Swords From the West

by Harold Lamb

  A teghin, a commander of a thousand, came before him. "Nephew of Roua, the Christians hold to the hill, making a wall of their shields."

  Attila's eyes probed the mist. Below him the teghins moved restlessly, awaiting his commands. The mist hid the great encampment that was his moving empire. Over the grass-grown ruin of an old Roman camp, his massed wagons walled in the horse herds, the cattle and myriad captives, the round yurtas that held the treasure of Europe. He could barely make out the silent group of subjected chieftains-the Slavs, Alans, Gepids, with the khans of farther Asia, and even the Chinese observers, his allies in name, who had come with gifts, to decide his real strength. The watchful Chinese observers from the Eight Banners of the Liu.

  "Let Ardaric, the chief, and his Alans," he ordered, "go against the hill."

  He would not send his horsemen of Asia through the curtain of mist against a height. Better for the Christian swordsman of the east to kill those of the west.

  Hissing submissively, the teghin bent close to him. "Master of the encampment, we have heard the Romans digging in the mist. Attack them now-strike like an eagle, unseen."

  When Attila closed his eyes, his lined face became a mask, revealing nothing. For a second he was tempted to do as the officer wished.

  But the strange darkness of the mist troubled him. He felt the watchful eyes of the Chinese on him. He remembered how other, little things had led him to change his plans. How he had started to lead his army from the Danube in the guise of a maker of peace, without conflict. Yet when food was taken from the fields, men in the farms began to resist, villagers gathered to defend their stone churches. He had changed then, swiftly from deception to terror, burning the villagers in their churches, making a road of terror from Metz to Reims to Orleans-where he had been amazed to hear the trumpets of a Roman army coming up, an army gathered from the peoples who had been quarreling among themselves. It was led by the one man Attila respected, Aetius.

  No, he would not change his plan again because the sun did not shine in the eyes of his enemy. Moving his fingers as if casting something away, he said, "Does an eagle strike with hooded head? Does a commander of a thousand think his wisdom to be greater than the Kagan's?"

  Crossing his arms before his belt, the officer withdrew. Fear of Attila lay upon him and all the encampment.

  Yet they were all troubled, waiting restlessly around him, by the littlest thing of all. By the loss of the sword. That sword, found in a Scythian grave and brought to Attila by a sheepherder of the Don, had been different from other weapons, and his ignorant people took it for an omen that the sword had come from the earth to Attila; his soothsayers prophesied, "Who holds the sword of power may never be defeated in battle." And his people believed that his conquests came from the iron of the sword.

  Attila did not believe that. His sagacity had led the stubborn Aetius after him to the center of this plain, whence the Romans could not escape. He had tricked the Christians by leaving his tent standing last night, as if he fled; then his idiot body slaves had left the strange sword behind in the tent. All those slaves had been killed at once, but his bodyguards noticed the absence of the sword. His sword bearer, empty-handed, rocked on his heels, mourning as if power had departed from the Kagan. Attila felt anger rising in him at the stupidity of the man.

  Attila forced himself to wait, impassive, until early afternoon, when the sun burned away the last of the mist. There lay the new Roman line, completed. A brown furrow in the green grass, topped by pointed stakes, stretching as he had expected from the solitary hill to the far-off swamps, with the Roman standards glittering above it.

  Faintly then he heard the blast of their trumpets, challenging him. The Chinese came closer to stare at him, and blood pounded in his brain. The Romans were calling him to attack.

  Yet he knew that he must wait. His hour would come when they would be forced to leave their lines to seek food, and his massed horsemen would sweep down on them; then Orleans and Rome would yield to terror, and his will would be supreme to the sea.

  Behind him he heard a grieving voice, "The power is gone from the Kagan. A Christian Frank holds it in his hand."

  Anger gripped him like a fever. Instinctively he reached back for a weapon to slay the speaker. His fingers caught at the air.

  Springing up, he screamed, "Ride and slay! The entire camp against the Roman line!"

