The Death of Attila, page 13
Monidiak said, “You are a man, Dietric, not a little boy—come live with us.”
“I wish …” He tried to imagine himself living with the Huns, but he could not. “I have to go back. I’ll come to see you tomorrow, Tacs. Maybe.” He bent and slapped Tacs on the shoulder. Picking up his Hun coat from the porch rail, he went around the corner of the palace for his horse. Behind him Monidiak shouted to the guards to keep the gate open for him.
With the setting of the sun the air had turned cold. He rode out the gate and down the deserted road to the ford and crossed the river. The night wind swept across the snow-covered plain and slapped him in the face. It was raw and rich with the smell of the coming thaw. He rode along the river bank, listening to the trees creaking in the wind. Everyone else was inside for the night.
The ride back from Sirmium stayed in his mind, growing as he thought of it. One night when they had stopped to rest Tacs had told him of how he and his friend Marag had crossed the Alps from Italy in the face of a screaming autumn blizzard. When he spoke of Marag’s death, Tacs’ voice was full of a hopeless longing. So even Huns died in the snow, and to survive such a journey was surely a sign of strength. With his father’s house growing large on the hill before him, Dietric took the memory as a kind of armor; no matter what Ardaric said, he knew better.
Nonetheless, he went in to the stockade through the little back door, which he knew how to force, and took his horse to the stable and stayed there until he was sure everybody was busy at dinner. If he managed to get to the sleeping loft and spend the night uncaught, Ardaric would look silly raging at him. The familiar smells and sounds of his home worked on him. Suddenly the ride from Sirmium seemed to have happened years before, and to another man. Of Sirmium itself he remembered only a jumble of details.
Opening the stable door, he looked out across the slushy yard toward the hall. Torchlight spilled out through the cracks in the shutters and he could hear the laughter and chatter of the people inside. He could smell the meat and bread and even the beer. Tears came to his eyes. This was the real, the true life; the life of the Huns was a ghost. He started toward the back of the hall, where there was a window he could sneak through.
“Stop there-—you dog! Stop!”
Dietric stopped. His arms broke out in gooseflesh; his mouth dried up. Ardaric walked out of the lee of the hall, his fists swinging at the ends of his arms, and his chin thrust out.
“Where have you been?” Ardaric shouted, taking a stride for each word. “Where did you go, when I ordered you—I ordered you not to go with them—”
“Please—” Dietric looked around to see who might be listening. “Please.”
“Please,” Ardaric said. “Please.” He strode up to Dietric and struck him across the ear. “Please!” With the other fist he hit him on the other ear. “Please!”
Dietric lifted his forearms to protect himself. “Father—”
Ardaric’s great fists flew around him, pounding his arms and glancing off the top of his head. Dietric bent over, trying to get down out of the way. Tears of humiliation ran down his face. He thought of running. Instead, he straightened up and hit Ardaric in the face.
The skin split across his knuckles; his arm went numb to the elbow. Ardaric wobbled back, his arms flailing, and sat down hard in the wet, filthy snow. Startled, Dietric laughed.
Ardaric heaved himself up out of the snow and came stiffly toward him. Dietric whirled and ran. His feet skidded on the slush and he had to work to keep his balance. A giant weight struck him in the back. He fell on his face in the snow and slid across the ground, Ardaric on his back. When he came to rest his father leapt up and seized him by the arms and dragged him to his feet.
“Strike me, will you—” Ardaric began to beat him over the shoulders. “Strike your poor father—pray to God for forgiveness, you wretched dog—”
Dietric folded his arms over his head and stood, crouched, while Ardaric slapped and punched him. He became gradually aware that half the population of the stockade was watching and laughing; the windows of the hall were mobbed with faces. But he had no more embarrassment left; he waited patiently for Ardaric to tire or get bored and stop, and at last the force of the blows lessened.
“Apologize,” Ardaric shouted.
“I’m sorry.” Dietric shook the front of his coat to knock the caked slush off it. “What for?”
Ardaric was staring at him, his wide chest rising in hard breaths. “You went to Sirmium? What did you do there?”
“Let’s go inside,” Dietric said. “I’m cold.”
