One after another his bravest comrades followed. Some missed their footing and were dashed to atoms on the rocks below; but still another and another succeeded, for Azimantium knew not fear. The Huns were on their threshold, and who dared hesitate? A hundred of the most agile passed the depth, pursued the green path, cleared another and another spring, reached the city wall, climbed over its ruined stones, and in the narrow entrance street met the victorious Huns, who had paused to plunder the first shrine they found.
No words were spoken: nor javelins nor arrows were now used: brow to brow, and sword to sword, the struggle was renewed. But who can conquer men who combat for their hearths? The Huns fell, died, or were driven backs; for that narrow way had no outlet but by the gate through which they had entered, and the close street where fought the youth of Azimantium. Not a Grecian glaive fell in vain, and at every step Menenius trod upon a slain barbarian. Like a reaper, each sweep of his unceasing arm made a hollow vacancy in the rank before him, and death grew so fearfully busy amongst the Huns, that vague imaginings of some supernatural power being armed to their encounter, took possession of their bosons. The form of the young hero swelled to the eyes of their fancy. "It is a god!" they cried; "it is a god!" They shrank from his blows--they turned--they fled. Those who were behind knew not the cause of terror, but caught it as it came. Each saw his fellow flying, and, touched by the same dim unnerving influence, sought but to fly. "A god! a god!" they cried, and rushed forth tumultuously on those who followed towards the city.
The broken line of Azimantium through which they had forced their way, now divided into two by the barbarian multitude, still waged terrific warfare on either side, while Menenius, pressing on with his companions, drove the ferocious Huns from the gate. The contagious terror of the fugitives spread to those without, and all were hurrying down the descent, when one chief rushed through the struggling crowd. "A god?" he cried. "This hand shall try his immmortality!" And on he urged his steed against Menenius.
For an instant the Greeks paused in their pursuit, and the barbarians rallied from their flight, and all eyes turned upon the Hun and his opponent. The fate of Azimantium--the last relic of Grecian and of Roman glory--hung upon that brief moment. An instant decided all, for before fear could become hope in the hearts of the Huns, the charger of the barbarian chief was wild upon the plain, and he himself, cleft to the jaws, lay motionless before Menenius. A thousand souls seemed in the hero's bosom, and plunging into the midst of the enemies, he drove them down the steep. All Azimantium followed, and their footsteps were upon the necks of the dying. The rout was complete, and terror and dismay hung upon the flank of the defeated Huns; but still Menenius urged the furious pursuit. On, on he cleft his way. He marked not, he saw not who was near, he heeded not, he felt not what opposed him. His eye was fixed upon a white and fluttering object which was borne along amidst the brown masses of the flying barbarians, and towards it he rent his way, while his unwearied arm smote down all things that impeded his progress, as if but to make a path to that.
As long as the rout and the pursuit were confined by the narrow sides of the ascent to Azimantium, he kept that one spot in view; but afterwards, when the path of the flyers opened out upon the plains, the horse which bore it carried it away from his straining eyes, while the gray falling of the evening gave every distant thing a vague, shadowy, uncertain form, like the objects of the past seen through the twilight memory of many years.--He followed it to the last--night fell, and it was lost.
With triumph and with song the children of Azimantium wound up towards the city. Joy! joy! joy! was in their hearts and victory upon their brows. They had overcome the myriads, they had conquered the invincible! they had rolled back the barbarian torrent from the gates of their glad city, and every step that they took among the unburied dead of the enemy, told they had won for themselves both victory and peace. With a quick step, but with a cast-down eye and a knitted brow, Menenius, the hero of the triumph, followed the path up the hill. Every voice was glad, every heart seemed joyful, but his; but there was a fear, a dread, a conviction in his bosom, that his was the home that had been plundered of its treasure, his was the hearth to be for ever desolate. He strode on to the town, and joy and glory hailed him; and gratitude and admiration proclaimed his name to the skies. They called him the deliverer of his country, the saviour of his native place--they saluted him as victor--they acknowledged him as chief.
"Honoria?" he asked, "Honoria?" but no one answered. Honoria was gone. Since the entrance of the Huns into the city, Honoria had not been seen; and casting himself down upon a couch, he hid his eyes in cloak, while gladness and rejoicing filled the midnight air, and all Azimantium was one high festival.
'Twas strange, 'twas wonderfully strange! that one small city of the greatest empire in the world--while an inundation of barbarians poured over the land--while fortress and town were cast down and levelled with the earth--while legions fled dismayed, and nations bowed the head--and while the very suburbs of Constantinople, the imperial city, beheld the fearful faces of the Huns,--'twas strange, 'twas wonderfully strange, that one small city should stand in its solitary freedom, bold, fearless, and unconquered. 'Twas strange, 'twas wonderfully strange! Yet the deeds of the children of Azimantium are recorded in an immortal page, wherein we read, that "they attacked in frequent and successful sallies, the troops of the Huns, who gradually declined their dangerous neighbourhood; they rescued from their hands the spoil and the captives, and recruited their domestic force by the voluntary association of fugitives and deserters."[[20]]
In every sally, in every irruption made by the Azimantines into the vast tract of country now covered with the Huns, Menenius was the leader; and in the fierce incessant warfare thus carried on, he seemed to find his only consolation, his only enjoyment. At other times, he would sit sad and gloomy, his vacant eye fixed unobserving upon space, and his heart meditating sad dreams. In the visions of the night, too, when weariness dimmed the fire in his heart, and suffered his eyes to close, the white and fluttering object he had pursued in the fight of Azimantium would again be carried off, while imagination would fill up all that sight had not been able to ascertain, and the form of Honoria, torn away from him by the barbarian, would hold forth its phantom arms, and implore aid and succour in vain. Then his vigorous and manly limbs would writhe with the agony of his dreaming soul, till horror and despair would burst the bands of sleep, and he would start again upon his feet to wreak his great revenge upon the enemy. And yet there was a quality in his soul which--although while an adverse sword was drawn, or a threatening bow was bent, his step was through blood and carnage, his path was terror and death,--yet there was a quality in his soul which suspended the uplifted blow when the suppliant and the conquered clasped his knee; and many was the train captives which he sent home to the city; the pledges of future security and respect to Azimantium.
At length when seventy cities had fallen before the Scythian hordes, and nought but ruins were left to say where they had been, and to point to after ages the sad moral of an empire's decay, the weak Theodosius, unable to protect his subjects, or defend himself, agreed to treat with the mighty Barbarian, and to buy precarious peace with gold and concession, when he dared not purchase true security by the sword. Attila dictated the conditions and Theodosius yielded to all his demands but one, with which the emperor had no power to comply; and that was, that the city of Azimantium should restore the captives taken from the Huns. Attila felt how little power a feeble and degenerate monarch could have over a fearless, noble, unconquerable race; and he felt, too, that all his own power, great and battle-born as it was, could scarcely suffice to crush the hearts of Azimantium. The monarch of all the Eastern empire confessed his inability to compel the restoration of the captives; and Attila, the terror of the world, the scourge of God, the conqueror of nations, treated on equal terms with the small city of Thrace.