The Scourge of God

I stalled, trying to think. “If we save her, which of us gets her?”

“That will be Ilana’s choice.” Of course he would tell me that, because I would assume she’d choose me. She was Roman. Yet what did I really know? The only word of her survival had come from Skilla himself. For all I knew she’d died in Hunuguri or had married Attila or even had married Skilla! He would tell me anything to get the sword. And yet, looking at him-this man I’d come to know too well through too many combats-I knew he was telling the truth. Knew it in my gut more than my mind. War had given us a curious comradeship.

If I did nothing, she would die. If I acceded to Skilla’s plan, there was a good chance that both Ilana and I would die. And so no chance existed, or did it? The seed of a desperate alternative began to form in my brain.

“I’m not even sure where the sword is,” I said as I thought. What if it now served a different purpose-to demoralize instead of empower?

“Any fool knows where it is. We saw Aetius lift it. Where your general sleeps, there sleeps the sword.”

“This is madness.”

“The madness is men’s preoccupation with that old piece of iron,” Skilla said. “You and I both know it has no power beyond what superstition gives it. That relic will not change what happened here, or what must happen tomorrow. My people cannot conquer the West-there are too many to conquer. But the sword saves Ilana and it saves my kagan. It saves my own pride.”

I looked at him, wondering how my plan could possibly work.

“We must work together, Jonas. For her.” At the outer fringes of the battlefield, where the Roman armies rested, tens of thousands of surviving soldiers were sleeping as if clubbed, every fiber drained by the fight we had just been through. Thousands more wounded had been carried or had crawled here to die. Fresh troops were still coming up to the field, so universal had been the response of resistance in Gaul. The work of war went on. These newcomers were making lanes of advance through the dead by piling them like cordwood. They were bringing fresh supplies of food and water, wheeling catapults and ballistae forward, and were readying for a resumption of battle on the morrow. Others were being sent into the battlefields to retrieve spent bolts and unbroken arrows. I paused to speak quietly to a carpenter working on a catapult, and took the tool he charged eight times too much for.

Torches lit the way to the complex of tents that marked the headquarters of Aetius. I’d left Skilla behind, telling him to lie still like one of the Hun corpses to avoid discovery. I would get the sword by persuasion or not at all; the two of us could not hack our way through an aroused Roman army.

I went by myself knowing that my general would think me a lunatic. Yet didn’t I have some claim to the weapon? Could I tamper with the sword? Was a gamble any worse than renewed slaughter?

If Aetius needed any reminding what his profession was, the night’s sounds provided it. I could hear the shriek of the wounded from all points of his headquarters compound.

Trestle tables had been set up within a stone’s throw; and limbs were being hacked, set, sewn, and bound for those unlucky enough to be grievously wounded and yet still alive. It was a demons’ chorus, despite the vaunted skill of Roman surgeons. A ditch and wooden stockade had been erected around this nexus of the army, and I worried that I might be stopped from entering, ending my ploy before it began. But, no, Jonas of Constantinople was well known as the general’s aide, envoy, spy, and adviser. With my face wiped clean, I was let pass with a salute of respect from the sentries. I walked toward the sword, listening to the cries of the dying.

What is one more dead? I asked myself. Even if it was me?

“We thought you had perished,” one centurion remarked with more prescience than he knew when I came to the tents.

I saw Visigothic and Frankish sentries and a little galaxy of lamps in one of the tents and heard a low murmur. The highest-ranking kings and generals were still awake, apparently, debating what to do when the sun came up. Aetius would be in there, but I needed to speak to him privately.

So where would Aetius have put the old sword? Not on the council table as a symbol of his own luck. He would diplomatically leave it aside and pay attention to the pride of the kings he’d bound to him. This triumph must be theirs as well as his. The weapon would wait in his sleeping chamber.

“The general has asked me to fetch maps and the great sword,” I lied. Aetius traveled with charts of the entire West, poring over them in the evenings the way a merchant might a budget. As his aide, I’d fetched them a hundred times.

“Is he ever going to sleep?” the sentry asked, betraying his own wish to do so. He looked heartsick, like all of us.

“When victory is final,” I replied. “Let’s hope the sword will end things.”

I lifted the flap, peering inside for additional sentries.