The Scourge of God (21 page)

It was while lost in such girlish thought that a wall loomed in the darkness and she stopped abruptly, afraid she was about to crash into a house. But, no, it sidestepped, snorting. She’d been so witless that she’d almost walked into a horse and rider! The Hun who loomed above her leaned drunkenly down, swaying slightly and grinning. “And who is this sweet woman, come to meet me before I’m fully home!” he said in slurred recognition. “Have you been waiting for me, Ilana?”

Her heart sank. What monstrous fortune was this? Skilla!

“What are you doing here?” she breathed. She’d thought him still away at Constantinople, escorting the humiliated Roman embassy.

Leaning precariously, a skin of
kumiss
dangling from one shoulder, Skilla slid off his horse in a half topple. “Finding you, it seems,” he said. “What a homecoming! First I find the whole plain alight with celebratory bonfires. Then a sentry patrol passes me some tart
kumiss
so that they don’t drink so much that they pass out themselves, earning a crucifixion. And then, following the river path because it’s the only one simple enough for my tired horse to negotiate, I find you running out to meet me!”

“It’s a
strava
for the Greek envoy Eudoxius, not you,” she said. She was thinking furiously. “I’ve been sent to fetch more
kamon
for the party.”

“I think you’ve come to look for me.” He swayed, leering. “I’ve been thinking of you for a thousand miles, you know. It’s all I think about.”

“Skilla, it’s not our fate to be together.”

“Then why did the gods send you to me just now?” He grinned.

Please, please, she prayed, not this, not now. “I have to go.” She tried to dart around him but he was quicker than his drunken state made her expect, snaring her arm.

“What beer is out here in the dark?” he objected. “I think it
is
fate that sent you to meet me. And why do you recoil? All I’ve ever wanted to do is honor you, to make you my wife, and bring you rich presents. Why are you so haughty?”

She groaned. “Please, I don’t mean to be.”

“I saved you.”

“Skilla, you were with the Huns who killed my father. You carried me into captivity—”

“That’s war.” He frowned. “I’m your future now. Not that Roman slave.”

She craned her neck, looking for help. She knew she should try to charm her way out of his grip but she was flustered. She had to get away! Jonas might come at any moment and a confrontation between the two men could ruin everything. She shoved and they rocked backward in a crude dance. “Skilla, you need to sober. We have to part.”

It amused him, this smug little flirt, this woman who preened. He yanked and pulled her in close, his breath on hers, the rank smell of travel sweat and dust pungent and disagreeable. He sniffed her sweetness greedily. “In a
strava?
This is when men and women come together.”

“I have duties. I serve the wife of Edeco.”

This challenged him. “I am the nephew of Lord Edeco and a future lord myself,” he growled, twisting her arm so that she remembered who was master. “I am one of those who is going to rule the world and everything in it.”

“Only if you prove yourself! Not like this—”

“You could be a queen. Can’t you see that?”

She slapped him with her free arm, as hard as she could, and the sound was as loud as the crack of a whip. Her hand stung like fire, the blow jolting her shoulder, and yet he seemed oblivious to the pain of it. He grinned more fiercely.

“I don’t
want
to be your queen. Find another. There are thousands who would want to be your queen!”

“But I want
you.
I’ve wanted you since I saw you by the burning church in Axiopolis. I wanted you all the way to Constantinople these last weeks, prodding that foolish senator seated backward on his ass and hating him for taking me away from you. I wanted you all the way back. You hang on me like that bag of lead hung on the neck of Bigilas, bowing his shoulders, humping his back, until at the end he could barely stagger, weeping, his son leading him by the hand. I’m tired of this foolish waiting.”

What to do? His grip was like a manacle. She had to find an excuse. “I’m sorry I slapped you. I’m just surprised. Yes, yes, I know we must marry.”

He looked triumphant and greedily kissed her.

She broke with a gasp and twisted her head away. “But Edeco said you must wait for Attila to give me! We must wait, Skilla. You know we must!”

