This interested Attila, who believed in destiny and had bones thrown and entrails read. After killing a few prognosti-cators in blinding rages, his prophets had learned to tell him what he wanted to hear: so much so, that they bored him. Now this hermit had a different view. So he ordered the Hun soldiers to back up their horses until the ropes were taut and the man was trapped in place. “You speak our tongue, old man.”
“God gives me the gift to warn the damned.” He was ragged, filthy, and barefoot.
“What prophecy?”
“That your own sword will smite you! That the darkest night heralds dawn!”
Some warlords murmured uneasily at this mention of a sword, and Attila scowled. “We are the People of the Dawn, hermit.”
The man looked at Attila quizzically, as if scarcely able to believe such nonsense. “No. You come in dust and leave in smoke, and blot out the sun. You are night creatures, sprung from the earth.”
“We are restoring the earth. We don’t cut it. We don’t chop it.”
“But you feed off men who do, old warrior! What nonsense Huns spout! If Attila was here, he’d laugh at your foolishness!”
The Huns did laugh, enjoying this little joke.
“And where do you think Attila is, old man?” the king asked mildly.
“How should I know? Sleeping with his thousand wives, I suspect, or tormenting a holy pilgrim instead of daring to face the great Flavius Aetius. Aye, easier to pick on the pious than fight an armed foe!”
Attila’s face lost its amusement. “I will face Aetius soon enough.”
The hermit squinted at the rider more closely. “You’re Attila? You?”
“I am.”
“You wear no riches.”
“I need none.”
“You bear no sign of rank.”
“All men but you know who I am.”
The holy man nodded. “I wear none, either. God Almighty knows who I am.”
“And who are you?”
“His messenger.”
Attila laughed. “Trussed and helpless? What kind of God is that?”
“What god do you have, barbarian?”
“Attila the Hun believes in himself.”
His captive pointed to the haze of smoke. “You ordered that?”
“I order the world.”
“The innocents you have slaughtered! The babes you have made orphans!”
“I make no apology for war. I’m here to rescue the emperor’s sister.”
The hermit barked a laugh, and his eyes lit with recognition. He waved his finger at Attila. “Yes, now I know who you are. I recognize you, monster! A plague! A whip, sent out of the East to punish us for our sins! You are the Scourge of God!”
The king looked puzzled. “The Scourge of God?”
“It is the only explanation. You are a tool of the divine, a wicked punishment as dire as the Great Flood or Plagues of Egypt! You are Baal and Beelzebub, Ashron and Pluto, sent to lash us as divine punishment!”
His men waited for Attila to kill the crazy man, but instead he looked thoughtful. “The Scourge of God. This is a new title, is it not, Edeco?”
“To add to a thousand others. Shall we kill him, kagan?”
Attila slowly smiled. “No . . . the Scourge of God. He has explained me, has he not? He has justified me to every Christian we meet. No, I like this hermit. Let him go—yes, let him go and give him a donkey and gold piece. I want him sent ahead, sent to the city of Aurelia. Do you know where that is, old man?”
The hermit squirmed against the ropes. “I was born there.”
“Good. I like your insult, and will adopt it as my title. Go to your native Aurelia, hermit, and tell them Attila is coming. Tell them I come to cleanse their sins with blood, like the Scourge of God. Ha! It is I who am His messenger, not you! ” And he laughed, again. “I, Attila! A tool of the divine!”
XXII
I
THEODORIC’S
DAUGHTER
Tolosa had been a Celtic city, then Roman, and now Visigothic; and the new rulers had done little more than occupy the decaying buildings of the old. Their famed prowess in battle was not matched by any expertise in architecture. The strategic city on a ford of the Garumna had long dominated southwestern Gaul, and when the Visigoth king Athaulf agreed to give up Iberia and send the Roman princess Galla Placidia back to Rome in return for new lands in Aquitania, Tolosa became the natural capital. The barbarians did front the old Roman walls with a ditch and dike, but inside the city it was as if a poor family had moved into a fine house and added tawdry touches of their own. The stone and brickwork was old and patched, the streets were pot-holed and poorly repaired, paint was older than the inhabitants, and dwellings of stucco and marble had additions of timber, daub, and thatch.
Yet under the great barbarian king Theodoric—who had reigned so long, thirty-six years, that most of his subjects had known no other king—Tolosa throbbed with activity. As Roman culture had been layered upon Celtic, so now was German tribal culture layered upon Roman; and the result was a fusion of pagan artisan, imperial bureaucrat, and barbarian warrior that had given the city an energy it hadn’t seen for a hundred years. Traders and farmwives bawled in half a dozen tongues from the crowded marketplaces, Arian priests ministered to thick crowds of illiterate tribesmen, and children chased each other through the streets in numbers not seen in living memory.
Their ferocity was still there, however, and it was this ferocity that Aetius hoped I could somehow help harness. The Visigoths were as haughty as Huns and as regal as Greeks.
They were as famed for the long lances of their heavy cavalry as Attila’s men were for their bows; and the palace guards looked like mailed, bearded giants, their pale eyes glinting from beneath the brow of iron helmets like bright, suspicious jewels. Their legs were like tree trunks, their arms like thighs. When the tips of their long swords rested on the chipped marble floor, the pommels came to their chests. Here were men who should have no fear of Huns.
Why weren’t they riding with us?
Perhaps they hesitated because their ancestors had been put to flight by the Huns three generations before. Had the Visigoths journeyed across Europe only to be faced with this peril once again? Would they at last make a stand? Or become vassals of Attila? I had to convince Theodoric that survival was with Aetius and the hated Romans.
My arrival had already been promised by correspondence from Aetius. A Visigothic captain helped stable my horse, gave me watered wine to quench my thirst, and finally escorted me to Theodoric. There was a courtyard in the palace, familiar enough except that its fountain was dry because no one could be found with the skill to repair it, and its plants dead because no barbarian could be bothered to keep them alive. Then we entered the reception hall beyond. The old Roman standards and symbols of office were long gone, of course, the pillars hung now with the bright shields and crossed lances of the Goths. Banners and captured tapestries gave color atop faded paint, and the marble floors were obscured by rushes that had been strewn to catch the mud of barbarian boots. High windows let in a crosshatch of light.
Nobles clustered and gossiped behind a railing that separated Theodoric’s carved wooden throne from petitioners and courtiers. A single aide stood by to make notes—could the fifty-six-year-old king read?—and the monarch’s crown was a circlet of simple steel. His hair was long, his beard gray, his nose curved, and his expression set in a permanent frown. This was a man used to saying no.