The Scourge of God Read online

  “Ilana, run for the river!”

  It was Jonas.

  The Hun snarled, bucked, and finally somersaulted backward. Jonas went over with him, taken by surprise, and lay stunned. The Hun twisted like a wolverine and reached for the Roman’s throat. “Haven’t they killed you yet?” Now he was on top, pressing down; but suddenly a fist shot upward and Skilla’s head snapped back, his grip coming free. Jonas heaved, and the two were separated once again.

  “Go to the river!” he gasped to her again.

  If she ran for the river she still had a chance to escape. The dwarf could help them find the way, and Jonas could keep Skilla pinned. And yet as the two men struggled, she couldn’t run as desperation dictated. Did she feel more for the Roman than she’d admitted? “I won’t leave you!” She looked around for a rock or stick.

  The Hun, spitting blood from a cut lip, put out his arms to encircle like a bear and charged. Jonas crouched, his arms cocked, and now he struck again—a left, a right, and then a hard jab left—as Skilla was brought up short, standing there stupidly as Jonas hammered at him. Finally the Hun staggered back out of range, confused. Then he stubbornly stumbled forward again. Jonas swung, there was a heavy thud, and Skilla went down.

  The Roman stepped back, wary. Ilana had to remember to breathe. She realized that the Hun had no knowledge of boxing, the art that all Roman boys were taught.

  Skilla rolled, got to his knees with his back to them, and staggered up, the fermented mare’s milk and the drumbeat of punches making him unsteady. From his battered mouth he managed a feeble whistle. “Drilca!” The Hun pony loomed into sight again, nervously dancing.

  Skilla fell against the saddle, seemingly spent, and then he whirled, drawing the sword sheathed there. He looked murderous. “I’m sick of your tricks, Roman.”

  Ilana found a pole from a meat-drying rack and wrenched it free, running back. Jonas had bent and was circling, fists cocked, eyeing the blade to elude it. “Ilana, don’t make me waste this. Run, and get away.”

  “No,” she whispered, crouching with the stave, afraid of the sword and yet determined. “If he kills you, he kills me, too.”

  But then came a new voice, as deep as thunder, and it boomed above all other sounds. “Stop, all of you!”

  It was Edeco. Skilla jumped like a small boy caught stealing figs and straightened, his sword lowered. Light flared as torches came near, revealing the blood on the warrior’s battered face. His uncle came up with a crowd of the curious, and Ilana was suddenly aware of her half nakedness. She dropped the stave and pulled up her dress to cover her breasts.

  “Damnation, Skilla. What are you doing back without reporting to me?”

  The Hun pointed. “He attacked me,” he said truculently.

  “He was attacking Ilana,” Jonas responded.

  “Is this true?” Edeco asked.

  Emboldened, she let her bodice fall open. “He ripped my clothes.” Some of the Huns gaped, others laughed. Everyone jostled closer—men, women, children, and dogs drawn by the tableau. She could smell their acrid breath.

  “You’d kill the Roman when he’s unarmed?” Edeco asked with contempt.

  Skilla spat blood. “He broke the law by attacking me, and he fights unfairly, like a monkey. Any other slave would be dead by now. And what is he doing out here in the dark? Why isn’t he at his duties?”

  “What were you doing, trying to rape a woman of your uncle’s household?” Jonas challenged.

  “It wasn’t rape! It was . . .”

  Edeco strode forward and with a contemptuous kick knocked the lowered sword aside. It rang as it skipped away into the grass. “We will let Attila say what it was.” The warlord sniffed in disgust. “I can smell the kumiss on you, nephew. Couldn’t you wait until you got to the strava?”

  “I did wait, I’d just gotten to camp, and she was waiting—”

  “That’s a lie,” she hissed.

  “Silence! We go to Attila!”

  But the Hun was already there like a nightmare, pushing gruffly through the crowd, the bones of Rusticius discarded but his demon horns still mounted on his head. Like a judging god, he pushed to take in the scene in an instant. There was a long silence while he looked from one to the other.

  Then Attila spoke. “Two men, one woman. This has never happened before in the history of the world.”

