It was as if the air had gone out of the room. Maximinus gaped like a fool. Bigilas went white. I felt confused. What treachery was this? Poor Crixus looked like he had not understood.
“We will uncoil your entrails like yarn and let my pigs feed on them,” Attila described without emotion. “We will boil your toes and your fingers, immersing them one by one so that you will know the pain of the last before we start on the next. We will cut away your nose, flay your cheeks, and break out your teeth in turn—one per hour—and cinch a thorny bramble around your privates and pull until they turn purple.”
Crixus was beginning to shake.
“What madness is this?” the senator croaked. “Why do you threaten a child?”
“We will do these things—and my wives will giggle at your screams, young Crixus—unless your father shows the honor that you have shown.” Now Attila’s dark gaze swung to settle on Bigilas.
“S-show honor?” stammered Bigilas. The guards, I saw, had quietly formed around us. “Kagan, what can you—”
“We will do it”—here Attila’s voice was rising to low thunder—“unless the translator here tells me why he has brought fifty pounds of gold from Constantinople.”
We other Romans turned to Bigilas in consternation. What was Attila talking about? The translator looked stricken, as if told by a physician he was doomed. His legs began quivering, and I feared he might collapse.
Attila turned to his chiefs. “He did bring fifty pounds, did he not, Edeco?”
The warlord nodded. “As we agreed in the house of Chrysaphius, kagan. We searched the translator’s saddlebags just moments ago and brought it here for you to see as proof.” He clapped his hands once, a sharp report. Two warriors came in bearing sacks, leaning slightly from the weight. They strode to Attila’s dais and slashed open the sacks with iron daggers, releasing a shower of yellow metal. Coins rolled at Attila’s feet.
The boy’s eyes were darting in confused terror. I could smell his urine.
“Edeco, you know what this gold is for, do you not?”
“I do, my kagan.”
“This is some monstrous misunderstanding,” Maximinus tried wildly, looking to Bigilas for explanation. “Another present sent by our emperor, as proof of—”
“Silence!” The command was as final as the fall of an ax. It echoed in the chamber, ending all other sound. It was an order that made courage desert. What insanity had I enlisted for?
“Only one man here needs to be heard from,” Attila went on, “the one who can save his son by practicing the honesty he claims.”
Bigilas was staring at Edeco in horror and hatred. The betrayer had been betrayed. Edeco had never intended to carry out his promise of assassinating Attila, the translator realized. The gold was a trap. Now he fell to his knees. “Please, my son knew nothing.”
“And what nothing, translator, did the boy not know?” Bigilas bowed his head miserably. “It was a mission entrusted to me by Chrysaphius. The money was to bribe Edeco to assassinate you.”
Maximinus looked like he’d been struck by a German long sword. He reeled backward, his face pained. His mission, he understood instantly, was in ruins. What treachery for the chief minister to not tell him of this plot! The proud senator had been made a complete fool. Worse, it probably meant the end of us all.
“To murder me, you mean,” Attila clarified, “when I was most trusting and most defenseless—while I slept or ate or pissed. A murder by my most trusted warlord.”
“I was only obeying the will of my master!” Bigilas wailed. “It was all Chrysaphius! He’s an evil eunuch—every man in Constantinople knows it! These other fools were ignorant of the plot, I swear! I was to fetch my son and with him the gold . . .” Suddenly he swiveled toward Edeco, furious. “You gave your word that you were with us! You promised you would assassinate him!”
“I promised nothing. You heard what you wanted to hear.”
The translator was beginning to weep. “I was no more than a tool, and my son ignorant. Please, kill me if you must, but spare the boy. He is innocent, as you said.”
