The Scourge of God

To my mother, and in memory of my father.

They gave me a children’s book recounting the Battle of Châlons and sparked a lifelong curiosity.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

ROMANS AND FRIENDS

Jonas Alabanda: A young Roman envoy and scribe Ilana: A captive Roman maiden

Zerco: A dwarf jester who befriends Jonas Julia: Zerco’s wife

Aetius: A Roman general

Valentinian III: Emperor of the Western Roman Empire

Galla Placidia: Valentinian’s mother Honoria: Valentinian’s sister

Hyacinth: Honoria’s eunuch

Theodosius II: Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire

Chrysaphius: His eunuch minister

Maximinus: Ambassador to Attila

Bigilas: A translator and conspirator Rusticius: A translator

Anianus: Bishop and (when it suits him) hermit THE HUNS

Attila: King of the Huns

Skilla: A Hun warrior who loves Ilana Edeco: Uncle of Skilla and warlord of Attila Suecca: Edeco’s wife

Eudoxius: A Greek doctor who is an envoy of Attila

Hereka: Attila’s first wife

Ellac, Danziq, and Ernak: Attila’s sons Onegesh: A Roman-born lieutenant of Attila THE GERMANS

Guernna: A captive like Ilana

Theodoric: King of the Visigoths

Berta: Theodoric’s daughter

Gaiseric: King of the Vandals

Sangibanus: King of the Alans

Anthus: King of the Franks

Map

INTRODUCTION

Three hundred and seventy-six years after the birth of Our Savior, the world was still one. Our Roman Empire endured as it had endured for a thousand years, extending from the cold moors of Britannia to the blistering sands of Arabia, and from the headwaters of the Euphrates River to the Atlantic surf of North Africa. Rome’s boundaries had been tested countless times by Celt and German, Persian and Scythian. Yet with blood and iron, guile and gold, all invaders had been turned back. It had always been so, and in 376 it seemed it must always be so.

How I wish I had lived in such security!

But I, Jonas Alabanda—historian, diplomat, and reluctant soldier—can only imagine the old Empire’s venerable stability the way a sailor’s audience imagines a faraway and misty shore. My fate has been to exist in harder times, meeting the great and living more desperately because of it. This book is my story and those I had the fortune and misfortune to observe, but its roots are older. In that year 376, more than half a century before I was born, came the first rumor of the storm that forever changed everything.

In that year, historians recount, came the first rumor of the Huns.

Understand that I am by origin an Easterner, fluent in Greek, conversant with philosophy, and used to the dazzling sun. My home is Constantinople, the city that Constantine the Great founded on the Bosporus in order to ease the administration of our Empire by creating a second capital. At that junction of Europe and Asia, where the Black Sea and Mediterranean join, rose Nova Roma, the strategic site of ancient Byzantium. This division gave Rome two emperors, two Senates, and two cultures: the Latin West and Greek East. But Rome’s armies still marched in support of both halves and the Empire’s laws were coordinated and unified.

The Mediterranean remained a Roman lake; and Roman architecture, coinage, forums, fortresses, and churches could be found from the Nile to the Thames. Christianity eclipsed all other religions, and Latin all other tongues. The world had never before known such a long period of relative peace, stability, and unity.

It never would again.

The Danube is Europe’s greatest river, rising at the foot of the Alps and running eastward nearly eighteen hundred miles before emptying into the Black Sea. In 376 its length marked much of the Empire’s northern border. That summer, Roman garrisons at posts along the river began to hear reports of war, upheaval, and migration among the barbarian nations. Some new terror unlike any the world had ever seen was putting entire peoples to flight, stories went, each tribe colliding with the one to its west. Fugitives described an ugly, swarthy, stinking people who wore animal skins until they rotted off their backs, who were immune to hunger and thirst but drank the blood of their horses, and who ate raw meat tenderized beneath their saddles. These new invaders arrived as silently as the wind, killed with powerful bows from an unprecedented distance, massacred with swords any who still resisted, and then galloped away before cohesive retaliation could form. They disdained proper shelter, burning all they encountered and living much of the time under the sky. Their cities consisted of felt tents, their highways the trackless steppes. They rolled across the grasslands in sturdy wagons heaped with booty and trailed by slaves, and their tongue was harsh and guttural.

They called themselves the Huns.

Surely this news was exaggerated, our sentries assured each other. Surely fact had become confused by rumor.

Rome had long experience with barbarians and knew that, while individually courageous, such warriors were poor tacticians and worse strategists. Fearsome as enemies, they were valuable as allies. Had not the terrible Germans become, over the centuries, a bulwark of the Roman army in the West? Had not the wild Celts been civilized? Couriers reported to Rome and Constantinople that something unusual seemed to be happening in the lands beyond the Danube, but its danger was still unclear.

Then rumor turned into a flood of refugees.

A quarter million people from a Germanic nation known as the Goths appeared on the north bank of the river, seeking asylum from the marauding Huns. With no way to stop such a migration short of war, my ancestors reluctantly gave the Goths permission to cross to the southern shore.

Perhaps these newcomers, like so many tribes before them, could be safely settled and become “federates” of the Empire like the unruly but calculating Franks: an allied bulwark against the mysterious steppe people.

It was an unrealistic hope, born of expediency. The Goths were proud and unconquered. We civilized peoples seemed pampered, vacillating, and weak. Romans and Goths soon quarreled. Refugees were sold dog meat and stole cattle in return. They became plunderers and then out-right invaders. So on August 9, A.D. 378, the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens fought the Goths outside the city of Hadrianopolis, just one hundred and fifty miles from Constantinople itself. The numbers were evenly matched and we Romans were confident of victory. But our cavalry fled; our infantry panicked; and, surrounded by Gothic horsemen, our soldiers were packed so tightly together that they could not raise arms and shields to fight effectively. Valens and his army were destroyed in the worst Roman military disaster since Hannibal had annihilated the Romans at Cannae, almost six centuries before.

An ominous precedent had been set: The Roman army could be beaten by barbarians. In fact, the Romans could be beaten by barbarians who were fleeing even more fearsome barbarians.

Worse was soon to come.

The Goths began a pillaging migration across the Empire that would not stop for decades. Meanwhile, the Huns ravaged the Danube River valley; and, far to the east, they pillaged Armenia, Cappadocia, and Syria. Whole barbarian nations were uprooted, and some of these migrating tribes stacked up on the Rhine. When that river froze solid on the last day of 406, Vandals, Alans, Suevi, and Burgundians swarmed across to fall on Gaul. The barbarians swept south, burning, killing, looting, and raping in an orgy of violence that produced the horrid and fascinating tales my generation was weaned on. A Roman woman was discovered to have cooked and eaten her four children, one by one, explaining to authorities that she hoped each sacrifice would save the others. Her neighbors stoned her to death.

The invaders crossed the Pyrenees to Hispania, and then Gibraltar to Africa. Saint Augustine died while his North African home city of Hippo was under siege. Britannia was cut off, lost to the Empire. The Goths, still seeking a homeland, swept into Italy and in 410 shocked the world by sacking Rome itself. Although they withdrew after just three days of pillage, the sacred city’s sense of inviolability had been shattered.

The barbarians began to settle on—and rule—large tracts of our Western Empire. Unable to defeat the invaders, the increasingly desperate Western emperors sought to buy them off, to confine them in specific territories, and to play one barbarian nation against another. The imperial court, unable to guarantee its own safety in Rome, moved first to Milan and then to Ravenna, a Roman navy base on the marshes of the Adriatic Sea. The Visigoths meanwhile occupied southwestern Gaul and Hispania, the Burgundians eastern Gaul, the Alans the valley of the Loire, and the Vandals North Africa. Christian heresies competed as barbarian religion merged with that of the Messiah, leaving a thicket of beliefs. Roads fell into disrepair, crime increased, taxes went unpaid, some of the brightest minds withdrew to monasteries . . . and yet life, under a loose confederation of Roman and barbarian leadership, went on. Constantinople and the East still thrived. New palaces and churches were built in Ravenna. Roman garrisons still soldiered because there was no alternative. How could there be no Rome? The slow collapse of civilization was as unimaginable as it was in-escapable.

And still the power of the Hun grew.

What had been mysterious rumor in the fourth century became grim and terrifying reality in the fifth. As the Huns rode into Europe and occupied what came to be called Hunuguri, they melded the barbarian tribes they overcame into a new and ominous empire. Ignorant of industry and disdainful of technology, they relied on enslaved nations, the plunder of raids, extorted tribute, and mercenary pay to sustain their society. Rome, wheezing and in decline, occasionally hired the Huns to subdue other tribes in its territories, trying to buy itself time. The Huns used such pay to attract more allies and increase their power. In 443 and 447, they initiated disastrous raids in the Empire’s eastern half that wiped more than one hundred Balkan cities off the map.

While the stupendous new triple wall of Constantinople continued to deter assault, we Byzantines found it necessary to pay off the Huns to guarantee a humiliating and precarious truce.

By the middle of the fifth century when I reached adult-hood, the Hun empire stretched from Germania’s Elbe River to the Caspian Sea and from the Danube northward to the Baltic. Its leader, headquartered in Hunuguri, had become the most powerful monarch in Europe. He could with a word gather a hundred thousand of the most fearsome warriors the world had ever known. He could enlist a hundred thousand more from his conquered tribes. His word was law, he had never known defeat, and his wives and sons trembled in his presence.

His name was Attila.

What follows is his true story and my own, told through the eyes of those I knew well and, where I played a role, my own. I set this down so my children can understand how I come to be writing this in such strange times, on such a tiny island, so far from where I was born, with such an extraordinary wife.

P A R T O N E

I

THE EMBASSY

TO ATTILA

I

I

BROTHER AND SISTER

RAVENNA, A.D. 449

My sister is a wicked woman, bishop, and we are here to save her from herself,” the emperor of the Western Roman Empire said.

His name was Valentinian III, and his character was unfortunate evidence of dynastic decay. He was of only middling intelligence, without martial courage and with little interest in governance. Valentinian preferred to spend his time in sport, pleasure, and the company of magicians, courtesans, and whichever senatorial wives he could seduce in order to gain the greater pleasure of humiliating their husbands. He knew his talents did not match those of his ancestors, and his private admission of inferiority produced feelings of resentment and fear. Jealous and spiteful men and women, he believed, were always conspiring against him. So he’d brought the prelate for tonight’s execution because he needed the church’s approval. Valentinian relied on the beliefs of others in order to believe in himself.

It was important for his sister, Honoria, to recognize that she had no champions in either the secular world or the religious, the emperor had persuaded the bishop. She was rutting with a steward like a base kitchen trollop, and this little surprise was really a gift. “I am saving my sister from a trial as traitor in this world and from damnation in the next.”

“No child is beyond salvation, Caesar,” Bishop Milo assured. He shared complicity in this rude surprise because he and the girl’s wily mother, Galla Placidia, needed money to complete a new church in Ravenna that would help guarantee their own ascent into heaven. Placidia was as embarrassed by her daughter’s indiscretion as Valentinian was afraid of it; and support of the emperor’s decision would be repaid by a generous donation to the Church from the imperial treasury. God, the bishop believed, worked in mysterious ways. Placidia simply assumed that God’s wishes and her own were the same.

The emperor was supposed to be in musty and decaying Rome, conferring with the Senate, receiving ambassadors, and participating in hunts and social gatherings. Instead, he had galloped out four nights ago unannounced, accompanied by a dozen soldiers handpicked by his chamberlain, Heraclius. They would strike at Honoria before her plans ripened. It was the chamberlain’s spies who had brought word that the emperor’s sister was not just sleeping with her palace steward—a reckless fool named Eugenius—but also was plotting with him to murder her brother and seize power. Was the story true? It was no secret that Honoria considered her brother indolent and stupid and that she believed she could run imperial affairs more ably than he could, on the model of their vigorous mother. Now, the story went, she intended to put her lover on the throne with herself as augusta, or queen. It was all rumor, of course, but rumor that smacked of the truth: The vain Honoria had never liked her sibling. If Valentinian could catch them in bed together it would certainly prove immorality, and perhaps treason as well. In any event, it would be excuse enough to marry her off and be rid of her.

The emperor excused his own romantic conquests as casually as he condemned those of his sister. He was a man and she was a woman and thus her lustfulness, in the eyes of man and God, was more offensive than his.

Valentinian’s entourage had crossed the mountainous spine of Italy and now approached the palaces of Ravenna in the dark, pounding down the long causeway to this marshy refuge. While easy to defend from barbarian attack, the new capital always struck Valentinian as a dreamlike place, divorced from the land and yet not quite of the sea. It floated separately from industry or agriculture, and the bureaucracy that had taken refuge there had only a tenuous grip on reality. The water was so shallow and the mud so deep that the wit Apollinaris had claimed the laws of nature were repealed in Ravenna, “where walls fall flat and waters stand, towers float and ships are seated.” The one advantage of the new city was that it was nominally safe, and that was no small thing in today’s world. Treacheries were everywhere.

The life of the great was a risky one, Valentinian knew.

Julius Caesar himself had been assassinated, almost five hundred years before. The gruesome endings of emperors since was a list almost too long to memorize: Claudius poisoned; Nero and Otho both suicides; Caracalla, the murderer of his brother, who was assassinated in turn; Constantine’s half brothers and nephews virtually wiped out; Gratian murdered; Valentinian II found mysteriously hanged. Emperors had died in battle, of disease, debauchery, and even of the fumes from newly applied plaster, but most of all from the plottings of those closest. It would have been a shock if his cunning sister had not conspired against him. The emperor was more than ready to hear his chamberlain’s whisperings of a plot, because he had expected no less since being elevated to the purple at the age of five. He had reached his present age of thirty only by fearful caution, constant suspicion, and necessary ruthlessness. An emperor struck, or was struck down. His astrologers confirmed his fears, leaving him satisfied and them rewarded.

So now the emperor’s party dismounted in the shadow of the gate, not wanting the clatter of horses to give warning.

They drew long swords but held them tight to their legs to minimize their glint in the night. Cloaked and hooded, they moved toward Honoria’s palace like wraiths; Ravenna’s streets dark, its canals gleaming dully, and a half-moon teasing behind a moving veil of cloud. As a town of government instead of commerce, the capital always seemed desultory and half deserted.

The emperor’s face startled sentries.

“Caesar! We didn’t expect—”

“Get out of the way.”

Honoria’s palace was quiet, the tapestries and curtains bleached of color by the night and the oil lamps guttering.

Domes and vaults bore tile mosaics of saints who looked serenely down at the sins below, the air languid with incense and perfume. The emperor’s entourage strode down dark marble hallways too swiftly for any challenge; and Honoria’s chamber guardian, a huge Nubian named Goar, went down with a grunt from a crossbow bolt fired from twenty paces before he even understood who was approaching. He struck the marble with a meaty thud. A wine boy who startled awake, and who might have cried warning, had his neck snapped like a chicken’s. Then the soldiers burst into the princess’s quarters, knocking aside tables of honeyed sweets, kicking a cushion into the shallow pool of the bath, and butting open the door of her sleeping chamber.

The couple jerked awake, clutching and crying out behind the gauze of the curtains as a dozen dark shapes surrounded their vast bed. Was this assassination?

“Light,” Valentinian ordered.

His men had brought torches, and they turned the scene bright and lurid. The steward, Eugenius, slid away on his backside until he bumped against the headboard, his hands seeking to cover himself. He had the look of a man who has stumbled off a cliff and, in one last moment of crystalline dread, knows there is nothing he can do to save himself.

Honoria was crawling toward the other side of the bed, naked except for the silken sheet draped over her, her hip bewitching even in her terror, clawing as if distance from her commoner lover would provide some kind of deniability.

“So it is true,” the emperor breathed.

“How dare you break into my bedchamber!”

“We have come to save you, child,” the bishop said.

The exposure of his sister strangely excited Valentinian.

He’d been insulted by her mockery, but now who looked the fool? She was on humiliating display for a dozen men, her sins apparent to all, her shoulder bare, her hair undone, her breasts dragging on the sheet. The situation gave him heady satisfaction. He glanced back. Goar’s prostrate form was just visible in the entry, blood pooling on the marble like a little lake. It was his sister’s vanity and ambition that had doomed those around her. As she had doomed herself! The emperor spied a golden cord holding the drapery around the bed and yanked, pulling it free. The diaphanous shelter dropped to the floor, exposing the couple even more, and then he stepped forward and began flailing with the cord at Honoria’s hips and buttocks as she flinched under the sheet, his breath quick and anxious.

“You’re rutting with a servant and plotting to elevate him above me!”

She writhed and howled with outrage, pulling the covering away from poor Eugenius in order to wrap herself.

“Damn you! I’ll tell Mother!”

“Mother told me when and where I’d find you!” He took satisfaction in the way that betrayal stung. They had always competed for Placidia’s affection. He whipped and whipped, humiliating more than injuring her, until finally he was out of breath and had to stop, panting. Both he and his sister were flushed.

The soldiers dragged the steward out of bed and wrenched his arms behind his back, forcing him to his knees. His manhood was shrunken, and he’d not had time to muster a defense. He looked in beseeching horror toward the princess as if she could save him, but all she had were dreams, not power. She was a woman! And now, in gambling for her affections, Eugenius had doomed himself.

Valentinian turned to study the would-be emperor of Ravenna and Rome. Honoria’s lover was handsome, yes, and no doubt intelligent to have risen to palace steward, but a fool to try to climb above his station. Lust had bred opportunity and ambition had encouraged pride, but in the end hers was a pathetic infatuation. “Look at him,” Valentinian mocked, “the next Caesar.” His gaze shifted downward. “We should cut it off.”

Eugenius’s voice broke. “Don’t harm Honoria. It was I who—”

“Harm Honoria?” Valentinian’s laugh was contemptuous.

“She’s royalty, steward, her bloodline purple, and has no need of a plea from you. She deserves a spanking but will come to no real harm because she’s incapable of giving it.

