to the visitor. Attila shook his head in polite demurral. The god-king looked momentarily sulky, and dropped it back in the chest. But he soon cheered up again when he showed off to the visitor his suits of Chinese armour, and his long swords in decorated scabbards. Attila’s hand settled on one of the sword-hilts and then released it. Bayan- Kasgar stood not far away to his right. His troop of guards looked on from the doorway.
‘In my stables down in the valley I have a thousand white camels, and two thousand white horses,’ said the god-king, speaking very rapidly and excitedly. Attila said he should like to see these white horses, perhaps even to ride them, but the god-king rattled on, oblivious.
He had three hundred wives and two thousand concubines, and also some boys, and one of them was black from head to foot, can you imagine that? Except for the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, and his pinky pinky tongue! And every new moon he, Tokuz-Ok, Lord of All the World under Heaven, created fire out of nothing, in the temple of Itugen, behind a little curtain. After he had blessed a bare stone, he came back out and two monks went in. A little later they emerged again and they carried the stone burning brightly with magical fire that he had created. It was a monthly miracle. Like a lady’s…
‘Itugen,’ repeated Attila. ‘The Lady of the Moon.’
‘And of the earth,’ said the god-king, trying to sound solemn. ‘It is she who blesses our crops and lades our orchards in summer.’
He returned to his treasures, wondering secretly what marvellous new treasure this visitor might have brought in tribute for him. He showed the visitor a ten-pound lump of amber from the shores of the frozen sea, and bags of pearls from Indian rajas, and at the back of the chamber, leaning against the bare rock wall, a pair of walrus tusks. Beyond that in the darkness was a little arched doorway that led into yet another chamber. The candelabra were brought in, and the god-king went on to show the visitor a chest full of gently rotting furs, of fabulously rare white beaver, and blue sable, and black panther. That great fur was more of a faded grey now, and motheaten, and as the god-king pawed at it, it gave off weightless tufts which rose and spiralled and fell noiselessly through the soporific candelit air.
The god-king also showed him manuscripts in scrolls in red and gold lettering, which he said had fluttered down from heaven like birds, and stone tablets from the west from ancient vanished kingdoms with carved angular script, and then in another chamber a menagerie of stuffed animals, including a sloth, a boa constrictor, and a tiger with obsidian eyes.
Attila admired them all with great sincerity, and the god-king led him back out onto the terrace. He looked out over his little kingdom and beamed.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what tribute have you brought me, stranger?’
‘My men,’ said Attila, ‘will bring you a fitting tribute.’
The god-king turned to Attila and his big pasty face seemed to pale a little. ‘Your… men?’
Attila said nothing. He merely nodded towards the distant mountains overlooking the valley from the south. The god-king turned and his knees trembled and his throat went very dry. All along the mountaintops to the south, little black figures bristled against the brightening sky. Hundreds of them. Thousands… The god-king made an odd little squeaking noise in his throat.
Bayan-Kasgar stepped up. ‘What is this?’ he rasped. ‘I will have you-’
Attila looked round at him curiously. ‘The tribute is on its way,’ he said. ‘It will take many men to carry it here.’
The old general began to speak angrily again, but Tokuz-Ok ordered him to be silent. The god-king could not be disobeyed. Bayan-Kasgar stepped back, and look down at the stone terrace floor, fuming silently. He must send out the order to his divisions to arm at once.
‘It must be a mighty tribute,’ said the god-king.
‘Sackloads and sackloads,’ said Attila. ‘Wagonloads.’
The god-king clapped his hands together and looked heavenwards, then without a word of farewell he tripped away across the terrace, through the door at the end and was gone.
The troop followed him. Bayan-Kasgar raised his head and stared at the visitor one more time. Then he turned on his heel and marched out after them.
As he reached the archway, he felt a powerful forearm clamp round his neck and he was dragged backwards, his heels scraping over the stone. He was hauled into the nearest chamber and flung up against the wall with that forearm still around his neck like a vice, half-throttling him. There was also a cold knife-blade at his throat for good measure. He tried to speak but could not. This was no dreamer of dreams who knew how to fight like this. Bayan- Kasgar cursed him in his heart.
The nomad savage leaned close to the old general and whispered in his ear, ‘He is no king.’ Then he released him.
Bayan-Kasgar turned, rubbing his neck, and stared at the savage, who held his knife out low towards him. One hasty move, he knew, and he would be bleeding to death on the stones. But soon the troop would return. Any moment now.
‘He is no king,’ hissed the savage again. ‘Nine Arrows! One arrow will break him. He is no king, and he is certainly no god. You know that you despise him.’
‘He is the seventeenth son of the son of heaven,’ rasped the general. But there was a fatal uncertainty in his voice, something both hesitant and ironic. Attila smiled to hear it. The general went on doggedly, ‘You cannot destroy the city, no matter how many men you command up there on the mountaintops.’
‘We cannot destroy the city, but we can lay waste the land, the whole Valley of Oroncha, and you will starve. You know this is true.’
Bayan-Kasgar said nothing.
‘One arrow,’ Attila said again. He stepped close and in a flash the knife-blade was at the general’s throat again. He moved like a snake, this one. He spoke very rapidly but the general heard and remembered every word. ‘You will kill him. You will make yourself emperor. You will join with us and ride out with us and we will conquer all who stand against us and I will give you a great empire. You will return to this valley wondering that you waited so long. You and your sons will be the mightiest of emperors of this country.
‘You worship Itugen, the Lady of the Moon, and Astur, and you remember the deeds of Manas. You were Huns once.’
‘We came from the southern deserts, long ago,’ said the general vaguely. ‘We warred with China.’
‘And you shall again. Join with us.’
‘We are farmers now.’
‘I will make warriors of your farmers yet.’
Bayan-Kasgar looked doubtful. ‘We are a settled people. How blessed this valley is, see for yourself. We cannot abandon it.’
Attila grew impatient. ‘Your women and children and your old men can farm it till you return. Any clod can turn a clod. Raise your divisions and ride with me. You will return. It will not be long. A year, two years of campaigning, and you will return a great conqueror. Your name will live for ever. This trash’ – he gestured contemptuously about – ‘you will use to stoke your fires, or you will melt it down into coin stamped with your likeness. You will inherit not a valley but an empire.’ His eyes burned. Bayan-Kasgar could feel the heat of those eyes on his very skin.
‘I have no sons,’ he murmured. ‘My wife is dead.’
‘Take another.’
‘The law forbids it. Only the emperor can take more than one wife.’
Attila did not deign to reply to this absurdity. Instead he stepped back and slashed his knife in two lightning diagonals before the old general’s eyes, as if bewitching him and blessing him in a single sign.
‘Kill him,’ he said. ‘Then come to me.’
With another movement of snakelike swiftness he was at the door, looking back, holding up his forefinger as one final prompt to regicide. Then he was gone.
The troop of guards reappeared a few moments later, peering into the gloom of the chamber, blind as bats.
Attila rode down from the mountainside city unmolested. He bade farewell to the women washing at the stream, to the children netting for minnows in the back pools. And, farther off, to the manaschi in his cloak of blue- black velvet and gold embroideries, standing beneath the bare-branched peach trees in the orchard, chanting the
