‘The Vandals are masters of much of the Mediterranean now. King Genseric.’
Orestes stared. ‘One of the brothers also held hostage in Rome in your boyhood.’
‘With his sleek ships in that fine harbour of captured Carthage. What irony there.’
‘He is your ally now? I did not know this.’
‘He is not my ally, he is my servant.’ Attila grinned. ‘But he does not know this.’ He took a deep draught of koumiss.
‘You should sleep,’ said Orestes. He had been awake all night, talking, the bloodlust of Margus still coursing in his veins.
Attila ignored him. Orestes laid his hand on his shoulder. No other man could have done this. Attila shrugged him off.
Finally he said, ‘Such dreams I have nowadays. You have no idea. Such dreams…’
‘Such dreams,’ echoed Little Bird from the back of the tent, shaking his head sorrowfully.
Orestes did not know if they were good dreams or bad, if his friend awoke in the cold midnight raging with dreams of world conquest or trembling from other visions altogether.
‘I do not sleep,’ said Attila. ‘I cannot sleep.’
Two more warriors stepped into the tent, Aladar, son of Chanat, and one of the Kutrigur Huns.
‘Another of the Chosen Men is dead,’ said Aladar.
The Kutrigur warrior nodded. ‘You seek the Lord Bela. I saw him go down into the water. One of the Romans, a brute of a man, fell on him and dragged him off the bridge, drowned him.’
Attila gazed at the messenger. First eager Yesukai, doomed to die young. Now Bela, one of the four steadfast brothers.
The king said not a word, made not a sound, but in a single, explosive movement smashed his wooden cup to the ground. Little Bird whimpered. No one else moved.
‘His body?’
‘Never found.’
Attila’s eyes searched the ground splashed with koumiss, muttering. ‘Drowned. What an end for my warrior Bela.’
Bela of the bull-neck and the bull-torso. The strong and silent, slow-witted, immovable Bela. Loyal unto death, like all his Chosen Men.
Chanat said, ‘The brothers will have their revenge, my lord.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ growled Attila.
Aladar took a deep breath. ‘And Candac is also gone.’
Clever, cautious, round-faced Candac.
‘Then find him. Find his body. He will be given full and honourable-’
‘No, Great Tanjou. He is gone. I saw him go.’
Attila’s scowl was ferocious. Two deep vertical grooves between his brows, his forehead furrowed deep and dark. Three ancient parallel scars just visible, fine and white. His traitor’s mark. His voice was soft and low, always the worst.
‘Not deserted,’ he said. ‘Not my Candac, not my Chosen Man. He would not desert me.’
‘I saw him ride, too, my master,’ said Little Bird, nodding furiously. ‘He rode away north and gone, all wordless into the wilderness.’
Attila’s bewilderment erupted into violence.
Little Bird yelped and scuttled to the darkest side of the tent, where he squatted down and wrapped his arms over his head like a monkey.
Orestes ducked under the wooden stool that the king was flailing wildly, smashing to splinters against the shuddering tentpost. He seized his arm. It was not seemly for a great man to show such passion. Attila froze and looked at Orestes as if unable to recognise him. His blazing eyes were filled with madness. Orestes returned his gaze steadily. Attila gradually grew calm again, dropped the remains of the stool at his feet and turned away.
‘Explain,’ he said eventually. His shoulders seemed to sag. ‘Explain to me the desertion of my Chosen Man, my beloved Candac.’
‘My lord,’ said Aladar gravely, ‘I cannot. Except that…’
‘I heard him speak,’ said Chanat.
Attila looked back.
The old warrior regarded his king gravely. ‘I saw him surveying the killing-field of Margus, and the mounds of dead bodies, and the deeds of the Kutrigur Huns, our brothers-in-arms: taking scalps, debauching the slain, having their usual enjoyments.’
The Kutrigur warrior, messenger of Bela’s death, remained impassive at the tent door.
‘Terror is a fine weapon,’ said Attila. ‘And very cheap.’
Chanat did not argue. ‘Our brothers-in-arms,’ he repeated boldly and bitterly. ‘Our comrades riding with us in the great and glorious conquest of this mighty Empire of Rome. I saw Candac standing among the flames, and I saw him drop his bow to the ground and not retrieve it. He watched them, the Kutrigurs, about their business, their exotic deeds and their violations, with the chieftain of the Kutrigurs, Sky-in-Tatters himself, among them. And I heard the Lord Candac say – I thought to me, though he did not turn his head – I heard him say, “This is not the treasure I fought for.”’
There was a moment of silence. Then, ‘Why did you not tell me this earlier?’
‘You would not have heard this earlier.’
Old Chanat.
‘Ach,’ murmured Attila. One soft, sad syllable. There was no more to be said.
After a while his warriors rose and retired from his tent. Even Orestes stepped after them, leaving him to his dreams.
Proud tempers breed sad sorrows for themselves.
Orestes searched for Little Bird but he was nowhere to be found. Like Candac, he had gone into the wilderness, though not for ever, only for a little while. He would never desert his master, come what may. He would always go with him through the storm and to the very gates of Hell, joking as he went.
In the hills to the south, looking out over the smouldering ashes of Margus, seated cross-legged upon an outcrop of pale moonlit limestone among the yellow rockroses, was an outlandish, beribboned creature. He wore a string decorated with tiny bird and animal skulls around his neck, and a torn goatskin shirt decorated with little black stick men.
A solitary girl fleeing south, a shepherdess, stumbled on him and gave a cry of terror but he never stirred, never even noticed. She fled onward.
For all his years he still had the face of a child, the colour high and hectic in his broad cheeks. A small fire of sticks burned at his feet and he threw strange seeds into it and leaned forwards to inhale the smoke.
His attention was fixed far beyond the ruined town. He saw turning stars and balefire and black night, and he felt afraid. He rocked back and forth and stirred his hands in the air. He saw his noble master, Lord Widow-Maker, Great Tanjou, Khan of Khans, drawing black night down over the world like a tent to cover and smother all. Not only the hated empire of Rome but the Hun people, too, would be caught in it, would suffocate and die under that dark sky heavy with hatred. He whimpered. The tent of the world twisted and became a monster made up of blood-red flame and black night, which would turn and devour them all.
6
Sabinus took a cup of wine after all. It wouldn’t make him slow on a night like this, only steady his nerves.
His palms sweated. He calmed his breathing.
Around the battlements he could see the white, strained faces of his men. Down below, the restless cavalry
