Attila

by William Napier

The woman started in fear when they called to her, but when she saw it was only two grubby, travel-stained boys she relaxed and listened to them. She saw that one boy was of the People, with his tattooed cheeks and his fierce top-knot tossing in the wind. He went naked to the waist, like the warriors of the tribe, and even though he was barely out of boyhood she could not help but admire the sinewy, muscular strength of his arms and chest. She lowered her eyes when she replied to him, as she would to her husband or a man of the tribe, for the boy had a strange authority. Then she pointed across the river to the shallow valley beyond, where the black tents were encamped.

  The boys said thank you and walked on.

  As they neared the rim of the valley, they saw a boy walking through the long grasses, his head bowed as if in sorrow, moving slowly, noticing little. A few paces behind him walked his slave.

  Attila called, ‘Who are you?’

  He stopped and looked up. This boy who walked by himself, as if burdened with the sorrow of the world, stood a full head taller than Attila. His eyes were a clear blue, his features very fine, his nose straight and classically Roman. His limbs were long and well-knit, his brow high and noble. Only his hair still retained a certain boyishness in its thatched brown tangle. Otherwise he looked and acted far older than his years.

  When he spoke, his Hunnish was perfect. ‘Who are you?’ he asked calmly.

  Attila faltered, and then with some reluctance answered, ‘I am Attila, son of Mundzuk.’

  The boy nodded. ‘I am Aëtius, son of Gaudentius.’

  On the same day that Attila was born - such is the ironic humour of the gods - under the same proud, blazing summer sun in Leo, another boy was born, in Durostorum in Silestria, a frontier province of Pannonia. He was christened Aëtius. His father was one Gaudentius, master-general of the cavalry on the Pannonian frontier.

  In the black tent of Mundzuk, that night, the father crouching still anxiously over the perspiring, smiling mother and the tiny baby at her breast, an old woman moved her hand slowly over the tiny, wrinkled baby and said, ‘He is made for war.’

  In the master-general’s fine military palace in Durostorum, while the straight-backed father paced the colonnade outside, and in an inner room the mother clutched the tiny newborn baby to her breast, an ancient haruspex pushed the midwife impatiently aside, gazed keenly down upon the little form and then into the crushed oakleaves she held in the palm of her hand, and said, ‘He is made for war.’

  Attila and Orestes began their descent into the valley.

  ‘Your father, Mundzuk,’ called the Roman boy from above.

  Attila stopped. ‘What?’ he said.

  The Roman boy hesitated, then shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  Attila walked steadily on into the camp of the Huns. Orestes walked behind, his hare-eyes darting among the tents, his lips working nervously. He, too, had heard of the Huns. He trusted his friend implicitly, but what of the rest of the tribe?

  The Huns did not build walls to defend themselves, and when they were not at war with their neighbours they hardly set a nightguard over their camp. There was a magnificent carelessness in their lack of fear, which struck only greater fear into the hearts of their enemies.

  One day a Byzantine ambassador had asked them why they built no defensive walls.

  Uldin stepped up uncomfortably close to him, put his face into the face of the startled Greek, and said, ‘Our walls are made of men, and spears, and swords.’

  Now women sat outside some of those undefended tents, stirring black pots on smoky turf fires. Many had the same deep blue tattoos on their cheeks as Attila. They regarded the newcomers inscrutably as they walked by. None said a word.

  Beyond the tents they could hear the whinny and snicker of the corralled horses, the Huns’ most valued possession. Somewhere among them was a white mare, her mane long and her tail almost down to the ground. Chagëlghan, his horse, his beloved mare . . .

  At last the boys came to the principal tent in the encampment, an imposing pavilion stretched across three massive tentpoles, the awning fringed with tassels. Two posts stood at either side of the great tent, and from them hung feathers and ribbons, mummified birds of prey, and flensed and polished human skulls.

  Orestes swallowed. He wanted to say something, if only his friend’s name. But he couldn’t speak. His mouth was as dry as the steppe in the August sun.

  A single man stood in the entrance to the tent, but he was a man bigger than Orestes had ever seen. Not in height, in breadth. His torso was as massive as that of an ox, his legs were like treetrunks, squat and thick and seeming to bow slightly under the weight of his hugely muscled body. But they said that all Huns had bow legs. It came from sitting on their horses all day. They even slept on their horses, it was said.

  The man crossed his arms over his chest, and his huge biceps bulged the more. His mouth was clamped tight shut under his thin, drooping moustache, and his narrow eyes never left the approaching boys. They stopped in front of him.

  ‘We wish to see the king,’ said Attila.

  The man did not move.

  ‘Step aside.’

  The man did not move.

  ‘Bulgü, I said, step aside.’

  The man-mountain started and looked more closely at the boy. Then, to Orestes’ astonishment, he lumbered to his left, the ground shaking beneath his felt-booted feet.

  The boys went in.

  The tent was long and deep, like the hall of one of the Germanic tribes, only of felt, not of wood. For nothing is built to last in the world of the Huns; everything passes away, like the wind, like the wind.

