The Scourge of God

by William Dietrich

  What followed, his mind would long shy from remembering. He would not recall if he had been suspended in darkness for hours or days, and if the overwhelming feeling had been of cramped heat or numbing cold. He’d simply remember wedging himself ahead. A ridge of stone could seem as insurmountable as a mountain, and he’d peck at it with his fingers, loosening key bits and letting them rattle down behind him. Then he’d shimmy, expelling all air to shrink and surge forward some impossibly small amount. He’d jam, gasp, his middle squeezed by what felt like the entire weight of the Earth, ears hammering, expel air again, wriggle forward, breathe, gasp against the pain, expel . . . again and again and again until finally his hips would be past the obstacle and he would lie panting in a tube no roomier than a cocoon, his heartbeat the only sound, his sweat the only lubricant. Somewhere, fresh air was keeping him alive. As his clothes disintegrated he left the pieces behind except for strips with which to wrap his hands. His blood made him slippery; and as it leaked, he shrank. Never before have I wanted to be small, he thought, drawing himself out like a snake. Occasionally he started to panic, his lungs working wildly, but stifled any scream by thinking of Julia. "Stop sobbing and get yourself out of the hole you climbed into" she lectured him. "What is so hard about crawling forward? Babies can do it!”

  So he did. He passed an even smaller hole, its rank smell tying it to an old Roman sewer, slimy effluent dripping down like a baptism from Hell. Praise God! It made him slicker! The worst came when he spied a glimmer of light but only beyond a narrowing of the cavity that at first seemed too small even for him. As tight as the cunt of a virgin, he cursed, as if he’d had all that many virgins. But what choice did he have but to be reborn? He put his arms forward as if diving, his already-narrow shoulders pressed to his ears, and kicked forward like a fish. Each rib clicked by the stones like a bead on an abacus, the pain as excruciating as if he were being flayed. Then his stomach was through and his hips jammed tight—I’m as wide as a woman!—until he found handholds and pulled the last inches by brute strength, jamming his teeth against the agony. Then the air was cooler and fresher, the light brighter. He came with his nose to an iron grate.

  Thank the saints for rust and the laziness of barbarian conquerors. The metal had been no better maintained than Aurelia’s walls, which is why the Alans were working so frantically now. With his last bit of strength he pounded on it like a madman, on and on, until suddenly it fell away with a screech and clang. He waited for shouts but heard nothing. He was still far under the city’s central fortress. Zerco popped out into a wider tunnel, big enough to crawl on all fours, lit by light coming down from grated shafts too narrow and sheer to climb. The new passageway seemed a hopeless labyrinth, making him panic all over again, but finally there was the sweet smell of steam and the chatter of laundry girls in a fortress washroom. A pipe from the room vented the steam, and Zerco was the only inhabitant small enough to slip down. He popped out into a clothing pile, a demon sheathed in bright blood. One laundress screamed and fled; another fainted and would later tell tales of the end time. Zerco merely stole a sheet and crept back to the bishop.

  “I think I know what they’re planning,” he announced.

  Then he collapsed.

  No wonder Romans fought so clumsily and slowly.

  Skilla felt as encased as a sausage in the heavy Roman armor, his vision restricted by the hot helmet and his torso confined by the weight of mail. The oval shield felt as unwieldy as the door of a barn. The lance was a log, the sword as straight as their rigid roads, and the heavy clothing wet with sweat. Once they got inside the gates of Aurelia he would abandon this nonsense and reach for his bow, but in the meantime the disguise would get them unchallenged to the city wall. Once the portal was seized, Edeco’s division of five thousand men could follow and the hapless Sangibanus would remain blameless.

  It was midnight, the moon dark, the city sleeping, and the Huns supposedly far away. Edeco had led his division two hundred miles in three days, outdistancing any warnings. Now his men waited in the woods while Skilla’s disguised company of a hundred men trotted toward Aurelia’s wall with a great clank and creak of Roman equipment. As always, Skilla found himself studying the walls with a soldier’s eye. The ramparts and towers of fresh stone glowed noticeably lighter than the weather-stained wall below, even in starlight. A few torches flickered to mark the gate, and the Hun could see the heads of Alan guards peering down as he approached.

