The Scourge of God

Our camping place became even grimmer when we began to pitch our tents. It was dusk as I have said, difficult to see the ground, and when one of our slaves bent to tie a rope to what appeared to be a brown and weathered root, the peg burst upward from the soil as if rotten. The annoyed slave bent to retrieve the stick and throw it away in disgust, but as he straightened and cocked his arm, he suddenly looked in startled recognition and dropped it as if it were hot.

“Lord Jesus!” He began to back away.

“What’s wrong?”

The man crossed himself.

Sensing what it must be, I bent. The stem was a bone, I confirmed, the size and shape clearly human. A gray and brown femur, now jagged at one edge and spotted with lichen. I glanced about, my skin prickling. The displacement of earth had revealed the knobs of other bones and that what had appeared to be a half-buried rock in the twilight was in fact the dome of a skull. How rarely we look down! Now my eyes began sweeping the ground of the riverbank where we were making camp. There were bones everywhere, and what had seemed a shoal of weathered sticks left by a flooding current was in fact a litter of exposed human remains. Sight-less sockets, stuffed with dirt, looked blankly at the sky.

Ribs held together by persistent sinews of dried flesh curled from the soil like reaching fingers.

I hurried to the senator. “We’re in some kind of grave-yard.”

“Graveyard?” asked Maximinus.

“Or battlefield. Look. There are bones everywhere.” We Romans began scuffling at the soil in wonder, crying out at each discovery and jumping when a crunch told us we had stepped on another fragment of the dead. The slaves joined in the dismayed clamor, and soon the camp was in an uproar. Tents that were being raised abruptly deflated, fires went unlit, and picketed horses whinnied nervously at the human disarray. Each skeleton brought a fresh shout of horror.

Edeco strode over in annoyance, kicking aside the de-nuded limbs with his boots as if they were autumn litter.

“Why aren’t you camping, Romans?”

“We’re in a boneyard,” Maximinus said. “Some massacre from Naissus.”

The Hun looked down at the remains, then looked around in sudden recognition. “I remember this place. The Romans fled like sheep, many swimming the river. We crossed ahead and waited for them here. If the city had submitted, they might have had a chance, but they had killed some of our warriors and so no mercy could be shown.” He turned, squinting downriver, and pointed to some feature in the gloom. “I think we killed them from here to there.” His voice carried no shame, no remorse, not even the pride of victory. He recounted the slaughter as if recalling a business transaction.

Maximinus’s voice was thick. “For the Savior’s sake, then why did we camp here? Have you no decency? We must move at once.”

“Why? They are dead, and we will be, too, someday. All of us will be bones sooner or later. A bone is a bone, no different here than in a kitchen or waste yard. It turns to dust.

The whole world is bone, I suspect.” The diplomat strained for patience. “These are our people, Edeco. We must move the camp out of respect for their remains. We should come back tomorrow to bury and sanc-tify these poor victims.”

“Attila gives no time for that.”

“There are too many, senator,” added Bigilas, who was translating the exchange.

Maximinus looked gloomily into the dark. “Then we must at least change our camping place. There are ghosts here.”

“Ghosts?”

“Can’t you feel the spirits?”

The Hun scowled, but his superstition showed. We walked half a mile to get out of the killing field, stopping in the lee of a ruined and abandoned Roman villa. The Huns seemed surprised and subdued by our reaction, as if upset that their companions had taken the battlefield so badly.

Death was simply the result of war, and war itself was life.

Since the Hun kit was simple-a cloak to wrap themselves in on the ground-their own move was uncomplicated. We Romans once more laboriously erected our canvas against the starry sky while the unoccupied barbarians built a large fire in the ruins of the house to roast some meat. The flames seemed to push back the haunting. “Come, eat with us, Romans,” the Roman turncoat Onegesh called, “and drink, too. Don’t dwell on what can’t be undone. Think of our mission to Attila and peace in the future!” We sat in the roofless triclinium, its owners likely lying somewhere nearby. While the walls reflected some of the fire’s light and heat, the habitation was sad. Its bright plaster murals were mildewed and peeling, cherubic gods and bright peacocks glazed with the dirt of neglect. The mosaic floor displaying a feast of Bacchus was obscured by litter.