“To hell with Attila.” He sought her lips.

She gave him only her cheek. “I’ll tell you said that! I’ll tell you’ve interrupted my duties, I’ll tell you drank on the way into camp, I’ll tell—”

Maddened by impatience he snarled and pushed, as violently as if in battle. She fell, the wind knocked out of her, and bounced her head off the hard-packed turf of the track. She was dazed, her eyes blinded by tiny lights as she looked up at him. He fell to his knees, straddling her, and grasped her dress at its neck.

“No, Skilla! Think!”

He pulled and the garment tore, its strings parting like scythed wheat, and her breasts came free to the cold kiss of the night air. She spat in frustration and defiance, and he cuffed her, dazing her even more, and began hauling her dress up her thighs. He’d gone crazy. The more she squirmed and struggled, the more it seemed to excite him. She clawed at him, and he laughed.

“I told them you’d scratch me.”

She screamed, hopelessly, because she knew the scream would be lost in the shouts of this wild night. Skilla was insane, drunkenly wrestling with her clothing and his own. Yet if he raped her, what would it matter? She was a captive and a slave, and he was of the Hun aristocracy.

Then something hurtled in a rush of wind and crashed into both of them, knocking Skilla aside and rolling with him across the grass and dirt. There were grunts and soft curses, and then the newcomer got atop Skilla and struck him.

“Ilana, run for the river!”

It was Jonas.

The Hun snarled, bucked, and finally somersaulted backward. Jonas went over with him, taken by surprise, and lay stunned. The Hun twisted like a wolverine and reached for the Roman’s throat. “Haven’t they killed you yet?” Now he was on top, pressing down; but suddenly a fist shot upward and Skilla’s head snapped back, his grip coming free. Jonas heaved, and the two were separated once again.

“Go to the river!” he gasped to her again.

If she ran for the river she still had a chance to escape. The dwarf could help them find the way, and Jonas could keep Skilla pinned. And yet as the two men struggled, she couldn’t run as desperation dictated. Did she feel more for the Roman than she’d admitted? “I won’t leave you!” She looked around for a rock or stick.

The Hun, spitting blood from a cut lip, put out his arms to encircle like a bear and charged. Jonas crouched, his arms cocked, and now he struck again—a left, a right, and then a hard jab left—as Skilla was brought up short, standing there stupidly as Jonas hammered at him. Finally the Hun staggered back out of range, confused. Then he stubbornly stumbled forward again. Jonas swung, there was a heavy thud, and Skilla went down.

The Roman stepped back, wary. Ilana had to remember to breathe. She realized that the Hun had no knowledge of boxing, the art that all Roman boys were taught.

Skilla rolled, got to his knees with his back to them, and staggered up, the fermented mare’s milk and the drumbeat of punches making him unsteady. From his battered mouth he managed a feeble whistle. “Drilca!” The Hun pony loomed into sight again, nervously dancing.

Skilla fell against the saddle, seemingly spent, and then he whirled, drawing the sword sheathed there. He looked murderous. “I’m sick of your tricks, Roman.”

Ilana found a pole from a meat-drying rack and wrenched it free, running back. Jonas had bent and was circling, fists cocked, eyeing the blade to elude it. “Ilana, don’t make me waste this. Run, and get away.”

“No,” she whispered, crouching with the stave, afraid of the sword and yet determined. “If he kills you, he kills me, too.”

But then came a new voice, as deep as thunder, and it boomed above all other sounds. “Stop, all of you!”

It was Edeco. Skilla jumped like a small boy caught stealing figs and straightened, his sword lowered. Light flared as torches came near, revealing the blood on the warrior’s battered face. His uncle came up with a crowd of the curious, and Ilana was suddenly aware of her half nakedness. She dropped the stave and pulled up her dress to cover her breasts.

“Damnation, Skilla. What are you doing back without reporting to me?”

The Hun pointed. “He attacked me,” he said truculently.

“He was attacking Ilana,” Jonas responded.

