The Scourge of God (33 page)

Attila rode toward horizons of smoke, with more smoke behind—a ring of smoke that marked the devastation of his armies in all directions. No cohesive resistance had formed. The Franks had retreated, and the other tribes were hesitating. If the Huns struck hard enough and quickly enough, they would annihilate Aetius before he could gather a credible force. Cities were emptied, armories were captured, aqueducts were deliberately broken, and granaries were looted. Crows were so bloated from feasting on the dead that they staggered on Roman roads like drunken men.

Thousands of opportunists, traitors, and the fearful were joining Attila’s invasion: craven chieftains, escaped slaves, greedy mercenaries. Some were fleeing a bad marriage, broken heart, or debt. There were not as many as the Hun king had hoped, but those who did enlist joined the slaughter with a kind of hysteria. All rules had ended. Hell had triumphed over Heaven. Anarchy and pillage provided opportunities to settle old scores, act on resentment against the rich, or take by force a maiden who had spurned earnest advances. As each law was broken, the next seemed easier to shatter. The indiscipline carried into the Hun army itself, where quarrels quickly turned murderous. The warlords had to separate feuding soldiers like snarling dogs, and maintained some semblance of order only by whip, chain, and execution. So huge was the army, and so far-flung were its wings and columns, that it was barely controllable.

Attila knew he was riding a whirlwind, but he was the god of storms.

It was at a clearing in a wood in Gaul that he encountered the Roman holy man who would give him a different title. A patrol of Huns had roped a Christian hermit who was apparently so stupid that he’d been making a pilgrimage right into the path of Attila’s army. The cavalry laughed as they trotted the pilgrim first one way and then another, jerking on the lines. The hermit was screaming, perhaps trying to egg on his own martyrdom. “Enjoy your triumph because your days are numbered, Satan’s spawn!” the old man cried in Hunnish as he staggered. “Prophecy foretells your doom!”

This interested Attila, who believed in destiny and had bones thrown and entrails read. After killing a few prognosticators in blinding rages, his prophets had learned to tell him what he wanted to hear: so much so, that they bored him. Now this hermit had a different view. So he ordered the Hun soldiers to back up their horses until the ropes were taut and the man was trapped in place. “You speak our tongue, old man.”

“God gives me the gift to warn the damned.” He was ragged, filthy, and barefoot.

“What prophecy?”

“That your own sword will smite you!That the darkest night heralds dawn!”

Some warlords murmured uneasily at this mention of a sword, and Attila scowled. “We are the People
of
the Dawn, hermit.”

The man looked at Attila quizzically, as if scarcely able to believe such nonsense. “No. You come in dust and leave in smoke, and blot out the sun. You are night creatures, sprung from the earth.”

“We are restoring the earth. We don’t cut it. We don’t chop it.”

“But you feed off men who
do,
old warrior! What nonsense Huns spout! If Attila was here, he’d laugh at your foolishness!”

The Huns did laugh, enjoying this little joke.

“And where do you think Attila is, old man?” the king asked mildly.

“How should I know? Sleeping with his thousand wives, I suspect, or tormenting a holy pilgrim instead of daring to face the great Flavius Aetius. Aye, easier to pick on the pious than fight an armed foe!”

Attila’s face lost its amusement. “I will face Aetius soon enough.”

The hermit squinted at the rider more closely. “You’re Attila? You?”

“I am.”

“You wear no riches.”

“I need none.”

“You bear no sign of rank.”

“All men but
you
know who I am.”

The holy man nodded. “I wear none, either. God Almighty knows who
I
am.”

“And who are you?”

“His messenger.”

Attila laughed. “Trussed and helpless? What kind of God is that?”

“What god do you have, barbarian?”

“Attila the Hun believes in himself.”

His captive pointed to the haze of smoke. “You ordered that?”

“I order the world.”

“The innocents you have slaughtered! The babes you have made orphans!”

