Burning Shadows (49 page)

“Why?” Niklos asked, more from jitteriness than any lack of understanding.

“They must know that there are still people here,” said Sanctu-Germainios . “How else would that fire get started? In this weather it could hardly be an accident. So the guards will be looking for us.” He edged away from the tower, through the roiling smoke, going toward the largest dormitory; he could hear Niklos’ soft steps behind him. He was relieved that neither he nor Niklos had to breathe, for it meant they would not cough as the smoke became denser. He touched the side of the dormitory and felt for the large pile of rags he had laid at the door after the last party of refugees and monks had left. They had been soaked in pitch and would burn quickly and tenaciously as soon as Niklos put his torch to them.

“What do you think? Do I light them now?” Niklos almost ran into him.

“Yes. The stack is right—” He stopped, shoved Niklos away, and swung his sword, feeling its impact and hearing a yelp of pain and surprise, followed at once by the whump of a body falling.

Niklos had staggered a few paces away, his torch still clutched in his hand, its light revealing a Hunnic warrior splayed on the ground, a deep gash in his abdomen. Niklos gawked at the dying man. “Did he almost—”

“He did his best,” said Sanctu-Germainios, wiping the blood from his Byzantine blade. “If he has found us, others might. Get the pitch burning, and we will go on to the outer wall.”

The Hun on the ground moaned, but the sound was weak; blood fountained ever more slowly from the wound across the middle of his body.

Niklos shuddered. “The dormitory and the outer wall.” He thrust his torch into the pile of rags, holding it there until it smoldered, sparked, and combusted. Niklos jumped back and almost slipped in the spreading pool of blood around the fallen Hun.

“Compose yourself,” Sanctu-Germainios told him, not unkindly. “You can crumple when we are safely out of here.”

It was a demanding effort, but Niklos managed to gather his scattering thoughts. “I’m ready.”

“Good.” He looked around the end of the dormitory. “Keep as near to the next building as you can. The smoke is not as thick on the other side.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until there’s more smoke?” Niklos knew the answer, but had to ask the question.

“If there were fewer Huns or more of us, yes; we cannot afford to give them any opportunity to regroup and start an organized hunt for us.” He hesitated, then added, “Your torch and your axe are both necessary to our escape.”

Niklos ducked his head. “I’ll be right behind you.” Sanctu-Germainios pointed in the direction they were to go. “Once the second dormitory is alight, then on to the outer wall.”

“I know,” said Niklos, trying to ignore the howls and shouts of the Huns, and the crackling roar of the fire.

As soon as he broke from cover of the dormitory, Sanctu-Germainios turned around as he ran, taking in all the increasing chaos between the walls of the monastery. He stayed as close to the surging smoke as he could, and slammed into the side of the next dormitory. He sought out the entrance to the building, and felt for the pile of rags as Niklos thumped into him. “These,” he said, pointing to the pile of rags.

Niklos shoved the torch into the rags, and tried to keep from fretting while he waited for the rags to light. “The Huns are gathering in front of the stable.”

“I saw,” said Sanctu-Germainios, gesturing to Niklos to move on as the fire came alive.

“The wall; by the hunters’ door.”

Sanctu-Germainios slapped his arm. “Go!” He watched Niklos rush off into the smoky mist, then went after him, his sword up, to ensure Niklos as much protection as he could provide. They were almost at the outer wall when two mounted Huns bore down on them, thin, metal-tipped lances aimed at them. “Keep on!” he yelled to Niklos, then drew out three caltrops from his small satchel and flung them in the path of the charging horses, and an instant later saw the first horse rear, screaming, throwing his rider, and then rearing again as his on-side hoof touched the ground.

The second Hun drew rein, prepared to turn about and summon help. Sanctu-Germainios reached into his satchel, pulled out the dagger, and struck the second Hun between the shoulder-blades. The man jerked in the saddle, then sagged and slid off his horse, which went trotting, head up and ears back, toward the rest of the company. The first Hun lay unconscious, while his horse continued to shriek in pain.

Niklos appeared at Sanctu-Germainios’ side, his torch gone, his battle-axe in his hands. “Let me take care of the horse,” he said, distressed at its suffering.

“I will do it. You go open the hunters’ door.” Without waiting for a response, he swung his sword and went up to the wretched animal, cutting its throat in a tremendous upward swipe of his sword. He backed away as the horse fell, blood spraying in all directions. He looked toward the outer wall and saw one of the straw-men burning. There was no time to lose, for the hunters’ door was directly beneath the part of the walkway already smoking. He bolted toward the hunters’ door just as a few more Huns rode toward him. Those in the lead reached the caltrops, and crippled their mounts, one of the men screaming as he fell onto another caltrop. Sanctu-Germainios continued on, half-expecting to be fatally impaled on a lance before he could get out of the monastery.

“This way!” Niklos shouted, and Sanctu-Germainios ran toward the sound of his voice, lurching through the door as the battlement platform started to rain burning embers down on the Huns behind him.

Once outside the door, Sanctu-Germainios shoved Niklos ahead of him toward the narrow trail that led to the hermits’ caves. Within the walls there was increasing panic as the Huns strove to get out of the new gate they had come in before the entire wall was blazing. “It will all be gone before nightfall,” Sanctu-Germainios remarked, pausing to look back.

“Unless it starts to rain,” Niklos reminded him.

“Our horses and mules are waiting,” said Sanctu-Germainios.

