Attila: The Gathering of the Storm

by William Napier

The women clamoured round him for news when he rode into the camp, and he drove them almost to distraction by not answering a single one of their questions. Several even struck out at him in their anguish but he dodged them and skipped away, laughing.

  When the sun went down, the women were still gathered around him in forlorn hope of news that made sense. He dropped down and sat cross-legged at the fireside and raised his eyebrows at them.

  The earth was rumbling.

  He leaned sideways at an extraordinary angle and put his ear to the ground. He waggled his topknot merrily and grinned, still canted sideways as if he were made all of flesh and had not a bone inside him. Then he snapped upright again and looked around at the troubled women, his hands resting on his knees where they poked through the ragged holes in his grubby breeches. They waited, fit to scream.

  ‘These baleful borborygmi in the deep earth’s bowels,’ he pronounced, ‘presage either the return of my mad-eyed master at the head of a million horsemen, or the end of the world.’ His black eyes danced with malevolence. ‘Or perhaps ... both!’

  16

  THE SICKNESS OF ELLAK, THE POWER OF ENKHTUYA

  But there was no celebration when the horsemen returned.

  Attila rode first into camp, at full gallop, and made straight for the royal palace. Someone tried to hail him as he sped past, but he took no notice. It was Bleda, open-mouthed at his brother’s return - he had been getting accustomed to kingship.

  Attila pulled Chagëlghan to such a violent halt that the horse skidded forward several yards on its rump, and was off and striding away before the poor beast had its feet. As the king approached the palace, Queen Checa emerged. She was gaunt and hollow-eyed, and her face had the grey pallor of sorrow. He ran to her, but she could not bear to look at him, could not bear him to touch her, as if her guilt were a contagion.

  It was Ellak, their second son. He was dying.

  ‘We all have to die one day,’ said Little Bird jauntily, playing with the cub nearby.

  Attila stopped in mid-stride, and for an instant it seemed as if he might at last turn on the shaman and slay him where he stood. But then he walked on into the palace after his wife.

  Little Bird pushed in between them. ‘Let me see.’ After a few moments of pushing and prodding he stood back again. ‘The boy just needs rest,’ he said, ‘and boiled milk. It’s something he ate.’

  The bear cub chewed his finger. Little Bird set him down.

  And then there was another figure in the shadows by the doorway. It was Enkhtuya.

  ‘The child will die,’ she said in a soft hiss.

  Little Bird cuffed the cub away and stared angrily at the ground.

  The witch glided over, her footsteps not making a sound. ‘Unless he drinks innocent blood.’

  Attila looked at her long and hard. Then he nodded. ‘Take it.’

  Bending swiftly, her long hand swooping like a falcon, Enkhtuya seized the cub by the scruff of its neck.

  ‘No!’ cried Little Bird, leaping round. ‘She shall not have it, curse her and her stone-eyed snakes!’ He rounded furiously on Attila. ‘How dare you give her the nod over me! She is not our holy thing, she is no one’s, she is unholy in her very soul, that cub is under my star and my protection, if she dares—’

  Attila roared for silence.

  Little Bird stood chewing his lip wrathfully, eyes darting.

  Attila nodded to the witch. ‘Take it,’ he said again. ‘Heal the boy.’

  Little Bird stood aghast, mouth still working furiously. Then he said softly, ‘You have chosen.’ And he vanished into the darkness.

  Enkhtuya worked her will over the groaning boy while his mother and father and brothers and sisters looked on, and in the shadows Orestes kept watch. She waved a smoking branch of fir over the perspiring, prostrate form, and she burned spruce resin on a flat stone, and made a maddening drone deep in her throat like a swarm of angry wasps. She grew frenzied and, rolling her eyes, began to flog the invisible demon out of the boy with ferocious lashes of the fir branch. In her other hand she produced a little knife with a point like a needle and she pricked the infected boy in the chest and belly, feet, head and hands. Ellak’s lips turned blue even as they watched. He groaned and twisted, then struggled and arched his back and gasped for breath as his mouth filled with blood.

