The Scourge of God

“It’s a family relic that’s important to me.” I wrapped it back up. “A token of our ancestors.”

“Were your ancestors ten feet tall? It’s ridiculous.”

“Listen, if you won’t provision us, at least let us spend the night. We haven’t slept under a roof in weeks.” He looked at Julia. “Can you cook?”

“Better than your mother.”

Silas grinned. “I doubt that, but better than wretched Lucius, without a doubt. All right, you will cook supper; you will fetch water; and you, little man, will carry wood. Your prisoner we’ll tie to a post in the tower and let him sputter.

Agents of Aetius! The garrison at Virunum will laugh when I tell them that one. Go on, I’ll let you fill your bellies and sleep in my fort. But you’re on your way in the morning.

This is a military post, not a mansio.” If the decurion seemed a reluctant host, his bored soldiers welcomed our company as entertainment. Julia cooked a hot and hearty soup; Zerco sang them ribald songs; and I told them of Constantinople, which to them seemed no more or less distant and incredible than Rome or Alexandria. Eudoxius, his gag removed, insisted he was a prince of the Huns and promised all of them their weight in gold if they would free and return him. The soldiers thought him as funny as Zerco. They assured us that Huns did not exist in these parts or, if they did, were no doubt on their way home by now.

Forts less than a day’s ride apart guarded the approaches to Italy, and we could travel from one to the next. “Sleep well tonight,” assured Lucius, “because we don’t allow barbarians in upper Noricum.”

At the gray smudge of dawn, that time when sentries finally become dark silhouettes against a barely lightened sky, just two Romans were still awake in our small outpost.

Both died within moments of each other.

The first, Simon, was at the gate and looking in sleepy boredom down the lane. He hoped that Ulrika, a local milk-maid who had udders like a cow, might make her delivery before he was called off duty to breakfast. He was thinking of her breasts, round as melons and firm as a wineskin, when a pony trotted out of the gloom and, before he could call challenge, a Hun arrow took him squarely in the throat. He gurgled as he sank numbly down, wondering what the devil had happened to him, and what had happened to Ulrika. It is oft remarked that a common expression on the dead is surprise.

The second man, Cassius, was at the top of the tower and was pacing back and forth to keep warm. It was a strange humming that caused him to look up before a dozen arrows hissed down like a sudden squall. Four of the arcing missiles found their mark, and the others rattled on the tower roof like hail. It was this, and the thump of his body, that woke me and the others.

“Huns!” I cried.

“You’re having a dream,” Silas grumbled, half asleep.

Then an arrow sizzled through the chamber’s slit window and banged off the stone wall.

We heard a rumble of hooves as Skilla’s men galloped to the compound wall in a rush, leaped from their pony’s backs to the lip of the wall, and then streamed over like a ripple of shadow. So far, remembering the lesson of yesterday, they had not let their voices make a sound.

They dropped lightly down into the courtyard like the softest of warnings, the quiet broken only by a dog that barked before it could be speared and a donkey startled and braying before it was brained by an ax. It took the barbarians a moment to explore the kitchen, storerooms, and stables, running lightly with swords drawn. Then, learning quickly enough that all of us were in the tower, they charged its door and found it barred. Now Roman heads were popping from the tower windows and shouting alarm. It was Silas who was the first to strike back, hurling a spear from a third floor window. It struck so fiercely that it staked the Hun it found like a tent peg.

“Awake!” he roared. “Grab your sword, not your sandals, you oaf! We’re under attack!” He stepped aside an instant before another arrow whistled through the window. It struck a beam and quivered.

I’d rolled out of my sleeping mat with loincloth and the Roman short sword I had killed Attila’s sentry with. Julia still had the spear with which she’d gutted my horse. Beyond that and the dagger I’d taken from Eudoxius, we fugitives were virtually unarmed: my skills as an archer were still indifferent. Now I ran for the rack of javelins, grabbed one, and peeked outside. It was barely light, and the Huns below were scuttling back and forth across the courtyard like spiders. One paused, looking up, and I threw. The man saw the motion and dodged. There was something familiar to his quickness. Skilla?

Now more Romans were throwing javelins or firing crossbow bolts, even as Hun arrows clicked and ricocheted off the stones of the tower.

“Who in Hades is attacking us?” Silas demanded.

“Those Huns you said would be scurrying home by now,” I responded.

“We have no quarrel with the Huns!”

“It appears they have a quarrel with you.”