The Scourge of God

Skilla found himself thinking of Ilana more than he wanted to, despite the humiliation of her both rejecting him and then saving him from Jonas. He knew she lived, and the thought of winning her back still haunted him. Why had she pushed aside Jonas’s spear from that final thrust? If she hated killing, why had she later tried to burn Attila, instead of simply fleeing with Jonas? She baffled him, and it was her mystery that kept her in his mind. He had visited her in captivity before setting out, bringing her food as an excuse and hoping she might give some clue about the fugitives, torn between pity, obligation, and exasperation.

“None of this would have happened if you had come to me,” he had tried.

“None of this would have happened if you and your kind had stayed where you belong, out on the oceans of grass,” she’d replied. “None of this would have happened if I’d let Jonas win the duel.”

“Yes. So why didn’t you, Ilana?”

“I wasn’t thinking. The noise, the blood . . .”

“No. It’s because you’re in love with me, too. You’re in love with both of us.”

She had closed her eyes. “I’m Roman, Skilla.”

“That’s the past. Think of our future.”

“Why do you torment me!”

“I love you. Accept this, because I’m going to free you from this cage.”

She had spoken with the weariness of the terminally ill.

“Just leave me, Skilla. My life is over. It ended in Axiopolis, and it’s some kind of monstrous mistake of misguided destiny that I’ve been left to witness this other. I’m a dead woman, and have been for some time, and you need to find a wife of your own kind.”

But he didn’t want his own kind-he wanted Ilana. He didn’t believe she was dead at all. After he killed Jonas, retrieved the sword, and won her back, everything would become simple. They would scratch and buck like wildcats, but when they coupled, what sons they would make!

The country became steeper, reminding him of his horse race with Jonas on the journey from Constantinople. Skilla sensed the Roman was near as he sometimes sensed a deer or wild horse was near, and yet he felt blinded in these hilly woods. He was growing discouraged-had the Huns somehow galloped past them in their haste?-when one of his men shouted and they reined up at a wondrous discovery: a bright Greek ring, left like a golden beacon beside a track that led off the main road. Eudoxius!

So the Huns rose long before dawn to ride quietly on the sidetrack, finally spying a pillar of gray smoke. Had the fugitives become so foolish or so overconfident? Then the smoke disappeared, as if someone realized the mistake. The Huns quietly ascended ridges that overlooked where the plume must have come from, dismounting to lead their ponies through the trees. It was the grayness before dawn, the mountains ahead a soft pewter and the trees a dark foundation. At the crest, Skilla spied three horses in a hollow below.

Now he would be revenged! But Skilla didn’t have much practice yet at leadership, his band was young, and before he could order a proper ambush his warriors whooped and charged. A dwarf and a woman? This would be easy.

It was the noise that saved Jonas. He sprang up, shouting, just as the first arrows, fired at too long a range, arced into his campsite to stick in the ground. He seized one horse, mounted it, and dragged some other man-the Greek doctor?-

across its neck with him. The woman and dwarf grabbed another as the third animal simply reared and plunged out of reach. It ran toward the attackers until Hun arrows thudded into the mount’s breast to make sure their quarry couldn’t use it, bringing that animal with a shudder to its knees. Now the fugitives were kicking their two surviving mounts furiously as arrows rained around, all of them precariously mounted bareback. The Huns had them! But then the Arabian horses seemed to explode with speed, weaving almost instinctually, and in a flash they were obscured by the branches. The warriors cried in excitement and frustration and whipped the flanks of their own ponies in pursuit, embarrassed they had not encircled their prey. But the fugitive

horses were fresh from a night’s rest and the Hun horses, already exhausted from these mountains, had been climbing for two hours and had sprinted in attack. In moments, what should have been easy capture turned into dogged pursuit.

Skilla was furious. Each of his men had abandoned the tactics they’d been taught since childhood in hope of the individual glory of retrieving Attila’s sword. Now they’d all spoiled it for one another. The warriors blamed as they rode, pointing, while their prey’s powerful horses slipped around the shoulder of a ridge, ending any chance of shooting them.

By the time the barbarians crested the hill, the fugitives were streaking for the valley below, where an arched Roman bridge led over a foaming stream.

“We’ll still run them down,” he grimly told his men.

“They’re carrying too much,” agreed Tatos.