Ardaric took him by the arm. “You should be, you are a disobedient cur of a worthless son.” His arms encircled Dietric in a painful hug. “The Lord chastiseth whom He loveth.” His voice broke; Dietric, amazed, felt his father’s wet clumsy kiss press against his cheek.
TACS’ BROTHER RAS KEPT A dozen mares on the plain west of Hungvar, and every evening he went out himself and brought them in to be milked. The day after he had come back to Hungvar, Tacs rode out to the pasture to get his own horses, which he had left in his brother’s care. He had ridden halfway to the pasturage when he heard a shout behind him; Ras himself galloped up to him. Ras was six years older than Tacs, his only living full brother, and although they had never been close to one another Tacs liked to talk to him, because he had many strange and unsettling ideas.
Ras galloped up on his black horse and jerked it down to a walk. Being tall and long in the face, he resembled their mother more than their father Resak whom Tacs favored. “I did not know that you were back again from Sirmium, brother,” he said.
“I came back yesterday,” Tacs said. “Edeco sent me back before the others.”
The two brothers rode forward, side by side, at a walk. Ras carried his leadline coiled on his shoulder. Tacs had always admired him more than he would admit even to himself; Ras was very rich and had the respect of all the important men. While they rode Tacs kept glancing at Ras through the corner of his eye.
Suddenly Ras said, “What was there to see in Sirmium?”
Tacs lifted one shoulder. “Only what is always there—many buildings, people, the things the Romans make. I met a Hiung in the service of the Emperor, I saw the house of the proconsul, I had a whore, all the same things.”
“You should be careful of whores, you might be robbed.”
“I took my friend with me to stand guard.”
Ras gave him a sharp look. “That Yaya? He is of no value.”
“No—Dietric, the son of the Gepids’ King.”
“The Gepids’ King. Ardaric? I thought Yaya was your friend.”
“He is, but Dietric is my special friend. Like Marag.”
Ras turned his gaze forward again. They rode under the branches of the trees that marked the edge of the pasture. On the naked grey twigs fat green buds showed, ready to burst. In the shadows snow lay in patches on the ground, pocked and watery.
“They still speak of that,” Ras said. “How you brought Marag’s body back to his family to be buried. His father brought me three colts and salt and iron, and he wept and swore that you are a great man.”
Tacs said nothing. He wondered why Marag’s father would bring such useful gifts to Ras and not to him, except of course Ras was the head of Tacs’ family. It startled him to hear admiration for him in Ras’ voice, and he cleared his throat and looked elsewhere. The plain before them dipped to the frozen stream and rose again on the far side. Hundreds of horses grazed across the brown mud their hoofs had made of the snow. Most of them were moving slowly across the plain toward the places where their masters would be gathering them. Ras’ horses already stood waiting under a dead oak tree, their heads together, their tails to the unceasing wind; patches of shedding hair clung to their flanks.
“So Dietric is your special friend now,” Ras said. “That is something to think about. That black mare of yours is a bad one. She never stays with the others. Do you see her anywhere? Yesterday I found her all the way across the stream, down in the ravine.”
Tacs craned his neck to look among the horses wandering slowly across the plain. The black mare loved to stray. When he did not see her, he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. The black pony threw up its head, and among Ras’ horses the sorrel mare and the grey gelding that belonged to Tacs started toward him, shouldering their way through Ras’ horses.
Ras went off to hitch his horses to his leadline. Tacs’ horses were coming to him, their heads low, and their long snarled manes drifting out on the wind. The black mare appeared at the edge of the trees; she stood a moment, her head raised into the wind, and Tacs whistled again. His black pony neighed. With her head high, the mare galloped over the slush toward them. Although she was heavy with foal she ran with a smooth easy stride that Tacs liked to watch. He thought that she wandered to find a place to have her baby in safety. Like the pony, she came of pure Hiung stock—the pony was her child. She came up beside the sorrel mare and nipped her in the neck, and the sorrel kicked at her. All three horses ambled toward him and stopped, their noses almost touching the black pony’s muzzle.