  Saddle drums beat. Horns blasted the signal. Past Attila's seat, massed riders moved at a trot, with lances and lariats. They swept down into the plain like dark rivers in flood.

  The racing horses made a sound of myriad stones beating the earth. Over it came the howling of human throats. The first flight of arrows seethed up through the dust toward the gleam of the Roman standards ...

  An hour before sunset, the Huns still drifted in open order through the dust; they were still stopped by something where the Roman eagles marked the line of the ditch and parapet. And the mounds of bodies of animals and men.

  The man who held the sword-Meroving-shook his head to clear it of the roaring sound. He felt the chill of water on his legs where he stood in the swamp, where few of the Huns had attacked. But not even Meroving had ventured forward out of the swamp to the plain where no one could live on foot.

  "Oud!" he shouted. His poet crouched on a boulder, arms over his head. "Oud," said Meroving, who felt awe in him, "where is your voice, that you do not sing of this mighty thing?"

  Swaying his head, Oud chanted, "Now I have no voice in me to sing this thing. It is the Flail of God we are seeing."

  Out of the dust behind them came a mounted legate, calling for the chieftain of the Franks, and when Meroving answered, the legate reined in. "If you can come," he called, glancing down the tangle of the swamp, "come to Aetius behind the front line. Now."

  So Meroving splashed out of the swamp water, with Oud and all the Franks following, for they knew no more than to follow their chieftain in battle. So he ran fast behind the lines, leaping over the wounded Celts of Brittany who dragged themselves forward to take the place of the dead.

  Where the catapult machines thudded against the thunder of the battle line, he found the heavy infantry of the front line. With thrusting spears and short swords, the men held a one-man line at the stakes where had been a three-man line. Meroving looked around him and sighted Aetius's cloak spread over a body on the ground.

  When he bent down to inspect the body, a hand caught his arm. Whirling around, he faced Aetius, who had got rid of his plumed helmet as well as his cloak, while sweat and blood dripped from his shorn head.

  "Let be, Meroving, lord of Frankland," said Aetius, in measured, polite words. "That body is Theodoric's, who was king of the Visigoths and the bravest of men. His death must not be known or the Visigoths will lose spirit. Now, in this lull between onsets, you must find Torismund. Do you understand that much?"

  "I understand well enough," grunted Meroving, "but if this is a lull, may I-"

  "Find Torismund," went on Aetius; "tell him to take over for Theodoric. Torismund must take over."

  It was strange to Meroving as he ran on-the rattle of the machines, the calls of the centurions to brace shields against the stakes-the strange ways of disciplined legions. Then he remembered that Torismund, who had a horse, would be far ahead of him in this battle and would accordingly win his challenge. So he raced through the horse lines and leaped the mounds of the dead, until he learned that Torismund was on the hill.

  Then he raced with his Franks up the hill to where the young prince stood in the shield wall of his comrades, beating off assault waves.

  Torismund looked from his head to his feet and said, "Fathead, I see that you have lingered long behind my back to wash your feet."

  Meroving's fighting blood warmed at that. "It is true," he admitted politely, "that I come up from behind you. But now my feet will go before you." Then he took Torismund three paces to the rear. "Theodoric is gone," he whispered, "Aetius says you must take over or the Visigoths will lo
se heart."

  At the word of his father's death, tears came into Torismund's eyes. Then he cried out in anger, "You will see if the Visigoths lose heart in battle! "

  Below them came the sound of the Huns beating again at the thin Roman line. "Shields away!" shouted Torismund, running to his horse. "Pass the word! All to follow me!"

  So the Visigoths got to horse. But when Torismund reined forward, Meroving grabbed the mane of his horse to race beside him. All those Franks did like their chieftain; they held to manes or tails or the ankles of the Visigoths, hewing and throwing their axes. So the charge came down on the Huns, down the hill and around the hill ...

  Attila rose to his feet when he saw it at sunset-the madmen racing and riding, and throwing weapons before them. He saw his Huns broken, who had never given ground to horsemen until then.

