just funny, he was perceptive. He came back not just with information about Attila’s power but about the Hun himself: His fear that civilization was corrupting. Aetius remembered Attila as the quietest and most sullen of all the Huns he’d met while a hostage in their camp. Aetius had wondered if the unhappy man, nursing some secret wounds, was simple.
The opposite was true, of course, and while Hun warlords had preened and boasted, Attila had made secret alliances with a fierce, quiet magnetism. He had proved to be as masterly a tactician off the battlefield as on. While others had strutted, he had risen, wooing, allying, and killing.
And what had been a plague of raiders had turned, under Attila, into something far worse: a horde of would- be conquerors who wanted to go back to a salvation of animal-like simplicity.
All this Zerco tried to explain and more: that the core of the Hun army was not huge, that the barbarians often quarreled like dogs over a scrap of meat, and that their spirits were winded quickly if they could not prevail. “They will win only if the West believes they
“My allies are afraid to stand up to them. They have cowed the world.”
“Yet it is often the bully who is the most fearful and weak.”
The young man Zerco had brought with him, this Jonas from Constantinople, also had spirit. He was in love with a captive woman—ah, the age when such longing could consume you!—and yet hadn’t allowed it to entirely cloud his reason. He had proved to be an able diplomatic secretary, despite his fantasies of rescue and revenge. While the youth chafed under his scholarly duties—“I want to fight!”—he was too useful to waste as a mere soldier. He was as interesting as Zerco, recounting how he had outlasted the arrows of a rival in a duel and arguing that Rome could do the same. As dusk fell in a March chill, Aetius ordered a fire lit and these two friends brought to him. Leaves were budding, and as soon as the grass was high enough to feed their horses, the Huns would come. On this side of the Rhine, every ally would be watching to see how many would unite under the Roman general. If he could not hold firm, all would come apart.
“I have a mission for each of you,” Aetius told them.
He could see the Byzantine brighten. “I’ve been practicing with your cavalry!”
“Which will serve, eventually. In the meantime, there’s a more important and pressing task.”
The young man leaned forward, eager.
“First, Zerco.” He turned to the dwarf. “I’m going to send you to Bishop Anianus in Aurelia.”
“Aurelia?”
“It is the capital of the Alan tribe, whose name the new rulers corrupt in their tongue so that it sounds like ‘Orleans.’
It is the gateway to the richest valley of Gaul, the Loire, and the strategic key to the province.”
Zerco stood up in self-mockery, his eyes at belt level. “I am certain to stop him if he gets that far, general.” His eyes twinkled. “And enjoy myself if he doesn’t.”
Aetius smiled. “I want you to listen and talk, not fight. I send you to Anianus as a token of friendship and, indeed, one of your tasks is to befriend him. I’m told he is a particularly pious Roman who has inspired great respect among the Alans; they think him holy and good luck. When the Huns come he will be watched closely by the population.
You must convince him to lead in our cause.”
“But why me, a halfling?” Zerco protested. “Surely a man of greater stature—”
“Would be watched too closely by Sangibanus, king of the Alan tribe. I have received word that Sangibanus is listening to emissaries from the Huns. He fears Attila, and wants to keep what he has. Once more I need you to play the fool, caper in his court, and pass me your judgment on which side he’s leaning toward. If he betrays Aurelia to Attila, then all of Gaul is opened to invasion. If he holds, we have time to win.”
“I will learn his mind better than he knows it himself!”
Zerco promised.
“And if there is a plot of betrayal then I will fight to stop it,” Jonas chimed in.
Aetius turned to him. “No, you have an even more important and difficult task, Bringer of the Sword. I am sending you to Tolosa.”
“Tolosa!” Far in the south of Gaul, it was two weeks’
journey away.
“Somehow King Theodoric must be persuaded to ride with us. I have reasoned, argued, and begged in correspondence, and still he refuses to commit. Sometimes a single visit is worth more than a hundred letters. I am making you my personal envoy. I don’t care how you do it, but you must bring the Visigoths to our cause.”
“But how?”
“You know Attila. Speak your heart.”
While Zerco and Julia set out for Aurelia, I ascended the Rhine by boat. All seemed quiet in the greening valley, war a distant dream, and yet change was in the air. Cavalry clattered by on the old Roman roads, evidence of preparations, and when the ship put in to deliver goods and messages or take on provisions, there was a solemn and watchful atmosphere in the riverside villages and old Roman forts. In the evenings the men honed weapons. The women smoked meat and loaded the last of the previous year’s grain into bags in case flight became inevitable. All had heard rumors of stirrings to the east. Few had ever seen a Hun. At inns I warned of Hun ferocity. At fortresses, I reviewed troops in Aetius’s name.
Aetius had asked me to detour to the legionary fortress of Sumelocenna. “I told the tribune named Stenis there to make his men into wasps,” the general recalled. “I want you to see if he has succeeded and write me the result.”
The fort seemed low and unimpressive as I approached, one tower broken and its paint long peeled away. Yet as I drew nearer I took heart from what I saw. The ditches had been cleared of brush and weeds. A hedge of wooden stakes had been planted within crossbow range to ward off siege towers and battering rams. The old walls were dotted with pale new stones. Peasant recruits were drilling in the courtyard.
“We are a nut Attila might not want to bother cracking,”
said Stenis with rare and welcome pride in his voice. “A year ago a child could have captured this outpost, and Aetius recognized that in an instant. Now I’d like to see an army try.
We’ve built twenty new catapults, a hundred crossbows, and recruited seventy-five men.”
“I will tell this to the general.” I decided not to reveal the size of Attila’s army.
“Just tell him that I am ready to sting.”
I traveled southwest to the Rhone where a barge carried me downriver toward the Mediterranean. As I traveled south, the sun brightened and the land grew lush. It was beautiful country, greener than distant Byzantium, and I wondered what it would be like to live here. Yet the oncoming rush of spring also heightened my apprehension.
Time was hurrying, and so would Attila. How could I persuade Theodoric?
I bought a horse near the river’s mouth and took the main Roman road west toward Tolosa and the Visigoths, occasionally spying the glittering sea far below to my left. How far I had come! From home. From Ilana. From dreams to nightmare.
It was late April when I finally came to the Visigothic capital in the old Roman city, its central fortress rearing above the red tile rooftops. I paused a minute before the city’s gray stone walls and wondered how I would convince these semicivilized barbarians to ally with the Empire they had half conquered, resented, envied, and feared. Frighten Theodoric with stories of Attila? My mission was absurd.
Yet destiny has its own devices. Unknown to me, watching secretly from a slit window high in a tower, was my answer.
XXI
I
THE SCOURGE OF GOD
The armies of Attila were too huge to advance on any single road or path, so they ascended the Danube valley in a series of parallel columns, engulfing the ancient border between Rome and Germania like a wave. The Hun cavalry went first as the tip of the arrow, striking ahead of any warning and overpowering weak garrisons before they had time to prepare. The heavier Ostrogoth cavalry came next, their big horses, heavy shields, and long
