Under the Free Sun – Chapter 7

Midnight had passed, and around Hilbudius’ camp there was chaos and uproar. Fires burned all around, and the army roared like they were half-mad. The camp had been completely plundered. The oxhides and tarpaulins had been ripped from the tents and spread out on the ground. They were laid on the earth, and the soldiers rolled over them, fought for them, pulled them from one another’s grasp, and tore them to pieces. They had looted the granary and the stockpile of dried meat. They fought over pieces of meat, scattered grain, chased each other from fire to fire, all drunken from the glory of their victory.

Only the wise elders and old soldiers sat gravely by Svarun’s fire. They saw what the young men were doing, how the shepherds and common folk raged, wild like wolves, envious, jealous, and ever ready to brawl and quarrel. No one stood up to restrain or calm them.

They knew their kin well. Like young bulls, they had grown up in the forest under the free sun. As soon as they were out of their mother’s arms, they drove lambs into the thicket and to the pastures, spending nights with them, fearing only the heavy hand of the elder whom their fathers respected, for they had chosen him themselves and voluntarily submitted to his authority.

The elders did not miss any of their companions. The young men had attacked first, and the elders had left them to do the bloody work, mostly staying outside the camp. Yet, on their faces, there was great and proud joy at the victory.

Only Svarun was sad—so sad that the proud elder, the conqueror of the daring Hilbudius, was hunched over in sorrow. His only support, Iztok, who had proven in this war that he would be a worthy son of the illustrious Svarun lineage, lay near the fire under a canvas tent, as if dead.

When the battle ended, the father did not rest until his son’s body was pulled from the pile of corpses. Tears welled up as they lifted Iztok, covered in blood. Svarun collapsed on him, weeping.

Suddenly, he stood up.

“He is not dead! His heart stirred!”

Hope shone in his eyes.

They carried the young man out of the camp, set up a tent, and laid him inside. Svarun called for the healer, who was powerful among the Slovenes, revered and respected as a great prophet to whom the gods revealed their secrets.

The healer removed Iztok’s armor, unfastened his helmet, and carefully washed his bloodied body, searching for wounds. He pressed his ear to Iztok’s heart and nodded with satisfaction.

“He lives, Svarun, your Iztok lives!”

Yet, he could not find any wounds.

“Struck? Stunned?” the healer muttered.

Hilbudius’ helmet, which Iztok had worn, had been slashed and crushed.

“He is stunned! He was struck on the head with great force. Iztok will wake, have hope, father, and promise offerings to the gods!”

Svarun vowed to sacrifice the finest bull if his son awoke and recovered.

The healer instructed the father to leave the tent and let him be alone with Iztok.

Svarun respectfully obeyed, returned to the elders, and crouched silently in his immense grief among the men.

The moments dragged and crawled by endlessly for him. He looked at the stars, gazed at the moon, yet everything seemed fixed in the sky. Nothing moved. In the terrible doubt and waiting, the old man thought he would pass away before dawn. Whenever someone approached the fire or a joyful shout echoed, he trembled, raised his head, and looked around. He hoped the healer was coming with good news. But he did not come.

The elders lay down and slept. Half of the army stretched out on the grass, and the fires began to die out. Only the wild songs, quarrels, and scuffles of the youth remained.

Svarun pressed his hands to his ears, suffering in the fateful waiting. He hunched over more and more, as if sinking into the earth, disappearing into the ground.

The stars grew pale, dimmed, and vanished in the gray sky. Then, a gentle hand touched Svarun.

The old man trembled.

The healer called him, his face beaming with joy.

“Svarun, illustrious elder, your lineage will not die—praise the gods, Iztok drinks water!”

The elder sprang to his feet and rushed into the tent. Iztok looked at him joyfully, a smile playing around his lips. His father knelt by his son and stammered, “Iztok, Iztok, my child…”

As the sun began to rise, even the most rowdy young men had grown weak. The worst troublemakers collapsed. No one stirred at the sun’s rays. The entire plain was covered with sleeping bodies, like the dead. Only Svarun walked before Iztok’s tent, raising his hands, praising the Sun, and whispering prayers.