  But it was not his blood. Enkhtuya had raised the bear cub high over his head, and with her little knife had slashed open its throat. The cub went limp almost instantly, and bright young blood cascaded over the boy’s face. The witch let the knife drop to the ground and in her long, fleshless hands she twisted and squeezed until the last drop had been wrung from the cub’s corpse. Finally the boy on the couch choked up blood from the back of his clenched throat, and then with a whistling wind from his lips the spirit of the demon fled. He sank back exhausted. Beneath the mask of blood, his lips began to turn a natural pink again. Enkhtuya dropped the bloody mitten of black fur to the ground, turned on her heel and walked out of the palace without another word. Only Orestes watched her go. Checa and Attila stood holding each other, looking over their living son.

  The camp lay under an uneasy stillness all the next day. Towards evening the king reappeared from his palace and stood with his forearms crossed and without expression. Then he smiled.

  The whole camp erupted into wild celebration, both of the return of the men and of the life of the king’s son. Ellak would live! And a great host of kindred Huns had come to join them from the east! Everything was in a state of ferment and excited chaos. The enveloping darkness was warded off with fires burning everywhere, and a babel of dancing and drinking and rejoicing had errupted, with men retiring somewhat hurriedly into their tents with their wives, not to be seen for another day and a night. It was even joked, more by the women at the riverside than by the men, since men do not find such jokes so comical, that a number of passionate encounters took place that night in the fevered darkness between women and men not, by the strict light of day, actually each other’s husbands and wives. In nine months’ time, the women chuckled, there would be born a greater than usual batch of ‘festival babies’.

  When, after this night of reunion and celebration, the dawn broke there was a strange air of hesitancy in the camp. One or two early risers dragged themselves from their blankets and wandered among the last of the smoking fires. They stood a little wearily and looked out over the vast encampment, an hour’s walk or more from end to end. Suddenly it all seemed unreal, insubstantial. A madman’s dream ...

  They had returned and gathered at the same time of year as they had left. It was nearing the end of summer. For tens of thousands of them came the question: what next? Talk of empire and conquest was all well and good, but ...

  There was nothing but this man. Quite a man, they acknowledged, quite a king. But there was nothing besides him except a few square miles of scratched grassland, corrals of tired horses, summer’s end, a summer passed so fleetingly as they had galloped home westwards that they felt they had hardly had time to warm themselves by it. A general lassitude and weariness of nature, the flowers already thirsting and drooping their overgrown heads, the very opposite and apogee to the youth and promise of spring. Impossible that one man’s vision, however powerful and vivid, could energise and inspire a whole nation of kindred peoples. Not now, not at this sleepy, dusty end-time of the year, when the thoughts of men and animals alike were turning to the comfort of winter pastures, shelter from the coming winter blizzards, and long, long nights of sleep under dark furs.

  Had they come all this way on nothing but a fool’s errand?

  It looked a great gathering. Ruga’s tribe of Black Huns had numbered perhaps four thousand, with maybe a thousand warriors. With the coming of the kindred clans, they had been as many as ten or twenty thousand, and now, though no man could count, they were many more than that again, with tens of thousands of men-at-arms alone. A mighty army, but soon it would be a hungry one. Like the sheaves of an unimaginable harvest,
the tents of Attila’s many peoples stretched almost as far as the eye could see. A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? Who could tell? Who could number them? And they grew afraid of their own numbers.

  So in the dismal dawn, the world looked very different to the revellers, the many chieftains and princelings, the captains of the bands and the bandit-kings, and their world-empire looked very far away.

  Attila came out of his palace, folded his arms before him, and said that there was to be a great council, and he would speak to them. They asked when, and he smiled and said, ‘Now.’ He ordered that all the chiefs of the various peoples, Bayan-Kasgar, and Kouridach, and Charaton, and Sky-in-Tatters, and all his chosen men and the captains of his regiments, assemble before him. The rest of the people would crowd close as best they could.

