The Scourge of God (37 page)

There was a brief period of confusion and slaughter before the failure to breach the gate was at last fully communicated to Edeco’s surging Huns and they all pulled back. By that time scores were dead and wounded, and flaming ballista bolts chased them for four hundred paces. The ruse had become a disaster.

“The priests were waiting for us!” Skilla seethed.

“So much for the promises of Sangibanus,” Edeco said. “It was Zerco, alive from the dead, who warned them!”

“Zerco? I thought you buried that damned dwarf.”

“He passes through walls like a ghost!”

Edeco spat. “He’s just a sly little man. Someday, nephew, you’re going to learn to truly finish your enemies, from that ugly dwarf to that thieving young Roman.”

I rode to an Aurelia that had a halo of orange, the glow of fires casting a corona against the night clouds, that I could see from ten miles away. Well past midnight I came to the crest of a hill overlooking the Loire River and saw the besieged city on the northern bank in a dramatic play of light. A thousand Hun campfires ringed the town. Buildings within Aurelia sent up plumes of glowing smoke. Catapults on both sides shot flaming projectiles that cut lazy parabolas of fire across the darkness, like a tracery of filigreed decoration. It was quite beautiful and quiet from a distance, like stars on a summer night, but I knew full well how desperate the situation must seem within. The hope I carried was vital to Aurelia’s resistance.

If the city could hold, Theodoric and Aetius were coming.

I was in temporary disguise. I’d become a Hun by killing one, a straggler I caught looting the farm of a slain peasant family. The hut’s plume of smoke and a chorus of faint screams had drawn me, and I’d cautiously observed the warrior, drunk on Roman wine and weighted with booty, staggering from outbuilding to outbuilding, looking for more. The bodies of the family he had murdered were scattered on farmyard dirt, smoldering from the hut fire that had driven them outside to their slaughter. I’d taken my own bow, with which I’d been earnestly practicing, and slain the Hun from fifty paces, the man grunting in perplexity as he went down. Such a kill no longer seemed momentous to me, given the apocalypse that was enveloping us. Taking his clothes and shaggy pony, I’d set out under a dirty Hun jerkin for Aurelia, knowing dried blood would arouse no suspicion in these dark days.

Now, under cover of darkness, I rode down into the Hun encampment. Unlike a Roman one, the encirclement was a haphazard affair. The Huns erected no fortifications of their own, as if to dare the defenders to come out and fight them. Their lines were thin south of the river, the Loire inhibiting assault or escape. Accordingly, this part of the barbarian encampment had a desultory air. The Huns were huddled around campfires, watching the city wall across the river.

“I’m looking for the Rugi,” I said in Hunnish, knowing my features and accent would betray any pretense I was a Hun. “I satisfied myself with a wench too long and lost my
lochus.
Now I’ve been riding two days to let my sword catch up with my cock.”

Such a confession would earn me a flogging in a Roman army, but the barbarians laughed and made a place for me by the fire, offering
kumiss.
It burned my throat as I drank, and they laughed again at my grimace. I grinned foolishly and wiped my mouth. “How long do we have to wait at this stink hole?”

This was not the kind of battle a Hun liked to fight, they said. Their cavalry had outrun their engineers, so there were not enough siege engines. Besides, the Huns preferred to fight in the open like men, not crouched behind machines of war. Yet the cowardly Alans wouldn’t come down from their walls. And while the Huns enjoyed shooting at the helmeted heads of defenders, so many thousands of arrows had been used that Edeco had finally ordered a halt to the sport until the attackers were ready for a coordinated assault. That left the warriors bored, some drifting away to loot, like the Hun I had killed.

“I thought you Huns tricked your way in,” I said.

The plan to open the city had been betrayed by a dwarf, it was said, which seemed like an ominous joke. Now the Alans were as aroused as ants. Good Huns had been killed trying to take a place these men no longer wanted. “We should go home.”

“But it’s a rich land, is it not?” I asked.

“Too many trees, too many people, and too much rain.”

I left them as if to piss and made my way to the river. A firebrand arced across the water, leaving a path of pink. The Loire was broad but dotted with sandbars that I could rest on as I swam. I slipped into the cold and began swimming on my back, kicking off my rancid Hun garments as I did so. My head was like a little moon against the current, and I waited anxiously for a bolt from either side, but none came. I paused on a bar to catch my breath, studied the walls, and then swam on my belly for the stone quay of Aurelia. In the shallows near it were carcasses of the city’s boats that had been burned and sunk to prevent the Huns from using them. I grasped one of the iron docking rings to lift myself. Was there someone I could call to?

