Aries Fire (22 page)

“A warrior becomes experienced by defeat; a scholar, by making mistakes,” he said.

Seira looked up at him, refusing to release her grip from his waist. Attila looked her in the eyes.

“I was defeated when Bleda attacked me, then you.  Your mistake was fkelen,” he said. 

Seira said nothing.

“Do you know this thing, fkelen? Rage,” he said.

Attila’s body surged with passion for her.  His stomach muscles gripped his emotions and held them in place. He wanted to kiss her, to lay her down naked on soft, white lambskin and kiss every part of her body, to ignite her rage into passion for him.  Restraint proved wiser.

Seira sat up suddenly and let go of him.  He did the same. They sat as equals in silence, side by side.

“I do not fight with fkelen,” he said to her. 

Seira looked at him, eyes filled with tears. Attila leaned forward.  Firm, yet loving hands held her face.

“I fight for victory.  I fight to be free. I fight to lead the ones who fight but cannot lead.  I am a warrior.  A warrior is not afraid to face fear.  You fight, afraid that if you do not kill, you will die. You fight Bleda. You fight the holy man. You fight the dark.”

Seira let the tears fall and cried softly. Her truth was visible to him and he named it. She wanted to look away, unable to face her own truth. Numbness turned to sensation.  Seira felt vulnerable.

“You, daughter of Hypatia, are Rhetman warrior. Rhetman, medicus. Teacher,” he reiterated and lightly squeezed her face. Then added, “Not every warrior is meant to kill. You are Rhetman warrior, to lead others from the darkness of their minds.”

There existed an eternal recognition of each other’s strengths.  Deep in her heart she would always be grateful for having known such an aggressive, yet judicious man.

Seira finally looked into his eyes and saw his love for her. She leaned forward to kiss him. As their lips barely touched, Attila suddenly felt like the defeated warrior he spoke of.  He pulled away and hid his overwhelming need to lie with her. 

“Attila,” she said, “I will fight no more… rage,” she concluded.

Attila nodded to her, stood quite suddenly and left the tent.

The days passed. Seira’s life revolved around routine and Attila’s spontaneous and insatiable need to war on the Roman nation.

War stained Seira’s history.  Seira knew she could not wipe her memory clean, so each day forward she fought her rage and fear less and less, in accordance with her vow.

Instead, Seira cared for the sick and the wounded in hopes of making amends to herself and to life itself.  She continued to teach Attila what she learned from Isaac and Kiki about philosophical concepts and the strength of prana.  It gave her hope to give something of promise to another.  It gave her hope that her life had meaning other than to cause harm.

They both pretended that their feelings for each other didn’t exist.  Here, stubborn in their thoughts and feelings, existed no hope for physical passion between them.  Attila and Seira, so at odds, so much alike.

Chapter Ten

A sudden change in the direction of life

Or Uranus in the 10th house

S
UDDEN SCREAMS AND
wailing bled into Attila’s tent.  He ran for his sword and to the tent flap with speed.  The sunset streaked orange and pink into the sky.  A surprise Roman skirmish kept most of the other Huns fighting throughout the day, northwest of the Hun camp. 

Seira jumped from her bed and looked for her bow.  It sat on her horse.  She ran outside and saw a procession of Huns carrying a man on their shoulders.

“Mundzuk!” shouted Attila.

He burst through the procession and pulled his father down from their arms.  Attila clenched his jaw, held in his cries. Seira pushed her way through the moaning people, kneeling near Attila.  She put her fingers on Mundzuk’s throat.  Attila did not stop her.  She checked for his pulse.  There was none.  Mundzuk, Sublime Khan of the Huns, was dead.

She looked at Attila, he at her.  Her heart saddened for Attila and for his father.  Bleda, eldest son of Mundzuk, would now become successor to Mundzuk’s brother, the Sublime Khan Ruga.  They saw this in each other’s eyes.  Attila would have to reunite with Bleda to construe his plans.  Attila, already mourning his father, began to grieve his Rhetman. Once more she briefly wondered about her own father.  She feared separate survival would be the only way in their fatherless new world. Seira spoke a silent prayer for all of them.

A tall, dark figure on horseback rode gallantly through the crowd.  His face showed disdain and pride simultaneously.  Seira looked up to see the people turn their gaze.  Attila’s eyes closed, he murmured prayers for his father’s passing.