See how helpless she is?”

“She never thought of betraying you—”

“Silence!” He slashed with the cord again, this time across the steward’s mouth. “Stop worrying about my slut of a sister and start pleading for yourself! Do you think I don’t know what you two were planning?”

“Valentinian, stop!” Honoria begged. “It’s not what you think. It’s not what you’ve been told. Your advisers and magicians have made you insane.”

“Have they? Yet what I expected to find I found—is that not right, bishop?”

“Yours is a brother’s duty,” Milo said.

“As is this,” the emperor said. “Do it.”

A big tribune knotted a scarf around Eugenius’s neck.

“Please,” the woman groaned. “I love him.”

“That’s why it is necessary.”

The tribune pulled, his forearms bulging. Eugenius began to kick, struggling uselessly against the men who held him.

Honoria began screaming. His face purpled, his tongue erupted in a vain search for breath, his eyes bulged, his muscles shuddered. Then his look glazed, he slumped; and after several long minutes that made sure he was dead, his body was allowed to fall to the floor.

Honoria was sobbing.

“You have been brought back to God,” the bishop soothed.

“Damn all of you to Hell.”

The soldiers laughed.

“Sister, I bring you good news,” Valentinian said. “Your days of spinsterhood are over. Since you’ve been unable to find a proper suitor yourself, I’ve arranged for your marriage to Flavius Bassus Herculanus in Rome.”

“Herculanus! He’s fat and old! I’ll never marry him!” It was as hideous a fate as she could imagine.

“You’ll rot in Ravenna until you do.”

Honoria refused to marry and Valentinian held to his word to confine her, despite her begging. Her pleas to her mother were ignored. What torture to be locked in her palace! What humiliation to gain release only by marrying a decrepit aristocrat! Her lover’s death had killed a part of her, she believed; her brother had strangled not just Eugenius but her own pride, her belief in family, and any loyalty to Valentinian. He had strangled her heart! So, early in the following year, when the nights were long and Honoria had entirely despaired of her future, she sent for her eunuch.

Hyacinth had been castrated as a child, placed in a hot bath where his testicles were crushed. It had been cruel, of course, and yet the mutilation that had denied him marriage and fatherhood had allowed him to win a position of trust in the imperial household. The eunuch had often mused on his fate, sometimes relieved that he had been exempted from the physical passions of those around him. If he felt less like a man because he’d been gelded, he suffered less, too, he believed. The pain of emasculation was a distant memory, and his privileged position a daily satisfaction. He could not be perceived as a threat like Eugenius. As a result, eunuchs often lived far longer than those they served.

Hyacinth had become not just Honoria’s servant but also her friend and confidant. In the days after Eugenius’s execution, his arms had comforted her as she had sobbed uncontrollably, his beardless cheek against hers, murmuring agreement as she stoked the flames of hatred for her brother.

The emperor was a beast, his heart a stone, and the prospect of the princess’s marriage to an aging senator in tired Rome was as appalling to the eunuch as it was to his mistress.

Now she had summoned him in the night. “Hyacinth, I am sending you away.”

He blanched. He could no more survive in the outside world than a domestic pet. “Please, my lady. Yours is the only kindness I have known.”

“And sometimes your kindness seems the only that I have. Even my mother, who aspires to sainthood, ignores me until I submit. So we are both prisoners here, dear eunuch, are we not?”

“Until you marry Herculanus.”

“And is that not a prison of another sort?”

He sighed. “Perhaps the marriage is a fate you must accept.”

Honoria shook her head. She was very beautiful and enjoyed the pleasures of the bed too much to throw her life away on an old patriarch. The reputation of Herculanus was of a man stern, humorless, and cold. Valentinian’s plan to marry her off would snuff out her own life as effectively as he had snuffed out Eugenius’s. “Hyacinth, do you recall how my mother, Galla Placidia, was taken by the Visigoths after the sack of Rome and married to their chieftain, Athaulf?”

“Before I was born, princess.”

“When Athaulf died, Mother returned to Rome, but in the meantime she had helped civilize the Visigoths. She said once that her few years with them were not too terrible, and I think she has some spicy memories of her first husband.

The barbarian men are strong, you know, stronger than the breed we now have in Italy.”

“Your mother had many strange travels and adventures before assuring the elevation of your brother.”

“She is a woman of the world who sailed with armies, married two men, and looked beyond the palace walls as she now looks to Heaven. She always urged me to do the same.”

“All revere the augusta.”

Honoria gripped her eunuch’s shoulders, her gaze intense. “This is why we must follow her brave example, Hyacinth. There is a barbarian even stronger than the leader of the Visigoths. He is a barbarian stronger than my brother— a barbarian who is the strongest man in the world. You know of whom I speak?”

Now the eunuch felt the slow dawning of dread. “You mean the king of the Huns.” Hyacinth’s voice was a whisper, as if they were speaking of Satan. The entire world feared Attila and prayed that his plundering eye would fall on some other part of the Empire. Reports said that he looked like a monkey, bathed in blood, and killed anyone who dared stand up to him—except for his wives. He enjoyed, they said, hundreds of wives, each as lovely as he was grotesque.

“I want you to go to Attila, Hyacinth.” Honoria’s eyes gleamed. Strong women relied not just on their wits but also on their alliances with strong men. The Huns had the most terrifying army in the world, and mere word from their leader would make her brother quail. If Attila asked for her, Valentinian would have to let her go. If Attila forbade her marriage to Herculanus, Valentinian would have to accede.

Wouldn’t he?

“Go to Attila!” Hyacinth gasped. “My lady, I scarcely go from one end of Ravenna to the other. I’m not a traveler. Nor an ambassador. I’m not even a man.”

“I’ll give you men as escort. No one will miss you. I want you to find your courage and find him, because both of our futures depend on it. I want you to explain what has happened to me. Carry my signet ring to him as proof of what you say. Hyacinth, my dearest slave, I want you to ask Attila the Hun to rescue me.”

III

THE MAIDEN

OF AXIOPOLIS

Father, what have you done?”

Seven hundred miles east of Ravenna, where the valley of the Danube broadens as that great river nears the Black Sea, the Hun were finally inside a small Roman colonial city called Axiopolis. Like all such Roman cities, it had initially been laid out in the neat grid pattern originating with the legionary camp, its forums, temples, and governing houses placed like board pieces in their logic. Like all such cities, it had been walled in the third century, when wars of unrest grew. Like all such cities, its pagan temples had become churches in the fourth, after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity. And like all such cities it had trembled with unease at each sacking of brethren settlements up the Danube.

Now the Huns were here. Their entry was like the advent of a storm: the sound a rising wail of terror that spread outward from the gates in a siren wave. With the sound came the false dawn of fire, orange and pulsing. In her family’s dining room Ilana tried to shut out what she had dreaded so long to hear: oaths and cries, the clatter of unshod horses on stone paving, the desperate grunts and clangs of futile resistance, and the low hiss and rumble of fire. She glimpsed from the corner of her eye the birdlike flash of an arrow winging down the street, having missed its mark and now on its way to another target at random, a humming hornet in stygian gloom. Her neighbors were running as if from the gates of Hell. The apocalypse had finally come.

“I think I have saved us, Ilana,” Simon Publius said, his voice’s quaver betraying his doubt. The plump merchant had developed a thousand-year-old face in recent weeks, his jowls sagging, his sleep-robbed eyes hollow, his pink skin sweaty and mottled like rancid meat. Now he had bet his family’s survival on treason.

“You opened the gates to them, didn’t you?”

“They would have broken through anyway.”

The street was filling with horsemen shouting in a harsh, ugly tongue. Strangely, she could make out the particular noise of swords cutting through the air that sounds like rend-ing fabric and then a deeper thunk when they struck. It was as if all her senses were heightened and she could hear every cry, every whisper, and every prayer. “But we were going to wait for the legions.”

“As Marcianopolis waited? Then there would be no mercy, daughter. I have Edeco’s promise that by aiding him, some of us will be spared.”

There was a shriek and then a gabble of hopeless pleading, making clear that not everyone would be spared. She peeked out. The dark below was filled with fleeing and thrashing forms and the occasional moonlike appearance of a human face, mouth agape in the glare of a torch before it was sucked away. Ilana felt numb. She’d been afraid for so long that it seemed an eternity of fear: frightened for years, really, as horrid tales filtered down the river. Then the para-lyzing dread when the Huns and their allies finally appeared under a plume of smokelike dust, just two weeks ago. They had surrounded Axiopolis at a gallop and threatened annihilation if the city did not surrender.

No such surrender had come, despite the pleas and urging of some. The inhabitants had the pride of Moesia and the fire of Thrace in their veins, and most wanted to fight. There had been brave Roman resistance since: fierce stands; moments of encouraging heroism; and even small, momentary victories. But there had also been a growing hopelessness as the dead and wounded were carried down off the walls, each day seeming grimmer, each night longer, each rumor wilder, each heartbroken widow and orphaned child adding to the city’s fatalism. Incense curled in the churches, prayers echoed up to heaven, priests paraded on the walls, messengers tried to creep away to summon help, and yet no relief arrived. The modest stone walls began to come apart like crumbling cheese. The roofs were pockmarked with fire.

Outside, crops were burned and boats destroyed. Inside, doughty old men who had been given spears were picked off the walls because they stood too long, trying to see enemies with aging eyes. So Ilana’s mind had taken refuge in dull despair, welcoming an end instead of fearing it. What was so good about this life anyway? She only hoped death would not hurt too much. But now her father, the city’s most prominent merchant, had betrayed them.

“They would have killed us all, once they stormed the walls,” he said. “This way . . .”

“They’re cavalry,” she replied numbly. “They lack skill . . .”

“Their mercenaries know sieges and siege engines. I had to do something, child.”

Child? How long ago that seemed! Child? Her great love, Tasio, the man she was to marry, had died on day three, shot through the eye with a Hun arrow and succumbing after four long hours of screaming agony. She had never dreamed the body could leak so much blood so ceaselessly. Child? That was a word for blessed ignorance, creatures that still had hope, innocents who might someday have children of their own. Now . . .

“I’ve hidden some coin. They have promised safe passage. We’ll go to Constantinople and find new lives there.

Your aunts, the servants . . . his spies promised all of us could go. More will be spared, too, I’m sure. I’ve saved many lives this night.”

She wanted to believe him. She longed to believe in an elder, and in the future. But now there was only an endless furious now, that storm wind of screaming, the pattering hail of arrows, and the pitiless grunts of warriors taking what they wished. “Father . . .”

“Come.” He jerked her into reluctant action. “We’ve to meet the chieftain by the Church of Saint Paul. God will protect us, child.”

The streets were a surf of churning humanity that their own frightened little group breasted by pushing like a pha-lanx past groaning bodies, smashed doorways, and lurid flames. They clutched useless things: an ancestral bust, an old wedding chest, a sheaf of accounts from a business now destroyed, a frightened dog. The sacking was anarchic, one home invaded and another passed by, one group of refugees slain and another ignored as its members huddled in the shadows. Here a pagan claimed that Jupiter had saved him, there a Christian rejoiced that Jesus had saved her, and yet people of all faiths were equally butchered. Everything had become random chance, death and life as whimsical as a butterfly’s wing. The Huns galloped into sacristies and kitchens without fear of resistance, shooting arrows as if at timid game, and contemptuous of anyone slow enough to be trampled under. The only mercy was that night made impossible the identification of her friends, relatives, shopkeepers, and teachers. Death had become anonymous. The city was being snuffed without names being called out.

When Ilana and her father arrived in the forum, the church was being crammed with citizens seeking miracles from a God who seemed to have forsaken them. A cluster of Huns watched the Romans run inside the sanctuary without interfering, instead conferring on horseback with each other as if commenting on a parade. Occasionally they’d send messengers galloping down the streets with orders, suggest-ing there was more discipline to the sacking than the young woman had assumed. The fires were growing brighter.

“Edeco!” Simon Publius called, hoarse from the night’s shouting. “I bring you my family for protection as we agreed! We are grateful for your mercy. This slaughter is not at all necessary—we will give up whatever you require . . .”

A lieutenant, looking of Greek origin, translated. The Hun chieftain, identifiable by his fine captured Roman lorica, peered down, his features shadowed, his face scarred, his beard thin. “Who are you?”

“The merchant Publius! The one who sent word and opened the gates as your emissary demanded! Of course, we have not seen each other yet. It is I, your ally who asks only to be allowed to go downriver! We’ll take ship far away from this place.”

The Hun considered as if this were a new idea. His eye fell on Ilana. “Who is she?”

Simon winced as if struck. “My daughter. A harmless girl.”

“She is pretty.” The young woman had a high and noble carriage, her hair a dark cataract of curls, her eyes almond shaped, her cheekbones high, her ears as fine as alabaster.

About to be wed, until the siege came.

“There are many beautiful women in our city. Many, many.”

Edeco belched. “Really? The ones I’ve taken look like cows.” His men laughed.

The old merchant sidled in front of his daughter, blocking her as much as possible from view. “If you could give us escort to the river, we’ll find a boat.”

The chieftain considered a moment, then looked toward the church at the end of the forum. The shadows within seethed with the pack of refugees. More people were pushing to get inside. He spoke something in Hunnish to one of his men, and several trotted their horses to the entrance, as if considering attacking it. The Romans trying to gain entry scattered like mice. Those already inside swung the great oaken doors shut and locked them. The barbarians let them.

“God will reward your mercy, Edeco,” Simon tried.

The Hun smirked. “You’ve talked to him?” He called to his men across the paving, and they dismounted to begin piling furniture and debris against the church doors. The members of Simon’s small party began to gasp and murmur in alarm.

“He talks to all who listen,” Publius assured earnestly.

“Do not turn your ear away.”

Edeco had watched enemies pray in desperation to a hundred gods. All had been conquered. Romans and Huns watched the work in silence for a while, the Roman party not daring to move without permission, waiting in suspense for what must come. People in the church, packed too tightly, began to shout and plead as they realized that, having locked themselves in, they couldn’t get out.

Edeco finally turned back to the merchant. “I have decided. You can go with the cows, the ugly ones. Your daughter and the pretty ones stay with us.”

“No! That was not our agreement. You said—”

“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

I

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.

At least that was the theory of Chrysaphius, chief minister to the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Theodosius II. Chrysaphius had been urging his emperor to pay tribute to the Huns for a decade now, because the thousands of pounds of gold sent north had forestalled a final assault on Constantinople. However humiliating, submitting to extortion was cheaper than war. The government pretended its payments were for a barbarian ally, similar to what the Western emperors sent the Franks, but this fiction for the masses fooled no one in authority. Now Attila’s demands were rising, the treasury was strained, the Byzantine army was pre-occupied with Persia, voices in court were muttering against the minister’s craven appeasement, and somehow the tribute had to end. Accordingly, Chrysaphius wanted to buy one Hun in particular, for a very specific purpose. He sent his minion Bigilas to begin to do it.

“Show this Edeco our great Nova Roma, translator,” the minister had said while dissecting a Galatian pear with a silver knife. “Show him our wealth and our walls and our power, and then bring our unwashed guest to my palace and show him me.”

Several months after the sack of Axiopolis, the Hun general Edeco had been sent south to Constantinople to press Attila’s demands that the terms of the Treaty of Anatolius, negotiated two years before, be fulfilled. The Byzantines were slow to pay all the gold they had promised, and the swelling Hun armies had a tireless appetite for the metal.

Chrysaphius hoped to turn this new barbarian envoy from tormentor to ally.

The meeting did not begin auspiciously. Bigilas had to go to meet the Hun delegation outside the city by the Golden Gate, since the barbarians refused to venture inside without a guide. The translator found himself squinting up at the man he had been instructed to impress. Though Bigilas arrived with bodyguard, personal chamberlain, and a slave to hold his parasol, he was on foot and the Huns were mounted; and the warriors had maneuvered their beasts so their backs were to the sun that shone in the Roman’s eyes.

Yet Bigilas dared not complain. The haughty barbarian was not just key to his master’s hopes but dangerous if offended.

If Edeco didn’t return to Attila with satisfying answers, war might resume.

For his part, Edeco considered this mission between campaigns as an opportunity for easy profit, regardless of treaty gabble. The Romans always tried to soothe the Huns with gifts, and so this visit was a reward to Edeco for the capture of Axiopolis and an opportunity to examine the capital’s more intimidating defenses. Someday, the Hun hoped, he would do to Constantinople what he had done to Ilana’s city.

As Bigilas expected, Edeco was dusty from the long journey but far from ragged. The rabbit skins that his people had first appeared in had long been supplanted by bear, fox, and sable; and crude leather jerkins had been tossed aside for captured mail and padded tunics. Silks and linens that would adorn a Roman girl’s breast were apt to peek from behind a lorica because the Huns had a childlike fascination with fin-ery and no knowledge of proper fashion. Nor were they at all self-conscious. It was the People of the Dawn who decided how lords should dress, and everyone else knelt before them.

Like all the Huns, Edeco looked as comfortable on horseback as a Roman at ease in a chair. He was short but powerful, with a long sword hanging from his waist, a short bow strapped to his saddle, and a quiver full of arrows on his back. Also, like all the Huns, he was ugly—at least to Roman eyes. His skin had the bronze cast of the East and the ruggedness of leather, and his cheeks were corrugated with ritual scars. Many Romans believed the common story that the Huns cut their boys at birth to teach them to endure pain before letting them suckle, but Bigilas knew the puckering was more likely the result of self-mutilation from mourning a close relative. Most adult Hun men, and many women, had such scars.

Edeco’s manner exuded menace, like a low criminal; and his expression seemed fixed in a permanent scowl, given emphasis by a thin mustache that curled downward. Yet he was a calculating brute, the translator guessed, who killed and stole with predatory intelligence. That meant he could be reasoned with. Or so master Chrysaphius hoped.