As if in answer, there was a flicker, and a projectile banged next to my cheek. I dropped back into the water immediately, still hanging on to the ring. Crossbow! “Don’t shoot! I bring a message from Aetius!” I called in Latin.

Another bolt ricocheted, drawn by my sound.

“Stop!From Aetius!” The name, at least, they should recognize.

I waited and finally someone called down in Latin. “Who are you?”

“Jonas Alabanda, an aide to Aetius! I’ve come through the Hun lines with a message for Sangibanus and Bishop Anianus! Throw me a rope!”

“What, you want in? All of us wish we could get out!” But a line uncoiled; and I heaved myself onto the quay, crawled, and grasped.

“Pull quickly, because the Huns are bored!”

They hauled so fast I almost lost my grip. I was dancing upward on the rough stones, trying not to think of the drop below, when a fresh firebrand soared overhead, illuminating the wall. I heard excited shouts across the river and knew what it meant. “Hurry!” Mailed arms reached out to seize me. There was a sigh, and a nearly spent arrow pinged off the stone by my shoulder. “Pull, damn you!” Another missile whisked overhead and a third clipped my ankle. Then I was through the gap in the stone and could collapse on the parapet, wet, cold, and gasping for breath.

A gnomelike face peered down to check mine. “You missed me so much that you’ve come to Hell to see me?” Zerco looked raw, half swaddled in bandages, and entirely satisfied with himself.

I sat up and looked back at the ring of fires around the city. “I’ve come to promise you salvation.”

At dawn the garrison of Aurelia gathered in the city’s great church, built from the Roman temple of Venus, to hear Bishop Anianus tell them what to do. Their king Sangibanus was present as well, but this dark-featured and dour man stood to one side, surrounded by his lords and also half shunned by them. Sangibanus had protested he had no knowledge of the ruse that nearly captured the gate, but his protests were too quick and too loud, and the rumors from priest and prelate too sober and convincing, to absolve him of blame. Was their monarch a coward? Or a realist, trying to save them all? In any event it was too late: Battle had been joined, and the city’s only chance now was resistance. A Roman courier had climbed over the walls the night before, bringing news for bishop and king. Now Anianus had called them to hear it. The assembly knew there was not much time. The Huns had begun a great drumming, signaling preparations for attack, and the rhythmic pounding carried inside the thick walls of the church.

Anianus commanded not just from faith but by example. Had he not, with the dwarf’s help, organized a secret defense of the gate that gave soldiers time to rally? Had he not marched around the walls during the attacks since, bearing a sacred fragment of the True Cross and exhorting the soldiers to stand firm? Had not Hun arrows not always missed his mitered head? Already, people were murmuring of sainthood and miracles. As the Huns drummed, at last he spoke.

“You cannot fail.”

The words hung there, like the haze of incense in the morning’s growing light. The soldiers stirred, a mongrel mix of eastern horseman, gruff German, sturdy Celt, aristocratic Roman—the mix, now, that made up Gaul.

“You cannot fail,” the bishop went on, “because more than the lives of your families are at stake. More is at stake than this city of Aurelia, more than my own diocese, and more than the lineage of your own king or your own pride.” He nodded, as if to confirm his own words. “You cannot fail because this Church is part of a new truth in the world, and that truth is part of a great and venerable Empire. We are inheritors of a tradition that goes back twelve hundred years, the only hope mankind has ever had for unity. You cannot fail because if you do—if the Huns breach these walls and overthrow your kingdom and win the strategic heart of Gaul—then that Empire, that tradition, and that Church will come to an end.”

He held them in silence a moment, his gaze circling the room.

“All life is a fight between light and darkness, between right and wrong, between civilization and barbarism, between the order of law and the enslavement of tyranny. Now that fight has come to Aurelia.”

Men unconsciously straightened. Fingers flexed. Jaws tightened.

“You cannot fail because the Holy Church is behind you, and I say to you this morning that God is on the side of our legions and that Heaven awaits any man who falls.”

