The Scourge of God

“But they don’t harm me because it is God’s will,” Anianus went on. “And it is His will, I think, that I see this mysterious visitor. These are strange times, and strange people are afoot.

Demons, perhaps. And angels! Let’s see which he is.” Their visitor had overheard. “Too ugly to be an angel and too charming to be a demon,” he proclaimed, pushing back his hood. “Of strangeness, I will confess to.” Bertrand blinked. “Not a child but a dwarf.”

“An emissary from Aetius, bishop. My name is Zerco.” The bishop’s face admitted surprise. “Not the usual representative.”

“When I’m not representing my master I amuse him.” Zerco bowed. “I admit to being unusual but not useless. Not only am I a fool by profession, but I came through the gates with Burgundian refugees. No one notices a halfling if there are children all around.”

“I thought it was the business of a fool to be noticed.”

“In less perilous times. But there are agents of Attila in Gaul as well as agents of Aetius, and I’d prefer not to meet them. I bring you greetings from the general and a warning that Aurelia is in the path of the Hun. Aetius wants to know if the city will hold.”

“The answer to that is simple. It will hold if Aetius will come.”

“His army has temporarily retreated to Limonurr in hopes that, by offering such proximity and support, Theodoric will bring his Visigoths. If Aurelia can buy my general time while he rallies the western tribes-”

“But what are the Visigoths going to do?”

“I don’t know. An able friend has been sent to urge them to join us, but I’ve had no word of his success or failure. My assignment is to know what Aurelia is going to do.” Anianus laughed. “Everyone is waiting for everyone else! Surely there is a parable about such meekness, but I can’t remember it now. Yet what choice do all of us have? If the Huns succeed, the Church is finished before it has properly begun, and I will be roasted as a preview of eternal punishment. I know more of Attila than you might expect, halfling-enough to have taken the time to learn Hunnish!

There is no question what I intend to do: resist, and resist with all my breath. But the king has shut me out of his councils. His soldiers don’t want to submit to the yoke of a new empire, but neither do they want to die for nothing. Every man is asking if the next man is constant, and none has the courage to be the first to step forward. The Franks are feeling out the Alans, the Alans the Burgundians, the Burgundians the Saxons, the Saxons the Visigoths and the Goths, I suppose, the Romans! Who, besides Aetius, is going to stand?”

“Let it start with you and me, bishop.” He smiled. “A man of peace and a dwarf? And yet isn’t that the message, in essence, of our Church? Of taking a stand against evil? Of belief in the face of fear?”

“Just as you know something of Attila, I know something of you. People sang your praises the closer I came to Aurelia, Bishop Anianus. They will unite behind you if Sangibanus allows it. But Aetius fears that the king of the Alans has no faith in him or anything else and will sell himself to the Huns.”

Anianus shrugged. “I am bishop, not king. What can I do?”

“I will listen to Sangibanus, but I need the eyes and ears of your priests, nuns, and prelates to find out what is really going on. If there’s a plot to betray the city we need to learn of it and stop it, and convince the Alans to hold until Aetius comes.”

Anianus looked sober. “If he doesn’t, Attila will kill us all.”

“If you give up Aurelia and put Attila in a position to win this war, he will kill the entire Empire, bishop, and with it the Church. The world will go dark, and men will live like beasts for the next thousand years. I, too, know more of Attila than most men, because I’ve played the fool for him.

One thing I always remember: I’ve yet to make him laugh.” If the Huns had an emissary in Aurelia he was well hidden, but the news from the east was grave. An ever-growing flood of refugees was pouring into the city. Mediomatrica had been entered on the eve of Easter, its inhabitants slaughtered and its buildings burned. Durocortorum was destroyed when its population fled. Nasium, Tullum, Noviomagus, Andematun-num, and Augustobona went up in flames as Attila’s vast army split into arms to sustain itself. The bishop Nicacius was beheaded, and his nuns raped and speared. Priests were crucified, merchants flayed until they revealed the hiding place of their valuables, children enslaved, and livestock slaughtered. Some Aurelians were already fleeing toward the sea. Yet the news produced grim determination as well. In the depth of despair, some people were finding courage. Aurelia was bitterly divided-as Axiopolis had been, far to the east-

on whether to resist or surrender.

In the end, Zerco’s discovery depended on luck. A boy assisting a new unit of hastily organized militia had gone to the city’s weapon shops and had curiously slipped through a narrow passageway briefly revealed by a shifting of shelves.