  The crowd roared, and Skilla’s face burned with humiliation. He looked at Jonas with hatred. “This woman is by rights mine, from capture at Axiopolis,” he protested. “All know that. But she torments me with her haughtiness, and looks to this Roman for protection—”

  “It looks to me as if she needed it, and that he protected her well.”

  The crowd roared with laughter again.

  Now Skilla was silent, knowing anything he said would make him look even more foolish. His face was swelling.

  “This is a quarrel sent by the gods to make our strava more interesting!” the king called to the crowd. “The solution is simple. She needs one man, not two. Tomorrow these two will meet in mortal combat, and the survivor can have the girl.” Attila glanced at Edeco, and his warlord nodded once. Both knew what the outcome would be.

  So did Ilana. Jonas was a dead man, and she was doomed.

  XIV

  THE DUEL

  Diana shuddered slightly under my unaccustomed weight, and I felt encased and clumsy. You’ll never be the soldier your brother is, my father had told me, and what had it mattered in Constantinople? I had prided myself on being a man of the mind, not arms, suited to higher callings. But now I wished I had taken cavalry training. Skilla could ride circles around me while I awkwardly charged in my heavy equipment, my big oval shield banging Diana’s flank and my heavy spear already tiring my arm. The nose guard and cheek plates of my peaked helmet blocked my peripheral vision. The heavy chain mail was hot, even though the day was cool, and the sword and dagger on my belt felt clumsy against thigh and hip. The only blessing was that the equipment cut my view of the thousands of half-drunken and hungover Huns who’d assembled in a field near the camp to watch what they expected would be quick butchery. The betting was on how quickly I would die.

  Skilla’s horse Drilca was prancing, excited by the crowd; and the Hun looked as unencumbered as I was swaddled.

  His light cuirass of hoof bone scales rippled and clacked like the grotesque skeleton Attila had worn the night before, and his legs and head wore no armor at all. He was armed only with his bow, twenty arrows, and his sword. His face was bruised from my blows, which gave me some small satisfaction, but he was grinning past the evidence of his battering, already anticipating the death of his enemy and his marriage to the proud Roman girl. Killing me would erase all humiliation. Ilana stood in a cluster of other slaves by Suecca, wrapped in a cloak that made her shapeless. Her eyes were red and she avoided my gaze, looking guilty.

  So much for confidence, I thought. Too bad I can’t bet against myself.

  I also caught sight of Zerco, sitting comically astride a tall woman’s shoulders. His bearer was not unattractive, and looked both strong and kind, the steady companion many men need but seldom wish for or get. That must be his wife, Julia.

  “You should not have interfered, Roman!” Skilla called. “Now you will be dead!”

  I ignored the taunt.

  “Look at him, armored like a snail,” someone from the crowd observed.

  “And as slow.”

  “And as hard to get at,” a third cautioned.

  There were other shouts: about my ancestry, my manhood, my clumsiness, and my stupidity. Strangely, I began to draw strength from them. I hadn’t slept since fighting for Ilana, knowing the coming dawn could be my last. My mind had become a whirlwind of regrets and misgivings, and I spent these last hours cursing myself for bad luck. Every time I’d tried to think of the actual combat my brain seemed to shy away from any intelligent planning or useful tactics, skittering away into memories of my race with Skilla, my kiss with Ilana, or that embar
rassing but intoxicating glimpse of her bare breasts. I hadn’t rested, hadn’t concentrated, and hadn’t prepared. But now I realized that if I were not simply to be a target as simple as those melons I’d watched the Huns practice on, I must use my head or lose it.

  I watched dourly as Skilla loped along the line of cheering barbarians, waving his fist in the air and crying in a high yip-yip-yip like an irritating dog. The Hun would shoot me and my horse from a hundred paces, shaft after shaft plunking in until I resembled a field of spiky flowers. It was not so much a fight as an execution.

  “Are you ready?” Edeco demanded.

  Was I going to sit as target for slaughter? What advantage could I find? Fight your battle, not theirs, Zerco had said. Yet what was my battle? “Wait,” I said, trying to think. At least, I decided, I could make myself a smaller target. I let the butt of my spear strike the earth and used it as a pole to lever myself off Diana’s saddle, landing heavily.

  “Look, he’s backing out!” the Huns called. “The Roman is a coward! Skilla gets the woman!”

