The Scourge of God

“He actually had little use for entertainment, to tell the truth. He was not unkind or conceited, only distracted. He believes in an idea called Rome but lacks the army to restore it. So he fights one day, negotiates the next, buys the third.

He’s a remarkable man who almost alone is holding the West together, and of course his superiors despise him for it.

There is nothing incompetence hates more than virtue.

Valentinian will one day punish him for his heroism, mark my word.”

“He never marched to help the East.”

“March with what? The people tormenting your half of the Empire were the same he was hiring to keep order in his half—the Huns. They’d work for him and take from you. It sounds callous, but it was the only way he could keep the other tribes in harness.”

“What can you tell me of the Huns?”

“I don’t tell, I show. I help you to see. Learn to think for yourself, Jonas Alabanda, and you will be a hated, feared, and successful man. Now, first of all, look at this settlement along the river. It goes on and on, doesn’t it?”

“The Huns are numerous.”

“And yet are there more people here than in Constantinople?”

“Of course not.”

“More than Rome? More than Alexandria?”

“No . . .”

“Yet the man with the wooden bowl and cup, leading a people who don’t know how to sow, forge, or build—a people who prey on others to supply everything they have—

believes it’s his destiny to rule the world. Because of numbers? Or because of will?”

“They are great and terrible warriors.”

“Indeed. Look there.” We reached a point on the river opposite a meadow used for grazing and riding. Twenty Hun soldiers were practicing archery. They galloped one by one down the length of their meadow at full speed, plucked arrows from their quivers with deadly rhythm, and fired with frightening rapidity. Their target were melons, erected on poles fifty paces away, and so often did the arrows hit that the warriors roared and jeered only when one missed. Such an error was usually no more than a handsbreadth in either direction. “Imagine a thousand of them, thundering by a clumsy legion,” Zerco said.

“I don’t have to imagine. By all accounts it’s happened far too many times, and again and again we are beaten.”

“Keep watching.”

After each pass the galloping warrior rejoined the jostling, joking group and then took his turn again, hurtling across the meadow. After three or four sprints each, they sat, spent and happy.

“Watch what?”

“How many arrows do they have left?”

“None, of course.”

“How fast are their ponies now?”

“They’re tired.”

“See? I’ve showed you more than most Roman generals ever learn. That’s what I mean by thought: observation and deduction.”

“Shown what? That they can hit an enemy’s eye at full charge? That they can lope a hundred miles in a day when our armies march twenty on our best roads?”

“That in far less than an hour they are out of arrows on exhausted horses. That a cloud of arrows came from a handful of men. That their entire strategy depends on breaking the will of others quickly and without mercy because their numbers are limited and their endurance is nil. But if they have to fight not for a moment but for a day, against a unity that outnumbers them . . .”

“This was archery. They were trying to expend all their arrows.”

“As they might uselessly against determined infantry that stands its ground behind its shields. Horses are like dogs.

They will catch a fleeing man, but shy from one who stands his ground. An army that is a porcupine of spears . . .”

“What you’re talking about is the greatest of all battles.

Of fighting, after all, not just thinking.”

“Of course, fighting! But what I’m talking about is the will to fight your battle, not theirs. On your ground: low, armored, patient. Of waiting until your moment. And there is one other thing you should be thinking about as you watch their skill.”

“What’s that?”

“To match it, if you want to survive. Did you bring any weapons at all?”

“They’re in my baggage.”

“You’d better get them out and practice as the Huns do.

That, too, you should have deduced by watching them. You never know when you will need to fight, as well as think.”

The jostling, joking warriors across the river reminded me of the dwarf’s leap into my lap the night before. “You claimed that you were warning me of danger at the banquet.

That nothing is as it seems.”

“Attila invites you to talk of peace, but what Attila says may not be what he means. And don’t be surprised if he knows more about your companions than you do yourself, Jonas of Constantinople. That’s the danger I’m warning you of.”

Skilla let the wild galloping of his horse release his turbulent emotions. Riding without direction across the flat plain of Hunuguri was like shedding a particularly constricting and burdensome piece of armor. It was a draft of wind that left the complications of camp and tribe and women behind, and restored to him the freedom of the steppes. Attila himself spoke of the tonic of the grasslands. When in doubt, ride.

So why did they leave the steppes ever farther behind?

Until the Romans came, Skilla had been certain that Ilana would eventually be his. He alone had protected her, and when Attila won the final battle there would be no alternative. But now she had flirted with Jonas and dressed like a Roman whore. It enraged him, because he feared the scribe could win simply by being Roman. Skilla didn’t want a bed slave. He wanted the highborn woman to love him for what he was, not just make love to him, and it frustrated him that she remained stubbornly blind to the Huns and their qualities. The People of the Dawn were better than the hordes that squatted in their stone cities, braver, stronger, and more powerful . . . except that Skilla secretly felt uncomfortable and inferior around the foolish but clever Romans, and hated just that feeling.

That’s why seeing Ilana with Jonas had so infuriated him.

It was not just that the Romans could read the thoughts of other men by peering at their books and papers or that they wore fine clothes or built with stone that lasted forever. As near as he could tell, all their wizardry did not make them particularly strong or happy. They could be beaten in battle, worried constantly about money while having more of it than a Hun would ever need, were hapless at surviving away from their cities, and fussed about rank and rules in ways that would never occur to a truly free man. A Roman had a thousand worries when a Hun had none. A Hun did not grub in the dirt, dig for metal, labor in the sun, or go blind squinting in a dark shop. He took what he needed from others, and all men quailed before him. This is how it had been since his people began following the white stag west, conquering all they encountered. And their women shared their haughty pride!

Yet the Romans disdained him. They never said so, of course, lest he chop them down, but he could tell it in their looks and whispers and manners as they had journeyed from the eastern capital. His was the empire that was growing and theirs was the one that was shrinking, and yet they regarded the Huns as their inferiors! Dangerous, yes, in the way a rabid dog is dangerous, but not the Roman equal in anything that mattered, let alone their master. This stubborn confidence tormented him as it tormented his fellow warriors, because no amount of military defeat seemed to convince the Romans that the Huns were their betters. Only killing seemed to settle the issue.

Ilana was the most baffling of all. Yes, she had lost her father and the man she’d planned to marry, and been