Tacs dismounted and neck-roped the three horses together, talking to them quietly and patting them. The black mare licked his hands; all three horses sniffed at his clothes in search of the presents he sometimes brought them. After he had pulled the burrs and tangles out of their manes he scrubbed some of the long winter hair off their flanks. The black mare’s barrel had a bump in it that he decided was the foal’s heel, and he touched it and said a charm for swiftness. When he was finished, he stood looking into the sorrel mare’s eye. Horses’ eyes were unlike human eyes; there was something cold and unfriendly about them. All his horses hitched to his leadline, Ras came riding back, and Tacs mounted and they started home, side by side.
So the Gepids’ King’s son is your friend,” Ras said. “A German and a Hiung. That is very strange.”
“Everybody says I shouldn’t be his friend.”
“Do they? Perhaps they are right. I couldn’t say. It seems odd to me, but I have no friends who are not Hiung. In fact I have no friends who are not exactly like me, with young children and several wives and the same cast of mind. You are as strange to me as a Gepid.”
“What?” It pleased Tacs to think his brother found him strange. They passed under the bud-heavy branches of the trees and up the little slope toward the Kagan’s stockade. To the north, the Gepid camp with its trim wooden houses came into view, and in the south he could see Orestes’ house and the stone Roman bath.
“My friends and I,” Ras said, “often disagree with the Kagan and his doings but we obey him because that is the correct way to act. I don’t understand why a young man like you, with no responsibilities, should cling so close to Hungvar, taking orders and wasting your youth. If I were you, I would go out and see what there is to be done in the world, what adventure I might find. But you just stay here and get drunk and play stupid games and tricks and get into trouble. You have always been frivolous, even The Fluteplayer agrees with me on that, and he is very fond of you.”
“What adventures could I have if I went off alone?” Tacs cried, angry. “I have to have my friends with me, or what fun is there?”
Ras’ long face drew longer with thought. “I don’t know. But I would find out, if I were you. There seems to be so much to do that you will not do.”
“What should I do? What have you ever done?”
They were coming up to the ford in the river. It was crowded with people—Gepids returning to their camp, Hiung going to the stockade, merchants moving in both directions. Ras and Tacs pulled off to one side to wait until the crowd thinned enough to let them cross with their horses.
“Don’t listen to me,” Ras said. “I meant nothing by it, it is all dreaming.”
“Then why did you say it?”
Ras moved his shoulders irritably. “What is the Kagan planning? Do you know if he wants to ride to Rome again?”
At the ford, the traffic momentarily thinned, and they rode across, scattering a little herd of goats a Gepid boy was trying to bring over the river.
“Yes,” Tacs said. He was unsure if he should be telling Ras, but he knew of no way to evade it. “Of course he is.”
Ras shook his head. He wore his hair long and unbraided on one side to cover his ear; he had lost the lower half of it in a fight when he was younger. “Sometimes I think we would be more comfortable with a lesser man to rule us—as it was in the old days, when there were many chiefs and not just one.”
Tacs stiffened; the black pony broke into a lope from the pressure of his legs, and he reined him down. When he looked at Ras again his brother was staring at him thoughtfully. Tacs jerked his eyes away.
“Do you know why I say that?” Ras asked.
“Because you are stupid,” Tacs said. “Even more stupid than I am. You should love the Kagan.”
“Maybe. But listen to me. A Hiung—because we are Hiung we believe in certain things—in the power of our ancestors, the old way of life, several other complicated beliefs. If a man believes in something more, he is no longer a Hiung. But what is he?”
“What do you mean? My mother was a Hiung, my father was a Hiung, what would I be, a Roman? A German?” Tacs shook his head. “A mare doesn’t drop calves. What do you mean?”
Ras smiled at him, smooth as oil. “Did I upset you?”
“Yes,” Tacs said. “You should not speak slightingly of the Kagan. You would not say it to him if he were here.”
They were riding around the base of the Kagan’s hill toward the Hiung camp. The thick smells of the evening cooking fires reached them. In the sky the colors of the sunset were dimming to grey.
Ras said, “Why did you do that—bring Marag’s body home? It could not have been easy.”
“Why—what else could I have done?”
