The Scourge of God

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?