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: Bulgu. 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 you? 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 Bulgu. ‘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, Chagelghan, 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, Aetius, 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 Aetius seemed impervious to it. He knelt down and held out his hand. After some hesitation Attila reached out and grabbed it, and Aetius 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.