The Death of Attila, page 26
The Hiung cheered. They were struggling to force themselves all at once into the narrow ford. On the far bank the Germans in orderly rows were chopping at the Hiung front rank. They were too many to use their bows, and half the Hiung apparently had not brought lances. Their horses stamped and lunged and crushed the riders’ legs between them. They could not move forward past the Germans and they could not drop back away from them. Tacs could not believe that he had come through so easily from the other direction: the Germans looked like a solid wall. Pressing his right rein against the pony’s neck, he worked his way to the edge of the battle.
The fighting was shoving him forward. Over the black hair and straining shoulders of the Hiung in front of him he began to see German faces. Each one of them reminded him of Dietric. He wondered what he would do if he saw Dietric, up ahead of him—reach him, somehow, take him away. Dietric was his friend. Dietric had saved him from Ardaric. The pony stumbled and went to its knees, throwing Tacs up onto its neck, and for a moment he stared blankly into the muddy foam of the river. The pony hurtled itself up again, snorting. Tacs gripped his spear, took a deep breath, and forced his way past two more men to the edge of the mob.
He saw no sign of Bryak or Monidiak until he was on the very edge. They were ahead of him, being forced like him toward the Germans but holding back and looking wildly around. Tacs imagined the Germans ahead as a maw they were being fed to. A shout tore from his throat; to his surprise, Bryak heard him and leaned out to pull on Monidiak’s sleeve. Tacs waved to them, and they fought their way back toward him.
Tacs aimed the pony at the river and beat it into the water. Again, the pony stepped into the deep water and had to swim, and the current whirled it off, struggling to keep upright. Tacs hung on with both hands. He could see where the gravel bank reached out into the current, and he aimed the pony for it. The pony swam strongly, blowing the water out of its nostrils. Tacs looked over his shoulder—Monidiak was following, with Bryak right behind him. Tacs turned forward. The pony stood spraddled-legged on the gravel bank, to its hocks and knees in the river, and shook itself violently all over. Tacs almost slipped off. With a snort that sprayed water from its nostrils, the pony started at a crisp trot along the gravel bank, toward the German side of the river.
They were mobbed on the river bank where Tacs had come out before, and he swerved to the left and drove the pony up six feet of sheer frozen mud into the thorns and briars along the bank. Reining in, he let the pony catch its breath. Monidiak raced up beside him. The bank came down under Bryak, and he went downstream a few yards and scurried up to join them.
The Germans were ranged before them, headed upstream toward the ford, but already they were looking back over their shoulders toward them. Tacs set his lance and charged. Just before he reached the Germans, he saw that several other Hiung were following him across the river. He lifted his voice in a scream, half cheer and half war-call. Before him the German faces dissolved into a blur of pale flesh to be torn with his spear, and he hurled the pony into it.
Like the river, the Germans lapped around him, their heads even with his shoulders—even on foot, they were giants. He stabbed with his spear and used it as a long limber club. His breath caught in his throat. Their hands were clawing for him. Swords sliced around him. He knew that something had hit him from behind. Suddenly there were Hiung around him, pressing toward him, working through the Germans with their arms swinging. The Germans faltered. Their light eyes turned away from Tacs. He let his arm slacken to his side, and no one struck him. When he looked around, he saw no face lighter than his own.
Twenty or twenty-five Hiung had followed him across the river. In a pack they struggled forward, trying to break through the mass of Germans and rejoin the other Hiung in the center of the battle. Tacs hung back in their midst until he was rested. Forcing his way forward, he wedged his pony into the front rank against the Germans. One German lunged for him, his hammer raised into the bright sunlight, and Tacs sliced his arm with his spear and drew it back and plunged it into the man’s chest. The line of Hiung around him surged forward a few yards. Two Germans braced themselves against Tacs, and one he killed and one he wounded so badly that the man crawled away into the German lines. Yet there were more in front of him still. He had to lean forward over the pony’s head to reach them. With their long shields they struck aside his spear. Their clumsy swords whirled in the air over him. He striped their arms with the blade of his lance and their swords dropped.
Gradually he realized that he was no longer moving forward. He could not see the Hiung in the middle of the river; he could hardly even see the river itself. There were too many Germans between him and it. Suddenly their number swelled, and he had to back the pony up a step.
Turning the pony, he dropped back into the middle of the Hiung pack. They were fighting on three sides now—the Germans were encircling them. Tacs caught Monidiak’s eye and waved, and Monidiak came over. “Let’s get out of here.” Tacs took a fresh grip on his lance and started toward the river, hitching his shield up on his shoulder to protect his left side.
Monidiak and Bryak rode up beside him. They trotted toward the river bank, jogging over foliage beaten to the ground by the hoofs of horses. Seeing them go, the other Hiung broke and followed them. The pressure of their horses behind them forced Tacs and his friends into a lope. They raced down toward the river.