  The Alan captain, paid well to keep the armory a secret, had left the city with Skilla and came back with him now, the new gold jingling in his purse as he rode.

  “A company from Aetius to reinforce Sangibanus!” the henchman cried when they came under the central tower. “Open the gate for friends!”

  “We’ve had no word of Romans,” a sentry responded cautiously.

  “How about word of Huns? They’re not far, you know. Do you want help or not?”

  “What unit are you?”

  “The Fourth Victorix, you blind man! Do we look like Norican salt merchants? Open! We need to eat and sleep!”

  The gate began to ponderously swing. It was going to work!

  Then it stopped halfway, giving just a glimpse of the city beyond. A voice called. “Send in your officer. Alone.”

  “Now!” Skilla cried.

  They charged, and even as the soldiers began to swing the gate against them the Hun horses bashed into it and knocked the sentries backward, pushing the entryway wide. Through the short arched tunnel that led through the wall was the courtyard beyond. The Huns kicked their horses.

  And a wagon lurched from one side of the inner arch and rolled to block their way. A torch made oiled hay explode in a fireball of flame. The ponies reared, screaming, and warriors cursed, reaching awkwardly for the unaccustomed Roman weapons. Before they could act a dozen arrows buzzed through the fire, some igniting as they flew, and struck home. Men and horses spilled in the crowded portal. The Alan captain’s gold coins of betrayal spilled with him, rolling on the stones. Meanwhile, men beyond the flames were yelling alarm. “They’re not Roman—they’re Hun! Treachery!” A bell began to ring.

  Priests were running past the burning wagon and charging at the front rank of horsemen with long pikes. The butts of the wicked weapons were planted in the ground and the spearheads set to form an impenetrable hedge of steel. Horns began blowing. In the light of the fire, Skilla could see soldiers were spilling from nearby buildings and dashing to the wall. Buckets of rocks began raining on the Huns bunched behind. Then sluices of oil came raining down and ignited. The trick had become a trap.

  Skilla’s horse wheeled uselessly at the hedge of pikes. Had Sangibanus double-crossed them? No . . . who was this halfling taking aim?

  On a stairway to one side of the gate, a midget was whirling a sling. Skilla cursed and reached for his bow. Could it be?

  A rock whizzed by Skilla’s ear even as he drew back his bowstring. Then Tatos grabbed his arm. “There’s no time!” An iron portcullis was rattling down to cut off the Hun leaders from their followers.

  “Blow the horns for Edeco!” Skilla cried.

  “It’s too late!” Tatos jumped down and hauled Skilla from his horse, an action that saved his life when another volley of missiles scythed into the gateway and toppled half a dozen more men and horses. Skilla’s own horse screamed and went down. The gate had become a slaughterhouse of kicking hooves, broken legs, and discarded Roman weapons. Skilla and his companion ran to where the portcullis was descending, slid, and rolled. They made it to the outer side just as the grate bit into the causeway. Behind, the priests who had attacked his men charged with a howl and began killing the wounded with axes and scythes. Here was none of the meekness of the monastery.

  Skilla stood at the outer end of the portal. Everything was chaos. Huns were on fire. Others were milling helplessly. One stone struck a warrior’s head and it exploded like fruit, spraying them all with blood. Hundreds of Alans were running to man the wall. Skilla heard
with dread the thunder of Edeco’s charge and ran to turn it back. The oaken gate itself slammed shut again against them. It was all the damned dwarf!

  “Fall back! Fall back! The Wolverine retreat!” Yet even as his men tried to flee out of range, Edeco’s huge division of screaming Huns swept Skilla’s stunned company forward like a wave against the wall, the formation breaking against the stone like surf. The Alans were electrified by this sudden appearance of their enemy, bells pealing and horns sounding all over the city, and any opportunity for Sangibanus to surrender had disappeared in an instant. Instead, the Huns found themselves mounting a cavalry charge against a wall fifty feet high.