“Amen,” the Christians rumbled. They put their hands on the hilt of sword, mace, ax, and hammer.

Anianus smiled at this ferocity, his gaze circuiting the room and seeming to rest for a moment on each man in turn. He spoke softly. “And you cannot fail, brave warriors, because a messenger came to us last night with great tidings. Theodoric and the Visigoths have joined the alliance against Attila, and even as we speak they are riding with Aetius to the relief of Aurelia. They are just days, perhaps hours, away. That is why you hear the drums, because the Huns are panicking and wish to conquer us before reinforcement arrives. They will fight desperately to get inside these walls, but they will not succeed because you cannot
allow
them to succeed. You need only fight and win for a little while, and then deliverance will be at hand.”

Now the assembly in the church was stirring and whispering, realizing that in an instant the entire complexion of the war had changed. Without Theodoric any resistance was desperate. With him, there was a chance to defeat Attila’s entire horde.

“Can you fail?” Anianus asked in a whisper.

“No!” they roared.

And then the bells and trumpets began sounding the alarm as the barbarian horns rang out from beyond the walls. The great attack was beginning.

The Huns had outridden their best mercenary engineers and couldn’t make a proper siege. What they did have were arrows, ladders, and an abundance of courage.

They attacked Aurelia from all sides but the river, a wild rush designed to stretch the defenders thin. As the scale of the attack became apparent, it was necessary for nearly every inhabitant of the city—from unarmored women to children as young as ten—to join the men on the ramparts and hurl down stones, tiles, and cobbles. The air was thick with flying shafts, each side shooting back some of the arrows shot at them; and there was an ominous humming in the air like the sound from a hornet’s nest. Scurrying priests and nuns gathered spent Hun shafts in baskets to carry back to their city’s own archers; and occasionally a plunging arrow would catch one of the clergy in the crown of the head, plunging with such force that its point would jut through the lower jaw and sew the mouth shut so tightly that the dying couldn’t scream. He fell, but another priest picked up his burden.

As the missiles flew, the barbarians surged, boling, across the ground outside the city, hundreds struck by the defenders’ salvos but thousands more bunching at the base of the walls. Pots of oil and boiling water, poured from the ramparts, cut swathes of fire and pain in the ranks. Plunging stones snapped limbs and shattered helmets. Yet all this seemed a dent. There were simply too many Huns. Scaling ladders soared skyward like an uncurling fist of claws. Hun archery began in earnest, each volley of arrows timed to follow the last so that it was impossible for the Alans to poke their heads above the protective stone crenellation without being killed. At the same time, attackers swarmed up the ramparts. So the Alans crouched and pitched rocks over the lip of the wall blindly, waiting for that cease in the hiss of arrows that would signal when the first Huns reached the top. Then a great shout went up, and they rose in their iron and leather to clash with the snarling attackers, wrestling on the lip of wall. Here a ladder was overthrown, there the Huns gained a toehold; and desperate battle raged back and forth on the parapet.

The ferocity of the fight made the combat in the lonely tower of Noricum seem leisurely in comparison. Here was battle of an entirely new scale—men swinging, chopping, and biting like animals because even a moment’s pause meant instant death. Some of those wrestling toppled off the wall together, throttling each other as they fell; and if a defender somehow survived such a plunge the Huns waiting below dismembered him and hoisted his limbs as bloody trophies.

I’d borrowed armor to join the battle, now that my message had given hope. I felt more practiced at this grim craft now, rising after the arrow volleys to slash with sword and club with shield, sinking out of sight when more arrows came, and then rising once again. A misstep in this rhythm and I was dead. There was no courage to it because there was no time to be afraid. To lose meant death, so I did what all of us did, what we had to do. We fought.

Soon the parapet was littered with the fallen, defender and attacker alike, some groaning and some already still, festooned with arrows. Many of the dead were women and children, yet new ones constantly clambered up the steps on the city side to drag them aside and bring fresh stones, arrows, or pots of hot oil and grease. At the base of the wall many of Attila’s men were thrashing on the ground and twisting in agony from cruel burns or trying to crawl away on broken legs. The luckiest rocks we dropped struck the ladders themselves, snapping enough in two to seriously limit the routes the attackers could take. Yet to aim a rock was to invite a dozen arrows, and many a broken ladder was purchased at the price of a defender’s life.