The Hun was not looking at Bigilas, who he knew was a bureaucrat of minor status, but at the triple walls of Constantinople that stretched four miles from the Sea of Marmara to the harbor known as the Golden Horn. His was a soldier’s gaze, trying to guess a way through or around the barrier. The height of the walls, one hundred feet, astounded him.

“The minister Chrysaphius invites you to supper,” Bigilas said now in the guttural tongue the Hun spoke. Compared to Greek or Latin, it sounded like the grunting of animals.

The fortifications were the thickest Edeco had ever seen.

“You will have to leave your horse outside the city,” the translator added.

This, at least, got a response. The Hun peered down. “I will ride to the palace.”

“No one rides in Constantinople except the emperor,”

Bigilas insisted. “It’s too crowded. It would frighten your horse.” The Huns lived on horseback, he knew. They fought there, parleyed there, ate there, sometimes slept there, and for all he knew they made love there. They’d ride a hundred paces if it would save them a walk, and fitted their mounts so easily that they seemed a single beast. They also had to be manipulated like petulant children. “If you’d prefer, I can call a litter.”

“A litter?”

“A couch, carried by slaves. You can ride that way.”

Edeco sneered. “Like a baby or a woman?”

“It is three miles to the palace.” He looked deliberately at the Hun’s bandy legs.

The Hun scowled. “What did you do to get here?”

“I walked. Even our senators and generals walk, ambassador. It will make it easier for me to show you the glories of our capital.”

The Hun shook his head. “Why live where you can’t ride?” But he slid off his pony anyway, not as surprised as he pretended. Previous envoys had warned him that if he allowed it, his horse would be stabled outside the city in a box just like the Romans lived in, a confinement that would make the pony fat and weak. These were an insect people, and they swarmed in their cities like maggots. The trick was to get your presents and get out.

Bigilas was pleased the Hun was not making an issue of his horse. It was an unexpected characteristic of these slaughterers that they would actually negotiate. He had begun to learn their tongue when taken captive in Attila’s raid of seven years before, and after being ransomed he had learned more when his skill won him jobs as a trader. His ability to translate had brought him to the attention of the imperial government and eventually to Chrysaphius himself.

Bigilas knew the Huns without liking them, which was just the quality the chief minister wanted.

The translator watched the Hun give his reins, bow, and quiver to an attendant he called Skilla. Edeco instructed the young man and another ranking Hun, a Roman-born lieutenant and turncoat named Onegesh, to wait outside the walls. If he did not return when expected, they were to report to Attila. “Do not let them box my horse and do not let them box you. It will cost you strength.”

“But we’ve arranged a villa and stables,” Bigilas said.

“Our roof is the stars,” the young man replied just a little too proudly. Skilla, like his uncle Edeco, was looking at the triple walls of Constantinople with a mixture of contempt and envy. “We will camp at the river and await you there.”

Chrysaphius wouldn’t like the Huns keeping to themselves, outside Roman control, but what could Bigilas do?

“Do you want food?”

“We will get what we need.”

What did that mean? Were they going to poach from farms, steal from pilgrims? Well, let them sleep in the dirt.

“Come then,” he said to Edeco. “Chrysaphius is waiting.” As they walked to the great gate he looked back at the two Huns left behind. They appeared to be counting the towers.

The new capital of the Eastern Roman Empire was a triangle, the apex that jutted into the water containing the imperial palaces, Hippodrome, and the church of Hagia Sophia. The triangle’s base, to the west, was the four-mile-long triple wall. The two watery sides of the triangle were also walled and lined with artificial harbors crowded with shipping. All of the world’s commerce now seemed to pass through this funnel; and the Eastern emperors had imported statues, art, marbles, and mosaics to give their new city instant re-spectability. There were probably as many Romans in Constantinople as there were Huns in the entire world, Bigilas knew; and yet it was the city that paid tribute to the barbarian, not the other way around. It was an intolerable situation that must come to an end.

The Golden Gate was a triple archway, the arch in the center being the highest and broadest; and its wood-and-iron doors were reinforced with a relief of enormous brass elephants polished to a golden sheen. The portal passed through all three walls in a tunnel that would be a corridor of massacre for any army that broke through: Its ceiling was peppered with kill holes through which arrows could be shot or hot oil poured. Moreover, the third and innermost wall was the highest so that each barrier overlooked the one in front, giving the appearance of a forbidding mountain range.

Edeco stopped just short of the outer entrance, peering up at statues of emperor, victory, and fortune. There was Latin lettering above. “What does it say?”

Bigilas read aloud: “‘Theodosius adorns this place, after the doom of the usurper. He who constructed the Golden Gate brings in the Golden Age.’”

The barbarian was silent a moment. Then, “What does it mean?”

“That our emperor is a god and that this is the new center of the world.”

“I thought you Romans only had one god, now.”

“I suppose.” The translator frowned. “The divinity of the emperor is still under theological debate.”

The Hun grunted, and they passed through the darkness of the triple walls to the bright sunlight on the inside. Edeco stopped again. “Where is your city?”

Bigilas smiled. Here the immensity of Constantinople first struck the barbarians. “The central city remains behind the original walls of Constantine.” He pointed at a wall nearly a mile ahead. “This new area, walled by Theodosius, is reserved for cisterns, gardens, monasteries, churches, and farmers’ markets. The Lycus River flows under our walls and we have enough water and food to resist an invader forever. Constantinople can never be starved or conquered, Edeco, it can only be befriended.”

The Hun said nothing for a while, his gaze rotating. Then,

“I come as a friend. For presents.”

“The chief minister has presents for you, my friend.”

At the smaller, older, single-width wall of Constantine there was a marketplace before the Gate of Saturninus where Edeco eyed the goods with a predator’s appetite. Nova Roma had become the world’s new crossroads and every product, every pleasure, every smell, and every taste could be found here. His wives would quiver like excited geese to see booty such as this. Someday he would carry it back to them, spattered with the blood of the merchants who had owned it. The thought pleased him.

The pair went through the gate and entered the urban hub of the Eastern Empire, a raw, bustling capital of gilded churches, ostentatious palaces, crowded tenements, and teeming streets. Edeco suddenly felt shrunken and entirely too anonymous. If the Hun evoked fear outside the walls, he elicited only curious glances inside them. To Constantinople came all the peoples of the world: black Africans, blond Germans, dusky Syrians, shrouded Berbers, migratory Jews, glowering Goths, copper-hued Iberians, industrious Greeks, proud Arabs, clamoring Egyptians, and bumpkin Illyrians and Dacians. They pushed, threaded, and jostled one another, crying out bargains, negotiating prices, shouting for passageway, and promising pleasure. The Hun felt caught in a vast river he did not control. There was a heady stench of spice, perfume, sweat, charcoal smoke, food, and sewage and a cacophony of tongues. It made him want to vomit.

Bigilas was gesturing to it all with pride.

The road they followed was stone, that Roman custom that Edeco believed was hard on feet and harder on hooves.

The middle was open to the sky but on either side was a marble portico that offered shade and shelter and was just as crowded as the lane’s center. The tops of the pillars were carved into fronds and leaves, as if to mimic trees. The Romans used rock instead of wood and then tried to make the rock look like wood! In the shadows beyond the portico was an endless line of shops tunneling into buildings so high that they made the street a canyon. The Hun could not keep himself from scanning the eaves, wary of ambush, and yet these Romans thronged without any apparent feeling of entrap-ment. In fact, they seemed to take comfort in this closeness.

It was an unnatural way to live and it had made the Romans strange: loud, overdressed, the painted women either too veiled or too exposed, the men too rich or too beggared, gamblers and whores beside monks and nuns, all of them clutching and calling and complaining with gusto. It was an ant’s nest, Edeco thought, and when it all finally burned it would be a blessing to the earth.

Bigilas chattered like a girl as they pushed ahead through the confusion, saying this marble was from Troad and their street was called the Mese and that forum was called Arca-dius, as if Edeco cared. The Hun was instead tabulating the wealth on display: the stalls of gold jewelry, the small hillocks of carpets, the linens from Egypt, the woolens from Anatolia, the jars of wine, the fine boots, and the metallic luster of aristocratic weapons. There were cups and bowls, bedding and pots, copper and iron, ebony and ivory, and fine carved chests to put it all away. How did the maggots make such things?

Periodically the Mese opened to wider places that Bigilas called forums. Many had statues of frozen men, for what purpose Edeco didn’t know. Tall columns jutted to the sky but held nothing up. One was topped by a frozen man called Constantine. This was the emperor who had founded the city, Bigilas explained.

The Hun was more intrigued by a monumental four-sided arch at an intersection called the Anemodoulion. At its top was a weathervane, and the Hun watched in amazement as its eagle pointed this way and that. What foolishness! Only Romans needed a toy to tell them which way the wind blew.

Bigilas also pointed out the arches of what he called an aqueduct. Why, Edeco wondered, did the Romans build rivers instead of simply living by one? The Earth Mother gave people everything they really needed, and yet the Romans toiled their whole lives to duplicate what was free.

As they advanced toward the apex of the peninsula, the houses, palaces, and monuments grew grander and the noise even worse. The clanging from the copper factories was like the heavy hail of the steppe, and the whine of the marble saws was almost unbearable. Only the gates of the Hippodrome were more appealing, giving a glimpse of open sand surrounded by a huge oval enclosure made of steps that went up to the sky. “What is this?”

“The place of chariot races and games,” Bigilas replied.

“When they compete there are eighty thousand people here.

Have you seen the scarves and ribbons? Those are our factions, the Greens the common folk and the Blues the nobles. There’s a great rivalry, betting, and sometimes riots and fights.”

“For what?”

“For who wins the game.”

So they spent their energies on pretend war instead of the real thing.

And with that they came to the palace of Chrysaphius.

The chief minister of the Eastern Roman Empire lived, in the manner of all beings in such exalted positions, on his wits, watchfulness, and ruthless calculation. Like so many in this new era of Roman government, Chrysaphius was a eunuch. It was his early service to, and access to, the emperor’s beautiful wife, Aelia—made possible because of his castra-tion—that had started his own precipitous rise. He was now, by some accounts, more powerful than the emperor himself.

And why not? Having observed the cunning of women his entire life, the minister had long concluded that the absence of balls did nothing to subtract from courage and everything to improve clarity of mind. The emperor Theodosius was normally equipped but was a hapless general and clumsy negotiator who had been dominated his entire life by his older sister, a woman so aware of the proper ranking of things that she had foresworn sex and devoted her life to religious chastity. Such purity made her as formidable and revered as it made her prickly and vindictive. What a contrast the dangerous Pulcheria was to the dim and lustful sister of the emperor of the West, a girl named Honoria, reportedly so stupid that she had been caught in bed with her palace steward! If only Pulcheria would exhibit such weakness. But, no, she seemed as immune to such feelings as Chrysaphius himself, which made her dangerous.

Pulcheria had first gotten rid of lovely Aelia by accusing her brother’s wife of adultery, driving her in humiliation to Judea. Chrysaphius had barely escaped being caught up in that scandal himself, since Aelia had been his patroness. Yet his skill at negotiation had made him so indispensable, and his emasculation had made him so immune to sexual chicanery, that even Pulcheria could not dislodge him. Nor could the minister, in turn, persuade the emperor that his sister’s public holiness was only a mask for private spiteful-ness. Now she was Chrysaphius’s most implacable enemy.

The minister’s own greed and treacheries had made him many foes, and he knew his unsexing added to his unpopularity. He needed a dramatic achievement to fortify himself against Pulcheria.

This was why the oafish barbarian Edeco was now rudely stuffing himself at Chrysaphius’s table.

So far, the political seduction had gone as planned. Bigilas had met the Hun outside the city walls and had escorted him through Constantinople, the translator confirming that he had dazzled the tribesman with the glories of Roman architecture, the richness of Byzantine markets, and the density and vigor of the population. The futility of assaulting Nova Roma should be evident by now. Edeco had then come into Chrysaphius’s palace, gaping like a peasant at its marbles, brocades, tapestries, carpets, pools, fountains, and carved cedar doors. Sunlit courtyards were filled like a meadow with flowers; bedchambers were seas of silks and linens; and side tables groaned under mountains of fruit, bread, honey, meat, and gleaming olives.

The Hun had grazed like a bull from room to room.

Chrysaphius had tried to get two of his tittering slave girls to coax the barbarian into one of his baths, a diver-tissement that would have made the creature more bearable at close range, but the Hun had suspiciously refused.

“They fear water spirits,” the translator had whispered in explanation.

Chrysaphius groaned. “How can they stand to reproduce themselves?”

Bigilas had finally persuaded Edeco to shed his furs and armor for a robe of Egyptian cotton that was laced with golden thread, edged with ermine, and spotted with precious gems, a freshening that was like throwing silk on a musty bear. The Hun’s hands were still as rough as a carpenter’s and his hair suited to a witch, but the unfamiliar and perfumed clothes made him fit a little more naturally into the triclinium that overlooked the Sea of Marmara. Lamps and candles lent a glittery haze, a cool breeze came off the water, and constant refilling of the Hun’s wine goblet seemed to have put him in an agreeable mood. It was time for the proposition.

The Huns were dangerous but greedy, Chrysaphius believed. They were little more than horse-borne pirates, who had no use for cities and yet had an insatiable hunger for their products. They hated the Romans because they envied them, and they were as corruptible as children lured by a bowl of sweets. For more than a decade the chief minister had avoided a final showdown with Attila by buying the madman off, wincing as the demand for annual tribute had risen from the three hundred and fifty pounds of gold demanded by Attila’s father to the seven hundred insisted on by Attila’s brother to the more than two thousand demanded by Attila himself. It was more than one hundred and fifty thousand solidi per year! To pay the six thousand pounds demanded to end the war of 447, the city’s merchants and senators had had to melt their wives’ jewelry. There had been suicides amid the despair. More important, there was barely enough money left to pay for Chrysaphius’s luxuries!

It was Attila who had turned the Huns from a confederation of annoying raiders to a rapacious empire, and it was Attila who had changed reasonable tribute to outrageous extortion.

Eliminate Attila, and their cohesion would collapse. A single knife thrust or draft of poison, and the Eastern Empire’s most intractable problem would be solved.

The eunuch smiled benevolently at the Hun and spoke, using Bigilas to translate. “Do you enjoy our epicurean del-icacies, Edeco?”

“The what?” The man’s mouth was disgustingly full.

“The food, my friend.”

“It’s good.” He took another handful.

“The finest cooks in the world come to Constantinople.

They compete with one another in the inventiveness of their recipes. They continuously astonish the palate.”

“You are a good host, Chrysaphius,” the Hun said agreeably. “I will tell this to Attila.”

“How flattering.” The minister sipped from his cup. “Do you know, Edeco, that a man of your standing and talents could eat like this every day?”

Here the barbarian finally paused. “Every day?”

“If you lived here with us.”

“But I live with Attila.”

“Yes, I know, but have you ever thought of living in Constantinople?”

The Hun snorted. “Where would I keep my horses?”

Chrysaphius smiled. “What need have we of horses? We have nowhere we need to go. The entire world comes to us, and brings the best of its goods with it. The brightest wits and best artists and the holiest priests all come to Nova Roma. The Empire’s most beautiful women are here, as you can see from my own slaves and bath girls. Why do you need a horse?”

Edeco, realizing that some kind of offer was being prepared, shifted more upright on his dining couch as if to focus his half-drunken attention. “I’m not a Roman.”

“But you could be.”

The barbarian glanced around warily, as if everything might be taken away from him in an instant. “I have no house here.”

“But you could have, general. A man of your military experience would be invaluable to our armies. A man of your station could have a palace exactly like this one. A man like you who gave his services to the emperor could be first among our nobles. Our palaces, our games, our goods, and our women could all be yours.”

The Hun’s eyes narrowed. “You mean if I leave my people and join you.”

“I mean if you are willing to save your people as well as ours, Edeco. If you take your rightful place in history.”

“My place is by Attila.”

“So far. But must we next meet across the battlefield? We both know that is what Attila wants. Your ruler is insatiable.

No victory satisfies him. No amount of tribute is ever enough. No loyalist is above his suspicion. While he is alive, no Hun and no Roman is safe. If he’s not stopped, he will destroy us all.”

Edeco had stopped eating, looking dubious. “What is it you want?”

Chrysaphius put his slim, soft hand over the Hun’s hard one, grasping it warmly. “I want you to kill Attila, my friend.”

“Kill him! I would be flayed alive.”

“Not if it was done in secret, away from his guards, in quiet parley with Roman ambassadors with you as the key Hun negotiator. He would die, you would leave the discussion chamber, and chaos would erupt only later when his death was discovered. By the time the Huns decide who among them is in charge and who might be guilty, you could be back here, a hero to the world. You could have a house like this one and women like these and gold enough to strain your back.”

He made no effort to hide his look of avarice. “How much gold?”

The minister smiled. “Fifty pounds.”

The Hun sucked in his breath.

“That is simply an initial payment. We will give you enough gold to make you one of this city’s richest men, Edeco. Enough honor to let you live in peace and luxury the rest of your days. You are one of the few trusted enough by Attila to be alone with him. You can do what no other man dares.”

The Hun wet his lips. “Fifty pounds? And more?”

“Would not Attila kill you for the same prize?”

Edeco shrugged, as if to concede the point. “Where is this gold?”

Chrysaphius snapped his fingers. A male slave, a tall German, came in bearing a heavy chest, its weight displaying the man’s powerful musculature. He set it down with a thump and flipped back the lid, revealing a yellow hoard.

The minister let the Hun take a good long look at the coins and then, with his nod, the lid snapped shut. “This is your opportunity, Edeco, to live like me.”

The Hun slowly shook his head. “If I ride back with that on my saddle Attila will know in an instant what I’ve promised. I’ll be crucified on the Hunuguri Plain.”

