"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."
[CHAPTER XIV.]
THE CAPTURED CITY.
In one dark, close-rushing stream the Huns were pouring into Viminacium, when Theodore, with unutterable agony of heart, approached the gates with those who held him a prisoner. It was an hour in which he could full well have died with scarcely a regret, for every sight and every sound around him spoke nothing but despair.
A few words from his conductor brought the barbarians who accompanied them pressing round the young Roman, so as to keep him distinct from all the multitude which had followed Attila to his first actual conquest in the Roman territory. But so dense, so rapid, was that living torrent, that after they had once entered the gates no one could move except in the same onward course; and, knee pressed against knee, horse jostling horse, forward they rushed, while nothing could be seen in the dark long street but an ocean of human heads, except where the flames burst forth from dwellings, palaces, and temples, and formed a fiery canopy above them.