The two boys eyed each other a little warily, then Attila laughed. Aetius didn’t.
‘And you,’ said Attila, rolling onto one elbow and waving regally at the two slaveboys. ‘You two. You’ll go free and laden with gold the moment we get back to camp.’
They stared.
Orestes stammered, ‘But – but I’ve nowhere else to go.’
Attila said seriously now, ‘You want to stay, Greek boy? Stay with the dreadful Huns, who eat raw meat and never have baths and refuse to bow to the meek dying and rising god of the Christians?’
Orestes looked down.
‘Then stay you will,’ said Attila. ‘But slave no more.’
Aetius was sitting cross-legged opposite Attila, watchful and wary as ever. He thought how like a king the boy already sounded, grandiloquently dispensing judgements and freedom and gold to left and to right with regal carelessness and magnificence.
‘And you,’ said Attila, turning to Cadoc, ‘you’ll go free, too. You almost saved my life.’
‘I did save your life,’ blurted Cadoc indignantly.
For a moment Attila stared at the dark-eyed slaveboy, and Aetius wondered if he might not erupt in fury at this impertinence, like his fiery uncle. But then he laughed, and they all relaxed. None of them wanted to see Attila lose his temper.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You did save my life. And my uncle will lade you with so much gold in gratitude that you won’t even be able to walk out of the camp!’
It took two ponies to drag the leaden weight of the boar’s head on its hazelwood travois. Two of the boys rode, and two of them walked, swapping places every hour or so. The three others tried to insist that Attila, at least, should ride, with his torn thigh muscle and his cut back, but he insisted on walking his fair share like the rest of them.
It was an arduous progress, and it was late the following night when they made it back into the camp of the Huns, so only the few warriors on nightwatch greeted their return.
But the next morning when people awoke and came blearily out of their tents, there in the middle of the camp, set on the back of a high-wheeled wagon to exaggerate its size still further, was a monstrous boar’s head, as big as any man or woman of the People had ever seen. Beneath the wagon lay four exhausted, grimy, travel-stained boys, huddled together under a heap of coarse woollen horse-blankets, fast asleep.
The people gathered around in open-mouthed amazement, some of the bolder reaching out to touch the boar’s great muzzle, or even tap its white fangs with their knuckles where its bloody jaws hung open. And they began to murmur among themselves.
The boys awoke to the sound, and crawled out from under the wagon and stood and stared. When they realised what was taking place, they began to grin and accept the many slaps on the arm or back, and agree that, yes, it was a terrific, and incredibly dangerous, feat that they had managed. They had slain the Monstrous Boar of the Northern Woods, and dragged it, or at least its severed head, all the way home to show the People with their own disbelieving eyes.
Two burly men of the tribe plucked Attila into the air, set him on their shoulders, and began to parade him around, while the women sang and ululated in praise of his great feat of arms. Other men had killed boar, they sang, but Attila had killed the King of the Boar. The sun shone bright from the bold eyes of Prince Attila. Surely there was no warrior in the land like Prince Attila.
Some of the women called out bawdy comments, saying that they would be happy to have a son by him any time, if he cared to visit their tent one night… Attila grinned and waved and lapped it up, his injured thigh and back forgotten for the moment. Meanwhile, the other three tried not to look too resentful: their contribution to the death of the boar was wholly ignored in favour of the People’s prince. Then the parade suddenly came to a halt, the singing died away, and an ominous silence settled heavily upon the crowd.
There stood King Ruga, flanked by his personal guard. He did not sing and ululate at his nephew’s great achievement. He did not hail him as the killer of the King of the Boar, or declare that the sun shone bright from his bold eyes. He stood grimly before him, folded his beefy arms across his chest, set his face grimly, and said nothing.
Attila slid down from the men’s shoulders, wincing as he took his weight on his torn thigh muscle again, and stood before him.
‘We slew a boar,’ he said, waving at it as casually as he could.
Ruga nodded. ‘So I see.’
‘And the slaveboys and the Roman boy, they slew it, too. In fact, they saved my life. The debt of the Royal Blood of Uldin is upon their heads, and I have given them their freedom.’
Ruga was silent for a long while. Then he repeated slowly, softly, ‘You have given them their freedom?’
Attila nodded, hesitantly, his eyes falling away from the king. ‘That is to say… ’ His voice weakened and tailed off. He knew he had made a mistake.
The voice of Ruga roared out across the circle, and the very sides of the surrounding black tents shivered under the blast, and as he roared he strode towards the suddenly cowering boy. ‘It is not yours to give a slave his freedom! It is in the gift of the king!’ With a gigantic backhanded swipe of his fist he knocked Attila into the dust. ‘Unless you think that you are an equal of the king, now? Is that it, boy?’ He planted his felt-booted foot hard on the boy’s chest, knocking the wind from his lungs, and roared again, ‘Is that it? Boar-slayer? Upstart? Malformed whelp from your mother’s womb?’
All Attila’s ardent spirit died under the righteous wrath of his uncle, and he turned his face into the dust and did not reply.
Suddenly Ruga looked across at the Roman boy, and the people were baffled. A few had glimpsed what Aetius had done, as had the hawk-eyed, bearded king. Almost despite himself, Aetius had taken a step forward when he saw Attila knocked to the ground, and his hand had reached for his sword.
Little Bird, with his bird-bright eyes, had seen, and seemed to think it funny. ‘White boy draw a sward, father! White boy draw a sward!’
‘Peace, madman,’ growled Ruga, brushing the capering fool aside. ‘You talk of nothing.’
‘Everything is nothing,’ said Little Bird sulkily, and sat in the dust.
Ruga turned his lowering gaze back to Aetius. ‘Approach me with your weapon, would you, boy?’ he rumbled.
Aetius faltered and stopped, but he did not step back. And he said, so quietly that only the very closest could hear, ‘Do not hurt him.’
‘Do you give me orders, boy? The days when the Huns took orders from the Romans are long gone. Aye, and if I were to mete out just punishment to you, for the sins that your people committed in their maltreatment of this boy, this prince of the royal blood – for all his impudence – I would have you stripped of your skin in a trice, and your bleeding carcasses dumped on the anthills of the steppes to be picked clean down to its meagre bones! A pretty death for such a high-born boy, eh? Eh? Answer me, boy.’
But Aetius said no more. He took a single step back, dropped hands at his sides, and lowered his eyes to the ground.
The people looked warily on, anxious lest the king’s wrath should turn against them, too. He was only one man, and they were thousands, and tens of thousands, yet the will of Ruga, like the will of all the kings of the Huns, and perhaps all kings among men, was as real and powerful as an iron rod on your back, and none but the very strongest might oppose it.
Ruga stepped back from Attila and looked angrily around at his people. None met his gaze.
At last he gestured at his prostrate nephew, and said to his guards, ‘Take him and his dear Roman boyfriend, too, and lash them to the wagon out on the plains. The two slaves – and they are slaves still – they shall serve in my tent henceforth, And woe betide you,’ he called across to the wide-eyed Orestes and Cadoc, ‘if you should spill so much as a drop of koumiss when you refill my royal goblet, do you hear?’
Ruga turned on his heel and strode back to his great adorned pavilion, and the chastened people shuffled slowly away. The two slaves crept uncertainly after the king.
And the two boys, Roman and Hun together, were led out by a group of spearmen, and walked for three miles across the baking steppe, until they came to a high flatbed wagon, the grass grown long about its solid wooden wheels. There they stripped the boys naked, and lashed them flat on their backs across the bed of the cart,
