2012: The Little Horn of Prophecy

PART ONE

The Old World

The great Empire of the Antichrist will begin where Attila and Xerxes descended in great and countless numbers, such that the coming of the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the 48th degree, will make transmigration, driving out the abomination of the Antichrist.

—Nostradamus

At the height of its power the great horn was shattered, and in its place came up four others, facing the four winds of heaven. Out of one of them came a little horn which kept growing toward the south, the east, and the glorious country. Its power extended to the host of heaven, so that it cast down to earth some of the host and some of the stars and trampled on them.

(Daniel: 8:8–10)

PROLOGUE

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Aquileia: 452 A.D

Please, your Holiness, do not give up the horn of prophecy. It is written thus in the Book of Daniel: The little horn shall wage war against the holy ones and claim ignoble victory. Attila is the Antichrist. Appeasing him will only make him bolder.

—from a letter to Pope Leo from the Bishop of Lilybaeum

The Council of Nicaea set to convene in May of the previous year had to be postponed because the Antichrist and his horde were poised to launch an all out assault on the very heart of Christendom. Pope Leo sent the Bishop of Lilybaeum as his delegate, empowering him to offer Attila the Hun even more gold—and the Roman Emperor's daughter in marriage. The Holy See also promised to return a bejeweled horn said to be sacred to the pagan horde. Although by the winter of 452 the Huns suffered from meager provisions, dysentery, and internal conflict among the different tribes, Attila's response had a serrated edge. He sent ambassadors to the Roman Emperor, ordering that by virtue of his expected dowry, a throne be prepared at once for the Lord of Earth and Sky.

Honoria, the Emperor's daughter, learned of the latest Hun demands while she was in Aquileia; upon hearing the news, she spit a grape-seed out of her mouth and tossed her head back in defiance. The arrogance of that beast! Leo was already paying 1,900 pounds of gold every year to the barbarian. How long was this extortion to continue? Why have an army if they are going to be robbed like this? She was infuriated by the pontiff's cowardice and sickened by his offer. It mattered little that she had been assured by Rome's generals that Attila would wear himself out and she wouldn't have to worry about the proposed marriage of convenience. Capable of small predatory incursions only, the Huns were not expected to pose any real harm to the city.

The Temple of Minerva in Aquileia, one of the Emperor's favorites, had been especially fortified. What the Emperor and his generals didn't know was that Honoria was already carrying the child of the Antichrist. When she delivered her ring to him in person, she was alone with him just long enough for the Lord of Earth and Sky to make sure their engagement was not a mere formality.

The architecture of Minerva's temple evolved from the strange alchemy of east and west, with a consistent strain of Christian influence, noticeable particularly in the frescoes. Minerva, the helmeted goddess, stared benevolently into the empty courtyard surrounded by walls decorated by gilded mosaics of saints. In her right hand she held a spear, while she pulled aside her vestments to show her breastplate adorned with the head of Medusa. Like her prototype, Pallas Athena, who sprang in complete panoply from the head of the god, Minerva was now to protect Aquileia from the swarming horsemen pouring through the Julian Alps.

The gladiolas on Minerva's pedestal looked like they were about to wilt, but despite the severe drought, Honoria shuffled across the marble tiles to the basin so she could refresh the vase. Earlier, she had noticed the goddess's perfect lips, and it seemed as if she were speaking to her.

As Honoria poured the fresh water, an arrow pierced her abdomen. She knocked over the vase as she collapsed, oblivious to the pool of blood drenching her robe and the feathered arrow that found a home so close to the baby inside her. Were she conscious, she would have known that a feathered tuft could mean only one thing: Attila had come. She did not hear the shrill alarm bells or see the wild commotion that seized the square below, one chariot after another careening through clouds of dust.

Archers rushed to the walls. A column marching to the northern rampart held their shields over their heads in the formation of the armadillo. The phalanx discharged its arrows and then architectonically closed ranks. The segments coiled open again, their arrows sailing over the wall to collect their groans on the other side. The fortified Roman war machine was incited to precision.

The first strike had come on the 7th day of June, 452. For a whole day, the ram's head hammered away at the northern wall before it was breached. Arrows decimated the first barbarian surge, but they were not enough. A Roman ballista had to be wheeled against the wall to seal up the breach. On its face were mounted eight individual engines that simultaneously fired thunderbolt arrows at a furious rate. Three other war machines like this were deployed into the fray, costing Attila 15,000 men in the first week of fighting. Two of his chieftains, seasoned in the war against the East, lay dead, and hundreds of his best archers sprawled in the thickets waiting to die.