  At the head of the tent was a raised dais, and there on an elaborately carved throne sat the king. He had heard of the boys’ approach and hastily taken up position to receive them. His beloved grandson . . .

  Attila cried, ‘Uldin!’ and ran to him.

  As he ran, in the dimness of the tent, something terrible happened. The king’s face changed. The face of his grandfather, old King Uldin, changed. It was no longer the wrinkled, grim but honest old face of his grandfather but a younger face, heavily bearded - far more heavily bearded than was usual among the Huns. The eyes were narrow, the nose snub and red, but the mouth, most revealing of features, was almost hidden beneath the dark, bushy beard.

  As the boy reeled to a halt before the crude wooden throne, the mouth revealed itself in a broad smile. The teeth within revealed themselves, too: yellow graves-tones overlapping and collapsing, and the smile never reached the narrow, watchful eyes.

  ‘Attila,’ rumbled the king.

  ‘Ruga!’ gasped Attila.

  ‘Astur and all the gods in heaven be praised,’ said Ruga. ‘You have returned.’

  Attila gaped and said nothing.

  ‘Our Roman allies informed us that you had . . . taken your own path, though you were an important hostage in the court of the emperor.’

  ‘You would ha—my grandfather would have had me escape, had he known . . . My father. Where is my father?’

  The narrow eyes looked coldly back at him.

  ‘Where is my father, Lord Mundzuk?’

  ‘Do not raise your voice to me, boy,’ said Ruga quietly, but with insidious menace.

  Behind him, Attila heard the tent-flap pulled aside, and a heavy presence step within: Bulgü. Orestes still stood trembling at the back of the tent. This was not how it was supposed to go, and the quick-witted Greek boy knew it immediately.

  ‘My father, Lord Mundzuk,’ repeated Attila, keeping his voice calm and respectful with the greatest of effort, ‘son of King Uldin.’

  Abruptly, and with the terrible, unreasoning violence that made him so feared, Ruga leant forward on his throne and roared, ‘On your knees before my throne, boy, or I’ll have you whipped and bloodied at the back of an ox-cart from here to the Takla Makan!’

  Shaken even in his sturdy young soul, Attila sank to his knees.

  Ruga rumbled on, ‘Stand before me and demand answers of me, would yo
u? Your manners have deserted you in the courts of Rome, it seems.’ He settled back in his throne and narrowed his eyes again. He stroked his tangled beard.

  ‘Lord Mundzuk, son of Uldin. Yes. I, too, am a son of Uldin, and the brother of Lord Mundzuk.’

  Attila waited in agony, though in his heart he knew what was to come.

  ‘The great King Uldin,’ said Ruga, ‘died only lately, in his bed, his women at his side, and full of years. Only days later, Mundzuk was killed in an accident while out hunting. A single arrow . . . ’ Ruga shrugged. ‘The will of the gods. And who are we to question it?’

  The boy bowed his head. His father, the all-knowing, all-powerful god of his boyhood world. The noble Mundzuk, beloved of women, admired by men. His reign over his people would have been great and long. And Attila had not even said farewell to him before his long and bitter journey, had not had his dying blessing on his head . . .

  ‘He is buried in a fine grave-mound,’ said Ruga, ‘a morning’s ride to the east.’

  Attila did not move; he could not. His eyes were tight shut so that the tears could not flow.

  ‘Go now.’

  At last the boy got to his feet and turned all in a single movement, so that Ruga should not see the tears springing from his eyes. As he approached the door of the tent, Ruga called after him, ‘The Romans maltreated you, you say?’

  The boy stopped. Without turning, he replied, ‘They tried to kill me.’

  ‘You lie!’ roared Ruga, aflame with anger again, springing from his throne and pacing down the tent. He was a big man, but swift. ‘They would not dare so to insult their allies the Hun people.’

  Then Attila turned, and although his face was streaming with tears his eyes were steady on the narrow eyes of his uncle. He said, ‘I do not lie. They tried to kill me. They tried to make it appear I was killed by the people of Alaric the Goth, so that you would turn against the Goths, the enemies of Rome, who are now their allies.’

  Ruga stared at him and shook his head as if to clear the fog of bewilderment from his brain. He knew the boy spoke the truth. It burnt from his eyes with a light no liar could summon.

  ‘Those Romans,’ he muttered at last. ‘They think like vipers.’

  ‘They kill like vipers, too.’

  Ruga looked at Attila again and saw him as if for the first time. He saw a certain quickness and strength, and of a sudden he admired him as well as fearing and resenting his return.

  He laid his big hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Get some new clothes, see the women. And then go to the grave-mound of your father.’

  Attila turned and left, Orestes trotting anxiously after him.

  Ruga beckoned to Bulgü. ‘Bring me Chanat,’ he said.

  A few moments later a tall, lean Hun stepped into the tent, naked to the waist, his hair long and oiled, his moustache black and resplendent across his high-coloured face. He showed no surprise or dismay at the command of his king. He bowed, and left the tent, and went to the great wooden corral to find his horse.

  Heavy grey clouds rolled down from the north, and a bitter wind swept before them, as the boy rode out on his white mare, Chagëlghan, to find the grave-mound of his father. He rode with his head bowed, and even the mare’s head hung low. The wind whipped around them, and then it began to rain. They rode east.

