The Scourge of God

their breasts. I found myself embarrassingly aroused. It had been weeks since I’d seen young women, and the long abstinence added to my en-chantment.

“What in Hades is this?” Maximinus asked, looking more frightened than intrigued.

“Not Hades, senator, but Heaven,” Bigilas replied with relish. “It’s the custom of the Huns and the other nomads to offer women in hospitality.”

“Offer? You mean for sex?”

“It is the pagan way.”

Edeco, not embarrassed enough by Anika’s history to turn down this opportunity, had already grabbed a plump and giggling girl and was dragging her away. Skilla had chosen a yellow-haired beauty, no doubt the product of capture and slavery. Onegesh was pointing to a redhead. I myself was captivated by a maiden with hair as black as raven’s wings and fingers that sparkled with rings. I was both excited and nervous. My father had initiated me in the ways of love with courtesans in Constantinople, of course, but as a bachelor in an outwardly pious Christian city, my opportunities for lovemaking had been limited. What would it be like to lie with a girl of another culture?

“Certainly not,” Maximinus announced. He turned to Anika. “Tell her thank you very much, but we are Christians, not pagans, and this is not our custom.”

“But, senator,” Bigilas pleaded. “It is their custom.”

“We will make a better impression on Attila by displaying the stoic dignity of our Roman ancestors, not copying barbarians. Don’t you think so, Jonas?”

I swallowed. “We don’t want to hurt their feelings.”

“Tell her that in our world we have one wife, not many, and that we revere our women, not share them,” Maximinus insisted. “They are lovely girls, just lovely, but I for one will be more comfortable sleeping alone.”

“For those of us who are not the diplomat . . .” Rusticius groaned.

“Will benefit from my example,” the senator said.

Our Hun escort emerged in the glistening morning looking much more satisfied than we were, and their women tittered as they served us breakfast. Then we resumed our journey.

Attila was said to be only two days away.

Again, Skilla was curious, riding next to me. “You did not take a woman?”

I sighed. “Maximinus told us not to.”

“He does not like women?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did he tell you not to?”

“In our world a man marries a single wife and is faithful to her.”

“You are married?”

“No. The woman I was interested in . . . rejected me.”

“She scratches?”

“Something like that.”

“The ones not chosen were very hurt, you know.”

My head ached from too much kamon. “Skilla, they were lovely. I was simply following orders.”

He shook his head. “Your leader is a fool. It is not good to store up your seed. It will make you sick and cause more trouble later.”

IX

I

THE LEGIONARY

FORTRESS

W hat a hollow thing our empire has become, Flavius Aetius thought as he continued his inspection of the fort of Sumelocenna, on the banks of Germania’s Neckar River. What a hollow thing I have become. A general without a proper army.

“It’s difficult to find masons these days, and so we’ve reinforced the walls with a timber stockade,” the tribune who was his guide was explaining with embarrassment. “There’s some rot we’re hoping to get to when replacements arrive from Mediolanum. The local patrician is proving reluctant to contribute the trees. . . .”

“You can’t teach your soldiers to lay one stone atop another, Stenis?”

“We’ve no lime and no money to buy any, commander.

We’re two years behind in disbursements, and merchants have ceased delivering because we can never pay. The soldiers today won’t do hard work; they say that’s a task for slaves and peasants. These tribesmen we recruit are a different breed. They love to fight, but to drill . . .”

Aetius made no answer. What was the point? He’d heard these complaints, repeated with little variation, from the mouth of the Rhine to this outpost on the eastern side of the Black Forest—had heard them, in fact, his entire life. Never enough men. Never enough money. Never enough weapons, stones, bread, horses, catapults, boots, cloaks, wine, whores, official recognition, or anything else to sustain the endless borders of Rome. The garrisons scarcely even looked like an army anymore, each man drawing an allowance to clothe and armor himself. They preened in military fashions that were sometimes as impractical as they were individualistic.

Aetius had lived half a century now, and for much of that time he had replaced his absence of military power with bluff, the tattered tradition of “inevitable” Roman victory, and shrewd alliances with whatever tribe he could persuade, pay, or coerce to oppose the menace of the moment. His was a lifetime of hard battles, shifting alliances, truculent barbarians, and selfish emperors. He had beaten the Franks, beaten the Bagaudae, beaten the Burgundians, beaten usurpers, and beaten the politicians in Italy who constantly whispered and conspired behind his back. He’d been consul three times, and, because he ran the army, ran the Western Empire in ways the Emperor Valentinian scarcely understood.

Yet instead of getting easier, each victory seemed more difficult. The moneyed sons of the rich bought their way out of the army, the poor deserted, and the barbarian recruits boasted more than they practiced. The relentless discipline that had marked Roman armies had eroded. Now he feared that the most dangerous enemy of all was casting a baleful eye in his direction. Aetius knew Attila, and knew how the angry, truculent youth he had once played and scuffled with had become a crafty, aggressive king. Aetius had been sent to the Huns as a boy hostage in 406 to help guarantee Stili-cho’s treaty with the tribe; and later, when his own fortunes were low in the political circus that was the Empire, he had fled to the Huns for safety. In turn, when Attila needed employment for his restless horde, Aetius had used them against Rome’s enemies, paying generously. It had been a strange but useful partnership.

That was why the fool Valentinian had written him the latest dispatch.

Your requests for more military appropriations, which increasingly sound like demands, are entirely unreasonable. You, general, of all people, know that the Huns have been our allies more than our enemies here in the West. It is your skill that has made them a tool instead of a threat. To pretend now that the Huns represent danger goes against not only all experience but also your own personal history of success. The needs of finance for the court in Italy are pressing, and no more money can be spared for the frontiers of the Empire. You must make do with what you have . . . .

What Valentinian didn’t understand is that all had begun to change when King Ruga died and Attila and Bleda succeeded him. The Huns had become more arrogant and demanding. It changed even more when Attila murdered Bleda and turned the Huns from marauders to imperialists. Attila understood Rome in ways that Ruga never had, and he knew when to press incessantly and when to make a temporary peace. Each campaign and treaty seemed to leave the Huns stronger and Rome weaker. The East had already been stripped as if by locusts. How long before Attila turned his eye west?

The weather today matched the general’s mood, a gray pall with steady rain. The drizzle showed all too well how the fortress leaked, and rather than properly repair stone buildings that were two and three centuries old, the garrison had patched them with wood and wattle. The trim precision of the old fort’s layout had been lost to clusters of new huts and wandering pathways.

“The men of the Twelfth are nonetheless ready for anything,” the tribune went on.

That was prattle. “This isn’t a fortress—it’s a nest.”

“General?”