Attila:The Scourge of God

FORTY-FIVE

Gripping the shaft of his late father’s angon, a wickedly barbed javelin with a long iron head, Cleph crouched behind an oak on the edge of the clearing, which was bisected by the path along which Gisulf should soon come riding. The silence of the great Thuringian Forest, which covered much of his tribe’s, the Thuringi’s territory, was broken only by the patter of raindrops on the ground, still carpeted in early spring from the autumn’s fall of leaves.

With a cold, controlled fury, Cleph thought of his father’s death last summer at the hands of Gisulf, an arrogant young lout of the local chieftain’s comitatus. Cleph’s father, a kerl or peasant farmer, had remonstrated with Gisulf when the latter had carelessly ridden through his field of standing wheat. Gisulf’s response was to club the older man aside with his spear-butt. The heavy iron cap-spike had connected with his temple, delivering an unintentionally fatal blow. Later, confronting Cleph, Gisulf had tossed a Roman solidus at the lad’s feet.

‘Wergeld, in payment for your father’s life,’ the warrior had declared loftily. ‘A lot more than his man-worth, considering he was only a kerl.’

‘I refuse it,’ replied Cleph, spitting on the gold coin, ‘as is my right.’

Clearly dismissing as an empty threat the implied claim to exact blood-vengeance, Gisulf shrugged and rode on laughing, leaving the solidus glinting in the mud.

But Cleph had been content to bide his time. Over many weeks he had noted Gisulf’s habitual movements, while at the same time allowing the warrior to become lulled into a false sense of security. Of late, Gisulf had taken to keeping a tryst on each Wotan’s-day with a wealthy widow in a nearby hamlet. Cleph knew the route his enemy would take, having trailed him on several occasions, and now from his hiding-place listened for the sound of Gisulf’s approach.

At last it came, muffled by the damp earth of the track: the thud of hooves. Then into the clearing cantered Gisulf, a heavy-set young man mounted on a rawboned destrier. Hefting the angon, Cleph drew back his throwing-arm, waiting for the moment when the other would have just passed level, exposing his broad back as a perfect target.

Suddenly Cleph heard a faint, muffled booming — the moot-horn! This was the prearranged call to arms for all owing allegiance to Etzel,¹, whether Huns or subject Germans, a summons which, issuing from the dread King of the Huns, would brook not the slightest of delays. Instantly lowering the angon, Cleph turned and made off through the trees at his best pace, in the direction of the horn-blast. His vengeance would keep, he told himself. Gisulf was living on borrowed time, which would elapse as soon as campaigning with Etzel should be over.

From the Mare Suevicum to the Danubius, from the Rhenish lands to the Imaus Mons,² wherever the war-horns sounded, men ceased whatever task they were engaged in, and hastened to their local muster. A fisherman casting his nets off the mouth of the Viadua river³ abandoned them and rowed for shore; a shepherd in the Carpates foot-hills left his flocks; a farmer ploughing in a forest clearing in Boiaria⁴ unyoked his oxen and hurried from his field; a fowler in the marshes of the River Vistula laid down his snares unset; a hunter in the Caucasus, about to loose an arrow at an ibex, let down his draw. . Such was the effect of Attila’s huge authority. Obedience, instant, total, was the one inalienable condition he demanded from his subjects, the least infraction of which was punishable by crucifixion or impalement. But his rule could be generous as well as stern: devoted or courageous service often rewarded with a costly gift such as a mail shirt, a jewelled cup, a golden dish.

From every quarter of Attila’s vast realm, rivers of armed men began flowing towards the upper Danubius: Gepid horsemen from the Carpathus foothills, dark-skinned Alans, blue-eyed Sciri and Thuringians, mounted Ostrogoths, above all countless Huns from the limitless steppelands above the Mare Caspium, the Pontus Euxinus, and the lower Danubius. All these, and many other, lesser tribes, who acknowledged Attila as overlord, merged at last into one enormous horde as they converged on the assembly place, the northern shore of Pannonia’s Lake Neusiedler.

When the last contingents had arrived, the great host, headed by Attila himself, clad in a simple coat of skins and carrying no weapon, began to move north-west towards the Belgic provinces of Gaul.

¹ The Germans’ name for Attila.

² The Urals.

³ The Oder.

⁴ The Carpathians; Bavaria.