Attila’s look was contemptuous. A quiet that really only lasted moments seemed to us Romans to last hours. Finally he spoke again. “Kill you? As if your master would care? As if he wouldn’t send a hundred idiots to try again if he thought one of my generals was foolish enough to believe him? No, I won’t waste the moment’s work required to kill you, translator. Instead, you will walk barefoot back to Constantinople with your bag around your scrawny neck, its gold replaced by lead. You will feel each pound with every step of your bleeding feet. My escorts will ask Chrysaphius if they recognize the bag, and he will do so, or you will die. Then you will tell Chrysaphius that you met ten thousand Huns and could not find even one who would raise his hand against the great Attila, not for all the gold in the world. This is what your Empire must understand!”
Bigilas was weeping. “And my son?”
“If he is foolish enough to go back with you, he may do so. Maybe he will become smart enough to despise you and find a proper mentor. Maybe he will eventually flee the corruption of his father and come live the clean life of the Hun.” Crixus collapsed, holding on to his father as they both bawled.
“God and the Senate thank you for your mercy, kagan,” Maximinus said shakily. “Please, do not let this blind foolishness destroy our partnership. The emperor knew nothing of this monstrosity, I’m sure! Chrysaphius is a vindictive plotter, all men in Constantinople know this. Please, let us make amends and start our talks—”
“There will be no talk. There will be no negotiation. There will only be obeisance or war. You, too, will return to Constantinople, senator, but it will be backward on an ass, and my warriors will make sure your head is always pointed toward the land of Hunuguri as you ponder your foolishness.”
Maximinus jerked as if struck. The end of his dignity would be the end of his career. Attila, I was certain, knew this.
“Do not humiliate Rome too much,” the senator said in despair.
“She humiliates herself.” Attila considered. “You and the one who betrayed you can contemplate my mercy. Yet none dare raise a hand against Attila without someone being struck down in consequence. So he”—Attila pointed at Rusticius—“will die in place of his friend. This man will be crucified to rot and dry in the sun, and his dying words will be to damn to Christian Hell the greedy and corrupt companion who put him in such danger.”
Rusticius had gone ashen. Bigilas turned his face away. “That is not fair!” I cried.
“It is your Empire that is not fair or trustworthy,” Attila said. “It is your country that treats some men like gods and others like cattle.”
Now Rusticius fell to his knees, gasping for breath like a landed fish. “But I have done nothing!”
“You joined with evil men you didn’t care to know well enough to discover their betrayal. You failed to warn me. By these omissions you doomed yourself, and your blood will be on your friends’ hands, not mine.”
I was dizzy with horror. “This makes no sense,” I tried, heedless of violating protocol. The simplest man of our party was the one who was being sacrificed! “Why him and not me?”
“Because he is of the West, and we are curious how such men die.” Attila shrugged. “I may decide to have you switch places. But for now,” he said, “you will remain as my hostage against the promise of the return of Senator Maximinus.” He turned to my superior. “For every pound of gold Chrysaphius was willing to spend to have me struck down, I want one hundred pounds in penance.”
“But, kagan,” gasped the senator, “that means—”
“It means I want five thousand pounds by autumn, senator, and only then will we talk peace. If you don’t bring it, there will be war and your scribe will have done to him exactly what I promised the young boy there, but done infinitely more slowly and painfully.”
The room was a blur, the earth seeming to have dropped from under me. I was to be left alone with the Hun
s, to watch Rusticius die? And then be tortured if Maximinus did not return with an impossible ransom? The treasury could not afford five thousand pounds of gold! We had all been betrayed by the fools Bigilas and Chrysaphius!
Attila nodded at me with grim satisfaction. “Until then, you are our hostage but a hostage who must begin earning his keep. And if you dare try escape, Jonas of Constantinople, this too means war.”
XIII
THE HOSTAGE
Something had gone horribly wrong.
