I let my head slump back, my voice thick. “I couldn’t save her. Attila grabbed her after we started the fire.” Tears came, welling on my face.
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Zerco was fumbling at me. “But you’ve got the sword.”
I shoved the dwarf away. “To hell with the damned sword!”
The dwarf came back, cutting the lariat from around my neck and dragging the weapon free. “This is what is important, Jonas Alabanda. This, and what I’ve stolen as well. I am sorry about your woman, but this will save many women. Many, many women.”
“What have you stolen?”
“You aren’t the only man who has been busy tonight. I paid a visit to the Greek doctor who would betray the Empire.” He grinned fiercely. “He decided to accompany us, trussed like a pig.”
“We’re taking Eudoxius when we failed to kill Attila?”
This was madness atop madness. “Our diversion failed!”
“If Gaiseric is allying with Attila, my master Aetius needs to know about it. He’ll be best convinced by the traitor himself. Besides, the doctor’s absence might confuse the Huns even more. Perhaps they’ll think him a double traitor, secretly in league with Rome. It might slow their plans, if your fire hasn’t already done that.”
I shook my head in frustration. Nothing was happening as I expected. Stripped of the encumbering weapon, I managed to kick myself free of the horse and dragged myself away. I felt raw: shot, burned, bruised by the fall, exhausted from being awake most of the night in that stifling jar, and devastated by the loss of Ilana. Half a mile away, I could see people running, backlit by the flames of the kagan’s palace.
“And is what we’ve stolen worth Ilana’s life?”
“A million women’s lives, I hope.” The dwarf rested the sword on his shoulder like a pole. It was nearly twice as long as Zerco was high. “This sword will be seen as a sign from God. It will help rally the West. I understand your sorrow, but we still have a chance. The Huns are in disarray, and Ilana didn’t know which way we’d flee. And if she somehow still lives, this sword may be her only hope.”
Suddenly I saw it. “We can trade it for her!”
Zerco shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. Don’t torture yourself with temptation. This sword goes to Aetius.”
“To hell with Aetius! This piece of iron is all Attila cares about! The Huns will give anything to get it back!”
“How long do you think any of us, including Ilana, will live once you stop to parley with the barbarians? Have you learned nothing in all your months here?”
He was right, but I was stubborn. “They have their own honor.”
“Which must now be avenged for the murder, or attempted murder, of Attila. And you want to walk back into their camp with his stolen sword?”
I opened my mouth to argue and then closed it. The dwarf was right. Escape was insult enough, but we’d risked everything by violating the chamber of Attila. This would not be forgiven. Ilana had courageously gambled and lost. Just as I’d lost her.
“If she lives your only hope is to defeat Attila,” the dwarf went on, “and the best way to do that is to take this sword to Aetius. Come, the horses are waiting.” He began dragging the sword toward the trees.
I felt I couldn’t move. “I failed her, Zerco,” I said miserably.
My tone made the dwarf stop. Finally he came back and pressed the old weapon into my hands. “Then make up your failure, Jonas. The last thing Ilana would want is for you to be found at dawn standing foolishly in a meadow, her sacrifice in vain.”
The sky was beginning to blush. So we mounted the horses and rode hard, desperate to be well out of sight by full daylight.
Eudoxius, bound to a saddle, was gagged, his eyes glar-ing furiously. I’d expected that Zerco might have stolen my own mare, Diana, but the dwarf said that would have aroused too much suspicion: both when he took the horse and when she was found missing. Diana’s presence, in contrast, might confuse the Huns enough to think that I died in the fire. So the dwarf had instead stolen Arabians. Julia and Zerco shared the same mount, Eudoxius was on the next, and I on a third. The fourth we let go again, for Ilana was not there to ride it.
XVII
I
PURSUIT
It was startling how the witch Ansila has been right, Skilla thought. Fortune had given him a second chance after all.
After his combat with Jonas, the Hun had been so humiliated that he wanted to drown himself in the Tisza. It was terrible enough that the Roman had bested him. But he’d been saved by a woman! The reprieve had meant other warriors treated him like a ghost already dead but somehow still annoyingly among the living, a reminder of rare defeat. Skilla burned for revenge and the recapture of his honor, but Attila wouldn’t allow a combat rematch. And mere murder would not erase his shame. A stab in the back was the mark of a coward. So until war came, there was no opportunity to prove himself, and war was an agonizing six months or more away. Every waking moment became a torment, and every dream a nightmare, as Jonas recovered with Ilana as his nurse. So finally Skilla went to the Hun witch Ansila and begged her to tell him what he should do.
How could he regain his old life and eliminate the cursed Roman?
Ansila was an ageless crone who lived like a burrowing animal in a clay cave, paved with straw and beamed with tree roots in the riverbank. She remembered much of the past and saw far into the future, and every warrior both feared her and bribed her, for visions. A gold-studded bridle and bit, looted by Skilla during the raid on Axiopolis, was the fee he paid for her prophecy. He went to her at midnight, squatted morosely as she built up her fire to heat sacred water, and then watched impatiently as she scattered herbs on its surface and looked into the steam.
For a long time nothing seemed to happen, the prophet-ess standing motionless over her iron pot, her lined face and gray hair wreathed in the vapors. Then her pupils dilated and her hands began to tremble. She recited her message in a singsong rhyme, not looking at him but at things impossibly far away:
You will not have to wait long, For your frustration to be gone, Young warrior.
The one you hate is tempting fate.
He will light a fire that will bring desire, And steal what will ultimately heal.
On a darkling field you will have met, When the greatest fire is not yet set.
She staggered back from the steam, breathing deeply, her eyes shut. Skilla waited for explanation, but there was none.
The closeness of the cave made him giddy.
“Steal what, Grandmother? What fire? I don’t understand.”
Finally she peered at him, as if remembering he was there, and gave a crone’s grin of missing teeth. “If you understood life, little fool, you could not bear to live it. No man could. Be thankful you’re as ignorant as a goat in its field, for you’re happier because of it. Go now, be patient, and prepare for everything to change.” She turned from him in dismissal, grasped the bridle, and tottered across the cave to se-crete it in a chest. Later, she would trade it for food and clothing.
For a week Skilla had stewed in frustration, confused by the prophecy and waiting for some obvious sign. Had Ansila been wrong? Had he wasted the bridle? Then Jonas set fire to the kagan’s house, trying to kill Attila, and Ilana had been caught. In a single night of flame and confusion, everything had changed.
No bodies had been found in the ruins of the great house.