Abruptly, Germans appeared in front of them, dashing in from either side to fill the gap. Tacs caught his breath. He tucked his lance under his arm. The Germans faced them like a wall of golden trees. The pony smashed into them, and the wall buckled, but beyond there was no open river bank, only more Germans. With a scream, Monidiak fell toward him in an explosion of blood. Tacs’ mouth was full of blood; it dribbled down into his eyes and blinded him. He dragged in another breath through his raw throat and laid about him with his lance. The river was before him, somewhere. He saw blood leap from a bright slash on the pony’s neck. Its body quivered between his knees. Ahead of him, in the haze of German faces, Dietric’s face appeared. For a moment he thought of going to him and helping him, but he was too far away, and saving Dietric didn’t seem important anymore. The river was before him at last. He kicked the pony in the ribs; the little horse skidded down the bank, and they stood in the cold water, safe.
The river was clogged with bodies. Above Tacs the trees along the bank shaded the water, and corpses floated in and out of the dappled shadows. They were Hiung bodies. More Hiung, still alive, dropped into the river around Tacs—the men who had come after him. Bryak was there, his eyes like holes burned into his face, and his mouth gaping.
In a mass they rode up toward the battle again. But before they reached it, they saw that the banks of the river were packed with Germans, on both sides, looking down at them. They came to the place where the current ran so strong, and like one man they decided to give up, to run away. Turning their horses, they charged the near bank, on the German side of the river.
In their midst, Tacs saw Bryak before him lunge up into a solid pack of Germans, and Bryak fell back into Tacs’ path and half the bank collapsed on him. The pony wrenched its body to one side to keep from stepping on him. Tacs’ neck ached from looking up into the faces of the Germans. He could not see them very well anymore; his eyes were full of dirt. Each time he breathed his throat burned. He gathered himself for one more strike. The pony clawed its way up the bank and pitched in among the Germans. Their hands and arms hacked at him. He saw no weapons, only faces, alien white flesh, and blue eyes. The pony slipped; dropping his lance, he leaned forward and clasped his arms around its neck. They fell for a long time, together, into the river, this time not cold at all, but hot with the blood of his people.
DIETRIC ENDED HIS PRAYER, crossed himself, and stood up. He could not believe that God had let him live. All around him, the dead and the wounded were heaped, and here and there lay parts of men, pieces of clothing, broken weapons. Save for the sturdiest, the trees and brush for half a mile along the river were hacked and flattened into the dust. He walked toward the river; his throat was caked with dirt.
When he saw the ford, he stopped, stunned, and Ardaric rode up beside him on his white stallion. Ardaric had not fought. From the ridge behind them, guided by his lookouts in the trees, he had directed the fighting, sending them here and there as the shape of their enemy changed. Now Ardaric looked down at his son and over toward the ford.
“You were right. There were only a thousand of them, all together. Maybe less.”
Dietric put his hand on Ardaric’s saddle to hold himself up. The bodies in the ford had dammed up the river, but while he watched, the water piling up behind the corpses mounted to the top and flowed over. The far bank was buried under the bodies of Hiung and their horses. On this bank there were almost as many dead, half of them German.
“If they had all come at us at once,” Dietric said, “they would have beaten us.”
Ardaric gave an indifferent shrug. He started along the river bank, looking over the dead. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“No.”
“You did very well. You are very brave, Dietric.”
Dietric nodded. He followed his father along the edge of the river. Even here the water was loaded with corpses. Against his will he searched for Tacs.
“How they fought,” Ardaric whispered; Dietric knew that he was talking to himself. He understood the tone in his father’s voice. He who had never seen a battle had expected nothing like the sight of a hundred Hiung riders flinging themselves at him, like men in a holy fit, ignoring wounds and their own dead. He had seen them plunge through the German line, fighting a dozen men at once, as if they could not die. He had seen Tacs do that. He was sure it had been Tacs.
“Dietric,” Ardaric snapped.
Dietric looked around. They had come to a place where the bank was sheer but the water ran slowly and was more shallow. At the foot of the bank, in the shallowest part of the river, lay a heap of dead men and horses. One of them was Tacs. The black pony lay across his body, its head buried in the river. Beyond him Bryak lay dead.
Dietric started forward. His father rode up between him and the river, and Dietric saw that Tacs was still alive.
Tacs had seen him. His body stirred; all the bones of his chest moved broken under his skin. “Help me,” he said.
Dietric could barely hear him. He took another step forward. Ardaric took him by the arm. “No.”
Tacs wet his lips with his tongue. He was shuddering; his eyelids drooped like a madman’s. “Help me.”
Dietric twitched. “No,” Ardaric said. “He would kill you.” He turned his horse away from the river. Dietric for a moment could not take his eyes from Tacs’. But he knew Ardaric was right, that Tacs would try to kill him if he went too close. He went stiff-legged after his father, back toward the height of land. The night was sweeping in; he walked into the comfort and the safety of darkness.
Cecelia Holland, The Death of Attila
