The Scourge of God (12 page)

Here was the historic boundary of the Empire: Rome to the south, barbarians to the north. The river retained its majestic serenity. Birds followed its course in flocks so great that at times they shaded the sun, and eddies and sloughs were dotted with ducks and geese. The Huns amused themselves by plucking some of the fowl out of the sky with their arrows. I would have feared losing my shafts, but they never missed.

“How will we get across?” Maximinus asked Edeco.

“River men will take us. There should be some near.”

Indeed, we spotted a plume of smoke a short distance upriver and found a crude settlement that was a polyglot of races: old Huns, surviving Romans, refugee Germans, even a black Ethiopian cast up at this outpost, all living together in a warren of log cabins, round houses, ragged tents, and riverbank caves. Naked children played amid wandering geese and pigs. Fly-specked game and fish dried in the sun. On the shore were a dozen log canoes. The crudeness was startling compared to the proud merchant ships and triremes of the Golden Horn. How could such simple people, incapable of building a decent boat, force Nova Roma to come to them in supplication? Yet here we humbled Romans were, bartering for passage with the canoe builders.

We crossed in turns, the villagers paddling while we passengers gripped the canoe sides as if that might somehow help prevent a capsize. Once again, I saw the nervousness of the Huns about water. There was no mishap, however, and our goods stayed dry, the horses and mules swimming at the end of their reins. At length we all gained the wild northern shore and made camp, building driftwood fires.

Rusticius joined me while we sat by the river eating our supper: duck and roots purchased from the village, a pinch of aniseed giving it a little of the flavor of home. “Do you regret your decision to come?” I knew he felt responsible for inviting me, and I had adopted him as my elder brother.

“Of course not.” I swallowed the lie. “What an opportunity you’ve given me, my friend.”

“Or risk.” He looked gloomy. “These Huns are sour and humorless, aren’t they? Edeco is a bully. I hope we don’t have trouble in their camp.”

“It they wanted trouble they would have made it a hundred miles ago,” I reassured him with more confidence than I truly felt. “We have Rome’s protection, don’t we?”

“Which seems an ocean away, now that we’ve crossed that river.” He shook his head. “Don’t let my foreboding affect you, Jonas. You’re young and more likable than any of us. You’ve great things ahead of you. I have less confidence in my own luck.”

“You were brave to stand up to Edeco at the ruined villa.” 

“Or foolish. He expects submission. I don’t think he’s done with me yet.”

Messengers found us with word that Attila was at his camp many days away, so on we went. We found the Tisza River, a broad and gray-green river that is a tributary of the Danube, and followed it northward into Hunuguri. Its banks were lined with timber, like its sister river, and again no ships were available to provide easy passage. Instead, we paralleled it on a great open plain the likes of which I had never seen. While before the sky was hemmed with mountains, now it was a vast bowl that bent to distant horizons. Grass had become an ocean, and animals moved across it in browsing herds. Hawks wheeled high above, while butterflies danced ahead of the legs of our horses.

Sometimes we saw distant curtains of smoke, and Onegesh told us the barbarians kept the flat landscape open by setting fires. Their animals also kept it mowed. Vast collections of horses and cattle roamed seemingly at will, yet the warriors were able to tell at a glance which tribe a herd belonged to: here Gepid, there Goth, now Scuri. Stucco and tile Roman architecture had given way to villages of wattle-and-daub huts or timber cabins. Their smoke holes carried new and foreign smells.

Maximinus, who had studied the maps and reports of travelers, said we were in a vast basin between two mountain ranges, Alps to the west and the Carpathians to the east. “Hunuguri has become their promised land,” he told us. “You’d think that having conquered a place better than their homeland they would be content, but instead they have multiplied and become fractious. There’s not enough grass to hold them all, so they raid.”

For the most part our diplomatic party kept to itself, making better progress by skirting the villages. But on the fifth day after we had left the Danube some freakish weather gave us a taste of Hun hospitality and made me reassess this barbarian people yet again.

The day had been muggy, the sky to the west heavy and yellow. When we stopped for the night at the shore of a large lake, the sun set in murk so thick that the orb turned brown. Vast clouds began to ominously form, their tops as broad and flat as anvils. Lightning flickered in their black bases.

