He fell silent. It was blasphemy that he had spoken. He would say no more, for even to talk of the Altai was treachery to any who did not know.
After a long pause, the officer said quietly, ‘And I always heard that the Huns had no poetry.’
‘The Huns have poetry,’ said Attila indignantly, ‘but they entrust it not to paper but to memory. All that is holiest and most dangerous is entrusted to memory alone.’
The officer was silent again for a while. Then he nodded to the two guards and they opened the door. With a sombre tread he walked from the room, and left the boy to his dreams of his unknown country.
Attila lay on his side on the lumpy straw pallet, comfort impossible with his arms wrenched behind him and his wrists manacled. They had said he would be unmanacled tomorrow. But tomorrow was tomorrow.
He could see the bright winter stars through the bars of iron: green and twinkling Vega low on the horizon, and Arcturus, and brilliant Capella. And then he heard the high, distant cry of a sparrowhawk. It came from far below, near the ground, which was wrong, and in the middle of the night, which was even more wrong. A sparrowhawk’s cry, like that of all birds of prey, was a cry of power and triumph, as it wheeled high in the sky in the bright day, and surveyed all the earth below it as its kingdom. He tensed and strained his ears, and after a while the cry came again. Not a real sparrowhawk: it couldn’t be. It was a boy with a shiny blade of grass trembling between his taut thumbs…
He had no grass to answer with, and anyway his hands were not free. Unable to contain the beating of his heart and the hot surge of his blood, he cried out in a loud voice, the cry echoing round the little cell and bringing the guards running. They shot the bolts and flung open the door and roughly demanded what he was up to. He said he must have been having a nightmare. They eyed him suspiciously and then left again, double-bolting the heavy door behind them.
He waited patiently on his straw pallet for the cry to come again. Patience is a nomad. But he heard nothing. Instead, something fell like a shadow across the stars beyond the window. He thought at first that it was a night-flying bird come to roost on the narrow shelf of stone outside the bars, but it was gone in an instant. Then it came again, and fell with a barely audible thud on the ledge. He got up and hobbled painfully to the tiny window. There on the ledge was the end of a knotted rope. He didn’t stop to consider, but hurled himself at the bars, reaching his head forward to try and grab the rope with his teeth. He could not reach it. He tried again, flinging himself at the bars with bared teeth, but it was hopeless. The knot trembled on the very verge of the ledge, and fell away and was gone. He sank back in despair.
Again and again the rope-end flew through the night air towards the little barred window, and again and again it fell away uselessly. Attila stopped even waiting for it to come. And then at last, thrown in a wider arc than usual, it sailed cleanly, miraculously, through the bars and fell back against the inner wall. Attila was on his feet immediately, grabbing the knot and holding on to it for all he was worth. There was a tug, and he tugged back. Then a much stronger weight, and he gasped with pain as his pinioned arms were wrenched upwards with the force. He sank to the ground and still clutching the rope he laid his whole weight upon it and braced his feet against the wall. He hoped and prayed it would be enough.
Twice the rope began to slip and his arm muscles screamed in pain, but he held on. The rope trembled in his grasp like a fishline. And then a shadow blocked the stars through the window, and a piping, boyish voice whispered his name.
He struggled up. ‘Orestes?’
The shadow nodded.
‘You came back.’
‘Yes.’
The shadow against the stars was perched precariously on the tiny ledge, squatting like a goblin. One hand clutched one of the bars; the other held a thick length of wood.
‘You need a crowbar, you muttonhead,’ said Attila. ‘You can’t shift iron with wood.’
‘People don’t just leave crowbars lying around, you know,’ hissed Orestes, indignantly. ‘It was all I could find.’
He set the thick log between two bars and began to lean his weight back against it, his body stretched almost horizontally out from the wall of the fort, thirty feet or more above the ground. Nothing. He collapsed back against the bars.
‘Here,’ said Attila, ‘try this end one.’
Orestes changed his grip and tried again, and this time it shifted slightly. The mortar setting gave in a little cloud of dust, and the bar fell on its side.
‘Now use that bar on the others,’ said Attila.
‘I know, I know,’ said Orestes.
He had managed to break off two more bars when they heard soldiers unbolting the door.
‘Quick, the other bar!’ cried Orestes.
Attila twisted painfully and managed to pass it up. The first door-bolt was shot. Orestes stood the bar upright in its place as the second bolt was shot.
‘Get down!’ hissed Attila, and he flung himself back onto his pallet and closed his eyes.
The door swung open and the soldiers looked in. They saw the little runaway hooligan asleep, sleeping like a baby. At the window, two boyish hands clutched the bars and a knotted rope, but the soldiers saw nothing. The door was closed and bolted again.
One more bar was wrenched free, and then Orestes could just slither in to the cell. He took the rope from Attila and tied it to the one remaining bar.
‘Will that hold?’ asked Attila.
‘It’ll have to. Here, kneel down.’
‘My ankles first, you fool. No one ever runs away on their hands.’
With a harsh twist of the bar in his ankle manacles, Attila’s feet were free. Then Orestes did the same for his wrists.
He grimaced and rubbed his bruised flesh. ‘Right. Time we left.’
It was the loose bar left carelessly on the window ledge that did it. Attila got down safely, but Orestes swung a little too much in his descent. The rope grazed over the ledge, nudged the loose bar and set it rolling across the the stone. It dropped with a loud, echoing clang – inside the cell.
In a trice the soldiers were back at the door and shooting the bolts. The door was flung open, and they stood open-mouthed at the sight of the empty pallet and the window with four bars missing. Then they sprang into action: they ran to the last standing bar, and slashed the rope knotted round it.
Orestes fell fifteen feet. Attila heard his bones break. He heard the crack quite clearly in the still night air, and he heard his friend scream.
‘Run!’ cried Orestes. ‘To the river – run!’
But Attila grabbed him and hauled him to his feet. He looped Orestes’ left arm over his own shoulders, and together, hobbling, not running, they made for the shelter of the reeds down by the silent river.
Behind them they could hear the creaking of the wooden gates of the fort. The soldiers were coming after them.
‘Leave me,’ gasped Orestes as he stumbled at Attila’s side. ‘Run!’
The older boy ignored him. He did not look back – he might stumble and trip. He dragged Orestes on down through the meadows beyond the town to the misty riverside. He could hear horses close by as they harrumphed their astonishment and displeasure at being pulled from the stables and galloped so hard at this peculiar hour of the night.
They came to an orchard and ran panting into its shadows. The branches were bare, and last year’s sere and yellow leaves strewed the ground; the grass was long and damp. They fell against a treetrunk and let their lungs suck in the cold night air as quietly as they could. They could hear the shouts of men through the trees.