The Scourge of God

“You dare to tell me what I said?” His face, swarthy and slanted and puckered with those scars, darkened.

Publius blanched. “No, no, but Ilana must stay with her father. Surely you understand that.” His face had a sick sheen and his hands were trembling. “She’s my only daughter.” Torches were hurled onto the barricades blocking the church doors and held against the eaves. The wood under the tile, dry and cracked, gulped the flames with greed. They ran in rippling waves toward the peak, and the shouts inside began to turn to screams.

“No. She is pretty.”

“For God’s sake . . .”

Ilana touched his sleeve in warning, realizing what must happen. “Father, it’s all right.”

“It is not all right, and I’m not about to abandon you to these savages. Are you devils?” he suddenly cried. “Why are you frying people who have turned to God?” Edeco was irritated at the man’s intransigence. “Give her to me, Roman.”

“No! No. I mean . . . please . . .” He held up his hand in supplication.

Edeco’s sword was out of its scabbard in an instant and whickered to take the hand off. The severed palm flew, bounced, and then skittered against the base of a fountain, its fingers still twitching. It happened too quickly to even elicit a scream. Publius staggered, more shocked than pained, uncertain how to bring things back under control. He looked at his own severed wrist in wonder. Then an arrow hit his breast. And another and another-a score of them thunk-ing into his torso and limbs while he stared in disbelief-

and the mounted warriors laughed, drawing and firing almost faster than the eye could see. He sat down heavily, as spiny as an urchin.

“Kill them all,” Edeco ordered.

“Not the girl,” a young Hun said. He leaned to scoop her up and throw her shrieking across the front of his saddle.

“Let me go to my father!”

He bound her hands. “Do you want to end like them?” he asked in Hunnish.

The rest of Simon’s party were shot down as they made for the corners of the forum. Any wounded were chopped as they begged. The conflagration at the church had become so fierce that its roaring finally drowned out the screams of the dying inside, and their souls seemed to waft upward with the heat, the illumination joining an eastern sky that was now lightening. As lines of stunned captives began to appear from other parts of the city, looped with line like a train of donkeys, the church’s walls caved in.

Ilana was sobbing, so choked with sorrow that she could scarcely breathe, her body splayed across the horse’s shoulders and the Hun’s muscled thighs, her hair hanging down in a curtain, exposing the nape of her neck. So why wouldn’t he kill her, too? The nightmare seemed to have no end, and her father’s treachery had been useless. Everything of her old life had been burnt and yet she, cruelly, was still alive.

“Stop crying,” the young Hun ordered in words she could not understand. “I have saved you.” She envied the dead.

Edeco led them out of the city he had destroyed, its memories a column of smoke. The besieged always opened the gates in the end, he knew. Someone always hoped, vainly and against all history and reason, that there was a chance he might be spared if he treated with an invader. The Huns counted on it. He turned to the lieutenant who carried the trussed Ilana, a warrior named Skilla. “Attila would have enjoyed this night, nephew.”

“As I’ll enjoy the coming one.” His right hand was on the captive’s waist, pinning her as she squirmed. Her thrashings made Skilla want to take her right there. What a fetching rump she had.

“No.” His uncle shook his head. “That one is too fine. We carry her back to Attila, for judgment to be made there.”

“But I like her.”

“She is Attila’s to assign. Yours to ask for.” The younger man sighed and looked back. He had ridden before he had walked; fought since he was a toddler; hunted, pursued, and killed. Still, this was his first sacking, and he wasn’t used to the slaughter. “The ones in the church . . .”

“Would make pups to rebuild the walls.” Edeco sniffed the smoke, roiling to blot out the rising sun. “This is a good thing, Skilla. Already the land breathes free.”

III

PLOTTING AN ASSASSINATION

CONSTANTINOPLE, A.D. 450

It was easier to buy a Hun than kill him, and easiest to buy those Huns who knew there are things worth a coin.