Around noon, bodies began to stir. A murmur arose among the soldiers, and the weary troops came back to life. From the north, a long line of laden horses moved toward the Danube, accompanied by bleating sheep. They came from the fort with food and drink.

Many young men crossed the bridge to meet them, soon driving the horses and livestock into the camp. Among them came many girls, and in their midst, Radovan rode a garlanded horse, holding his lute, singing a new victorious song that made the strings hum.

They unloaded the grain and honey, grabbed the rams, and began slaughtering them. The entire camp turned into a gigantic celebration. Everywhere there was laughter and cheer, singing and dancing.

Radovan camped among the girls, joined by young warriors. He sat on an old stump, played whatever his fingers and strings could produce, and recounted joyful stories of his journey. The youth laughed so loudly that the woods echoed with their wild joy.

“Hey, Radovan, why did you linger in the fort? You should have come with us and played your lute when we fought the Byzantines!”

A robust young man teased the minstrel.

“Thank your mother you weren’t born ten years earlier. For such prattling, I would’ve smashed my precious lute over your skull so you wouldn’t wag your tongue again. But you’re young and brash like a foal—Radovan forgives you!”

“Well, you should have strapped on a sword, hidden your lute with the girls, and fought with us.”

“I didn’t fight with you, that’s true. But it’s also true that your howling, like a pack of young wolves, would have deafened me forever. Who would then pluck my strings? Maybe you? When even a vine is too delicate for your donkey ears? Who would feed Radovan if I couldn’t roam the world with my lute? You, perhaps, when you don’t even have goat’s milk to give to a hungry dog? Silence, you fool!”

Everyone burst out laughing, and Radovan proudly started to play and sing a cheerful song. But the young men began to awaken a desire for Radovan’s anger.

“What were you doing in the fort while we were fighting for freedom?”

“He was chasing after girls!”

The girls cheered.

“Oh, Radovan, shall we show you?”

“If your loves are so cheap that they’d hang onto my old bones, I still don’t want them!”

“But you lied last time, saying that even the empress herself said how handsome you are.”

“Empress Theodora is a wise woman, fools! And that was years ago, before I had furrows on my brow and goose feathers in my beard!”

“Hey, if Hilbudius had knocked on the fort, Radovan would have run to the woods like a badger to its burrow! Too bad he fell before giving you that joy.”

“Run? When did I ever run? Tell me, girls, didn’t I sit night and day on the fortifications, guarding the fort like a lynx in a beech thicket?”

“You crouched on the fortifications, Radovan, but you trembled.”

“Of course I trembled—with the desire to show the world what a hero Radovan the minstrel could be if needed.”

Pluck—pluck—pluck.

The lute began to play, and the girls joined hands, spinning around the merry musician.

When they had caught their breath, Radovan selected a few young men and went off with them to the camp.

“We’ll win, we surely will. I know the Byzantines! They can’t do without that divine drink. Mead, I won’t deny it, it’s good—so is ale—but wine…”

Radovan licked his lips greedily.

On his travels across the world, he had played many times in Byzantine camps. Even in the camps, the soldiers didn’t hide their passion for theater and circus, which everyone loved at the time. Every wandering jumper, half-baked singer, chatterbox actor, and wild dancer was revered and well-paid. Radovan knew this, so he was always eager to join a provincial camp where he was always well treated. He also knew that every camp had a wine cellar.

Radovan was looking for the cellar. The place was all ruins and destruction. Only a few posts jutted upwards, and between them lay trampled wheat and barley.

“It must be here! The granary was around here—the wine can’t be far!”

They began searching diligently, rolling logs and dragging away the unburied dead bodies that lay there.

Radovan carefully tapped the ground with his foot. Suddenly, there was a hollow sound. “Stop, you fool, come here! The cellar is here! My heel is worth more than your noses!”

They rolled away some beams, cleared a toppled two-wheeled cart, cleaned the area, and revealed the boards of a small door in the ground. They bowed, grabbed it with strong hands, the bolts cracked, and beneath them, a pit opened, with a steep, narrow ladder leading down.

