The Scourge of God (31 page)

“The whole world is in motion,” Skilla murmured to his uncle as they watched fresh troops march out toward the west, even as newcomers were arriving from the east. “I didn’t know so many people even existed.”

Edeco smiled grimly. “There will be fewer by season’s end.”

At the new moon of late spring, Attila called the most important warlords to a final conference before a great pyramidal bonfire. This would be his last opportunity for some time to address them all in person with his charismatic intensity. Once the host fully set out and spread like an engulfing wave, he could communicate only by messenger until they gathered again for battle. Once more he dressed humbly, his armor plain, his head bare, his clothes rugged. The only concession to ornament was a gold brooch to hold his cape, in the shape of a golden stag. The Goths wore the oath rings that pledged loyalty, and the Gepids the colored sashes of their clans. Attila’s eyes held them all like a fist.

“The People of the Dawn,” he began, “are destined to march as far as the setting sun. This is our fate, and has been since the white deer led us out of our homeland.”

There was solemn nodding by the Huns in the assembly. “We will rule from the endless grass to the endless ocean, which none of us have yet seen. All men will unite under us, and any of you here will have your pick of a hundred women and a thousand slaves.”

There was a low growl of anticipation.

“The campaign ahead will not be easy.” Attila’s look was stern. “Rome’s western emperor is a fool; all know this. But his general is not a fool, and Aetius, who I know well, will do all in his power to oppose me. As children we were the best of friends, but as men we have become the deadliest of enemies. It must be so, because we are too much alike and want the same thing: empire.”

Another murmur of assent.

“The princess Honoria has begged me for rescue from her insipid brother. As the greatest king in the world, I cannot ignore her plea. She yearns for my bed, and who can blame her?”

The warlords laughed.

“Moreover, I’ve had communication from our brothers the Vandals. Their king Gaiseric has sent word that if we strike the West, he will as well. Cloda will bring his Franks to our side. Rome’s own prophets forecast our victory.” Another solemn nodding of heads. All knew that fortune was on the side of the Huns.

“Here is what will happen. We are not going to raid. We are going to
conquer
and stay, until all men swear fealty to the People of the Dawn. We are going to destroy the West in what has become its heart, Gaul. We will defeat the Romans there, enlist their German allies, and descend on Italy and Hispania and make ourselves masters. Then I shall marry Honoria, and rut with her, and make new Attilas.” He grinned.

They roared, stamping their feet in an enthusiastic drumming. “Attila! Attila! Attila!” Only his eldest sons scowled.

“Then, with all the West under my banner, I will destroy Marcian and the East.”

“Attila!” they cried. They bayed like dogs and screamed like eagles. They howled and yipped and growled. They drummed the ground with spear butts in a rumble so loud that all the camp could hear their enthusiasm.

Attila held up his hands for quiet. “The Hun will win, and why? Because he is not soft like the Roman. A Hun needs no roof, though he can take one. He needs no slave, though he can conquer one. He can sleep on horseback, wash in a stream, and shelter under a tree. The People of the Dawn will triumph not because they come with much, but because they come with little! Every battle has proven this. Cities turn men into weaklings. Their burning will make our women sing.”

There was less certainty this time. These men had learned the comforts of a snug hearth or heated bath. They liked fine jewelry and gilded swords.

“Listen to me, all of you! We are going to make the complicated places simple! I want the purity of fire. I want the cleanliness of the steppe. Leave no stones together. Leave no roof intact. Leave nothing but the ashes of new birth, and I swear to you by any god you hold holy, victory will be ours. This is what the gods truly wish!”

“Attila!” they roared.

He nodded, grimly satisfied but knowing the human nature of his followers. “Do this,” he promised them, “and I will make you rich with the wreckage.”

Like thunder heralding the approaching storm, rumors and reports of the Hun assembly filtered steadily to Aetius. He had made his winter headquarters at Augusta Treverorum in the valley of the upper Mosel, a city with the same hollow heritage as his army. Once a headquarters for emperors, Augusta Treverorum had been sacked, rebuilt, and rewalled. Constantine’s palace had become a church, since no imperial delegations came this far north anymore. The baths had closed and the newcomer Franks and Belgicans had turned them into apartments, wooden floors subdividing what had once been great arching halls. The games were no longer held, so the arena had become a marketplace.

