Читать книгу The Darkness and the Dawn - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 26

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When the ruler of the Huns had taken his departure there was a sudden movement in a pile of rugs under the table at which he had been seated. They were tossed aside and a copper-haired man with a broad and engaging face crawled out. When he got to his feet, it was apparent that he towered over most men by many full inches. He stretched his long thewed arms and yawned.

“I am hungry,” he announced.

“You are always hungry, Ivar,” said Nicolan.

The Briton, who would have been matched against Uldin of the Bulgars if he had been obtainable in the early evening hours, laughed in an amiable tone. “I have a large body to feed, my busy, scribbling friend. Do you suppose we can get some food quickly?”

Nicolan went to the door and called: “Scyles, you lazy scoundrel! Bring us food at once. The best you have and plenty of it. If you have any doubts, go right up to the man whose feet I hear on the floor above me. He will tell you we must have whatever we want. That,” he said, when he had come back to stand beside his friend who bettered his height by nearly half a head, “will be the one reward I get for the work I did last night. Did you hear what we were saying, the mighty one and I?”

Ivar nodded. “I wakened just as the great bringer of death and destruction came in. I decided it would be best to stay where I was and not bring myself to his attention. And so I heard everything he said.” He then asked a question in a serious tone of voice. “Nick, good friend, will you do as he has ordered? I mean about spying out the land for him?”

The young man from the plains who now served as Attila’s chief tactician answered in a tone of equal gravity. “You heard what I told him. Have you any thoughts in the matter?”

The pleasant face of the tall Briton showed that he was entertaining serious doubts. “I am not certain,” he said, frowning. “It is a hard thing to go against your own people.”

Nicolan agreed to this. “Yes, it is a hard thing. But my people are in a very difficult position. There we are, high up on the plain and no more than a handful as compared with the races around us. It has been impossible to stay independent. First, it was the Romans who engulfed us and despoiled us, and then introduced their customs and abominations among us. Then came the Huns. For generations we have had masters to obey. Most of my people prefer the Romans to the Huns. I do not. They don’t know as I do how lazy, cruel, degenerate, haughty and corrupt the Romans have become. The Huns have strength at least. If I must serve, I would rather serve a strong man than a dancing master and pimp.”

“But, good friend,” said the Briton, “this is a question not of which one you must serve, but of how far you must serve. I have never told you much about myself. My father was the slave of a rich holder of land in the fen country. He wore an iron collar around his neck and when I was big enough to walk they came and forged one around my neck. They made it large enough to last all my life, they thought, but they did not know I would grow so large. Before I was fifteen, they had to come again and file it off and put a larger collar around my neck. When they saw how strong I had become, they sold me to a Roman trader who thought he could offer me as a gladiator. But Rome had become Christian and the fighting of gladiators in the forum was prohibited before I could be trained for it.” His eyes had assumed a faraway look. “You might think I do not owe that country of mine any loyalty. It gave me nothing but blows and withheld the right from me to stand up and call myself a man. And yet, good friend, it calls to me. I think all the time of the soft air, the greenness of the grass, the sweet fields which yielded so much good food that even I, a slave, had plenty to eat.” He gave his head an emphatic shake. “I could not do anything to hurt that country of mine. I shall go back someday soon.”

“I love my country as much as you do,” declared Nicolan. “The air is just as sweet, the fields as rich. There is nothing in life I would rather do than watch the Trumping of the Baws. There is a girl back there I want to see again, although she may be married now; a girl with yellow hair and a fine spark in her eyes.” He dropped a hand on his friend’s great shoulder. “Let this be consolation for you, my huge Ivar. I had already decided that the first thing I will do when I reach my own land is to visit a Christian priest. He has been there ever since I was a boy but he had to stay in concealment much of the time because Attila has no liking for missionaries. He comes from the island where you were born.”

Ivar frowned in a puzzled way. “Why should a British priest come to your country to make Christians out of you? Why did he not stay and do the same for our own people?”

“I shall ask him that when I see him,” said Nicolan, smiling. “He is very wise and he sees into the heart of things. I will tell him what is demanded of me and ask him what I am to do. He will know, that smiling old priest. And whatever he says, I shall do. Does that satisfy you?”

Black Scyles arrived at this moment with a dish containing a most savory mixture of meats. In his other hand was a bowl of camus, a heady Hun brew. These he placed on the table and in a trice the hungry Briton was seated in front of them.

“It is no wonder you are so big, master, when you have such a big appetite,” said the cook. “That Bulgar, now, you would have found him an easy mouthful to swallow if you been there, eh, master?”

On their return the evening before, the pair had been told of what had happened in the great hall. The Briton nodded without any pause in his eating. “I think it would not have been too hard, Scyles. But I am glad you finished him instead of me.”

Nicolan found that he had no appetite. When the cook had left, he walked over to the narrow window high up under the ceiling through which the warm sun was shining. Stripping off his tunic a second time, he seated himself where the welcome rays could reach his scarred back, believing that the heat might be beneficial to it.

The loss of a full night’s sleep and the warmth of the sun on his back put him into a reflective mood. His mind strayed back to the past and he began to recall everything which had happened to him since that day of horror when the Roman slave trader with the villainous scar on his face had come to the house of the Ildeburghs. He could still feel some of the panic he had experienced then, he could hear the cries of the frightened servants, the wild neighing of the horses, and old Maffa screeching her maledictions.