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.