At last Aetius 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 Aetius 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 Chagelghan 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 Chagelghan on her flanks, and whispered into her flicking ears one last time.
It was time for the ceremony of manhood and the Kalpa Olumsuk: the Death of the Heart.
It reminded Aetius 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 Chagelghan close behind him, and his expression betrayed nothing. Any emotion except rage was unfit for a man.
Aetius 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 Aetius 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 moment’s hesitation, all in the same swift movement, he brought the bright clean blade down upon Chagelghan’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.
Now he was again one of the tribe. Now he was truly of the People, a prince of the royal blood, and a proven man.
2
That night there was great feasting in the tent of the people. The men drank and roared and sank their teeth into the roasted flesh of eight different kinds of animals, horses included. The women regarded the noisy excesses of their husbands with a certain tolerance, for once. Then there was potent koumiss, fermented from sweet mare’s milk, which set them all dancing in the middle of the tent, and grabbing the captured dwarves they had enslaved and ordering them to dance. The boldest men made everyone laugh by tossing the dwarves to and fro like sacks of dried grass.
At the king’s high table, along with other members of the royal family, sat a boy only a little older than Attila, but very different in demeanour. His name was Bleda, and he was Attila’s elder brother by two years. He sat grinning stupidly to himself for much of the time, and ate so much that at one point he had to go outside to be sick. When he came in again, he fell upon his food as if he hadn’t eaten for days. He and his younger brother seemed to have little to say to each other.
King Ruga did not dance, but he certainly roared and guzzled and drank immense quantities of koumiss. Attila sat obediently nearby, eating and drinking little. Once he looked up because he could feel eyes upon him, and he saw that the Roman boy, picking carefully at a leg of mutton on the bone, was watching him with a certain expression on his face. Suddenly the roaring in the tent was very far away, and Aetius with his grave blue eyes was very near. Attila nodded slightly to him. Aetius put a strip of roast mutton in his mouth, and nodded back equally slightly.
The feast went on.
Attila’s cup was refilled from behind, and glancing back he saw that it was Orestes. The slaveboy managed a smile. Attila tore off a strip from his own haunch of venison and passed it to the boy. Feeding slaves at a feast was strictly forbidden, but Attila didn’t care. Orestes took it and guiltily popped it in his mouth. Then, trying not to look as if he was chewing, he moved on down behind the lords and warriors of the tribe, refilling their goblets as he went.
Attila took another sip of koumiss and his hunched shoulders relaxed a little. Not everything he loved was destroyed.
And then it was the moment that he dreaded almost as much as the Death of the Heart.
Ruga stood up and held his goblet aloft. He staggered a little into the man next to him, and was helpfully pushed upright again, and then he roared, ‘Today, my nephew Attila has become a man!’
Everyone cheered and shouted and some threw chunks of food by way of celebration. Bleda threw a gnawed deerbone along the high table, which would have struck Attila in the face if he hadn’t ducked. His brother hooted with mirth.
‘Today he has bloodied his sword at the Sacrificial Stone,’ cried Ruga. ‘Today he has shown himself a warrior who scorns even his own heart.’
There was more, still louder acclamation.
‘And tonight… ’ said Ruga, allowing for a dramatic pause, ‘tonight… he goes for the first time to the Tent of the Women.’
At which the entire tent erupted into deafening applause.
Attila bent his head and took another, longer sip of koumiss. He could feel it warm in his throat and in his belly. It felt good. He took another. He felt he was going to need it.
There tumbled into the middle of the tent an extraordinary figure in a motley of fur and feathers, bright ribbons wound round his top-knot and with a manic grin on his face. It was Little Bird, the mad, all-licensed shaman of the People. He whooped with laughter and clapped his hands, and sang a song about how the noble Prince Attila must go and swive in the tent of the women, for now he was a man.
‘And you must get many sons, for there are not enough to go round,’ cried Little Bird.
Ruga glared and shifted in his seat, but the shaman went on.
‘And there must be more babies born, for you know that there are many graves yet to fill, and we wouldn’t want the earth growing hungry.’
People laughed uncertainly at Little Bird’s jokes, for they were always strange and disturbing. But then they drank more koumiss, and solaced themelves with drunkenness, and laughed more and more at the cruel jokes and songs. Little Bird laughed, too, though he never ate or drank a single drop.