Ilana had been so confident of rescue that she had actually packed and hidden a bag of clothes, biscuit, and dried venison to take with her when she left with the Romans. Surely it had been a sign when the embassy rode into camp and she’d caught the eye of Jonas. God meant for her to be free and to return to civilization. Yet Guernna had run to her, smirking. “Come see your fine friends now, Roman!” Ilana had emerged into a sea of hooting and jostling Huns, some of them flinging vegetables and clods of earth at the three departing Romans. The old man was mounted backward on a donkey, his feet dangling and his fine gray hair and beard dirty and matted. His eyes looked hollow with defeat. Following on foot was the translator who had come back from Constantinople, staggering with a heavy sack around his neck that bent him like a reed. Roped behind was a boy who must be the translator’s son, looking frightened and ashamed. A dozen Hun warriors surrounded them as escort, including, she saw to her relief, Skilla. He must be leaving, too. But the Roman tents and baggage and slaves were all remaining behind, the latter conscripted into Attila’s army. Where was Jonas?
“I heard they put one of them on the cross,” Guernna said gleefully, enjoying Ilana’s dismay. Guernna thought the Roman girl vain, aloof, and useless. “I heard he screamed more than a Hun or a German ever would and begged like a slave.”
Crucifixions took place on a low hill a half mile from the river, far enough so that the stench was not overpowering but near enough so that the cost of defiance was always apparent. One or two happened per week, as well as periodic impalings. Ilana ran there, praying. Indeed, there was a new victim, whipped, bound, spiked, and so masked with blood and dirt that at first she had no idea who it was. Only after studying him anxiously did she discern that it was Rusticius, his eyes half hooded, his lips cracked like dried mud.
She was ashamed at her relief.
“Kill me . . .” He was rasping for breath, his own weight compressing his lungs. Rivulets of blood had dried brown on skin blistered from exposure.
“Where is Jonas?”
There was no answer. She doubted he could still hear. She dared not grant Rusticius’s wish, or she would find herself hung beside him. Sickened by her own helplessness, she ran back to the camp, the crowd dissipated now that the humiliated Romans had left. Their tents had already been shared out as if the Romans had never existed. She came to Attila’s compound, breathless and tear-stained. “The young Roman,” she gasped to a guard. “Please . . .”
“Back like a pup, tied to his father.” The man sneered. “Not the boy, the scribe! His name is Jonas Alabanda.”
“Oh, the lucky one. Hostage for more gold. Attila has given him to Hereka until we kill him. Your lover has become a slave, woman.”
She struggled to remain expressionless, her emotions a tumult of relief and despair. “He’s not my lover—”
“And when Skilla returns, you will be his.” He grinned. It was the rare tryst, feud, love affair, or rivalry that did not become gossip in the camp.
Hereka, Attila’s first and primary wife, lived in her own compound adjacent to Attila’s. Several dozen slaves and servants lived with her; and now Jonas had become one, forced to earn his keep by hewing wood, hauling water, tending Hereka’s herds, and entertaining the Hun’s primary wife with stories of Constantinople and the Bible.
Ilana tried to get in to see him, but Hereka’s gigantic Ostrogoth guards shooed her away. Her rescuer had become a prisoner and hope had evaporated, its memory like a kiss that could never be repeated.
It was two long weeks later that she spied him from a distance driving a Hun cart from the poplar and willow copses where the camp collected its firewood. The sun was low in the west, the sky pinking, when she took a water jar to once more give herself an excuse to walk to the track by the river to intercept him. The day had the warm sultriness of late summer, clouds of gnats orbiting each other. The Tisza River was low and brown.
Jonas reined the oxen when he recognized her, but he looked reluctant. She was surprised by how he’d changed. His hair was matted with sweat from a day of chopping and gathering wood, and his skin had become deeply tanned. Beyond that, he had visibly aged. His face was harder, his jaw stronger, and his eyes deeper and more worried. He had learned in an instant the cruelty of life, and it showed. He’d become a man. She found herself strangely heartened by his grim maturity.
His first words were not encouraging. “Go home, Ilana. I can do nothing for you now.”
“If Maximinus returns—”
“You know he won’t.” He shaded his eyes against the setting sun, looking away from the slight, pretty, helpless woman.
“Won’t your own father try to ransom you?”
