The Scourge of God (23 page)

But when he tried to pull the string, it flapped uselessly. Skilla gaped. The fall had broken his bow.

I charged. Before he could reach for his sword my Roman boot was on his chest and my spear point was at his throat. The Hun started to twist and the tip began to cut. He stopped, frozen, finally knowing fear. He looked up.

I suppose I looked like a great, metal monster, chest heaving, blood droplets from my two arrow wounds spraying us both, my face still mostly lost behind my helmet but my eyes bright and lusting for revenge. Impossibly, I had bested him. The Hun closed his eyes against the end. So be it. Better to die than bear humiliation.

Now the crowd had surged forward, dramatically shrinking the battlefield to a tiny ring, its sound and excitement clamoring, the smell of the pressed bodies rankling. “Kill him, kill him!” they screamed. “Now, Roman, he deserves to die!”

I looked at Edeco. Skilla’s uncle had turned away in disgust. I looked at Attila. The Hun king grimly put his thumb down, in mocking copy of the Roman gesture he had heard of.

It would not be a combat kill anymore; it would be an execution. I didn’t care. These Huns had crucified Rusticius, enslaved Ilana, slain her father, and trapped me. Skilla had taunted me from the day we’d met. I knew this was not what the priests of Constantinople expected. The final thrust would be a relic from the old world, not this new, saved, Christian one, supposedly so close to Apocalypse. But none of this mattered in my hatred. I squeezed the shaft of my broken spear in preparation.

And then something slight and frantic hit me, butting me aside before I could thrust. I staggered, outraged, and howled with pain. Who was this interloper?

She loomed in my vision. Ilana!

“No.” She was weeping. “Don’t kill him! Not for me!”

I saw Skilla’s eyes blink open, amazed at this reprieve. His hand closed on the hilt of his sword, still undrawn. He rolled to one side to clear it.

And then all went black. I had fainted.

PART TWO

RALLYING THE WEST

XV

THE WINE JAR

I
was in a dark, hot place, and some kind of gnome or incubus was leaning over me, perhaps to feast on my aching flesh or carry me to some place even deeper. The roar of the Hun crowd had subsided to a hushed ringing, and Ilana had betrayed me and then disappeared in a fog. I knew I had made some great, irretrievable mistake but couldn’t remember what it was. Then the demon leaned closer . . .

“For the sake of your Savior, are you going to sleep forever? There are more important things afoot than you.”

The voice was high, caustic, and familiar. Zerco.

I blinked, white light flooding in. So did pain, fresher and more acute than I had felt in my fever dream. The hum of the crowd was merely the noise my ear made while pressed in a cup of wool blanket, and the mistake I regretted was leaving Constantinople and becoming entangled with a woman. I struggled to sit up.

“Not yet.” The dwarf pushed me down. “Wake, but lie still.” Someone placed something hot on my shoulder.

“Ahhhggg!” It stung like a viper. And I had longed for adventure!

“It will help you heal,” a female voice murmured. It was a voice I painfully recognized. “Why did you save Skilla!” 

“To save us. And no man is going to die for me. That’s silly.”

“It wasn’t for you—”

“Hush! Rest.”

“What kind of a future do you think you’d have if you’d slain Edeco’s nephew?” Zerco added. “Let the girl heal you so you can save Rome.”

I waited for a wave of nausea and dizziness to pass and then tried to focus. The unbearable light faded as my eyes adjusted to fire and candle. It was actually quite dim in the room, I realized. I was in a cabin with the jester, the leather webbing of the bed creaking as I shifted on my straw mattress. From the smoke hole at the cabin’s peak, I glimpsed a circle of gray sky. A cloudy day, perhaps dusk. Or dawn. “What time is it?”

“The first hour, three days after you humiliated that young rooster,” the dwarf said.

“Three days! I feel drained.”

“As you are, of blood, piss, and spit. Julia, is it ready?” There was a third person in the room, the woman I had seen holding the dwarf on her shoulders. “Here, drink this.”

The cup was bitter.

“Don’t turn your head away—drink it! My God, what an unruly patient you are! Finish that, and then you can have some wine and water. That will taste sweeter, but this will make you well.”

Obediently, but grimacing, I drank. Three days! I remembered nothing except my own collapse. “So I am alive.” 

“As is Skilla, thanks to Ilana here. He hates you more than ever, of course, especially since this beauty has been given leave to nurse you. He’s hoping she can heal you only so he can try killing you again. No man has ever prayed harder for the recovery of another! I warned him that you’ll simply outthink him again. Now he is puzzling how you did it the first time.”

Even smiling hurt. I turned to Ilana. “But you feel something for him.” It was an accusation. I’d fought for her, and she hadn’t let me finish it.

She was embarrassed. “I led him on about marriage, Jonas. I led both of you on, because women are so helpless here. I’m not proud of it. The duel made me sick. Now I’m out of Suecca’s house and soon will be out of this one, and leave you all alone.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s the other reason Skilla hates you,” Zerco said cheerfully. “When it was apparent neither of you two bucks was going to die, Attila considered like Solomon—and awarded the girl to himself.”

“Himself!”

“As slave, not concubine. He actually said you’d both fought bravely. He declared that Skilla was the true Hun but pointed out that he was now in the debt of a Roman. So both of you will now be given a chance to fight for Attila, and whoever distinguishes himself the most will eventually get the woman.” The dwarf grinned. “You have to admire his ability to motivate.”

