Finally, when they had dug to the point of exhaustion, there was one more task. He had his men unload some mysterious bundles wrapped in canvas that each carried slung from his packhorse. The villagers saw that each packhorse had carried all this way three long, fire-hardened staves, cut from the northern forests. This was a treeless country and the sight of so much wood astonished them. But it was not for burning.
He had the children bring pitchers of water from the acrid lake and pour it out to soften the cracked and adamantine earth. When the ground had softened sufficiently, he showed them himself, wielding a long iron-headed mallet, and with a flurry of mighty blows, how it was just possible to drive each stake into the ground at a cruel angle. He had them set the stakes in a circle inside the thorn brake.
‘Inside, my lord?’ queried his men, puzzled.
‘Inside,’ he said. ‘The stakes are not for burning, but the thorn brake will burn only too well.’ He looked away. ‘Sooner or later.’
They did not understand him but, grumbling, they did all that he said. This madman, muttered the villagers amongst themselves, had already slain one of the warriors of the Kutrigur, as if to annoy them. You might as well annoy a hornet’s nest, or a herd of buffalo, run at them defenceless and naked, waving your arms and hallooing. What hope was there in that? What sense? He had slain a Kutrigur and then returned here for refuge. In their joy they had held a night-time feast, but now in the cold daylight they began to wonder again, and to doubt. He was a madman, with that sardonic smile, that harsh laugh. He loved adversity. Like a shaman who talks backwards, rides backwards on his horse, weeps when other men laugh, laughs when other men weep.
Yet something made them trust his grim-faced madness nevertheless.
He also had the villagers drive what livestock they could into the centre of the thorn brake, and store what fresh water they could in whatever containers they could. And he had them dismantle the wooden walls of one hut and take the wooden slats into the thorn circle and set them up again in the shape of a rough wooden tent, large enough for the villagers, all fifty or sixty of them, to crawl into on their hands and knees, tight-packed as salted fish in a barrel. A crude armour against enemy arrows, but it would suffice.
At last it was done and he nodded with some satisfaction. The thorn brake now stood as high as a man, sometimes higher.
‘Yesukai,’ he called.
The eager young warrior rode over.
He nodded at the thorn brake. ‘Jump it.’
Yesukai patted his horse’s neck and hesitated. ‘My lord, it is too high. And the staves…’
‘Then take it at a gallop.’
‘But I cannot gallop over those rocks.’
Attila nodded and smiled. ‘Quite.’
After a meagre breakfast the next day, Attila took Geukchu and Candac aside and spoke to them quietly. Then he sent them off with their twenty men, and the entire troop of one hundred packhorses, and all but twenty of the warhorses. At this even his most loyal warriors looked dismayed and bitter. Not only must they dig holes in the earth, like ignoble farmers, but now, it seemed, they must fight on foot, their beloved horses taken from them. They watched for a long time as Geukchu and Candac and his men hazed the horses far out across the plateau towards the south, and finally over the horizon and were lost to sight.
Attila kept his own, of course. He mounted his beloved, ugly, tireless skewbald, Chagelghan, and his closest men mounted likewise. He and Orestes rode out ahead, with Chanat and Yesukai behind them carrying the slain Kutrigur warrior, still bound to the long stake, slung between their horses.
‘We will be back before noon,’ he called to his men and the anxious villagers. ‘So will the Budun-Boru!’ And he laughed.
They rode across the grasslands and through the ominous high shale gully and then out onto the plain, heading for the river. They did not halt, though the other three warriors felt their stomachs churning, their hands sweaty on their reins and bows, their scalps and their upper lips beading with sweat, their hearts hot and strained in their chests. Surely they would die now, today. But they had thought so before, under his command, and they still lived.
They walked their horses slowly and steadily across the plain towards the river and the vast encampments of black tents smoking sullenly in the still early-morning air. Both men and horses could smell more men and horses, dung smoke, the presence of the tribe. They crested the last rise, the last possible place of refuge and cover, where Yesukai had startled the partidges into the air. Then onward and downward to the edge of the camp, feeling as exposed as infants. They tried not to grip their bows too hard.