  There was a certain amount of covert grumbling at their host’s lack of consideration. ‘Much koumiss, much sleep,’ went the Hun proverb, but this tyrant had allowed them no more than two or three hours under their blankets. He himself, Attila, whom they had seen with their own eyes the night before, draining bowl after bowl of koumiss and never wavering or slurring for one moment, was now riding around among the tents, apparently all the better for so little sleep, grinning, his teeth flashing wolfishly, his gold earrings dancing in the early sunlight, and calling out to them each by name, which he remembered perfectly.

  ‘Empires are not won by late sleeping!’ he roared at the tent entrances, leaning down from his saddle. ‘Shake your old bones, Bayan-Kasgar! You will never become rich and beautiful by lying there in your tent breaking wind! To the council ring! There is war to be planned!’

  Then he vanished in a cloud of dust to torment Sky-in-Tatters, who was still sunk in boozy slumber between his two favourite wives.

  Poor Bayan-Kasgar, feeling very far from a beautiful wolf this morning, crawled out from his tent, ratcheted himself upright and looked blearily out on the world.

  He gazed out over steppes with that burnished silver horizon, strange for late summer, already promising cold to come. Overhead the sky was slate-grey and heavy, bad for headaches. Amid the tents the dung fires still smoked forlornly, and in the corrals the horses stood with dew on their backs and their damp heads hung low. Everywhere, roused unwillingly from sleep by their leader’s tireless and furious energy, men were awakening with foul tongues and parched throats, bitter stomachs, throbbing heads, as tired as men of a hundred. After less than three hours’ sleep, tempers were frayed.

  But they stumbled obediently from their tents nonetheless, knowing that this king’s decree, of all decrees, would brook no argument. Within their tents, many wives turned over again and sighed with relief and slept.

  17

  ATTILA SPEAKS, THE COUNCIL LISTENS

  He sat to one side of the council ring on his plain wooden throne, his great fists clenched round the carven horsehead finials, his eyes blazing. In the centre of the ring stood a dark wooden chest. The chieftains and captains sat round the circle, and beyond gathered more and more curious people. Sitting close to the king’s right hand was his brother, Bleda.

  Bleda had said little to him since his return, apart from a polite and formulaic expression of happiness to see him safely returned. But Attila knew why. His brother was complaisant about surrendering the throne to him for now, because he knew that before long he himself would occupy it, with the help of Byzantine arms. Last night, while Bleda lay sozzled in his tent door, a crust of vomit down his front, his unwatched wives mysteriously absent from his tent, Orestes had stepped quietly over the blubbery prostrate form and quickly searched within. He found what he wanted in moments. A little olivewood box, of pleasing Greek craftsmanship, he noted approvingly, containing four scrolls. Letters from the court of Emperor Theodosius, in the customary flowery and flatulent Byzantine style. The first letter began:

  ‘To Our Beloved Brother, Bleda, son of Mundzuk, son of Uldin the Great, Our Most Favoured Confederate, Our Bulwark against the Eastern Hordes, Our Most Highly Esteemed Ally, Lord of All Scythia under Theodosius, Vice-Regent of Almighty God upon Earth, and Our Very Dear Brother in Christ. Greetings.’

  So Bleda was officially a Christ-worshipper now, was he? Orestes grinned and returned the scrolls to the box. Wonders would never cease.

  As the light-footed Greek stepped out of the tent-door, he had thought how easy it would be to lean down and open Bleda’s throat. It could be blamed on one of his wives, tripping gaily back from her night with her lover, only to find this pig of a husband blocking the entrance to her tent and to her life. She could be lightly whipped and then pardoned. But no. The traditional fate for Bleda: an accident while out hunting, an arrow carelessly fired.

  Attila glanced at his brother and smiled benevolently. The idiot. Who had fathered this grub? What rancid womb had borne him, this retard from the farrow of a retard sow? Bleda smiled blearily back at him. When would Bleda sit upon this throne?

