Anianus looked sober. “If he doesn’t, Attila will kill us all.”
“If you give up Aurelia and put Attila in a position to win this war, he will kill the entire Empire, bishop, and with it the Church. The world will go dark, and men will live like beasts for the next thousand years. I, too, know more of Attila than most men, because I’ve played the fool for him.
One thing I always remember: I’ve yet to make him laugh.”
If the Huns had an emissary in Aurelia he was well hidden, but the news from the east was grave. An ever-growing flood of refugees was pouring into the city. Mediomatrica had been entered on the eve of Easter, its inhabitants slaughtered and its buildings burned. Durocortorum was destroyed when its population fled. Nasium, Tullum, Noviomagus, Andematun-num, and Augustobona went up in flames as Attila’s vast army split into arms to sustain itself. The bishop Nicacius was beheaded, and his nuns raped and speared. Priests were crucified, merchants flayed until they revealed the hiding place of their valuables, children enslaved, and livestock slaughtered. Some Aurelians were already fleeing toward the sea. Yet the news produced grim determination as well. In the depth of despair, some people were finding courage. Aurelia was bitterly divided—as Axiopolis had been, far to the east—
on whether to resist or surrender.
In the end, Zerco’s discovery depended on luck. A boy assisting a new unit of hastily organized militia had gone to the city’s weapon shops and had curiously slipped through a narrow passageway briefly revealed by a shifting of shelves.
Inside, the boy glimpsed a glittery cache of weapons and armor. The youth always prepared earnestly for the sacrament of the Sabbath, but always had difficulty during confession to find some sin with which to practice penance. It was hard to be venial enough to occupy the confessional’s time when you were only eight! He finally remembered to confess his trespass, and it was the room’s very existence that caught the priest’s ear. He thought the hidden cache of weaponry peculiar enough to mention to a prelate, who in turn remembered the bishop’s request to report anything unusual. Anianus mentioned it to Zerco.
“It seems strange to lock armor away.”
Zerco thought. “Saved for an elite unit, perhaps?”
“For when? After the city has fallen? And that’s not the only peculiar thing. The boy said all the helmets and shields and swords looked alike.”
Now this was intriguing. The tribesmen who had settled in Gaul retained individual taste in weaponry. Every man had his own armor, every clan its own colors, every nation its own designs. Only the thin and depleted Roman units managed by Italians retained a uniformity of equipment. Yet Roman troops were far away, with Aetius.
“Perhaps it is innocent or a boy’s imagination. But I’d like a look at this storeroom, bishop. Can you get me in there?”
“That’s the province of the marshal, just as the altar is mine.” He considered. “But I might send an altar boy to fetch Helco, the youngster who made his confession. Someone of your stature, in a vestment, might just get close enough. . . .”
“An altar boy I shall be.”
Zerco was helped by the confusion the approach of the Huns had caused. Men were assigned to the armory at morning and reassigned to a tower by noon, and then posted to the granary at dusk and a well by midnight. Private arms were being sold, donated, and redistributed. As a result, a small altar boy with a concealing hood, sent by the bishop to find another lad, did not cause much notice at first. Zerco spied a narrow opening behind the regular armory storage, and when eyes were turned tried to slip inside.
But a guard challenged him. “Hold up, boy. That back there is not for you.”
“The bishop has sent me to fetch Helco. The captain said to look there.”
“The captain of the guard?”
“Ask him if you must. But Anianus is impatient.”
The man scowled. “Stay until I come back.”
Once the guard left, Zerco didn’t pause. There was a tight twist in the rocky corridor and a wooden door with a heavy lock. The dwarf had brought a hammer and chisel, and with a bang, the lock parted. If he was caught, his means of entry was the least of his worries.
The room was dark, so the dwarf lit a candle to reveal the gleam of steel and leather. It was much as Helco had described, except the boy had omitted a crucial detail.
“Roman!” There was enough Roman armor to equip a troop of cavalry, yet no Roman troops would come to Gaul unequipped, and none would report to Sangibanus before reporting to Aetius. This was for barbarians, but why? And why was this equipment kept secret? Because any men wearing it would be assumed to be Roman. . . .
Zerco heard voices and snuffed out the candle, melting into the shadows. He discarded the hood and took out the signet medallion assigned him by Aetius, in hopes it would make the guards hesitate long enough for the dwarf to remind them that Anianus knew where he was.
The corridor filled with approaching light and then the broken doorway filled with men and oaths. There was the guard who had challenged him and a second, older, grizzled soldier, probably his captain, angry at the broken lock.
