None was permitted to look out after him, or even speak of him again. For the People, their prince had ceased to exist.
Yet speak of him they did. At the wooden watertrough later that day, the women said among themselves, ‘He will return.’ One old woman looked out across the steppes to the east, and crinkled her eyes, and saw in her mind an image of that strange, fearless boy riding away across the endless grasslands, the hooves of his horse stirring up the dust of the plains as he rode. She nodded and said again, ‘He will return.’
After riding all morning eastwards, the broken-hearted exile came to the grave-mound of his father. And there on the grave-mound sat Little Bird, cross-legged, rocking back and forth, his top-knot swaying comically as he conversed with his only friend, the wind.
The boy sat his horse and said nothing.
It was death for any of the tribe so much as to look at the cursed exile, let alone speak to him. But Little Bird was different and under the protection of the gods. He spoke to Nameless-Under-a-Curse as blithely as he would speak to anyone.
‘Give directions to Little Bird,’ he sang. ‘Give directions to a seedhead of feathergrass on the wind. The result is much the same.’
Little Bird talked always as if about himself, but really he talked about the People. He talked of tragedy with a laugh, and he spoke mournfully of the most ludicrous and trivial things. He rode into camp facing backwards on his horse, he dressed as a woman, he danced and clapped his hands at children’s funerals. He said that it was all one: that the gods bled when mankind bled, but they laughed when they bled, too.
Now he seemed to think the exile of Attila was amusing in the extreme. He joyfully sang one of his little songs.
‘Under the earth I go
On an oakleaf I stand
I ride on a filly that never was foaled
And I hold the dead in my hand.’
The boy heeled his horse and began to walk wearily on.
‘One day, when you were a baby, baby piglet… ’ Little Bird called after him.
Attila hesitated, sighed, then drew in his horse. ‘What?’
Little Bird grinned tormentingly. ‘One day, when you were a boy – do you not remember? You and your brother, Bleda with the Brain like a Grass-Grain, went out to play in the woods. We were camped near the marshes of the Dnieper in those days. Do you not recall, little father?’
Attila shook his head.
‘And in the woods, you met an old woman,’ went on Little Bird liltingly, ‘you met an old woman with a wart on the end of her nose, a wart the size of a molehill. But that, I admit, is by the by. And maybe I’m making it up altogether. Maybe I’m making it all up altogether.’
The boy waited patiently. His horse shook its head free of flies and waited likewise.
‘Anyway. The woman smiled her ghastly smile – and a bat flew out of her mouth as she smiled! And she creaked and croaked and pointed her pointy old finger, and she told you and your arse-brained brother that the first of you to run back and hug your mother – your mother was still alive in those far-off days, little father, and very beautiful and lovesome she was, too-’
The boy did not flinch.
‘-that the first of you to run and hug your mummy would be king of the world. Now, if some droopy nosed old beldame, and with droopier milk-sacs by far, I fear – if such a noisome old dame, as I say, were one day to accost me in a bat-haunted forest and tell me to run and hug my mother, I might think twice before doing her peculiar bidding. But not you, O innocent, boyish little chap that you were in those days, nor your galumphing, arse-brained brother. So you both set off running, in your quest to become kings of the world. And your galumphing, arse-brained brother gets to your mother first, where she is sitting so beautiful on a rug in the sunshine and carding sheep’s wool, or whatever it is that women do all day. And much startled was she to get a hug all out of the blue that way from Bleda her arse-brained son. But you, O noble princeling, were way behind, for you had fallen flat on your pug. Or perhaps your not so arse-brained-as-he-looks elder brother had tripped you up as you ran? For I never said that the world was a just and joyful place, little father. At all events – in falling – in falling, you seized two great handfuls of dust. And you stood and shouted to your brother that you had seized your mother earth. He looked back, did Prince Bone-Headed Bleda the Dim, and he saw your little joke, and oh! how he did scowl!’
Little Bird paused and regarded the boy on the horse with eyes which twinkled with strange, otherworldly amusement. ‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘What do you make of that tale, little father?’
Attila’s eyes lowered slowly towards the ground as he heard the madman’s words. Then he slowly reined his horse around, and began to ride on.
‘O King of the World!’ Little Bird cried, throwing a single blade of feathergrass like a spear futilely after him. ‘O Princeling! O Little Father of Nothing!’
As to the five, they took their separate ways.
Orestes vanished one night, soon after they had left the camp of the Huns, long before they crossed back over the Kharvad Mountains, and they never saw or heard from him again.
After fond farewells, Gamaliel went south towards Byzantium, where he said he had pressing business.
Aetius they said farewell to at the gates of a Danube fort, and he was taken from thence back to Rome.
Lucius and Cadoc, father and son, made the long, long journey home to Britain.
As to their home-coming, and the joy that was there in the eyes of Seirian, wife and mother, and in the upturned face of curly-haired Ailsa – it would take a pen greater than mine to do that scene justice. But I do not suppose that there has been such pure happiness often in the history of mankind.
There was only one more encounter before the exiled prince left the land of the Huns for ever.
Two more days to the east, on the horizon he saw a figure sitting on a horse. The figure did not stir. A full hour later, he pulled up alongside.
‘Stolen?’ he said, indicating the horse.
The other boy nodded.
Attila examined it. ‘Rubbish choice. It’s half spavined already.’
The boy grinned.
Attila grinned, too.
Master and slave rode on into the eastern steppelands together.
Once back in Rome, Aetius was adopted by a high-ranking, self-regarding but not unkindly senatorial family. In the autumn he was given a personal pedagogue, for it was felt that his manners and education must have fallen behind dreadfully during his time with the unwashed Huns.
The boy regarded the pedagogue with a certain aloof scorn. ‘Greek?’
The pedagogue nodded.
‘Ever travelled beyond the Alps? Ever fought in battle? Ever-’
‘Aetius,’ interrupted his adoptive father, ‘that is enough.’
‘No, master,’ said the pedagogue mildly. ‘It is true that I am neither a traveller nor a soldier. But not all men are born for the same tasks.’
Aetius considered for a moment, and thought it a fair enough answer. ‘What is your name?’
‘Priscus,’ said the pedagogue. ‘Priscus of Panium.’
EPILOGUE
And there, lest I begin to sound as self-important and disingenuous as Caesar in his dubious Gallic Wars, let me cease referring to myself in the third person.
Upon Aetius’ return to Rome from the camp of the Huns, yes, it was I who for two short but rich years was his pedagogue. At sixteen he left home to join the army. But for those two years I shaped and formed him, as I had others, though only five years his senior. And I watched over his progress for fully the next forty years.
As an old man I have come to write the life and times of the most remarkable pupil I ever taught, the most
