They roared their fealty. Attila was giving them the world. Ilana pushed out through the crowd to slip away.
Finally it quieted. “As you know, I am the meekest of men,” he began.
There was appreciative laughter. Indeed, who was less ostentatious than Attila? Who wore less gold, demanded less praise, and ate more modestly than the king of the Huns?
“I let deeds replace speeches. I let loyalty speak my praise. I let mercy show my heart. And I let dead enemies testify to my power. Like this one here!” He shook the skeleton hanging on his body, and the Huns howled. “This is the Roman I crucified after his friends tried to have me assassinated. Listen to this Roman of the West, because I have no words to match what his rattle says about my contempt for his people!”
I was sickened. Rusticius’s head, I knew, must now be mounted on one of the poles around Attila’s house, its fine brown hair blowing in the wind, his once-friendly grin now a skull’s grimace.
“You have been patient this year, my wolves,” Attila went on. “You have slaked your thirst for blood with water and let tribute substitute for plunder. You have slept, because I commanded it.”
The crowd waited, expectant.
“But now the world is changing. New tidings have come to Attila. New insults, new promises, and new opportunities.
The Romans must think we are a nation of women, to send a few pounds of gold to kill me! The Romans think we have forgotten how to fight! But Attila forgets nothing. He misses nothing. He forgives nothing. Drink well and deeply, my warriors, because for some of you it will be your last. Sleep deeply and rut deeply, to sow new Huns, and then sharpen your weapons this long cold winter, because the world must never stop fearing its Hun master. All this year we have rested, but in the coming spring, we ride. Are the Cadiseni of the Huns ready to ride with Attila?”
“Ten thousand bows will the Cadiseni bring to the king of the Huns!” shouted Agus, the chieftain of that clan. “Ten thousand bows and ten thousand horses, and we will ride from Rome itself to the bowels of Hades!” The crowd cheered, half crazed with drink and bloodlust. All they really knew was conquest and restless journey.
“Are the Sciri ready to ride with Attila?” the king cried.
“Twelve thousand swords will the Sciri bring when the snows melt in the spring!” promised Massaget, king of that nation. “Twelve thousand who will be first to break the shield wall and let the Huns follow us!” Cheers, hoots, and challenges followed this boast, and there was a friendly and rough jostling as the warlords pushed and jockeyed for position before their king.
“Are the Barselti ready to ride with Attila?”
Another roar. Now I began to push my way out of the crowd, saying I was under orders to fetch more food. Attila would give us the time we needed.
Ilana had initially stumbled in the dark after leaving the area of the great fires, but soon her eyes adjusted. The glow from the clouds cast a lurid red light. As she neared the Tisza the camp seemed empty at its margins, only an occasional Hun hurrying to fetch another skin of mead or chase the rump of a lover. No one paid her any heed. So now she was about to trust her life and future to this young Roman and his strange dwarf friend! It was necessary. Although Jonas and his party had failed to ransom her as she originally hoped, he at least represented the male strength she needed to help escape to the Empire. He’d even said he was falling in love with her.
Did men fall in love so easily? Did she at all love him? Not in the way she’d loved her betrothed, the dear Tasio, who’d been shot by that arrow during the siege of Axiopolis. She’d dreamed girlish dreams of marrying him, having a vague but happy future of home and children and sweet surrender to his lovemaking. Now that seemed a thousand years removed, and she could scarcely remember what Tasio looked like, much to her secret embarrassment. She was more practical now, more desperate, more cynical. This man from Constantinople was really just a convenient ally. And yet when he kissed her, and looked at her with longing eyes, her heart had stumbled in a tumult she dared not confess. What foolishness to be thinking of such a thing before they were even away! And yet if Jonas and she escaped together, would he try to press himself upon her? And what should be her reaction if he did . . . ?
It was while lost in such girlish thought that a wall loomed in the darkness and she stopped abruptly, afraid she was about to crash into a house. But, no, it sidestepped, snorting. She’d been so witless that she’d almost walked into a horse and rider! The Hun who loomed above her leaned drunkenly down, swaying slightly and grinning. “And who is this sweet woman, come to meet me before I’m fully home!” he said in slurred recognition. “Have you been waiting for me, Ilana?”
Her heart sank. What monstrous fortune was this? Skilla!
“What are you doing here?” she breathed. She’d thought him still away at Constantinople, escorting the humiliated Roman embassy.
Leaning precariously, a skin of kumiss dangling from one shoulder, Skilla slid off his horse in a half topple. “Finding you, it seems,” he said. “What a homecoming! First I find the whole plain alight with celebratory bonfires. Then a sentry patrol passes me some tart kumiss so that they don’t drink so much that they pass out themselves, earning a crucifixion. And then, following the river path because it’s the only one simple enough for my tired horse to negotiate, I find you running out to meet me!”
“It’s a strava for the Greek envoy Eudoxius, not you,” she said. She was thinking furiously. “I’ve been sent to fetch more kamon for the party.”
“I think you’ve come to look for me.” He swayed, leer-ing. “I’ve been thinking of you for a thousand miles, you know. It’s all I think about.”
“Skilla, it’s not our fate to be together.”
“Then why did the gods send you to me just now?” He grinned.
Please, please, she prayed, not this, not now. “I have to go.” She tried to dart around him but he was quicker than his drunken state made her expect, snaring her arm.
“What beer is out here in the dark?” he objected. “I think it is fate that sent you to meet me. And why do you recoil?
All I’ve ever wanted to do is honor you, to make you my wife, and bring you rich presents. Why are you so haughty?”
She groaned. “Please, I don’t mean to be.”
“I saved you.”
“Skilla, you were with the Huns who killed my father.
You carried me into captivity—”
“That’s war.” He frowned. “I’m your future now. Not that Roman slave.”
She craned her neck, looking for help. She knew she should try to charm her way out of his grip but she was flustered. She had to get away! Jonas might come at any moment and a confrontation between the two men could ruin everything. She shoved and they rocked backward in a crude dance. “Skilla, you need to sober. We have to part.”
It amused him, this smug little flirt, this woman who preened. He yanked and pulled her in close, his breath on hers, the rank smell of travel sweat and dust pungent and disagreeable. He sniffed her sweetness greedily. “In a strava? This is when men and women come together.”