The Scourge of God

I bent. Her head came up, hair tousled and her eyes still sleepy: She had nodded off while waiting. The moon painted innocence on her that I hadn’t observed before and I realized how much the Ilana I knew was a woman anxious and driven, desperate for alliance. Here for a moment was a younger, softer woman who’d emerged from a dream. I found myself kneeling and caressing her cheek and shoulder before I fully knew what I was doing, aroused by all this female beauty.

“Not here,” she whispered, trembling as my fingers slipped down. Light fingers gripped mine. “Jonas, stop.” She was right. I pulled, and we both stood. None of the other girls had moved. My eye wandered over their forms, wondering their eventual fate. Would they suffer for what was about to happen? No, I told myself, the Huns had their own sense of harsh fairness and would know the slave girls were blameless. But, then. Rusticius had been blameless as well . . . Ilana nudged me. Her look had become impatient.

We padded quickly toward the door and then froze as a tawny-headed Scythian groaned and turned, her limbs twitching for a moment like a sleeping dog’s. She stilled.

I could hear the release of Ilana’s breath.

Then we were through the door and I took a last, wistful glimpse.

As we hurried for the kitchen I wondered: Had a head come up?

XVI

ESCAPE

What took you so long?” Ilana demanded when we paused at the door of the kitchen. “I feared they had found you. I worried all night!”

“Until you fell asleep.”

“It’s almost dawn!”

“I was delivered on their schedule, not mine, and waited for the kitchen to quiet.” I studied her. “We don’t have to risk this.” She shook her head. “Yes, we do. Not just for us but for Rome.”

Her determination made me braver. “Then find some jars of cooking oil and let’s do what you and the dwarf have planned. By first light, we’ll either be gone or dead.” The battle with Skilla had hardened me, she could see, just as the sack of Axiopolis had hardened her. Pain had cut some lines onto our young lives, and the hopelessness of rescue had provided desperation. I saw the gleam in my own eyes reflected in hers, and realized we had become wolves.

We had, in a way, become Huns. “Yes,” she said. “It ends tonight, one way or another.”

“Hold still. I’m going to cut your dress.” She caught my wrist. “I don’t need help for the distraction you’ve planned.”

“But I would enjoy helping.”

She snorted, turned from me, used my short sword herself, then gave it back.

It had to be as simple as it was brutal. I crept along the stockade wall until I neared the rear of Attila’s great hall, keeping a wary eye out for sentries on the walls. The silhouettes on the stockade towers, all facing outward, looked somnolent. At the rear door to the hall there was only a single guard, slumped and bored. I signaled my companion by briefly revealing the gleam of the short sword.

Ilana ran wordlessly across the dark courtyard, jars of oil cradled. The guard straightened, puzzled by this approaching female form. She stumbled when she reached the sentry, a sealed jar rolling like an errant ball and drawing his eye.

She grasped his knees. “Please!”

He looked down in confusion. “Who are you? Get up.” She leaned back to reveal the provocative tear she had made. “He’s trying to have his way with me but I’m pledged to Attila. . . .”

The man stared just a moment too long. I came up behind and thrust. The point of my sword emerged from his stomach as my other hand drew a dagger across his throat. Blood geysered, wetting us all. The man, his cry cut off by the knife, collapsed in the dirt.

“It went through so easily,” I said, a little shaken.

“It will go just as easily into Attila. Take his helmet and cloak.”

The hall was high, dark, and empty. The table and benches had been pushed to one side and the dais where Attila’s curtained bed rested was shadowy, lit only by a single oil lamp. There the chieftain slept with whichever wife he’d picked for the evening, and we could hear the faint drone of his drunken snoring. On the wall, mounted as it had been when I’d first seen it, was the great black iron sword of Mars. It looked huge and ungainly, its haft long rotted away so that only a spike of iron remained. The wavering lamplight played over it. Would stealing it really deter the superstitious Huns?

“Spread the oil and I’ll take the sword,” I whispered.

She shook her head. “I step lighter.” Dancing across the boards, she hopped up on the dais and made for the weapon. I began pouring oil on the planks of the great hall, the sheen catching the feeble light. Oil splashed on my hands, making the clay slippery; and despite the coolness, I was sweating. How long before another sentry found the dead guard? I finished with one jar, took up the other. If we failed, I did not want to imagine the long death we would endure. . . .