  Hefting my shield and squaring my shoulders, I addressed Edeco. “I will fight on foot.”

  He looked surprised. “A man without a horse is a man without legs.”

  “Not in my country.”

  “But you’re in ours.”

  I ignored that. Striding fast to hide my tremors, I made for the center of the makeshift arena, a circle two hundred paces across formed by the wall of thousands of barbarian bodies. There could be no escape.

  “Yes, he’s a coward!” the Huns called to one another. “Look at him stand still for execution!”

  Skilla had pulled up short and was looking at me in bewilderment. Did I hope simply to spare my fat mare from arrows? Diana was in no danger. Skilla’s intent, he had promised, was to slay me as quickly as possible and claim the mare for his own.

  I stopped at what appeared to be the exact center of the field. Skilla, you will have to come to me. I looked back. Attila was seated on a hastily constructed platform, Ilana and the other women pressed against its base. The great iron sword of Mars, pitted and black, was across the tyrant’s knees. A man in Greek dress was at his shoulder, whispering commentary. This, I assumed, was the Eudoxius whose return had initiated the strava. Why was he so important? The kagan pointed his arm straight up at the sky and then brought it down. Begin! A roar went up from the assembled crowd, where skins of drink were being passed freely.

  I watched as Skilla on Drilca made another long loping circuit of the ring, cheers rising as he passed. He seemed to hesitate to attack, as if wondering what I intended to do. I simply followed him by turning in a slow circle, my mail shirt hanging to my knees, my oval shield covering all but my feet and head, my eyes hidden by the shadow of my helmet. My sword was sheathed and my spear remained planted on the ground. I stood like a sentry, not crouched like a warrior, but still well covered. Finally the Hun decided it was time to finish things. He reached and, in a practiced motion almost too quick and smooth to be followed, plucked an arrow from his quiver, drew, and shot. He could not miss.

  Unlike a battle, however, where a sky full of bolts and arrows make evasion impossible, I had the advantage of being able to follow a single shaft. I jerked to my left and the arrow passed harmlessly over my right shoulder, flying on toward the crowd. The spectators there surged backward with a yell, some toppling each other, and the missile landed harmlessly at their fringe, plowing into the dirt. The rest of the audience laughed at them.

  “One,” I breathed.

  Skilla, annoyed at my evasion, shot again from the ring’s periphery, and again I had time to dodge and duck, the arrow making a sucking sound in the wind as it buzzed by my ear. I cursed myself for the imagination that allowed me to picture it striking home.

  “Two.” My own voice was firmer now to my ears. I spat and swallowed.

  Now a new chorus of yells and catcalls came up from the crowd, which was beginning to back up in order to make a larger arena in respect for the wayward arrows. “The target is the Roman, not us!” Others wondered aloud if my punches had blinded him.

  Angry at this mockery, Skilla kicked Drilca into a gallop, still making a broad orbit around me. This time his action was almost a blur. With a speed that seemed almost superhuman but which was practiced until it was second nature to the Huns, Skilla launched a succession of arrows too quickly for me to evade them singly, while riding the circuit at full tilt. They came at me in a fan. Now I crouched beneath my shield and then at the last moment fell into a ball. Three arrows flew over me entirely and three struck my shield at an oblique angle, plowing into it but not penetrating. No sooner had the volley stopped than I bounced up, reached around, and snapped in half the shafts that had stuck in my shield.

  “Eight.”

  Skilla had settled his horse into a lope again, seemingly as baffled by this evasion as he had been by my boxing. He made for where one of his arrows was jutting from the ground and leaned to scoop it up, but a Hun ran forward, yanked it out, and broke it in two. “You only get one quiver!” he shouted.

  Sensing the sport, the crowd pulled up and shattered the other spent arrows as well. “A quiver only! Strike home or be damned, Skilla!” Some of the sentiment was beginning to swing to me, I realized. “You couldn’t hit your mother’s ass!”

  Zerco the dwarf had bounded down from his wife and was capering in front of the crowd, crowing excitedly. “The Roman is invisible!” he cackled. “The Hun is blind!”

  Scowling, Skilla galloped by and almost ran the dwarf down. At the last moment Zerco scampered back into the safety of the crowd, hooting and turning a somersault as he tumbled to safety.

