The Scourge of God

by William Dietrich

  Aetius! The very name was a curse. Romans hailed a man whom Eudoxius considered to be a toad for Emperor Valentinian and his mother, Placidia, a scheming and slippery general who had been sent as a hostage to the Huns in his youth, learned their language, and then hired the Huns to annihilate his ever-changing enemies. Aetius represented the whirlpool of alliance, betrayal, and assault that passed for imperial policy. For decades the wily general had played one tribe against another to hold the rotten toga of Rome together. As long as Aetius existed, Rome existed. And as long as Rome existed there could be no true democracy: nothing, at least, like the great civilization of ancestral Athens. But now Attila had united the Huns, and Gaiseric had seized Carthage and Sicily. It was time for the lion’s final bite.

  A hairy red giant of a Vandal lieutenant summoned Eudoxius inside for his audience, so he left the blinding courtyard for the cool darkness of its throne room. At first he could barely see, smelling instead the animal rankness of a crude barbarian court. There was the sweat of rarely washed bodies; the stink of the discarded food that the slovenly Vandals could not bring themselves to clean away; the thick incense Gaiseric burned to mask the smells; the tang of sword oil; and the musk of public, shameless sex. Gaiseric’s captains were sprawled on heaps of stolen carpets and lion skins. Their women lolled with them, some as pale as snow and others as black as ebony, curled like satiated cats, many with breasts and hips bare and one, snoring, with her legs splayed so obscenely that Eudoxius could scarcely believe these savages had converted even to the heretical Arian creed. Of course, Arians were false Christians, believing the Son inferior to the Father, but worse than this they prayed indifferently while slaying with ferocious intent, mixing Christian creed with pagan superstition. They were, in sum, savages, as apt to quail at thunder as they were to charge a Roman battle line. But these crude warriors were the necessary means to his noble end. His scheme was to let legionary and barbarian destroy each other in a single great battle until none were left, and then build after the slaughter.

  Taking breath through his mouth to avoid the smell, Eudoxius made his way to the dim end of the hall.

  “You come from Attila.” It was Gaiseric, sixty years old now but still tall and powerful, seated on a gilded throne. His hair and beard were like a lion’s mane, and his arms had the thickness of a bear’s. The Vandal king sat upright and watchful. There were no women at his side. Two guards flanked him instead, one a Nubian and the other a pale and tattooed Pict. Gaiseric himself peered with bright, piercing blue eyes as out of place in this climate as ice. How far his people had marched! The Vandal king wore silver chain mail over captured Roman linens, as if expecting an attack at any moment, and a circlet of gold rested on his brow. A dagger was on his belt and a long sword and spear leaned on the wall behind him. He’d been lame since being thrown from a horse as a youth, and his lack of mobility and a life of enemies had made him cautious of attack.

  Eudoxius bowed, his robes a curtain around his feet and his gray beard brushing his chest, gesturing with his hand at waist level in the manner of the East. “I come from your Hun brothers, great Gaiseric.”

  “The Huns are not my brothers.”

  “Aren’t they?” Eudoxius boldly came closer. “Don’t both of your kingdoms fight Rome? Are not both of your treasuries hungry for its gold? And is the accession of Attila and your own capture of Carthage not a sign from God, or all the gods, that the time has come for the world to be ruled anew? I have come with Attila’s blessing, Gaiseric, to inquire about an alliance. The West has yet to feel Attila’s wrath, but he is tempted by the opportunities there. Aetius is a formidable enemy, but only if he has one battle to fight at a time. Were Attila to attack Gaul at the same time the Vandals attacked Italy from the south, no Roman combination could stand before us.”

  Gaiseric brooded quietly for a while, considering the vast geographies that would be involved. “That is an ambitious plan.”

  “It is a logical plan. Rome prevails only by fighting the tribes and nations of the barbarians separately or by shrewdly pitting one against the other. The ministers in Ravenna laugh at how they manipulate their enemies, Gaiseric. I am of their world, and I have seen it. But were Hun and Vandal to march together, with Gepid and Scuri, Pict and Berber, then perhaps the man I see before me would be the next emperor.”

