was barely out of boyhood she could not help but admire the sinewy, muscular strength of his arms and chest. She lowered her eyes when she replied to him, as she would to her husband or a man of the tribe, for the boy had a strange authority. Then she pointed across the river to the shallow valley beyond, where the black tents were encamped.
The boys said thank you and walked on.
As they neared the rim of the valley, they saw a boy walking through the long grasses, his head bowed as if in sorrow, moving slowly, noticing little. A few paces behind him walked his slave.
Attila called, ‘Who are you?’
He stopped and looked up. This boy who walked by himself, as if burdened with the sorrow of the world, stood a full head taller than Attila. His eyes were a clear blue, his features very fine, his nose straight and classically Roman. His limbs were long and well-knit, his brow high and noble. Only his hair still retained a certain boyishness in its thatched brown tangle. Otherwise he looked and acted far older than his years.
When he spoke, his Hunnish was perfect. ‘Who are you?’ he asked calmly.
Attila faltered, and then with some reluctance answered, ‘I am Attila, son of Mundzuk.’
The boy nodded. ‘I am Aetius, son of Gaudentius.’
On the same day that Attila was born – such is the ironic humour of the gods – under the same proud, blazing summer sun in Leo, another boy was born, in Durostorum in Silestria, a frontier province of Pannonia. He was christened Aetius. His father was one Gaudentius, master-general of the cavalry on the Pannonian frontier.
In the black tent of Mundzuk, that night, the father crouching still anxiously over the perspiring, smiling mother and the tiny baby at her breast, an old woman moved her hand slowly over the tiny, wrinkled baby and said, ‘He is made for war.’
In the master-general’s fine military palace in Durostorum, while the straight-backed father paced the colonnade outside, and in an inner room the mother clutched the tiny newborn baby to her breast, an ancient haruspex pushed the midwife impatiently aside, gazed keenly down upon the little form and then into the crushed oakleaves she held in the palm of her hand, and said, ‘He is made for war.’
Attila and Orestes began their descent into the valley.
‘Your father, Mundzuk,’ called the Roman boy from above.
Attila stopped. ‘What?’ he said.
The Roman boy hesitated, then shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
Attila walked steadily on into the camp of the Huns. Orestes walked behind, his hare-eyes darting among the tents, his lips working nervously. He, too, had heard of the Huns. He trusted his friend implicitly, but what of the rest of the tribe?
The Huns did not build walls to defend themselves, and when they were not at war with their neighbours they hardly set a nightguard over their camp. There was a magnificent carelessness in their lack of fear, which struck only greater fear into the hearts of their enemies.
One day a Byzantine ambassador had asked them why they built no defensive walls.
Uldin stepped up uncomfortably close to him, put his face into the face of the startled Greek, and said, ‘Our walls are made of men, and spears, and swords.’
Now women sat outside some of those undefended tents, stirring black pots on smoky turf fires. Many had the same deep blue tattoos on their cheeks as Attila. They regarded the newcomers inscrutably as they walked by. None said a word.
Beyond the tents they could hear the whinny and snicker of the corralled horses, the Huns’ most valued possession. Somewhere among them was a white mare, her mane long and her tail almost down to the ground. Chagelghan, his horse, his beloved mare…
At last the boys came to the principal tent in the encampment, an imposing pavilion stretched across three massive tentpoles, the awning fringed with tassels. Two posts stood at either side of the great tent, and from them hung feathers and ribbons, mummified birds of prey, and flensed and polished human skulls.
Orestes swallowed. He wanted to say something, if only his friend’s name. But he couldn’t speak. His mouth was as dry as the steppe in the August sun.
A single man stood in the entrance to the tent, but he was a man bigger than Orestes had ever seen. Not in height, in breadth. His torso was as massive as that of an ox, his legs were like treetrunks, squat and thick and seeming to bow slightly under the weight of his hugely muscled body. But they said that all Huns had bow legs. It came from sitting on their horses all day. They even slept on their horses, it was said.
The man crossed his arms over his chest, and his huge biceps bulged the more. His mouth was clamped tight shut under his thin, drooping moustache, and his narrow eyes never left the approaching boys. They stopped in front of him.
‘We wish to see the king,’ said Attila.
The man did not move.
‘Step aside.’
The man did not move.
‘Bulgu, I said, step aside.’
The man-mountain started and looked more closely at the boy. Then, to Orestes’ astonishment, he lumbered to his left, the ground shaking beneath his felt-booted feet.
The boys went in.
The tent was long and deep, like the hall of one of the Germanic tribes, only of felt, not of wood. For nothing is built to last in the world of the Huns; everything passes away, like the wind, like the wind.
At the head of the tent was a raised dais, and there on an elaborately carved throne sat the king. He had heard of the boys’ approach and hastily taken up position to receive them. His beloved grandson…
Attila cried, ‘Uldin!’ and ran to him.
As he ran, in the dimness of the tent, something terrible happened. The king’s face changed. The face of his grandfather, old King Uldin, changed. It was no longer the wrinkled, grim but honest old face of his grandfather but a younger face, heavily bearded – far more heavily bearded than was usual among the Huns. The eyes were narrow, the nose snub and red, but the mouth, most revealing of features, was almost hidden beneath the dark, bushy beard.
As the boy reeled to a halt before the crude wooden throne, the mouth revealed itself in a broad smile. The teeth within revealed themselves, too: yellow graves-tones overlapping and collapsing, and the smile never reached the narrow, watchful eyes.
‘Attila,’ rumbled the king.
‘Ruga!’ gasped Attila.
‘Astur and all the gods in heaven be praised,’ said Ruga. ‘You have returned.’
Attila gaped and said nothing.
‘Our Roman allies informed us that you had… taken your own path, though you were an important hostage in the court of the emperor.’
‘You would ha-my grandfather would have had me escape, had he known… My father. Where is my father?’
The narrow eyes looked coldly back at him.
‘ Where is my father, Lord Mundzuk?’
‘Do not raise your voice to me, boy,’ said Ruga quietly, but with insidious menace.
Behind him, Attila heard the tent-flap pulled aside, and a heavy presence step within: Bulgu. Orestes still stood trembling at the back of the tent. This was not how it was supposed to go, and the quick-witted Greek boy knew it immediately.
‘My father, Lord Mundzuk,’ repeated Attila, keeping his voice calm and respectful with the greatest of effort, ‘son of King Uldin.’
Abruptly, and with the terrible, unreasoning violence that made him so feared, Ruga leant forward on his throne and roared, ‘On your knees before my throne, boy, or I’ll have you whipped and bloodied at the back of an ox-cart from here to the Takla Makan!’
Shaken even in his sturdy young soul, Attila sank to his knees.
Ruga rumbled on, ‘Stand before me and demand answers of me, would you? Your manners have deserted you
