The Scourge of God

Seven hundred miles east of Ravenna, where the valley of the Danube broadens as that great river nears the Black Sea, the Hun were finally inside a small Roman colonial city called Axiopolis. Like all such Roman cities, it had initially been laid out in the neat grid pattern originating with the legionary camp, its forums, temples, and governing houses placed like board pieces in their logic. Like all such cities, it had been walled in the third century, when wars of unrest grew. Like all such cities, its pagan temples had become churches in the fourth, after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity. And like all such cities it had trembled with unease at each sacking of brethren settlements up the Danube.

Now the Huns were here. Their entry was like the advent of a storm: the sound a rising wail of terror that spread outward from the gates in a siren wave. With the sound came the false dawn of fire, orange and pulsing. In her family’s dining room Ilana tried to shut out what she had dreaded so long to hear: oaths and cries, the clatter of unshod horses on stone paving, the desperate grunts and clangs of futile resistance, and the low hiss and rumble of fire. She glimpsed from the corner of her eye the birdlike flash of an arrow winging down the street, having missed its mark and now on its way to another target at random, a humming hornet in stygian gloom. Her neighbors were running as if from the gates of Hell. The apocalypse had finally come.

“I think I have saved us, Ilana,” Simon Publius said, his voice’s quaver betraying his doubt. The plump merchant had developed a thousand-year-old face in recent weeks, his jowls sagging, his sleep-robbed eyes hollow, his pink skin sweaty and mottled like rancid meat. Now he had bet his family’s survival on treason.

“You opened the gates to them, didn’t you?”

“They would have broken through anyway.” The street was filling with horsemen shouting in a harsh, ugly tongue. Strangely, she could make out the particular noise of swords cutting through the air that sounds like rend-ing fabric and then a deeper thunk when they struck. It was as if all her senses were heightened and she could hear every cry, every whisper, and every prayer. “But we were going to wait for the legions.”

“As Marcianopolis waited? Then there would be no mercy, daughter. I have Edeco’s promise that by aiding him, some of us will be spared.”

There was a shriek and then a gabble of hopeless pleading, making clear that not everyone would be spared. She peeked out. The dark below was filled with fleeing and thrashing forms and the occasional moonlike appearance of a human face, mouth agape in the glare of a torch before it was sucked away. Ilana felt numb. She’d been afraid for so long that it seemed an eternity of fear: frightened for years, really, as horrid tales filtered down the river. Then the para-lyzing dread when the Huns and their allies finally appeared under a plume of smokelike dust, just two weeks ago. They had surrounded Axiopolis at a gallop and threatened annihilation if the city did not surrender.

No such surrender had come, despite the pleas and urging of some. The inhabitants had the pride of Moesia and the fire of Thrace in their veins, and most wanted to fight. There had been brave Roman resistance since: fierce stands; moments of encouraging heroism; and even small, momentary victories. But there had also been a growing hopelessness as the dead and wounded were carried down off the walls, each day seeming grimmer, each night longer, each rumor wilder, each heartbroken widow and orphaned child adding to the city’s fatalism. Incense curled in the churches, prayers echoed up to heaven, priests paraded on the walls, messengers tried to creep away to summon help, and yet no relief arrived. The modest stone walls began to come apart like crumbling cheese. The roofs were pockmarked with fire.

Outside, crops were burned and boats destroyed. Inside, doughty old men who had been given spears were picked off the walls because they stood too long, trying to see enemies with aging eyes. So Ilana’s mind had taken refuge in dull despair, welcoming an end instead of fearing it. What was so good about this life anyway? She only hoped death would not hurt too much. But now her father, the city’s most prominent merchant, had betrayed them.

“They would have killed us all, once they stormed the walls,” he said. “This way . . .”

“They’re cavalry,” she replied numbly. “They lack skill . . .”

“Their mercenaries know sieges and siege engines. I had to do something, child.”

Child? How long ago that seemed! Child? Her great love, Tasio, the man she was to marry, had died on day three, shot through the eye with a Hun arrow and succumbing after four long hours of screaming agony. She had never dreamed the body could leak so much blood so ceaselessly. Child? That was a word for blessed ignorance, creatures that still had hope, innocents who might someday have children of their own. Now . . .