They rode in among the auls; Tacs had to draw rein to follow Ras’ string of horses. He could not imagine how anyone would say the things Ras had implied about the Kagan. It was as if Ras had spoken against Tacs himself. He rode along behind his brother toward the center of the camp, planning sharp retorts to give him when Ras left himself open.
When they came to the place where they would have to separate, Ras called out to him and waved to him. Tacs dropped his leadrope and rode around his horses toward his brother. His throat burned with the clever things he had thought up to say.
“Come share food with us,” Ras said. “You have been gone and we should see you more, anyway.”
“Yaya will—”
“Come along,” Ras said. He smiled; he touched Tacs’ arm. “You will have a chance to tell me what you think of me.”
Tacs could not help but smile. He nodded. “If you have enough.”
“We always have enough,” Ras said, and started off toward his aul, his mares in a jumbled herd trotting along behind him; up ahead, Tacs could already see his brother’s youngest wife, waiting with a jar of water to pour over his hands when he dismounted.
ELEVEN
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, THE Romans came to Hungvar. No one was allowed to greet them except the few men assigned to watch over them, but many curious people came anyway, pretending to be merely passing by. Dietric was among them; after Tacs had seen to the Romans and been dismissed, they met and went together into the Hun camp.
Ummake had fallen sick again, sick enough, Tacs said, to die, and The Fluteplayer was to cure her that afternoon. Dietric and Tacs went to the aul of the shaman. A little group of people was milling around it, staring curiously in through the door whenever it opened. Tacs had said that The Fluteplayer wanted him to assist him. It seemed to fill him with pride. Dietric hung back at first, wondering how The Fluteplayer would react to an unexpected visitor, but Tacs pulled him inside.
They sat down in the middle of the aul; the shaman was working in the back, his profile to them. He ignored them. Dietric looked around, amazed. He had never seen a German home as rich as this. He had seen nothing so fine since they left the Roman house in Sirmium.
“Ummake has been sick all her life,” Tacs said; he shifted his weight on his hams and his fingertips stroked the pattern of the carpet. “Her mother ate snake before Ummake was born and that made the baby’s blood all cold. Fluteplayer, where did this thing come from?”‘
“New Rome.”
“Why would having cold blood make her cough up blood?” Dietric asked. “Do you really think that’s why she is sick?”
“Certainly.” Tacs spat to the right for emphasis. The Fluteplayer gave him an evil look and hastily Tacs rubbed the white spittle into the nap of the carpet. “Everybody knows that coughing blood is a mark of coldness.”
Dietric watched The Fluteplayer pound berries on a flat stone. They three were alone in the aul; Tacs had said that the shaman was married but Dietric had seen nothing of his wife. The aul was dark and except for the muffled grating of the grindstone utterly quiet. In the dimness beyond the light of the small oil lamps, goldwork glistened, on the lacquered benches, on the lodgepole, on the hundreds of little jars placed everywhere, full of herbs and medicines. Even the air smelled exotic.
“I was in New Rome once,” Tacs said. His hand traced the dark red pattern in the carpet, moving in slow swirls over the black. “They piss into gold pots there, even the dogs wear gold.”
“If they weren’t rich we would starve,” The Fluteplayer said. “Be quiet, let me think.”
Tacs put his hands on his thighs, the fingers curling, and sat absolutely still. Dietric glanced at him, amused. The Fluteplayer put a bowl down on the carpet and scraped the pounded berries into it. He took a jar from the many beside him and tipped powder from it into the palm of his hand and held the hand out over the bowl, an arm’s length above it, and let the powder run down into the bowl in a thin stream. Dietric admired the man’s show-craft. Ardaric had said once that certain of the Huns had a refinement and understanding that elevated them above the common ruck of their people.
The Fluteplayer lowered his hands and sat still, his gaze resting on the bowl, unwinking. The perfect silence hung around him like a shield. The lamplight picked out the small white pebbles bound into his greased hair; the cords on his neck stood out with effort. It was all very excellent flummery and Dietric let himself admire the shaman’s cunning. He felt wiser than Tacs who obviously believed it all. A moment later the mess in the bowl gave off smoke.