Radovan was the first to slip into the open cellar. He shouted joyfully, grabbed the first clay jug, and tilted it to drink, the liquid loudly gurgling down his throat. The supply was abundant. Tall, elongated jugs with strong handles, made of brown clay, lined the walls. Many wine-filled skins hung from ropes attached to the ceiling.

The Slavs brought the wine up from the cellar. Each grabbed a jug and carried it off. Radovan, however, struggled with a large skin that he had bitten open in the cellar to taste the wine. And it was excellent.

When the others learned about the cellar and the wine, everyone rushed to the camp. They shoved into the opening, drank straight from the jugs, pulled them out, and brought them to the fires where rams were roasting.

The drinking and revelry began—feasting and singing, quarrels and fights—until, by nightfall, they collapsed, half-exhausted, half-drunk, and slept as if lifeless. Even Radovan dozed off with his lute on his lap, swaying before finally sprawling on the ground, using his lute, its strings torn, as a pillow.

While the young warriors were raging and struggling over the wine, Iztok lay in front of the tent. Beside him, Ljubinica placed a beautiful pitcher of the best honey; she sat at his feet, gazing at his face.

“Iztok, Perun himself has saved you from Morana. I sacrificed the finest lamb to him when you left. Perun is merciful.”

Her brother looked at her gratefully. His face darkened and then brightened, as if with faith and doubt. He raised himself, leaning on his elbow.

“Don’t, brother, maybe it’s better if you lie down. The healer advised it!”

“Don’t worry, Ljubinica! The pain is small.”

He touched the top of his head.

“Iztok, tell me how you fought! They pulled you out from under the dead—and you live! Perun is great!”

“My memory is dark. I remember well that I was the first to break through the gate into the camp. Behind me, like rams, were the young men from our fort.”

“And they all fell!”

“They all fell? Oh, Morana!”

“She spared you; let us thank her!”

“Ljubinica, you don’t know how the Byzantines fight! They made a wall of shields before me, and behind them, swords flashed like lightning. I struck, but their helmets were like anvils. My sword chipped and broke. Then a weapon hit my head, I spun, collapsed, and was buried under a landslide of comrades.”

“Look at that, on your head, and yet you have no wound! Oh, Perun is mighty!”

“Sister, if I hadn’t had a helmet, the gods wouldn’t have saved me.”

“A helmet?”

“Hilbudius’ helmet, it’s in the tent. Bring it to me!”

Iztok took the split helmet in his lap and examined it for a long time.

“How beautiful it is, adorned with precious stones.”

“It saved me from death, Ljubinica.”

He pried pearls from the cross with a knife.

“Half for you, half for me, sister. Thread them onto gold rings and wear them in your hair, around your temples.”

“As a keepsake from my brother!”

“And I as a memento of the battle!”

He poured the gems into a small, silver-adorned horn that he wore on his belt—a talisman from a famous sorceress.

Evening crept over the land. Mists rose from the ground. The entire army was already silent.

Only Iztok was still awake in the tent, holding his aching head, deep in thought.

“The Slavs have won. Yes. But really, it was my father’s wisdom that triumphed. A ruse won, not us. And yet—three or four Byzantines could be taken down in a field by any Slav or Antian! But this armor and this way of fighting! What use is brute strength?”

He remembered the tale of a small tribe of Slavs who sold a fort to the Byzantines, along with many daughters into slavery, cattle, and sheep, to buy their freedom. When the Byzantine soldiers came for the agreed ransom, the women spat in their husbands’ faces, screaming: “You were afraid of such cowards? Shame! Are you warriors?”

Iztok thought about what kind of force the united Slavs would be if they knew how to wage war. They could knock on the doors of Byzantium itself. How much smaller Hilbudius’ army was! They attacked it from an ambush, tricked the camp, yet more Slavs than enemies lay among the dead. And tonight, if a hundred horsemen came with Hilbudius at the head, they would mow down and scatter the great army of Slavs to the winds. The mob would howl, every command would be in vain, and a handful could overcome thousands.

Iztok felt sorrowful. For the first time, he had fought in battle, and he learned that wild, brute strength is not everything. He realized that he would soon have to take over leadership from Svarun, and perhaps one day, earn the honor of becoming an elder and leading armies…

His heavy head sank onto his bedding, dark thoughts wandering longingly through the future.