Читать книгу The Darkness and the Dawn - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 20

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It has already been told that Micca the Mede left the dining hall early. He made his way with sure steps to one of the large tents pitched on the plain outside the gate. It belonged, obviously, to someone of importance, for it stood fifteen feet high and was at least thirty feet across, and it was most snugly covered with the thick felt which made it cool in summer and warm in winter. The itinerant merchant lifted the flap and asked, “May a humble purveyor of simple goods enter the home of the honorable and influential Berend, son of Cham?”

The thickset man seated behind the pile of ashes, which had accumulated during the winter, nodded his head in welcome but did not get to his feet, for a Hun used his legs as little as possible. “Come in, O Worthy Micca,” he said, in a reedy voice.

There were guests in the tent already, half a dozen men wearing their round felt hats crowned with red tassels pulled down over their brows. They gave no sign of recognition, it being the role and the sole privilege of Berend to greet the newcomer. A group of women, seated with their backs against the matting of steppe grass which formed the inner lining of the tent, were not so decorous. Looking out at the visitor from under lines stretched along the lattice and weighed down with joints of beef and lamb, dried fish, and bags of meal and flour, they nodded their heads and smiled in anticipation of a pleasant evening in the company of the great storyteller. The women were more of a type than the men and distinctly more rewarding to the eye, their black eyes smiling in round faces bronzed by the winds, and all of them as lively and as plump as pea hens.

The man seated on Berend’s right moved over to accord that place of honor to the latest arrival. When Micca had seated himself cross-legged beside his host, he seemed like some great snowy bird which had plummeted down by mistake into a convention of jackdaws.

It was the rule that conversation should proceed from the point of interruption and visitors remain discreetly silent for several moments; long enough to gain some inkling of the opinions of the earlier arrivals before venturing any of their own. Micca observed this point of etiquette and to his surprise discovered that they were not discussing the double execution of the evening. Instead they were deep in a problem which concerned all of them very much. What steps were to be taken to conserve the trade of Rome when that city went down in violence and the inhabitants were put to the sword? Only one of the guests shared with Berend the gnomelike proportions of the Hun, the round yellow face and the deep-sunken eyes. The rest were of various nationalities, men who had deserted their own lands for good reasons and taken service with Attila. None of them were fighting men. They were money-changers, traders, merchants of one kind or another, all intensely acquisitive and bitterly selfish.

They were trying to find some way of preventing any stoppage of the wealth which flowed into Rome from all parts of the empire. The spout through which the gold and the loot poured so abundantly must be kept in operation after Roman domination had been ended.

Micca listened with an uneasiness which he did not allow to show on his face. “This is the final proof,” he said to himself. “There is not in any of them a trace of doubt that it is Rome Attila will attack this time. They are so sure, they do not think it necessary to pretend before me, a Roman citizen.” Thinking of the huge encampments he had seen on the plains, he wondered if Aetius would be able to put armies in the field strong enough to stem the tide. He shared an opinion held by everyone in Rome, that Aetius was an adroit leader and a soldier of sound parts but that he lacked the genius of the great captains of the past. He was not even placed on a par with a more recent commander, Stilicho.

It was Berend who introduced a new note into the discussion. “We must remember this,” he said, in guttural tones of deep earnestness, “that we are no longer nomads. Never again will we strike our tents and follow the turn of the seasons. The time has come for us to sink our roots into the rich soil of the south as deeply as we sink the sword into the ground when we go to war.”

“Not the plow!” cried his fellow Hun, Barich. “The plow is the sign of servitude. Let the rest of the world stay in slavery to toil. We must rule the world from our saddles!”

“Victory, O Barich, has its penalties,” declared Berend. “It will be from Rome that we rule the world and not from here. Attila will sit in the palace of Valentinian. The rest of us will fold up our felt tents for the last time and content ourselves with marble walls. The plow will become the symbol of the kind of life that victory will fasten on us.”

“Do you mean,” cried his compatriot, “that we must start to live as the Romans do? That we must squat every day in these great steaming baths? That we must live on peacocks’ tongues and the eggs of fishes?”

“They say a bath is very pleasant,” said Berend, with a broad grin. “But you have not grasped what I mean, Barich. I think it will be well to talk about something else. Perhaps our honored guest will tell us a story.”

So Micca proceeded to tell stories. The men who sat behind the ashes forgot their deep concern in the trade of the world as his skilled tongue wove its spell. The lively round eyes of the women, like dead-ripe plums, were fixed on his face with a fascination which was evinced in squeals of astonishment and little trills of fear. He was selecting his stories with such foresight that at the end of each he could lead his hearers on to discuss the points raised and he could then ask them questions. The group in the tent (where it was pleasantly cool because the top had been opened) did not realize how cleverly he interjected his questions or the satisfaction he took in the information gleaned from their replies.

Finally the tall old man felt that he had gone as far as he dared with this subtle interrogation. He bowed to his host and begged permission to withdraw. Getting to his feet, he said: “If Rome falls as you expect, I will see you there. Saddened and impoverished, of course, but with goods still to offer you—for I am a trader, not a soldier—and perhaps new stories to tell. If Rome does not fall—and you cannot blame me if I, a citizen of the empire, entertain doubts on that score—I will continue to come here and, I hope, to be greeted as an old friend. Whichever way it is to be, I trust that you will all abide in the best of health.”

