“Wait,” said Remi. “Take a look at this one.”

Sam joined her beside the skeleton. The skeleton had a gold ring around his neck like a Celtic torque. Beside him was a sword with a scabbard with silver mountings. He was wearing a vest that had been made of sheepskin. There were but a few wisps of the shaggy wool left on the outside, and the whole inner leather surface had turned a deep brown.

Through the rib cage and past the backbone, they could see something that looked like rows of designs and, below it, a large and elaborate shape. Remi said, “Doesn’t that look like print? And surely that’s a picture of something.”

“Kind of odd,” said Sam. “While he was wearing the vest, you wouldn’t be able to see the designs.”

“Priscus wrote that they wore their leather clothes until they fell off them. The only time you’d see this is after he was a skeleton.”

Sam raised his hand in the air. “Albrecht!” he called. “Can you spare a minute?”

Albrecht came from across the big room and joined them. He looked down. Then he knelt beside the skeleton, moving his head to see the vest through the ribs. Very faintly he breathed, “Oh, no.”

Remi said, “Doesn’t it look like writing?”

“It is writing,” said Albrecht. “We’ve got to get the vest off him so we can see all of it.” They carefully lifted the upper part of the skeleton, leaving the severed head on the tarp. While Sam held the torso, Remi and Albrecht slipped the vest down off the shoulders and then the arms. They laid it out on the tarp. Albrecht looked at the shapes closely.

“It’s Gothic. It’s an early eastern Germanic language, probably what half of Attila’s troops spoke.”

“Can you read any of it?”

“Quite a lot of it, actually,” he said. “There was a nobleman named Ulfilas who commissioned a translation of the Bible just about when Attila died, so we know a lot of the vocabulary and structure. And it has a lot of similarities to other Germanic languages. In English you say have. In German it’s haben. In Gothic it’s haban. Generally, Gothic retains a z that German lost. Things like that.”

He read. “‘Two days and a half north, one half day west. He’s where the fourth-night moon is widest.’ Fourth-night moon. I have no idea what that means.”

Sam said, “I do. The moon is on a twenty-eight-day cycle. If you start a cycle with the new moon or the full moon, the fourth night is always a crescent.”

“Look at the picture,” said Albrecht.

“That’s the waxing crescent,” Sam said. “The left edge is lit up.”

“Do you think it’s a calendar?” Albrecht said.

“No,” said Remi. “This guy was the cheater. He didn’t get to talk, but he made a map. The crescent is the shape of the bend in the river that they cut off when they diverted it. He’s telling us where Attila is buried.”