  This discussion was made in the earshot of Gaiseric’s followers, in the open manner of barbarians who insisted on hearing a plan before following it. These final words made his lieutenants shout and hoot in agreement, banging goblets and daggers against the marble floors and roaring at the idea of ultimate triumph. Their king as emperor of Rome! But Gaiseric himself was quiet, his eyes probing, careful not to promise too much.

  “I as emperor, or Attila?”

  “Co-emperors, perhaps, on the model of the Romans.”

  “Humph.” Gaiseric’s fingers tapped on the arm of his throne. “Why is it you who have come with this proposition, physician? Why aren’t you out lancing boils or brewing potions?”

  “I’ve fought Aetius and his minions in eastern Gaul and seen poor men, whose only hope was to be free, slain by Roman tyranny. I barely escaped with my life and sought refuge with Attila, but I’ve never forgotten my people. Am I a mere doctor? Yes, but I minister to men’s health by being their political champion as well as their physician. My role is to see that you and Attila understand how your interests coincide with all good men.”

  “You have a smooth tongue. Yet this Aetius is your enemy, not mine.”

  Here Eudoxius nodded, having anticipated this very objection. “As Theodoric and the Visigoths are your enemies, not mine.”

  Now the Vandals fell silent, as if a cloud had passed before the sun. Romans were targets, sheep to be harvested. But the rival Visigoths who had settled in southwestern Gaul were a deeper and more menacing opponent, a barbarian power as dangerous as their own. Here was rivalry that went back generations, two Germanic tribes with a long history of feuds. It was to a Visigoth that the Roman empress Placidia had once been wed, and it was the Visigoths who haughtily claimed to be more civilized as a result: as if they were better than the Vandals!

  At one point King Gaiseric tried to heal the breach by having his son marry King Theodoric’s daughter, to join the tribes with blood. But when the Roman emperor Valentinian later offered the boy his own daughter instead—clearly a more important and prestigious marriage—Gaiseric had tried to send the Vandal bride, a princess named Berta, back to her father in Gaul.

  It was then that trouble truly started. The haughty Visigoths had refused to countenance the divorce of their already married Berta to make room for a new Roman wife. But the Roman princess, a Christian, wouldn’t agree to polygamy. Visigothic refusal had been followed by recriminations, and recriminations by insult, and finally in a burst of drunken fury Gaiseric himself had slit the nose and ears of Berta and sent her in humiliation back to her father. Ever since, his dreams had been tormented by the possible vengeance of Theodoric: War with the Visigoths was what he feared above all else. “Do not mention those pig droppings in my court,” he now growled uneasily.

  “It is the land of the Visigoths that Attila covets,” Eudoxius said. “It is Theodoric who is the only hope of Aetius. Pledge yourself to this war, Gaiseric, and your most hated enemy becomes Attila’s enemy. Pledge yourself against Rome, and the Huns march against Theodoric. Even if he does not destroy the Visigoths Attila will surely wound them. Meanwhile, you can have Italy. But before Attila can march he must know you will distract the Romans in the south. That is the alliance that will benefit us all.”

  “When will Attila march?”

  Eudoxius shrugged. “He is waiting for portents and signs, including a sign from you. Your word alone may help him to finally make up his mind. Can I carry word back of agreement?”

  Gaiseric pondered a moment more, considering how he could pit Hun and Roman and Visigoth against one another and then march in to pick up the pieces. The doctor and
his miserable peasants would be trampled by them all, he knew, but wasn’t that how things were? The weak always gave way to the strong, and the foolish—like this doctor—were there to be used by the wise. How could he use him best? Finally he stood, swaying on his lame foot. “I am going to offer your king the jeweled dagger that I took from the mangled body of the Roman general Ausonius as proof of my word,” he pronounced. “All men know that this is my favorite knife. Give it to your new king, and tell the great Attila that if the Romans and Visigoths are his enemies, then I am his friend!”

  His captains and their women roared in acclamation of this pledge, banging and screaming; and to Eudoxius it was the sweet sound of wolves, howling at the moon. He retreated with a grateful bow, unable to suppress his jubilant smile, and hurried to take ship with his news.

