Читать книгу The Darkness and the Dawn - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 19

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When the curtain was drawn back and Attila appeared at the top of the steps leading down to the main room of the palace, Micca’s voice trailed off into silence. The leader of the Huns raised a hand in salute and immediately the fighting men who made up the company sprang to their feet and cheered wildly. “O Mighty Leader, may the gods direct your feet on the way to Rome! O Attila, live forever!”

He descended three steps and then stopped. Again he raised an arm, this time as a demand for silence.

“You saw two men die tonight who had refused to obey my orders,” he called. “I have pardoned the others. And now, I trust, there will be no more disunion in the ranks. There will be nothing but eagerness and obedience when the earth begins to tremble under the marching feet of my armies!”

The room went wild with excitement. The blond German warriors of the north joined with the squat fighting men from the east in cheering the king who had united all the barbarian races. They waved their swords in the air as he descended the rest of the steps and walked to the elevated table at the head of the room.

“Lead us to Rome!” his followers were chanting with almost maniacal excitement. “To Rome! To Rome! To Rome! Our swords thirst for the blood of the sons of Caesar! Our arrows cry out to be launched against the tyrants! Against those who laugh at us and call us barbarian!”

Attila seated himself. Raising both arms, he commanded silence and invited his fighting men to seat themselves at the smaller tables which filled the room. They obeyed with alacrity, being both hungry and thirsty. Their master then looked about him with satisfaction. The bloody lesson of the evening had produced the desired effect. In the eyes of the men about him he could see nothing but eagerness for the battles which lay ahead, no hint of holding back, of disobedience. This was what he wanted to see. “My men,” he thought, “are the best fighters in the world. They will crush the Roman squares and smother in blood the legions of these effete fools.”

His eyes found other reasons for satisfaction. The tables were covered with looted treasures: tall jeweled standing cups, gold and silver vessels filled with salt and with spices from the East for those who had learned to like them, and long golden platters from which other kings had once partaken of meat. The wooden walls of the hall were covered with trophies and the round pillars holding up the ceiling were draped with rich silks. The objects on which his covetous eye rested had been wrested by bloody hands from marble halls where refinement ruled: tapestries, mirrors of polished silver, the crowns and scepters of conquered kings now dead, the great curved swords of leaders vanquished long before. There was always pride in his eyes when he viewed these fruits of conquest.

His own table and chair were small and simple in design but they were placed high above all others in the room. He noticed as he took his place that, for the first time, a second chair had been placed beside his. The exalted feelings, which had welled up inside him as he responded to the welcome of his warriors, subsided and he felt suddenly downcast; for he had ordered that Swanhilde was to sit beside him. The chair was empty.

He said to himself with a grim determination: “I must make my peace with her. It will not be easy, for the child is filled with courage and spirit. I must see her in the morning.”

Before the heaping platters of meat could be brought in, there was a ceremony to be observed. Attila nodded to Onegesius, who shared a table directly beneath the dais with Micca, as a special guest. Onegesius rose to his feet and called in a loud voice:

“Linicenthus!”

One of the eight subsidiary rulers, who had been pardoned a bare hour before, got up from somewhere in the rear and walked to the steps beneath the dais of Attila. The ruler lifted a plain cup of ivywood, the only one on his table, for he insisted on being served in the simplest manner. The cupbearer filled it with rich wine from the sun-baked region called Tokaz. The emperor touched his lips to the brim and the cupbearer then bore it to the kneeling Linicenthus. The latter quaffed the wine and then said in a loud voice:

“O Mighty Emperor, who will one day rule all of the earth and the seas and the skies above us! O Favorite of the Gods, to thee I give thanks for the great boon of life I have received at thy hands. To thee I pledge my undying fealty and my promise to lead my men under your banners when we march against the common enemy.”

All eight of the pardoned rulers were summoned in turn and expressed their allegiance in similar words. They were proud men, kings in their own right and long accustomed to rule; but they displayed no hesitation in their obeisances to this barbarian from the East who had forced them into submission. The lesson taught them had been a sharp one but it had been completely effective.

