Читать книгу The Darkness and the Dawn - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 12

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Attila did not allow these distressing complications in his personal life to interfere with his work. After leaving the Court of the Royal Wives, he sat in the open and held his daily Justice in the Gate, listening to complaints and settling disputes. He displayed good judgment and a sense of fairness in the decisions he rendered. His semi-nakedness did not disturb him at all, nor did it seem to give concern to those who came before him. After the last litigant had left, he retired to his great dining hall where in solitary state he consumed a knuckle of cold fat mutton and a handful of dried dates. He then went below for a consultation with a group of his officers.

They were seated about a long table, these thickset subordinates, and although they had emulated him in wearing no clothes above the waist, all of them had retained their high leather boots; which, having been well oiled and tallowed, stank most abominably. It was difficult for them, quite clearly, to sit on benches beside a high table when the racial habits of many generations had accustomed them to sitting only in a saddle or squatting on the ground. The feet of some of them did not touch the floor but swung back and forth like those of small boys on a school bench.

After listening for some minutes to a discussion of the routing of the armies from the East through the mountainous country called Dacia which lay to the north of the Eastern Roman Empire, Attila concluded there were things about them which he disliked more than the odor of their boots. He rose impatiently to his feet.

“What folly is this I have been hearing?” he demanded. “These orders you talk of sending will throw my dominions into disorder. We will have all my armies from the East marching through Dacia at once and crowding each other off the roads. They will eat the country bare like a cloud of locusts. They will halt to fight each other. I am not summoning these armies to war among themselves at fords and crossroads. They are to march against a common enemy.” His eyes roved along the line of ugly, dwarfish faces at the table; he was contemptuous now and red with anger at their folly. “Wars are won by getting the best armies to the most favorable of battlefields. You, my sagacious ones, will founder my troops in Pannonian bogs and lose whole armies in the passes of the Carpates Mountains. I have heard enough of this for one day. I had hoped to get these details settled without calling on the Coated One, who is engaged in other work. But I see he will have to be set to untangling these knots you have tied between you.”

The expressions on his generals’ faces made it clear that whatever liking they may have had for this favorite tactician and assistant known as the Coated One had now been thoroughly dissipated. They said nothing but exchanged glances more eloquent of their feelings than any words.

Attila felt no concern over the resentments of his lieutenants. With a gesture he dissolved the meeting and watched them shuffle out. Then, without realizing that he was allowing himself to indulge in the vice of idleness, he dropped into a deep study. For the length of time that he sat beside the deserted council table his face fell into repose. It became less grotesque. Viewed at this moment, it seemed almost to have a trace of nobility about it as well as strength and cruelty. There was something about him to induce a reluctant admiration.

Attila became conscious finally of the passage of time and also of the presence of someone else in the room. He turned and saw Giso standing inside the door. He frowned at the intruder.

“When did you come?”

“Half an hour ago. I did not dare interrupt the great thoughts which filled your head.”

The man who aspired to crush the earth beneath his heel gave a scornful snort. “Why do you think it worth your while to tell me lies? You could not have been in this room more than two or three minutes. The meeting has just ended.”

Giso gestured with both hands. “You are the Master of Life and Death and cannot be wrong. This makes it clear that the truth is not in me and that I have uttered a great and deliberate lie.”

“What brought you?”

Giso did not hesitate to answer this question with his customary glibness in spite of the doubtful mood of his master. “I knew you would need me. The able soldiers who left the presence half an hour ago—forgive me, O Great Tanjou—who left you two minutes ago, had faces red with mortification. It was clear they had heard some painful truths. From this I concluded that their labors had brought forth no results and that you would have to call in a certain young Illyrian whose name is Nicolan of the Ildeburghs but who is usually called Togalatus, which means the Coated One. I came to report that the Coated One is expected to return this evening. As he is always on time, it may be taken for granted that he will be here in a few hours.”

“He will have to work all night to straighten out this tangle and get a proper set of orders prepared.”

For a moment it seemed that Attila was going to relapse into the mood of abstraction from which he had roused himself. Then he shook it off and, getting to his feet, began to stalk briskly about the room on his stumpy bowed legs. After completing several turns, he stopped in front of his attendant.

“I have reached a decision,” he said. His eyes had lighted up and it was clear that this decision, whatever it might be, filled him with pleasure and excitement.

“I knew it was coming.” Giso nodded his head with a corresponding eagerness. “It is about the ten prisoners.”

At most times Attila was brusque in his manner and curt in his speech. He had, nevertheless, a curious gift for words which he could call upon when necessity arose. On the few occasions when he used it, his face would light up, his gestures would become eloquent, his speech would flow easily and convincingly. So it had been on the never-to-be-forgotten day when he presented himself to the chiefs of the Huns with the newly discovered Sword of Mars in his hands and had claimed their undivided fealty.

