The Scourge of God

“It looks to me as if she needed it, and that he protected her well.”

The crowd roared with laughter again.

Now Skilla was silent, knowing anything he said would make him look even more foolish. His face was swelling.

“This is a quarrel sent by the gods to make our strava more interesting!” the king called to the crowd. “The solu-tion is simple. She needs one man, not two. Tomorrow these two will meet in mortal combat, and the survivor can have the girl.” Attila glanced at Edeco, and his warlord nodded once. Both knew what the outcome would be.

So did Ilana. Jonas was a dead man, and she was doomed.

XIV

THE DUEL

Diana shuddered slightly under my unaccustomed weight, and I felt encased and clumsy. You’ll never be the soldier your brother is, my father had told me, and what had it mattered in Constantinople? I had prided myself on being a man of the mind, not arms, suited to higher callings.

But now I wished I had taken cavalry training. Skilla could ride circles around me while I awkwardly charged in my heavy equipment, my big oval shield banging Diana’s flank and my heavy spear already tiring my arm. The nose guard and cheek plates of my peaked helmet blocked my peripheral vision. The heavy chain mail was hot, even though the day was cool, and the sword and dagger on my belt felt clumsy against thigh and hip. The only blessing was that the equipment cut my view of the thousands of half-drunken and hungover Huns who’d assembled in a field near the camp to watch what they expected would be quick butchery.

The betting was on how quickly I would die.

Skilla’s horse Drilca was prancing, excited by the crowd; and the Hun looked as unencumbered as I was swaddled.

His light cuirass of hoof bone scales rippled and clacked like the grotesque skeleton Attila had worn the night before, and his legs and head wore no armor at all. He was armed only with his bow, twenty arrows, and his sword. His face was bruised from my blows, which gave me some small satisfaction, but he was grinning past the evidence of his battering, already anticipating the death of his enemy and his marriage to the proud Roman girl. Killing me would erase all humiliation. Ilana stood in a cluster of other slaves by Suecca, wrapped in a cloak that made her shapeless. Her eyes were red and she avoided my gaze, looking guilty.

So much for confidence, I thought. Too bad I can’t bet against myself.

I also caught sight of Zerco, sitting comically astride a tall woman’s shoulders. His bearer was not unattractive, and looked both strong and kind, the steady companion many men need but seldom wish for or get. That must be his wife, Julia.

“You should not have interfered, Roman!” Skilla called.

“Now you will be dead!”

I ignored the taunt.

“Look at him, armored like a snail,” someone from the crowd observed.

“And as slow.”

“And as hard to get at,” a third cautioned.

There were other shouts: about my ancestry, my manhood, my clumsiness, and my stupidity. Strangely, I began to draw strength from them. I hadn’t slept since fighting for Ilana, knowing the coming dawn could be my last. My mind had become a whirlwind of regrets and misgivings, and I spent these last hours cursing myself for bad luck. Every time I’d tried to think of the actual combat my brain seemed to shy away from any intelligent planning or useful tactics, skittering away into memories of my race with Skilla, my kiss with Ilana, or that embarrassing but intoxicating glimpse of her bare breasts. I hadn’t rested, hadn’t concentrated, and hadn’t prepared. But now I realized that if I were not simply to be a target as simple as those melons I’d watched the Huns practice on, I must use my head or lose it.

I watched dourly as Skilla loped along the line of cheering barbarians, waving his fist in the air and crying in a high yip-yip-yip like an irritating dog. The Hun would shoot me and my horse from a hundred paces, shaft after shaft plunking in until I resembled a field of spiky flowers. It was not so much a fight as an execution.

“Are you ready?” Edeco demanded.

Was I going to sit as target for slaughter? What advantage could I find? Fight your battle, not theirs, Zerco had said.

Yet what was my battle? “Wait,” I said, trying to think. At least, I decided, I could make myself a smaller target. I let the butt of my spear strike the earth and used it as a pole to lever myself off Diana’s saddle, landing heavily.

“Look, he’s backing out!” the Huns called. “The Roman is a coward! Skilla gets the woman!” Hefting my shield and squaring my shoulders, I addressed Edeco. “I will fight on foot.” He looked surprised. “A man without a horse is a man without legs.”

“Not in my country.”

“But you’re in ours.”

I ignored that. Striding fast to hide my tremors, I made for the center of the makeshift arena, a circle two hundred paces across formed by the wall of thousands of barbarian bodies. There could be no escape.

“Yes, he’s a coward!” the Huns called to one another.