During the fourth week of the siege, Attila himself was wounded. A Roman arrow, having come unseen through a fringe of leaves, penetrated his shoulder blade. He reached back and pulled it out with a wild grunt and continued to fight in spite of the searing pain. The air streaming thickly into his lungs made him pant, and it wasn't until he collapsed from loss of blood that he was taken by his men to Torda's tent. Torda was the Shaman of the Huns.

Torda regarded the Lord of Earth and Sky with grave foreboding. Attila's skin, usually packed tight like a lizard's, now sagged. Strange ripples appeared on the skin. Even as he was propped up against a pile of furs, his squat frame fell backwards, taking the furs down with him. His back arched, and the slanting perforations that were his eyes rolled back into his head. The body convulsed violently for a longer period than Torda had ever seen. The Lord of Earth and Sky foamed at the mouth like his stallion in the heat of battle. The Shaman took this as a sign. His Lord was wrestling with the gods so he could divine the future. As soon as he regained consciousness, Attila rambled on about a smell, a bad smell, the stench of burning carcasses. Torda thought it was the fever talking. If only his Lord could drink the milk of the brood mare, he could mix into it the Wort of St. John. Attila could not hold water; it went out of him as fast as it went in. Torda was afraid a fever would set fire to the body again, and this time his Lord would writhe until his spirit left him.

Attila's head cleared. He would be content with goat milk. Who would have thought, he said amidst groans, that the opulent Romans would have field after field charred by the sun? Barren riverbeds, mudcracked springs. Nothing but these accursed grasshoppers.

Torda tried quieting him to save his strength, but Attila was not to be quieted. He kept asking about the storks. Were the storks leaving Aquileia?

I have seen them flying in the air.

Suddenly Attila's narrow eyes blazed with light. It is not the custom of storks to leave so early in summer when the shoots are still green. Unless they sense something. Their long bills sense the doom of a city destined to be crushed under my sole. If only I had the Sacred Horn of the ancients, I could bring down these walls and turn their temples into rubble! A grin twitched Attila's lips. I will meet the Shaman of the Christians and reclaim the Horn of our fathers. I can feel it. In my hand, I am holding the same Sacred Horn. My fingers trace its magical carvings. Our holy war began and will end with it. The storks sense it. I feel it.

As Attila said these words, the rooftops of Aquileia were already on fire. During the night, all eleven battering engines had been wheeled into position along a section of wall where Attila's scouts found a fracture. The battering poles pointed their massive heads at the crack. Again and again the bronze heads crashed against the weakened wall. It was only a matter of time before they broke through, when a battering ram with seven horns penetrated the wall in a deafening explosion of rubble and dust.

Hun catapults unleashed sizzling boulders. Heated to incandescence, scraps of white metal streaked in arcs over the crumbling wall. The Romans fell from their ladders into the chaotic mob, and those who could run scurried from the fiery barrage as fast as their feet could take them. Comets out of hell! shouted a Roman weapons-maker as he sought refuge under his overturned chariot. The Beast is here. The Beast with the seven eyes! The wheels of his overturned chariot were still spinning.

The Huns flung one fiery boulder after another into the air at timed intervals. One crashed through the dome above Minerva; the tiny tesserae exploded into powder and smelled of sulfur. Paint melted from the frescoes of saints. Stampeding around the square, and driving their horses straight into the temple, the Huns jeered at the meager-limbed figures with their gold halos emblazoned into the walls. A horseman hurled the chain sling of his war hammer at the tightly packed mosaic, all the while cursing the tiny hammer of the smithies whose hand could make these shards fit so snugly.

By the morning mist of July 28, 452, the destruction of Aquileia was complete. The entire city had been set on fire. There would be no food for the soldiers or fodder for horses, and no rain to quench the raging fires; Minerva's temple city had become a charred field on which Hun horsemen played polo with a fleshless skull. The few birds that stayed behind hovering over carrion whirred from the ruins.

The cool sun sliced through the mist and streaked the tops of trees with a rusty color. The long caravan, tired and hungry, abandoned Aquileia and started out for Ticinum, where another Hun contingent waited. Attila, feverish and still smarting from his wound, huddled with his Shaman, their two-wheeled cart trundling past battle weary troops who had to march ahead of them many leagues before the caravan could rest.

