The villagers huddled in the centre of the thorn brake in their tent of leaning wooden slats and clutched each other in terror and silence. The old priestess’s lips worked furiously with incantation, though none could hear her words over the sound of the furious battle, the cries of men and the screams of horses, and the endless thump of arrows into the thin wooden slats over their heads.
The galloping Kutrigurs also began to drop arrows down onto the livestock inside the thorn brake, and the few horses that remained. The villagers watched the horses’ agony in an agony of their own. There was no shelter for them, nothing they could do. Now they understood why Attila had given the order for most of the animals to be driven off earlier, to some place of safety, some green and innocent valley beyond the horizon, far beyond the reach of men and their falling arrows.
Two of Attila’s warriors fell back with arrows in their chests, for while the thorn brake was a good horse barrier it was a poor barrier to arrows. But it was all they had, all they could muster. Now the galloping Kutrigurs began to learn, and instead of arcing their arrows into the air, fired them directly into the thorns. A few picked their way determinedly among the rocks and assembled at the perimeter of the thorn brake but they were easily brought down by arrows or long spear-thrusts. Others went crashing into the ditch dug by the Attila’s grumbling warriors – it was roughly but effectively covered by stretches of canvas strewn with sand – and were similarly finished. But the ground had been too hard, and the time too little, to make of the ditch a proper defence. It was enough to break the legs and bring down the riders of a few front-running horses, but no more. Attila had inspected it earlier and muttered, ‘Not up to Roman standards, but it’ll have to do.’
Now he ordered his men to drop to the ground. Just at that moment, Yesukai reeled and spun round, clutching his upper arm and bellowing in anger: there was an arrow straight through his arm. Chanat leaped to his feet again and ran to him, in obedience to no order but to look to Yesukai.
The warriors lay flat on the ground and fired as best they could through the thorns, but now the difference in numbers was taking its toll. One of Attila’s men suddenly reared up – he had an arrow straight in the top of his head. He half turned, then his eyes rolled upwards to the whites and he fell dead in the dust.
Many Kutrigurs lay dead beyond the thorn brake, but many more came on, vaulting over the corpses of their comrades as they rode. The defenders’ bow arms, though as hard as steel, began to tire. Each draw of the string was like pulling yourself up by one hand from an overhead branch. Each warrior had fired a hundred times or more. There were arrows remaining in store, but the archers themselves were only flesh and blood. And the Kutrigurs, like jackals, scented blood and injury and came closer.
Some slowed their horses and still tried to trot through the field of rocks but were quickly shot down. Others, however, did something no Hun warrior ever did willingly, and it came as a surprise. They dismounted, dropped to the ground and began to make their way across the mere hundred yards or so to the thorn brake on their stomachs. Hatchets, daggers, clubs and short stabbing-spears clutched between their teeth, they crawled zigzag on their elbows and knees like an army of lizards. They clung flat to the ground among the strewn rocks and were hard to hit. Attila’s men rolled low and fired out at them but the target was small and too often their hard-drawn arrows only clattered off the shielding rocks or skittered over the dusty earth and ceased.
Some got close enough to lash out with long lassos, with ropes hooked and barbed, and managed to drag sections of thorn brake clear and came crawling through. The sharpened staves within might stop warriors on horseback but they could not stop men on foot or crawling on reptilian bellies. Then they stood and came running in, naked and howling, weapons held above their heads. It became as desperate a face-to-face battle, on foot, as Attila had foreseen.
‘Aladar’s men!’ he roared out across the circle. ‘To my left! Hold that gap!’
The men rushed to attack the Kutrigurs breaking through, and all was chaos and dust.
Seeing that the battle was reaching its endpoint, old Chanat cast aside his offensive weapon, his bow, the weapon of hope among the Huns, and instead drew his old sword, its dulled edge nicked and serrated by six decades of unforgiving blows. Attila glanced across and saw the old warrior standing proud and looking out over the thorn brake and stiffening himself against the coming onslaught. And the king turned aside and for a moment could look no more, not at Chanat, not at anything.
Then he drew his sword likewise and waited.