The horse’s hooves stepped uniformly, brusquely stopping at Mundzuk’s body.  Seira shielded the setting sun from her eyes as she focused on the colossal statue atop his horse.  She gripped Attila’s forearm and held her breath.  They both wondered how Bleda knew to return to Mundzuk’s tribe at such a mournful hour. Seira clenched her jaw. The time had arrived for her to seek justice.

It had been hours.  Attila and Bleda met and planned in private.  Aymelek now summoned, would return with riders from the South.  It would take days, but Attila refused to hold the death ritual for Mundzuk without Aymelek.

Her heart will ruin in sorrow, thought Seira.

Seira’s sadness for Aymelek turned to worry about Bleda.  She questioned his sudden appearance after being gone for two years. What did he have to do with Mundzuk’s death?

Attila would bargain for her safety and ultimately her life, but she knew nothing of the terms.  Her impatience grew to a nervous frenzy. 

She paced in her tent then decided to gather her tinctures and herbal preparations. Her hands trembled as she wrapped and unwrapped the remedies repeatedly until their solid packaging satisfied her.

“AH!” she gasped and clasped her knife in her right hand. 

Flipping it into the air and catching it to see if her nerves would somehow falter in a sudden time of need, obsessed her thoughts.

Sudden, clear memories of the first time she ever used a knife on a human caused her heart to race.  Blotting the thought from her mind, she concentrated on the knife handle.

Attila had carved it from a poplar tree before fitting the blade into its shaft.  His talent for craftsmanship grew with every Roman, Germanic, or Baltic conquer it seemed.  He learned what he could from the foreign slaves he kept alive. A faint memory of Attila addressing the more unruly of Hunnish men came to mind.

“A nation of one ancestry and race is weakness! We must hold strong our custom to welcome all foreigners who seek to join our cause.  Aya, we treat them with dignity and respect and teach them our language and customs and learn theirs.”

Her finger slid across the shape of a flame Attila had carved into the hilt.   Seira’s knife was more commonly used for operations and small medical procedures.  Although she felt safer knowing it was near, yet hesitated to think of it as a tool of harm. But with Bleda in camp, it might be her only avenue to safety.  Thoughts flew from extremes and she found no rest in them.

Seira consoled herself then busied herself with useful tasks; grinding dried herbs for teas and simple ailments. 

I must keep my mind occupied or I shall lose it to fright, she thought.

Seira kept out of sight of both Attila and Bleda. She offered her usefulness to Kiral who helped prepare Mundzuk’s body for the wake.  The encampment was deadly silent. The fate of a people hung on hope that Attila and Bleda could come to agreeable terms.

A faint memory of Isaac’s words echoed in her head, you have everything you need, it said. Seira fought hard to believe it once again.

Two days later, Aymelek arrived, looking melancholy and yet tranquil.  She knew the life of a warring khan meant the likelihood of a violent death.  Mundzuk was given a proper Hun ritual wake, with his sons in attendance.  Loud drums and shouts rose up from the flames of his burning possessions.  His body, cleansed and oiled, wounds concealed, was wrapped in virgin cloth newly woven by an adept needlewoman of the Hun tribe.

Mundzuk, Seira learned, would be returned to the stone city of Scythia for burial, where he first ruled.  Aymelek would accompany his body on the journey: her future undetermined or perhaps merely undisclosed to Seira.

Seira sat with Aymelek during the death ceremony.  The tribe gathered almost casually, without formal ritual, outside of their khan’s tent.  Two women squatted and arranged wood for the funeral pyre.  What possessions of Mundzuk that Aymelek did not keep, they would burn.

An old man with white hair and no teeth laid a bulky cloth on the ground. His wiry fingers gently unwrapped the coarse fibers.  He picked up his kankle. Seira had seen only one other in Alexandria, brought to the marketplace and played by a commoner.  The kankle was weatherworn but as the old man plucked at its numerous strings, it came to life.

No one spoke.  A large muscular man wearing only pantaloons and a bright red silk sash stood abruptly: the plaits of his hair sprung up. Head tilted slightly back his jaw dropped open and called out a sound.

Seira was moved by the resonance of his monody that seemed to have no end. The sound rolled out of his mouth from his belly and undulated in the air as a lament.