These two put their hands to the hilt of their swords. A third man, shorter and stockier and with a brimmed hat concealing his face, stepped up behind them. They came inside with a torch.
Zerco, his discovery inevitable, stepped out. Even as he displayed the medallion, the dwarf could see the third man’s eyes widening.
The stranger spoke in Hunnish. “Little mouse!”
It was Skilla.
“That man is a Hun!” Zerco cried in surprise.
The guard captain shook his head. “We warned you not to come here.”
Skilla spoke to the Alans in Latin, his accent thick. “I know this dwarf. He’s an assassin, kidnapper, and thief.”
“I’m an aide to Aetius and Anianus! Harm me at your peril!”
“If allowed to speak to your bishop,” Skilla warned, “he will mislead him.”
“He’s not going to speak to anyone.” Blades were drawn.
“Listen to me! This is a trick to betray your city—”
A sword swung with a whistle, narrowly missing. Zerco hurled his hammer at Skilla’s head, but the Hun knocked it away, scoffing at the attempt. The dwarf dropped and tried to scuttle, but blades clanged against the stone floor, blocking his way. So he somersaulted backward instead, knocking over a rack of spears and shields to slow his tormentors. The men laughed. This was play!
“The Huns are going to enslave you!” the dwarf warned from the darkness.
A spear sailed at the sound of his voice and nearly pinioned him. “Come out, little mouse,” Skilla called in Hunnish. “The cat is here to eat you.”
He needed a mouse hole. There was no back door and no window. A drain? He hadn’t noticed one. He looked for a spot darker than the darkness, the boots of his assailants treading heavily on the stone as they moved to corner him.
And there, in the corner where wall and ceiling met . . .
The men charged, and the dwarf leaped. He sprang past a sword thrust and clutched at the mail of the guard who had challenged him, temporarily blinding the man with a poke that elicited a howl. Then he clambered like a squirrel to the man’s head and leaped, half landing in a tight cavity. His fingers scrabbled for a hold.
“Get him! Get him! I can’t see!”
A hand slithered on his ankle. Zerco kicked, connecting with something hard, and pulled himself upward with all his might, wriggling up a passageway as narrow as a pipe.
“Boost me up!” someone cried.
He could hear an arm thrashing behind him. “He’s like a damned rabbit. It’s too small! There’s no way I can follow.”
“What is that hole?” Skilla asked.
“Who knows? Probably a vent, to give air.”
“Can he get out the other way?”
“There are grates on the outside to keep out animals. He can’t go anywhere, but we can’t get him, either.”
“Maybe if we boost up a dog . . .”
“Why bother,” Skilla said. “Aren’t men working to reinforce the walls? Get some stones and a hod of mortar. We’ll seal him in and have no corpse to explain.”
Even as they worked, Skilla felt cursed by the dwarf. The little man was grotesque and scuttled like a spider, and he seemed tied to every moment of the Hun’s torment by Jonas and Ilana. The witches had told him forest legends of squat and scabrous gnomes from the German woods who plagued ordinary men with magic and tricks. The annoying Zerco was one of these, Skilla believed, and sealing him in a stone tomb would be a gift to the world.
The warrior watched impatiently as the guards clumsily bricked. How Skilla hated it down here! No Hun liked crowded, dark, or confined spaces; and these underground passageways that the Romans had built were all three. He was proud of having been assigned the mission of conspiring with Sangibanus—it was a mark of his uncle’s growing trust in him, despite his setbacks—and he knew success would eventually bring him overdue recognition, and Ilana.
But the past week in Aurelia was almost more than he could bear. It was never quiet in the city. His senses were battered with noise, color, crowds, and ceaseless clanging. How he longed for the countryside! But soon Sangibanus would betray his own capital and Aurelia would fall. Soon the Huns would be masters of everything, and the clever men who made life complicated would be no more.
The king of the Alans dared not simply surrender his city, Skilla knew. His own warlords, who distrusted their cousin Huns as much as they distrusted Romans, might turn on him.
Sangibanus could not convince them of the West’s weakness without seeming a coward. Nor could he simply organize a party of traitors to overwhelm the sentries at his own gate. If too cowardly to fight Attila, he was also too cowardly to murder his own soldiers, because the chance of betrayal and civil war was too high. So instead Skilla had offered a different way. With Roman armor and a persuasive Aurelian officer, a party of Huns could seize the gate with a minimum of bloodshed, holding it open just long enough for other Huns to gallop through. With that, the battle would be over before it began, and no one—including King Sangibanus—
need die.
Now they had to act more quickly than planned. If Zerco had found this hidden armory, who else might know? Aurelia must fall before the dwarf was missed.