The Scourge of God

“A nest made of twigs and paper. Your stockade is so wormy that it’s ready to fall over. Attila could punch through it with his fist.”

“Attila! But the king of the Huns is far away. Surely we don’t have to worry about Attila here.”

“I worry about Attila in my dreams, Stenis. I worry about Attila in Athens or Lutetia or Tolosa or Rome. It’s my job and my fate to worry.”

The tribune looked confused. “But you’re his friend.

Aren’t you?”

Aetius looked somberly out at the rain. “Just as I am friend of the emperor, friend of his mother, friend of Theodoric at his court at Tolosa, and friend of King Sangibanus at Aurelia. I am friend of them all, the one man who binds them together. But I trust none of them, soldier. Nor should you.”

The officer blanched at this irreverence but decided not to challenge it. “It’s just that Attila has never come this way.”

“Not yet.” Aetius felt every moment of his fifty years.

The endless rides on horseback, the hurry to every point of danger, the lack of a proper home. For decades he’d loved it.

Now? “Soldiers prepare for the worst, do they not?”

“As you say, general.”

“True Roman soldiers don’t wait for money or permission to repair their walls, they do it today. If they’ve no lime, they buy it. If they can’t buy it, they take it. And if those they take it from complain, they tell them that the army comes first, because in the end the army is Rome. Do the complaining merchants want a world of barbarian warlords and petty princes?”

“It’s just as I have tried to tell them—”

Aetius stiffened as if coming to attention and thumped himself on the chest with his fist. “What is in your nest, tribune?”

“In it?” Again, Stenis looked confused. “The garrison, of course. Some are sick, many on leave, but if we have time enough—”

“What is within is what makes reputation. None dare disturb a wasp’s nest, because behind its paper wall is a deadly sting. The smallest child could pierce a wasp fort, but even the bravest warrior will hesitate to do so. Why? Because of the fierce sentries inside. Those insects are your lesson!

Sharpen your weapons against the Hun!”

“Attila? What have you heard?”

What indeed? Rumors, warnings, and observations that his strange dwarf spy had scribbled on scraps of paper and sent to him from Attila’s camp. Did they mean anything?

Was Attila increasingly studying the West? Had the disgrun-tled Frank named Cloda really fled to Attila to demand support for his claim to the throne of his people?

“Make your men into wasps, soldier, before it is too late.”

X

I

KING OF THE HUNS

Romans are coming!”

The words were like flame in a darkened room. “An army?” Ilana asked.

“Just an embassy,” the cook reported.

The captive’s heart sank as quickly as it had soared, and yet still it hammered in her breast like an anxious bird. At last, the slimmest connection to home! Since the sack of Axiopolis and the death of her father, Ilana had felt fogged in a vast and noisy Underworld, a migrating Hun capital of unruly children, barking dogs, submissive women, smoke, dirt, and grass. She was only beginning to understand their harsh language, brutal customs, and sour food. The shock of her city’s massacre was with her at every moment like the pain of a broken heart, and the uncertainty of her future kept her anxious and sleepless. The dull work she was assigned failed to distract her.

Her situation was better than that of many captives, she knew. Her assignment as handmaiden to Suecca, one of the wives of the chieftain Edeco who had conquered her city, had protected her from the enslavement, rape, and beating that some prisoners had to endure. The Hun Skilla, who had carried her here, had treated her with respect on the journey and made plain his interest in a wife. Ilana knew he had saved her life in the massacre at Axiopolis, and he brought her small presents of clothing and food, a generosity that gave her subtle status but also filled her with uncertainty.

She didn’t want to marry a Hun! Yet without his favor she was little more than chattel, a prize to be traded. She’d pushed away his early clumsy advances and then felt guilty about it afterward, as if she’d swatted a pesky dog. He’d responded with hurt, amusement, and persistence. He’d warned other men away from her, which was a relief, but it was also a relief when he disappeared with Edeco on a mission to Constantinople.

Now Romans, real Romans, had come, back with Skilla and Edeco. Not traitorous Romans like Constantius who served as Attila’s secretary, or the strategist Oenegius, who had tried to pretend to civilization by having a slave engineer build him a stone bathhouse, or the lieutenant Onegesh who had been sent south with Edeco. No, these were Romans from the Eastern emperor himself, representing civilization, faith, and order.

“Please, Suecca, can we go watch?” pleaded Guernna, a German captive with long blond braids and impish restless-ness. Any task, no matter how light, was daunting to her lazy nature. “I want to see their clothes and horses!”

“What have the lot of you done to deserve to gape and jabber?” groused Suecca, who, despite her grumbling, was not an unkind mistress. “You’ve enough undone embroidery to last a year, not to mention having drawn neither wood nor water.”

“Which is exactly why the sewing can wait!” reasoned Guernna. “Look at sad Ilana there, so quiet as she stitches.

Some excitement might wake her up! Come, Suecca, come look with us! Maybe Edeco is bringing presents!”

“Romans are no more special than sheep,” Suecca said.

Nonetheless, she relented. “Go see them if you must and I’ll look for my lout of a husband, if I can even remember what he looks like. Just remember that you are of the house of Edeco, so don’t chirp like a nest of senseless chicks. The hearth of the warlord has dignity!”

The handmaidens ran, Ilana among them. Just the physical release from Edeco’s wooden compound was enough to pierce her fog. A tide of inhabitants was rushing with them, all curious to see this latest in the steady parade of kings, princes, generals, and soothsayers who came to pay court to the great Attila. Someday, Ilana prayed, Romans would come in real numbers and put an end to her captivity.

Edeco she recognized almost immediately, leading the procession with his horsehair spirit banner held high, allowing just the slightest grin to crack the reserve of his ritually scarred face as he spotted his wife Suecca. Close behind came Onegesh with his paler face, who nonetheless rode with an ease and satisfaction that sometimes made him seem more Hun than the Huns. Finally came Skilla, straight and proud, as if merely visiting the Empire had granted him new status. When his eye triumphantly caught hers, it lit with recognition and possession. She flushed with confusion. He was not ugly like many of the Huns and was quite earnest in his attentions, but he didn’t understand that to her eyes he was a barbarian responsible for the destruction of her city; the death of her betrothed love, Tasio; and the end of her dreams. “That is gone,” he had told her . “Now you will be happiest if you pair with me.”

Behind the Huns came the Romans. At the sight of them, her heart lifted a little. The man in front had draped his riding clothes with the complex ceremonial folds of the ancient toga; and she guessed that he was the lead ambassador, perhaps a minister or senator. Those following did not appear to have his importance, but she eagerly studied them as a reminder of home. Two were in the court dress of aides or in-terpreters. The shorter man looked uneasily at the throng of Huns as if he feared being found out. The other, who sat straighter and had a pleasanter, more friendly face, kept his eyes carefully ahead as if not to offend anyone. There was also a handsome young man of her age in slightly finer clothes, who peered about with a look of alert and innocent curiosity. He seemed young to have earned a place in an imperial embassy.