“I make no apology for war. I’m here to rescue the emperor’s sister.”

The hermit barked a laugh, and his eyes lit with recognition. He waved his finger at Attila. “Yes,
now
I know who you are. I recognize you, monster! A plague! A whip, sent out of the East to punish us for our sins!
You
are the Scourge of God!”

The king looked puzzled. “The Scourge of God?”

“It is the only explanation. You are a tool of the divine, a wicked punishment as dire as the Great Flood or Plagues of Egypt! You are Baal and Beelzebub, Ashron and Pluto, sent to lash us as divine punishment!”

His men waited for Attila to kill the crazy man, but instead he looked thoughtful. “The Scourge of God. This is a new title, is it not, Edeco?”

“To add to a thousand others. Shall we kill him, kagan?” Attila slowly smiled. “No . . . the Scourge of God. He has explained me, has he not? He has justified me to every Christian we meet. No, I
like
this hermit. Let him go—yes, let him go and give him a donkey and gold piece. I want him sent ahead, sent to the city of Aurelia. Do you know where that is, old man?”

The hermit squirmed against the ropes. “I was born there.”

“Good. I like your insult, and will adopt it as my title. Go to your native Aurelia, hermit, and tell them Attila is coming. Tell them I come to cleanse their sins with blood, like the Scourge of God. Ha! It is
I
who am His messenger, not
you!”
And he laughed, again. “I, Attila! A tool of the divine!”

XXII

THEODORIC’S 

DAUGHTER

T
olosa had been a Celtic city, then Roman, and now Visigothic; and the new rulers had done little more than occupy the decaying buildings of the old. Their famed prowess in battle was not matched by any expertise in architecture. The strategic city on a ford of the Garumna had long dominated southwestern Gaul, and when the Visigoth king Athaulf agreed to give up Iberia and send the Roman princess Galla Placidia back to Rome in return for new lands in Aquitania, Tolosa became the natural capital. The barbarians did front the old Roman walls with a ditch and dike, but inside the city it was as if a poor family had moved into a fine house and added tawdry touches of their own. The stone and brickwork was old and patched, the streets were pot-holed and poorly repaired, paint was older than the inhabitants, and dwellings of stucco and marble had additions of timber, daub, and thatch.

Yet under the great barbarian king Theodoric—who had reigned so long, thirty-six years, that most of his subjects had known no other king—Tolosa throbbed with activity. As Roman culture had been layered upon Celtic, so now was German tribal culture layered upon Roman; and the result was a fusion of pagan artisan, imperial bureaucrat, and barbarian warrior that had given the city an energy it hadn’t seen for a hundred years. Traders and farmwives bawled in half a dozen tongues from the crowded marketplaces, Arian priests ministered to thick crowds of illiterate tribesmen, and children chased each other through the streets in numbers not seen in living memory.

Their ferocity was still there, however, and it was this ferocity that Aetius hoped I could somehow help harness. The Visigoths were as haughty as Huns and as regal as Greeks. They were as famed for the long lances of their heavy cavalry as Attila’s men were for their bows; and the palace guards looked like mailed, bearded giants, their pale eyes glinting from beneath the brow of iron helmets like bright, suspicious jewels. Their legs were like tree trunks, their arms like thighs. When the tips of their long swords rested on the chipped marble floor, the pommels came to their chests. Here were men who should have no fear of Huns. Why weren’t they riding with us?

Perhaps they hesitated because their ancestors had been put to flight by the Huns three generations before. Had the Visigoths journeyed across Europe only to be faced with this peril once again? Would they at last make a stand? Or become vassals of Attila? I had to convince Theodoric that survival was with Aetius and the hated Romans.

