No victory satisfies him. No amount of tribute is ever enough. No loyalist is above his suspicion. While he is alive, no Hun and no Roman is safe. If he’s not stopped, he will destroy us all.”
Edeco had stopped eating, looking dubious. “What is it you want?”
Chrysaphius put his slim, soft hand over the Hun’s hard one, grasping it warmly. “I want you to kill Attila, my friend.”
“Kill him! I would be flayed alive.”
“Not if it was done in secret, away from his guards, in quiet parley with Roman ambassadors with you as the key Hun negotiator. He would die, you would leave the discussion chamber, and chaos would erupt only later when his death was discovered. By the time the Huns decide who among them is in charge and who might be guilty, you could be back here, a hero to the world. You could have a house like this one and women like these and gold enough to strain your back.”
He made no effort to hide his look of avarice. “How much gold?”
The minister smiled. “Fifty pounds.”
The Hun sucked in his breath.
“That is simply an initial payment. We will give you enough gold to make you one of this city’s richest men, Edeco. Enough honor to let you live in peace and luxury the rest of your days. You are one of the few trusted enough by Attila to be alone with him. You can do what no other man dares.”
The Hun wet his lips. “Fifty pounds? And more?”
“Would not Attila kill
Edeco shrugged, as if to concede the point. “Where is this gold?”
Chrysaphius snapped his fingers. A male slave, a tall German, came in bearing a heavy chest, its weight displaying the man’s powerful musculature. He set it down with a thump and flipped back the lid, revealing a yellow hoard.
The minister let the Hun take a good long look at the coins and then, with his nod, the lid snapped shut. “This is your opportunity, Edeco, to live like me.”
The Hun slowly shook his head. “If I ride back with that on my saddle Attila will know in an instant what I’ve promised. I’ll be crucified on the Hunuguri Plain.”
“I know this. So here is my plan. Let’s pretend we could not reach agreement. Let me send a Roman ambassador back with you to Attila. Let me send Bigilas here as translator. You will receive enough gifts now that Attila will suspect nothing. Such talks take time, as you well know. You will become close to the tyrant once more. And to guarantee the Roman word, you will suggest that Bigilas slip away and bring back his son as a hostage for Roman honesty. He will not just fetch his boy but your gold. When you see it, and know my word is true, strike. Then come back here and live as a Roman.”
The Hun considered. “It is risky.”
“All reward requires risk.”
He looked around. “And I can have a house like this one?”
“You can have
He laughed. “If I get this house, I will make a pasture for my horses!”
Edeco slept in the palace of Chrysaphius two nights while the Roman embassy was organized and then purposely rode in a litter, like a woman, back out of the city. How wormlike to be carried! It was his joke for his Hun companions. Skilla and Onegesh had ignored the villa prepared for them outside the city walls and camped beside it. Now Edeco brought presents to share with them: rich brocades, intricately carved boxes, jars of spice and perfume, jeweled daggers, and coins of gold. The gifts would help buy each a personal retinue of followers back home.
“What did the Romans say?” Onegesh asked.
“Nothing,” Edeco replied. “They want us to take an embassy to Attila and conclude negotiations there.”
Onegesh frowned. “He won’t be happy that we haven’t ended this in Constantinople. Or that we don’t bring back the tribute. He’ll think the Romans are stalling.”
“The Romans are bringing more gifts. And I am bringing something even better.”
“What is that?”
Edeco winked at Skilla, the nephew and lieutenant who had been included in this mission in order to learn. “An assassination plot.”
“
“They want me to kill our king. The girl man actually thinks I’d try it! As if I’d get a hundred paces before being boiled alive! Attila will be very amused by this and then very angry, and will use his outrage to squeeze even more gold out of them.”
Onegesh smiled. “How much are they paying you?”
“Fifty pounds of gold, to start.”
“Fifty pounds! A big haul, for one man. Perhaps you should whet your assassin’s knife, Edeco.”
“Bah. I’ll make more with Attila and live to enjoy it.”
“Why do the Romans think you would betray your king?” Skilla asked.
“Because they would betray theirs. They are maggots who believe in nothing but comfort. When the time comes, they will squish like bugs.”
The turncoat Roman looked out at the high walls, not certain it would be quite so easy. “And the fifty pounds of gold?”
“It is to be brought later, so Attila will not be suspicious.
We will wait until it comes, melt it over a fire, and pour it down the Romans’ lying throats. Then we’ll send it back, in its new human sacks, to Chrysaphius.”
IV
I
A ROMAN EMBASSY
And so this story comes to me. I could hardly believe my good fortune at being chosen to accompany the latest imperial embassy to the court of Attila, king of the Huns, in the distant land of Hunuguri. A life that had seemed over just one day before had been resurrected!
At the callow age of twenty-two, I was certain that I had already experienced all the bitter disappointment that existence allows. My skill at letters and languages seemed to offer no useful future when our family business was faced with ruin after the loss of a trio of wine ships on the rocks of Cyprus. What good are the skills of a trader and scribe when there’s no capital to trade? My dull and stolid brother had won a coveted posting to the army for its Persian campaign, while my own boredom with martial skills robbed me of similar opportunity. Worst of all, the young woman I had given my heart to, lovely Olivia, had rejected me with vague excuses that, reduced to their essence, meant my own prospects were too poor—and her own charms too abun-dant—to tie herself to a future as uncertain as mine. What had happened to undying love and sweet exchange of feelings? Disposed of like stripped kitchen bones, it seemed.
Discarded like an old sandal. I wasn’t just crushed, I was baffled. I’d been flattered by relatives and teachers that I was handsome, strong, bright, and well-spoken. Apparently such attributes don’t matter to women, compared to career prospects and accumulated riches. When I saw Olivia in the company of my rival Decio—a youth so shallow that you could not float a feather in his depth of character and so un-deservedly rich that he could not waste his fortune as fast as his family made it—I felt the wounds of unfair fate might be truly mortal. Certainly I brooded about various means of suicide, revenge, or martyrdom to make Olivia and the world regret their ill- treatment of me. I polished my self-pity until it glowed like an idol.
Then my father summoned me with better news.
“Your curious preoccupation with languages has finally borne fruit,” he told me, not bothering to conceal his relief and surprise. I had taken to learning the way my brother had taken to athletics, and so spoke Greek, Latin, German, and—
with the help of a former Hun captive named Rusticius who had enrolled in the same school—some Hunnish. I enjoyed the strange, gravelly sound of the hard consonants and frequent vowels of that tongue, even though there had been little opportunity to put the language into practice. The Huns did not trade, travel casually, or write; and all I knew of them was exotic rumor. They were like a great and mysterious shadow somewhere beyond our walls, many Byzantines whispering that Attila might be the Antichrist of prophecy.