“I know this. So here is my plan. Let’s pretend we could not reach agreement. Let me send a Roman ambassador back with you to Attila. Let me send Bigilas here as translator. You will receive enough gifts now that Attila will suspect nothing. Such talks take time, as you well know. You will become close to the tyrant once more. And to guarantee the Roman word, you will suggest that Bigilas slip away and bring back his son as a hostage for Roman honesty. He will not just fetch his boy but your gold. When you see it, and know my word is true, strike. Then come back here and live as a Roman.”

The Hun considered. “It is risky.”

“All reward requires risk.”

He looked around. “And I can have a house like this one?”

“You can have this house, if you like.”

He laughed. “If I get this house, I will make a pasture for my horses!”

Edeco slept in the palace of Chrysaphius two nights while the Roman embassy was organized and then purposely rode in a litter, like a woman, back out of the city. How wormlike to be carried! It was his joke for his Hun companions. Skilla and Onegesh had ignored the villa prepared for them outside the city walls and camped beside it. Now Edeco brought presents to share with them: rich brocades, intricately carved boxes, jars of spice and perfume, jeweled daggers, and coins of gold. The gifts would help buy each a personal retinue of followers back home.

“What did the Romans say?” Onegesh asked.

“Nothing,” Edeco replied. “They want us to take an embassy to Attila and conclude negotiations there.”

Onegesh frowned. “He won’t be happy that we haven’t ended this in Constantinople. Or that we don’t bring back the tribute. He’ll think the Romans are stalling.”

“The Romans are bringing more gifts. And I am bringing something even better.”

“What is that?”

Edeco winked at Skilla, the nephew and lieutenant who had been included in this mission in order to learn. “An assassination plot.”

“What?”

“They want me to kill our king. The girl man actually thinks I’d try it! As if I’d get a hundred paces before being boiled alive! Attila will be very amused by this and then very angry, and will use his outrage to squeeze even more gold out of them.”

Onegesh smiled. “How much are they paying you?”

“Fifty pounds of gold, to start.”

“Fifty pounds! A big haul, for one man. Perhaps you should whet your assassin’s knife, Edeco.”

“Bah. I’ll make more with Attila and live to enjoy it.”

“Why do the Romans think you would betray your king?” Skilla asked.

“Because they would betray theirs. They are maggots who believe in nothing but comfort. When the time comes, they will squish like bugs.”

The turncoat Roman looked out at the high walls, not certain it would be quite so easy. “And the fifty pounds of gold?”

“It is to be brought later, so Attila will not be suspicious.

We will wait until it comes, melt it over a fire, and pour it down the Romans’ lying throats. Then we’ll send it back, in its new human sacks, to Chrysaphius.”

IV

I

A ROMAN EMBASSY

And so this story comes to me. I could hardly believe my good fortune at being chosen to accompany the latest imperial embassy to the court of Attila, king of the Huns, in the distant land of Hunuguri. A life that had seemed over just one day before had been resurrected!

At the callow age of twenty-two, I was certain that I had already experienced all the bitter disappointment that existence allows. My skill at letters and languages seemed to offer no useful future when our family business was faced with ruin after the loss of a trio of wine ships on the rocks of Cyprus. What good are the skills of a trader and scribe when there’s no capital to trade? My dull and stolid brother had won a coveted posting to the army for its Persian campaign, while my own boredom with martial skills robbed me of similar opportunity. Worst of all, the young woman I had given my heart to, lovely Olivia, had rejected me with vague excuses that, reduced to their essence, meant my own prospects were too poor—and her own charms too abun-dant—to tie herself to a future as uncertain as mine. What had happened to undying love and sweet exchange of feelings? Disposed of like stripped kitchen bones, it seemed.

Discarded like an old sandal. I wasn’t just crushed, I was baffled. I’d been flattered by relatives and teachers that I was handsome, strong, bright, and well-spoken. Apparently such attributes don’t matter to women, compared to career prospects and accumulated riches. When I saw Olivia in the company of my rival Decio—a youth so shallow that you could not float a feather in his depth of character and so un-deservedly rich that he could not waste his fortune as fast as his family made it—I felt the wounds of unfair fate might be truly mortal. Certainly I brooded about various means of suicide, revenge, or martyrdom to make Olivia and the world regret their ill-treatment of me. I polished my self-pity until it glowed like an idol.

Then my father summoned me with better news.

“Your curious preoccupation with languages has finally borne fruit,” he told me, not bothering to conceal his relief and surprise. I had taken to learning the way my brother had taken to athletics, and so spoke Greek, Latin, German, and—

with the help of a former Hun captive named Rusticius who had enrolled in the same school—some Hunnish. I enjoyed the strange, gravelly sound of the hard consonants and frequent vowels of that tongue, even though there had been little opportunity to put the language into practice. The Huns did not trade, travel casually, or write; and all I knew of them was exotic rumor. They were like a great and mysterious shadow somewhere beyond our walls, many Byzantines whispering that Attila might be the Antichrist of prophecy.

My father had never seen a practical value in learning barbarian jargon, of course; and, in truth, Olivia’s Tutiline family had been put off by it as well. She viewed my interest in obscure scholarly pursuits as somewhat peculiar, and despite my infatuation I’d been frustrated that she seemed bored by my fascination with the campaigns of Xenophon, my meticulous record of seasonal bird migrations, or my attempts to reconcile the movement of the stars with politics and destiny. “Jonas, you think about such silly things!” But now, unexpectedly, my aptitudes might pay off.

“There’s an embassy going to parley with Attila and the scholar they selected as scribe has taken sick,” my father explained. “Your acquaintance Rusticius heard of your unemployment and got word to an aide of Chrysaphius. You’ll never be the soldier your brother is, but we all know you’re good with letters. They need a scribe and historian willing to be away for some months, and have nominated you. I have negotiated some pay in advance, enough to lease a ship and resuscitate our business.”

“You’re spending my pay already?”

“There’s nothing to buy in Hunuguri, Jonas, let me assure you, but much to see and learn. Rejoice at this opportunity, and put your mind to practical matters for a change. If you perform your duties and keep your head attached to your shoulders, you may catch the eye of the emperor or his chief minister. This could be the making of you, boy.”

The thought of travel on a state mission was exciting.

And the Huns were intriguing, if intimidating. “What am I to do?”

“Write what you observe and stay out of the way.”

My family had emigrated from our home city of Ephesus to the new city of Constantinople a hundred years ago.

Through trade, marriage, and government service, my ancestors had scrabbled their way into the city’s upper classes.

Capricious fortune, however, always prevented our entry into the highest ranks; the Cyprus storm being just the latest example. Now I had opportunity. I would be an aide to the respected Senator Maximinus, the ambassador, and would ride with three Huns and two translators: Rusticius and a man I’d never heard of named Bigilas. We seven men and our train of slaves and bodyguards would journey to the barbarian lands beyond the Danube and meet the notorious Attila. The thought immediately occurred to me that this would provide stories enough to impress any pretty girl. The haughty Olivia would burn with regret at her rejection of me, and other damsels would seek my attention! Yesterday my future seemed bleak. Today I was responsible for helping keep the world’s peace. That evening I prayed to the saints at the Alcove of Mary for my good luck.

Two days later I joined the party outside the city walls, riding my gray mare, Diana, and feeling dashingly equipped, thanks to the anxious and hurried investment of my father. My sword was forged in Syria, my tightly woven wool cape came from Bithynia, my saddlebags were of Anatolian manufacture, my paper was Egyptian, and my ink and pens were the finest in Constantinople. Perhaps I would see great events, he told me, and write a book. I realized he had pride in me, and I basked in unaccustomed approval. “Get us a good ship,” I told him grandly. “I believe our luck has changed, Father.”

How little we understand.

Our route would take us west and north more than five hundred miles, through the Pass of Succi and down the course of the Margus to the Danube, then uncounted miles beyond to find Attila. It was a reverse of the path the Huns had followed in their great raids in 441 and 443, and I was well aware that the territory I was about to traverse was a ruin. That invasion and another, farther east in 447, had devastated Thrace and Moesia and destroyed such cities as Viminacium, Singidunum, Sirmium, Ratiaria, Sardica, Philippopolis, Arca-diopolis, and Marcianopolis. Smaller raids had followed, with poor Axiopolis falling just months ago.

Yet each winter the barbarians retreated like the tide to their grasslands. Constantinople still stood, Attila had re-frained from further attacks after the promise of more tribute, and there was hope for recovery if war could permanently be averted. And why not? There simply was little left in the outlying provinces to easily plunder, and Hun losses had been as heavy as Roman. This embassy might put an end to the insanity of war.

I reported to a villa outside the city walls where the party was being assembled, the Romans sleeping indoors and the Huns outside, like livestock. At first I wondered if this was deliberate insult or clumsy oversight, but the Hun ambassadors, Rusticius explained when he greeted me, had disdained to stay within the walls. “They believe them corrupting. They’re camped by the river, which they won’t wash in because of their fear of water.”

This was my first exposure to their odd beliefs. I peered around the villa corner to get a glimpse of them, but all I saw was the smoke of a cooking fire. The distance was disconcerting. “It seems an odd way to begin a partnership,” I said.

“You and I will be sleeping on the ground with them soon enough.”

I suppose their invisibility was fitting. I’d hoped for some immediate panoply that would give me recognition among my peers in the city, but there had been no announcement of our embassy. This mission, it seemed, was a quiet one.

Chrysaphius was unpopular for the payments to Attila, and no doubt he didn’t want to call attention to further negotiation. Better to wait until we could announce some kind of success.

So I went inside the villa to meet our ambassador. Maximinus, the emperor’s representative, was examining lists of supplies in the courtyard, his head exposed to the sun and bright birds darting among the climbing roses. He was one of those physically blessed men who would rise by appearance even had he lacked ability. His thick white hair and beard, piercing black eyes, high cheekbones, and Grecian nose gave him the look of a marble bust come to life. He combined this handsomeness with the care, caution, and slow gravity of the diplomat, his voice deep and sonorous.

When he was a thousand miles from Constantinople it would be his bearing alone that would convey the might of the Eastern Roman Empire, he knew; and he told me once that an effective diplomat was also an effective actor. Yet Maximinus had the reputation of being able as well as dignified and intelligent as well as connected. His greeting was gracious, without presuming friendliness or warmth. “Ah, yes, Jonas Alabanda. So you are to be our new historian.”

“Secretary, at least.” I gave a modest bow. “I make no pretense at being a Livy or Thucydides.” My father had coached me not to put on airs.

“Sensible modesty. Good history is as much judgment as fact, and you’re too young to make judgments. Still, the success of a mission often hinges as much on how it is reported as what it accomplishes. I trust you intend to be fair?”

“My loyalty is to you and to the emperor, ambassador.

My own fortune depends on our success.”

Maximinus smiled. “A good answer. Maybe you have a talent for diplomacy yourself. We’ll see. Certainly we have a difficult task and need to support one another as much as we can. These are perilous times.”

“Not too perilous, I hope.” It was an attempt at a small joke.

“You’ve lived your life inside the walls of Constantinople. Now you’re about to experience the world outside them.

You will see things that will shock you. The Huns are brave, gracious, cruel, and unpredictable—as clever as foxes and as wild as wolves. And the omens of recent years have not been good, as you know.”

“Omens?”

“Remember the killing winter of seven years ago? The floods six years past, the riots in the city just five years back, the plague a mere four, and the earthquakes just three? God has been trying to tell us something. But what?”

“It has not been a lucky time.” Like everyone, I had heard the speculation from priests and prophets that this wretched string of woes foretold the biblical end of time. Many believed that the Armageddon the Church constantly expected was at last on the horizon and that the Huns represented the Gog and Magog of religious lore. While my hardheaded father derided such fears as superstitious nonsense—“The more ordinary a man, the more certain that his time must be the culmination of history”—the constant assaults on the Empire had given Constantinople an atmosphere of foreboding. One couldn’t help but be affected.

“All that misfortune is combined with Attila’s victories, crippling tribute payments, the loss of Carthage to the Vandals, the failure of the Sicilian expedition to get it back, the quarrels with Persia, and the refusal of the Western Empire to come to our aid. While Marcianopolis was burning, the celebrated general Flavius Aetius preferred to sit in Rome, leaving Moesia to her fate. So much for the promises of Valentinian, emperor of the West!”

“But the earthquake damage has been repaired,” I pointed out with the optimism of youth. “The Huns have retreated. . . .”

“The Huns know our weaknesses better than any nation, which is why you and I can never afford to be weak. Do you understand what I’m saying, Jonas?”

I swallowed and stood straighter. “We represent our people.”

“Exactly! We come not with strength but with the wit to manipulate a people simpler than ourselves. I’m told Attila is a great believer in prophecy, astrology, omens, and magic.

He claims to have found the great sword of the god of war.

He thinks he is invincible until someone convinces him oth-erwise. Our job, with no weapons and no tools, is to do that convincing.”

“But how?”

“By reminding him how long Rome and Nova Roma have prevailed. By reciting how many chieftains have been smashed, like waves, upon the rocks of Rome. It will not be easy. I hear he is aware of the vision of Romulus, and that is just the kind of thing to give barbarians courage.”

“I don’t think I recall the vision of Romulus.” I was less familiar with the legends of the West.

“Pagan nonsense. Still, I suspect Attila is crafty enough to use it to his advantage. The legend is that Romulus, the founder of Rome, had a dream in which he saw twelve vultures over the city. Soothsayers have long contended that each bird represents a century and that Rome will come to an end at the end of the last one.”

“Twelve hundred years? But—”

“Precisely. If our historians have counted correctly from the city’s founding, the prophecy calls for Rome’s end in just three years’ time.”

It was a strange party that set out to reach Attila. Maximinus I have already described. Rusticius was more acquaintance than friend, but an earnest and well-meaning fellow who greeted me warmly. He was in his thirties, widowed by the plague, and, like me, viewed this mission as rare opportunity for advancement. He’d been captured by the Huns while on a trade mission from his native Italy and ransomed by a relative in Constantinople. At school, he had shared tales of his life in the West. Since we were natural allies and I felt somewhat in his debt, we immediately decided to share a tent. Though not particularly quick nor a leader, Rusticius was consistently good-humored and accepted new situations with equanimity.

“Had I not been captured I would not know Hunnish, and had I not known Hunnish, I would not know you or be on this embassy,” he reasoned. “So who but God is to say what is good and what is bad?”

He would become my closest friend on this expedition, humble and steady.

The other translator was unknown to me and somewhat aloof: not from shyness but from self-importance, I judged.

He was an older, shorter, and rather oily Roman named Bigilas, quick to talk and slow to listen, whose manner had the false sincerity of a rug merchant. This fellow, who had been a captive and done some bartering with the Huns, carried himself with an odd presumption of rank. Didn’t he know his place in the world? He even pretended to some secret familiarity with the Hun leader, Edeco, and talked to him like a comrade. Why the Hun tolerated this self-importance, I didn’t know, but the barbarian made no move to put Bigilas in his place. I found his cultivation of mystery irritating, and he in turn ignored me unless to give unsolicited advice about what I should wear or eat. I decided he was one of those people who think constantly of themselves and have no empa-thy for others, and I took mean satisfaction in noticing he had fondness for the grape. This man, I thought early on as I watched him drink, is trouble.

The Huns, when I finally met them, were simply arrogant. They made it clear that in their world a man’s worth was measured by his skill at war and that any Hun had ten times the skill of a Roman. Edeco was proud, crude, and condescending. “In the time it takes Romans to pack a mule, a horse and donkey could produce a new one,” he growled the morning we left.

Onegesh was more urbane, given his background, but left no doubt that he felt he had improved himself by trading the Roman world for this new barbaric one. Captured in battle, he had promptly defected. His choice astonished me, but he told me that he now ranked higher and had grown richer, besides learning he preferred the sky to a roof. “In the Empire, it’s all birth and patron, is it not? In Hunuguri, it’s ability and loyalty. I’d rather be free on the plains than a slave in a palace.”

“But you weren’t a slave.”

“To expectation? Everyone is, in Rome and Constantinople. Besides, I had no rich relatives to ransom me but only my own wits and ability. In the Roman army, I was ignored.

In Hunuguri, I’m listened to.”

Most irritating was the youngest Hun, a warrior named Skilla just a few years older than I. He had arguably the least rank of any of us and yet exemplified Hun pride. I sought him out the day I arrived and found him squatting by their fire, working on the fletching of an arrow and disdaining to even glance at me. I tried a formal but simple greeting.

“Good day to you, companion. I am Jonas, secretary to the senator.”

Skilla kept working on his arrow. “I know who you are.

You’re young to go with the graybeard.”

“As are you to go with your uncle. In my case it’s because I’m skilled with letters and know your language.”

“How do you know Hunnish?”

“I enjoy foreign tongues and Rusticius taught me yours.”

“Soon the whole world will speak the words of the People of the Dawn.”

Well, that seemed presumptuous. “Or we will live as neighbors and share Latin, Greek, and Hunnish together.

Isn’t that the point of this embassy?”

Skilla sighted down the shaft of his arrow. “Is our language all that you know?” There seemed some secret meaning in the question, but I didn’t know what it was.

“I am schooled in many things, like classics and philosophy,” I said carefully.

The Hun looked up for a moment to study my face and then went back to his arrow, as if I’d revealed more than I intended to. “But not horses and weapons.”

This was annoying. “I’ve been trained with arms and animals but been educated in much more. I know music and poetry.”

“No use in war.”

“But of great use in love.” I’d wager he coupled like I’d seen the Huns eat: with too much speed, too little care, and a great belch afterward. “Have the Huns heard of love?”

“The Huns have heard of women, Roman, and I have one of my own without need for music and poetry.”

“You are married?”

“Not yet, but I have Attila’s promise.” He finished bind-ing his quill of feathers to the shaft and allowed a smile. “I have to teach her not to scratch.”

“It sounds like you need the book and lyre, not the bow and arrow.”

“The Hun use books to wipe our asses.”