He began to speak now with an uplifted hand. “I have decided thus. Two only of the prisoners are to die. Who the two are will depend on the drawing of the lots tonight. I shall make no effort to control the decision. The executions will be carried out as I had planned except for one change. When the heads of the unlucky pair are in the basket, a message will be read to the people from the”—he paused for a moment and then began to describe himself with the candid insight he sometimes liked to display—“from this strange and harsh divinity who rules so large a part of the world. This contradictory man of destiny, who has been known to put the populations of great cities to the sword and to devastate whole countries but who does so because of state necessity and not through sheer cruelty, will show a side of himself which few men have suspected. His magnanimity. The message will pardon the other eight. This unexpected generosity will astonish everyone. It will leave the eight survivors with a sense of gratitude. The multitude of spectators will be thrilled and excited. They will even forget they are not to have the pleasure of seeing the rest die.”

Giso found himself carried away with unqualified enthusiasm. “Mighty Tanjou!” he cried. “It is perfect! By such acts as this a great ruler commands the loyalty of those under him. All through the empire there will be nothing but praise for what you have done.”

Attila nodded. “But they will find in my generosity no encouragement for further disobedience.”

“It will be as sharp a lesson as lopping off all ten of the heads.” Giso paused for several moments and then added in a tone which might best be described as sly, “Of course, there will be only nine names in the box from which the two are drawn.”

Attila had gone back to his pacing but at that he swung around so suddenly that his inadequate legs threatened to fail in their task of supporting his heavy body.

“What do you mean?”

The sharpness of his tone caused the loquacious Giso to pause and consider. “Well, O King, it would be natural for you not to risk having the father of the beautiful German princess selected as one of the two chop-chop victims.”

“You think I would resort to trickery?”

“It would not be trickery, Mighty King. You would be sparing this lovely young woman from the grief of losing the father she loves so much.”

A curious change had been coming over the ruler of the Hun empire. He seemed almost to have accomplished the miracle of adding a cubit to his stature. A light which could be defined only as mystical had come into his eyes. Motives which could not be defined by any words had taken possession of him, racial beliefs which had governed his people when they lived their nomadic lives on the cold plains of northern Asia.

“Giso, you were with me when I carried into the kuraltai of my chiefs the sword which the gods had delivered into my hands, the Sword of Mars. Where else could it have been found save in the long grazing grass where the flocks of the Huns fed? That it was now mine meant that the hand of the god of war had touched my shoulder. It meant I must rule the Hun dominions alone and no longer share them with my brother Bleda. You knew then, even as I did, that my fate was hanging in the balance. Suppose they had not believed in the sword and in the strange way it had been entrusted to me? Then I would have died instead of Bleda and this great empire would never have been drawn together and welded into a mighty force. It was a chance that I took. But I did not hesitate to risk the decision of the dice of fate.”

Giso knew the whole story, the real story, of the finding of the Sword of Mars. Nevertheless, he was carried away by his master’s emotional statement. “Yes, Mighty Lord!” he said, in a rapt tone. “You have always listened to the voices which whisper in your ear and in none others.”

“Do you think then that I would resort to trickery in the drawing of the lots tonight?” demanded Attila. “There is too much at stake. This lovely child, for whom I have conceived a passion which astonishes me, will be my wife if her father is spared. If he is chosen as one of the two to die”—the eyes of the great leader seemed to become lost in a strange fanaticism—“then I will know it was not intended I should have her as a wife, or that she should ride with me when I lead my armies to the conquest of the world.” He seemed to lose all consciousness of his audience of one. “When it is a matter of state, I will lie and cheat and connive. I will resort to any measure. There are no limits to what I will do to achieve my ends. But this is different. Here the strange powers which have always guided me must be considered. If I took this decision into my own hands, would I not be risking their anger? This is for them to decide.”

Giso had quickly relapsed into his normal frame of mind. “But it would be very easy, Master, to make the drawing come out as you want it. You desire this beautiful princess. Make sure you get her.”

Attila shook off the mood in which he had been held. But he also shook his head and gave no indication of a change of purpose. “My mind is made up, Giso. Let me hear no more from you.” Then he added as though he found himself in need of reassurance, “The odds, after all, are very much in my favor. Five to one.” He turned and gestured toward the papers and reports strewn over the surface of the table. “It may be I shall be occupied when the Coated One returns. A wedding night is not to be interrupted lightly. I shall depend on you to meet him and bring him here. Tell him my generals have failed to work out plans for the arrival of the armies from the East. He will know what is expected of him. And now send Onegesius to me.”

When Attila had explained his new plan to Onegesius, the latter made the same suggestion about holding one name out of the box. This sent the emperor into another long and excited explanation of why he was leaving the decision to the forces which dictated so many of the most important things in his life. But Onegesius thought he knew his master better than that. As he left the presence, he said to himself: “But there will be only nine names in the box. I am not going to risk the blame if things should go wrong.”