same age. Attila was one with these men of world-hunger. But he was in his forties before he even tasted power. Some say he could have exercised that iron will of his and deposed Ruga far earlier taking the crown of the Huns and setting it on his own broad head. One glare from those leonine eyes, and not a man of the tribe would have dared oppose him. But Attila was wiser than that. He knew that patience is the nomad’s greatest weapon. He watched. He waited. And when he finally rode back into the camp of his people, it seemed that he not only had might but right on his side, having been preserved in the wilderness for so long. What trials and tribulations he must have faced there. And so his return only seemed the more extraordinary, the more miraculous. All the warriors of his tribe then believed in him, in a way they had never believed in Ruga, or even tough old Uldin before him. He was consort of the mountains, he was friend of the desert and brother of the waste places. There blew through him that same invisible wind that blew from heaven and coloured the shamans’ dreams. With him at the head of their armies, none could oppose them. That was what they believed, and he knew it. ‘An army that believes in something – anything – will always defeat an army that believes in nothing.’
His army would believe in him.
4
It was as Chanat had foretold. Hearing somehow – in the voices of the wind, perhaps – of the things that had transpired in the camp of the Huns, and the return of the Prodigal Son, come murdering his own uncle with his bare hands and a rusting arrowhead – Little Bird reappeared.
Impossible to say if he had aged at all, or how many summers his life had counted now. His raven-black hair was streaked with random grey, but his face still had the strange bright innocence of a child, though he might have been forty, or sixty. The skin stretched thin over his broad Asiatic cheekbones, his colour was high and hectic, and his eyes were as darting and bright and malicious as a mink’s. He had no facial hair nor shadow of it anywhere. Even for a Hun he was as smooth-cheeked and innocent as a boy. He wore his hair up in a topknot after the fashion of the people, but tied with a scrap of bright flowery silk like a woman. He wore a string decorated with little animal skulls round his neck, and bangles and bracelets, also like a woman. He tipped his head to left and to right as he talked, mocking both himself and the man he addressed. His clothes were bright and tattered, and his ripped goatskin shirt, loosely laced, was decorated across his chest and right around the back with coarsely drawn little black stick-men.
When he threw his cloak off and danced, spinning on the spot, his nostrils filled with sweet hemp smoke, his eyes rolling back in his head and his arms held wide, the stick-men whirled round and blurred together, and it was as if there was no distinction between one and another but all men merged together, some ascendant and some descendant on the wheel of fortune, but none in the end more than a brief black blur in the white light of eternity.
He addressed King Attila. The king was at his fireside, eating with a handful of his chosen men. Chanat and Orestes sat close by, and also young Yesukai and wily Geukchu.
Little Bird sat uninvited among the men and held his hands together like a Christian at prayer and smiled sweetly at the king.
‘Great Tanjou,’ he said, ‘what an ascent you have made in the world of dreams, who only seven days’ since would not have been allowed into camp even to lick out King Ruga’s night-bowl!’
Attila eyed the madman over the legbone he was gnawing. ‘Welcome back, Little Bird,’ he rumbled.
‘My lord!’ protested Yesukai.
‘Holy and untouchable you may be, boy,’ growled Chanat, fixing his dark eyes on the little shaman from under his arched black brows, ‘but if you-’
‘Hark!’ squealed Little Bird, staring at Chanat wide-eyed. ‘The old bag of bones comes back to life and speaks. I thought you were dead long since, old Chanat.’
Chanat made to seize him by his dancing topknot and drag him away into the darkness, holy man or no, but Attila held out his arm. ‘Words, words, words,’ he said.
Little Bird looked away from Chanat with a sneer, and then resumed his sickly sweet smile as he gazed at King Attila again. His voice was singsong and ridiculous.
‘A wanderer and an exile upon the earth you were, Lord Widow-Maker, and a detested pariah dog amongst men, with your noble brow cruelly marked with the three shameful scars of a traitor. How far and fast you have climbed in the world of dreams! But one can fall as well as rise, for there is no knowing the will of the wicked and wayward gods, and conquests and triumphs in this world of dreams have all the longevity of virginity! Though doubtless Great Tanjou, oh my Attila, Little Prince of Everything and Nothing – doubtless the gods will favour you especially, and you will live for ever and conquer all the world. Of course you will.’
Still Attila did not react.
Little Bird sighed. He sat cross-legged in the dust and wagged his head in vexation. Then he looked up and said in a more normal voice, ‘So, Great Tanjou, where have you been? What have you done?’
Attila set down the legbone and wiped his lips. ‘Everywhere,’ he said. ‘And everything.’
Little Bird liked the answer and smiled. ‘And why did you not return earlier?’
‘You know that. The law of the tribe was against me.’
‘Such a lord as yourself,’ put in Geukchu smoothly, ‘need have no fear of the law.’
‘Do not flatter me,’ said Attila, not even looking at him, his eyes still fixed on Little Bird. ‘I am not superior to all laws. Nor to all lawgivers.’
There was a silence in the night. Little Bird understood his words.
‘Besides,’ said Attila, ‘there were other things for me to do.’
‘What things have you done?’ asked Little Bird, his voice quieter.
Attila’s voice, too, was quiet. ‘What things have I not done?’
The fire crackled. The men around him sat expectant, almost fearful, their eyes upon him. Only Orestes looked at the ground, while his king murmured strange and ancient words.
‘I have been a king, I have been a slave,
I have been a warrior, madman, fool and knave,
A dewdrop in the grass, an eagle on its nest,
And a thousand thousand heads have lain upon my breast.’
‘These are the words of a shaman,’ whispered Little Bird.
Attila nodded. ‘You were nine years in the wilderness and on the heights of the holy Altai, Little Bird. But I was thirty. And thirty years is a long time.’
Little Bird shifted where he sat.
‘Look into my eyes.’
Little Bird turned away.
‘Look into my eyes.’
Little Bird looked, and he did not like what he saw. Those eyes yellow and leonine in the firelight. That gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun. He had seen such eyes before. But not in the face of a man.
Little Bird stared at him a moment longer, then, saying not a word more, he vaulted to his feet like a young acrobat and hurried away among the darkening tents.
The other men, too, felt some nameless dread, and made their obeisances and went soon after in silence with heads lowered. All departed except Chanat, who remained at the fireside, and faithful Orestes, lying back upon the ground with eyelids closed.
Attila gazed long into the fire, and the fire danced in his eyes.
After some time Orestes spoke. Turning to Chanat he said, ‘Friend, tell me about Little Bird.’
Chanat thought for a long time, then said, ‘I remember the story of Little Bird from when I was still a young man. It is a story that has never left me.’ He pulled up some grass, stripped off the seeds and held them in his palm and considered them, before he leaned forwards and blew them from his hand. ‘When he was a young man…’ He watched the grass seeds fall into the fire and die.