“Is this true?” Edeco asked.

Emboldened, she let her bodice fall open. “He ripped my clothes.” Some of the Huns gaped, others laughed. Everyone jostled closer—men, women, children, and dogs drawn by the tableau. She could smell their acrid breath.

“You’d kill the Roman when he’s unarmed?” Edeco asked with contempt.

Skilla spat blood. “He broke the law by attacking me, and he fights unfairly, like a monkey. Any other slave would be dead by now. And what is he doing out here in the dark? Why isn’t he at his duties?”

“What were
you
doing, trying to rape a woman of your uncle’s household?” Jonas challenged.

“It wasn’t rape! It was . . .”

Edeco strode forward and with a contemptuous kick knocked the lowered sword aside. It rang as it skipped away into the grass. “We will let Attila say what it was.” The warlord sniffed in disgust. “I can smell the
kumiss
on you, nephew. Couldn’t you wait until you got to the
strava?”

“I
did
wait, I’d just gotten to camp, and
she
was waiting—”

“That’s a lie,” she hissed.

“Silence! We go to Attila!”

But the Hun was already there like a nightmare, pushing gruffly through the crowd, the bones of Rusticius discarded but his demon horns still mounted on his head. Like a judging god, he pushed to take in the scene in an instant. There was a long silence while he looked from one to the other.

Then Attila spoke. “Two men, one woman.
This
has never happened before in the history of the world.”

The crowd roared, and Skilla’s face burned with humiliation. He looked at Jonas with hatred. “This woman is by rights
mine,
from capture at Axiopolis,” he protested. “All know that. But she torments me with her haughtiness, and looks to this Roman for protection—”

“It looks to me as if she needed it, and that he protected her well.”

The crowd roared with laughter again.

Now Skilla was silent, knowing anything he said would make him look even more foolish. His face was swelling.

“This is a quarrel sent by the gods to make our
strava
more interesting!” the king called to the crowd. “The solution is simple. She needs one man, not two. Tomorrow these two will meet in mortal combat, and the survivor can have the girl.” Attila glanced at Edeco, and his warlord nodded once. Both knew what the outcome would be.

So did Ilana. Jonas was a dead man, and she was doomed.

XIV

THE DUEL

D
iana shuddered slightly under my unaccustomed weight, and I felt encased and clumsy.
You’ll never be the soldier your brother is,
my father had told me, and what had it mattered in Constantinople? I had prided myself on being a man of the mind, not arms, suited to higher callings. But now I wished I had taken cavalry training. Skilla could ride circles around me while I awkwardly charged in my heavy equipment, my big oval shield banging Diana’s flank and my heavy spear already tiring my arm. The nose guard and cheek plates of my peaked helmet blocked my peripheral vision. The heavy chain mail was hot, even though the day was cool, and the sword and dagger on my belt felt clumsy against thigh and hip. The only blessing was that the equipment cut my view of the thousands of half-drunken and hungover Huns who’d assembled in a field near the camp to watch what they expected would be quick butchery. The betting was on how quickly I would die.

Skilla’s horse Drilca was prancing, excited by the crowd; and the Hun looked as unencumbered as I was swaddled.

His light cuirass of hoof bone scales rippled and clacked like the grotesque skeleton Attila had worn the night before, and his legs and head wore no armor at all. He was armed only with his bow, twenty arrows, and his sword. His face was bruised from my blows, which gave me some small satisfaction, but he was grinning past the evidence of his battering, already anticipating the death of his enemy and his marriage to the proud Roman girl. Killing me would erase all humiliation. Ilana stood in a cluster of other slaves by Suecca, wrapped in a cloak that made her shapeless. Her eyes were red and she avoided my gaze, looking guilty.

So much for confidence, I thought. Too bad I can’t bet against myself.

I also caught sight of Zerco, sitting comically astride a tall woman’s shoulders. His bearer was not unattractive, and looked both strong and kind, the steady companion many men need but seldom wish for or get. That must be his wife, Julia.