ordered you a hideous death a thousand times, and yet I stayed my hand,” Attila said. “It amused me to watch young Skilla long for what I hate. From all reports he’s fighting like a lion to win my favor and your company. It reminded me to be wary of desire and greed, because they change like the weather and have no more explanation. This is why I eat from a wooden plate, sleep in animal skins, and spit out soft bread in favor of meat and gristle. To long for too much is to risk losing it.”
Somehow, she found voice. “To fear to hope is the mark of a coward.”
He scowled. “I fear nothing but the stupidity of those I must deal with. Like you, who longs for what is out of reach: the past. A Hun like Skilla would make you a princess. A Roman like Jonas has reduced you to a cage.”
She rocked back on her heels, her carriage more upright now. “It is your cage, kagan. And I know you can slit my throat in an instant. So, yes, why did you bring me here?”
He leaned back in his camp chair, lazy in his power. “Alabanda is alive.”
Instantly she was tense. “How do you know this?”
“Skilla saw him on the walls of Aurelia. They fought, but again there was no decision.” He saw her confusion, not just at this news but at his willingness to tell her. He was quiet for a while, amused by her little dreams, and then spoke. “Have you ever considered that I brought you to Gaul to give you back to him?”
She trembled. “Give me or trade me?”
“Sell you, if you want to call it that, for the sword.”
“You don’t even know he has the sword.”
Attila sat abruptly upright and his fist crashed onto the arm of his chair, making her start. “Of course I do! Why else does Theodoric ride with Aetius? Why else do the tribes of Gaul refuse to join me? Why is there no news of Gaiseric and his promised Vandals? Because Rome has been given courage by the sword of Mars, that’s why! But that sword is mine, by discovery and by right. He stole it from me, and I want it back before the battle!”
“You brought me all this way for that?” It was odd how courage ebbed and flowed, and now came unbidden. She even smiled. “Surely you know the Romans would never trade the sword for me. Even Jonas wouldn’t do it.”
Attila’s fingers drummed in that habit he had, his dark, sunken eyes regarded her dourly. “He will if you ask him to. He’ll only do it if you ask him to.”
Her heart began to hammer.
“Why do you think I’ve dressed you like a Roman whore, had the pig smell scrubbed off you, and painted your lips the color of your cunt? Why would I do this to a witch who helped the thief steal what was rightfully mine and who set my house on fire and who almost burned me in its flames? To persuade your lover.”
“I wish we had all burned,” she said quietly.
“We will, witch, if I lose the coming battle because I have lost my sacred sword. We will burn together, you and I, on a pyre that I will build of my choicest possessions—and while I might stab my own heart to quicken things, you’ll be left to the flames.”
“You fear the Romans, don’t you?” she said in sudden realization. “You, the king who professes to fear nothing. The Westerners are uniting to fight you. That’s why we’ve stopped. You fear Aetius. You even fear Jonas. You regret that you’ve come here. It is all going wrong.”
He shook his shaggy head. “Attila fears nothing. Attila needs nothing. But it will spare many lives, Roman and Hun, if the final battle is an easy one instead of a hard one. If you meet Jonas, and he brings the sword, I will let you go with him.”
“What about Skilla?”
“Skilla is a Hun. He will forget you in a year. I’ll have a thousand women for Skilla, all of them more beautiful than you. Just help me get back what you stole.”
She looked at him in wonder, this king trying to strike a bargain with the most helpless member of his retinue. “No. If you want the sword back, then take it from Aetius.”
Attila sprang out of his chair and towered over her, his face enraged, his voice a howl. “I want it stolen back from Aetius! Do it or I kill you right now! I can rape you, strip you, flay you, and give you to my soldiers to use and my dogs to eat!”
His rage was weakness, and it gave her hope. “You can do anything you wish, but it will not bring back the swor
d,” she said quietly. Here was power, she realized, the power to play on his fears. He had the look of a man haunted by nightmares. “I have cursed you, but it’s a curse you earned when Edeco treacherously killed my father. Rape me, and the curse is redoubled. Kill me, and I’ll be at your shoulder in the battle, whispering the breath of the grave. Abuse me, and you’ll lose your empire.”
His look was wild. “If we lose this fight, you will burn on my pyre!”
“And go happier that way than living to watch you win.”
XXVI
FIRST BLOOD
The Huns who had assaulted Aurelia were but a tree in a wood. Now we were approaching the immensity of the full forest.
Attila was gathering his forces on the Catalaunian Plain, and that is where Aetius would face him. A hundred kings and warlords rode from the council to direct a hundred armies into one mighty host. Some were from the decimated garrisons of cities and forts that had fallen. Some were proud retinues of the high kings of the Germans. Some were Roman legions whose standards and histories dated back centuries, marching now to this last and greatest battle. And some were the hastily organized regiments of men who had fled in fear and now, with a mixture of desperation and hope, wanted to recover their pride and avenge their burned homes. The Huns had put more than a million people to flight, creating chaos, but also churned up a vast reserve of potential manpower that Aetius was now furiously arming. Some of these men were old veterans. Others were untried youths. Many were merchants and craftsmen with little knowledge of war. Yet all were able to hold a spear and swing a sword. In the havoc to come, skill might not count as much as numbers.
I felt swept up in the current of a river, carried toward Ilana by an irresistible flood. My decision not to go as an envoy to Marcian in Constantinople had reduced my importance from diplomat to soldier and aide, but I found my new anonymity strangely comforting. I need do nothing more complicated than take orders, fight, and wait for an opportunity to find the woman I’d been forced to leave behind. As the columns marched forward, long glittering spears of men on the straight Roman roads, it seemed to me we marched with the ghosts of countless Romans who had gone before us: with Caesar and Trajan, Scipio and Constantine, legion upon legion who had imposed order on a world of chaos. Now we faced the greatest darkness. It seemed ominous and appropriate that in the heat of late June a range of thunder-heads formed to the east, lightning crackling in the direction of Attila’s army. The air was humid and heavy, and the storm seemed symbolic of the test to come. Yet no rain fell where we were, and huge columns of dust rose as herds of men, horses, and livestock moved toward collision. Ordinary life had stopped, and every soldier in Europe was migrating toward the coming contest.
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