As they climbed away from the fire, the smoke lessened, the heat vanished, and Sanctu-Germainios and Niklos were less than shadows in the mist.

Text of a report from Hredus in the Hunnic camp near Potaissa, to Verus Flautens, Praetor-General of Drobetae in the former Province of Dacia, written in the regional Gothic/Latin dialect with fixed ink on vellum, delivered ten months after being dispatched.

To the Praetor-General of Drobetae from the freedman Hredus,

To Verus Flautens, Ave:

This is to warn you to evacuate all Roman citizens in the former Province of Dacia to safer towns and forts south of the Danuvius River before the autumn rains make the roads impassable. The Hunnic King, Attila, has been taking advantage of the slow response from Roman officials and troops; he intends for his lieutenants to drive toward all the Roman towns north of the Danuvius before winter. Since there are insufficient forces to stop them, the best course is to remove the Romans in this region from the path of danger. If only the Thirteenth Legion were still at Apulum to defend those faithful to the Roman Empire, East and West. Attila has paid the Praetor Custodis of Viminacium, Gnaccus Tortulla, handsomely to keep his troops south of the Danuvius, so any help you seek from him will surely be denied or postponed until all action is futile. In the meantime, Attila himself has taken his best companies and gone westward to strike at the Roman borders from here to Aquitania.

So it is that Huns are growing in strength daily, not only from an increase of their own numbers but from nobles and officers in the region giving their loyalty to Attila in exchange for rank and favor. Not three days ago, Tribune Rotlandus Bernardius of Ulpia Traiana arrived here with fourteen of his soldiers, and was welcomed as a hero not only by the Huns but by the Gepidae and Goths who have joined Attila’s companies of foreign allies. Bernardius informed Attila’s advisors that the Sanctu-Eustachios the Hermit monastery is all but deserted and ripe for the picking, and that if a company of soldiers were dispatched at once, the remaining goods and treasure could be taken without any true opposition; it would gain the valley and lake for the Huns, and the advantage of a place high enough to offer a superior view of the whole region. Since the monastery can be reached in two days’ steady riding, a company was ordered out, charged with that task. They are expected back in five days with plunder from the monastery, especially foodstuffs and livestock.

Tribune Bernardius is not the only Roman officer assisting in the dismantling of the former province: I have seen three Praetors, seven column commanders, fifteen Tribunes other than Bernardius, twenty-two Centurions, and in excess of fifty soldiers. There are even nine scribe-monks and four former tax collectors among those who have made themselves allies of the Huns. They are shown respect and offered titles and privilege for their treachery.

This camp has upwards of four thousand men—a considerable number with Attila and many of his troops gone westward—and as many horses in it; all of them have the smell of victory and plunder in their nostrils; it is well-known that the intention of Attila is to have his men take and hold all the towns, villages, forts, and monasteries in this part of the Carpathian Mountains while his army makes its main push to the towns the Huns do not yet control. I have seen that Attila has been altering his methods of fighting to give him equal footing against Roman and Byzantine soldiers, increasing the danger they pose to us all. They have already surrounded more than half of the territory in these mountains that they wish to hold and there are only a few safe roads out of the Hunnic noose. For that reason, I will have to send this to Aquincum with instructions to have it carried to Drobetae by courier, and pray that none of the Hunnic armies have got to Aquincum or Drobetae ahead of the courier. I trust you will have it in time to make arrangements for your defense before winter sets in. I will leave camp after the first snow and I will hope to greet you at the start of the New Year, when I look forward to the reward you have promised me for my clandestine service to you and to all Roma. And I trust that when I see you, I will find my sister well.

This on the eighth day before the Autumnal Equinox,

Hredus

      
freedman of Drobetae

EPILOGUE

T
ext of a letter from Ragoczy Sanct’ Germain Franciscus at Salonae in the Province of Illyricum to Atta Olivia Clemens at Arae Flaviae in Noricum, written in Imperial Latin with fixed ink on vellum, carried by private courier, and delivered ten weeks after being dispatched.

To my much-loved Olivia, the greetings of Ragoczy Sanct’ Germain Franciscus, or as I am still currently styled in this part of the Empire, Dom Feranescus Rakoczy Sanctu-Germainios:

The search is over at last. I have finally found her, and it is as you supposed—although I am unfathomably saddened to learn that Nicoris has come to dislike the necessities of her vampire life, and that the Blood Bond is insufficient to compensate for the burden her existence has become. Her death four years ago was not so terrible that it left her shocked and appalled with her changed state; she has said she would have preferred to have my company when she first woke to our life; she succumbed to the same fever that killed Antoninu Neves, a kind of complicated lethargy that was marked by pain in the guts and muscles of the legs. A number of mercenaries died of it at about the same time. Nicoris was hard put to explain her survival to Neves’ comrades, and has sought the privacy of setting herself up once again herding goats, gathering herbs, and weaving. In the five nights I spent in her tent, I could not change her mind. She said of Neves that her time with him, more than five years, was better than she had thought they would be, but that generally she disliked the life of a mercenary’s woman.

I offered to provide her with a villa and servants, but she said she would not accept either from me, for that would seem to her as if I were paying her for her companionship at Sanctu-Eustachios the Hermit, which would cheapen our passion in her memory. That is also the reason she says that she intends to end her undead life: she has no desire to remain in her current state, dependent on the passion and generosity of spirit from others. She has said she did not mind supplying my needs as she did, but that she does not want to be the one requiring the blood and the intimacy it corroborates.