She wondered where he acquired such a lavish sash but let that thought go and watched the muscles of his abdomen contract and expand with natural proficiency.   The old man took up his kankle and sat it in his lap.  He began to rock back and forth, with eyes closed, as he plucked on the string fibers.  Several other women knelt together and wrapped black cloths around their heads, leaving only their eyes exposed.

The women swooned in a trance and joined the singer while the old man strummed the kankle.  Chords performed in equal measure rang and quivered alongside the angst in each mourner, giving emotions a door to freedom.

Seira was unfamiliar with the words they eventually sang, but had no trouble understanding their meaning.

Aymelek sat as a queen while Mundzuk’s people paid tribute to their dead ruler and to her.

They sang in unison and broke off into separate harmonies while the one note rang clear, as it swelled from high to low and back again.

Seira felt their sorrow. She, too, mourned the death of Mundzuk. A faint smile crossed her lips as she imagined her mother and Mundzuk having long discourses on the nature of the Cosmos.

Perhaps now they are, she thought.

Eyeing the crowd, she lost sight of Attila. Where had he gone?

Perhaps he could not share his grief in public. The air had grown unusually crisp. Seira pulled her shawl around her shoulders and leaned toward the warmth of the fire.

Bleda was there with his guardsmen, Tarvel and Umar.  Bleda ignored Seira and she was relieved.  The Hun tribe circled around the central fire pit where the old man sat, playing his instrument. The whole while, Aymelek sat, unmoving, graceful even in her anguish, she half smiled while watching the others.

Attila reappeared and Seira let out a sigh, never realizing she held in her breath.  In his hand he carried a block of the bark of a young tree. Seira recognized the bark and noted that it was from an Ailanthus tree. 

“What’s he doing?” she murmured beneath her breath.

Aymelek put her hand on Seira and spoke softly.

“Seira,” she said.

Seira turned and tilted her head to one side with sympathy and took Aymelek’s hand in hers.

“Is there something I might do for you?”

Aymelek glanced at Attila and back to Seira.

“He has much loves, evet? Much loves for you?”

Seira looked away toward Attila. 

In some other time or place, my warrior friend, she thought then reclaimed Aymelek’s gaze.

“Yes, Aymelek. He loves me much.”

Feeling quite uncomfortable in her seat, Seira focused on Attila’s actions.

“What’s he doing, Aymelek?”

“Ah,” she said, smiling.

“The singing tree of God,” she said.  “Attila makes for Aymelek and,” she paused, “for Mundzuk.  In my lands of my father, when greatness dies, but not yet buried, a tree is broken to make kankle sounds. See?” she said in her broken Latin and Turkish mix of words and pointed to the old man and Attila.

Seira watched Attila sit next to the old man playing his instrument and began to craft a new kankle.  She sighed aloud in awe of Attila. Hands that could kill without hesitation became so delicate and exceptionally fastidious in the name of love and honor.

What else didn’t she know about this warrior? An unmistakable fire rose within her.  It was the same feeling she had in fantasies of Alexander.  Quicker than it appeared it died and Seira began to grieve for other reasons. There seemed little hope left of having a husband or a family of her own.

Late into the night when the singing and chanting were finished, Seira joined Aymelek in her tent. They talked of small pleasures and reminisced as two friends of youth might.  Seira held Aymelek’s hand.  The ageless Turkish Queen still carried the scent of spices and youthful sensuality.  Seira feared to wonder of Aymelek’s future.  Would Bleda claim her?  Or perhaps Attila?  She pushed the thought from her mind and the strange sense of jealousy with it.

“Attila must marry now,” she said to Seira.

Seira didn’t know that.  She sighed. 

“It seems I will never truly know the Hun way, their mysteries.”

In her mind, Seira saw the Huns fade from time and understanding.   She looked at Aymelek with benevolence.

“But he marries not you,” Aymelek said curiously.

“Not me,” Seira replied with a kind, reticent smile.

“Huns have much wives,” she said and stared; her thoughts drifted somewhere. 

Seira imagined Aymelek at the tomb of Mundzuk, gathered with all of his wives.  How must it be to share a man’s life and his death?  Seira wondered if Attila had women somewhere no one knew about and how he regarded them.  He did not confide these things to her and as much as she longed to know, she resisted asking.