“Because you can’t read and have no thoughts worth writing down.” Not the most diplomatic rejoinder, I know, but the man’s stubborn ignorance was dismaying.

“Yet you Romans pay tribute to us, the Hun.”

That was true enough, and it was unclear how this embassy would change that. I finally walked away, wondering what would be accomplished.

V

I

A TEST OF HORSES

We set out on horseback, the slaves and pack mules extending the total caravan to fifteen people and thirty animals. This was considered modest for an imperial embassy, but again, our mission was a quiet one. We would of necessity be camping. The Roman system of mansionis, or inns, located twenty miles apart, had been abandoned after the devastation of the recent wars, so we would set our own ambitious pace, averaging twenty-five miles per day. The Huns would have moved faster on their own, but our Roman baggage train, with its gifts and food, could not move faster.

“You travel so slowly that you need even more food and fodder, which makes you slower yet, and which requires yet more supplies. It is insane,” Edeco pronounced.

“We could leave the presents behind,” Maximinus said mildly.

“No, no,” the Hun muttered. “We will ride like Romans, and I will catch up on my sleep.”

It was late spring, the afternoons hot and the mornings cool; and the forests and meadows of Thrace were green and in high flower. Here, close to Constantinople, people had returned to their farms after the gallop of armies and there was a semblance of normality to the landscape. Cattle grazed, oxen plowed, grain was already high, and we would period-ically thread through flocks of sheep or gaggles of geese.

When we rode farther north and west, Maximinus warned me, the effect of the Hun raids would be more apparent.

“The country will become increasingly wild. Bears and wolves have returned to valleys they haven’t roamed in generations—and stranger things, too, it is claimed. We live in evil times.”

“I would like to see a wild bear.” I’d seen only chained ones in the arena.

“I’d like to see peace and resettled farmers.”

While I had journeyed as far as Athens by sea, this kind of expedition was entirely new to me. I was unaccustomed to sleeping in a tent, being exposed to the weather, and riding my mare for so long at a time. The first days my thighs and butt were on fire; and while I stoically tried to hide my stiffness, I fooled no one. Yet I also felt a rare freedom. For most of my life my days had been carefully scheduled and my future plotted. Now my future was as open as the sky and horizon.

As the comforting walls of Constantinople fell behind, I studied the young Hun warrior who had taunted me. Skilla rode as if one with his horse like a centaur, his mount a bay gelding and his saddle made of wood and leather softened with sheep’s fat. His bow, like all those of the Huns, was that secret combination of wood, sinew, and bone, short but curved backward at the ends, that when pulled made them the terror of the world. Called reflex bows for the added power the bend gave them, they were short enough to be fired from a horse and yet uncannily accurate. The arrows could fly three hundred paces and kill easily at one hundred and fifty. The bow rode in a saddle holster to the Hun’s right, next to a whip to lash his pony’s flanks. A sword hung from a scabbard on his left, so it could be drawn horizontally by the right arm. A quiver of twenty arrows rode on the man’s back. On his saddle was a lariat, used by the barbarians to catch errant livestock and immobilize enemies so they could be enslaved. Unlike Edeco’s mail, purchased or stolen from some enemy, Skilla wore a light Asian cuirass of bony scales, cut from the hooves of dead horses and layered like the skin of a dragon or fish. While seeming dangerously light, it was also cool compared to Roman mail or breastplate. He had soft leather boots over his trousers and a con-ical wool cap he wore in the chill of the evening when we camped, but by day his head was often bare, his long black hair tied back like the tail of a horse. He was clean shaven and not yet ritually scarred like Edeco, and in fact boasted a somewhat noble and handsome look, his cheekbones high and his eyes black and shiny, like stones in a river. His cos-tume was by no means typical because there was no typical barbarian dress. Onegesh wore a strange mix of Roman clothes and Hunnish fur, and Edeco seemed a vain mix of all nations.

My own weaponry was mostly packed away. I had brought the full shirt of mail, helmet, shield, and heavy spear that I had used for the basic military training all men of my class received, as well as my new sword. But only the latter was kept at my side. The rest seemed too heavy for a peace party, so it was bundled on one of the animals. My mare, Diana, bore a padded Roman saddle that borrowed from Hun design, crowned front and back by wood ridges to hold me in place, my legs dangling free. I wore a fine woolen tunic of yellow with blue borders that I had purchased in the forum of Philadelphion, sturdy cavalry trousers, and a fine leather baldric studded with gold coins that held an ivory-handled dagger. A felt skullcap gave me some protection from the sun, and my cape was tied behind my saddle.

I was of approximately the same height and proportion as Skilla, my Greek complexion dark but not as dark as his. I rocked more than he did as Diana clopped down the road, not as at ease on a horse. But then he was useless in a library.

The early part of the journey was uneventful as our group established a pace and learned one another’s habits. We camped in early evening, the Romans pitching tents and the Huns sleeping under the stars. I found the nights unaccustomedly dark—I was used to the city, of course—and the ground damp and hard under my sheepskin. I wakened frequently to the sounds of the night and stumbled clumsily when I got up to urinate. When I went out of our tent the first night I saw that the Huns had simply rolled themselves in their cloaks and slept with their heads against their wooden saddles, using for a pillow the same saddle blanket that reeked of horse. From each cloak the hilt of a sword pro-truded, and near the shoulder their bow and arrows were nestled as carefully as their heads. When I passed near Edeco, he jerked up and then, recognizing me, sank again in dismissal.

“What do they do when it rains?” I whispered to Rusticius once as we lay side by side, comparing impressions.

“Get wet, like their horses.”

Each dawn we set out again, my own body still tired from a restless night. And so began a daily rhythm of hourly pauses, a noon meal, and camp again before sunset, mile succeeding endless mile.

Periodically Skilla became bored with this routine and galloped ahead for amusement, sometimes looping around and coming down at us from a nearby hill, yipping as if charging.

Another time, he dropped back to study me. Eventually his stare became a challenge as he searched for diversion.

“You ride a mare,” the Hun said.

Quite the observation. “Yes.”

“No Hun would ride a mare.”

“Why not? You ride a gelding. Their manners are similar.” Castrating stallions was a basic skill in successfully running horse herds, I knew.

“They are not the same. Mares are for milking.”

I had heard the Huns fermented the milk to purify it and drank it like wine, and I had smelled them doing so. Kumiss, they called it. By reputation it was awful stuff, as rancid as their trousers. “We have cows and goats for that. Mares have just as good endurance, and better character, than geldings.”

Skilla looked at Diana critically. “Your horse is big but fat, like a woman. All Roman horses seem fat.”

Because all Hun horses looked half starved, I thought, ridden hard and forced to forage. “She’s simply muscular.

She’s a barb, with some Arabian. If I could afford a pure Arabian all you’d see is her tail this whole trip.” It was time to return some disdain. “Your steppe horse looks sized for a boy and skinny enough to go to the knacker.”

“His name is Drilca, which means spear, and our ponies have made us master.” He grinned. “Do you want to race, Roman?”

I considered. This at least would break the monotony of travel, and I had great confidence in Diana. Nor was I as weighted with weapons. “To the next milepost?”

“To our next camping place. Edeco! How far is that?”

The older Hun, riding nearby, grunted. “Still half a dozen miles.”

“How about it, Roman? You are carrying less than me.

Let’s see if this mare of yours can keep up with my pony.”

I judged the barbarian’s small, shaggy horse. “For a gold solidus?”

The Hun whooped. “Done!” And without warning he kicked his horse and was off.

Game now, I shouted “Yah!” and set off in pursuit. It was time to put this young Hun in his place. With Diana’s longer stride we should catch and pass Skilla’s mount easily.

Yet long after we left the main party far behind, the Hun remained elusively ahead. After a brief gallop the barbarian’s horse settled into a sustainable canter, Skilla leaning forward in his saddle, legs cocked easily, his hair like a banner in the wind. I put Diana into her own lope to conserve her energy, and yet the Hun’s smaller horse seemed to eat ground with an enviable efficiency that my own mare lacked. Despite Diana’s longer stride, Drilca kept steadily in front. A mile passed, then two, then three. We pounded past farm carts, couriers, peddlers, and pilgrims. They stared as we passed, Hun and Roman linked.

We entered a copse along a river bottom where the lane twisted through the trees, obscuring the view ahead. I could hear Skilla’s mount break into a gallop to lengthen his lead.

Determined and increasingly anxious, I did the same, riding hard past the poplar and beech. Yet at wood’s end I seemed entirely alone. Skilla had already passed over the rise ahead.

Angry now, I kicked Diana into a dead run. I didn’t want Rome to be beaten! We pounded in a blur, gravel flying, and after another mile I had the Hun in sight again. Skilla’s horse had once more settled into a rhythmic pace and so now I was gaining, the drum of hoofbeats forcing Skilla to look behind.

Yet the Hun’s horse didn’t mimic Diana’s gallop, staying instead in his easy canter. Diana pulled abreast . . . and then the Hun grinned and kicked. We raced together now, neck and neck, our mounts galloping along the ancient road, but my horse began to fade. Diana was losing her wind. I could feel her straining. Not wanting to harm her, I reluctantly let her fall back again, Skilla’s dust swirling over us. Drilca’s tail became a taunt, its hooves a receding blur. Beaten!

I slowed and glumly patted my horse’s neck. “Not your fault, girl. Your rider’s.”

At a small stream where we planned to camp, Skilla was lounging in the grass.

“I told you she’s for milking.”

Drilca was tired, too, I saw, its head down. In war, I knew, Skilla would switch to a new mount. Each warrior took four or five horses with him on campaign. Here the lack of endurance was more apparent.

“My mare has more stamina.”

“Does she? I think she’s longing for her stable. Drilca is more at home out here under the sky, eating anything, bearing me anywhere.”

I flipped him the solidus. “Then race me for two of these tomorrow.”

Skilla caught it. “Done! If your purse gets light enough, maybe the pair of you can go faster. By then I’ll have enough coin to wed.”

“To a woman who scratches you.”

He shrugged. “She’ll think twice about scratching when I return from Constantinople. I am bringing presents! Her name is Ilana, she is the most beautiful woman in Attila’s camp, and I saved her life.”

*

*

*

That night I brushed my mount down, checked her hooves, and went back to the baggage train to fetch oats I had packed in Constantinople. “A Hun can’t feed what he can’t grow,” I murmured as she ate. “His horse can’t draw on strength it doesn’t have.”

Skilla boasted of the day’s victory to the others around our fire that night. “Tomorrow, he promises me two gold coins! By the time we reach Attila, I’ll be rich!”

“Today we ran your race,” I said. “Tomorrow we run mine. Not a sprint but endurance: whoever goes farthest between sunrise and sunset.”

“That’s a fool’s race, Roman. A Hun can cover a hundred miles in a day.”

“In your country. Let’s see it in mine.”

So Skilla and I set out at dawn, the others in the party making their own bets and cheering us as we departed, joking about the frisky foolishness of young men. The Rhodope Mountains were to the left and Philippopolis ahead. There I first encountered Attila’s destruction. We skirted the devastated city at mid-morning; and while Skilla scarcely glanced at it, I was stunned at the extent of the ruin. The roofless me-tropolis looked like a torn honeycomb, open to the rains.

Grass grew in the streets, and only a few priests and shep-herds resided around a church the barbarians had somehow spared. The surrounding fields had gone to weeds, and the few villagers peered from huts like kittens from a den.

I had to beat the Huns who had done this.

The road crossed the Hebrus River on an arched stone bridge, crudely repaired by the locals, and became rougher, side hilling along the river’s valley. With the rising terrain, my confidence grew. Still we kept within sight of each other: sometimes the Hun riding ahead, and sometimes my determined mount passing him. Neither of us stopped for lunch, eating in the saddle. In the early afternoon we crossed the river again and then the land began to steepen as the road climbed toward the Pass of Succi.

Skilla cursed at the grade.

His lighter pony could keep an easy pace on level ground.

On a slope its gait was less even and the horse’s lighter muscles and lungs began to strain. My mare was bigger in relation to her rider, her lungs giving her a reserve of air and her oats giving her a store of energy. As we climbed, the Hun’s gelding began to slip behind. When it lost sight of Diana, it slowed even more.

The sun was setting over a sea of blue mountains when I reined in at the crest of the pass. The rest of the party wouldn’t make it this far today and it would be cold to wait for them at the summit, but I didn’t care. I had ridden a smarter race.

Skilla finally came up at dusk, his horse looking ragged, as morose in defeat as he was jubilant in victory. “If not for the mountains, I would have beaten you.”

“If not for the sea, I could walk to Crete.” I held out my hand. “Two solidi, Hun. Now you must pay tribute to me.”

It was such a bold insult that for a moment Skilla seemed ready to balk. Yet the Huns had their own sense of fairness, part of which was acknowledgment of debt. Grudgingly, the Hun handed over the coins. “Tomorrow again?”

“No. We’ll get too far ahead of the others and kill our horses.” I tossed a coin back. “We each won one day. Now we’re even.” It seemed the diplomatic thing to do.

The Hun contemplated the coin for a moment, embarrassed at the charity, and then cocked his arm and hurled it away into the dark.

“A good race, Roman.” He tried to smile but it was a grimace. “Someday, perhaps, we will race for real, and then—

no matter how long your lead—I will catch you and kill you.”

VI

I

THE NEW KING

OF CARTHAGE

How far the fight for justice has taken me, thought the Greek doctor Eudoxius.

It was dazzling noon at conquered Carthage on the shore of North Africa, and the rebel physician found himself in a world of bizarre color. Marble and stucco shimmered like snow. Arcades and antechambers were hollows of dark shadow. The Mediterranean was as blue as the cloak of the Virgin, and the sands shone as blond as a Saxon’s hair. So different from the hues of Gaul and Hunuguri! How odd to come to this capital that had been destroyed by the Roman Republic so many centuries ago, rebuilt by the Roman Empire, and now captured and occupied by Vandals—a people who had originated in gray lands of snow and fog. Down from the cold the tribe had come, carving like a knife through the Western Empire for decade after decade. Finally they marched through Hispana to the Pillars of Hercules and learned to be sailors, and then they seized the warm and fecund granary of Africa, the capital of which was Carthage.

The Vandals, once disdained as hapless barbarians, now rested their boots on the throat of Rome.

As if to fit their sunny new kingdom, King Gaiseric’s rude and chaotic court was a rainbow of recruited human color, of blond Vandal and red-headed Goth, black Ethiopian and brown Berber, swarthy Hun and bronzed Roman. All these opportunists had been collected in the migratory conquest and now roosted in a half-deserted and decaying city that no one bothered to keep up anymore. Carthage’s palaces had become barracks, its kitchens sties; its aqueducts were falling into disrepair, and its roads were buckling from the assault of sun and rain. There were no engineers left, no scholars, no priests, no astronomers, and no philosophers.

All had been slain or fled, and the schools had closed. The barbarians paid no money to maintain them. There was just Gaiseric’s powerful army and navy, foraging on the carcasses of the countries they conquered like a tide of ants and wondering how soon they must resume their ravaging march.

Eudoxius believed he knew the answer. Ignorant, arrogant, and illiterate these Vandals might be, but they had seized Sicily and could almost throw stones at Italy itself. As a result, Rome was in the lion’s jaw. The top of the mouth was represented by the empire of Attila, occupying the roof of Europe. The bottom was Gaiseric, the conqueror of north-western Africa. Now the two rulers merely had to be convinced to snap their jaws shut in unison and the oppressive fragment of empire left between them would at last disappear. With it would go the greedy landlords, the heartless slave traders, the pompous aristocrats, the cruel tax collectors, and the corrupt priests who lived like lice on the body of the poor. Had not the Christ himself condemned such leeches? Ever since Eudoxius had realized how the world truly worked—that the strong stole from the weak—he had been determined to change it. Rome was a cancer, and from its excision would rise a better world. These ignorant barbarians would be his unwitting tool to forge a new paradise.

The Greek plied the physician’s trade only when hunger and the lack of a patron made it necessary. Medicine was a messy business replete with failure and blame, and Eudoxius didn’t really like to work. His real passion was politics, and he imagined himself the liberator of the vast peasantry that Rome had oppressed for centuries. In the early days the Romans had exemplified a golden age of yeoman farmers and free men, the Greek believed, banding together to triumph through virtue as well as courage. But this Republican brotherhood had gradually been replaced by tyranny and sloth and the worst kinds of taxes, slavery, tenant farming, and compulsory military service. In his youth, Eudoxius had preached reform, just as the Lord Jesus had preached his own kingdom in the hills of Judea, but his Greek neighbors jeered at him, too ignorant to understand their own demo-cratic history. So after migrating to northeastern Gaul, where the inhabitants were simpler and less skeptical, he had helped organize an uprising of the Bagaudae tribe against the Romans. His dream was to create a kingdom of free men, with him at its head! Then the great and ruthless General Flavius Aetius had led his mongrel mix of Roman soldiers and barbarian mercenaries against the rebellion, slaughtering the Bagaudae and forcing Eudoxius to flee to Attila. How humiliating! The doctor had been forced to pledge fealty to the worst tyrant of all, the king of the Huns.

At first Eudoxius was in despair. Then he realized that this must all be God’s plan and that he had been given an opportunity to create alliance. How shrewd were the mysterious ways of the Almighty! The doctor began to whisper in Attila’s ear.

Aetius! The very name was a curse. Romans hailed a man whom Eudoxius considered to be a toad for Emperor Valentinian and his mother, Placidia, a scheming and slippery general who had been sent as a hostage to the Huns in his youth, learned their language, and then hired the Huns to annihilate his ever-changing enemies. Aetius represented the whirlpool of alliance, betrayal, and assault that passed for imperial policy. For decades the wily general had played one tribe against another to hold the rotten toga of Rome together. As long as Aetius existed, Rome existed. And as long as Rome existed there could be no true democracy: nothing, at least, like the great civilization of ancestral Athens. But now Attila had united the Huns, and Gaiseric had seized Carthage and Sicily. It was time for the lion’s final bite.

