Aries Fire (21 page)

Seira examined the stick in her hand as if it were faulty.  She then examined the stick with the hole.  She peered through it meticulously.  She frowned and started over.  Attila sat against a tree and picked up the dead bird.  He ripped its head off and pulled out some raw flesh.  Seira huffed, barely noticing him. Her hands turned red from friction.  She stopped for only a moment as Attila shoved raw game into his mouth.

In all of her time with Isaac and Kiki, she never learned how to make a fire. Kiki always made it with her fire starter.

This is preposterous! she thought. How could I not have learned this? Why didn’t they teach me this!

Irritation escalated as Seira suddenly threw the stick at Attila, who caught it easily without blinking.  Her swollen fingers carefully picked another stick from the quiver.  Attila belched and crafted an arrow from his catch.

Hours went by. Seira’s palms blistered.  She stood up and kicked her tools and screamed.  Attila paid her no attention.  He ripped more flesh from the dangling bird and ate.  Seira stared at him with disdain.

She squatted, knees close to her chest, and closed her eyes. This was supposed to be an easy task.  Focus was needed to bring her mind in unison with her body. She heard Isaac’s voice, “Prrrana,” it echoed.

Seira picked up the sticks and placed them appropriately between hands and feet.  The stick rubbing against her hands burned like the fire she attempted to create. Muffled, exasperated grunts sounded off in her throat.

Attila disappeared for a few minutes then brought soft grass and tossed small tufts into Seira’s labor.  Smoke sparked into fire.

Seira licked her burning hands.  A proud look crossed her face. Attila handed her what was left of the bird.  She looked at the meager carcass.

“But I am hungry!” she yelled.

“Next time eat it dead or make fire faster,” he said, sitting near her in the grass.

Seira plucked the rest of the bird’s feathers and impaled the meager portion.  Placing the remains on the fire, Seira frowned.  She measured Attila’s inconsistencies of being both animal and human.  Content to accept him, she cooked her leftover bird. The flesh smoked then sizzled on her fire.

“How did you learn Latin?” she asked.

He spewed a feather from his lips.

“At thirteen I live in Rome. Three years.  Aetius, from Rome, lived with my father.  Peace treatise between Hun and Roman,” he said, shrugging. “The holy men say this way, we learn to live together in peace.”

Attila bowed his head in a dramatic display of dishonest reverence for the priests of Rome. He spat to one side and continued to eat. Seira smiled at how much he resembled his father.

“Oh, so you lived with a Roman family?”

“No, not with family. At court.”

“You lived at Court?”

Seira was surprised he had never mentioned it before.  Attila nodded as he chewed on the bone and cracked it in two.

“You are very wise, Rhetman.  The holy ones in Rome are not so holy.  The holy men did not want to pay tribute to Khan Mundzuk any longer is more the truth.  Aetius learned the Hun way. I learned the Roman way.”

Seira was silent for a moment.  Attila sucked out the marrow from the bone.

“And what did you learn?”

“I learned that it is time to conquer the head of Rome so that it knows how to bow and bend to the world,” he said.

“With whom did you meet?”

“Aya,” he sighed and leaned back.

He put his arms behind his head and made himself comfortable on the ground.  Seira thought his profile was exquisite.  Seira looked beyond his swarthy appearance and saw a provocatively handsome man. 

I could kiss him.

She suddenly saw Bleda and looked away.

If he didn’t look so much like him, she thought.

“Did you meet Bishop Cyril of Alexandria?” Seira asked.

Attila looked at her while he picked his teeth with a sliver of bone.

“No.  But I hear his name many times when with the Deacon.”

They were both quiet for a time.

“If I see the Bishop I will kill him,” he said.

“No.  There is information I would need, Attila.  He killed my mother and I wish to know why.  The true reason cannot just be because of her faith. It cannot be.”

Attila appeared thoughtful for a moment.

“Know this Rhetman, men kill for any reasons.”

“You are like your father in many ways,” she said.

“And you? What is your father like?” he asked.

Seira felt empty.

“I do not know who my father is,” she finally said.

“Aya, Rhetman,” he said, picking up the bird’s skeleton.

“It is maybe that you never know,” he said and playfully threw the bird bones at her.