The ceremony over, the room burst suddenly into the kind of activity for which all the rude warriors had been waiting. The servants came into the room in a long procession, carrying platters of roasted meat high above their heads. There were dozens of haunches of beef and mutton as well as spitted chickens and ducks, and dishes of steaming stews. Every pair of eyes in the room lighted up at this welcome sight; all save those of the man who sat alone above them, for Attila could not stifle a feeling of dismay at the amount of food he must offer each night to his men. He was a light eater himself. On this occasion he took no more than a morsel of baked lamb. The ivywood cup was not refilled. It was apparent to everyone in the room that he was in a strange mood but this did not serve to dampen the feelings of his followers. The hall was filled with their loud voices as they slashed and cut at the warm roasts and tore the chickens apart with greasy fingers. Their feasting did not prevent them, however, from keeping wary eyes in the direction of the solitary figure seated high above them; and so, when he raised a hand abruptly in the air, an almost immediate silence fell on the room.

Attila pushed the wooden cup to one side, perhaps as a hint that the feasting and drinking should come to an end. Beneath him the seat which Micca had occupied was empty and a feeling of resentment took possession of him. “He has contempt for us,” he thought. “He left the table as soon as he dared.”

Every eye in the place was fixed on his face. Attila forced himself to put the action of Micca out of his mind. He looked about him slowly.

“What better way is there for justice to be done than in the presence of my splendid warriors?” he asked. He was pitching his voice high so that everyone in the hall could hear. “All of you know that Uldin of the Bulgars, who deserted to the enemy some months ago, has been captured and is now a prisoner here. I am of a mind to settle the case at once.” He glanced down at Onegesius. “Have him brought in.”

There had been continuous desertions since the Hun yoke had been forced on the land of mighty rivers and great forests which stretched from the Black Sea to the Rhine. Men who found they could not exist under barbarian rule had sought freedom outside the borders. Attila’s pride had been ruffled by the volume of the desertions and he had included demands for the forcible return of the runaways in all of the peremptory exactions he laid on his Southern neighbors. The few who had been sent back in response had been promptly crucified in the open squares of Hun cantonments or at much-traveled crossroads. Of those who had fled, the one for whom the Hun leader felt the deepest hatred was Uldin of the Bulgars, and his capture had been accepted as a personal triumph.

While he waited Attila licked his lips with eagerness. “So!” he thought. “At last he comes before me. Uldin the proud, Uldin the superior, Uldin the troublemaker! Now we will see how he bears himself in the face of death, this prince of unrest, this leader of discord!”

The man who was brought in by two tall guards, with his arms tied behind his back, was garbed in Dacian costume with a long-sleeved tunic and wide trousers. He was young and tall and apparently of unusual strength. His eyes surveyed the eagerly grinning company with nothing but scorn and then came to rest on the single figure seated on the dais. There was no hint of fear in them.

“Uldin of the Bulgars,” said Attila, licking his lips a second time and staring down at the prisoner, his voice alarmingly low, “you think poorly of us. You call us barbarians.”

The prisoner answered in a clear and high voice. “Yes, O Attila. I think poorly of you. I have called you barbarians so loudly and openly that all the world has heard.”

“You have had the boldness to write me in similar terms. When you wrote this letter you were enjoying what you believed to be the secure sanctuary of the court at Constantinople. You did not seem to know how far my arm can stretch and that you might face the consequences of such audacity. Perhaps you now regret that you wrote it.”

“I do not regret it, O Attila.”

The emperor continued to speak in a restrained voice. “Do you mean you would not have taken more care in choosing your words if you had known you would be caught and brought before me thus?”

“That is what I mean.”

“It seems,” said Attila, looking along the rows of fierce and ugly faces below him, “that this proud young man sets small value on life. It is well that he does.” He leaned over the table and fixed his eyes on the unrepentant captive. “You will die in the morning, O Uldin of the Bulgars. The Romans, who seem to you so much more worthy of your praise than my people, invented a cruel way of getting rid of their enemies and their criminals. They nailed them to a cross and left them there to die slowly in torment. You, O Uldin, will die by this method your friends have used so much. At break of day you will be crucified in the open square where two other men lost their heads tonight. I shall give permission for the troops in the camps along the river to come in relays and see how traitors die.”

The prisoner said nothing for a moment. Perhaps the knowledge of what lay ahead of him caused his courage to desert him briefly. When he spoke, however, it was without any evidence of fear either in voice or manner.

“Crucifixion is a death reserved for criminals,” he said. “I am a king.”

“In my eyes, you are a criminal. The worst kind of criminal. You have disobeyed my laws.”

“If I am subject to the laws of the Huns,” cried the condemned man, “then I may demand that you allow me to fight for my life. There is a law which says so. I believe it is called the Law of Sangaree.”