“What little he could afford would mean nothing compared to the pleasure and object lesson Attila derives from making an example of me. And Rusticius died in innocence, while the creature that created this disaster goes home to Constantinople, a bag around his neck.” His tone was bitter.
“Bigilas’s master will punish him for failure.”
“While I eventually hang on a cross and you become bed slave to Skilla.”
Not slave, but wife, she wanted to correct. Was that her fate? Should she accede to it? She took a deep breath. “We can’t live expecting the worst, Jonas. The Empire won’t forget you. It was a crime to execute Rusticius, and Attila will sooner or later want to make amends. If we’re patient—”
“I can chop a lot of wood and you can haul a lot of water.” There was a long dispirited pause, neither seeing an alternative, and then she laughed, the absurdity making her feel she was going insane. “How gloomy you’ve become!” Her laughter startled him. He looked confused, then sheepish. “You’re right.” He sighed. “I’ve had another long day feeling sorry for myself.”
“It gets tiresome after a while.” Her grin was wry.
He straightened. Meek submission to barbarian will was not what Romans were taught. She watched him watching her, each trying to draw strength from the other. “We have to get away from here,” he said, obviously trying to force his depressed mind to think.
A glimmer! “Maybe we can steal some horses.”
“They would catch us.” He thought of his race with Skilla, and the Hun’s promise. “They’d send a hundred men. It would be too humiliating for Attila to let us succeed.”
“I wish there’d been a real plot,” she said fiercely. “I wish Edeco had killed Attila.”
“I wish a thousand things, and find it as useful as spit. Our only hope would be a head start, to go when they’re distracted. If Attila left on campaign—”
“It’s too late in the year for that. There’ll be no grass for the cavalry.”
He nodded. This girl was smart and observant. “So what should we do, Ilana?”
She thought furiously, knowing word of this conversation would reach Suecca. Yet this lonely and forlorn man was her only chance, unless she wanted Skilla. Despite Jonas’s despair there was something good at his core in an age when goodness was in short supply. “We should be ready for that distraction,” she said firmly. “My father was as lucky in business as he was unlucky in war, but he said luck was preparation that waited for opportunity. We need to know who we can trust and which horses we can steal. Who can help us, even a little?”
Now he pondered, and then suddenly brightened with an idea. He reached for the switch and lashed the ox forward, the cart jolting as he started. “A little friend,” he said.
It was dangerous to take Zerco into my confi
dence and yet who but the dwarf could help us? I was furious at the crucifixion of Rusticius and felt guilty at my own survival. I knew Zerco had no more love for Attila than I did. Indeed, the dwarf was both intrigued about the idea of our escape and thoughtful about its practicalities. “You can’t outrun them, even with a diversion,” he said. “They’ll catch you at the Danube, if nowhere else. But you might outthink them. Go north instead of south, for example, and circle to the west. You need horses—”
“Roman, for endurance.”
“You saw the Arabians they’ve captured for breeding. The Germans have big horses, too. The woman is going to slow you, you know.”
“She’s Roman.”
“This camp has a hundred captive Romans. What she is, is pretty and desperate, which is a dangerous combination. Hoist your brain above your belt a moment and tell me what she is to you.”
I scowled. “Something Skilla wants.”
“Ah! Now that makes better sense. All right, then. You’ll need to take food so you can avoid farms and villages as long as possible, and you’ll need light weapons. Can you shoot a bow?”
“I was practicing until made hostage. I admit I’m no Hun.”
“It will be useful for hunting, at least. Hmmm. You’ll need warm clothing because winter is coming. Coin for when food runs out. A waterskin, hooded cloaks to hide your identity—”
“You sound like the commissary of a legion.”
“You need to be prepared.”
“You’re so helpful that I’m suspicious.”
The dwarf smiled. “At last you’re learning! Everything has a price. My help, too.”
“Which is?”
“That you take me with you.”
“You! And you talk of Ilana slowing me down?”
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