“Fight? I want to fight
against
Attila. He crucified my friend Rusticius for no reason. He humiliated my mentor, Maximinus. He—”

“Ah, I see Skilla has shot some sense into you. That’s why you need to recover. While you fuss about this pretty morsel, great things are astir in the world, Jonas of Constantinople. Attila has not been asleep, and the world is in peril. Are you planning to nap through all of history or help your Empire?”

“What are you talking about?” My vision was getting blurry again. Whatever Julia had given me was obviously a sleeping potion. Why had they awoken me only to put me back under?

“We’re saying that you must sleep to recover, not listen to this little fool called my husband,” Julia soothed. “That drink had the medicine of the meadow. Sleep, while your body struggles to heal. You have years ahead to save the world.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Zerco said.

But by that time I was asleep again.

I do not recommend being holed by two arrows. Great heroes bear wounds bravely and without complaint, childhood stories tell. But my arm and shoulder complained loudly and long of having been punched through by two shafts of wood, and every twinge reminded me of my own mortality. My courage would never be so naive again. Yet I was of that age when confinement in bed seems a torment and recovery comes quickly. By nightfall I was sitting up, even if the hours dragged from pain, and by the following morning I was walking unsteadily around the hut. Within a week I was restless and well on my way to healing, aching but not incapacitated. “By the first snow you’ll be chopping my firewood,” the dwarf promised.

Ilana and I had spoken at length only once. It was dark, the other two asleep, and fever had brought me awake. She mopped my brow and shoulder, sighing. “I wish the arrows had gone into me.”

“Don’t blame yourself for a duel ordered by Attila.”

“I felt like a murderess and utterly helpless. I thought the death of my betrothed and my father had hardened me, but I couldn’t stand to see you two pitted against each other with me as the prize. I don’t want to marry Skilla, but do you think I feel nothing toward him after the attention he’s given me? I wanted to use you to rescue me, but do you think I don’t notice how you looked at me, touched me? I hate fighting. And now . . .”

“It’s still a contest.”

She shook her head. “I’ll not have either of you killing Attila’s enemies for him in return for my bed. I won’t marry Skilla, but I won’t burden you. Pretend you’ll fight, and then slip away. Don’t worry about me or the Empire. We’ve damaged you enough.”

“Do you really think me such a fool that I was just led around by you? I wouldn’t have tried escape if you hadn’t encouraged me, Ilana. It’s you who was trying to save me.” She smiled sadly. “How naive your goodness is! You need to heal your mind as well as your body. And that’s best done alone.” She kissed my forehead.

“But I need . . .” I drifted off again. When I awoke, she was gone.

“Where’s Ilana?” I asked Zerco.

He shrugged. “Maybe she’s tired of you. Maybe she loves you. Maybe she told Attila you’ll live and he decided she’d done enough. And maybe, just maybe, I had more important things for her to do.” He winked conspiratorially. “Tell me what’s going on, Zerco.”

“The end of the world, the seers believe. The Apocalypse, Christians fear. Messengers are riding out. Spears are being sharpened. Do you know of the Greek Eudoxius?”

“I saw him at my match with Skilla.”

“He came with tidings for Attila. Then another party, quieter and even stranger, arrived in camp. I’ve asked Ilana to keep her ears open. When I entertain in Attila’s great hall, she feeds me what information she can, with a whisper here or a written scrap of message there. Thank God we are literate and most Huns are not!”

“What has she learned?”

“Ah, curiosity. Isn’t that a sign he is healing, Julia?” 

“Curiosity about politics or about the woman?” his wife replied slyly.

“Curiosity about everything!” I shouted. “My God, I’ve been prisoner long enough of your pots and potions! I need to know what’s going on!”

They laughed, and Zerco peeked out the hut’s wicker door to make sure no one was listening. “It appears a eunuch has again entered our lives.”

“Chrysaphius?” I dreaded hearing that minister’s name again.

“No, this one from the West, and considerably gentler by all description. His name is Hyacinth, like the flower.” 

“From the West?”

“Have you heard of the princess Honoria?”

“From gossip, on the journey. The sister of Valentinian, shamed when she was caught in bed with her steward. Her brother was expected to marry her off.”

“What you may not have heard is that she’s chosen confinement over marriage, which indicates she’s perhaps more sensible than her reputation.” He grinned, and Julia poked him. “Actually, this Hyacinth is her slave and messenger, and it seems she may be ever more foolish than reported. Nothing is secret in a royal household, and Ilana has heard he came in the dead of night with a secret message to Attila from the princess. Hyacinth bore her signet ring, and what the eunuch had to say has changed the Hun’s entire thinking. Up to now Attila has focused on the riches of the East. Now he is considering marching on the West.”

This did not strike me as entirely bad news. Attila had been preying on my half of the Empire for a decade. It would be a relief to have his attention turned elsewhere. “That, at least, is not my concern. My position is from the Eastern court.”

“Really? Do you think either half of the Empire will stand if its brother collapses?”

“Collapses? The Huns are raiders—”

“This
Hun is a conqueror. As long as the West stands fast, Attila dares not risk all his strength against Constantinople. As long as the East gives craven tribute, he satisfies his people by making threats and distributing gold. But now everything is changing, young ambassador. What little standing you might have retained as a member of a failed imperial embassy disappeared two weeks ago when news came that the Eastern emperor, Theodosius, died in a riding accident. General Marcian has succeeded to the throne.”