fearless horses were at full stretch, with their thick, muscular necks outstretched into the wind, their lips drawn back over their teeth, their legs moving in so fast a flurry through the dusty air that they could not be seen or reckoned. The Kutrigurs came on, but the gap could not be closed.
The four horsemen galloped into the gully and up the narrow slope, between the high dank sides, the drumming of their horses’ hooves and their own wild shouts and cries echoing off the walls and about their maddened ears, and they began to whoop and holler with glee. As he galloped, Orestes fitted an arrow to his bow and, almost as if for recreation, or in a spirit of pure inquiry perhaps, curious as to whether it could be done, he half turned in his saddle, pulled the powerful bowstring back to his chest, and bent low to sight it. When the first of their pursuers appeared at the end of the gully, jostling clumsily with each other to come first through the narrow gap in bellowing pursuit, he let fly the arrow and the sound of it thumping into a warrior’s chest reached his ears even as he galloped away.
The narrow defile rang with the cries of the dead man’s comrades as he toppled from his horse and fell in their path, his wrist tangled in the reins. His horse reared out of control and the others barged into it, and heeled their horses over its rider’s prostrate form in their insatiate fury to get at his killers. The sounds of screaming horses and jostling men squeezed into so narrow a gap echoed off the high walls, as four raiders rode onwards.
Suddenly Chanat’s horse tripped among the grey rocks scattered treacherously over the high plateau, lying concealed among the grey grasses as they fled amongst the ovoo s where the wind soughed and sighed and the funerary pennants fluttered. His flying horse stumbled and buckled forward, the sound of its breaking cannonbones echoed in the clear air. As it fell it revolved, it seemed, in a perfect circle over and over, its rider flung far clear into the grass and landing on his back with a thump. The other three were already a hundred – two hundred – yards off when they realised. They jerked up their reins and stopped and wheeled.
It couldn’t be done.
Chanat raised himself painfully from the grass where he lay on his elbows and shook his head clear.
The Kutrigurs were at full, crazy gallop, not four or five hundred yards away, a little uphill. Chanat lay almost halfway between them and his king, who would get to him only moments before the enemy.
It couldn’t be done. Chanat would die.
If they came back for him they would all die.
It couldn’t be done. It would be madness.
Chanat got unsteadily to his feet, rubbed the heels of his hands in his eyes and looked down the grassy slope at the horde of approaching horseman. His three comrades saw him tense and he stood very still. Then he turned his back on his approaching enemies and looked up the slope towards his old comrades. He raised his right hand and he was steady now, all shock and unsteadiness gone. He threw back his grizzled old head and the copper torc strained tight around his strong, muscular neck and the sun flashed on his broad copper-skinned brow and he smiled. Then in one swift movement he turned away from them, drew his sword and held it two-handed above his head, roaring his last defiance at his enemies and death and all the world.
The Kutrigurs howled down upon him.
It couldn’t be done.
Attila, Orestes and Yesukai drove their heels into their horses’ flanks and pounded back down the slope to meet them. Three against a thousand.
Arrows should have rained down upon them now, but the Kutrigurs were coarse and unskilled warriors, as they had seen, and could barely gallop and shoot at the same time. The horde held their spears low and leaned forwards eagerly in their saddles and came on.
The three skidded to a halt beside Chanat and Yesukai leaned down, off his saddle and seized him round his chest, under his arms, and with a terrific heave pulled him up. The old warrior kicked out in rage and Yesukai’s horse almost toppled sideways under the double load, fighting furiously against the pull of the earth. Attila and Orestes drew their horses round and glanced back. Only a few horses’ lengths between them now. The very air was deafened with cries. Some of the lead warriors were at last nocking arrows to their bows, others drawing swords, pushing themselves up high in their saddles to land the final fatal blows.
The two fired off a bunch of arrows as they turned and galloped away uphill. The Kutrigurs were almost on their horses’ tails. It was impossible that Yesukai should escape them, his horse burdened with Chanat as well. But they must try. They could not be defeated here now, not with all the world still left to conquer.
Attila slashed out and cut the warrior across the chest. He had almost pulled alongside them, his sword arm raised. He tumbled into the dust at blinding speed, his riderless horse continuing to gallop alongside them with its tongue lolling from its foaming mouth. The Kutrigurs’ horses were not so hardened as theirs. But still, it was impossible that they should survive this. They were almost surrounded. More Kutrigurs were surrounding them, some of them smiling. They would take their time. Some cantered easily uphill and still kept pace with their own exhausted mounts at desperate gallop. They would be taken alive. They would be kept alive for many days. They would be half flayed with great skill by the Kutrigur women, then bound and laid across anthills out on the steppes, to be devoured by a million tiny mouths over several days.
Yesukai’s strength and pride knew no bounds. Chanat sat behind him now, and they both fought, from horseback, slashing to left and right. The Kutrigurs mocked and veered and laughed. None seemed to carry lassos. But soon they would be brought down. It was a game to them. Soon they would end it.
Suddenly, with bewildering speed Kutrigurs started to fall back and go down. The air was torn with horses’ high screams and filled with belches of dust. Meaty thumps, and then, above those sounds, the whistle of arrowshafts in the air. Ahead of them, the doomed four saw a line of horsemen sitting their still and patient horses atop the rise, firing arrow after patient arrow, motionless otherwise, their aim sure and steady, finding a target every time in a pursuant warrior’s chest.
In the camp Little Bird had grown hysterical, talking of snakes again, and Csaba had ordered the troops of Juchi, Bela and Noyan, the three rocklike brothers, the sons of Akal, to ride out on the few horses remaining in the thorn corral. It was their steady troop of men, a line of unmoved thirty, who now fired their arrows undaunted into the approaching horde.
The four on their three horses galloped into them with their hearts aflame with pride in their people and their fearless comrades. The line parted magically before them and they rode on through. The land levelled out across the flat plateau and away in the distance they could see the village with its meagre thorn brake. The three brothers and their men behind them continued to fire with murderous accuracy, quite expressionless, their horses still and steady beneath them, and the Kutrigurs, reeling in ferocious confusion before this onslaught, slowed their horses and stopped. Men cried out and toppled, horses jostled, the slope was already strewn with their own dead. They howled in fury.
And then they began to fall back.
The brothers and their men waited until the Kutrigurs were in full retreat, then turned and cantered back to the village after their king.
The four and then the thirty slowed their horses and walked them carefully over the strewn rocks. The thorn gate was dragged open and they rode in through the narrow gap between the last of the staves, now set bone hard in the dry cold ground, and the gate was pulled shut behind them. They fell still gasping from their horses, bowed down, doubled up, reins still in their hands, laughing. The horses foaming with sweat, saliva drooling from their lips, leg muscles trembling, but never panicking, never sagging with despair. Not for them the rolling eyes and flicking ears of high-strung berber steeds with their prancing gait and glossy beauty. The horses of the Huns endured.
The men were gasping and laughing, all except for Chanat, who stood a little apart, scowling bitterly.
Yesukai lay stretched out in the dirt on his back. ‘The gods rode with us today,’ he gasped. ‘By my horse’s arse they did.’
Attila fought for breath, too, as one of the village women used a wet rag to clean the blood that ran from his left shoulder.
‘They did,’ he muttered. He looked over at Chanat. ‘Did they not, Chanat?’
Chanat harrumphed.
The men laughed.
‘And you, sons of Akal. “Akal’s trident”, we should call you. You did well.’
The three taciturn brothers looked as pleased as they ever did.
‘Right.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘The tribe will be here soon. And this time they will not be turned back so easily.’ He looked up and scanned the low hills away to the south. ‘Geukchu and Candac and their men…?’