  Later that evening, King Gaiseric drank with his men out in the warm courtyard, the desert they had come so far to conquer glittering under a shroud of stars. “We have accomplished two things this day, my chiefs,” he confided when drunk enough. “First, we have encouraged Attila to destroy Theodoric before Theodoric can destroy us. And second, I have gotten rid of that cursed knife I took from the Roman and cut that bitch of a Visigoth princess with. Every time I have worn it since then, I’ve had bad luck. Let this idiot of a doctor take it to Attila and see if they do any better.”

  VII

  A RUINED CITY

  I first truly realized what kind of a world I was journeying into when our Roman embassy camped on the banks of the Nisava River, across from the sacked city of Naissus. The day was late, the sun already gone behind the mountains, and in the dimness it was possible to imagine that the roofless walls still represented a thriving Roman provincial city of fifty thousand people, waiting until the last possible minute to light their lamps. But as dusk deepened, no lamps shone. Instead, birds funneled down in somber spirals to roost in new nests that had been built in empty markets, theaters, baths, and brothels. Bats swirled out from abandoned cellars. The city’s stones were shaggy with vines and brambles, and the desolation seemed somber and ominous.

  Our camping place became even grimmer when we began to pitch our tents. It was dusk as I have said, difficult to see the ground, and when one of our slaves bent to tie a rope to what appeared to be a brown and weathered root, the peg burst upward from the soil as if rotten. The annoyed slave bent to retrieve the stick and throw it away in disgust, but as he straightened and cocked his arm, he suddenly looked in startled recognition and dropped it as if it were hot.

  “Lord Jesus!” He began to back away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  The man crossed himself.

  Sensing what it must be, I bent. The stem was a bone, I confirmed, the size and shape clearly human. A gray and brown femur, now jagged at one edge and spotted with lichen. I glanced about, my skin prickling. The displacement of earth had revealed the knobs of other bones and that what had appeared to be a half-buried rock in the twilight was in fact the dome of a skull. How rarely we look down! Now my eyes began sweeping the ground of the riverbank where we were making camp. There were bones everywhere, and what had seemed a shoal of weathered sticks left by a flooding current was in fact a litter of exposed human remains. Sightless sockets, stuffed with dirt, looked blankly at the sky. Ribs held together by persistent sinews of dried flesh curled from the soil like reaching fingers.

  I hurried to the senator. “We’re in some kind of graveyard.”

  “Graveyard?” asked Maximinus.

  “Or battlefield. Look. There are bones everywhere.”

  We Romans began scuffling at the soil in wonder, crying out at each discovery and jumping when a crunch told us we had stepped on another fragment of the dead. The slaves joined in the dismayed clamor, and soon the camp was in an uproar. Tents that were being raised abruptly deflated, fires went unlit, and picketed horses whinnied nervously at the human disarray. Each skeleton brought a fresh shout of horror.

  Edeco strode over in annoyance, kicking aside the denuded limbs with his boots as if they were autumn litter. “Why aren’t you camping, Romans?”

  “We’re in a boneyard,” Maximinus said. “Some massacre from Naissus.”

  The Hun looked down at the remains, then looked around in sudden recognition. “I remember this place. The Romans fled like sheep, many swimming the river. We crossed ahead and waited for them here. If the city had submitted, they might have had a chance, but they had killed some of our warriors and so no mercy could be shown.” He turned, squinting downriver, and pointed to some feature in the gloom. “I think we killed them from here to there.”

  His voice carried no shame, no remorse, not even the pride of victory. He recounted the slaughter as if recalling a business transaction.

  Maximinus’s voice was thick. “For the Savior’s sake, then why did we camp here? Have you no decency? We must move at once.”

  “Why? They are dead, and we will be, too, someday. All of us will be bones sooner or later. A bone is a bone, no different here than in a kitchen or waste yard. It turns to dust. The whole world is bone, I suspect.”

  The diplomat strained for patience. “These are our people, Edeco. We must move the camp out of respect for their remains. We should come back tomorrow to bury and sanctify these poor victims.”

  “Attila gives no time for that.”

  “There are too many, senator,” added Bigilas, who was translating the exchange.

  Maximinus looked gloomily into the dark. “Then we must at least change our camping place. There are ghosts here.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “Can’t you feel the spirits?”

