![]() When they’d heard shouting, they’d rushed outside, and would no more have come without their swords and daggers than without their hands and feet. They were trained and experienced killers from birth who had conquered their way from remotest Asia to Europe by sheer ferocity. The barbarians were in his way, running about, whipping one another into a fury. But the wailing might mean they were arriving too late. Ellak, the High King’s son, had come for him because Priscus was the most learned man for many leagues and might know of a way to save the High King’s life. He was a diplomat, and, by default, the man who must write the history of this momentous day. He slowed enough to remain upright and maintain his Roman dignity. Ellak was a fighter, a man descended from famous warriors, who had lived to adulthood by the strength and speed of his limbs.Īs Priscus caught sight of the huge animal-skin tent of the High King, its center pole as tall as a villa and its floor wide enough to hold hundreds, he could hear wailing and shouting and knew what must have happened in the night. He followed Ellak, trying in vain to keep up with him in a pair of light sandals made for walking on the smooth pavements of Constantinople. Priscus hurried along over the uneven soil, trying not to turn an ankle in a wagon rut or step in a hole. Priscus’s manservant had pulled him from his bed, certain that they were about to lose their lives in the sudden commotion in the barbarian horde. The stink of the livestock competed with the smoke of ten thousand fires being fanned to life at once. ![]() Hundreds of thousands of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats all bleated and neighed in the general alarm and made the dawn a cacophony of sounds. Hundreds of thousands of warriors and their shrieking women and ungovernable offspring milled about. But in the dim light of this predawn morning it was in chaos. THE BARBARIAN ENCAMPMENT WAS ENORMOUS, A GREAT city that moved from place to place at the whim of its unquestioned ruler, the High King. ![]() NONFICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER AND CRAIG DIRGOīuilt for Adventure: The Classic Automobiles of Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt® ![]()
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