understood life, little fool, you could not bear to live it. No man could. Be thankful you’re as ignorant as a goat in its field, for you’re happier because of it. Go now, be patient, and prepare for everything to change.” She turned from him in dismissal, grasped the bridle, and tottered across the cave to se-crete it in a chest. Later, she would trade it for food and clothing.
For a week Skilla had stewed in frustration, confused by the prophecy and waiting for some obvious sign. Had Ansila been wrong? Had he wasted the bridle? Then Jonas set fire to the kagan’s house, trying to kill Attila, and Ilana had been caught. In a single night of flame and confusion, everything
No bodies had been found in the ruins of the great house.
Attila himself had escaped with Ilana and his third wife, Berel, who had been sharing his bed that night. The king had pushed the two women beneath his bed through a hole that led to a tunnel specifically constructed to keep him from being cornered. It had been too dark and smoky for the king to be certain just who had attacked, but Guernna said it had been the young Roman.
Ilana, battered from Attila’s beating of her in his early rage, claimed Jonas was kidnapping her. “I was trying to save the sacred sword when you awoke,” she said in the gray ash of morning, her high chin failing to control the quaver in her voice. “He was trying to steal it and me.”
None believed this, and yet it provided a plausible excuse for what was to come next. Attila’s chiefs had assembled by the smoking ruins, several murmuring that the Roman girl should be crucified or worse. Their king had a different idea.
The loss of the sword deeply disturbed his superstitious spirit. This was a message, but what? To reveal misgiving would be to invite a usurper, but to fail to keep alive every opportunity for the sword’s recovery would be to tempt fate.
Better to use the loss to spur on his warriors, and use the woman until he got the sword back.
“It seems the god of war is testing us,” he told his followers. “First he allows us to discover the sword in a common field, meaning for us to find it. Then he steals it away just as easily. Do we deserve his favor? Or have we become soft as the Romans?” His warlords looked down in embarrassment and resentment. All had heard Attila’s warnings of decay many times. Was this finally a sign of divine disfavor?
“Now we will become hard again,” Edeco vowed, “hard like Mars.”
“What do we know?” Attila asked. “Is the Roman here?”
“His horse is here.”
“Which means nothing.” He thought. “The war god is revealing our proper direction. He wants us to march to wherever the sword is and wrest it back.”
“But the Romans will have it!” Onegesh exclaimed.
“They will use it against us!”
“How can they use what they do not understand? This is my talisman, not theirs.”
Edeco looked glum. “I would rather they not have it.”
“So let’s get the woman to tell us where he went,”
Onegesh said.
They eyed her. Ilana said nothing.
“No,” Attila finally said. “I am not going to damage this woman for what she probably doesn’t know. She’s better used as bait. All know how much the Roman who must have the sword desires her. Guernna said he leaped the flames to try to follow.” He pointed to Skilla. “I also know the longing of our own young hothead. So nothing has changed except this test. This fire is a sign that the Hun must return to the open sky. My survival is a sign that Mars still finds me worthy. Any sword that has been through the fire is stronger for it. So now we plan in earnest. This girl goes in a cage. This hothead finds where the sword has been taken and gets it back—or, when we find the Roman, we trade the woman for the sword.” He looked pointedly at Skilla.
“There will be no trade because the Roman will be dead and I will bring the sword back to you!” Skilla cried. And, elated that Ansila’s promises seemed to be coming true, Skilla took thirty men and rode out in pursuit.
He followed the Tisza southward to the Danube, reaching it in two and a half days of hard riding, but there was no trace of Jonas. The ferrymen in their canoes swore they hadn’t seen any fugitive. Villagers didn’t report any strange travelers. The best hunters in the group could find no trail or sign.
Skilla was anxious. Was he about to be humiliated again?
“Maybe he is so slow we’ve gotten ahead of him,” a warrior named Tatos, one of Skilla’s closest friends, suggested.
“Maybe.” Skilla pondered. “Or maybe so fast that he slipped across on a log or a stolen boat, or even swam the river with his horse. It’s not impossible. Nor is it impossible he drowned.”
“What?”
“My guess is he’s gone another direction.”
“East?” asked Tatos.
“That takes him farther from everywhere he knows.”
“West?”
“Eventually, perhaps. But not at first, because he’d risk running into our patrols. I say north first, but not forever.
The Germans would never hide him from us—they know better than that. My guess is north and then west . . . west to Aetius.” He tried to remember the maps of that area he’d seen. The Huns didn’t have the knowledge to draw maps, but they had learned to read them. How strange that an enemy would tell you the way to his homeland! “If we follow the Danube to the old Roman provinces of Noricum and Raetia, far up the Danube valley, we may intercept him. Tatos, return to Attila with word of what we’re doing and see if anything more has been learned in the camp. The rest of us will ride northwestward, toward the great bend of the Danube.
I’ve ridden with Romans before and know well how slow they are. We still have time.”
So they set out, and when Tatos rejoined them five days later he had intriguing news. “The dwarf and his wife are gone, too.”
“The dwarf?”
“The fool, Zerco. He’s disappeared.”
Of course! The jester had not just help nurse the Roman in his hut, the pair had become conspirators. Not until they lived together had Jonas shown the boldness to set fire to Attila’s palace. How much of what happened had been the fool’s idea?
“And something even stranger, Skilla. The Greek Eudoxius has disappeared, too.”
“Eudoxius! He’s no friend of Zerco.”
“Or of the Roman. Unless he’s been playing a double game.”
Skilla thought. “Or they have taken him prisoner.”
“Perhaps as a hostage,” Tatos said, “or for the Romans to torture.”
“It’s clear, then. They’re riding for Zerco’s old master, the Roman general Aetius. So we ride toward news of Aetius, too. Anyone who sees them will remember a dwarf, a woman, a Roman, and a Greek doctor. They might as well be a traveling circus.”
Our quartet of fugitives rode ever deeper into the barbarian world. Zerco’s plan was to travel a great arc into Germania, going first northwest and then southwest, striking the Danube again somewhere between Vindobona in the east and Boioduram to the west. He said we would cross the river into the relative safety of Noricum, that province north of the Alps still partly under Roman control. From there we could learn the whereabouts of Aetius or go on to Italy.
The chance of discovery by roving patrols of Huns or Germans forced us from the main tracks and required us to move slowly. We rested during the middle of the increasingly short days as autumn advanced, but rode into the night and rose again before dawn, as stealthy as hunted deer. Fortunately, we were away from major rivers or trading routes and settlement was sparse. Log huts crouched in clearings amid forest as old as time, the smoke of cooking fires curling away into thick ground mists. Trunks were as fat as towers, their limbs the outstretched hands of giants. Leaves rained down, and the days were growing cloudy and cold.
