The night was dark but not monotonous, and the cloudless sky was full of stars, but it was brightly lit in Attila's palace, where soldiers and nobles alike ran back and forth on the earthen roads.

One of them, dressed in a toga robe, stood out, and he ran under the escort of four guards towards the wooden palace in the center of the fortress, where soldiers with torches had been waiting for a long time guarding the huge wooden gates of the palace.

The man's arrival was like a signal, and there was no need to rush or prove it, and the guard guarding the door immediately opened the door and let him through.

He trodden the Scythian stalls, groping his way in the faint light of the fire, his mouth still murmuring, whispering "My king, my king!" ”

The guard at the last gate opened the last wooden door for him, and the man dared not hesitate any longer, and he plunged into it.

It was a very spacious room, with a huge bed in the middle, with a messy blanket and pillows, and a brazier for lighting around it, while a Scythian woman, who was only wrapped in a cloth or even naked, was busy lighting the wood in the brazier to make the room look like daytime.

Attila sat upright on the outermost edge of the bed, worthy of being a king, even sitting at the end of the bed just after the rain clouds had a kind of momentum of being on the throne.

"My king!" The man hurriedly called out to Attila, "Do you have something to do with me?" ”

It wasn't until he heard the man's call that Attila opened his eyes slightly and looked at the Roman in front of him, who was panting from running all the way. His face turned a little pale from the exhaustion, but the dim glow of the flames successfully concealed his misery.

"You look the same skin color as mine now, Odystes, my old friend." Attila spoke, his voice was a little hoarse, and his tone showed a sense of loss, he looked like he was bored in the middle of the night and deliberately disturbed the rest of the people, but fortunately, he was the king, no matter how willful, he would be forgiven.

"Yes, yes, my king!" Odystes didn't know what medicine Attila had taken wrong, so he could only respond in a hurry.

"You must be complaining in your heart about why I woke you up while you were asleep and then made you come all the way here to find that everything was normal." Attila smiled coldly as she spoke, his laughter was gloomy, more like a sigh.

"I didn't, my king!" Odystes defended himself: "I am your servant, my king, Attila the noble king of the Huns, and I am your faithful servant, and since you need me, then I should be at your disposal at all times!" ”

"Haha, your words always make me feel very useful!" Attila smiled and said, "Isn't it true that you Romans have been learning how to please people for hundreds of years?" But I have to say that you did, Odystes, for your loyalty. ”

"It's my honor to serve you!" Odystes said hurriedly.

"Okay, okay!" Attila smiled and beckoned to Odeses and said, "Come, sit next to me, just right, I want to talk to you." ”

Oatees did not dare to hesitate, he came to Attila's side and sat down slowly, Ati stretched out his hand and stroked his back, hesitated for a moment, and then said thoughtfully: "You know, my friend, I had a dream, a very, very bad dream, in which I felt that I was so helpless, yes, I could not trust anyone, I was so lonely, so hateful. ”

"Is it because of the Goths?" Odystes followed Attila's words and asked, "The Visgoths named Torrismon?" ”

"No, it's not just him." Attila shook his head, his eyes fixed on the patterns of flowers and plants on the Scythian carpet illuminated by the firelight below, "And Flavis. Luga, I dreamed that at Thermopylae he was whipping his soldiers with a whip as long as the Rhine, and ordering them to fight me. ”

"And then?"

"My soldiers are retreating, and they are helpless by the terrain of Hot Springs." Attila looked up at Odystes, "I heard that hundreds of years ago there was a Persian king named Xerxes, and it was here that he suffered a defeat and saved the Greeks from being conquered. ”

"I always want to conquer them, let them taste what it will be like to be conquered, but how can they be so tenacious? It can even break the bowstring in our hands and bend the spear. ”

"Maybe now is not the time, my king."

"Maybe you're right, Odeses, my friend." Attila sighed softly, "Every time I set out on Roman soil with the conviction of victory, I often ended up with a feather in the fall, and they were not as fragile as we seemed, at least not as fragile as the illustrious men who sat in the council chambers and palaces. ”

"When I came back from the Marne, I had the same dream, dreaming of the wide river with red blood flowing from the source, and in front of it there were dense bodies of corpses, and there were people struggling in it, but the blood could not stop pouring from his mouth until it was like a rope around their necks and suffocated them and finally sank into the water. I also saw Golding, the fellow I trusted, who was pierced through his chest by a golden spear that seemed to come down from the sky and nailed poor Golding to the ground. But the poor fellow refused to die, and he wailed, and raised his head to me, and cried at me with his fingers clasped on the ground until two deep chasms were dug, and he cried out at me, begging me to save his life, but I was frightened, and stood still like a tree, watching them in despair. ”

"I don't blame you for this, my king, it's all our accompanying tribe that they refuse to fight with all their might, and they only let you fail in order to survive!"

"But I still failed! Isn't it? ”

Odystes was silent.

Attila continued: "Because defeat our enemies will only laugh at me,"