The Scourge of God (25 page)

“Not here,” she whispered, trembling as my fingers slipped down. Light fingers gripped mine. “Jonas, stop.”

She was right. I pulled, and we both stood. None of the other girls had moved. My eye wandered over their forms, wondering their eventual fate. Would they suffer for what was about to happen? No, I told myself, the Huns had their own sense of harsh fairness and would know the slave girls were blameless. But, then. Rusticius had been blameless as well . . . Ilana nudged me. Her look had become impatient.

We padded quickly toward the door and then froze as a tawny-headed Scythian groaned and turned, her limbs twitching for a moment like a sleeping dog’s. She stilled.

I could hear the release of Ilana’s breath.

Then we were through the door and I took a last, wistful glimpse.

As we hurried for the kitchen I wondered: Had a head come up?

XVI

ESCAPE

W
hat took you so long?” Ilana demanded when we paused at the door of the kitchen. “I feared they had found you. I worried all night!”

“Until you fell asleep.”

“It’s almost dawn!”

“I was delivered on their schedule, not mine, and waited for the kitchen to quiet.” I studied her. “We don’t have to risk this.” She shook her head. “Yes, we do. Not just for us but for Rome.”

Her determination made me braver. “Then find some jars of cooking oil and let’s do what you and the dwarf have planned. By first light, we’ll either be gone or dead.”

The battle with Skilla had hardened me, she could see, just as the sack of Axiopolis had hardened her. Pain had cut some lines onto our young lives, and the hopelessness of rescue had provided desperation. I saw the gleam in my own eyes reflected in hers, and realized we had become wolves. We had, in a way, become Huns. “Yes,” she said. “It ends tonight, one way or another.”

“Hold still. I’m going to cut your dress.”

She caught my wrist. “I don’t need help for the distraction you’ve planned.”

“But I would enjoy helping.”

She snorted, turned from me, used my short sword herself, then gave it back.

It had to be as simple as it was brutal. I crept along the stockade wall until I neared the rear of Attila’s great hall, keeping a wary eye out for sentries on the walls. The silhouettes on the stockade towers, all facing outward, looked somnolent. At the rear door to the hall there was only a single guard, slumped and bored. I signaled my companion by briefly revealing the gleam of the short sword.

Ilana ran wordlessly across the dark courtyard, jars of oil cradled. The guard straightened, puzzled by this approaching female form. She stumbled when she reached the sentry, a sealed jar rolling like an errant ball and drawing his eye. She grasped his knees. “Please!”

He looked down in confusion. “Who are you? Get up.”

She leaned back to reveal the provocative tear she had made. “He’s trying to have his way with me but I’m pledged to Attila. . . .”

The man stared just a moment too long. I came up behind and thrust. The point of my sword emerged from his stomach as my other hand drew a dagger across his throat. Blood geysered, wetting us all. The man, his cry cut off by the knife, collapsed in the dirt.

“It went through so easily,” I said, a little shaken.

“It will go just as easily into Attila. Take his helmet and cloak.”

The hall was high, dark, and empty. The table and benches had been pushed to one side and the dais where Attila’s curtained bed rested was shadowy, lit only by a single oil lamp. There the chieftain slept with whichever wife he’d picked for the evening, and we could hear the faint drone of his drunken snoring. On the wall, mounted as it had been when I’d first seen it, was the great black iron sword of Mars. It looked huge and ungainly, its haft long rotted away so that only a spike of iron remained. The wavering lamplight played over it. Would stealing it really deter the superstitious Huns?

“Spread the oil and I’ll take the sword,” I whispered.

She shook her head. “I step lighter.”

Dancing across the boards, she hopped up on the dais and made for the weapon. I began pouring oil on the planks of the great hall, the sheen catching the feeble light. Oil splashed on my hands, making the clay slippery; and despite the coolness, I was sweating. How long before another sentry found the dead guard? I finished with one jar, took up the other. If we failed, I did not want to imagine the long death we would endure. . . .