The moon was high in the heavens when he emerged, and at its fullest. There had been a time, and not far in the past, when the nomads from the Eastern steppes had been impelled by moons such as this to take to the saddle and to race their horses madly while their plump wives joined hands in circles and danced and sang. The light had other effects and when a man spoke of his April son or his August daughter he was not referring to the months in which his children arrived. The tents which now stretched in all directions, seemingly without end, looked ghostly in this strange light. Micca himself, with his white robes swishing about his ankles and his long silver hair falling over his shoulders, was like a wraith. He made his way toward the gates of the city where there was much noise and confusion. Booths had been set up for the dispensing of strong drinks and a company of dancing girls were wriggling and galumphing in a singularly graceless manner. As he paced slowly from one group to another, he became aware that someone was following him. Stopping finally and, without turning, he asked in a low voice:

“Is it you?”

“Yes, my lord Micca.”

“No names! You must cure this habit or sometime you will utter a name when it will cause serious harm. Have you news for my ear?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Come, then, to my tent behind the first of the red wagons.”

Half an hour later, in darkness because no lamp had been lighted in the tent, Micca sat down with the man who had been following him and listened to the whispers in which the latter delivered his report. If the darkness had been less complete, it would have been seen that the merchant was wearing an impatient frown.

“It comes to this,” he said, finally. “You have done nothing.”

“My lord Micca!” protested the visitor. “I have done everything that is possible. By the beards of my ancestors, I swear that I have not been held back by any fear or lack of willingness for the task. You do not realize the dangers and the difficulties I face. I must wait for the proper opportunity to present itself.”

“There must be no more waiting.”

Micca’s voice carried a distinct note of warning. After a moment of silence, he continued in the same tone. “You see the armies this man is gathering. You know that he aims to attack Rome. There is only one way to avert the blow. Attila must die.”

He got to his feet and closed the flap of the tent, after gazing intently to make sure that no listeners lurked outside. Then he produced a lamp from somewhere in the darkness and lighted it. Holding it above his head, he scrutinized his visitor closely.

What he saw was a lean, hawk-billed face staring at him apprehensively from the framework of a white turban and a bushy black beard. The attitude of the visitor, seated cross-legged on the ground, made it clear that he suffered from an extreme uneasiness of mind.

“Ala Sartuk,” said Micca, “you agreed to carry out the mission I proposed to you. You accepted gold in advance. Do you know the source from which the gold came? From a very high source, Ala Sartuk. The man whose gold you took could reach out and pluck you from any hiding place to which you might scuttle.”

The man responded in a sulky voice. “I agreed to do your bidding. I took the gold you offered. But I did not know how carefully he is guarded. Even if I succeeded in getting within striking distance, I would be cut to pieces before I could do more than raise my knife.”

“A way can be found,” declared Micca. “But before I tell you of the plan in my mind, I must make it clear to you that you will not be allowed to step down—nor to delay any longer. We have a reason much more potent than gold to drive you into action. Are you aware that your father in Moesia and your two brothers have joined the deserters and are now in Roman territory? If I give the word they will be returned to Attila to be dealt with—in the usual way. If that happens, their deaths will be laid at your door.” Micca raised his fine head and stared hard at his visitor. “That is not all. There is the attractive widow of a certain money-changer, the rich man who absconded and was brought back to die. She also will be returned if we are driven to extreme measures. Am I not right in assuming that you, Ala Sartuk, are more concerned over the welfare of the beauteous widow than in saving your own skin? You would not like her to suffer the fate that the Huns reserve for female captives?” There was a brief silence during which the rolling eyes of Ala Sartuk vainly searched the face of the merchant for signs of relenting. Then Micca continued. “It would avail you nothing to go to Attila’s men and say that Micca the Mede is plotting his death. I would die, of course; but you would die also and in due course the two brothers who would be sent back—that has been arranged for, of course. The rich widow woman would become the property of some greasy Hun.”

Silence fell on the tent and then the visitor asked in a whining voice: “Is your magic equal to finding me a way to get within striking distance of the great khan?”

“I grant you that the difficulties here are great,” said the merchant, his manner and voice still completely unruffled. “But some information came to my ears today. The Tanjou plans an excursion. He will ride into a country where the population is thin and the woods are thick and dark. His plan is being kept a secret and he will travel with a small company. Under such circumstances he is likely to relax his vigilance at times. I have arranged that you are to leave for this country at once. There is a man of some wealth and position who will receive you. He will help to find you the opportunity. Your escape has been provided for, if you accomplish your mission.”

A long silence fell between them. The fingers of Ala Sartuk plucked at his glossy beard and his uneasy eyes kept darting about in all directions.

“I will do it,” he said, finally.

Micca nodded his head in satisfaction. “There will be more gold for you if you succeed,” he promised. “And when the Hun empire has dissolved into nothingness—which is inevitable after Attila’s iron hand has been removed—you will be regarded as a benefactor of the whole human race. Nothing will be too good for you, no praise too high.” He paused and then asked in an anxious tone: “Have you kept your skill with the knife?”

Ala Sartuk flexed the muscles of his right arm with an irritable nod. “Carry the lamp to the other end of the tent,” he instructed. “Place it on the chest over there. Then step clear.”

Micca did as he was bid and was quick to step well back as soon as he had deposited the lamp on the end of the chest. Ala Sartuk had produced a knife from his belt. He felt the edge of it and then gave it a single flourish above his head. His arm whipped forward.

Darkness descended on the interior of the tent. The knife had cut the tallow in two.

“An easy target,” said the knife thrower, with a trace of self-satisfaction in his voice. “The neck of Attila will be a more difficult one.”