Each day they practiced shooting Seira’s arrows into targets.  Attila brought some of the younger tribe along and hid them behind trees.  He blindfolded Seira and had the youngsters call out to her.  She aimed her arrows toward sounds, striking tree targets.

Her senses grew while blindfolded.  Her intuitive fire guided her movement. She was, she discovered, a natural born warrior.  Even though fear remained her biggest adversary, self-competition led her to excellence.

At night, after her training sessions, Seira showed Attila the constellations and told him stories of their supposed origins.  He listened attentively as Seira also recounted the heroic tales of Alexander the Great, as she had heard them from her grandfather. Attila debated with her over Alexander the Great’s warring tactics, as he had heard similar stories from his father. These talks with each other filled them both with a connection to something greater.

She admired Attila’s brilliance and desire to learn. Every mathematical problem she presented him with, Attila attacked like a foe.  Seira marveled at Attila’s mind, which could calculate in seconds what took Seira moments more. 

“Here,” Attila said.

He handed Seira her bow and walked away from her. 

“Stay ready to fight,” he said and disappeared.

Seira was left alone in a thicket.  Tall pine trees her only company.

Where is he? She wondered.

All was quiet. She scanned the skies.  She peered at something peculiar.  Clouds rolled and disappeared as they waved by rapidly.  She felt a sudden chill in the air. The frosted leaves of the tree next to her caught her attention as they quickly thawed making way for green buds.  Her sense of time and perception sped then suddenly slowed.  She had no time to wonder.  Seira felt strange, as if in one moment she lived the same days repeatedly without memory of any particular one.

The ground vibrated loudly, galloping followed. The sound echoed all around her.  She instinctively pulled an arrow from the quiver, stretching it back in the bow.  Seira aimed at nothing.  Her body twirled around to meet the sound, hips aching.

A Hun flew past her on horseback.  She fell backwards into the brush.  Bleda’s face flashed in her mind.

Attila? She thought. What’s hap…

She scrambled for her bow and arrow and jumped to her feet. Sounds warbled and reverberated.  Seira’s legs slowly crept from the underbrush, toes flexed, her heels descended in slow motion.  All movements slowed in time.  Seira pivoted and balanced.  Her hair flew into the air and fell across her neck, bouncing down and splashing upward again.  Her eyelids lowered and lifted in an endless blink.

A legion of Roman soldiers appeared on the rise. They were real. This was no vision. Seira’s heart beat a drum that drowned all other sounds.

She let fly her arrow.  Wispy, hollow hisses emerged all around her.  Her head turned from side to side and witnessed the company of Huns as they crawled across the countryside like black spiders, hatching from the Earth.  The Huns moved, a gliding plague, flinging arrows from their backs, and dimming light from the sky.  Seira fought with them as her fire within intensified. 

Seira had a singular purpose.   She killed anyone who appeared before her.  Hand crafted arrows slung astride her back.  A song her mother once sang filled her head while men’s screams filled her ears.  The sounds commingled and hummed until all sounds muted to silence.  She turned wild with rage.  Seira was emotionally removed from the slaughter, from time, from life, from the past.

She warred with the Huns.  Random limbs severed.  Blood spurt.  Time sped. They tread over dead bodies, lifeless corpses underfoot. 

Life and death had no meaning for Seira.  She acted from a pure place of rage, of fire, that burned and consumed everything in its path.  Seira buried her mother’s murder and Bleda’s face with each strike of her sword.   With every shot of her arrow she made her target. 

The Roman soldiers, with all of their strength and strategy, turned blind to their own history of Zenobia and Boudicca, brave warrior women who fought the Romans and won. The Hun masses distracted Roman soldiers from detecting Seira.  A woman fought like a man and no one but the Huns knew.  No one questioned Seira as she swung her sword.  With each Roman soldier, Seira discovered the warrior Hun within.  Vengeance led her through the clash of blades and the crashing of enemies’ shields.  Eight hundred Legionnaires against half of that in Huns bore their way through each other to destroy one another.

Seira, sheltered by a blind fury, ignored the brutal violence of war.  Attacked from all sides, she held her ground with constancy.  The Roman artillery alit and discharged fiery-knotted balls of cloth and wood soaked in oil that exploded all around Seira.  She looked for Attila only once and saw him, fixed on killing.  This gave her permission to continue her slaughter.