Suddenly there was a thud and I jerked. The unexpected heaviness of the iron sword had twisted it out of Ilana’s grasp and its tip had struck the floor. My own grip slipped and the second jar fell and broke, sending oil streaming across the planks.

We froze, waiting. The snoring had stopped a moment, becoming a grumble instead. Yet the curtain of Attila’s bed didn’t part.

All I could hear was the roar of blood in my ears. Then the snoring resumed.

I remembered to breathe.

Ilana caught the dull blade in her other palm, lifted it, and, bearing the sword, began to carefully make her way to me. Then she would fetch the lamp to ignite the fire. . . .

“The Romans are killing Attila!”

The shout made us jump. It was a woman’s voice, coming from the courtyard outside. “Help! The Romans have murdered a Hun!”

Now the bed curtains swung open.

“It’s Guernna,” Ilana spat.

I leaped our moat of oil to take the sword. “Get the lamp!” I hefted the weapon. No wonder she had dropped it! The relic seemed two or three times the weight of an ordinary blade, as if a god had indeed wielded it. Where had the Huns found it? Who had made it? Then my feet strayed into the pool of oil and I slipped, sprawling, and cursing myself as I did so. At the same moment, the dark form of Attila burst from his bed and he seized Ilana by her hair just as she was lifting the oil lamp.

How could it all go so wrong?

She looked at me desperately as I scrambled to get up, hoping to use the old sword to skewer the barbarian king before I, in turn, was skewered. Then, as Attila bent Ilana’s head painfully back and reached for her lamp, she threw.

It struck the oil and a wall of flame roared up, separating me from her.

“Ilana!”

“For the sake of the Empire, run!”

The struggling pair were obscured. I tried to find a way through or around the fire, but my oily leggings ignited. I dropped to press my leg against the floor to smother the flames, wincing at the burn. The fire was growing bigger, and I was coughing from the smoke. “Ilana!”

There was no answer, just fire. The rear door was cut off, but I could see the figure of Guernna, staring at me in the rippling heat. Damn her! Snarling, I charged and leaped, flying through the flames, my clothes smoking.

The German girl yelped and disappeared.

I turned to the dais and Attila’s bed, ready to cleave him in two. It was empty. I whirled. I couldn’t see the kagan and Ilana anywhere. I began to cough.

Now the wood of the walls was igniting. The heat was a roiling wave, pulsing at me.

“Ilana!”

No answer. Attila’s bed ignited, and from its light I saw a hole in the floor leading down into a passageway. Even as I spied it, its entrance burst into flame.

With a whoosh, the rafters overhead ignited. I had to retreat.

I plunged through the flames again to get to the main entrance, ignited, dropped, and rolled. Flames sputtered out even as more pain seared me. Then I staggered toward the front door of the hall, dizzy and coughing. There were shouts and the sound of horns outside the barred main entry. I was still dragging the heavy sword and still wore the Hun helmet. What should I do? The whole point of my escape had vanished in the smoke. I’d lost what I’d really come for: not a sword but a woman. Yet Ilana had sacrificed herself to give me time.
Save the Empire,
she had told me. So had Zerco.

Heartsick at what I must do, I unbarred the door. “The Romans are attacking Attila!” I shouted in Hunnish. Soldiers pushed past me. “Get water to save the kagan!” In the smoke and confusion, no one looked past my helmet and cloak. “He told me to protect the sword!”

With smoke pouring into the darkness and a hundred voices shouting at once, they let me stagger past. Out in the courtyard, all was chaos. Huns were galloping in through the gate to lend help even as the slave women were streaming from the barracks to seek refuge outside the stockade walls. I joined their current, clutching the weapon to my chest. It bumped as I ran. Then I grabbed the reins of a horse that a rider had momentarily abandoned and swung on, looping his lariat around the guard of the sword to hang it from my back. I looked around. Attila’s palace was in flames. Ilana was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the kagan.