  The Hun scowled, but his superstition showed. We walked half a mile to get out of the killing field, stopping in the lee of a ruined and abandoned Roman villa. The Huns seemed surprised and subdued by our reaction, as if upset that their companions had taken the battlefield so badly. Death was simply the result of war, and war itself was life.

  Since the Hun kit was simple—a cloak to wrap themselves in on the ground—their own move was uncomplicated. We Romans once more laboriously erected our canvas against the starry sky while the unoccupied barbarians built a large fire in the ruins of the house to roast some meat. The flames seemed to push back the haunting. “Come, eat with us, Romans,” the Roman turncoat Onegesh called, “and drink, too. Don’t dwell on what can’t be undone. Think of our mission to Attila and peace in the future!”

  We sat in the roofless triclinium, its owners likely lying somewhere nearby. While the walls reflected some of the fire’s light and heat, the habitation was sad. Its bright plaster murals were mildewed and peeling, cherubic gods and bright peacocks glazed with the dirt of neglect. The mosaic floor displaying a feast of Bacchus was obscured by litter. Weeds had erupted through the pavers of the courtyard, and its pool was thick with scum. More vegetation crowded the outer walls, and I had the curious feeling that the house was slowly sinking back into the earth, like bones into soil. The Huns had started the flames with broken furniture and were using the detritus of the dwelling to keep it fueled, turning to ash the last evidence that these dead had ever truly lived here. To my dismay, I saw that Edeco was even feeding half-ruined books and scrolls into the fire. The chieftain glanced at some before throwing them in, but often held them sideways or upside down. It was obvious he couldn’t read. “Don’t burn those!” I exclaimed.

  “Relax. There’s no one left to read them.”

  “That’s a thousand years of knowledge and history!”

  “What good did it do them in the end?” He threw another into the flames.

  We sat uneasily. “By God, even I need a drink,” muttered the normally abstentious Maximinus. “I’ve never seen a boneyard like that.” He took his wine unwatered, gulping the first cup. Bigilas, of course, was already ahead of him. The Huns were drinking kumiss and the heady German beer, kamon.

  “Only two times do you see so many together,” Edeco said, “when they fight like cornered bears and when
they flee like sheep. These were sheep, dead in their own hearts before we slew them. It was their fault. They should have surrendered.”

  “If you’d stayed in your own country they all would have lived,” the senator grumbled.

  “The People of the Dawn have no country. We follow the sun, go where we please, settle where we wish, and take what we need. These dead tarried to cut and rob the earth, and the gods don’t like that. It’s not that we came but that the Romans stayed too long. It isn’t right for men to nest and dig. Now they will stay here forever.”

  “I hope you are as philosophical about your own death.” Bigilas stumbled on the word philosophical as he translated and looked to Maximinus for a substitute. “Thoughtful,” the senator supplied.

  Edeco laughed. “Who cares what I will think! I will be dead!”

  “But you destroy what you could seize,” Maximinus tried to reason. “You burn what you could live in and kill those you could enslave. You take once, yes, but if you showed mercy and governed the people you conquer, you could live in leisure.”

  “Like you Romans.”

  “Yes, like us Romans.”

  “If we lived like you do we would rule until we became fat, like the people who lived here, and then someone else would do to us what we did to them. No, better to stay on our horses, ride, and keep strong. Who cares that this city is gone? There are many, many cities.”

  “But what happens when you’ve raided everything, burned it all, and nothing is left?”

  The Hun shook his head. “There are many cities. I will be dead long before then, and like those bones.”

  At length the drink began to numb us and lighten the Huns. The conversation slowly turned to other things. Both nations had sacked cities, of course. Rome had prevailed by its own ruthlessness, we knew. In the end, it was only the threat of Roman arms that gave our own embassy any meaning. So it did no good to brood on the fate of Naissus, just as Edeco had said. As they became drunker, the Huns began boasting of their mighty home camp and the deeds of their king, who they said had no fear, no greed, and no guile. Attila lived simply so his followers could become rich, fought bravely so his women could know peace, judged harshly so his warriors could live in harmony, talked to high and low alike, welcomed freed slaves into his armies, and led his men from the front rank.