Yet Treveris was the most intact and strategic Roman city left in the region. From there, Aetius took ship on the Rhine and traveled up and down, anxiously preaching the strengthening of defenses and the need to burn the river bridges when the time came. Messages went out to the Alans, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Armoricans, and the Saxons, warning that the Hun aim was to destroy the West and make them vassal nations. Only by uniting, he warned, could they hope to stand.

The barbarian kingdoms answered him cautiously. Most sent queries about a great sword they had heard of, the sword of Mars, which Aetius had somehow captured from Attila. Did it really exist? What power did it have?

Come to me in the spring and see for yourself, Aetius replied.

At the same time, spies from Attila reached these same courts and urged surrender and obeisance as the only chance of tribal survival. The coming invasion could not be withstood, they warned, and to ally with the tottering Roman Empire was folly.

The key, for both Aetius and the wavering tribes, was Theodoric, king of the Visigoths and the most powerful of the barbarian chieftains. If he joined with the Romans he gave Aetius and his allies a slim chance of victory. If he remained neutral or went over to Attila, then all was lost.

Theodoric was well aware of his own strategic importance, and wary of the wiles of Aetius. The general had manipulated the Germanic tribes too many times before. In response to every missive and every blandishment, he kept putting Aetius off. “I have no quarrel with Attila and none with you,” he wrote the Roman general. “It is winter, when men should rest. In spring, the Visigoths will make a decision in our best interests, not yours.”

The emperor Valentinian seemed equally oblivious to the danger. In response to Aetius’s pleas for more men, weapons, and supplies, he responded with lengthy letters complaining about the incompetence of tax collectors, the miserly ways of the rich, the dishonesty of bureaucrats, the treasonous plotting of his sister, and the selfishness of military planners. Couldn’t the army appreciate the problems of the imperial court? Didn’t Aetius understand that the emperor was doing all he could?

I suspect your spies are quite misinformed about the intentions of Attila. You may be unaware that Marcian has suspended the tribute payments that the East has made to the Huns and has recalled troops from Persia. Isn’t it more likely that the Hun’s wrath will fall on Constantinople? Isn’t Attila one of your oldest friends? Have not the Huns served bravely as mercenaries in your own campaigns? Is not my half of the Empire poorer than Marcian’s? Why would Attila attack here? Your fears are exaggerated, general. ...

It was like the prattle of a nagging and self-pitying wife, Aetius thought bitterly. He knew Valentinian had committed large portions of the budget to circuses, churches, palaces, and banquets. The new emperors refused to acknowledge they could no longer afford to live like the old. Legions were at half strength. Contractors were corrupt. Equipment was shoddy. Maybe the prophets are right, the general thought. Maybe it’s Rome’s time to die. My time, as well. And yet . . .

He looked out at the green Mosel, swollen with spring rains. This river had long since lost the thick traffic of imperial trade but still led to a remnant of Roman agriculture and commerce in the northern reaches of Gaul. The barbarians might disdain Rome, but they also copied it in inferior, almost childlike, fashion. Their churches were rustic and their houses crude, their food plain, their animals unkempt, and their contempt for literacy impregnable to reason. Still, they pretended at Romanness, preening in plundered clothing and living in half-ruined villas, like monkeys in a temple. They tried to cook with aniseed and fish oil. Some men cut their hair short in Roman style, and some women traded their clogs for sandals, despite the mud.

It was something. If Attila won, there would not be even mimicry. The future would be a return of wilderness, the eclipse of all knowledge, and the extinction of the Christian Church. Couldn’t the fools see it?

But of course one fool could: Zerco. It was odd how the dwarf had become a favored companion. He was not 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 animallike 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
must
win,” the dwarf argued. “Fight them, sire, and they will back off like a jackal looking for an easier meal.”

“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.