The Death of Attila, page 25
“No. Not by himself. But he and all the other men like him are important at a time like this, especially if they don’t come.”
Monidiak handed him a gourd of The White Brother. “Here. Make yourself sober.”
“They are all off leading their dull little lives,” Edeco said. He gulped down the tea without stopping to taste it, and made a face, surprised. “I thought it was wine.”
“We are too poor to drink wine,” Monidiak said.
“Too wise,” Bryak said.
Edeco took another drink of the gourd. “Maybe both.”
Tacs said, “You mean there will be no Kagan.” He had thought so before but he had not been relieved until now.
“None of them can get enough support. You heard them before. They clapped at Dengazich.” Reluctantly, Edeco passed the gourd to Bryak, who drank and smacked his lips.
“None of them is any worth, either,” Monidiak said. “What are we to do now, cousin?”
Edeco leaned back on one elbow. “That is why I am here, cousin.”
“Ah?”
“None of you is married, none of you has a family. Come with me, fight for me, and I will make you all rich.”
Tacs could think of nothing to answer. He licked his lips. Bryak said, “Where will you go?”
“Italy, maybe. Or Spain. Thrace. Somewhere good to fight in.”
“What are we fighting for?” Tacs asked.
Edeco shrugged. “Whatever is there.” He got his feet under him. “Tell me what you decide. I mean to gather many men—perhaps five hundred.” He pushed himself erect and went away, leading his horse.
The night had fallen while he spoke. Beyond the light of their fire, in the crowded camp, other fires blazed, showering embers. Monidiak took the hares they had shot in the morning, got his knife, and began to joint them. Bryak was staring into the fire, his chin on his raised knee.
“Well?” Tacs asked.
Monidiak hitched up one shoulder. With his hand he scooped out the guts and organs of the hare. “Can you think of anything else to do? You know we really cannot take revenge on Ardaric.”
Tacs said nothing.
“Edeco will see that we don’t starve, we will see that Edeco has what he wants.”
Bryak said, “He promised we would be rich.”
“Almost as rich as he will be,” Monidiak said. “I heard him. I will go with him.”
Tacs took the gourd and drank from it. It depressed him to think that he had nothing else to do except follow Edeco. It seemed as if when the Kagan died, everything valuable disappeared. He thought of the Roman monk, wandering alone on the plain. For the first time he saw why the monk might prefer the wild country to a camp full of other men. He watched Monidiak joint the hare and throw the pieces into a pot. Turning the skin fur-side down, Monidiak scraped the fat off and dropped it in after the meat.
In the darkness at the edge of the firelight, a dog snuffled, and when Tacs glanced that way he saw a pack of four or five dogs, their tongues running out, and their eyes on the rabbit offal. Monidiak was spitting the heart. With a stab of his arm, Tacs snatched up the rest of the garbage and tossed it to the dogs.
“There was good meat there,” Monidiak cried.
From the dark came the growling and snapping of the dogs. Tacs said, “You know what will happen to you if you eat rabbit hearts and livers.”
“That’s just a story. Wolves and wildcats eat them every day and are not cowards.” Monidiak took the roasted heart from the fire and waved it in the air to cool.
“Italy, he said,” Byrak muttered. “Maybe we could take Rome, after all.”
“THE OSTROGOTHS ARE HERE,” Dietric said. He shaded his eyes against the sun and looked around Ardaric’s camp. Since he had left, the army gathered there had swelled so large the bend in the river could not hold them, and they were making camps on the far side, which was dangerous. Everywhere he looked he saw men talking or cooking over fires; they had flattened the bushes and stripped the trees of their branches to build huts and make fires.
Ardaric nodded. “They came yesterday. We shall have to find a new place to camp. How close can we move to the Huns?”
“Don’t bother to move,” Dietric said. “They must know you are here, and as soon as they can they will attack you.”
“Let me make such decisions.”
Dietric sat down on his heels. He glanced down the slope at the men camping on the far side of the river. “You should pull them in. Do you have sentries over there?”
“You must think I’m a fool.”