For the first time, I saw the Huns uneasy. If men couldn’t scare them, thunder might. “Witch weather,” Edeco muttered. Onegesh surprised me by quickly crossing himself. Was the traitorous Roman still a Christian? The grumble of the storm began to walk across the lake and the water turned gray and troubled, waves breaking and leaving a scud of foam.

“Come in our tents,” Maximinus offered.

Edeco shook his head, eyes darting. “We will stay with our horses.”

“Your animals will be fine.”

“I don’t like canvas holes.”

Dark tentacles of rain were sweeping across the lake, so we left the Huns to themselves. “They don’t have the sense of dogs sometimes,” Rusticius said. And, indeed, we’d no sooner huddled inside than the fabric suddenly began a furious rattle and the wind rose to a shriek. A downpour began, the tent twitching under its pounding.

“Thank the Lord we came with shelter,” Maximinus said, eyeing the hammered canvas uneasily. The wind rose, the fabric rattling. Our poles leaned from the strain.

“There’s nothing on this shoreline to block the wind,” Bigilas pointed out unnecessarily, and then the air cracked with thunder, the boom echoing in our ears. The air smelled like metal.

“It will soon be over,” Rusticius hoped.

No sooner had he said it than a higher gust struck like a wall and our shelter collapsed, pegs and ropes flying wildly and poles snapping in two. We were trapped, just as Edeco had feared, and the enclosing folds beat on us like flails. We crawled for escape. “Here’s the flap!” Maximinus called. We struggled out into a night that was now completely black and howling.

“Where are the Huns?” The senator gasped against the suck of wind.

“They have abandoned us!” Bigilas cried. Indeed, there was no sign of them, the horses, or the mules.

“What do we do now?” I shouted above the sting of rain. Waves crashed on the lakeshore like ocean surf, and spray whipped off their tops.

“There was a village two miles back,” Rusticius remembered.

“Tell the slaves to secure our tents and baggage,” Maximinus shouted. “We’ll seek shelter in the town.”

We struggled back along the lakeshore, clinging to each other, and at length stumbled upon the cluster of cabins. We called for help in Hunnish until the portal of the largest house opened.

Stumbling inside, blinking in dim firelight, we saw our rescuer was a middle-aged Hun woman, slight, wizened, and with sad but luminous eyes.

“Ah, the Romans,” she said in Hunnish. “I saw you passing and thought I might see you again when I noticed the storm. Edeco tries to avoid me, but now he can’t.”

“We’ve lost him,” Bigilas said.

“Or they lost you. They will come here looking.”

“A woman alone?” Maximinus whispered to me in Latin. “He seeks to know your husband,” I interpreted to her rather loosely.

“My husband is dead. I, Anika, head the village now. Come, let’s light more lamps and build up the fire. Sit, have some meat,
kumiss,
and
kamon
.”

Chilled, hungry, and thirsty, I gulped the latter. It was a dark and foamy liquid that is made, she explained, from barley. While sour compared to sweet wine, it was rich and warming, and heady enough that I soon saw the hut through a pleasant haze. The wood joinery was quite fine, I decided blearily, and the proportions pleasing: There was more craftsmanship in barbarian dwellings than I expected. The fire pit glowed with hot coals and the storm was reassuringly muffled, hissing against the thatch. Rushes covered the dirt floor, woven blankets hung on the walls, and crude stools gave us places to sit. What a refuge this was, after so many days in camp! Anika ordered her slaves to fetch help, and soon men and women were entering to bring stew, bread, berries, and fish. I drifted in a happy haze. After a time the wind began to die. Eventually Edeco, Onegesh, and Skilla appeared from the storm, dripping wet but apparently well satisfied that they had either safeguarded the horses or outmaneuvered their demons and witches.

“You were not going to say hello, Edeco?” Anika challenged.

“You know the animals needed pasture, Anika.” Clearly they had some awkward history. He turned to us. “I told you those tents were no good. Learn to make a yurt.”

“Which I have not seen
you
erect,” Anika chided him.

He ignored her. “If the horses had stampeded, we would have a long walk to catch them,” he explained unnecessarily, perhaps embarrassed that we had been separated by the storm. He sat, looking away.