  When mule foaled, when foal flew, when an arrow drew blood from the moon.

  He turned away from Bleda and began to unfold his plan to his chieftains.

  No doubt, he said, as pasture was growing scarce under the mouths of so many horses and cattle and sheep, they should be thinking of breaking camp and turning south, to the winter pastures beside the Caspian Sea.

  Grizzled, bow-legged old Kouridach of the Hepthalite Huns nodded and stroked his long, narrow beard. ‘The Caspian winter pastures will be fine and green. These steppes are eaten bare. We are happy to serve, but we must soon return east, or go south for winter pastures.’

  Charaton agreed. ‘The Huns are not a people to live in clotted masses, like ants.’

  Attila nodded slowly. ‘Yet finer pastures by far await us to the west.’

  The chieftains eyed him.

  ‘By the banks of the Roman Danube, in the territory they, in their arrogance, call Trans-Pannonia, beside the Tisza river. The Hungvar.’

  ‘Our people pastured their horses there before, in my youth,’ put in Chanat from the other side of the tent. ‘Long ago, when we were allies of Rome, in Uldin’s day. When we fought against our ancient enemies, the Germanic tribes of Rhadagastus, and cut them to pieces on the plains of Italy.’

  ‘That was long ago indeed,’ said Attila.

  ‘But since then they have driven your people back east,’ said Kouridach.

  ‘Driven?’ said Attila. ‘The Romans do not drive my people anywhere, like cattle.’ Only now did he turn slowly to face Kouridach’s direction, and the look in his eyes was pitiless.

  Kouridach’s gaze dropped to ground. In the voice of this king, this leader of men, there was the sound of a terrible fury under iron control.

  ‘Under Ruga,’ Attila said, ‘as well you know, the Huns withdrew east in exchange for Roman gold, like slaves doing Rome’s bidding in all self-abasement. When Rome wanted a troublesome, rebellious boy got rid of, that detestable Ruga did their bidding for more gold.’ He glared around at them. ‘But neither decree from Rome nor chests of gold will keep us from our chosen pastures. Who owns the earth? We Huns are a free people of the steppes and we come and go as we please.’

  ‘And if the Romans think otherwise?’

  ‘Then we should bow before them, yes?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Kouridach, shifting a little in his seat, ‘perhaps this empire of Rome is appointed by a higher power. Is it not one of their myths that they are blessed by the gods?’

  Charaton concurred. ‘Surely so great an empire, which has lasted so long, and seen so many generations of men arise and pass - surely it must have the favour of the gods? Is it right to ride against it? Are their gods not powerful? Perhaps it would be wrong to ride against it. Perhaps the bounds of this empire are set for eternity.’

  No one dared look at Attila. Not Chanat, not Orestes, no one.

  His voice could have scoured the skin off a man. ‘Then let us bow before Rome! Let us content ourselves with our permitted Caspian pastures. Perhaps in spring, we might make one
or two little mouse-like raids upon the northern borders of Sassanid Persia, to remind ourselves that once we were warriors. Those Sassanid kings who mount to their thrones on golden footstools, and sit there dangling their divine feet in silver bowls filled with rosewater, chilled with handfuls of snow brought down by their numberless slaves from the Zagros mountains. How terrible they are, those Sassanid kings, and how right we are to fear them!

  ‘And after our little mouse-like raids we should disband again. For this many nomads to flock together is bad wisdom. The wandering Huns were meant for the lonely tents and the wide spaces, but not for high ambitions or mighty conquests of nations! When the Huns flock together it is like the gathering of ravens by the winter sea. A storm is presaged. Is it not so?’

  They hardly knew how to respond. One or two nodded in cautious and kingly agreement. Others murmured among themselves, putting careful points, attending politely to the elders, nodding in agreement, and many began to concur that perhaps there really was nothing to be done for now but go their separate ways, with hearts rejoicing inwardly at the marvellous discovery of the Sword of Savash, and at this newfound unity among all the tribes and kindred of the Huns.