“No. Not at all.” Dietric thought of fighting, and his muscles stiffened. He felt vulnerable, soft all over his body to the sword. Hastily he pulled his mind back to the Hun camp.
“They don’t seem organized. They have no sentries out. I don’t think they had scouts, either. I watched the camp from several different points, all day long. Once I was so close I overheard them talking—I could hear two men arguing, I understood the words. Once …” He searched Ardaric’s face. “Once I saw many men all in a mass, listening to Dengazich talk. When he said something—that I did not hear—they all clapped. All of them.”
“They liked him?”
“No,” Dietric said. “They clap their hands together to show contempt.”
Ardaric’s eyebrows arched up. “Really. Of Dengazich?”
“Or of what he said. The same thing. And there are only about a thousand auls in the whole camp. Shouldn’t there be more?”
“Auls? Huts. Yes. You have miscounted.”
“No. There are less than a thousand. That means only a few thousand fighting men, at the most. And while I was there, I saw wagons leaving. If we wait long enough, there will be no Huns there at all.”
Ardaric dusted off his hands, scrubbing his palms together. “But you think they will attack us when they know where we are.” Reaching into the back of the wagon, he got out another of his charts. Setting one foot on a spoke of the nearest wagon wheel, he rested the chart against his knee.
“If they do not, we will outnumber them too much.”
“If your estimate is right there are already two Germans to each Hun.”
Dietric said nothing. Ardaric was staring down at his chart. Turning his head, Dietric looked out over the camp. The German warriors moved over it in swarms, full of industry, ordering their campground into ranks and files. Their yellow hair and yellow beards looked red in the bright sunlight. Here and there, a wagon stood, being unloaded. In the midst of it the river curled in a sinuous loop.
“Do you think they have elected a new Kagan?” Ardaric asked.
Dietric shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He turned back toward his father. Ardaric was watching him shrewdly. In deference to him, Dietric lowered his eyes. Ardaric said, “Do you actually miss them? Your Hun friends?”
Dietric got up and without answering walked away.
AT DAWN THE HIUNG learned that the Germans were marching toward them. From fire to fire the rumor spread among the few men left awake, and they woke up the men they could rouse. Nobody could agree who was to command them, but they all wanted to attack the Germans. Some of them took their horses and rode out of camp on first hearing the news. Others waited long enough to collect twenty or thirty men together. Most of them got out of their blankets, put on clothes, ate, pissed, and went around getting their war-gear ready and waking up their friends, with a view toward leaving camp around noon. The Germans, after all, would not disappear.
Tacs had been awake when the news first came. He called Monidiak out of sleep and sent him for their horses. Moving around their little campsite on his hands and knees, he put meat, water, and grain together and set it to cook in the coals of last night’s fire.
Around him, men galloped constantly off in all directions. The hoofs of their horses lifted the dust into the air, thick as smoke. Three riders, shouting Ellac’s name, trotted along the river bank through the haze, and here and there a warrior followed them, to gather under Ellac’s standard. But most of them did not even lift their heads at the sound of his name. Bryak woke up; grinding his fists into his eyes, he staggered to the fire and slumped down beside it. “Ayya. What a night’s sleep.”
“The Germans are coming,” Tacs said. He lowered his head down almost to the ashes and blew on the coals under the pot.
“How brave of them.”
Bryak lay on his side to reach for a gourd of The White Brother. It was empty, and he let it fall, groaned, and straightened up. His eyes moved slowly over the camp around them. “Where is Monidiak?”
“Over there.” Tacs was cutting bread; he gestured with his knife. Through the accumulated litter of the camp, Monidiak was walking toward them, leading their horses; on the black pony’s back was a bundle of hay as tall as the pony itself. Bryak jumped up to help him.
They fed the horses and themselves, and afterward, while Bryak washed the pot, Tacs and Monidiak sat watching the other Hiung flood out of the camp. Many of those leaving waved and sang and shouted jokes back and forth. Tacs unhooked his bow and arrow cases from one of the lean-to’s support poles. They had made some paint, and when Bryak came back, they sat in a little circle and painted each other’s faces with their totems and the war-sign.
