Ekkehard: A Tale of the Tenth Century. Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Joseph Victor von Scheffel

A dozen of his men were ordered to stay behind, in order to protect the baggage and camp followers, against their hidden enemies. The ground echoed with the tramp of the advancing horde, and as soon as they reached the plain, they spread their ranks, and uttering a wild howl, advanced to meet the approaching column of the arrier-ban.

Far ahead rode Ellak, accompanied by the Hunnic standard-bearer, who was waving the green and red flag over his head. Uttering a piercing cry, the chieftain now lifted himself high in the saddle, and then shot off the first arrow, thus opening the battle according to old custom; and now the bloody fight began in good earnest. Little availed it to the Suabian warriors, that they stood firm and immovable like a wall of lances; for although the horses recoiled before it, a shower of arrows were sent at them from the distance. Half raised in the stirrups, with the reins hanging over their horses necks, the Huns took aim, and generally their arrows hit the mark.

Others, came on from the sides, and woe to the wounded, if his companions did not take him into the centre.

Then the light troops intended to come out of the fir-wood, and attack the Huns from behind. The sound of the bugle again collected them together; they advanced,--but quick as thought, their enemies' horses were turned round, and a shower of arrows greeted them. They staggered, only a few advanced, but these also were thrown back, so that finally Audifax was left alone, bravely marching along. Many an arrow whizzed round his head, but without minding them, or once looking back, he blew his bag-pipe, as was his duty. Thus he came right into the midst of the Hunnic riders. But now his piping stopped suddenly, for in passing, one of the Huns had thrown a noose over his head. Trying hard to resist, Audifax looked around, but not a single man of his troop was to be seen. "Oh Hadumoth!" cried he mournfully. The rider took pity on the brave fair-haired boy; so instead of splitting his head, he lifted him up into the saddle, and galloped away to the place where the Hunnic train had stopped, under the shelter of a hill. With erect figure, the woman of the wood stood on her cart, intently gazing at the raging battle. She had dressed the wounds of the first Huns who fell, pronouncing some powerful charms over them, to stop the bleeding.

"Here I bring you someone to clean the camp-kettles!" cried the Hunnic rider, throwing the boy over, so that he fell right into the cart, and at the feet of the old woman.

"Welcome, thou venomous little toad," cried she fiercely, "thou shalt get thy reward sure enough, for having shown the way up to my house, to that cowl-bearer!" She had recognized him at once, and dragging him towards her, tied him fast to the cart.

Audifax remained silent, but scalding tears fell from his eyes. He did not cry though on account of being taken prisoner, but he cried from another heavy disappointment. "Oh Hadumoth!" sighed he again. Yesterday at midnight he had sat together with the young goose-driver, hidden in a corner of the fire-place. "Thou shalt become invulnerable," Hadumoth had said, "for I will give thee a charm against all weapons!" She had boiled a brown snake, and anointed his forehead, shoulders and breast with its fat. "To-morrow evening I shall wait for thee in this same corner, for thou wilt surely come back to me, safe and sound. No metal can do anything, against the fat of a snake." Audifax had squeezed her hands, and had gone out so joyously into battle,--and now!...

The fighting was still going on in the plain, and the Suabian combatants not being used to battle, began to get tired already. With an anxious expression Simon Bardo was watching the state of affairs; and with an angry shake of the head, he grumbled to himself: "the best strategy is lost on these Centaurs, who come and go, and shoot at a distance, as if my threefold flanks stood there only to amuse them. It would really be well, if one were to add a chapter to Emperor Leo's book on tactics, treating of the attack of the Huns."

He now approached the monks, and dividing them again into two bodies, ordered the men of St. Gall to advance on the right, and those of Reichenau, on the left; then wheeling about, so that the enemy, having the wood at his back, was shut in by a semicircle. "If we do not surround them, they will not let us get at them," cried he, flourishing his broad sword in the air. "So now to the attack!"

A wild fire was gleaming in all eyes; and on the point of starting, they all dropt down on their knees; each took up a clod of earth, and threw it over his head that he might be consecrated and blessed by his native earth; and then they rushed on to battle. Those of St. Gall struck up the pious war-song of "media vita." Notker the stutterer, once passed through the ravines of the Martistobel, in his native land, when a bridge was just being built over the yawning precipice. The workmen were hanging suspended over the giddy height, and at that sight, the idea rose in his soul, how in our life we are always walking on the edge of the abyss of Death, and so he composed those verses. Now they served as a sort of magic song, which was to protect them, and bring death to their enemies. Solemn, sounded its strains from the lips of the men going into battle: