arraignments and the court’s decrees, the solemn pronouncements of kings and chamberlains and eunuchs and all the petty panoply of man’s deluded government on earth – what have these to do with the high eternal ways of god? You fools! These arrangements and orderings of man, which seem so noble and grand, overawing all but the true rebels and sons of god, elicit nothing but scornful laughter from the throat of the All-Father. Do you not know? And the pompous articulations by which kings and governments tell the people that they are appointed of god – do you not know? These are the scandalous jokes of god. And this sword? Did it come from god? Did it so?’
He pulled it abruptly from the ground where it had stuck and tossed it clattering onto the chest with extravagant contempt. Then he glared around balefully, as dangerous as a maddened bull in the arena, challenging them to find the bright steel vein of truth in the tangle of his taunting words and contradictions, and to make sense of the rage he vented on them. Few now believed anything of that strange decorated sword. It was, after all, just a sword. But they believed all the more in him.
It even seemed to some of them there that the thunderous voice that filled the council ring and even the whole camp, a camp so vast yet barely big enough to contain him and his primeval fury, the voice that demanded Who, Who…? It seemed to some that that voice was the voice of Astur himself, and they feared him beyond the power of words to tell. All the rumours that he was as much shaman as king, as much wizard and witch-born spirit as mortal flesh and blood, filled them with terror and at the same time with growing elation. It was not only the power of his words, of his voice, of his blazing presence. It was the intimation that he was party to something that they dreaded and could not understand, but only worship.
With him at the head of their horsemen, nothing could stand…
He dropped his voice, and said with a note almost of sadness, ‘They have taken the earth from you, my people. And with it, it seems, your hearts. But I will win back the earth, and with it your wild hearts.
‘The earth is the gift of the gods and everything that is in it, and not a possession since time before time of the Romans. It is not the great-hearted and eternal gods who bid men huddle in stinking cities and behind defensive walls and make laws and bounds and fences. The gods gave men the earth for their home. The wide green measureless inexhaustible earth! And the great sky above, look you, the measureless and eternal sky! It is Astur who forged it all out of a clot of his own blood, it is the Great Mother who bore the living creatures from her womb, She is the amber butterfly on the birch tree, she is the dewdrop in the early sunlight, there! There! You know these things in your hearts, why do I tire my voice in telling you? These are the wellsprings of power in the world, these are life, and kings and governments are something other than life. We shall ride west and break down the walls and fences of the Romans, my friends. That is our destiny. That is the decree of Astur. I have promised you gold, glory, empery, and you shall have them all, in abundance. In good measure, pressed down, and running over!’ He laughed harshly, as if at some private joke. ‘You have ridden with me this far, and you shall have your reward. Let the way of the Hun horsemen be the way of all the world. And as for those lawyers and tax-gatherers and senators and conniving politicking courtiers and murderous plotting eunuchs in those perfumed courts of Rome, may their throats be slit open by our very children! May their bloated white bodies be hung from the battlements of their burning cities and scorned even by the crows!’
Part III
THE HUNGVAR
1
He gave them three days.
Even during that time, as they hurried to pack, he ordered the warriors out onto the plain for ceaseless drills and exercises. Though they and their families, the women and the children, should have been weary after such long travels across Scythia, and so little rest in the Euxine pastures, nevertheless he urged them onward, still onward. Urging them with such zeal, like a contagious fire, that despite themselves they felt a surge of limitless energy.
Out on the plains he had his warriors gallop and wheel in huge formations, in battle lines over a mile long. He had them fire volley after volley of arrows at distant targets across the steppes. And he had them play the ancient games of the Huns with a new competitiveness and ferocity: the mad gallop towards a steep riverbank, the winner being he who was the last to pull up. A number of men pulled up too late and tumbled, still mounted, over the bank and twenty or thirty feet down into the river. Several arms and legs were broken, and at least two horses had to be killed, to their owners’ great grief.
‘Women come and go,’ said one, shaking his head in sorrow, ‘but horses…’
There was also the perilous rope-walk among the knives, in which each warrior had to totter along a tightrope suspended several feet above the ground, in which were set dozens of knives and daggers, their blades glinting upwards. And of course there was the furious game of pulu, played out over the steppes with spearhafts and an inflated pig’s bladder. Never before had one game been played with so many thousands of men on each side. Most never even got to see the object of all their strenuous efforts.
There were slower and gentler games of skill with their leather whips and nets and lassoes. And in the lazy mid-afternoon many of the young boys came running out from the camp, eager and red-cheeked, and their fathers went with them on earnest hunting expeditions among the reeds by the river’s edge, their five- and six-year old sons armed with child-sized bows, hunting for small birds and mice. Attila watched them go, and joked to those near him that Bleda had still been hunting thus only a year or two back.
There were more martial games towards sundown, and it was during these games, towards evening on the second day, in failing light, that Bleda was tragically shot from behind. The arrow flew cruelly true, penetrated through his back, beneath his left shoulder, and pierced his heart. None could say for certain whose bow it had come from. His wives put on a good show of lamentation, and he was buried with full if expeditious funeral rites.
Later that evening, Orestes heard Little Bird singing at the edge of the camp, holding a small brand and waving it back and forth over his head as he danced with slow footsteps in the dust. The Greek remained silent to listen and heard the words of the low chant. Little Bird sang of great brothers of the past. He sang of two called Cain and Abel, and of another two called Romulus and Remus. In each case, one brother had killed the other…
Orestes went over to Little Bird and warned him softly not to sing too loud. But the shaman in his gentle slow-stepping trance seemed hardly to hear him or to heed his warning. He only murmured that there would be many more such songs to be sung before this tale was over. And he continued to sing long into the night, long after his flaming brand had expired in a grey wisp of smoke.
At night the shamans maddened themselves with hemp-smoke baths in their sweat-lodges, and danced and clubbed their drumskins with the thighbones of goats. The dry ground lapped up the blood and the molten fat of the sheep led bleating to the sacrifice, and the flames towered into the sky from the pyres and the altars. Sparks flew higher still, the dark horizon of the steppes lit up for travellers to see from far off in the night. Any lonely travellers seeing that sight from afar off out on the steppes would have shuddered, and, hearing that sound, would have turned back and returned home another way.
For it was the sound of the Hun nation on the point of riding out against the whole world.
It felt like the first day of autumn, late on that dying day when they finally departed. The skies were low and streaked grey and harried with the wind.
Bayan-Kasgar was still having his armour polished by one of his women when Attila rode near.
‘How far is this Rome?’ the general demanded. ‘How many days in the saddle?’
‘Days?’ repeated Attila sardonically. ‘Weeks. Many weeks’ hard riding, far to the west, far from your beloved homelands. And then there will be long wars, and dangers I cannot even describe to you.’
‘You make a poor salesman,’ growled Bayan-Kasgar.
‘But honest,’ said Attila, heeling his horse onward.
So the people loosed their guyropes, dropped their tents, dragged free the central tentpoles and packed up