“I have a bad feeling about this battle,” Monidiak said. “Everybody is too happy about fighting today.”
Tacs whistled to the black pony. It walked around from behind the lean-to, wisps of hay trailing from the corners of its mouth. Tacs cajoled it into lowering its head for the bridle; with his left hand wound in the long black mane, he hauled himself onto his feet and saddled the pony up. “Don’t be foolish,” he said to Monidiak. “You will bring bad luck on us. Remember when we went to Italy. Everybody was in very high spirits then.”
“We did not conquer in Italy.”
Tacs shrugged. “We did not lose, either. Have we ever been beaten?”
“We were beaten in Gaul.”
Tacs made a rude sound with his lips.
The Kagan always said it was a victory, but we were beaten and he knew it. Edeco once told me so.”
“What does Edeco know of it?”
Bryak came back, swinging the pot by the handle. “What shall I do with this?”
“Leave it,” Monidiak said. It was his pot. He stood up and started around the lean-to for his horse.
“Are we coming back here?” Bryak called after him, and turned toward Tacs for an answer.
Tacs pulled his saddle-girths tight. He had tied his bow and arrow cases to the saddle and bound his cloak on behind the cantle. “We can get whatever we need from the Germans.” He dragged himself up onto the pony’s back and sat straight.
“Wait for us,” Monidiak said, coming back leading his horse. Bryak dropped the pot and ran off the way Monidiak had come.
Tacs laid his reins on the pony’s neck and sat watching his friends saddle their horses. The wound in his right heel was festering again; it had refused to heal, closing over only to break open again if he banged it or strained it. Now it itched and burned halfway up his leg. That frightened him, and he wished again that he could ask The Fluteplayer to heal him. Although he had seen people die by the hundreds, he could not get it into his mind that The Fluteplayer was actually dead, he felt as if the shaman were hiding somewhere, just out of his reach. For the first time in his life, he was afraid of the battle coming.
At that moment, he heard someone shout, and a horseman galloped along the river bank, weaving in and out of the fires, crying, “Everybody come—there is fighting in the river, they are driving us back—everybody come.”
Tacs snatched up his reins. The black pony threw up its head and took two nervous steps sideways. Monidiak leapt into his saddle. “Wait for me,” Bryak cried. He jerked his girths snug and ran back into the lean-to for his bow.
“Get me my lance,” Tacs shouted. If they were fighting in the river, a bow would do no good. He reined the pony over to take his lance from Bryak.
Monidiak shouted, “Edeco!” and his horse bounded away. Following, Tacs saw Edeco, off in the middle of the camp, riding at the head of a hundred horsemen. Dozens more were joining him with every stride of his horse. Streaming west along the river bank, other men called to each other and banged their ox-hide shields, laughing. Tacs took his shield from his saddle and hung it on his left shoulder. Bryak, riding beside him, was flushed and laughing.
Now they rode in the middle of a tide of horsemen, all talking and shouting. Here and there, men sang, their voices hoarse with excitement. Bryak’s wooden stirrup struck Tacs’ left leg with every other stride. On his right rode a man cursing in a steady monotone.
Tacs turned his eyes forward. Always before he had loved the prospect of fighting, the action, the suddenness, the strain. He made a face at himself for being afraid but the fear gnawed him still. All around him, his friends’ voices sounded, but he could not make himself speak.
IN A LONG PARADE OF warriors, they rode down the bank of the river, keeping their horses to a quick jog. The sun rose blazing into the clear autumn sky; men who had ridden out wearing their cloaks took them off and stowed them behind their saddles. A waterskin came back through the crowd, and Tacs took a long drink and handed it on to Bryak. He strained his eyes to see. The dust of their passing hung in the air like a veil.
Bryak was muttering to himself. Tacs said, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Why didn’t we think to bring The White Brother?”
Tacs reached behind him, into his cloak, and got out his last full gourd. Bryak seized it with a cry of disbelief and joy. Pulling out the stopper, he put the mouth to his lips and up-ended the gourd. Tacs laughed at him, but when the gourd came back to him, he drank as much as Bryak.