A hairy red giant of a Vandal lieutenant summoned Eudoxius inside for his audience, so he left the blinding courtyard for the cool darkness of its throne room. At first he could barely see, smelling instead the animal rankness of a crude barbarian court. There was the sweat of rarely washed bodies; the stink of the discarded food that the slovenly Vandals could not bring themselves to clean away; the thick incense Gaiseric burned to mask the smells; the tang of sword oil; and the musk of public, shameless sex. Gaiseric’s captains were sprawled on heaps of stolen carpets and lion skins. Their women lolled with them, some as pale as snow and others as black as ebony, curled like satiated cats, many with breasts and hips bare and one, snoring, with her legs splayed so obscenely that Eudoxius could scarcely believe these savages had converted even to the heretical Arian creed. Of course, Arians were false Christians, believing the Son inferior to the Father, but worse than this they prayed indifferently while slaying with ferocious intent, mixing Christian creed with pagan superstition. They were, in sum, savages, as apt to quail at thunder as they were to charge a Roman battle line. But these crude warriors were the necessary means to his noble end. His scheme was to let legionary and barbarian destroy each other in a single great battle until none were left, and then build after the slaughter.

Taking breath through his mouth to avoid the smell, Eudoxius made his way to the dim end of the hall.

“You come from Attila.” It was Gaiseric, sixty years old now but still tall and powerful, seated on a gilded throne. His hair and beard were like a lion’s mane, and his arms had the thickness of a bear’s. The Vandal king sat upright and watchful. There were no women at his side. Two guards flanked him instead, one a Nubian and the other a pale and tattooed Pict. Gaiseric himself peered with bright, piercing blue eyes as out of place in this climate as ice. How far his people had marched! The Vandal king wore silver chain mail over captured Roman linens, as if expecting an attack at any moment, and a circlet of gold rested on his brow. A dagger was on his belt and a long sword and spear leaned on the wall behind him. He’d been lame since being thrown from a horse as a youth, and his lack of mobility and a life of enemies had made him cautious of attack.

Eudoxius bowed, his robes a curtain around his feet and his gray beard brushing his chest, gesturing with his hand at waist level in the manner of the East. “I come from your Hun brothers, great Gaiseric.”

“The Huns are not my brothers.”

“Aren’t they?” Eudoxius boldly came closer. “Don’t both of your kingdoms fight Rome? Are not both of your treasur-ies hungry for its gold? And is the accession of Attila and your own capture of Carthage not a sign from God, or all the gods, that the time has come for the world to be ruled anew?

I have come with Attila’s blessing, Gaiseric, to inquire about an alliance. The West has yet to feel Attila’s wrath, but he is tempted by the opportunities there. Aetius is a formidable enemy, but only if he has one battle to fight at a time. Were Attila to attack Gaul at the same time the Vandals attacked Italy from the south, no Roman combination could stand before us.”

Gaiseric brooded quietly for a while, considering the vast geographies that would be involved. “That is an ambitious plan.”

“It is a logical plan. Rome prevails only by fighting the tribes and nations of the barbarians separately or by shrewdly pitting one against the other. The ministers in Ravenna laugh at how they manipulate their enemies, Gaiseric. I am of their world, and I have seen it. But were Hun and Vandal to march together, with Gepid and Scuri, Pict and Berber, then perhaps the man I see before me would be the next emperor.”

This discussion was made in the earshot of Gaiseric’s followers, in the open manner of barbarians who insisted on hearing a plan before following it. These final words made his lieutenants shout and hoot in agreement, banging goblets and daggers against the marble floors and roaring at the idea of ultimate triumph. Their king as emperor of Rome! But Gaiseric himself was quiet, his eyes probing, careful not to promise too much.

“I as emperor, or Attila?”

“Co-emperors, perhaps, on the model of the Romans.”

“Humph.” Gaiseric’s fingers tapped on the arm of his throne. “Why is it you who have come with this proposition, physician? Why aren’t you out lancing boils or brewing potions?”

“I’ve fought Aetius and his minions in eastern Gaul and seen poor men, whose only hope was to be free, slain by Roman tyranny. I barely escaped with my life and sought refuge with Attila, but I’ve never forgotten my people. Am I a mere doctor? Yes, but I minister to men’s health by being their political champion as well as their physician. My role is to see that you and Attila understand how your interests coincide with all good men.”

“You have a smooth tongue. Yet this Aetius is your enemy, not mine.”

Here Eudoxius nodded, having anticipated this very objection. “As Theodoric and the Visigoths are your enemies, not mine.”

Now the Vandals fell silent, as if a cloud had passed before the sun. Romans were targets, sheep to be harvested.

But the rival Visigoths who had settled in southwestern Gaul were a deeper and more menacing opponent, a barbarian power as dangerous as their own. Here was rivalry that went back generations, two Germanic tribes with a long history of feuds. It was to a Visigoth that the Roman empress Placidia had once been wed, and it was the Visigoths who haughtily claimed to be more civilized as a result: as if they were better than the Vandals!

At one point King Gaiseric tried to heal the breach by having his son marry King Theodoric’s daughter, to join the tribes with blood. But when the Roman emperor Valentinian later offered the boy his own daughter instead—clearly a more important and prestigious marriage—Gaiseric had tried to send the Vandal bride, a princess named Berta, back to her father in Gaul.

It was then that trouble truly started. The haughty Visigoths had refused to countenance the divorce of their already married Berta to make room for a new Roman wife.

But the Roman princess, a Christian, wouldn’t agree to polygamy. Visigothic refusal had been followed by recriminations, and recriminations by insult, and finally in a burst of drunken fury Gaiseric himself had slit the nose and ears of Berta and sent her in humiliation back to her father. Ever since, his dreams had been tormented by the possible vengeance of Theodoric: War with the Visigoths was what he feared above all else. “Do not mention those pig droppings in my court,” he now growled uneasily.

“It is the land of the Visigoths that Attila covets,” Eudoxius said. “It is Theodoric who is the only hope of Aetius.

Pledge yourself to this war, Gaiseric, and your most hated enemy becomes Attila’s enemy. Pledge yourself against Rome, and the Huns march against Theodoric. Even if he does not destroy the Visigoths Attila will surely wound them. Meanwhile, you can have Italy. But before Attila can march he must know you will distract the Romans in the south. That is the alliance that will benefit us all.”

“When will Attila march?”

Eudoxius shrugged. “He is waiting for portents and signs, including a sign from you. Your word alone may help him to finally make up his mind. Can I carry word back of agreement?”

Gaiseric pondered a moment more, considering how he could pit Hun and Roman and Visigoth against one another and then march in to pick up the pieces. The doctor and his miserable peasants would be trampled by them all, he knew, but wasn’t that how things were? The weak always gave way to the strong, and the foolish—like this doctor—were there to be used by the wise. How could he use him best? Finally he stood, swaying on his lame foot. “I am going to offer your king the jeweled dagger that I took from the mangled body of the Roman general Ausonius as proof of my word,”

he pronounced. “All men know that this is my favorite knife.

Give it to your new king, and tell the great Attila that if the Romans and Visigoths are his enemies, then I am his friend!”

His captains and their women roared in acclamation of this pledge, banging and screaming; and to Eudoxius it was the sweet sound of wolves, howling at the moon. He retreated with a grateful bow, unable to suppress his jubilant smile, and hurried to take ship with his news.

Later that evening, King Gaiseric drank with his men out in the warm courtyard, the desert they had come so far to conquer glittering under a shroud of stars. “We have accomplished two things this day, my chiefs,” he confided when drunk enough. “First, we have encouraged Attila to destroy Theodoric before Theodoric can destroy us. And second, I have gotten rid of that cursed knife I took from the Roman and cut that bitch of a Visigoth princess with. Every time I have worn it since then, I’ve had bad luck. Let this idiot of a doctor take it to Attila and see if they do any better.”

VII

I

A RUINED CITY

Ifirst truly realized what kind of a world I was journeying into when our Roman embassy camped on the banks of the Nisava River, across from the sacked city of Naissus.

The day was late, the sun already gone behind the mountains, and in the dimness it was possible to imagine that the roofless walls still represented a thriving Roman provincial city of fifty thousand people, waiting until the last possible minute to light their lamps. But as dusk deepened, no lamps shone. Instead, birds funneled down in somber spirals to roost in new nests that had been built in empty markets, the-aters, baths, and brothels. Bats swirled out from abandoned cellars. The city’s stones were shaggy with vines and brambles, and the desolation seemed somber and ominous.

Our camping place became even grimmer when we began to pitch our tents. It was dusk as I have said, difficult to see the ground, and when one of our slaves bent to tie a rope to what appeared to be a brown and weathered root, the peg burst upward from the soil as if rotten. The annoyed slave bent to retrieve the stick and throw it away in disgust, but as he straightened and cocked his arm, he suddenly looked in startled recognition and dropped it as if it were hot.

“Lord Jesus!” He began to back away.

“What’s wrong?”

The man crossed himself.

Sensing what it must be, I bent. The stem was a bone, I confirmed, the size and shape clearly human. A gray and brown femur, now jagged at one edge and spotted with lichen. I glanced about, my skin prickling. The displacement of earth had revealed the knobs of other bones and that what had appeared to be a half-buried rock in the twilight was in fact the dome of a skull. How rarely we look down! Now my eyes began sweeping the ground of the riverbank where we were making camp. There were bones everywhere, and what had seemed a shoal of weathered sticks left by a flooding current was in fact a litter of exposed human remains. Sight-less sockets, stuffed with dirt, looked blankly at the sky.

Ribs held together by persistent sinews of dried flesh curled from the soil like reaching fingers.

I hurried to the senator. “We’re in some kind of grave-yard.”

“Graveyard?” asked Maximinus.

“Or battlefield. Look. There are bones everywhere.”

We Romans began scuffling at the soil in wonder, crying out at each discovery and jumping when a crunch told us we had stepped on another fragment of the dead. The slaves joined in the dismayed clamor, and soon the camp was in an uproar. Tents that were being raised abruptly deflated, fires went unlit, and picketed horses whinnied nervously at the human disarray. Each skeleton brought a fresh shout of horror.

Edeco strode over in annoyance, kicking aside the de-nuded limbs with his boots as if they were autumn litter.

“Why aren’t you camping, Romans?”

“We’re in a boneyard,” Maximinus said. “Some massacre from Naissus.”

The Hun looked down at the remains, then looked around in sudden recognition. “I remember this place. The Romans fled like sheep, many swimming the river. We crossed ahead and waited for them here. If the city had submitted, they might have had a chance, but they had killed some of our warriors and so no mercy could be shown.” He turned, squinting downriver, and pointed to some feature in the gloom. “I think we killed them from here to there.”

His voice carried no shame, no remorse, not even the pride of victory. He recounted the slaughter as if recalling a business transaction.

Maximinus’s voice was thick. “For the Savior’s sake, then why did we camp here? Have you no decency? We must move at once.”

“Why? They are dead, and we will be, too, someday. All of us will be bones sooner or later. A bone is a bone, no different here than in a kitchen or waste yard. It turns to dust.

The whole world is bone, I suspect.”

The diplomat strained for patience. “These are our people, Edeco. We must move the camp out of respect for their remains. We should come back tomorrow to bury and sanc-tify these poor victims.”

“Attila gives no time for that.”

“There are too many, senator,” added Bigilas, who was translating the exchange.

Maximinus looked gloomily into the dark. “Then we must at least change our camping place. There are ghosts here.”

“Ghosts?”

“Can’t you feel the spirits?”

The Hun scowled, but his superstition showed. We walked half a mile to get out of the killing field, stopping in the lee of a ruined and abandoned Roman villa. The Huns seemed surprised and subdued by our reaction, as if upset that their companions had taken the battlefield so badly.

Death was simply the result of war, and war itself was life.

Since the Hun kit was simple—a cloak to wrap themselves in on the ground—their own move was uncomplicated. We Romans once more laboriously erected our canvas against the starry sky while the unoccupied barbarians built a large fire in the ruins of the house to roast some meat. The flames seemed to push back the haunting. “Come, eat with us, Romans,” the Roman turncoat Onegesh called, “and drink, too. Don’t dwell on what can’t be undone. Think of our mission to Attila and peace in the future!”

We sat in the roofless triclinium, its owners likely lying somewhere nearby. While the walls reflected some of the fire’s light and heat, the habitation was sad. Its bright plaster murals were mildewed and peeling, cherubic gods and bright peacocks glazed with the dirt of neglect. The mosaic floor displaying a feast of Bacchus was obscured by litter.

Weeds had erupted through the pavers of the courtyard, and its pool was thick with scum. More vegetation crowded the outer walls, and I had the curious feeling that the house was slowly sinking back into the earth, like bones into soil. The Huns had started the flames with broken furniture and were using the detritus of the dwelling to keep it fueled, turning to ash the last evidence that these dead had ever truly lived here. To my dismay, I saw that Edeco was even feeding half-ruined books and scrolls into the fire. The chieftain glanced at some before throwing them in, but often held them sideways or upside down. It was obvious he couldn’t read.

“Don’t burn those!” I exclaimed.

“Relax. There’s no one left to read them.”

“That’s a thousand years of knowledge and history!”

“What good did it do them in the end?” He threw another into the flames.

We sat uneasily. “By God, even I need a drink,” muttered the normally abstentious Maximinus. “I’ve never seen a boneyard like that.” He took his wine unwatered, gulping the first cup. Bigilas, of course, was already ahead of him. The Huns were drinking kumiss and the heady German beer, kamon.

“Only two times do you see so many together,” Edeco said, “when they fight like cornered bears and when they flee like sheep. These were sheep, dead in their own hearts before we slew them. It was their fault. They should have surrendered.”

“If you’d stayed in your own country they all would have lived,” the senator grumbled.

“The People of the Dawn have no country. We follow the sun, go where we please, settle where we wish, and take what we need. These dead tarried to cut and rob the earth, and the gods don’t like that. It’s not that we came but that the Romans stayed too long. It isn’t right for men to nest and dig. Now they will stay here forever.”

“I hope you are as philosophical about your own death.”

Bigilas stumbled on the word philosophical as he translated and looked to Maximinus for a substitute. “Thoughtful,” the senator supplied.

Edeco laughed. “Who cares what I will think! I will be dead!”

“But you destroy what you could seize,” Maximinus tried to reason. “You burn what you could live in and kill those you could enslave. You take once, yes, but if you showed mercy and governed the people you conquer, you could live in leisure.”

“Like you Romans.”

“Yes, like us Romans.”

“If we lived like you do we would rule until we became fat, like the people who lived here, and then someone else would do to us what we did to them. No, better to stay on our horses, ride, and keep strong. Who cares that this city is gone? There are many, many cities.”

“But what happens when you’ve raided everything, burned it all, and nothing is left?”

The Hun shook his head. “There are many cities. I will be dead long before then, and like those bones.”

At length the drink began to numb us and lighten the Huns. The conversation slowly turned to other things. Both nations had sacked cities, of course. Rome had prevailed by its own ruthlessness, we knew. In the end, it was only the threat of Roman arms that gave our own embassy any meaning. So it did no good to brood on the fate of Naissus, just as Edeco had said. As they became drunker, the Huns began boasting of their mighty home camp and the deeds of their king, who they said had no fear, no greed, and no guile. Attila lived simply so his followers could become rich, fought bravely so his women could know peace, judged harshly so his warriors could live in harmony, talked to high and low alike, welcomed freed slaves into his armies, and led his men from the front rank.

“So let us drink to both our kings,” Edeco proposed, slurring his words, “ours on horseback and yours behind his walls.” The company hoisted their cups.

“To our rulers!” Maximinus cried.

Only Bigilas, who had been drinking steadily and who had remained uncharacteristically dour and quiet, neglected to join the toast.

“You won’t drink to our kings, translator?” the Hun chieftain challenged. The shadows of his facial scars were lit so that his visage seemed streaked with paint.

“I will drink to Attila alone,” Bigilas said with sudden belligerence, “even though his Huns killed family I once had here. Or to Theodosius alone. But it seems to me blasphemy for my comrades to raise their cups to both together when all know that the emperor of Rome is a god and Attila is only a man.”

The group immediately fell silent. Edeco looked at Bigilas in disbelief.

“Let’s not pretend a tent and a palace are the same,” Bigilas went on doggedly. “Or Rome and Hunuguri.”

“You insult our king? The most powerful man in the world?”

“I insult no one. I speak only the truth when I say no mere man is the equal of the emperor of Rome. One is mortal, one is divine. This is common sense.”

“I will show you equality!” cried an angry Skilla, hurling his wine cup into a corner where it clanged, and standing to unsheathe his sword. “The equality of the grave!”

The other Huns sprang up and drew their weapons as well. We Romans stood awkwardly, armed with nothing but the daggers we had been using to eat with. The barbarians looked murderous and could slay us in an instant, as casually as they had slain the people of Naissus. Bigilas stumbled backward. His drink-benumbed brain had finally caught up with his mouth and he realized he had risked us all.

“You fool,” Maximinus hissed.

“I only said the truth,” he mumbled truculently.

“A truth that could get us stabbed or crucified.”

“When Attila speaks, the earth trembles,” Edeco growled ominously. “Perhaps it is time you trembled yourselves, Romans, and joined your brethren on the riverbank there.” Any pretense of genial debate was gone. I realized that our complaints about the slaughter on the riverbank had gnawed at the Huns. Was there guilt there after all? Now the tension had become manifest.

Bigilas looked uncertain whether to beg or flee. His mouth opened and shut uselessly.

Rusticius decided to come to the defense of his fellow translator, even though I knew he could hardly stand the man’s pretensions. “No true Roman trembles, any more than any true Hun,” Rusticius tried. “You are brave, Edeco, with your head full of drink and your sword at hand, while Bigilas and the rest of us are defenseless.”