  There was a brief period of confusion and slaughter before the failure to breach the gate was at last fully communicated to Edeco’s surging Huns and they all pulled back. By that time scores were dead and wounded, and flaming ballista bolts chased them for four hundred paces. The ruse had become a disaster.

  “The priests were waiting for us!” Skilla seethed.

  “So much for the promises of Sangibanus,” Edeco said. “It was Zerco, alive from the dead, who warned them!”

  “Zerco? I thought you buried that damned dwarf.”

  “He passes through walls like a ghost!”

  Edeco spat. “He’s just a sly little man. Someday, nephew, you’re going to learn to truly finish your enemies, from that ugly dwarf to that thieving young Roman.”

  I rode to an Aurelia that had a halo of orange, the glow of fires casting a corona against the night clouds, that I could see from ten miles away. Well past midnight I came to the crest of a hill overlooking the Loire River and saw the besieged city on the northern bank in a dramatic play of light. A thousand Hun campfires ringed the town. Buildings within Aurelia sent up plumes of glowing smoke. Catapults on both sides shot flaming projectiles that cut lazy parabolas of fire across the darkness, like a tracery of filigreed decoration. It was quite beautiful and quiet from a distance, like stars on a summer night, but I knew full well how desperate the situation must seem within. The hope I carried was vital to Aurelia’s resistance.

  If the city could hold, Theodoric and Aetius were coming.

  I was in temporary disguise. I’d become a Hun by killing one, a straggler I caught looting the farm of a slain peasant family. The hut’s plume of smoke and a chorus of faint screams had drawn me, and I’d cautiously observed the warrior, drunk on Roman wine and weighted with booty, staggering from outbuilding to outbuilding, looking for more. The bodies of the family he had murdered were scattered on farmyard dirt, smoldering from the hut fire that had driven them outside to their slaughter. I’d taken my own bow, with which I’d been earnestly practicing, and slain the Hun from fifty paces, the man grunting in perplexity as he went down. Such a kill no longer seemed momentous to me, given the apocalypse that was enveloping us. Taking his clothes and shaggy pony, I’d set out under a dirty Hun jerkin for Aurelia, knowing dried blood would arouse no suspicion in these dark days.

  Now, under cover of darkness, I rode down into the Hun encampment. Unlike a Roman one, the encirclement was a haphazard affair. The Huns erected no fortifications of their own, as if to dare the defenders to come out and fight them. Their lines were thin south of the river, the Loire inhibiting assault or escape. Accordingly, this part of the barbarian encampment had a desultory air. The Huns were huddled around campfires, watching the city wall across the river.

  “I’m looking for the Rugi,” I said in Hunnish, knowing my features and accent would betray any pretense I was a Hun. “I satisfied myself with a wench too long and lost my lochus. Now I’ve been riding two days to let my sword catch up with my cock.”

  Such a confession would earn me a flogging in a Roman army, but the barbarians laughed and made a place for me by the fire, offering kumiss. It burned my throat as I drank, and they laughed again at my grimace. I grinned foolishly and wiped my mouth. “How long do we have to wait at this stink hole?”

  This was not the kind of battle a Hun liked to fight, they said. Their cavalry had outrun their engineers, so there were not enough siege engines. Besides, the Huns preferred to fight in the open like men, not crouched behind machines of war. Yet the cowardly Alans wouldn’t come down from their walls. And while the Huns enjoyed shooting at the helmeted heads of defenders, so many thousands of arrows had been used that Edeco had finally ordered a halt to the sport until the attackers were ready for a coordinated assault. That left the warriors bored, some drifting away to loot, like the Hun I had killed.

  “I thought you Huns tricked your way in,” I said.

  The plan to open the city had been betrayed by a dwarf, it was said, which seemed like an ominous joke. Now the Alans were as aroused as ants. Good Huns had been killed trying to take a place these men no longer wanted. “We should go home.”

  “But it’s a rich land, is it not?” I asked.

  “Too many trees, too many people, and too much rain.”