The tea heated him and made him light-headed in an instant. His mouth dried up. The dust stung his eyes. His fear shrank to nothing and before the gourd had come back to him he was singing a gamesong with Monidiak. They passed the gourd back and forth among the three of them and two or three other men, until there was none left. Tacs hung the empty gourd on his saddle. A moment later they picked up speed, and the pony broke into a lope.
Somewhere just ahead, there was shouting. The noise rolled back into the ranks around them: “The river—the river—” Tacs took a firm hold on his spear. He could see no use for his bow. The pony stretched out into a dead gallop. Shoulder to shoulder, the big horses all around charged up a little slope, trampling down brush and knocking into trees. The dust covered everything. Tacs could see only the heaving bodies of the men and horses immediately around him. Monidiak’s dark head with its red feather bobbed before him. Suddenly the ground swooped away; he braced himself, and the pony slid down a long steep bank into two feet of cold water.
To his right, there was a roar like drums. Metal clanged. The sudden crash of sound hurt his ears. To his left, someone shouted in German. Arrows sliced the water around the pony’s legs. Tacs reined in and looked around him. The tight pack of men loosened—Bryak was two horses’ lengths away, looking around as bewildered as Tacs. Now the sound of fighting came from three sides, and behind him more Hiung slithered down the bank into the river.
“Bryak!” Tacs waved to him and pushed forward. The pony laid its stubby ears back and at first refused to move, and Tacs beat it with the butt end of his spear until it jumped forward. Losing its footing, it fell sideways into the river. Tacs clung with his free hand to its mane. The current caught the pony, sweeping it downstream, and the pony righted itself and swam and scrambled up onto a gravel bank that projected out from the far side of the river. Tacs was soaked through; when the cold air struck him he gasped and started to shiver uncontrollably. Prodding the pony with his lance, he forced it toward the far bank.
The pony skidded and staggered along the gravel bank. Trees and thick-growing brambles covered the bank ahead of them. Beyond the bare, thorny branches Tacs could see people moving—Germans, their yellow hair plaited and their crosses around their necks. Tacs screamed for Bryak and charged up the bank. The pony put out its nose and crashed into the brambles without breaking stride. A thousand tiny thorns stabbed into Tacs. The Germans beyond wheeled to face him. He ran his lance through one man’s chest and kicked another in the face.
The rest ran away from him, yelling. The White Brother pounded in his blood. He had no time to be afraid; all he could think of was how to fight, chasing after the half dozen Germans fleeing him. He speared two of them and ran the pony over another. The others turned; more of them raced toward him, carrying swords and hammers. Their red mouths, fringed with yellow beards and mustaches, opened like the sucking mouths of fish. He could hear nothing save the tremendous featureless roar of the fighting. He gave it a scream of his own and galloped along the bank toward the ford.
They had caught the Germans crossing the river here, but somehow the Germans had managed to trap the Hiung instead. Tacs had never understood tactics. Ahead of him, between him and the river swarming with bodies, stood a wall of German backs. They weren’t even fighting; there were no Hiung before them, and they leaned on their swords and watched. Tacs waved his spear at shoulder height and crashed in among them. The spear bounced off the heads and shoulders of the Germans. They swung to face him, and Tacs stabbed the one before him in the eyes. He was so close that he heard the man’s gasp of pain. The falling body left a gap to the river, churned to a blood-spattered foam, and Tacs lowered his head and squeezed the pony toward it.
A dull throb filled his right leg, and he pulled out his knife and slashed down across the German holding him. The German shied out of the way, letting him go, and the pony jumped out into the river. It landed on men fighting; Tacs swayed over the rushing brown water, bodies leaping and screaming under the pony’s thrashing hoofs. He jerked himself back into the saddle. Something hit him hard in the right hand. Water splashed in his face—it tasted of blood. Beneath him the pony bucked and kicked out, lunging forward on its hind legs, bucked again, and broke into a gallop. Sheets of water surrounded him. He heard Hiung screaming. The pony spun around and stopped dead, and they were in the midst of the Hiung again, safe and snug.