The Hun grinned evilly. “Then fill your hands.”

“I’ll fill them when we have a chance, not to give you another excuse for slaughter like your massacre on the riverbank.” Rusticius looked stubborn, and I was taken aback by his courage. I hadn’t seen this side of him before.

“Don’t test me, boy.”

“I’m no boy, and no true man threatens murder and pretends it is combat.”

“For God’s sake,” Maximinus groaned, fearful his mission was about to end before it had properly started. Edeco’s knuckles were white on the hilt of his sword. Something had to be done.

“You misunderstood our companions.” I spoke up, my voice sounding even to my own ears as barely more than a pathetic squeak. As the youngest and least-threatening traveler, perhaps I could smooth things over. Gulping, I found my normal voice. “Our translator Bigilas doesn’t assemble his words well when he’s had too much to drink, as all know.

He meant to honor Attila, because your king has achieved as much as a mortal as our emperor has with divine powers. He meant a compliment, not an insult, Edeco.”

“Nonsense. The young Roman is trying to save himself,”

sneered Skilla.

“I am trying to save this embassy.”

There was a long silence as the Huns weighed whether to accept this dubious excuse. If they slew us, both Attila and Chrysaphius would want to know why. “Is this so?” Edeco asked Bigilas.

He looked confused and nervous, glancing from me to the chieftain.

“Answer him, you idiot,” Maximinus muttered.

“Yes,” he finally said. “Yes, please, I meant no harm. All know how powerful Attila is.”

“And no Roman could detract from that,” Maximinus added. “Your lord is the most powerful monarch in Europe, Edeco. Come, come, Onegesh, Skilla. Sheathe your weapons and sit. I apologize for the confusion. We have more presents for you, pearls from India and silks from China. I was going to wait until we reached Hunuguri, but perhaps I will fetch them now. As a sign of our good faith.”

“You will drink to Attila first.” Edeco pointed. “Him.”

Bigilas nodded and hastily hoisted his cup, gulping. Then he lowered it and wiped his mouth. “To Attila,” he croaked.

“And you,” he said, pointing to Rusticius. He sheathed his sword and stood with his hands open, ready at his side.

“You think I am afraid to deal with you like this?”

Rusticius’s voice came from a mouth that was a line. “I think all of us should treat each other like men, not animals.”

It was not the abject apology the Hun was looking for, and from that moment he would react to Rusticius with a coldness he never showed the foolish Bigilas: Rusticius’s courage had made him an enemy. But the Hun provided an exit.

“Then drink to my king.”

Rusticius shrugged. “Indeed.”

So the rest of us drank as well. “To Attila!”

With that we all finally sat again, and slaves fetched the gifts Maximinus directed. The senator tried to pretend that nothing had happened, but the tension of this night lingered.

As soon as was seemly, our gathering broke up.

“Your quickness may have saved our lives, Alabanda,”

Maximinus murmured to me as we groped in the dark for our tents. “Just as that fool Bigilas might have ended them.

You may have the wit to be an ambassador yourself someday.”

I was still shaken, believing I had seen the true nature of our barbarian companions for the first time. When crossed, they turned into vipers. “I think I’ll be happy just to keep my head attached. I hope Rusticius can keep his. I’ve not seen him with his back up.”

“Yes, he has a stubborn bravery, but it’s risky to insult a Hun. You are wise enough to listen before you speak, I sense. Never assume barbarians are the same, young man.

The Franks and Burgundians, once arrogant, are now our allies in the Western Empire. The fearsome Celts have become the peaceful citizens of Gaul. Huns have proved courageous mercenaries as well as implacable enemies. The secret is not to antagonize potential enemies but to court potential friends. The Empire can win only by using barbarian against barbarian. Do you understand what I’m saying, my scribe?”

Yes, I understood. We were trying to placate jackals.

VIII

I

THE HOSPITALITY

OF THE HUNS

The next morning, as we proceeded down the Margus valley, Skilla rode his pony next to mine. There was no challenge this time. Everyone’s head was fogged from the evening’s drinking and quarreling, and conversation had been quiet. Now the Hun warrior simply had a question.

“Tell me, Roman, what god do you believe in?”

I shook my head to clear it, thinking it entirely too early for theological discussion. “The Christ, of course. You’ve heard of Jesus? He’s the God of the Roman world.”

“But before him the Romans had other gods.”

“True. And some Romans are still pagans, passionately so. There is always great debate about religion. If you ask three Constantinople shopkeepers you will get eight opin-ions. Put a priest in the mix and the arguments are endless.”

“So Bigilas is a pagan?”

“I don’t think so. He wears a crucifix.”

“Yes, I have seen his tree that your god was killed on. Attila learned to use the cross from Romans. But this Christ allows no other gods—is this not true?”

I saw where this was headed. “Yes.”

“Yet Bigilas calls his emperor a god—is this not true?”

“Yes. It’s . . . complicated.”

“It’s not complicated at all. He claims to believe first one thing, then another.”

“No . . .” How to explain? “Many Christians consider our emperor divine. It is a tradition of many centuries: believing gods are manifest on earth. But not in the way that Jesus is divine. The emperor is . . . well, simply more than a mere man. He represents the divine nature of life. That’s all Bigilas meant. He didn’t mean to insult Attila.”

“Attila has no need to claim to be a god. Men fear and respect him without it.”

“He’s lucky, then.”

“Rome’s emperors must be little gods, if they fear a mere man like Attila.”

“Rome’s emperors aren’t just soldiers, Skilla. They sym-bolize civilization itself. Law and order, prosperity, morality, marriage, service, sanctity, continuity . . . all are bound up in them. That’s why they represent the divine.”

“Attila is no different.”

“But your empire doesn’t build, it destroys. It doesn’t give order, it takes it away. It is different.”

“In my empire, the word of Attila is law for a thousand miles. He has given order to a hundred different tribes. It is the same, whatever you say.”

I sighed. How to reason with a man who hadn’t even entered Constantinople, instead sleeping outside like an animal? “What gods do Huns worship, then?”

“We have nature gods, and shamans and soothsayers, and know good signs from bad ones. But we’re not obsessed with gods like Romans. We’ve overrun hundreds of gods and none helped their believers prevail against us. So what good are gods?”

“Three generations ago, the armies of the Christian Romans and the pagan Romans fought a battle on the Frigidus River that the whole world saw as a contest of faith. The Christians won.”

“They have not won against us.” Skilla galloped ahead.

It was later that day that we encountered a task even more disagreeable than camping near a boneyard. Maximinus had sent word of our progress ahead to what shaky Roman authority survived here, and we were duly met by Agintheus, commander of the Illyrian soldiers who had tentatively re-occupied the ravaged valley. While not pretending to be able to stand before another Hun invasion, this rough militia kept the region from anarchy. Now we carried embarrassing orders from the emperor that Agintheus was to give up five of the men who had joined him after deserting Attila. We were to take them back to the Hun king for judgment.

The five had been prepared for this. They rode without weapons, their hands tied to their saddles, and had the look of the doomed. Agintheus looked ashamed. By their appearance the five seemed to be Germans, tall and fair-haired. The smaller, darker Huns mocked them, galloping around like circling dogs. “Now you must explain yourselves to Attila!”

Edeco cried in triumph.

“At your command, I return these men,” Agintheus announced. “The other twelve you wrote about are nowhere to be found.”

“Their good luck, I suppose,” muttered Maximinus.

“Or wisdom.” Agintheus sighed. “These soldiers deserve better, senator.”

“It is necessary to conform to the treaty.”

“It is an evil treaty.”

“Imposed by the Huns. Someday . . .”

“See that it doesn’t go badly for them, ambassador.”

“Attila needs men, not corpses. They’ll survive.”

As our expanded party rode away toward Hunuguri the five prisoners called back to their general. “Good-bye, Agintheus. God be with you! You have treated us well! Look after our families!” Their new wives ran after them, wailing, but the Hun rode among the deserters and lashed them into silence. At length, their homes were left behind.

“Why are we giving the Huns those men?” I asked Maximinus. “This is wrong.”

“It’s at the insistence of Attila.”

“And they have to leave their families behind?”

“Attila would say they should never have started families.”

“But why give back recruits to a despot we’ve been fighting?”

Maximinus frowned. “Because he is more desperate for men than for gold. Many German allies flee his armies. The Huns are great warriors, but they aren’t numerous.”

“What will happen when we turn them over?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps they will be whipped. It’s possible they will be crucified. But most likely they will just be pressed back into his armies. The lesson here, Alabanda, is that sometimes you have to do bad things to do good: in this case, peace.”

I rode in silence for a while. “There is another lesson as well, senator.”

“What, my youthful friend?”

“That Attila has a weakness, and that is manpower. If the provinces of Rome and their barbarian allies could ever unite and field a truly great army, and make him pay a heavy price on the battlefield, then his power to frighten us would be at an end.”

Maximinus laughed. “The dreams of youth!”

I resented the condescension. It was not a dream. If Attila took the time to care about five fugitives, it was reality.

Although the province of Moesia that we traveled through had been Roman territory for hundreds of years, civilization had been abandoned. Hun and Goth had crisscrossed this land for nearly three-quarters of a century; and each invasion had further crippled the economy, stolen tax collec-tions, and beggared repairs. As a result, mills had long since stopped turning, their waterwheels rotted away. Bridges had collapsed, forcing our embassy to detour upstream to fords.

Fields were being reclaimed by oak and scrub pine. Granaries had been looted, and broken wagons lay rotting in high grass. Mountains that had not seen a bear for generations now were the home of sow and cubs. At Horreum we passed a cracked aqueduct spilling water uselessly into a new erosive channel.

Most haunting of all were the cities, empty save a few priests, wild refugees, and the dogs that went with them.

Frost and rain had cracked the walls, stucco had peeled like tired paper, and roof tiles had cascaded off abandoned houses to heap in piles of red dust.

There were inhabitants still, but they were a peculiarly hard and skittish lot. Shepherds stayed cautiously on slopes high above the road, allowing plenty of time to flee. Surviving farms were tucked into side valleys where they were less visible to roving armies. Groups of armed Roman bandits scavenged like animals. Accordingly, several old Roman villas had been turned into small castles with new walls and towers, their determined owners clinging to ancestral lands.

Where peacocks once strutted, now chickens ran.

The road began to drop in elevation, the pines giving way to forests of oak, beech, elm, and alder; and the mountains were left behind for terrain that was flatter, wetter, and more confusing. Roads in the Danube valley wound around marshes like snarled thread: One morning we woke to see our path leading briefly east, not west! Finally we came to the banks of the broad Danube itself, its powerful current opaque and green. This river, once patrolled by the Roman navy, now was bare of ships. The paths on which slaves or oxen had towed the craft upstream were overgrown.

Here was the historic boundary of the Empire: Rome to the south, barbarians to the north. The river retained its ma-jestic 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 pas-sengers 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 en-chantment.

“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.”

He shook his head. “Your leader is a fool. It is not good to store up your seed. It will make you sick and cause more trouble later.”

IX

I

THE LEGIONARY

FORTRESS

W hat a hollow thing our empire has become, Flavius Aetius thought as he continued his inspection of the fort of Sumelocenna, on the banks of Germania’s Neckar River. What a hollow thing I have become. A general without a proper army.

“It’s difficult to find masons these days, and so we’ve reinforced the walls with a timber stockade,” the tribune who was his guide was explaining with embarrassment. “There’s some rot we’re hoping to get to when replacements arrive from Mediolanum. The local patrician is proving reluctant to contribute the trees. . . .”

“You can’t teach your soldiers to lay one stone atop another, Stenis?”

“We’ve no lime and no money to buy any, commander.

We’re two years behind in disbursements, and merchants have ceased delivering because we can never pay. The soldiers today won’t do hard work; they say that’s a task for slaves and peasants. These tribesmen we recruit are a different breed. They love to fight, but to drill . . .”

Aetius made no answer. What was the point? He’d heard these complaints, repeated with little variation, from the mouth of the Rhine to this outpost on the eastern side of the Black Forest—had heard them, in fact, his entire life. Never enough men. Never enough money. Never enough weapons, stones, bread, horses, catapults, boots, cloaks, wine, whores, official recognition, or anything else to sustain the endless borders of Rome. The garrisons scarcely even looked like an army anymore, each man drawing an allowance to clothe and armor himself. They preened in military fashions that were sometimes as impractical as they were individualistic.

Aetius had lived half a century now, and for much of that time he had replaced his absence of military power with bluff, the tattered tradition of “inevitable” Roman victory, and shrewd alliances with whatever tribe he could persuade, pay, or coerce to oppose the menace of the moment. His was a lifetime of hard battles, shifting alliances, truculent barbarians, and selfish emperors. He had beaten the Franks, beaten the Bagaudae, beaten the Burgundians, beaten usurpers, and beaten the politicians in Italy who constantly whispered and conspired behind his back. He’d been consul three times, and, because he ran the army, ran the Western Empire in ways the Emperor Valentinian scarcely understood.

Yet instead of getting easier, each victory seemed more difficult. The moneyed sons of the rich bought their way out of the army, the poor deserted, and the barbarian recruits boasted more than they practiced. The relentless discipline that had marked Roman armies had eroded. Now he feared that the most dangerous enemy of all was casting a baleful eye in his direction. Aetius knew Attila, and knew how the angry, truculent youth he had once played and scuffled with had become a crafty, aggressive king. Aetius had been sent to the Huns as a boy hostage in 406 to help guarantee Stili-cho’s treaty with the tribe; and later, when his own fortunes were low in the political circus that was the Empire, he had fled to the Huns for safety. In turn, when Attila needed employment for his restless horde, Aetius had used them against Rome’s enemies, paying generously. It had been a strange but useful partnership.

That was why the fool Valentinian had written him the latest dispatch.

Your requests for more military appropriations, which increasingly sound like demands, are entirely unreasonable. You, general, of all people, know that the Huns have been our allies more than our enemies here in the West. It is your skill that has made them a tool instead of a threat. To pretend now that the Huns represent danger goes against not only all experience but also your own personal history of success. The needs of finance for the court in Italy are pressing, and no more money can be spared for the frontiers of the Empire. You must make do with what you have . . . .

What Valentinian didn’t understand is that all had begun to change when King Ruga died and Attila and Bleda succeeded him. The Huns had become more arrogant and demanding. It changed even more when Attila murdered Bleda and turned the Huns from marauders to imperialists. Attila understood Rome in ways that Ruga never had, and he knew when to press incessantly and when to make a temporary peace. Each campaign and treaty seemed to leave the Huns stronger and Rome weaker. The East had already been stripped as if by locusts. How long before Attila turned his eye west?

The weather today matched the general’s mood, a gray pall with steady rain. The drizzle showed all too well how the fortress leaked, and rather than properly repair stone buildings that were two and three centuries old, the garrison had patched them with wood and wattle. The trim precision of the old fort’s layout had been lost to clusters of new huts and wandering pathways.

“The men of the Twelfth are nonetheless ready for anything,” the tribune went on.

That was prattle. “This isn’t a fortress—it’s a nest.”

“General?”

“A nest made of twigs and paper. Your stockade is so wormy that it’s ready to fall over. Attila could punch through it with his fist.”

“Attila! But the king of the Huns is far away. Surely we don’t have to worry about Attila here.”

“I worry about Attila in my dreams, Stenis. I worry about Attila in Athens or Lutetia or Tolosa or Rome. It’s my job and my fate to worry.”

The tribune looked confused. “But you’re his friend.

Aren’t you?”

Aetius looked somberly out at the rain. “Just as I am friend of the emperor, friend of his mother, friend of Theodoric at his court at Tolosa, and friend of King Sangibanus at Aurelia. I am friend of them all, the one man who binds them together. But I trust none of them, soldier. Nor should you.”

The officer blanched at this irreverence but decided not to challenge it. “It’s just that Attila has never come this way.”

“Not yet.” Aetius felt every moment of his fifty years.

The endless rides on horseback, the hurry to every point of danger, the lack of a proper home. For decades he’d loved it.

Now? “Soldiers prepare for the worst, do they not?”

“As you say, general.”

“True Roman soldiers don’t wait for money or permission to repair their walls, they do it today. If they’ve no lime, they buy it. If they can’t buy it, they take it. And if those they take it from complain, they tell them that the army comes first, because in the end the army is Rome. Do the complaining merchants want a world of barbarian warlords and petty princes?”

“It’s just as I have tried to tell them—”

Aetius stiffened as if coming to attention and thumped himself on the chest with his fist. “What is in your nest, tribune?”

“In it?” Again, Stenis looked confused. “The garrison, of course. Some are sick, many on leave, but if we have time enough—”

“What is within is what makes reputation. None dare disturb a wasp’s nest, because behind its paper wall is a deadly sting. The smallest child could pierce a wasp fort, but even the bravest warrior will hesitate to do so. Why? Because of the fierce sentries inside. Those insects are your lesson!

Sharpen your weapons against the Hun!”

“Attila? What have you heard?”

What indeed? Rumors, warnings, and observations that his strange dwarf spy had scribbled on scraps of paper and sent to him from Attila’s camp. Did they mean anything?

Was Attila increasingly studying the West? Had the disgrun-tled Frank named Cloda really fled to Attila to demand support for his claim to the throne of his people?

“Make your men into wasps, soldier, before it is too late.”

X

I

KING OF THE HUNS

Romans are coming!”

The words were like flame in a darkened room. “An army?” Ilana asked.

“Just an embassy,” the cook reported.

The captive’s heart sank as quickly as it had soared, and yet still it hammered in her breast like an anxious bird. At last, the slimmest connection to home! Since the sack of Axiopolis and the death of her father, Ilana had felt fogged in a vast and noisy Underworld, a migrating Hun capital of unruly children, barking dogs, submissive women, smoke, dirt, and grass. She was only beginning to understand their harsh language, brutal customs, and sour food. The shock of her city’s massacre was with her at every moment like the pain of a broken heart, and the uncertainty of her future kept her anxious and sleepless. The dull work she was assigned failed to distract her.

