He added some further orders; and in a few minutes was heard, from the Hunnish camp, the sound of trumpets, giving forth the peculiar notes of recall with which the Huns and other barbarous nations were acquainted; and, separating themselves gradually but securely from the masses of the Romans, the various tribes which had followed Attila to that bloody battle were seen moving, in firm and regular order, towards their camp.
What would have been the result of this movement under other circumstances, it is difficult to say, had the eye of Ætius marked the proceedings of the Huns, or the mind of Theodoric directed the movements of the enemy; but trampled under the horses' feet, not far from the spot where Attila then sat, lay the disfigured body of the Gothic king, and the Roman general was far away, embarrassed with a party of the Gepidæ, by whom he had nearly been taken.
The inferior commanders of the Roman host gladly perceived that a battle, of which they were beginning to despair, was not entirely lost; and seeing the dark cloud of Huns, with which Attila on the hill covered the man[oe]uvres of his troops, they dared not act any very vigorous part, with thinned and exhausted troops, against so bold and well-prepared an enemy. The trumpets of Attila continued to sound for two hours after nightfall: his forces entered the camp unmolested, and the last of the host who left the battle-plain was the monarch of the Huns himself.[[2]]
[CHAPTER VII.]
THE RETREAT.
"Let the dead be numbered!" said Attila, as he entered his tent--"let the dead be numbered! I have lost many of my children! Let every chieftain of every tribe count up their numbers, and tell me how many are wanting. We are brave men, and can look our loss in the face. Theodore, my son, I thank thee; and I give thee leave, as a Roman, to rejoice that, for the first time, Attila has fought without winning a victory."
Thus saying, he passed on, and Theodore turned to where his own tents were placed. It had been a day of terrible excitement; and no man, probably, in either army, had felt such strange and contending emotions as the young Roman, who, riding by the side of Attila through that terrible conflict, exerted every energy to defend the monarch's life, and yet from his heart wished success unto his enemies. Though every moment his own person had been in danger--the more, perhaps, because he sought to take the life of none himself--yet, during the day, he had not felt even that slight exciting shade of apprehension which is rather pleasing than otherwise. His whole thoughts had been divided between Attila and the Romans. He had sought most eagerly, and he had found completely, an opportunity of proving his gratitude to the monarch of the Huns for all the great and singular favour which he had displayed towards him.
That gratitude had indeed been great. It is true, he had discovered that Attila had a personal object in the first signs of forbearance which he had shown towards him; but Theodore was not one to scan narrowly the causes of gratitude, or to weigh it out in very fine and accurate scales; and yet, though he would willingly have given his life to save that of the mighty king who had protected and befriended him, he could not find in his heart to wish his fellow-countrymen defeated. Thus he had watched the wavering progress of the fight with an anxious and a beating heart, longing every moment to spring forward and rally the legions when he saw them shaken, or to form again the cohorts broken by the Hunnish cavalry.
The same feelings continued, and agitated him still after he had re-entered the camp. Throughout the night a low and moaning murmur went up from the plain between the two armies; and when Theodore, raised upon one of the wagons, gazed over that bloody field, as it lay in the tranquil moonlight, he could see among the piles of dead, which now broke the flat line of the land, a number of objects moving slowly, and darkening, here and there, those spots where the beams of the calm, bright planet were reflected from heaps of corslets and shining arms. The whole camp around him, except a few solitary warriors keeping guard, seemed now to have fallen sound asleep, wearied out with exertion, and none of the noises of the preceding night broke the stillness of the air. Horses and men, equally tired, uttered no sound; and that low moan, not unlike the sighing of a melancholy wind, was all that interrupted the silence. As Theodore gazed, a step near him made him turn; and the next moment, mounting upon the same part of the rampart on which he had raised himself, Ardaric stood by his side, and gazed out in the same direction for some time without speaking.
"What can that faint moan proceed from?" said Theodore, at length. "You hear it, do you not, noble Ardaric? The stream is too small to be heard here!"