Csaba yelled back at him in defiance.
‘O Stinking Ones!’ Attila roared out over them. ‘O Accursed Wanderers of the Earth, despised outcasts from the Great Wall to the Western Sea. Offspring of the Devil, Spawn of Witches and the Demons of the Wind, know how deeply you are hated! And how is that immemorial hatred to be repaid? With nice politicking, with polite debate?’
The men scowled their response.
He goaded them. ‘With gifts of silk and gold to our natural, god-ordained masters in Byzantium, perhaps? With solicitous, smooth-tongued embassies? With meek and slavelike acceptance, with humble abasement, as befits such stinking slaves as we?’
Already swords were unsheathed from their leather scabbards and raised aloft, blades flashing in the blue air.
‘How is this lofty contempt best countered, my beloved people? My Stinking Ones?’
Even as he spoke, he snatched his recurved bow from his shoulder and nocked an arrow to its string faster than the eye could see, and loosed it into the startled midst of them. His aim was sure and the arrow flew straight and struck Geukchu squarely on his buckler. The warrior looked down startled, but it was a light draw and the arrow did not make headway.
Attila pulled himself up in his saddle and roared out over the heads of his men, weapon held high, ‘By our horses and our bows the world will know us!’
The men chorused back the ancient Hun war-cry, and the earth trembled under them as they curved and galloped away over the steppes in the rush of their fury.
He brought them back to him and marshalled them and drilled them for the rest of that day and on into the dusk, telling them that soon they would be drilling warbands of their own. He mocked them and poured scorn upon them, goading them into ever more competitive zeal. He commanded them to see how fast they could fire a dozen shots. The chosen men snatched and strained back at their quivers, fumbling for single arrows, eyeing the nocks in the ends of the arrows before fitting them carefully, sighting along their arms, drawing back the bowstring steadily. Most took two or three minutes to fire their dozen arrows. At standstill.
At last in his impatience he surged forward. One hapless warrior, burly, sausage-fingered Juchi, was still struggling to fire his last arrow. Attila struck out with his fist and dashed arrow and bow together to the ground. Juchi’s horse flared its nostrils and trotted backwards into the mass of warriors behind. They laughed. Juchi scowled.
Attila seized twelve arrows in his left hand.
‘Now watch,’ he said, suddenly going quiet. ‘Orestes,’ he called over his shoulder.
The Greek rode away some distance, thrust his long spear into the ground and hung his buckler loosely by its leather strap from the butt.
All watched, transfixed.
Attila took his bow in his left hand, the dozen arrows still bunched up in the same fist. He turned sideways on to them. He did not eye the arrows, he seemed only to touch them, to feel the nock with his thumb. He drew each arrow out of his fist and into the string, and straight back against the straining curve of the bow in one long, easy movement. He let fly, and was already drawing the second arrow from his fist and nocking it afresh. The first arrow struck the tossing buckler dead centre. He wasted no time pulling the string back to his cheek and trying to sight along the arrow, but held the bow at an angle nearly sideways and pulled the string into his chest. To his heart. Drawing the bow thus meant no chance of it getting caught or bumping into his thighs or saddle.
‘At what point does a galloping warrior loose his arrow?’
They stared back dumbly.
‘Only when all four of his horse’s hooves are off the ground. Only then does he inhabit a tiny moment floating through the air, smooth and free, when the arrow flies true. Loose an arrow when your horse is bumping over the hard ground and you are jolting in the saddle, and you will miss.’
The men looked at each other. Some grinned. Now he was testing their credulity.
Then suddenly he was at a gallop, circling the buckler on the spear at a furious pace, his horse low and straining into its bit, ears flat back, teeth bared, and their king in his animal fury likewise. They saw as he blurred by them how he continued to pull and loose the arrows in swift, easy movements and how each arrow flew and struck the swinging buckler on its strap. Some, staring closely as he fired, could have sworn that what he said about firing in that split second when his horse was entirely in the air, free of the hard ground, was quite true…
He pulled up and looked back. The buckler was stuck with eleven arrows. The twelfth had split the spear- haft.
From drawing the first arrow to firing the last had taken perhaps thirty seconds. No, even less – their faces were blank with disbelief. He had fired an arrow every three seconds or so, at stand and at full gallop, it made no difference. It seemed an almost supernatural performance.
He looked over them, his chest heaving, a wide smile on his face now. ‘Oh my Stinking Ones,’ he said gently, ‘you too will learn to shoot like that. And you will be the terror of the earth.’
‘My brother Bleda?’ Attila said to Chanat as they rode back.
‘In his tent.’
‘Bring him to me.’ They rode on. ‘And Little Bird?’
Chanat shook his head. ‘He still lives. He’s not been seen all summer. But he’ll be back.’ He nodded. ‘Now he will be back.’
Bleda had grown fat, and most of his hair had fallen out, but his expression was the same as ever. Greedy, sleepy, conniving, resentful, sly.
Attila embraced him warmly.
‘My brother,’ slurred Bleda. He was already drunk, for it was after sundown. ‘A great return. I always longed to see that traitor slain.’
‘And now we rule together,’ said Attila, holding his arms tightly and shaking him. ‘We two brothers, we two sons of Mundzuk. We shall rule the people together, for there is much to do.’
Bleda looked into his younger brother’s burning eyes, and it crossed his mind to say that he didn’t want to rule the people. He would rather stay in his tent with the new young girl he had bought recently with a gift of gold from Ruga. Circassian she was, and her body was so smooth. When she-
‘But first,’ said Attila, striding away from him and then back again, clapping his hands together. ‘Organisation.’
Bleda sighed.
After dark, and a few mouthfuls of meat but no wine, Attila walked out with Chanat among the tents of the people. The king wore no crown or diadem, no rich Byzantine robes of purple silk, but only his battered leather jerkin and crossgartered breeches, his rough deerskin boots.
‘My lord,’ began Chanat. ‘Your slave, Orestes. He addresses you by your familiar name. I have heard him. It is not right.’
‘Slave?’
‘Your… servant.’
Attila shook his head. Orestes was not his slave any more, nor his servant. Even the words ‘friend’ or ‘bloodbrother’ were inadequate. There was no word for what Orestes was to him.
‘Orestes can call me what he likes,’ he said. He glared at Chanat. ‘And only he.’
The old warrior could not approve, but he said nothing.
Towards the edge of the great circle of tents they pulled up and looked over the corral of the horses. There were perhaps a thousand of them; squat, ungainly beasts, with huge heads and thick necks, barrel chests and short, sturdy legs. As fast as deer, as tireless as mules.
‘There lies the strength of the Huns,’ murmured Attila.
‘By our horses and our bows the world will know us,’ said Chanat.
The horses whinnied and snickered in the corral, snuffing the night air, the low moon of the first hours of darkness casting a low silver light along their backs and over their coarse, cropped manes. Attila turned his face to the sweet horse smell of them and inhaled.
A voice came to them through the night air, and on such a night as this, of promise and expectation, it struck Attila as a dreary and mournful song. He turned and stepped nearer the tent where the music came from. It was a