Her situation was better than that of many captives, she knew. Her assignment as handmaiden to Suecca, one of the wives of the chieftain Edeco who had conquered her city, had protected her from the enslavement, rape, and beating that some prisoners had to endure. The Hun Skilla, who had carried her here, had treated her with respect on the journey and made plain his interest in a wife. Ilana knew he had saved her life in the massacre at Axiopolis, and he brought her small presents of clothing and food, a generosity that gave her subtle status but also filled her with uncertainty.

She didn’t want to marry a Hun! Yet without his favor she was little more than chattel, a prize to be traded. She’d pushed away his early clumsy advances and then felt guilty about it afterward, as if she’d swatted a pesky dog. He’d responded with hurt, amusement, and persistence. He’d warned other men away from her, which was a relief, but it was also a relief when he disappeared with Edeco on a mission to Constantinople.

Now Romans, real Romans, had come, back with Skilla and Edeco. Not traitorous Romans like Constantius who served as Attila’s secretary, or the strategist Oenegius, who had tried to pretend to civilization by having a slave engineer build him a stone bathhouse, or the lieutenant Onegesh who had been sent south with Edeco. No, these were Romans from the Eastern emperor himself, representing civilization, faith, and order.

“Please, Suecca, can we go watch?” pleaded Guernna, a German captive with long blond braids and impish restless-ness. Any task, no matter how light, was daunting to her lazy nature. “I want to see their clothes and horses!”

“What have the lot of you done to deserve to gape and jabber?” groused Suecca, who, despite her grumbling, was not an unkind mistress. “You’ve enough undone embroidery to last a year, not to mention having drawn neither wood nor water.”

“Which is exactly why the sewing can wait!” reasoned Guernna. “Look at sad Ilana there, so quiet as she stitches.

Some excitement might wake her up! Come, Suecca, come look with us! Maybe Edeco is bringing presents!”

“Romans are no more special than sheep,” Suecca said.

Nonetheless, she relented. “Go see them if you must and I’ll look for my lout of a husband, if I can even remember what he looks like. Just remember that you are of the house of Edeco, so don’t chirp like a nest of senseless chicks. The hearth of the warlord has dignity!”

The handmaidens ran, Ilana among them. Just the physical release from Edeco’s wooden compound was enough to pierce her fog. A tide of inhabitants was rushing with them, all curious to see this latest in the steady parade of kings, princes, generals, and soothsayers who came to pay court to the great Attila. Someday, Ilana prayed, Romans would come in real numbers and put an end to her captivity.

Edeco she recognized almost immediately, leading the procession with his horsehair spirit banner held high, allowing just the slightest grin to crack the reserve of his ritually scarred face as he spotted his wife Suecca. Close behind came Onegesh with his paler face, who nonetheless rode with an ease and satisfaction that sometimes made him seem more Hun than the Huns. Finally came Skilla, straight and proud, as if merely visiting the Empire had granted him new status. When his eye triumphantly caught hers, it lit with recognition and possession. She flushed with confusion. He was not ugly like many of the Huns and was quite earnest in his attentions, but he didn’t understand that to her eyes he was a barbarian responsible for the destruction of her city; the death of her betrothed love, Tasio; and the end of her dreams. “That is gone,” he had told her . “Now you will be happiest if you pair with me.”

Behind the Huns came the Romans. At the sight of them, her heart lifted a little. The man in front had draped his riding clothes with the complex ceremonial folds of the ancient toga; and she guessed that he was the lead ambassador, perhaps a minister or senator. Those following did not appear to have his importance, but she eagerly studied them as a reminder of home. Two were in the court dress of aides or in-terpreters. The shorter man looked uneasily at the throng of Huns as if he feared being found out. The other, who sat straighter and had a pleasanter, more friendly face, kept his eyes carefully ahead as if not to offend anyone. There was also a handsome young man of her age in slightly finer clothes, who peered about with a look of alert and innocent curiosity. He seemed young to have earned a place in an imperial embassy.

The Romans’ slaves and pack train were diverted to open grass near the Tisza River that had been reserved for their camping space, deliberately positioned downhill from Attila’s own compound. Edeco led the diplomatic contingent itself farther into the vast sea of yurts, huts, cabins, and wooden palaces that rambled on the eastern bank of the Tisza for two miles, representing a central guard of at least ten thousand warriors. Small villages of allied tribes clustered around this crude city like moons circling a planet. The curious crowd moved with the diplomats, flowing around houses like water and chanting greetings to the Hun warlords and good-natured taunts to the Romans. Children ran, dogs barked, and tethered horses whinnied and snorted at the embassy’s ponies as they passed, the ponies in turn jerking their necks up and down as if in greeting.

As the Romans and their escort approached the stockade of Attila’s compound, Ilana saw that the king’s own wives and maids had come out in proud procession under the cloud of cloth, a ceremony she had now seen several times. The tallest and fairest formed two rows, and between their up-stretched arms they carried a long runner of white linen, wide and long enough that seven girls walked beneath. All bore flowers that they cast at the ambassadorial party, filling the air with Scythian song. Maids lifted bowls of food to Edeco and his companions, and the barbarian lieutenants gravely ate while sitting on their horses—the consumption acknowledgment of Attila’s sovereignty, just as Communion was acknowledgment in Ilana’s world of the sovereignty of Christ.

The Romans were given nothing.

They waited patiently.

She noticed that the handsome young man was looking curiously at the horsehair banners before each yurt or house.

Each of these spirit banners was made from the hairs of favorite stallions. The richer the owner in horses, the thicker his banner. On the other side of each doorway were horse skulls of favorite past steeds mounted on poles as protection against evil spirits, their large teeth set in permanent grins and their eye sockets empty. Also staked near each house were hides and meat drying on racks, a cloud of flies around each. Mounted on either side of the gate of Attila’s own house were two stuffed and snarling badgers, the king’s totem. Watching the newcomer take it all in, Ilana was reminded of the powerful stink that had seemed overwhelming to her when first brought to this place: an odor of musty bodies, horses, manure, cut grass, strange spices, and a sallow fog of cooking fires. The Huns believed their odor was an emanation of their souls, and instead of a kiss or a hand-shake they often greeted each other with a sniff, like friendly dogs. It had taken Ilana a month to get used to their smell.

The Roman’s gaze eventually came to rest on her and she saw him pause with interest for a moment, a reaction from men she’d enjoyed before. He registered her beauty as if startled, and she liked to think she still looked Roman, not barbarian. Then his inspection moved on to other people but once or twice returned in her direction, trying to pretend his gaze was casual but nonetheless determined to seek her out.

For the first time since her capture, Ilana felt a glimmer of hope.

And so I, Jonas, came to Attila’s palace. It was modest by Roman standards but still more magnificent than I’d expected. I wasn’t sure if I’d find the king of the Huns in a tent, hut, or golden palace, but his principal and least temporary headquarters was somewhat between: made of wood but of superior craftsmanship. The Huns, I realized, were caught halfway between their migratory origins and a settled existence, and their city displayed this awkward transition.

Yurts, wagons, log cabins, and wattle-and-daub houses all served as homes, scattered haphazardly.

I had already noticed the fondness of Hun warriors for gold jewelry, elaborately styled bridles and harness, fine saddles, and weapons inlaid with silver and jewels. Their boot buckles were apt to be of silver and their waistbands of silk. Now I saw that the women were even more elaborately decorated. Their necklaces and intricate belts were draped over embroidered dresses that came in a hundred colors, meaning I watched goat girls chase their flocks in gowns threaded with silver. Their hair was braided and fenced with circlets of gold on their brows. Gold clasps designed like ci-cadas held the garments of the queens and princesses at each shoulder, and belt ends looped and dangled to their ankles, the entire length sparkling with metal and jewels. Some of their necklaces fanned from neck to breast as intricately and thickly as a sheath of mail.

Wooden structures showed similar craftsmanship, the timber hauled from long distances and the logs and boards carefully dressed and carved. Attila’s palace was finer yet: the planks of its stockade as straight and close fitting as a floor; its guard towers boasting complex balustrades; and the grand home itself as intricate as a jewel box, every board polished to a warm red sheen. Porticos gave shelter on its sides; outbuildings lined the stockade walls; stepping-stones provided pathways across the mud; and ovens, storerooms, cellars, and wells made the complex self-sufficient against attack. Window grilles, rafter ends, and eaves bore carvings of horses, birds, and dragons.

“German craftsmanship, done by captives,” Rusticius said quietly. “The Huns themselves disdain construction labor. They can’t even make bread.”

This palace was one of a half dozen such compounds Attila had scattered along the rivers of the Hunuguri plain, Bigilas told us, but this house was reputedly the most impressive. Circling the great hall was a small forest of staffs bearing horsehair banners representing the Hun clans.

Again, each staff was topped by the skulls of royalty’s no-blest and best-loved horses.

More disquieting were poles that bore human skulls.

“What are those?” I whispered.

“Vanquished enemies,” said Bigilas.

Each was mounted on a spear tip with the flesh allowed to rot away naturally. By now, most of the heads had been eaten by the crows down to bone, topped only by a few shreds of flesh and strands of hair that fluttered in the wind.

Just as odd were the curiously misshapen heads of some of the Huns. I noticed it first among the bareheaded children and thought that perhaps they were simply imbeciles, malformed at birth. Their foreheads seemed twice normal height, sweeping backward from their faces, so that their heads came to a kind of rounded peak. Politeness forbade me to comment, but then I saw the same feature on some of the male warriors and even on their women. Add this deformity to their swarthy complexion; dark hair; ritual scars; and small, squinting eyes, and the result was a terrifying visage.

“What has happened to these poor people?” I asked Rusticius.

“Poor? They wear more gold than I will ever see.”

“I mean their heads. They look like the kinds of babies best left on a slope.”

He laughed. “It’s a sign of beauty among these monsters!

Some of them flatten their heads deliberately when the bone is soft at birth. They lash a board and tighten the thongs while the baby howls. They think such deformity attractive.”

We finally dismounted just steps from the palace porch and Edeco, Onegesh, and Skilla led our little party of Romans into the rectangular great hall of Attila’s palace. This reception area was modest by imperial standards, just large enough to hold perhaps a hundred people, and had a wooden floor strewn with carpets and a timbered ceiling that peaked about thirty feet high. This, apparently, was Attila’s throne room. Tapestries and captured legionary standards decorated the walls, and small grilled windows let in a modest amount of light. Armed guards stood in the corners and Hun nobles sat cross-legged on the carpets of both sides, the men short, swarthy, and apelike. My childhood idea of barbarians—tall and graceful black Nubians or strapping blond Germans—

had been corrupted. These men seemed more like gnomes, squeezed down into compact balls of hard muscle. If anything, this density made them more menacing. They watched us with narrow eyes, their noses broad and flat and their mouths tight and expressionless. Each had a sword by his side and bow and arrows laid against the wall behind him. They seemed as cocked as the trigger of a crossbow.

In the shadows at the far end of the room, on an elevated platform, was a single man, sitting in a plain wooden chair, without weapon, crown, or decoration. A curtain of tapestries hung behind him. This was the king of the Huns? The most powerful man in the world seemed a disappointment.

Attila was more plainly dressed than anyone, his torso erect and his feet firmly planted. Like all Huns he was short legged and long waisted, his head unusually large for the length of his body, and so motionless that he might have been carved from wood. He was, as reputation suggested, a somewhat ugly man: flat nose, eyes so deep set that they seemed to peer from caves, and the ritual cheek scarring that marked so many Huns. Had Attila cut himself after murder-ing his brother?

The king’s wispy mustache drooped in what I had come to think of as the Hunnish frown, and his beard was scrag-gly and flecked with gray. Yet his gaze was focused and penetrating; his brow large; and his cheekbones and chin hard and pronounced, resulting in a visage that was undeniably commanding. His physique added to his presence. His shoulders were broad and his waist narrow, making him—at forty-four years—as fit as a soldier of twenty. His hands were large and looked as brown and gnarled as exposed roots, the fingers gripping the arms of his chair as if to prevent himself from levitating. There was nothing on his person to give any mark of authority, and yet without saying a word or moving a muscle he commanded the room as naturally as a matriarch dominates a chamber of children. Attila has slain a hundred men and ordered the slaying of a hundred thousand more, and all that blood had given him presence and power.

There was a gigantic iron sword behind him, resting horizontally on two golden pegs. It was rusty and dark, as if of great antiquity, its edge jagged. It was so enormous—it would reach from my feet to my cheek—that it seemed made more for a giant than a man.

Maximinus noticed it, too. “Is that the sword of Mars?”

he murmured to Bigilas. “It would be like trying to swing a roof beam.”

“The story is that it was found near the banks of the Tisza when a cow cut her hoof on something sharp in the grass,”

Bigilas answered quietly. “The herdsman alerted Attila, who had it dug out and shrewdly pronounced it a sign of favor from the gods. His men are superstitious enough to believe it.”

We were waiting for a sign of what to do, and suddenly Attila spoke without preamble—not to us but to his lieutenant. “I sent you to get a treaty and treasure, Edeco, and you have brought me only men.” His voice was low but not unpleasant, a quiet strength to his tone, but his displeasure was obvious. He wanted gold, not an embassy.

“The Romans insisted on addressing you directly, my kagan,” the warlord answered. “Apparently they found my conversation lacking, or felt they had to explain their recal-citrance in person. At any rate, they’ve brought you presents.”

“As well as our emperor’s wish for peace and understanding,” Maximinus added hastily as this was translated.

“For too long we’ve been at odds with the king of the Huns.”

Attila studied us like a lion stalking a herd. “We are not at odds,” he finally said. “We have an understanding, ratified by treaty, that I have beaten you as I have beaten every army I’ve encountered, and that you are to pay tribute to me. Yet always the tribute is late or too small or in base coins when what I demanded was gold. Is this not true, ambassador? Do I have to come myself to Constantinople to get what is rightfully mine? If so, it will be with more warriors than there are blades of grass on the steppe.” His tone was a growl of warning, and the warlords who were watching buzzed like the warning hum of the hive.

“All respect the power of Attila,” the senator placated him, obviously flustered by this rude and quick beginning.

“We bring not only a share of the annual tribute but also additional presents. Our Empire wishes peace.”

“Then abide by your agreements.”

“But your thirst for the yellow metal is destroying our commerce, and if you don’t relent we will soon be too poor to pay anything. You rule a great empire, kagan. I come from a great one as well. Why aren’t we better friends? Can we not join together as partners? Our rivalry will exhaust both our nations and spill the blood of our children.”

“Rome is my partner—when she pays her tribute. And returns my soldiers.”

“We have brought five fugitives back to you—”

“And shielded five thousand.” The Hun turned to Edeco.

“Tell me, general, is Constantinople too poor to give me what was promised?”

“It is rich and noisy and crammed with people like caged birds.” Edeco pointed to Bigilas. “He showed me.”

“Ah, yes. The man who thinks his emperor a god, and me a mere man.”

I was startled. How had Attila learned this already? We’d just arrived and already the negotiations seemed to be slew-ing out of control.

Attila stood, his legs bowed, his torso like a wedge. “I am a man, translator. But the gods work through me, as you’ll learn. Look.” He pointed to the great sword displayed behind him, pitted and dull. “In a dream Zolbon, the one you Romans call Mars, came to me and revealed his sword. He showed me where to find it on the trackless plain. With this weapon, he told me, the Huns will become invincible. With the sword of Mars, the People of the Dawn will conquer the world!”

He lifted his arms and his warlords sprang to their feet, roaring in agreement. Our little embassy shrank, and we clustered together, fearing slaughter. And yet as abruptly as he had stood, Attila dropped his arms, the noise ceased, and he and his chiefs promptly sat again. It had all been an act.

He pointed. “Listen to me, Romans. It is the People of the Dawn who are your god now. It is our choice who lives and who dies, which city rises and which is burned, who marches and who retreats. It is we who have the sword of Mars.” He nodded, as if confirming this arrogance to himself. “But I am a good host, as you were a host to Edeco.

Tonight we feast and begin to know each other. Your visit is just beginning. It is over time that we will decide what kind of partners to become.”

Rattled by this reception, our embassy retreated to our tents by the river to rest and confer. Bigilas and Rusticius, with the most knowledge of the Huns, were the least disconcerted. They said Attila’s aggressive opening was simply a tactic.

“He uses his moods to intimidate and rule,” Bigilas said.

“I’ve seen him so infuriated that he writhed on the ground until blood spurted from his nose. I’ve seen him tear an enemy apart with his bare hands, clawing the man’s eyes out and breaking his arms, while the victim waited so frozen in fear that he was incapable of defending himself. But I’ve also seen him hold a baby and kiss a child, or weep like a woman when a favorite warrior was borne back dead.”

“I was expecting patient diplomacy,” Maximinus confessed.

“Attila will be more hospitable and less demanding at the banquet,” Bigilas said. “He’s made his point, just as we’ve made ours by showing Edeco the strength of Constantinople. It’s obvious that word of all that transpired on our journey was sent ahead. The Huns are not stupid. Now, having blustered, Attila will try to forge a relationship.”

“You seem very certain.”

“I mean no presumption, ambassador. I simply believe that, in the end, things are going to go our way.” He smiled, but it was a secret smile that seemed to conceal more than it revealed.

We bathed with water from the river warm in its summer flow, dressed in finer clothes, and returned that night to the same great hall for Attila’s welcoming banquet. This time the room had been expanded. The tapestries and partitions that had backed Attila’s chair had disappeared, revealing a platform that bore the king’s bed, canopied with linens. It seemed odd to me to display one’s bedroom, given that Roman chambers were small and secretive, but Rusticius said this intimacy was taken by the Huns as a sign of hospitality. Our host was welcoming us to the center of his life.