The Scourge of God

They swept across at midnight, arrows plucking away the engineers, and so crossed the Rhine as if the great barrier of the river hardly existed. Attila himself crossed two days later, watching with interest the bodies from upstream floating by on the current, bloated and bearing Hun arrows. His soldiers were doing their work. Aetius had established his own army at Argentorate, a hundred miles to the south, and the Hun plan was to outflank him through the forested high-lands of northeastern Gaul and break out east of Luttia. The cavalry could then sweep southward over the fertile flat-lands, take the strategic crossroads of Aurelia, and hold the strategic center of the West.

Attila rode toward horizons of smoke, with more smoke behind-a ring of smoke that marked the devastation of his armies in all directions. No cohesive resistance had formed.

The Franks had retreated, and the other tribes were hesitat-ing. If the Huns struck hard enough and quickly enough, they would annihilate Aetius before he could gather a credible force. Cities were emptied, armories were captured, aqueducts were deliberately broken, and granaries were looted. Crows were so bloated from feasting on the dead that they staggered on Roman roads like drunken men.

Thousands of opportunists, traitors, and the fearful were joining Attila’s invasion: craven chieftains, escaped slaves, greedy mercenaries. Some were fleeing a bad marriage, broken heart, or debt. There were not as many as the Hun king had hoped, but those who did enlist joined the slaughter with a kind of hysteria. All rules had ended. Hell had triumphed over Heaven. Anarchy and pillage provided opportunities to settle old scores, act on resentment against the rich, or take by force a maiden who had spurned earnest advances. As each law was broken, the next seemed easier to shatter. The indiscipline carried into the Hun army itself, where quarrels quickly turned murderous. The warlords had to separate feuding soldiers like snarling dogs, and maintained some semblance of order only by whip, chain, and execution. So huge was the army, and so far-flung were its wings and columns, that it was barely controllable.

Attila knew he was riding a whirlwind, but he was the god of storms.

It was at a clearing in a wood in Gaul that he encountered the Roman holy man who would give him a different title. A patrol of Huns had roped a Christian hermit who was apparently so stupid that he’d been making a pilgrimage right into the path of Attila’s army. The cavalry laughed as they trotted the pilgrim first one way and then another, jerking on the lines. The hermit was screaming, perhaps trying to egg on his own martyrdom. “Enjoy your triumph because your days are numbered, Satan’s spawn!” the old man cried in Hunnish as he staggered. “Prophecy foretells your doom!” This interested Attila, who believed in destiny and had bones thrown and entrails read. After killing a few prognosti-cators in blinding rages, his prophets had learned to tell him what he wanted to hear: so much so, that they bored him. Now this hermit had a different view. So he ordered the Hun soldiers to back up their horses until the ropes were taut and the man was trapped in place. “You speak our tongue, old man.”

“God gives me the gift to warn the damned.” He was ragged, filthy, and barefoot.

“What prophecy?”

“That your own sword will smite you! That the darkest night heralds dawn!”

Some warlords murmured uneasily at this mention of a sword, and Attila scowled. “We are the People of the Dawn, hermit.”

The man looked at Attila quizzically, as if scarcely able to believe such nonsense. “No. You come in dust and leave in smoke, and blot out the sun. You are night creatures, sprung from the earth.”

“We are restoring the earth. We don’t cut it. We don’t chop it.”

“But you feed off men who do, old warrior! What nonsense Huns spout! If Attila was here, he’d laugh at your foolishness!”

The Huns did laugh, enjoying this little joke.

“And where do you think Attila is, old man?” the king asked mildly.

“How should I know? Sleeping with his thousand wives, I suspect, or tormenting a holy pilgrim instead of daring to face the great Flavius Aetius. Aye, easier to pick on the pious than fight an armed foe!”

Attila’s face lost its amusement. “I will face Aetius soon enough.”

The hermit squinted at the rider more closely. “You’re Attila? You?”

“I am.”

“You wear no riches.”

“I need none.”

“You bear no sign of rank.”

“All men but you know who I am.” The holy man nodded. “I wear none, either. God Almighty knows who I am.”

“And who are you?”

“His messenger.”

Attila laughed. “Trussed and helpless? What kind of God is that?”

“What god do you have, barbarian?”

“Attila the Hun believes in himself.” His captive pointed to the haze of smoke. “You ordered that?”

“I order the world.”

“The innocents you have slaughtered! The babes you have made orphans!”

“I make no apology for war. I’m here to rescue the emperor’s sister.”