have his blood and his seed on me still. But perhaps it is as the ancient prophecies say. His own shall destroy him. It is right. The Hun people have devoured themselves. Now kill me.’ She seized Orestes’ forearm. ‘ Kill me! ’
He looked into her blazing, triumphant eyes. Then he killed her.
Attila’s body was burned on a flaming pyre, laid out beneath a silk pavilion. Horsemen galloped round it, slashing themselves to bloody ribbons. Many horses were sacrificed, their bodies hefted and impaled on long pikes around the pyre. There were mourning pipes, angry drums and wailing women. Dust obscured the sun as thousands of horsemen galloped wildly over the plain, firing arrows into the reddening sky.
His calcified bones were laid in a triple coffin of gold, silver and iron, with many ornaments and jewelled weapons, goblets of gold and sacks of jewels. The River Tisza was diverted into a neighbouring channel, the huge coffin buried in the riverbed, and the river’s course restored, to flow over the place of burial again for all time. The captive slaves who buried him were slain and hurled into the river. To this day his burial place remains unknown.
All night the drums continued to beat, weary warriors shaking their heads, their hair loosed from their topknots and hanging low like the manes of horses in rain, shuffling and dancing round the fire. Their eyes were closed, their scarred cheeks caught the firelight and gleamed. In their deep throats a collective murmur, a low humming song like one voice, old as the earth, tired but implacable, willing to surrender to none but the earth itself.
Without anything being discussed, with no word from the eldest son, Dengizek, now supposedly King, the people took down their tents the next day and set out for the eastern wilderness from which they had so suddenly erupted to shake the pillars of the earth. The great wagons rolling through a haze of orange dust, their songs fading on the air as they vanished into the darkening steppes. A people in their proud strong noonday more feared than any other on earth, never to be heard of more. Children of witches and demons of the wind, now melting away. ‘ Like the wind, like the wind ’.
After the great horde of the people had gone, a single man remained. He had feathers and ribbons in his hair, and wore a goatskin shirt decorated with little black stick men. He sat high on a golden limestone bluff looking away over the great river towards the south and the west, looking out over Europe. A soft evening breeze stirred the grass and the yellow rockroses, and the sunset was beautiful on the water. How beautiful the world was in all its mystery. He understood nothing of it, after all. The world was as it was, unimaginably beautiful, and it broke his heart to leave it.
Weep not, Little Bird,
Tribe-lonely, restless,
Unheeded, nestless,
Words on your lips that hold
The People’s history,
More rare than gold.
And I salute you, earth-breaker,
Bridge-builder, fortress-maker,
Danube-tamer, Roman brother!
You called us the storm from the east,
Storm that shall not cease,
But you are the storm from the west,
Storm that shall know no rest.
14
It was some weeks before the news arrived at Ravenna and Constantinople that Attila, King of the Huns, was dead – at the hands of a girl of twenty.
Marcian understood his dream.
Valentinian got drunk.
Aetius hung his head.
Valentinian observed Aetius, and what looked like his sorrow. Only a few days later he summoned him to the palace.
The emperor had more guards around him than usual, and also several of his closest courtiers and advisers, including that old orator Quintilianus, the library-expert on Huns.
The general bowed curtly. There was a prolonged and unsettling silence, but Aetius was not unsettled. He had experienced many things worse than the ritual intimidation of an imperial audience.
Standing there in all his sad majesty, alone and silent and unafraid in that vast and echoing hall, its walls covered in gleaming mosaics showing the emperor as Lord of All, its great porphyry pillars disappearing up into the vaulted darkness overhead, the emperor high upon his dais gazed down in divinely-appointed judgement. Everything was designed to dwarf any mortal man who stood before the resplendent gilded throne. But Aetius was not dwarfed.
The emperor’s eyes were watery and unfocused, and his voice was soft and sinuous. ‘So,’ he said, ‘he is slain by a cruel fair maid. Your… alter ego. ’
Aetius said nothing.
Valentinian’s mouth began to work. ‘Your boyhood friend, the Scourge of God, is no more. You must feel that a light has gone out of your life, that your sense of purpose, of mission, is over. That your whole career is over, in fact.’
Still Aetius said nothing.
Valentinian leaped to his feet and stood shaking. ‘Answer me, damn you! Standing there in dumb insolence like Christ before Pilate! Who do you think you are?’
‘My apologies, Majesty. I was not aware that you had asked a question.’
The emperor gave a strangulated cry and rushed down the steps towards him. He fought for self-control, grew quieter again, and began to pace around Aetius, examining him as he might a strange animal in his menagerie. Aetius remained quite still.
‘You make me anxious, Master-General. You are not like other men.’
Aetius could almost have smiled at this. Coming from you, Your Majesty…
‘And, you see, this leaves us with a problem. Indeed, my dreams point to many problems, and the word of God which comes to me in the night tells me of only one solution.’
‘Majesty, my most ardent wish is to be quit of the court, to relinquish my command, and to go on a pilgrimage. To Jerusalem.’
‘To Jerusalem, you say!’ His mouth began to work again, and his words became garbled. ‘And what will you do and say and plot out there in the mysterious shining east, I wonder? Is not the old empress, there too? Old Eudoxia, a great and cunning enemy of the Empress Pulcheria, eh?’
‘Majesty, I do not believe-’
‘And I do not believe, either!’ cried Valentinian furiously. ‘I do not believe that it is your “most ardent wish” at all to go to Jerusalem, to dirty your knees in prayer all the way up the Via Dolorosa to the Holy Sepulchre, along with all the other low-born pilgrims! You would not so humble yourself, Master-General, great victor of the Catalaunian Fields! No, we must not let you get away, we must monitor you. There is no need for you to visit Jerusalem, to see Calvary with your own eyes. I will show you Calvary right here!’
The emperor began fumbling beneath his robes. Aetius’ grey eyes were very still, looking straight ahead. He did not stir to protect himself.
‘I will show you Calvary, you, you…’ Imperial spittle flew in Aetius’ face. ‘You brazen traitor! Hold his arms out!’
Four guards seized him, two on each arm. He could not resist, and he did not try. He only glanced left and right to see their faces. Lads of eighteen or nineteen, new appointments, obedient slaves. Even though they hardly
