Bigilas was staring at Edeco in horror and hatred. The betrayer had been betrayed. Edeco had never intended to carry out his promise of assassinating Attila, the translator realized. The gold was a trap. Now he fell to his knees. “Please, my son knew nothing.”
“And what nothing, translator, did the boy not know?”
Bigilas bowed his head miserably. “It was a mission en-trusted to me by Chrysaphius. The money was to bribe Edeco to assassinate you.”
Maximinus looked like he’d been struck by a German long sword. He reeled backward, his face pained. His mission, he understood instantly, was in ruins. What treachery for the chief minister to not tell him of this plot! The proud senator had been made a complete fool. Worse, it probably meant the end of us all.
“To murder me, you mean,” Attila clarified, “when I was most trusting and most defenseless—while I slept or ate or pissed. A murder by my most trusted warlord.”
“I was only obeying the will of my master!” Bigilas wailed. “It was all Chrysaphius! He’s an evil eunuch—every man in Constantinople knows it! These other fools were ignorant of the plot, I swear! I was to fetch my son and with him the gold . . .” Suddenly he swiveled toward Edeco, furious. “You gave your word that you were with us! You promised you would assassinate him!”
“I promised nothing. You heard what you wanted to hear.”
The translator was beginning to weep. “I was no more than a tool, and my son ignorant. Please, kill me if you must, but spare the boy. He is innocent, as you said.”
Attila’s look was contemptuous. A quiet that really only lasted moments seemed to us Romans to last hours. Finally he spoke again. “Kill you? As if your master would care? As if he wouldn’t send a hundred idiots to try again if he thought one of my generals was foolish enough to believe him? No, I won’t waste the moment’s work required to kill you, translator. Instead, you will walk barefoot back to Constantinople with your bag around your scrawny neck, its gold replaced by lead. You will feel each pound with every step of your bleeding feet. My escorts will ask Chrysaphius if they recognize the bag, and he will do so, or you will die.
Then you will tell Chrysaphius that you met ten thousand Huns and could not find even one who would raise his hand against the great Attila, not for all the gold in the world. This is what your Empire must understand!”
Bigilas was weeping. “And my son?”
“If he is foolish enough to go back with you, he may do so. Maybe he will become smart enough to despise you and find a proper mentor. Maybe he will eventually flee the corruption of his father and come live the clean life of the Hun.”
Crixus collapsed, holding on to his father as they both bawled.
“God and the Senate thank you for your mercy, kagan,”
Maximinus said shakily. “Please, do not let this blind foolishness destroy our partnership. The emperor knew nothing of this monstrosity, I’m sure! Chrysaphius is a vindictive plotter, all men in Constantinople know this. Please, let us make amends and start our talks—”
“There will be no talk. There will be no negotiation.
There will only be obeisance or war. You, too, will return to Constantinople, senator, but it will be backward on an ass, and my warriors will make sure your head is always pointed toward the land of Hunuguri as you ponder your foolishness.”
Maximinus jerked as if struck. The end of his dignity would be the end of his career. Attila, I was certain, knew this.
“Do not humiliate Rome too much,” the senator said in despair.
“She humiliates herself.” Attila considered. “You and the one who betrayed you can contemplate my mercy. Yet none dare raise a hand against Attila without someone being struck down in consequence. So he”—Attila pointed at Rusticius—“will die in place of his friend. This man will be crucified to rot and dry in the sun, and his dying words will be to damn to Christian Hell the greedy and corrupt companion who put him in such danger.”
Rusticius had gone ashen. Bigilas turned his face away.
“That is not fair!” I cried.
“It is your Empire that is not fair or trustworthy,” Attila said. “It is your country that treats some men like gods and others like cattle.”
Now Rusticius fell to his knees, gasping for breath like a landed fish. “But I have done nothing!”
“You joined with evil men you didn’t care to know well enough to discover their betrayal. You failed to warn me. By these omissions you doomed yourself, and your blood will be on your friends’ hands, not mine.”
I was dizzy with horror. “This makes no sense,” I tried, heedless of violating protocol. The simplest man of our party was the one who was being sacrificed! “Why him and not me?”
“Because he is of the West, and we are curious how such men die.” Attila shrugged. “I may decide to have you switch places. But for now,” he said, “you will remain as my hostage against the promise of the return of Senator Maximinus.” He turned to my superior. “For every pound of gold Chrysaphius was willing to spend to have me struck down, I want one hundred pounds in penance.”
“But, kagan,” gasped the senator, “that means—”
“It means I want five thousand pounds by autumn, senator, and only then will we talk peace. If you don’t bring it, there will be war and your scribe will have done to him exactly what I promised the young boy there, but done infinitely more slowly and painfully.”
The room was a blur, the earth seeming to have dropped from under me. I was to be left alone with the Huns, to watch Rusticius die? And then be tortured if Maximinus did not return with an impossible ransom? The treasury could not afford five thousand pounds of gold! We had all been betrayed by the fools Bigilas and Chrysaphius!
Attila nodded at me with grim satisfaction. “Until then, you are our hostage but a hostage who must begin earning his keep. And if you dare try escape, Jonas of Constantinople, this too means war.”
XIII
I
THE HOSTAGE
Something had gone horribly wrong.
Ilana had been so confident of rescue that she had actually packed and hidden a bag of clothes, biscuit, and dried venison to take with her when she left with the Romans.
Surely it had been a sign when the embassy rode into camp and she’d caught the eye of Jonas. God meant for her to be free and to return to civilization. Yet Guernna had run to her, smirking. “Come see your fine friends now, Roman!” Ilana had emerged into a sea of hooting and jostling Huns, some of them flinging vegetables and clods of earth at the three departing Romans. The old man was mounted backward on a donkey, his feet dangling and his fine gray hair and beard dirty and matted. His eyes looked hollow with defeat. Following on foot was the translator who had come back from Constantinople, staggering with a heavy sack around his neck that bent him like a reed. Roped behind was a boy who must be the translator’s son, looking frightened and ashamed. A dozen Hun warriors surrounded them as escort, including, she saw to her relief, Skilla. He must be leaving, too. But the Roman tents and baggage and slaves were all remaining behind, the latter conscripted into Attila’s army.
Where was Jonas?
“I heard they put one of them on the cross,” Guernna said gleefully, enjoying Ilana’s dismay. Guernna thought the Roman girl vain, aloof, and useless. “I heard he screamed more than a Hun or a German ever would and begged like a slave.”
Crucifixions took place on a low hill a half mile from the river, far enough so that the stench was not overpowering but near enough so that the cost of defiance was always apparent. One or two happened per week, as well as periodic im-palings. Ilana ran there, praying. Indeed, there was a new victim, whipped, bound, spiked, and so masked with blood and dirt that at first she had no idea who it was. Only after studying him anxiously did she discern that it was Rusticius, his eyes half hooded, his lips cracked like dried mud.