Chapter XIII: The Desolation

A long deep sigh was all that Theodore would now give to the pain of parting. It was over, finished, and endured! and he stood there, calm but grave, prepared for the long cold lapse of the next seven years. Oh, sad and sorrowful is it, more melancholy, if not more painful, than any other state of human being--fertile as existence is in woes and miseries--when over the summer and the sunshiny days of early youth are brought the premature storms of manhood, the hurricane of angry passions, or the deep and settled clouds of disappointment and despair! Oh, sad and sorrowful is it, when the half-open flower of the heart is broken off by the rude footstep of adverse fate ere it has time to expand into beauty! Oh, sad and sorrowful is it, when by the rough hand of circumstance the fresh bloom is brushed from the fruit ere it be ripe!

Yet such was the fate of Theodore. Endowed with ardent feelings, strong passions, powerful energies both of mind and body, he had been called, while those feelings were in their first freshness, while those passions were in their early fervour, ere those energies had been strengthened by time or instructed by experience, to mingle with scenes, and take part in events, which few even of the mightiest and most mature minds of accomplished manhood could pass through, without bearing away the indelible stains left by feelings blighted, or the rude scars inflicted by evil passions. He had loved, and he had been beloved. He had tasted once of the nectar cup of the gods, which, when pressed by a pure lip, instils into the heart a spirit of immortality--and his lip had pressed it purely. Then had been called forth the exertion of that great attribute of manhood, the power of protecting, aiding, directing weaker beings in moments of terror and danger. Then came the mingling of that most bitter draught, when grief and indignation are all that are offered to allay the thirst of a lip burning for revenge. Then came the ignominy of flight from an enemy alike hated and despised; then the temptation conquered, to pamper vengeance by treason; and then the mighty struggle where life was played for as a dicer's stake, and every energy of heart and brain was called into fierce activity, when human blood was spilt, and mortal being extinguished by his hand, to save from death, or worse than death, those he most loved on earth. And there he now stood, that wayward, fated being, around whom within the last month so many lightnings had played, left alone amid men with whom he had no community of feeling.

Those hours of agony and excitement had indeed made him a man before his time, and well, well might they take the bloom off his young heart; yet though the siren voice of expectation might have lost part of its sweetness; though the chord which once vibrated to every joy might now possess no longer its elastic tone; though there was the gray shade of doubt mingling with every bright colour which went to paint the future, and the enchanter could charm no more; still there was within his bosom, in his love for Ildica, a sweet source of unpolluted happiness, a well of youthful feelings undefined, a fountain of bright clear waters, where wearied hope might come and drink and be refreshed. As he stood there in his loneliness, the value of that spring of secret enjoyment was displayed in all its brightness. He knew, he felt that there was his treasure; and, with that support and conscious innocence alone, he prepared to face the future, be it what it might.

The rapid process of thought had ran over in a few minutes all the varied particulars of his situation, the much of gloomy and dark, and the small but intense spot of guiding light; and, ere the few Huns who remained with him showed any disposition to move, he himself turned towards their leader, and demanded what was to ensue.

"Are you able to sit a horse?" demanded Edicon, gazing on his features, still pale with loss of blood.

"I am," replied Theodore, "if the journey be not long."

"Then we must follow the king," replied Edicon; "but I have his commands to make the stations suit your capability. There is your sword," he continued, giving him the weapon which had dropped from his hand when the blow of Ardaric had for the time disabled his right arm. "You are to be treated in no way as a bondman."

"Keep it for me," replied Theodore, putting it aside with the back of his hand; "I will never go armed into my native land with the enemies of my country."

Edicon laughed aloud. "Is there anything else," he demanded, "that your fancy would have! I am ordered to humour thee to the utmost."

"There was one faithful freedman," said Theodore, "whom I saw not with the rest who departed just now. I would gladly hear of his fate: I left him with the horses on the hill."

"What! a giant?" demanded Edicon. "I saw such a one contending like a madman with our whole army. If it be of him you speak, most probably he is dead. I saw him fall beneath a blow which would have slain a bull. At all events, he is in the hands of Attila the King; for I heard him bid his people see to the brave African. Is there aught else?"

"I would fain," said Theodore, with a sigh, "I would fain recover the horse I rode. It was my father's charger: but I fear that it is vain, for I left it upon the hill."

"What, the black horse with the white star on his forehead?" demanded Edicon.

"The same," answered Theodore, with some surprise. "Have you seen him?"

"I saw him with you on the other side of the Danube, some four days ago," replied Edicon, "when Attila came down from the interior to meet you."

