I could have ridden faster by myself, I suppose, but it would have been with a sorrowful recklessness likely to get me caught. The elation I’d expected from fleeing Attila’s camp had instead become sadness at the loss of Ilana. In this somber mood, the company of the dwarf and his wife was a comfort, relieving me of having to make the decisions of where to go. They were gentle at my remote and troubled manner—only much later would I think to thank them—and Julia, who had come from such country, instructed us in the ways of camping. Zerco tried to explain the intricacies of imperial politics to me. So many kings, so many alliances, so many treacheries! Animosities reaching back two and three hundred years! The sword, perhaps, would help temporarily unite them.
The kidnapped Eudoxius, in contrast, was a misery as company. The Greek, once his gag was removed, was tireless in complaining not just about his capture but also about the weather, the food, the route, the hard ground at night, and the companionship. “I consort with kings, not jesters,”
he ranted. “I am on a mission to free a captive world. I am Pericles! I am Spartacus! I am Gideon! I can hear the pursuing hoofbeats now! Listen, you’ve sealed your own doom by capturing me!”
“Listen?” Zerco replied. “How can we not? You’re louder than a mule and twice the trouble, and your braying makes just as much sense.”
“Let me go and I’ll trouble you no more.”
“Slit your throat and you’ll trouble us no more! You are gabbling your way toward a bright red necklace, believe me!”
“Let’s do it now,” I suggested irritably.
“He’s met Gaiseric,” the dwarf replied wearily. “That’s what Aetius will be interested in. Trust me, he’s worth all his noise.”
Zerco knew more than I suspected. His fool’s antics had allowed him to be ignored like a dog during some of the Hun councils, and he’d learned much about the location of barbarian tribes, favored routes to the west, and where provisions might be bought or stolen. Riding like a stocky child in front of his wife, his head cushioned pleasingly against her breasts, he led us by the map he’d formed in his mind.
At an unmarked crossroads or at the hovel of a sutler where we might buy food, he’d clamber down and leave us waiting while he played the mysterious and misshapen pilgrim.
Eventually he’d waddle back with information and bread.
“This way,” he’d announce confidently. Then we’d be on our way again. Never seen was the great sword that was swaddled in rags and slung across my back.
The traveling was more rugged than my journey to Attila.
The autumn rains were chill and this part of Germania seemed a maze of low hills, cloaked by dark forest that extended as far as the eye could see. Our sleep was restless, and there were no slaves to pitch a tent or prepare a meal.
We huddled like animals.
It was on the fourth night that Eudoxius tried to escape.
I’d tied the captive’s hands behind his back, hobbled his feet, and strung another rope from the Greek’s ankle to my own to alert me of any mischief, but in the deepness of the night I shifted slightly, my leg stretching, and realized the tether had gone slack. I came sharply awake. Someone was moving because I could hear his anxious breath.
The quarter moon came out from behind a shred of crowd, and I saw a dark form crouched over my saddle where I had placed the great iron sword.
I reacted without thinking, hurling a faggot of wood that took Eudoxius by surprise. It bounced off him, drawing a grunt, and then the Greek was running hard for the darkness of the trees, abandoning the sword he’d tried to steal.
I snatched up the Hun bow I’d been practicing with and had taken, but Zerco, also awake, stayed my hand. “Aetius needs him.” So I ran, too, and here my youth stood me in good stead. I steadily gained on the lumbering doctor, hearing his panicked wheezing.
It was when I was about to tackle him that he whirled and almost killed me, lashing out with a bright knife I didn’t know he had. So that is how he’d cut himself free! It barely grazed my side before I was inside his reach and plowing into him like a bull. We both flew; the knife was knocked free and crashed. Then the same boxing skills I had used on Skilla were employed again. I wasn’t sure what I was more furious about—my own laxness at searching him, his greed for the sword, or his attempt to kill me—but I pummeled him thoroughly for all three. In moments he gave up resisting and curled into a ball.
“Please, mercy! I only wanted to go back to Attila!”
I stopped, panting. “Where did the knife come from?”
He peeked and smirked. “From the small of my back to my inner thigh to the stitching on my saddle—wherever I could hide it.”
Zerco came and spied the knife in the moonlight. He picked it up. “This could have ended all three of us, if he’d been brave enough to go for our throats while we slept.” He turned its jeweled hilt. “A pretty blade. Look at the work-manship!” The dwarf squatted. “Where did you get it, doctor?”
“What care is that of yours?”
Zerco pricked the doctor’s throat. “So I’ll know who to send it for cleaning!”
“It was a gift from Gaiseric,” Eudoxious squeaked. “He took it from a Roman general. He sent it as a token of his word to Attila, and Attila gave it to me as a reward.”
The dwarf handed it to me. “And now you’ve bestowed it on Jonas, while you’ll be trussed each night like a pig.” He gave a kick to the prostrate doctor. “That’s for disturbing my sleep.” He kicked again. “And that’s for having to listen to you for the last four days.”
“I’ll speak my truth!”
“And I’ll kick you again.”
We traveled on. With no Roman mileposts and few promontories to judge our progress, this new world seemed as endless as the sea. Crude forest tracks wound underneath patriarch trees that had sprouted before Romulus and Remus were born. This was a world Rome had never conquered and never wanted to, a place of shadowy stillness; gray marshes; and dark, tunneled brooks. The sun of the Bosporus seemed impossibly distant, and when we encountered settlement, the primitive state to which people were falling after the rampages of the Huns was depressing. At the ruins of Carnuntum we passed by a small party of Gepids living like animals in its corners. How I longed for a Roman bath! And yet the baths were a ruin, the pools empty and the boilers unlit. The only water left running was through the abandoned community’s sewage drains, and it was here that the hapless barbarians washed themselves and their clothes.
We bought food, and passed on as quickly as we could.
I learned more about the peculiar marriage of Zerco and Julia.
“The union was meant to mock me,” Julia explained. “I was captured from the Scuri tribe when a child and sold by the Huns to a Gepid master as brutal as he was stupid. He thought he could force affection by the whip, and meant to take me to wife when I reached thirteen. I was comely enough to excite his lust, and he was ugly enough to extinguish mine. He proclaimed one night I was ripe enough to give up my virginity, but I put foul meat in his stew and gave him a night at the privy instead. His neighbors laughed at him. He threatened to kill me, but the Huns warned him not to, so he went to Bleda demanding his money back. Bleda, who didn’t want to offend the Gepids at that moment, paid for me himself from money he owed his own jester. Then he awarded me to Zerco instead, as an insult to me and in punishment for my mischief.”
“Not that I minded losing coin I might never see anyway,” the dwarf chimed in. “I’d no hopes of marrying, and then suddenly I was presented with this angel. The Huns thought it hilarious. They offered to lend us a stool.”