  The vast and treeless steppe was obscured by hanging curtains of rain. The grass was flattened by the gusting wind from the north, and horse and boy both turned their faces away for respite and shelter. After some hours’ riding the rain abated, and a watery sun came out. Still far away across the steppe, the boy saw a break in the endless flat horizon, and it was the mound where his father lay buried.

  He came to the mound and dismounted and sat cross-legged on the top. He raised his face to the last of the raindrops falling from the Eternal Blue Sky, and held his hands out wide, and he wept for a long time.

  It took him all afternoon to ride back to the camp, and it was dusk by the time he returned. He went down to the river’s edge to wash away the dust and sorrow that clung to him. The riverbank was steep, but he slipped carelessly from his horse in his grief and exhaustion, and almost fell into the deep water. It was cold and he gasped and came back to life again. He stripped off his clothes, tossed them up onto the bank and sank under the water. When he came up again for air, the world was dark and silent around him, and he could hear nothing but the soft paddling of the sandpipers making their springtime nests even in the last moments of twilight. Making their nests, raising their young.

  He began to shiver with cold and grief again, and started to scramble back up the bank. But it was steep and slippery, and his wet body made it more slippery and muddier still, and he slithered back helplessly into the water. He looked up, and there was the Roman boy, Aëtius, at the top of the bank, looking down at him without expression, his horse standing close behind him. Attila’s eyes flashed with anger, but Aëtius seemed impervious to it. He knelt down and held out his hand. After some hesitation Attila reached out and grabbed it, and Aëtius hauled him up the bank; he was strong. He picked up Attila’s clothes and handed them to him. Attila pulled them on: cross-laced leather breeches, a coarse woollen shirt and a fur jerkin belted round the waist. They said no word to each other. Then Attila went over and got onto his horse as best he could, with his cold, stiff, trembling limbs.

  The Roman boy mounted, too, on his taller bay mare, and they sat for a while and looked across the darkening steppe.

  At last Aëtius said quietly, ‘My father died the summer before last. I have never seen his grave.’

  They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Aëtius wheeled his horse round alongside Attila’s and they rode back into camp side by side.

  For a week more Attila was permitted to mourn the death of his father, then it was time for the ceremony. He had known that it would come soon . . .

  He was grooming Chagëlghan with a bristle brush when one of the warriors came cantering over. He reined in and waited for Prince Attila to speak first.

  Attila jerked his head in enquiry.

  ‘It is time,’ said the warrior. ‘Your uncle the king and the holy men have decreed it.’

  The boy nodded. He patted Chagëlghan on her flanks, and whispered into her flicking ears one last time.

  It was time for the ceremony of manhood and the Kalpa Olümsuk: the Death of the Heart.

  It reminded Aëtius of a Roman triumph, the way the people formed up alongside the wide ceremonial way to the Stone, while the boy processed between them. But the singing of the harsh, pentatonic songs and the wailing and keening of the women was anything but Roman. And the grim-faced priests of the tribe who followed behind, the front of their heads shaven and then pasted with blood-red paint, naked to the waist, wearing belted kilts hung with feathers and animal skulls, reminded him in no way of the well-born patricians who served as priests in the Christian churches of Rome.

  Attila led Chagëlghan close behind him, and his expression betrayed nothing. Any emotion except rage was unfit for a man.

  Aëtius had asked what the ceremony entailed , but none would tell him. It was his own slaveboy, the brown-eyed, soft-voiced Cadoc, who said something to him about it.

  ‘For many people, to become a man you must know your heart. But for the Huns, to become a man you must kill your heart. You must kill the one thing in the world that you love most.’

  Now Aëtius pushed through the crowd of chanting and ululating tribespeople, and watched in dawning horror as Attila drew his treasured mare to a halt before the great grey Stone at the end of the processional way. For the last time he patted her smooth white flanks. The crowd fell silent. There was a terrible tension in the cool spring air, and a sombre silence as once more they witnessed this ceremony that turned a boy into a man.

  Attila kept his eyes downcast. His horse stood patiently by. At last he reached up and drew the long, curved sword from the scabbard that hung at his back. Without a momen
t’s hesitation, all in the same swift movement, he brought the bright clean blade down upon Chagëlghan’s patiently bending neck. Her front legs gave way and she stumbled to her knees, her big velvet eyes looking stricken and pained, not understanding. The boy brought the sword down again with all his might and with a terrible cry. The deep wound he had cut into the mare’s neck went far deeper this time, and her spinal chord was severed. She sank down into the dust and oblivion. The boy cut down once more, and again, and again, crying words no one could understand, until at last the head was completely severed from the slashed and ragged neck. He tossed the bloody sword upon the Stone, and knelt before it. The crowd erupted into wild cheering and ululation.

  Two men of the tribe seized the kneeling boy and dragged him to his feet. They raised him up so that he sat on their shoulders, and half walked, half ran back down the processional way, the people strewing their path with bright spring flowers, and tossing coronets of woven grasses at the boy’s bowed head.