"To meet me!" exclaimed Theodore, with a faint smile; "he could not come to meet me; for I crossed the Danube by accident, not from any long-conceived purpose."

"So it might be," answered the chief, "and yet the king knew that you were coming, and went down to meet you. Do you not believe that there are men who see the coming events as clearly as we see the past? But it matters not," he added; "we left the tribe of Vultingours upon the hill. Perchance the horse may have fallen into their hands; if so, thou shalt have him."

He then spoke a few words in their own tongue to some of the Huns near, two of whom instantly sprang upon their horses and galloped up the hill. While they were gone, Theodore and Edicon lay down in the shade upon the grass; and the young Roman endeavoured to induce his companion to pursue to some clearer point of explanation the vague hints which had been given regarding his first meeting with Attila; but the wily barbarian was not to be led onward beyond the precise line by which he chose to bound his communication; and as soon as Theodore attempted to gain further information, he started up, and busied himself in giving orders to the wild warriors around him.

In a few minutes the two Huns returned, leading down at a quick pace the horse of the young Roman, which, snorting and rearing, resisted the unfamiliar hands by which he was guided. In a moment, however, the voice of his master rendered him tame and docile as a lamb; and Theodore could perceive, by the smiles and gestures of the barbarians, whose affection for, and command over, their own horses were even then proverbial, that he had risen highly in their esteem by the love and obedience which the noble beast displayed towards him.

When at length all was prepared, he mounted, though with much pain and difficulty from his wounds; but when once on his horse's back he experienced no further inconvenience, except from weakness; and, riding side by side with Edicon, he proceeded slowly on the same track which Attila and his troops had previously taken.

A little farther to the east, the woods again swept down to the very banks, seeming to present an impervious barrier against their advance in that direction; but still the Scythian horsemen rode on direct towards the forest, and, separating on the very edge, each took his path by himself, winding along with extraordinary skill and dexterity, and keeping up their communication with each other by shrill, sharp cries. They had apparently left the direction taken by Attila and his myriads; for the grass of the forest bore no trace of having been trodden down by the feet of those innumerable horsemen; and the green boughs on either side, clad in the refreshing garmenture of the early year, neither scorched by the summer's sun nor withered by the autumn's wind, were unbroken and undisturbed. With slow and heavy wing rose up the feathered tenants of the wood, on the passage of strangers through those spots of which they had held solitary possession for so many years: the beasts started away from their path, almost under the horses' feet; and everything indicated that calm tranquillity had reigned there for many a year, while the civilized world beyond had been torn by faction, turbulence, and war.

For nearly three miles the branch of the great Dacian forest, which they were now traversing, continued unbroken, but at the end of that distance it again suddenly ceased, and, issuing out upon a wide savanna, the little band of Huns reunited, and rode rapidly on. Another wood succeeded, but of less extent, and bearing evident traces, in many parts, of the destroying axe. It, too, was soon crossed; and when Theodore had again reached its extreme limit, another scene, more gloomy, more painful, more terrible, broke upon his eye.

It was a cultivated land laid desolate! The corn, just losing its fresh green, and touched with the golden hand of summer, was beaten down, and trodden into the very ground from which it grew; the fences and partitions were swept away, and the scattered remnants thereof, mingled with the produce which they were intended to protect, spread wide over the trampled and ruined country. The huts and cottages of a lowly but industrious population were seen around; but the roof had fallen in, and the blackened and smouldering rafters told the tale of destruction but too well. In the midst of the field lay a husbandman with a javelin wound in his throat, and at the door of one of the cottages, stretched across that threshold which her feet had so often passed with joy and gladness, was the body of a young mother, with her golden hair streaming on the ground, her white arms extended motionless above her head, now tranquil in death, but telling still the tale of agonized emotion past, of supplication urged in vain, and unanswered appeals unto mysterious Heaven; and there, beside her, seeking with plaintive cries its wonted food, crept on towards her bosom her infant child, its little hands dabbling in the stream of gore that welled from the fond loved home of infancy, the dear maternal breast now for ever cold and feelingless.

"Oh God, the child!" cried Theodore, as they rode by.

Edicon gazed on it with a stern dark brow. "There will be many such," he said, and it was all his reply.

The young Roman's heart swelled within him with the choking agony of fruitless indignation. He could do naught to succour, to save, or to defend; and bending down his eyes upon the arching neck of his proud charger, he strove not to see the many miseries of the land through which he passed. He could not shut his eyes to all, however. Every now and then the horse would recoil from a corpse stretched across his way. Every now and then the crashing fall of some burning cottage or Roman watch-tower, which were thick upon the road towards Viminacium, would make him start and look up, and behold new traces of ruin, slaughter, and desolation.

