There stood King Ruga, flanked by his personal guard. He did not sing and ululate at his nephew’s great achievement. He did not hail him as the killer of the King of the Boar, or declare that the sun shone bright from his bold eyes. He stood grimly before him, folded his beefy arms across his chest, set his face grimly, and said nothing.
Attila slid down from the men’s shoulders, wincing as he took his weight on his torn thigh muscle again, and stood before him.
‘We slew a boar,’ he said, waving at it as casually as he could.
Ruga nodded. ‘So I see.’
‘And the slaveboys and the Roman boy, they slew it, too. In fact, they saved my life. The debt of the Royal Blood of Uldin is upon their heads, and I have given them their freedom.’
Ruga was silent for a long while. Then he repeated slowly, softly, ‘You have given them their freedom?’
Attila nodded, hesitantly, his eyes falling away from the king. ‘That is to say… ’ His voice weakened and tailed off. He knew he had made a mistake.
The voice of Ruga roared out across the circle, and the very sides of the surrounding black tents shivered under the blast, and as he roared he strode towards the suddenly cowering boy. ‘It is not yours to give a slave his freedom! It is in the gift of the king!’ With a gigantic backhanded swipe of his fist he knocked Attila into the dust. ‘Unless you think that you are an equal of the king, now? Is that it, boy?’ He planted his felt-booted foot hard on the boy’s chest, knocking the wind from his lungs, and roared again, ‘Is that it? Boar-slayer? Upstart? Malformed whelp from your mother’s womb?’
All Attila’s ardent spirit died under the righteous wrath of his uncle, and he turned his face into the dust and did not reply.
Suddenly Ruga looked across at the Roman boy, and the people were baffled. A few had glimpsed what Aetius had done, as had the hawk-eyed, bearded king. Almost despite himself, Aetius had taken a step forward when he saw Attila knocked to the ground, and his hand had reached for his sword.
Little Bird, with his bird-bright eyes, had seen, and seemed to think it funny. ‘White boy draw a sward, father! White boy draw a sward!’
‘Peace, madman,’ growled Ruga, brushing the capering fool aside. ‘You talk of nothing.’
‘Everything is nothing,’ said Little Bird sulkily, and sat in the dust.
Ruga turned his lowering gaze back to Aetius. ‘Approach me with your weapon, would you, boy?’ he rumbled.
Aetius faltered and stopped, but he did not step back. And he said, so quietly that only the very closest could hear, ‘Do not hurt him.’
‘Do you give me orders, boy? The days when the Huns took orders from the Romans are long gone. Aye, and if I were to mete out just punishment to you, for the sins that your people committed in their maltreatment of this boy, this prince of the royal blood – for all his impudence – I would have you stripped of your skin in a trice, and your bleeding carcasses dumped on the anthills of the steppes to be picked clean down to its meagre bones! A pretty death for such a high-born boy, eh? Eh? Answer me, boy.’
But Aetius said no more. He took a single step back, dropped hands at his sides, and lowered his eyes to the ground.
The people looked warily on, anxious lest the king’s wrath should turn against them, too. He was only one man, and they were thousands, and tens of thousands, yet the will of Ruga, like the will of all the kings of the Huns, and perhaps all kings among men, was as real and powerful as an iron rod on your back, and none but the very strongest might oppose it.
Ruga stepped back from Attila and looked angrily around at his people. None met his gaze.
At last he gestured at his prostrate nephew, and said to his guards, ‘Take him and his dear Roman boyfriend, too, and lash them to the wagon out on the plains. The two slaves – and they are slaves still – they shall serve in my tent henceforth, And woe betide you,’ he called across to the wide-eyed Orestes and Cadoc, ‘if you should spill so much as a drop of koumiss when you refill my royal goblet, do you hear?’
Ruga turned on his heel and strode back to his great adorned pavilion, and the chastened people shuffled slowly away. The two slaves crept uncertainly after the king.
And the two boys, Roman and Hun together, were led out by a group of spearmen, and walked for three miles across the baking steppe, until they came to a high flatbed wagon, the grass grown long about its solid wooden wheels. There they stripped the boys naked, and lashed them flat on their backs across the bed of the cart, even their necks and heads tied so tightly that they could not turn away from the sun. And they left them there, to burn and then freeze for a day and a night.
‘Well,’ said Attila companionably, when the guards had ridden away back to camp and they had only the whispering wind and the burning sun for company.
‘Well,’ said Aetius.
‘Here we are.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Are you thirsty?’
‘Of course I’m thirsty. Have you got any water?’
There was a pause. Then for some reason, from the fear before and now the long pain of the day and the night that lay ahead of them, they began to laugh. They laughed hysterically, until the tears ran over their cheeks.
Attila said, ‘Stop, stop, we need to conserve our water,’ but they only laughed the more.
Eventually the laughter died on their lips, and the tears dried on their cheeks, and they fell silent.
The sun burnt down. They screwed their eyes shut, but the red and orange sun cooked through their lids. Their lips began to dry and crack, and their cheeks and foreheads to burn.
‘Keep your mouth closed,’ said Attila. ‘Breathe through your nose.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Aetius.
‘We’ll survive this.’
‘Damn right we will.’
Towards dusk they heard a sound in the long grass, not far away. For a moment they hoped it might be the guards, come back to release them, Ruga having relented of his harshness. But no, Ruga never relented of his harshness.
‘What is it?’ croaked Aetius, his throat as rough as the skin of a shark.
Attila snuffed the air, and his insides gave a lurch of fear. ‘Golden jackal,’ he whispered. ‘Pack of them.’
The Roman cursed, the first time Attila had ever heard him do so, then said, ‘Can they get up?’
Attila tried to shake his head, but of course he couldn’t. ‘Don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Make a loud noise if they do.’
As dusk settled over the vast and lonely plains, the two boys lay in taut silence, hearing and smelling the rank hot smell of the golden jackals as they snuffled round the wheels of the cart, raising their damp noses into the air and sniffing the warm, salty aroma of sunburnt human flesh.
Although unable to raise or turn their cruelly bound heads, the boys knew that the jackals were just below them, their slender, powerful jaws drooling, slavering into the long grass. And both boys imagined the same thing: the feel of those sharp white teeth as the creatures tore at their stomachs, pulled the skin aside, and delved their long muzzles into their innards, devouring their rich, bloody livers and spleens as they lay there, still alive. Or the jackals nuzzling lower, and feeding on their sunburnt, exposed…
Whether it was simply a warm gust of air, or whether it was truly a jackal, its forefeet up on the side of the wagon beside his head, its hot canine breath wafting over his face, Attila would never know. But with sudden urgency he said, ‘Now – shout!’
The boys broke into a frenzied shouting, as loud as their blistered and sun-parched throats could manage. When they stopped shouting they could still hear the distant whimpering and yikkering of the jackal pack, far off now and curving away into the feathergrass.
But they would be back.
Throughout many more hours of dusk and night, Attila and Aetius lay side by side, driving the jackals away with their panicked, grating voices raised to shouts. It would be only a matter of time before the jackals realised that shouting was all they could do, and then… But the jackals never did realise.