Attila sat cross-legged on the other side of the fire, staring into the embers, hands upturned on his knees, as brooding and silent as a stone god.
‘When he was young he was just as crazy,’ said Chanat, ‘but not in the way he is now. He was a crazy young boy, with a head full of visions and dreams. Then he met a girl, at a khurim, a feasting meet. She was very beautiful. At first she scorned him utterly.’ Chanat smiled. ‘How cruel and haughty she was to him! To test his spirit, of course. Like all women she was flattered beyond measure that a man adored her. But she was cruel to him with her tongue, as is the way of the Women of the People. She whipped him and berated him mercilessly. “You puny little man!” she would yell at him in her high girlish voice so that all the camp could hear and laugh. “I despise you and the very earth you walk on! Your hands are like a girl’s, you tremble at the mewing of a lamb, a single raindrop on your nose affrights you. Oh, how I detest you!” Her gift of invective was great, as is the way with women when aroused.’
Orestes laughed silently. His eyes were open now, searching among the stars.
‘But Little Bird’s gift of flattery and charm was greater. Words and songs and poems and extravagant similes flowed from his lips like the waters flow from the heights of the Tavan Bogd, the Five Kings, in springtime. Bright and sparkling words, a strong current to sweep a young girl away. And so in time she was swept away. Little Bird was without doubt an embarrassment and a catastrophe on the ball field or on the field of the bow. She, Tsengel- Duu her name was, meaning Little Sister of Delight, she would cry out, “Oh, you are an embarrassment and a catastrophe among men, Little Bird! What woman would be foolish enough to have you for a husband? She must needs be deaf and blind and older than a hundred years, your lovely wife who is waiting for you now, you walking disaster of a man!”
‘But at night by the firelight he would adore her and compliment her and do it all with a bright gleam in his eye and a bold mirthful-ness, rather than that solemn slavish hopeless hangdog yearning which all women find repellent. He flattered her and charmed her, confident as if he knew that in the end he would win her. And so of course he did. They were wed, and soon her belly grew round, and Little Bird’s happiness was beyond all bounds and all sense. There was a craziness to it that could have spilled out at any moment into jealousy or worse. But instead…’ Chanat pulled up more grass stems. ‘Instead, he went into the woods one day. This was in high summer and the People were high to the north on the edge of the forests, hunting roe deer and boar – game was good.
‘In the forest it is said he met a raven. The raven sat on a low branch and spoke to Little Bird and greeted him as his brother, and Little Bird asked him what news. The raven said, “The past is done, but much is to come.” Little Bird asked him what he meant. And the raven said that he, Little Bird, would kill his beloved with his own right hand. Little Bird stared and stammered, then he ranted and screamed, “Never, never, never!” He swore that he would rather see the whole People destroyed and the sun blotted out from the sky than do any harm to his beloved for she was his heart and his life and the fairest in all the plains from the holy mountains to the western sea. He cursed the raven as a fiend sent to torment him. The raven looked at him with his bright black eyes and said that, all the same, Little Bird would kill her. At that Little Bird grew furious beyond all reason, as if a wood demon had taken possession of him, and he drew his knife and struck down the raven with a single blow across the throat. The bird fell to the ground stone dead. Little Bird turned and whirled and threw his head back and yelled defiance up at the blue sky.
‘When he had calmed a little he looked back, and there was no raven lying there. Instead, there was his beloved, stretched out on the forest floor with her throat cut.’
The horror and mystery of the story was in the very air around them.
Chanat raised his head. ‘Little Bird tried to kill himself three times after that. Each time he failed – something prevented him. He stopped eating but it made no difference. Even today, you will notice, he hardly eats at all. And since then, Little Bird has been crazier or wiser than all other living men. Or perhaps both. Something was taken from him that day when he killed her. But something was given to him, too. Though everything that was precious to him was snatched away by the hand of heaven, in exchange, some vision was vouchsafed.’
Chanat brooded a while, then said softly, ‘I would not have the vision that was vouchsafed to Little Bird that day for all the world. I am happy to have the ignorance of a child, and for the ways of the world and the gods to remain hidden from me still.’
He blew the last of the grass halms from his hand and got slowly to his feet. He made to walk away, but looked back one last time and said quietly, ‘Respect him, though. He has journeyed far.’
5
It was mid-afternoon on the following day and Orestes was crossing the camp when a terrible shrieking came from the royal tent.
He drew his sword immediately and burst in, to see two of the younger royal wives in a ferocious argument, face to face, immediately in front of where Attila sat on a stool. They seized each other by the hair and began a vicious catfight. The sound of their shrieks was augmented by the sound of Attila roaring with laughter at the spectacle, sitting back on his stool with folded arms.
Then he caught sight of Orestes and came over, still grinning broadly.
‘We have work to do,’ he said. He glanced back. ‘Besides, one can only watch women fighting for so long.’
Outside he mounted his favourite dusty skewbald, Chagelghan, and summoned Geukchu to him.
‘It is time to build a fitting royal palace.’
Geukchu bowed low. ‘An honour that I dream not of, my lord. You shall have the finest shining white tent from here to the Iron River.’
‘I shall have the finest royal palace from here to Lake Baikal,’ said Attila. ‘Built of carved and polished wood, with many rooms for many wives and servants. As for my own throne, let it be of plain and sober build.’
‘Wood?’ repeated Geukchu.
‘Wood.’
‘My lord,’ said Geukchu, ‘the nearest woodlands to our beloved grasslands are a good two days’ ride to the north, and the people of the woods are not our brothers.’
‘Then take your bows and your swords, and the best wagons for transport. I am leading a raiding party east. We will be no more than a week. The palace will be built upon my return.’
He pulled his horse round and rode away.
‘A raiding party?’ said Orestes, running after him.
Attila glanced back and growled with irritation, ‘Get on a horse, man.’ Then he nodded. ‘Eastwards, to the Byzantine trading-station at the mouth of the Tanais.’
‘But… it isn’t the season for furs.’
‘Furs?’ he said mockingly. ‘It’s not furs we need. It’s Greeks.’
Minutes later the king rode out of the camp and eastwards into the lawless steppelands with just four men for company: faithful Orestes, young Yesukai, the handsome Aladar, and Csaba, the skinny, far-eyed dreamer. Old Chanat sulked like a boy at not being chosen.
Many thought that he must be crazy to ride off with so little escort and bodyguard, two or three days to the east and into the lands of unknown tribes and nomad bands, now guarding fiercely what pitiful pastures remained at the parched and hungry end of summer. But none dared say it.
They rode well armed, but with supplies for only a day.
The Hun warriors’ fingertips were raw with having pulled the bowstring for gruelling hours and days of target practice, under the watchful eye of Orestes, both at standstill and at full gallop; and the soft insides of their left arms were likewise grazed red-raw. But now Attila allowed them to wear leather guards on their left arms, and leather fingerloops, and they fired better each day. The muscles in their arms and chests ached but hardened under the repeated strain of that bowstring and that springing, lethal bow.
They rode south and east until they met the shores of the Maeotis Palus, which is to say the Marsh of the Scythians, which in the barbarian tongue is called the Sea of Azov. It is a haunted place.
