Attila had no intention of fighting Aetius if he didn’t have to; the man was too good a soldier. But if he did fight him it would be when Aetius was nearly alone, his allies fragmented and quarreling, his cities burning, his food supplies stripped by the homeless, his legionaries sick and demoralized, his emperor wavering, his lieutenants betraying. Attila had never lost a fight because he never fought fairly. Surprise, deception, treachery, superior numbers, terror, and stealth had let him win every contest, from the murder of his brother to the destruction of the eastern provinces. Only the loss of the old sword secretly troubled him. He knew it was only a talisman, shrewdly invented by himself, but his followers believed in its magic. Leadership was all about belief. Its disappearance was never spoken of, but it planted a seed of fear.
Victories would make up for the loss of symbol. The barbarian led his entourage of warlords and messengers up a grassy slope to look back down the Danube valley at the long winding columns making up his attack force, stretching back to a hazy horizon, the hard men resting on tough ponies that cropped the grass. Attila never lost because if he did lose, he knew, these jackals would turn against him. His warlords could be kept in harness only with the booty that was corrupting them. The more they took the more they craved, and the more they craved, the more like Romans they became. Attila saw no way out of this dilemma except to destroy everything. In desolation, he believed, was the salvation of the Hun.
He looked forward to the wasteland.
And to what he would finally do to Ilana when his sword was recovered.
It was the way of the world, a cycle that could never end.
Ilana had become an exhibit in Attila’s bizarre zoo.
Like Attila’s wives and slave girls, she had been brought for the invasion. But instead of a comfortable rolling wagon with felt canopy and carpets, her home was a trundling cage of wooden poles, its grid roof open to sun and rain. It was one of a dozen wagons in a train that included some captured bears; a lion liberated from a Roman villa; a pacing wolf; three captured Roman generals squeezed into a single iron enclosure; and squalling badgers, Attila’s favorite animal. The wagons were normally used for transporting slaves and prisoners, but any Roman slaves were pressed into Attila’s great army and any liberated criminals were simply executed. So Attila had decided to load the transports with curiosities—among them the woman who had tried to burn him alive and who, for purposes not yet fully explained, had been allowed to remain living.
His temporary mercy was torment. Ilana’s life had been reduced to animal-like squalor as she sat dully in the lurch-ing wagon amid a great, dusty, fly-plagued army: her clothing filthy, her privacy gone, her station abased. At noon she was hot and at night she was cold. She got barely enough water to drink, let alone bathe. Her keeper was Guernna, who enjoyed mocking her from a safe distance.
“I’m sure he’ll come to your rescue at any moment,” the German girl cooed to the Roman when she brought her scraps of food. “He’ll cut his way through a half million men with that sword he stole.”
“He’s waiting for both of us, Guernna,” she replied with more spunk than she really felt. “Your liberation, too. When battle is joined we’ll both have a chance to escape to the Romans.”
“Do you think there’ll be any Romans left, Ilana? Edeco says this is the biggest army the world has ever seen.”
Ilana believed it. The wagon had bogged down once in a rut at the crest of a hill. While a dozen Gepid infantry heaved to clear it, she’d had a chance to gaze backward in wonder at the great host stretching to the horizon. Fields of spears rocked like wheat in a breeze; herds of horses churned up dust like thunderheads; and wagons heaped with tents and booty crawled across meadows like elephants, grinding the grass to stubble.
“Aetius and Jonas will have a great army, too.”
Guernna smiled. “We are all wondering what Attila will eventually do to you, Ilana. Most of the women suggest fire, since that is what you nearly did to him. Some think crucifixion, and some think a rape by Ostrogoths or perhaps by animals. Some think you will be flayed; and some think Attila will wait until he has enough Roman gold to melt and pour down your throat, burning you from inside out and making a cast of your body.”
“How amusing all this speculation must be. And what do you think, Guernna?”
“I think he is devising an execution so clever that none of us has thought of it yet!” Her eyes danced at the thought.
Guernna had little imagination and admired it in others.
“And you will help him.”
Guernna looked reproachful. “Ilana! I am the only one feeding you. You were wrong to attack our master, yet still I bring you water and throw a bucket to wash out your filth.
Don’t you expect the best from me?”
“The best, as you know, would be a spear between my ribs. I think I could expect that from you, given your betrayal when we tried to escape that night.”
Guernna smiled. “Yes, killing you would consummate our relationship. But I must think of the other women, too, sweet Ilana. It is always exciting to watch torture. We have all discussed it, and what we really want to do is hear you scream.”
Aetius had planned to burn the Rhine bridges, but Hun cavalry arrived three days before defenders thought it possible.
They swept across at midnight, arrows plucking away the engineers, and so crossed the Rhine as if the great barrier of the river hardly existed. Attila himself crossed two days later, watching with interest the bodies from upstream floating by on the current, bloated and bearing Hun arrows. His soldiers were doing their work. Aetius had established his own army at Argentorate, a hundred miles to the south, and the Hun plan was to outflank him through the forested high-lands of northeastern Gaul and break out east of Luttia. The cavalry could then sweep southward over the fertile flat-lands, take the strategic crossroads of Aurelia, and hold the strategic center of the West.
Attila rode toward horizons of smoke, with more smoke behind—a ring of smoke that marked the devastation of his armies in all directions. No cohesive resistance had formed.
The Franks had retreated, and the other tribes were hesitat-ing. If the Huns struck hard enough and quickly enough, they would annihilate Aetius before he could gather a credible force. Cities were emptied, armories were captured, aqueducts were deliberately broken, and granaries were looted. Crows were so bloated from feasting on the dead that they staggered on Roman roads like drunken men.
Thousands of opportunists, traitors, and the fearful were joining Attila’s invasion: craven chieftains, escaped slaves, greedy mercenaries. Some were fleeing a bad marriage, broken heart, or debt. There were not as many as the Hun king had hoped, but those who did enlist joined the slaughter with a kind of hysteria. All rules had ended. Hell had triumphed over Heaven. Anarchy and pillage provided opportunities to settle old scores, act on resentment against the rich, or take by force a maiden who had spurned earnest advances. As each law was broken, the next seemed easier to shatter. The indiscipline carried into the Hun army itself, where quarrels quickly turned murderous. The warlords had to separate feuding soldiers like snarling dogs, and maintained some semblance of order only by whip, chain, and execution. So huge was the army, and so far-flung were its wings and columns, that it was barely controllable.
Attila knew he was riding a whirlwind, but he was the god of storms.
It was at a clearing in a wood in Gaul that he encountered the Roman holy man who would give him a different title. A patrol of Huns had roped a Christian hermit who was apparently so stupid that he’d been making a pilgrimage right into the path of Attila’s army. The cavalry laughed as they trotted the pilgrim first one way and then another, jerking on the lines. The hermit was screaming, perhaps trying to egg on his own martyrdom. “Enjoy your triumph because your days are numbered, Satan’s spawn!” the old man cried in Hunnish as he staggered. “Prophecy foretells your doom!”