The Scourge of God

Ilana, battered from Attila’s beating of her in his early rage, claimed Jonas was kidnapping her. “I was trying to save the sacred sword when you awoke,” she said in the gray ash of morning, her high chin failing to control the quaver in her voice. “He was trying to steal it and me.” None believed this, and yet it provided a plausible excuse for what was to come next. Attila’s chiefs had assembled by the smoking ruins, several murmuring that the Roman girl should be crucified or worse. Their king had a different idea.

The loss of the sword deeply disturbed his superstitious spirit. This was a message, but what? To reveal misgiving would be to invite a usurper, but to fail to keep alive every opportunity for the sword’s recovery would be to tempt fate.

Better to use the loss to spur on his warriors, and use the woman until he got the sword back.

“It seems the god of war is testing us,” he told his followers. “First he allows us to discover the sword in a common field, meaning for us to find it. Then he steals it away just as easily. Do we deserve his favor? Or have we become soft as the Romans?” His warlords looked down in embarrassment and resentment. All had heard Attila’s warnings of decay many times. Was this finally a sign of divine disfavor?

“Now we will become hard again,” Edeco vowed, “hard like Mars.”

“What do we know?” Attila asked. “Is the Roman here?”

“His horse is here.”

“Which means nothing.” He thought. “The war god is revealing our proper direction. He wants us to march to wherever the sword is and wrest it back.”

“But the Romans will have it!” Onegesh exclaimed.

“They will use it against us!”

“How can they use what they do not understand? This is my talisman, not theirs.”

Edeco looked glum. “I would rather they not have it.”

“So let’s get the woman to tell us where he went,” Onegesh said.

They eyed her. Ilana said nothing.

“No,” Attila finally said. “I am not going to damage this woman for what she probably doesn’t know. She’s better used as bait. All know how much the Roman who must have the sword desires her. Guernna said he leaped the flames to try to follow.” He pointed to Skilla. “I also know the longing of our own young hothead. So nothing has changed except this test. This fire is a sign that the Hun must return to the open sky. My survival is a sign that Mars still finds me worthy. Any sword that has been through the fire is stronger for it. So now we plan in earnest. This girl goes in a cage. This hothead finds where the sword has been taken and gets it back-or, when we find the Roman, we trade the woman for the sword.” He looked pointedly at Skilla.

“There will be no trade because the Roman will be dead and I will bring the sword back to you!” Skilla cried. And, elated that Ansila’s promises seemed to be coming true, Skilla took thirty men and rode out in pursuit.

He followed the Tisza southward to the Danube, reaching it in two and a half days of hard riding, but there was no trace of Jonas. The ferrymen in their canoes swore they hadn’t seen any fugitive. Villagers didn’t report any strange travelers. The best hunters in the group could find no trail or sign.

Skilla was anxious. Was he about to be humiliated again?

“Maybe he is so slow we’ve gotten ahead of him,” a warrior named Tatos, one of Skilla’s closest friends, suggested.

“Maybe.” Skilla pondered. “Or maybe so fast that he slipped across on a log or a stolen boat, or even swam the river with his horse. It’s not impossible. Nor is it impossible he drowned.” That would be a bitter theft, he thought. “All right, two will search downriver, one on either bank. Two more upriver. Five of you will cross here and ride toward the Pass of Succi, questioning every person you meet and offering a reward for the Roman. But I don’t think he came this way. He has another purpose in mind.”

“What?”

“My guess is he’s gone another direction.”

“East?” asked Tatos.

“That takes him farther from everywhere he knows.”

“West?”

“Eventually, perhaps. But not at first, because he’d risk running into our patrols. I say north first, but not forever.

The Germans would never hide him from us-they know better than that. My guess is north and then west . . . west to Aetius.” He tried to remember the maps of that area he’d seen. The Huns didn’t have the knowledge to draw maps, but they had learned to read them. How strange that an enemy would tell you the way to his homeland! “If we follow the Danube to the old Roman provinces of Noricum and Raetia, far up the Danube valley, we may intercept him. Tatos, return to Attila with word of what we’re doing and see if anything more has been learned in the camp. The rest of us will ride northwestward, toward the great bend of the Danube.

I’ve ridden with Romans before and know well how slow they are. We still have time.”

So they set out, and when Tatos rejoined them five days later he had intriguing news. “The dwarf and his wife are gone, too.”

“The dwarf?”