They passed by a hamlet where once many happy hearths had gathered round a small Christian church; but the hearths were strewed with the rafters that had covered them; the voice of the pastor and the hearts of the congregation were now still in death; the church was void, its walls smoking, its pavements stained with blood, and its altar profaned; and silence reigned equally where the merry laugh and the gay song had rejoiced in the blessings of God, and where the voice of supplication or of gratitude had been raised to him in prayer or adoration.

They passed by a villa built in the graceful and the mighty times of Trajan, while the name of Rome was awful over all the earth; but its halls and vestibules, its courts and gardens, were strewed with its fragments of works of art, and blackened with the fire which had destroyed its fair proportions.

Oh how glad was Theodore, when the gray coming on of twilight gave him the hope that night would soon shut out from his weary eyes the sight of such scenes of horror and devastation. But, alas! even when darkness spread over the whole sky, the earth beneath--as he rode along, across the high grounds which there sweep down to the Danube--seemed glowing in a thousand spots with the lurid light of wide-spread conflagration; and Theodore beheld the destiny of his native land. Fire consumed each dwelling's roof-tree, and blood drowned out the ashes.

At length, at the bottom of the hills, where a small wood skirted one of the little rivers they had to cross, they came suddenly upon a number of fires, round which were seated some thousands of the barbarians. On the approach of Edicon and his party, numbers of them started up, and, leaving the loud rude merry-making in which they were engaged, gathered around the new comers, with wild gestures and quick vociferous tongues talking, laughing, shouting, and screaming, while the fitful gleams of the fire displayed, in strong, unpleasant light and shade, their strange attire and harsh repulsive countenances. Food of various kinds and in great abundance was set before Theodore and those who escorted him; but the young Roman felt no power to eat, and only quenched the burning of his lip, while he strove to drown remembrance of his griefs in two full cups of wine.

"We must on with the first light to-morrow morning," said Edicon, "and therefore it were better for you to take what sleep you can, though, perhaps, being a Roman, you cannot find slumber on such a couch as nature provided for man, and under such a tent as the starry sky."

"Sleep!" cried Theodore, "sleep! Do you expect me to sleep after such a day as this? Such sleep, however, as I can gain may as well be taken here as anywhere else," and, wrapping his mantle round his head, he cast himself down near one of the fires. For repose he sought not, for he neither hoped nor expected to find it, but he sought to shut out from his sight the fierce forms and savage merriment of those who had just devastated his country. With his eyes closed, and his mantle round his head, he saw them not, it is true, but still the wild peals of barbarian laughter rang in his ears, as they caroused around the fires; still imagination called up to his view the rude, ill-favoured countenances of the Huns; still memory presented to his fevered brain all the sad and painful sights which he had beheld during the day.

Thus passed by the greater part of the night; for, even when the Huns, giving themselves up to slumber, left silence to recover her empire over the scene from which their rude revels had banished her, bitter remembrance haunted the young Roman still, and drove far away from his troubled breast that soft and soothing guest which visits so unwillingly the couch of pain or wo. About an hour before dawn, exhaustion, however, conquered thought; and when Edicon roused him to proceed, he was sleeping, if the name of sleep could be applied to that dull, unrefreshing want of consciousness into which he had fallen for the time. He started up, however, ready to go on, ay, and willing; for although he could hope to find but little better or fairer in the things before him, yet every scene in which he was placed was, for the time, so hateful to him, that it was a relief and consolation even to change.

The road lay still by the side of the Danube; but, after leaving their night's resting-place, it was evident that they were coming fast upon the great host of Attila himself. Multitudes of small wagons covered the way. Thousands of straggling parties were seen in every direction; and at length, after riding on for about two hours, they came in sight of the towers of a city, rising up from the banks of the river. At the same moment, as they stood upon the hill above it, a shout came up to the ear so loud, so fierce, so demoniacal, that it seemed to Theodore that the very fiends of hell had burst forth to mingle with the dark innumerable multitudes that he beheld whirling round that devoted town like the waves of some mighty vortex in the stormy oceans of the north.

Another and another yell succeeded; and as Edicon still led on down the hill, screams of anguish could be distinguished mixing with the shout, and fire might be seen bursting forth from various parts of the city.

"Viminacium is taken!" said the Hunnish leader: "we shall find the king in the market-place; ride close by me, and let us on."