  And he knew he had failed. The Master of the World had used his army and had been beaten back. The legend of the invincible Attila, like the legend of the sword, was no more ...

  After dark, Aetius found them by forcing his way through their comrades. Meroving had dropped his sword and was hewing into the Hun wagons at a corner with an ax, while Torismund covered him with a shield. Aetius swore that he found them where neither was a foot in advance of the other, and so he pulled them away.

  That night the two armies lay apart, licking their wounds. The next day Attila was gone with his wagons, on the road back to the Danube.

  In our restaurant car the lights had been turned on. It gave me a comfortable feeling to be sitting at ease like that, speeding toward the Paris we knew. I wondered what we would be doing if things had broken differently on that dark plain of Mauriac. Squadron Leader Noel put down his cognac glass thoughtfully.

  "But it was a drawn battle, Monsieur Vesny," he observed. "At least, history says so. Attila still had his army and his empire."

  The little Frenchman shook his head, smiling. "Ah, but no, monsieur. There was no empire but Attila's will. So long as people believed him to be infallible, it existed. The battle ended it."

  "You'd find that," I put in, "hard to prove."

  "On the contrary. Consider what happened afterward. In two years he died and those conquered people revolted-the Gepids and East Germans gathered in Yugoslavia and drove the surviving Huns out of the West, into their steppes of Asia."

  He thanked me for listening with courtesy to an old soldier. He wished us a pleasant leave in Paris, and added something in French to Noel. Then, with a bow, he left the car.

  "He may be right, at that," I admitted. "What was that he said?"

  "An old French saying, Bob. 'The more things change, the more they are the same."'

  I

  "Yes, sahib, it is undoubtedly true. There is a devil in the castle, and that is why no one else will sleep there."

  Jaswat Das, khitmatgar-butler-inclined his head gravely, and Sir A. Cunningham did not smile. Years of service in the Honorable East India Company and as Resident of the Jumna district of Upper India had made Cunningham very well acquainted with the demonology of India. Moreover he knew that Jaswat Das, his butler, was relating the common talk of the countryside.

  It was the Year of Our Lord 1802 and the two white men sat under the chenars by the Jumna River bank just outside the walls of Agra. Squatting on the ground in front of them, the butler looked from his master to the stranger.

  "How do you know, Jaswat Das, that there is a demon in the castle if you have not seen him?" inquired Cunningham.

  The other white man asked no questions, contenting himself with listening closely to what the native said.

  "Because, sahib, the men of the village have seen him. Sometimes the demon takes the form of a snake and sometimes that of a deadly sickness. When he is in his own body he looks like an old man with long hair and a face the color of old ivory; he wears a black khalat that covers his human body down to the ankles so that no one can tell what his form is really like. He has lived in the castle for a hundred years and it is said he once inhabited the form of the daughter of the potail* of the village."

  "Then why," pursued the Resident, "did the demon slay the two sahibs who went to Bhir when he has never molested the villagers?"

  "The two farangi died because they slept in the castle of Bhir that was the demon's home."

  "Aye, Jaswat Das, that is true. But natives-even the potail-have slept in the castle at various times and have come to no harm."

  The khitmatgar nodded understandingly.

  "True, sahib. Yet you do not remember that the folk of the village when they wanted to sleep in the castle always made holes in the walls first. Then they lighted fires within and rushed about, firing their weapons and making great outcry. In this way they made a spell and the demon did not hurt them."

  "Yet if the people of Bhir did not make offerings to the ghost, it would attack them?"

  "Assuredly, sahib-either in the form of a snake or a sickness. Their womenfolk would be childless and their cattle would die."

  "Very well, Jaswat Das. Still, in spite of their fear of the ghost of Bhir castle, the villagers and the merchants endure the demon, you say?"

  Patiently Jaswat Das explained, knowing the wisdom of his master and suspecting rightly that his story was for the benefit of the strange sahib who sat in uniform and with a sword at his belt beside the Resident.

  "Aye, sahib, it is so. For Bhir has waxed prosperous since the coming of the ghost who takes much wealth, but gives more. The merchants have rugs and store of gold in their houses-and fair wives."