  So the Hun fired again, singly this time, and then again in almost absentminded fashion, giving me time to dodge the arrows.

  “Ten.”

  Yet even as I evaded the tenth shaft, Skilla abruptly changed tactics and kicked his pony straight at me. This time he drew and held, leaning toward me as Drilca neared, the hoofbeats kicking up a blur of clods, clearly intending to shoot from a distance of a pace or two and pinion me once and for all. There would be no time to dodge. Yet as he drew near I stopped pivoting around my planted spear and hefted it, and just before I judged he’d shoot I threw as hard as I could. The spear sailed. Now Skilla was forced to jerk the reins, his horse cutting away; and while the spear missed, so did his arrow, which this time went so high that it soared over the heads of the Huns. A great shout went up, both of excitement and derision, at this near miss by both opponents. Skilla wheeled his horse around, and I ran to retrieve my weapon.

  The exchange was repeated, with no different result. Neither of us had yet drawn blood.

  “Twelve,” I counted, panting now. Sweat stung my eyes.

  Edeco stepped out from the mass and grabbed Drilca’s bridle as it trotted by. “Are you trying to cool him with the wind from your arrows?” he demanded. “This is not a game, it’s your reputation. Use your head, boy.”

  Skilla yanked away. “I will give you his, uncle.”

  Now he sped by again, but this time at a distance that was too far for me to heave my spear. Again he loosed three arrows in quick succession so that no matter which way I dodged, I could not escape. This time two arrows thudded home on my shield with enough force to pierce it. One broke through but was spent enough that it merely punched against my mail shirt, not penetrating it. The armor saved my heart. The other arrow struck, however, where my left arm held the shield straps, and pierced my forearm. I was pegged to my protection. The shock was enough to make me stop for what was almost a fatal moment, and another arrow flew singing toward my eye. I ducked just in time so that its head clanged and skipped across my helmet, jarring me with a blow to the head. I staggered.

  “Sixteen.” I winced, my ears ringing. A rivulet of blood dripped from my shield.

  The crowd noise fell briefly to a disconcerted murmur. Skilla had clearly struck his target, but my Roman shield and armor was stronger than they had expected
. What witchery was this? As derisive as they were of defeated opponents, any prowess or good equipment earned their respect.

  Still the pony cantered around, the crowd screaming encouragement and abuse at both of us now. Skilla reached around and then hesitated.

  He had only four arrows left. How to end this frustration?

  With a howl he directed Drilca straight at me again in a thunderous charge, and as I raised my spear he suddenly veered sharply to the left. My throw sailed wide, and Skilla cut back to come at my undefended side before I could turn, his bow drawn. This time I simply fell in panic, and the arrow sizzled by my ear just before the Hun pony ran over me. Hooves slammed down on my shield, cracking it, and one hoof struck my side and kicked me along the ground in a spinning skid. It was as if the world had been robbed of air. I felt disoriented and in agonizing pain, a rib cracked. The horse danced, and then it was beyond me, neighing in confusion while Skilla hauled to turn its head around. The sound of the crowd was like a roaring ocean, buffeting both of us with rising emotion.

  I had to fight back, but how?

  Skilla rode toward me even as I crawled to get my spear. I grabbed it and then twisted around, using my shield like a rock to hide beneath in a desperate attempt to defend myself, as Skilla shot downward again from murderous range. The powerful bow sent the arrow through the shield like paper. Yet the pony was skittering away from my wavering spearhead, and so this shaft missed my chest and plowed through my shoulder instead, driving down with such force that it went completely through and stuck me to the ground. I was more helpless than ever. Skilla drew again, Drilca sidestepping closer. He couldn’t miss. This would finish it. I glanced sideways along the ground. Ilana had emerged from the crowd at Attila’s dais and had run a few steps into the field, her hand at her mouth.

  I would not let him have her.

  With an awkward heave I desperately lurched my spear upward and it stuck in the pony’s belly. The horse screamed and bucked and Skilla’s next to last arrow went at an awkward angle that merely stuck in my shield. Drilca trotted fearfully away, the lance dragging from his underside, blood and piss draining as it weaved. The pony’s head shook.