The fog from the Po Valley curled under the hooves of the horses, and Attila, taking this as a sign of uncertainty and perhaps even defeat, decided not to attack heavily fortified Ravenna. Despite the distant sound of animals being slaughtered and the rising smoke, the storks were still nesting close to the city. In a desperate strategy to starve out the invaders, the Romans ordered the city to destroy its own livestock. Ravenna would have to be bypassed, Attila told his Shaman.

But the troops have to be fed, Torda sputtered.

Then let them feed on Roman legions. I tell you, Ravenna stinks to heaven of swine. Attila's voice sounded firm, yet Torda noticed that the Lord of Earth and Sky tried to hide his trembling hand in a fold of his furs. The Shaman thought it would be wise to let the matter drop. As he checked the dressing and applied more salve to the mangled tissue, Torda noted that the skin still felt hot, and not only around the wound. In a voice charged more with anger than pain, Attila spoke of Leo, the great Shaman of the Christians.

Attila had informed the papacy that negotiations would not begin unless Leo brought to him the Sacred Horn, 20,000 pounds of gold, and the Emperor's daughter. Attila's hand started to shake again and his teeth chattered. After drinking red wine, which restored the color to his face, Attila asked about the magical powers of the Christians. He had heard they could turn water into wine and wine into blood. Instead of answering, Torda changed the subject and said sleep would help with the fever and urged his Lord to rest.

It was not until they approached the gates of Ticinum that Attila was awakened by moans of soldiers dying of dysentery. These men had to be kept outside the gates for fear their sickness might contaminate the others. Before the march toward Rome, they would have to be buried. Attila felt an icy sickness at the bottom of his stomach as an endless stream of the dying fell prostrate before his wagon. Torda said the men have been warned, but they kept eating the blue meat under their saddles. The meat was foul, it made them sick. Attila added, It is true, they have lost heart. He would have to lift their hearts so they could see for themselves how mighty they were.

The first order of business was for him to ask for his white horse. He must ride into the city on his white horse and with his head held high. Tomorrow, when all his warriors were arrayed by the delta of the River Mincius, he would speak to them. 20,000 pounds of gold could buy a forest full of venison. And once his warriors had their fill, and with the Sacred Horn in their possession, they would race across the river, not stopping until they could feel in their hands the treasures of Rome, including its delicate women whose necks were as white as the hind. Although his arms and legs felt weak and tremulous, he insisted on walking without aid to the silk tent waiting for him, but once inside, alone, the sigh he let escape from his lips brought on an attack of labored breathing. He knew that without the Sacred Horn he, too, was a mere mortal, a Lord only of the Earth but not of the Sky. Pitching himself on a bed of furs, he did not move until the break of day.

200,000 strong, the Huns bristled on the dry delta on the eastern bank of the River Mincius. Half a league across the slow-moving water waited Pope Leo and his small party.

The horde closed ranks, the tips of their spears gleaming in the morning sun. Pope Leo would have to wait, because Torda, whose divine name means teller of tales extraordinary, was still consumed with his chanting, telling the great history of the Hunnish race and prophesying a greater future:

"And the great gods, their armor inlaid with crystal, shall fly on the wings of eagles and sweep across the vault of heaven as two shooting stars. And far below them shall swirl the blue-green Earth, and under the clouds, lofty towers shall aspire with a haughty air that will one day atomize into flakes and snow onto the firmament. And under the ground, colonnades that delve deep into the Earth and store fine linen, and purple and scarlet, and gilded in gold, and precious stone, and pearls shall wash out into the sea.

And from the entrails of time that seeded Xerxes shall come the mighty Attila, the Lord of Earth and Sky. And his seed in time shall craft an instrument of war the world has never seen before, forging an arrow of light powerful enough to pierce steel prows and armor of the sturdiest design. This he shall perform with furious speed, aided by the ancient art of the Sacred Horn. Torda paused for effect before he continued. I have seen the great Turul bird take wing beyond the clouds, flash a silver wing before disappearing in the fire of the sun. We are destined to rule all that is under the sun. We are to rule the Earth and the Sky. And the Sacred Horn betrayed to our enemies shall once again glorify our tribe. Attila and his seed shall rule the world with it for a thousand years, our numbers ever increasing until we cover the Earth like a sea of grass and the heavens with a myriad stars. O Attila, Lord of Earth and Sky, we salute you and your seed, bravest of warriors in the War of the Stars.