A crude ceremonial way led down the slope to the camp. They skirted it and rode around. The way was lined with stakes, and on each stake was impaled a human head. Kites and crows were feeding on them. Everywhere there were totems of witchcraft, crucified birds nailed to crosses, figurines of feather and fur, eyes hollowed out from wooden masks, mouths agape and crying out in silent horror. Chanat eyed the totems and sucked in his breath through clenched teeth. Such evil would not wash away for generations.
The Kutrigur set out no watchmen, such was their power and reputation. The four horsemen were almost in the camp before anyone noticed. And then one or two men moved silently across their path, reaching for their spears, looking more puzzled than anything else. One or two called out angrily, Who were they? How dare they ride into their camp uninvited? One nocked an arrow to his bow but Attila turned and looked at him and shook his head and the bewildered warrior let his bow drop.
At the heart of the camp was a wide, dusty circle, and the greatest tent of all with a high central tentpole cut from a single larch. They stopped and waited, and soon enough a man stepped out of the great tent, still wrapping a richly embroidered blanket around his shoulders. He stood tall again and looked at the four horsemen. He had a nose flattened by a terrible blow, heavily hooded eyes, and a face pockmarked by some old disease. His face was without expression, as befits a chieftain.
‘Who are you that dare invade my domain?’
‘We come from the village,’ said Attila, jerking his thumb back towards the high plateau to the west.
‘You lie,’ said the chieftain. His brow darkened. ‘We have tracked you for many days from the west. You know it well. Why have you come to that village now? Why do you stop there? What is your purpose? Tell me, before you die.’
For a time the strange bandit king returned no answer. And then at last he said, ‘My answer would not be within your understanding. ’
A ripple of disbelief at such insolence went through the gathering warriors.
The Kutrigur chief looked around. Most of his men were mounted now, bows in hand.
Attila, too, glanced around. The circle about them was not yet complete. He spoke again. ‘We bring you our offering, our tribute. A fine carcase.’ He smiled grimly. ‘In weight not less than a man, as you have stipulated.’
Turning his horse, he grasped the hopsack that lay draped over the slain warrior and snatched it off.
A gasp of disbelief ran around the circle. In that moment, before the disbelief had transmuted into fury and vengeance, Attila kicked his horse into a violent gallop. The other three did likewise, Chanat and Yesukai letting the stake with its burden of bloated corpse fall to the ground in ignominy.
The four were already galloping among the black tents before any of the Kutrigur warriors had overcome their astonishment and marshalled their anger enough to act with sense. And then they were in pursuit.
Attila dragged spears from the ground as he rode and pulled down tents into adjacent campfires. His men did likewise, leaving a trail of scattered wreckage behind them. They galloped through the tents as a hare runs through the grass beneath the jaws of a predator, zigzagging furiously to left and right, never allowing their pursuers to follow a neat, straight line. The air was filled with dust and enraged cries and the thunderous galloping of dozens-of hundreds of flying hooves, and the arrows began to whistle. The four crouched low in their saddles and no arrows found their target. It was as Attila had thought: the Kutrigur were numerous and cruel, but not greatly skilled. It was a relief to know, as another arrow whistled and smacked wide into the side of a tent as he passed. A woman ran out of it, screeching like an angry fowl, and their pursuers were slowed further by a mother’s fist shaken angrily in the faces of their horses, their path strewn with fiery obscenities.
Finally they were free of the camp and galloping across the grassy plains to the narrow gully and the high plateau, the pitiful protection of the village and the thorn brake. There was now no ducking and weaving, but a gallop as straight as an arrow’s flight for home, their pursuers not two or three hundred yards behind. Occasional arrows zinged around them but nothing slowed their mad gallop, and nothing could speed it, either. Their squat,