There was no going back.

So I galloped hard for the Tisza, my heart a stone, my throat burning from smoke, my mind in shock. How I had failed! First I’d lost Rusticius and now Ilana. The fire was mercy if it killed her quickly, I told myself. What Attila would do to her if they had survived by disappearing down that hole, I didn’t want to guess.

The entire Hun camp was in chaos. Many, seeing the fire, assumed they were under attack. Half-naked warriors burst from their dwellings with drawn swords or half-strung bows, looking for enemies. Mothers shooed children like tides of mice. Horsemen galloped wildly, passing each other in the confusion. I, looking simply like one more crazed and furious Hun, was able to sprint for the river without being challenged. My mount and I crashed into the Tisza, the spray like milk under the moonlight, and we let the current carry us downstream away from the lurid light of the fire.

My horse gained its footing, we splashed onto land, and then galloped across dew-wet grass to the rim of dark trees where the dwarf was supposed to be waiting.

I was nearly in the cover when my stolen pony reared away from some figure lunging with a spear. Before I could react the weapon rammed home in the horse’s breast and my mount went over, crashing to earth and pinning one of my legs. Caught! The great iron sword dragged me down. My attacker loomed over the dying horse and another, a scuttling child, was coming with a long knife. Perhaps, given our failure, it was just as well. I tensed for a thrust and then realized who was attacking.

“Zerco! It’s me!” I cried in Latin. “Julia!”

The dwarf stopped and his wife paused. She had yanked the bloody spear out of my dying horse and had lifted it to plunge it into my torso, but now she looked down in surprise. “Dressed like a Hun? And where’s Ilana? This was not the plan.”

I let my head slump back, my voice thick. “I couldn’t save her. Attila grabbed her after we started the fire.” Tears came, welling on my face.

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Zerco was fumbling at me. “But you’ve got the sword.”

I shoved the dwarf away. “To hell with the damned sword!”

The dwarf came back, cutting the lariat from around my neck and dragging the weapon free. “This is what is important, Jonas Alabanda. This, and what I’ve stolen as well. I am sorry about your woman, but this will save many women. Many, many women.”

“What have you stolen?”

“You aren’t the only man who has been busy tonight. I paid a visit to the Greek doctor who would betray the Empire.” He grinned fiercely. “He decided to accompany us, trussed like a pig.”

“We’re taking Eudoxius when we failed to kill Attila?” This was madness atop madness. “Our diversion failed!”

“If Gaiseric is allying with Attila, my master Aetius needs to know about it. He’ll be best convinced by the traitor himself. Besides, the doctor’s absence might confuse the Huns even more. Perhaps they’ll think him a double traitor, secretly in league with Rome. It might slow their plans, if your fire hasn’t already done that.”

I shook my head in frustration. Nothing was happening as I expected. Stripped of the encumbering weapon, I managed to kick myself free of the horse and dragged myself away. I felt raw: shot, burned, bruised by the fall, exhausted from being awake most of the night in that stifling jar, and devastated by the loss of Ilana. Half a mile away, I could see people running, backlit by the flames of the kagan’s palace. “And is what we’ve stolen worth Ilana’s life?”

“A million women’s lives, I hope.” The dwarf rested the sword on his shoulder like a pole. It was nearly twice as long as Zerco was high. “This sword will be seen as a sign from God. It will help rally the West. I understand your sorrow, but we still have a chance. The Huns are in disarray, and Ilana didn’t know which way we’d flee. And if she somehow still lives, this sword may be her only hope.”

Suddenly I saw it. “We can trade
it
for her!”

Zerco shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. Don’t torture yourself with temptation. This sword goes to Aetius.” 

“To hell with Aetius! This piece of iron is all Attila cares about! The Huns will give anything to get it back!”

“How long do you think any of us, including Ilana, will live once you stop to parley with the barbarians? Have you learned nothing in all your months here?”