Attila trotted forward on his white horse to wild cheers that clamored his name in deafening waves. Enormous antlers sprouted from his helmet, befitting the Lord of Earth and Sky. His booming voice was carried by renegade gusts of air: I have good news for you, brave sons of Hunnia. A Daughter of Earth, the Roman Princess Honoria, has consented to be my wife. She is to give me a son, who will rule both East and West and North and South. When the Shaman of the Christians learns I have seeded the Daughter of Rome, he shall open the city to us, nor will he bar us from its opulent treasures, lofty temples, gold and silver, its sweet pastures and sweet pleasures, milk and honey, spiced meats and rare spices of the richest empire on the face of this Earth.

Attila raised his sword, the chieftains followed. Swords and spears flourished from a double line of horsemen stretching along the base of the delta. Once again, Attila intoned, once again we will be in possession of the power and the glory of our Sacred Horn. Behold, at this moment we are supported by one of its fantastic figures. The Delta. Let it be known to our enemies that the double set of Hunnish steel you brandish now are the teeth of our Attila and seed of Xerxes. Oh, how like the shark we are, how sleek, how terrible!

He waited for the thunderous roar of his troops to quiet before he continued. Now that I have sired a sharp-toothed male, my seed shall revenge the destruction of the seeds of our fathers. And if he should fall before he sires a son, a great turbulence in the entrails of time will issue the One worthy of my illustrious name. And he will sound the Sacred Horn, and his arrows of light will strike from heaven, thunderbolt after thunderbolt, in the most terrible battle of the stars.

As if on cue, a horn sounded from across the river. The Huns' infernal din echoed through the Po Valley. On the other side of the river, Pope Leo's escort, the Bishop of Lilybaeum, kept sounding the horn, the very horn he had demonized so vociferously in his letters. Now his pontiff was asking him when Attila intended to cross the river and claim his horn. Did the barbarian expect the Vicar of Christ to go to him? Honoria had been right. There was no end to Attila's arrogance. The bishop took the horn from his mouth, wiped it ceremoniously and handed it back to the pontiff. Little does Attila know that Your Holiness in his infinite wisdom had ordained that the power of the Antichrist be exorcised from the horn. Still, their rallying cries sound like the hyenas. The Antichrist is still drawn by the sounding of this horn. Behold, he is detaching himself from his troops now and galloping as in a dream toward the ringing in his ears.

His purple pontifical banners fluttering behind him, Pope Leo had no other choice but to cross the shallow riverbed to meet his adversary. The deacons lighted candles the wind continually extinguished. Staying behind with them was the Bishop of Lilybaeum and in the distance, erect on a white hind, sat Honoria, the daughter of the Roman Emperor.

Attila's vast army, not a half league across the river, stood silent and tumultuous.

Leo halted his mount a few paces from Attila, mumbled something in a tongue the barbarian could not understand. Then he released the horn into Attila's hand. The sun was overly bright, the light seemed to waver. The Lord of Earth and Sky fixed his gaze on the Sacred Horn. Something was not right with the horn. It was stripped of its jewels and was a fraction of its size. Attila rotated the horn in his hand for a closer look at what was left of the legend of the ancients.

x = 4π

With his index and middle finger, he felt around the smooth inside. Several lines of numbers and letters were missing. What was left was but a fragment of the engraved magical symbols. Attila was enraged. Dark-green bile surged toward his throat, and his brow furrowed as he turned toward the pontiff. What have you done with the Sacred Horn, O Shaman of the Cross?

The pontiff spoke almost gently: The destruction of Aquileia, my son. Honoria herself kept it safe for you in the Temple of Minerva. She tells me the artifact had been whole, but then you laid siege to the city, and in the process the horn was damaged. We will do everything we can to find the precious stones, and they will be returned to you by the Vicar of Christ when he crowns you king of his people.

I am already king. I am the Lord of Earth and Sky.

"You may be pater patriae, Pope Leo pontificated, but you wear the antlers of the Beast. It is more fitting for the king of your people to wear a holy crown, golden and bejeweled, and tipped by the cross.

The little Attila understood, he did not like. Clouds passing in front of the sun caused the light to flutter.

You, Attila, must repent, the pontiff chanted in a solemn voice. Repent of blood and vengeance, rape, plunder and dark murder. Of brother killing brother. The voices of the dead cry out to me from the ground. The Shaman's tongue moved fast, like the tongue of a bird. "The soil shall not give its fruit to you. A fugitive and a wanderer shall you be on Earth for your deeds. Whoever rapes and kills shall be punished