An arrow pierced through a Roman soldier’s neck, toppling him.  Seira jumped on his body.  He struggled beneath her.  She sat atop the gasping, dying soldier.  Seira jerked his sword from his hand and raised her fists over her head.  His face covered in death.  She screamed as she thrust the sword into his heart.  She glared viciously at him.

Seira forced the blade so hard the handle hit her chest. She fell over the body and lay startled, momentarily breathless.

Attila flew through the air and pounced on a soldier nearby.  Seira watched him, dazed. The soldier’s head flung back.  Attila sliced it from his shoulders with one swift lift and cut.  The head dropped, rolled to a stop; lifeless eyes fixed on Seira jarred her to her soul.

Attila quickly dragged Seira to his horse.  He flung her atop and slapped the horse’s haunches.  It flew.  Seira looked back at the Huns who massacred what remained of the Northern Roman legion.  Attila’s horse rode straight to the Hun encampment.

Seira entered the camp with a small group of wounded Huns. She was suddenly confused, as if waking from a nightmare, and wondered if she had been hit in the head during combat.  She made her way to Attila’s tent. Her foot slid easily from the stirrup as she dismounted Attila’s horse.  A faint memory recalled a time when that stirrup felt foreign.  Her clothes were drenched with blood, and by some miracle, none of it was hers.

Many Huns died in the past week. Many more Romans perished in the onslaught.  Seira heard the others talking about the battle. Attila and Mundzuk led the Huns to victory.  Just as she had witnessed earlier, the trees showed signs of an early Spring.  Winter had come and gone. 

She stared at her body and wondered how long she’d been fighting in the war.

“I’ve been under a curse of sorts,” she said.

Her head pounded.  Seira entered Attila’s tent. She was one of very few allowed access.  Seira felt sick as she wrung her bloodied hands.  Isaac’s face drifted into her mind.  She felt ashamed that anger had dictated her course for so long.  Obsessed with revenge, Seira sank to a lowly place that led her to violence, where compassion could not be found.  She lowered her palms into a basin of water and stared at her hands, the bearers of harm.

“Mother,” she whispered.  I am filled with contrition.  I have dishonored you.

It was not long after that Attila arrived and met Seira in his tent.

“Northern army is done,” he said, tearing into a cold leg of lamb.

“Attila,” she looked at him, searching for something.

He continued to eat as he ripped off his animal vestment soaked in blood.

“Attila, how long have we been here?” she asked.

He looked at her and stopped chewing.

“At Northern camp?”

“That isn’t wha…no, I, what I mean to say is, on the calendar, how many seasons?”

“Aya,” he said and began to chew quickly as he glanced upward, calculating the seasons in his mind. 

Calling upon his studies with Seira he summoned up the calendar system of astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria who set forth a standard of coordinating the celestial tropical seasons, solstices and equinoxes equaling 365 days and ascribing 30 days to each month.  Attila remembered to take February’s short month into his calculations and said, “Hmm,” and swallowed, “Near twelve moons we fight. Three Egyptian seasons, evet?”

He handed her some mutton.

She shook her head to say, ‘no.’

“One year? How can that be? I…” she sat down. A look of astonishment spread across her face.

“Aya,” he said.  “A man who is drenched does not fear rain.”

Have I been fighting for that long? she wondered. Where has my mind been?

“Twelve months, Attila?”

Attila put the gnawed bone down.  He looked at his hands then at her.  Fingers smeared with soil, blood, and now animal grease.  He grunted and walked to the basin and washed his hands the way Seira taught him to do before eating. 

“Evet? Clean hands now. Yes, that many seasons it is,” he said, sitting next to her.  “You are the brave warrior Rhetman,” he said.

A clean, sturdy hand lay lightly atop hers.   Rarely did Attila touch Seira.  He respected her body as much as he respected her wisdom.  Seira looked at his masculine fingers. She leaned into him and closed her eyes. Attila felt awkward. After a moment he raised his arm and placed it around her shoulder.  Seira coiled her arms around his naked, sweaty torso.  His chest was copper and muscular, devoid of hair, unlike Bleda.

For the first time, Attila held the woman he loved.  He held the woman he knew he would never have.  A distinct maturity encompassed this young man of nineteen.