  I left them as if to piss and made my way to the river. A firebrand arced across the water, leaving a path of pink. The Loire was broad but dotted with sandbars that I could rest on as I swam. I slipped into the cold and began swimming on my back, kicking off my rancid Hun garments as I did so. My head was like a little moon against the current, and I waited anxiously for a bolt from either side, but none came. I paused on a bar to catch my breath, studied the walls, and then swam on my belly for the stone quay of Aurelia. In the shallows near it were carcasses of the city’s boats that had been burned and sunk to prevent the Huns from using them. I grasped one of the iron docking rings to lift myself. Was there someone I could call to?

  As if in answer, there was a flicker, and a projectile banged next to my cheek. I dropped back into the water immediately, still hanging on to the ring. Crossbow! “Don’t shoot! I bring a message from Aetius!” I called in Latin.

  Another bolt ricocheted, drawn by my sound.

  “Stop!From Aetius!” The name, at least, they should recognize.

  I waited and finally someone called down in Latin. “Who are you?”

  “Jonas Alabanda, an aide to Aetius! I’ve come through the Hun lines with a message for Sangibanus and Bishop Anianus! Throw me a rope!”

  “What, you want in? All of us wish we could get out!” But a line uncoiled; and I heaved myself onto the quay, crawled, and grasped.

  “Pull quickly, because the Huns are bored!”

  They hauled so fast I almost lost my grip. I was dancing upward on the rough stones, trying not to think of the drop below, when a fresh firebrand soared overhead, illuminating the wall. I heard excited shouts across the river and knew what it meant. “Hurry!” Mailed arms reached out to seize me. There was a sigh, and a nearly spent arrow pinged off the stone by my shoulder. “Pull, damn you!” Another missile whisked overhead and a third clipped my ankle. Then I was through the gap in the stone and could collapse on the parapet, wet, cold, and gasping for breath.

  A gnomelike face peered down to check mine. “You missed me so much that you’ve come to Hell to see me?” Zerco looked raw, half swaddled in bandages, and entirely satisfied with himself.

  I sat up and looked back at the ring of fires around the city. “I’ve come to promise you salvation.”

  At dawn the garrison of Aurelia gathered in the city’s great church, built from the Roman temple of Venus, to hear Bishop Anianus tell them what to do. Their king Sangibanus was present as well, but this dark-featured and dour man stood to one side, surrounded by his lords and also half shunned by them. Sangibanus had protested he had no knowledge of the ruse that nearly captured the gate, but his protests were too quick and too loud, and the rumors from priest and prelate too sober and convincing, to absolve him of blame. Was their monarch a coward? Or a realist, trying to save them all? In any event it was too late: Battle had been joined, and the city’s only chance now was resistance. A Roman courier had climbed over the walls the night before, bringing news for bishop and king. Now Anianus had called them to hear it. The assembly kn
ew there was not much time. The Huns had begun a great drumming, signaling preparations for attack, and the rhythmic pounding carried inside the thick walls of the church.

  Anianus commanded not just from faith but by example. Had he not, with the dwarf’s help, organized a secret defense of the gate that gave soldiers time to rally? Had he not marched around the walls during the attacks since, bearing a sacred fragment of the True Cross and exhorting the soldiers to stand firm? Had not Hun arrows not always missed his mitered head? Already, people were murmuring of sainthood and miracles. As the Huns drummed, at last he spoke.

  “You cannot fail.”

  The words hung there, like the haze of incense in the morning’s growing light. The soldiers stirred, a mongrel mix of eastern horseman, gruff German, sturdy Celt, aristocratic Roman—the mix, now, that made up Gaul.

  “You cannot fail,” the bishop went on, “because more than the lives of your families are at stake. More is at stake than this city of Aurelia, more than my own diocese, and more than the lineage of your own king or your own pride.” He nodded, as if to confirm his own words. “You cannot fail because this Church is part of a new truth in the world, and that truth is part of a great and venerable Empire. We are inheritors of a tradition that goes back twelve hundred years, the only hope mankind has ever had for unity. You cannot fail because if you do—if the Huns breach these walls and overthrow your kingdom and win the strategic heart of Gaul—then that Empire, that tradition, and that Church will come to an end.”

  He held them in silence a moment, his gaze circling the room.