Maximinus, curious, leaned to him and I translated. “She has authority like a man.”

“She has the respect accorded her dead husband,” Edeco muttered.

“And who was her husband?”

“Bleda.”

Maximinus started at this news.

I had not heard this name.

“Bleda was Attila’s brother,” Bigilas explained self-importantly. “For a time they ruled together, until Attila killed him. This must be one of his widows.”

I was intrigued. “He murdered his own brother?”

“It was necessary,” Edeco muttered.

“She’s allowed to live?”

“She’s kin and no threat. Attila honors her with this village. If he did not, the blood feud would continue. This village is
konoss
.”

Again, a word I was unfamiliar with. “What is
konoss?”
“It is payment for a blood debt. A man caught stealing cattle can be killed, or he or his relatives can give
konoss
by paying the man stolen from. Goods can be paid for a life. A life can be traded for another’s. Attila or Bleda had to die— everyone knew that—because they could no longer rule together. So Attila murdered Bleda and paid
konoss
to his wives.”

I looked around. This hut seemed meager payment for the life of a husband, a king.

“When you are as powerful as Attila,” Bigilas said slyly, “you can decide how generous your
konoss
is going to be.”

“When you are a helpless woman,” Anika said, who had clearly overheard our whispering, “you must decide how little you will accept to keep the peace.” There was an edge of bitterness, but then she shrugged. “Yet I offer the hospitality of the steppes to any travelers. Our women will still warm you to sleep.”

What did this mean? As if in answer, soft laughter and the light shuffling of feet caused us to turn. A dozen pretty females slipped into the room, heads cloaked against the now-drizzling rain, eyes bright, their forms draped in intricately embroidered dresses and their feet shod in boots of soft deer leather, soaked from the wet grass. They giggled as they reviewed us shyly, golden girdles cinching their slim waists and lace curving across the hillocks of their breasts. I found myself embarrassingly aroused. It had been weeks since I’d seen young women, and the long abstinence added to my enchantment.

“What in Hades is this?” Maximinus asked, looking more frightened than intrigued.

“Not Hades, senator, but Heaven,” Bigilas replied with relish. “It’s the custom of the Huns and the other nomads to offer women in hospitality.”

“Offer? You mean for sex?”

“It is the pagan way.”

Edeco, not embarrassed enough by Anika’s history to turn down this opportunity, had already grabbed a plump and giggling girl and was dragging her away. Skilla had chosen a yellow-haired beauty, no doubt the product of capture and slavery. Onegesh was pointing to a redhead. I myself was captivated by a maiden with hair as black as raven’s wings and fingers that sparkled with rings. I was both excited and nervous. My father had initiated me in the ways of love with courtesans in Constantinople, of course, but as a bachelor in an outwardly pious Christian city, my opportunities for lovemaking had been limited. What would it be like to lie with a girl of another culture?

“Certainly
not
,” Maximinus announced. He turned to Anika. “Tell her thank you very much, but we are Christians, not pagans, and this is not our custom.”

“But, senator,” Bigilas pleaded. “It is
their
custom.”

“We will make a better impression on Attila by displaying the stoic dignity of our Roman ancestors, not copying barbarians. Don’t you think so, Jonas?”

I swallowed. “We don’t want to hurt their feelings.”

“Tell her that in our world we have one wife, not many, and that we revere our women, not share them,” Maximinus insisted. “They are lovely girls, just lovely, but I for one will be more comfortable sleeping alone.”

“For those of us who are not the diplomat . . .” Rusticius groaned.

“Will benefit from my example,” the senator said.

Our Hun escort emerged in the glistening morning looking much more satisfied than we were, and their women tittered as they served us breakfast. Then we resumed our journey. Attila was said to be only two days away.

Again, Skilla was curious, riding next to me. “You did not take a woman?”

I sighed. “Maximinus told us not to.”

“He does not like women?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did he tell you not to?”

“In our world a man marries a single wife and is faithful to her.”

“You are married?”

“No. The woman I was interested in . . . rejected me.” 

“She scratches?”

“Something like that.”

“The ones not chosen were very hurt, you know.”

My head ached from too much
kamon.
“Skilla, they were lovely. I was simply following orders.”