My arrival had already been promised by correspondence from Aetius. A Visigothic captain helped stable my horse, gave me watered wine to quench my thirst, and finally escorted me to Theodoric. There was a courtyard in the palace, familiar enough except that its fountain was dry because no one could be found with the skill to repair it, and its plants dead because no barbarian could be bothered to keep them alive. Then we entered the reception hall beyond. The old Roman standards and symbols of office were long gone, of course, the pillars hung now with the bright shields and crossed lances of the Goths. Banners and captured tapestries gave color atop faded paint, and the marble floors were obscured by rushes that had been strewn to catch the mud of barbarian boots. High windows let in a crosshatch of light. Nobles clustered and gossiped behind a railing that separated Theodoric’s carved wooden throne from petitioners and courtiers. A single aide stood by to make notes—could the fifty-six-year-old king read?—and the monarch’s crown was a circlet of simple steel. His hair was long, his beard gray, his nose curved, and his expression set in a permanent frown. This was a man used to saying no.

Theodoric beckoned me forward through the wood railing to stand where we could talk without being overheard. I bowed, trying to remember the formal manners of Maximinus, my diplomatic mentor, and marveling at the odyssey that had brought me here. “I bring you greetings, King Theodoric, from your friend and ally Flavius Aetius. Great happenings shake the world, and great deeds are needed.” 

“General Aetius has already sent me such greetings a hundred times in missives this winter,” the barbarian replied with a deep, skeptical voice. “The greetings always come with tidings, and the tidings with requests. Is this not so, Hagan?” He turned to his scribe.

“The Roman wants us to fight his battle for him,” the scribe said.

“Not for him,
with
him,” I corrected. “Attila is marching on the West, and if we don’t stand together, all of us will perish separately, frightened and alone.”

“I have heard this talk from Aetius before,” the king replied. “He is a master at playing on the fears of the tribes. Always there is some dire peril that requires us to muster our armies for Rome and shed
our
blood for
his
Empire. Yet even as he begs for our help, he is reluctant to promise how many legions
he
will muster or what
other
tribes will join. Nor can he explain why Attila should be my enemy. I have no quarrel with the Huns.”

This would be difficult. “The world has changed, sire.” I recited what Theodoric already knew: the plea of Honoria, the accession of Marcian in the East, and the claim of the Frankish prince Cloda in the north. He listened impatiently.

“And then there is the matter of the Greek doctor Eudoxius,” I tried.

“Who?” The king turned in curiosity to Hagan.

“I think he is referring to the man who stirred up the Bagaudae in the north,” the scribe said, “an intellectual who led a rabble.”

“In the revolt that Aetius crushed a few years ago,” I added.

“Ah, I remember this Greek now. What about him?” Theodoric asked.

“He fled to Attila.”

“So?”

“He persuaded Attila to send him as embassy to Gaiseric in Carthage. It was when Eudoxius came back from the Vandals that the Huns decided to march on the West.” At these words something moved in the shadows, jerking as if startled. It was a shrouded figure, I realized, listening from an alcove. Who was that?

“Gaiseric?” Theodoric’s gaze narrowed at mention of the Vandal king. “Why is Attila talking to the Vandals?”

“An equally pressing question, sire, is why are the Vandals talking to the Huns?”

I had at last struck a nerve. Attila was distant, and the Roman emperor Valentinian impotent, but Gaiseric and his haughty Vandals were the one group the Visigoths truly feared. They were a powerful tribe of Germanic origin like themselves, lodged in Africa, and no doubt they coveted Aquitania. I could see that this news had a powerful effect. I remembered hearing that the Vandals had humiliated the Visigoths by rejecting and mutilating Theodoric’s daughter. “Gaiseric is marching with the Huns?” he asked.

“Perhaps. We don’t know. We only know that to wait and do nothing is folly.”

Theodoric sat back on his throne, fingers drumming as he thought. Gaiseric, whose warriors were the equivalent of his own. Gaiseric, who alone matched Theodoric in age, longevity of rule, and list of bloody victories. Gaiseric, who had shamed him as no man ever had by scarring Berta, his beloved child. He squinted at me, this young Roman before him. “What proof do you have of what you say?”