A naked savage came at Chanat, jabbing at him with a short stabbing-spear. Chanat swept his sword low. The savage stepped backwards, yikkering like a monkey, his spear held out low in defence, and Chanat stepped towards him, raising his arm for a second right-handed swipe. At the last instant he turned easily on the ball of his right foot, spun in a swift semi-circle and stabbed backwards from this new and unexpected angle, close in to his enemy’s exposed left side. The old warrior stood straight, pulled his sword free of the dead man’s ribs, and turned to fight again without looking back at him once.
And there was Orestes, fighting two at once. Chanat tripped one of them, knocked him to the ground and cut his head off. The Greek fought as silently as a cat, and perhaps with the same pleasure.
Chanat was injured now. He fought on, his neck wound bleeding afresh with each mighty stroke he gave, longing for rest. But there would be no rest on this battlefield before the grave. ‘Then let it be,’ he growled. Another Kutrigur turned and fled, and one of Aladar’s men put an arrow in his back and he came down.
Chanat approached his king, covered in dust and blood, his neck slick with blood, his leather jerkin ripped almost from his broad chest.
‘Geukchu and Candac,’ he said gruffly, jerking his head. ‘You sent them away with the horses. And for reinforcements?’
‘Of a kind,’ said Attila.
‘Then where are they? If they come not very soon they come too late. And we have need of their fresh strength.’
‘It is not fresh strength that they bring,’ said Attila. ‘On the contrary. They are coming back with old weakness.’
Chanat scowled and muttered bitterly that this was no time for riddles and runes: ‘Riddles win no battles.’ His king only raised an eyebrow, then turned to drive his sword deep into the ribcage of a Kutrigur who had vaulted the loosened brake, slipped between the staves and came running at him with teeth bared like a wolverine.
Behind the crawling Kutrigurs, the mounted horsemen heard another order go out from their cunning old chieftain – no man remained chieftain of the Kutrigurs for long without the keenest and cruellest cunning. Then some passed burning brands along their lines, and others broke away and collected arrows from a flatbed wagon; women passed them out, smiling and chirruping. These arrows had shafts tightly wrapped in resinous reeds, the kind that do not freeze or die beside the marshes, however icy the weather. Some were also dipped in oil from the desert oilbeds, and once lit from a burning brand would not be extinguished until they had burned out. The Kutrigurs lit these fire-arrows from handheld torches, smoking flambeaux held aloft and fluttering like victorious pennants, or else lit them from the blazing huts of the village itself. Leisurely taking careful aim, they began to fire them down upon the thorn brake. Instantly the dry thorn brake was ablaze and burning merrily.
Flames exploded before Orestes’ and Attila’s faces and both men fell back in an instant, Orestes staggering a little.
It was as Attila had foreseen. Once the thorn brake had been fired, their best line of defence was its momentary flames, and then the staves. The brake would soon fall apart, lying a tattered and black smoking ruin, and the Kutrigurs would be through on foot. And then this little band of warriors and adventurers, so far from home, would be slain with ease, no matter how valiantly they fought.
Arrows still flew. Another warrior, one of Aladar’s men bearing the brunt of the attack where the thorn brake had given away, fell back and went walking slowly across the compound towards the centre where the terrified villagers crouched. He cradled the flight of white feathers that nestled up into his stomach, walking slowly, carefully, nursing the feathers as if they were a baby bird. Another arrow, two more, struck him as if randomly, insolently in the back as he walked before he fell and lay dead.
Among the villagers huddled under their wooden slats, the sound of weeping was heard.
The first horses had stumbled and fallen into the ditch outside the thorn brake, their hooves dabbling at the empty air, their lips drawn back over their long teeth, whinnying. They had scrabbled desperately to clamber up the crumbling sides of the cruel, half-concealed barrier before the thorn brake that now towered above them, and there they and their riders had been shot at close range. But now the ditch was half filled by the dead and dying, and the thorn brake was aflame and falling into ruins.
Now mounted warriors came up close and fearlessly to the brake, just the other side of the choked ditch, and
