“Please, sit.” I gestured to the camp stools as if this tent were mine. “I’m as surprised that you two are on your feet as I’m surprised I’m on mine.”
“Yes,” said Aetius, taking my invitation. “How important all of us must be, to be so tireless. And what are you planning to do with that? Kill Attila? Are you trying to file it sharp?”
I put the file aside. “I’ve been informed the woman that I love is chained to a funeral pyre. She’s to be burned tomorrow with Attila, if we attack and he loses the battle. A Hun told me this, and I believe him.”
“Skilla,” the dwarf surmised.
“I seem as bound to him as you seem bound to Attila, general, or you seem bound to Aetius, Zerco. Bound by fate.
He’s a young warrior, the nephew of the warlord Edeco, who I fought in Noricum when you first encountered me and the sword.”
“Ah, yes. A bold Hun, to have followed you so far into Roman territory. Is he the one who saluted you this day?”
“Yes.”
“Now I have a better idea why. He wants you to trade the sword for this woman?”
“Yes.”
“He loves her, too?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe Attila will accept this trade?”
“No. He will take the sword, of course, but he wants revenge for our setting fire to his palace. I’ll die if we go to his camp, and accomplish nothing.”
The general smiled. “Then I fail to see the logic in your plan.”
“There’s no possibility of escape from Attila’s laager. No possibility of rescuing Ilana. And for me, no possibility of life without that rescue. I’ve watched many men die for what they believe in, and now I’m prepared to die for what I believe in: her.”
The general looked bemused.
“I plan to ask Skilla to take her and trade myself for her life. The Huns have a word for it,
“Letting Attila rally his troops with this symbol, after all we did to get it here,” Zerco accused, “so one woman can be given to one Hun, instead of burned!”
“Yes.” I shrugged. “I can’t bear the thought of her dying, not after so many others have died. Could you bear the thought of losing Julia, Zerco?”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then Aetius spoke again.
“I acknowledge your willingness to sacrifice, but do you really think I’ll let you take the sword for such a pointless exchange?”
“Not take it, exactly.”
“What then?”
I explained my plan.
They were quiet a longer time now, turning over the risk in their minds.
“Attila must be distraught and defeated if he is planning to throw himself on a pyre,” Aetius finally said.
“Indeed.”
“My own army is in no better shape. My men have endured casualties on a scale none of us have ever imagined, and the havoc is threatening to break our alliance. Thorismund leads the Visigoths after the death of his father, but his brothers thirst for the kingship just as much as he does. The Visigoths who charged with such implacable fury and unbroken unity at sunset will be a divided people by dawn.
Similarly, Anthus has been satisfied with the body of Cloda and fears further sacrifice. The Franks have already fought two days in a row. Sangibanus hates me for putting him and his Alans in the center. The Olibriones scarcely have endurance to go another day; they are not young men. And so on. Our horses need more water. Our war machines are short of ammunition. Our quivers are empty. All the problems that plague the Huns plague us as well. But
Attila is a tyrant, and as long as he lives he can keep his coalition of Huns and subject tribes united by fear. My power, in contrast, is simple persuasion, and only the threat of Attila has persuaded our nations to unite. Even as Attila threatens to destroy the Western Empire, he has perversely welded it together. If he’s annihilated in our attack tomorrow, our own unity disappears instantly and with it the influence of Rome. Our allies won’t need us anymore. Attila is as necessary to Aetius as Satan is necessary to God.”
I was puzzled. “You want him to prevail?”
“I want him to survive. Neither of us can afford an attack tomorrow. But if he withdraws crippled but with face, I have the tool—fear of the Hun—that I need to keep the West together. Two days ago, his existence was the greatest threat to Rome. Tomorrow, his absence would be the greatest threat.
I’ve held this Empire together for thirty years by balancing one force against another, and it’s how I’m going to hold it now. I need him to retreat, demoralized, but not lose.”
“Then you’ll give me a chance to try this?”
The general sighed. “It is risky. But the sword has done what it can in my hand.”
I grinned, dizzy with relief and fear.
Zerco laughed at my expression. “Only an amateur fool, exhausted by battle and heartsick with love, would come up with an idea as absurd as yours, Jonas Alabanda!” He nodded, to confirm this judgment to himself. “And only a professional fool, like me, could think of absurdities to improve it!”
XXIX
I
THE LAAGER OF ATTILA
Skilla and I struggled across a battlefield as treacherous as a marsh. The moon had set to a deeper darkness but now the sky was blushing in the east, giving barely enough light to illuminate the grotesque path we must take. We stepped carefully to avoid the blades, arrows, spear tips, shards of shattered armor, and bodies. On and on the havoc stretched, thousands upon thousands upon thousands. Worst were those who were still alive, twitching feebly, crawling blind as snails, or begging pitifully for water. We had none, so we passed quickly by. There were too many! By the time we drew near the Hun encampment, I was finally and forever done with war.
Once more I had strapped the great sword of Mars on my back, but this time it felt like I was carrying a cross. Could this gamble possibly work? I was about to find again, and possibly lose forever, the one person I truly cared about.
Having once escaped the lion’s den, I was walking back into it. Fool, indeed.
Skilla had tethered his pony on the field’s edge, a dark silhouette with neck down as it munched dew-wet grass, oblivious to the historic carnage. Nearby was another horse with a form that seemed gladly familiar.
“We will ride, not walk, to see Attila,” he said. “I brought your horse.”
“Diana!”
“I added her to my string after you fled.” He turned to me in the pearl gray light and grinned that familiar flash of teeth. “She’s only good for milking, but I kept her anyway.”
Suddenly I felt a rush of a feeling of brotherhood with this man, this Hun, this barbarian, that so flooded my body that it felt disorienting. My most hated enemy had become, after Ilana, the one I felt closest to: closer, even, than Zerco.
We were partners trying to save a life, instead of taking one.
And yet I was planning to betray him.
We mounted and rode. My Roman dress drew attention, of course, but Skilla was well known even in this vast army, and the light had grown strong enough that he was easily recognizable. Huns sentries rose warily from the meadow grass but stepped aside to let us pass. We reached the great circle of Hun wagons, a laager half a mile in diameter with similar, smaller laagers scattered about it like moons. Weary Hun ponies grazed between in vast herds. Ranks of Hun archers still slept in the shadow of the wagons, ready to be roused if the Romans