A voice from somewhere in the hall spoke up eagerly. “That is right. Let him fight for his life under the Law.” Another voice joined in. “But he must fight any champion sent in against him, armed with any weapon, while he himself has nothing but a knife the length of his forearm.” The idea was being joyously accepted throughout the room as a measure of entertainment as well as a demonstration of a right which any of them might sometime demand. Greasy hands waved beef bones in the air and clamored for the fight to take place at once. The name of a champion to face the young king was introduced by one of the most vociferous and was at once taken up by the rest. “Ivar! He’s the one we want. Ivar the Briton! Send him in to attend to this black Macedonian who demands his rights under the Law.”

Attila was not pleased with the turn things had taken. He would have preferred to make the death of Uldin a long-drawn-out one so that all his men within marching distance could come in and see the traitor writhing on the cross. But he was too shrewd to disregard the wishes of his men, particularly when they were invoking a law of long standing, one of the few which had survived from earlier centuries.

“Ivar the Briton is not here,” he stated. “He accompanied the Coated One and may not return until tomorrow. He will not be in time to fight this upstart who invokes a law older than any of his own.” All of the company were standing now, some with their jaws still filled with food, others voluble in their demands for a furious clash of champions at once. “Who will volunteer, then, to fight this man under the Law of Sangaree?”

There was no immediate response. The still hungry company stared in unison at the stalwart king of the Bulgars and silently reckoned him a mighty champion even when armed with nothing more potent than a knife the length of a forearm.

“If no one comes forward to fight him,” declared Attila, in a voice of bitter impatience, “he will die by the method I have ordered.”

Uldin, fearing that he would lose his chance to die on his feet in combat under the rules prescribed by the Law, glanced at the angry faces about him. When he realized that no one was coming forward, he cried in a taunting voice: “Are you all afraid of me? Do you hesitate to meet me even though I shall be armed with nothing better than a fish scaler? Has your courage deserted all of you? Or is it that Huns prefer to fight in great numbers and have no stomach for the kind of conflict that brave men welcome?”

The dark faces of Attila’s warriors showed bitter resentment at his words but each man waited, nevertheless, for some other champion to step forward. Uldin was a foot taller than any of them, and his arm, which would clutch the knife, was long and powerful.

“Is it because I am tall and straight and you are squat and crooked?” cried Uldin, who was now deliberately baiting them into action against him. “Are you all afraid to face me with the advantages the Law gives you? Listen, then, to what I propose. I am ready to fight any two of you under the same conditions. Two of you, armed to the teeth, and I with no more than my slender blade. Come, O brave warriors from the East. Is my proposal not a fair one? Do you think it lacking in boldness? Select your two champions at once and remove the ropes from my arms so we can settle the issue while the great Attila looks on.”

A huge ebony figure had emerged from the door which had served the servants in their trips to and from the kitchen. He had a white cap on his round head and in his hands was a long rod of iron which he had been using as a spit in preparing the dinner. This was Black Scyles, the head cook. Making his way through the room until he stood directly behind the captive, Black Scyles waved the iron spit in the air with a savagery which told how much he would enjoy employing it on the head of the proud Bulgar.

It may have been that Attila now desired to bring the episode to a quick ending. It would stand as an indelible reflection on the courage of his Hun warriors if no contest under the Law took place. Better, then, to let Uldin die at once before it became too evident that no champion was going to volunteer.

Attila’s smoldering eye caught the excited orb of the man with the spit. He raised the forefinger of his hand which rested on the table. Black Scyles accepted this as a command. He gave the iron bar a flourish in the air and brought it down on the head of the young king.

For a moment the tall figure did not move, although it was clear from the sound of the blow that the skull had been fractured. Then the inert body seemed to fold slowly and sway forward. It fell with a thud to the floor.

Immediately the eager fighting men in the room went into action. With drawn daggers they converged on the spot where Uldin of the Bulgars lay, his head in a rapidly spreading pool of blood. There was a savage scramble to get near enough to plant a blow in the unresisting flesh. Like a pack of pariah dogs, they fought and snarled over the body of the man who had taunted them openly. When the rage to be in at the kill had been satisfied, the object on the floor bore little resemblance to anything human.

Attila waved a hand to the servants who had come out in a mad hurry from the dark kitchens where they blew on the coals and tended the spits, to stand in the doorway and stare with eyes white-rimmed in their smoke-blackened faces.

“Carry it out,” he ordered. “The executioner has been saved the necessity of killing this disobedient dog.”