  Cunningham frowned thoughtfully at this. The district of Bhir, beside the great river Jumna, had long been a thorn in his side.

  "For how much silver," he asked the butler, "would you take up your abode in the castle of Bhir?"

  The dark eyes of Jaswat Das widened and he salaamed.

  "Ai, my lord-I am but a poor khitmatgar. In my sahib's command are many soldiers who are paid to be killed. Give them the silver and a piece of gold for their families and let them die. Has not the demon of Bhir castle slain travelers who came within the district? Have not strangers dropped out of sight overnight, without a trace of the manner of their going?"

  "Enough, Jaswat Das. You have my permission to depart."

  When the two Englishmen were alone Cunningham turned to his companion with a smile that was not altogether merry.

  "There, Malcolm, you have the native side of the mystery of Bhir. Let me add a few words of Iny own to show how heavily it weighs upon the success of our affairs in the district."

  Punctuating his remarks by prodding his cane into the dust at his feet, the Resident explained that following upon the signing of peace between the English and the Nawab of Oudh, the Northern Provinces had been established along the Jumna. Rajputana was on friendly terms with its white allies. Everything had gone well except in the district of Bhir-a fertile district, eagerly exploited by Portuguese traders a hundred years ago.

  In that quarter a malignant force had been at work against the farangis. This power for evil had been located in the ruins of the castle of Bhir-a citadel built by a long-dead raja and deserted for three generations.

  "It began with the death by sickness of Mr. Powell, a commissioner of the company, three years ago. He was robbed of his revenues after he had established himself in the castle. The fortress, you know, overlooks the countryside, the highway, and the river, and seemed to him the most suitable and honorable quarters.

  "And then, last year a worthy gentleman who was my friend took over the office of magistrate and collector of Bhir. He also availed himself of the castle. Certain hostile manifestations of an uncanny nature alarmed him-so I am informed by his native cook who fled the place before him-and he was hastening back to me when he disappeared. He literally vanished, horse, revenues, servant, and all, on the highroad."

  Cunningham sighed.

  "Added to the untimely death of these two kindly and respected gentlemen is the loss of several couriers sent by them to me-both English
and native troopers. We were never able to trace them after they started forth on the high road. Nor were we ever able to learn how they died."

  With that the Resident rose and began to pace back and forth, his ruddy face palpably worried. His young companion gazed reflectively at the river.

  "Bhir," mused Cunningham aloud, "is attracting miscreants and malcontents who believe that we fear to send a magistrate there. They think the proprietor-ghost is friendly to them, and hostile to us kafirs-unbelievers, you know. The mystery is still unsolved, and unless we can occupy the castle, Bhir may become the keystone in an arch reared against our rule in northern India.

  "Anticipating your natural questions, Captain Malcolm," he resumed, "I will add that none of the neighboring rajas is unfriendly to us. Nor have the people of Bhir displayed untoward feelings openly. The ghost alone stands revealed as our enemy.

  "And now, my dear Captain Malcolm," he concluded, "what do you make of the tale of Jaswat Das?"

  John Malcolm, who had not spoken until then, shrugged square shoulders. Two years before he had led the first embassy from the company into Persia; and at that time he was known as a veteran of Seringapatam.

  He had been in the Indian service since childhood and possessed a familiarity rare in those days with the native languages and manners. Malcolm's homely face was expressionless; his uniform and accoutrements were more than a little travel stained. Cunningham, a stickler for the niceties, fancied that the new officer sent to him from Calcutta seemed dull, even indifferent.

  "Nothing very palpable, sir," responded Malcolm. A Scot by birth, he was reticent and slow to express an opinion.

  "But, zounds! My dear fellow, your experience with the natives must have taught you something. I am informed that you can do wonders."

  "I regret, sir, that you have been misinformed." Malcolm surveyed his muddy boots gravely, noticing that the Resident was glancing at them with some choler. Cunningham was brave in finery of lace and red coat, London cut. "What is your own opinion of the deaths, sir?"