But he understood Aetius’ exile.
Such a man could not but be viewed with suspicion and sullen resentment by the craven Emperor Valentinian. Generals such as Aetius invariably eyed the purple for themselves: so it was commonly held. Therefore it was with wearisome frequency that news was brought to Aetius in his campaign tent: there was a plot against him, and he must flee to save his life. Sometimes the news came, so it was rumoured, from Galla Placidia herself. He would go into exile, to the court of the Franks or the Burgundians or the Visigoths, against whom he had fought all his life. Those huge, brawny, red-faced Germanic warriors always welcomed him like a brother, pressing foaming goblets of ale into his hand and urging him to stay with them for good, to ride against Rome and take it for himself. And he would sup his ale and thank them for their hospitality and say no more. When they laughed at him, he merely smiled. And when word came that the imperial court had forgiven him for whatever imaginary crime he had committed, he would mount his horse, bid his magnanimous hosts farewell, ride back south unescorted, and take up command of the Western Army again without a word of reproach.
Such was the man the blue-eyed youth had become. How clearly Attila remembered him, standing solemnly there in the waist-high feathergrass of the steppes, the day he first set eyes on him. The tall, proud, clean-limbed boy, who spent his earliest years in the alien camp of the Huns, as Attila spent his in Rome. When they rode out together across the Scythian plains on those long summer days, all life and all the world lay bright and sunlit before them.
Attila gruffly dismissed his spies from his presence, and passed his hand over his eyes, unfocused, deep in memories.
They had ridden out together one day, he and Aetius and their two slaveboys, just the four of them together, and killed that monstrous boar, and dragged it all the way back to camp! And now he learned that Aetius, too, had spent much of his manhood life in exile from his own beloved people.
All humour had gone from his eyes, all sardonic merriment at the absurdity of the world. Surely there was a meaning and a pattern to it after all; and the dramatist of the world was a tragedian.
A sadness like an old man’s filled his eyes.
That straight-limbed Roman boy, who had stepped forward with his hand on his swordhilt when Ruga struck Attila across the face, who would have drawn his sword in Attila’s defence. The two of them had lain all night on a wagonbed out on the plain for punishment, bound and tied, laughing, shivering, shouting off the jackals…
Oh, Aetius.
O you gods. You gods.
Part II
THE BINDING OF THE TRIBES
1
The news spread like a plains fire from the Danube to the shores of the Aral Sea: the Sword of Savash had been found!
Savash was the Hun god of war, and it was told in legend that whoever found his sword should wield power over all the earth.
The tale of its discovery was strange.
A shepherd was out on the plains when he saw that one of his animals had cut its foot. He followed the trail of blood back through the grass and a beautiful sword half-buried in the ground. Fine scrollwork, a sinuous, tapering blade, the like of which he had never seen before. Superstitiously he took it back to Attila, and the king seized his opportunity. Raising the sword above his head, he declared that the Sword of Savash had been found.
One man alone among the crowds did not cheer but stared, and then his usual impassive features took on a look of shock. It was Orestes the Greek. He alone among all those cheering people saw that the sword the king held aloft was none other than the sword given to the boy Attila, by a Roman general called Stilicho.
An act of grossest cynicism? The duping of his own people by their cunning, unprincipled king? Dazzling them with a magical ‘sword of the gods’, really forged in some imperial armoury in Italy, in the heartland of their enemies?
But no. It was not so simple. The shock on Orestes’ face gradually settled into acceptance again.
Attila often liked to murmur the mysterious rhyme, ‘Whether we fall by ambition, blood or lust, /Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.’
Orestes understood his blood-brother of old well enough by now.
Attila proclaimed himself King of all the Huns from the Danube to the Wall of China. He received Indian pearls and eastern silks and Baltic furs in tribute. At night he stood and addressed his people in the midst of their feasting, and told them that their empire would soon cover the whole world; and they believed in him.
A great altar of wood was built, as high as the king’s palace. Many animals were slain, and the altar was sprinkled with the blood and fat of sheep and cattle and horses.
In the days that followed, upon hearing the news that spread eastwards over the vast plains of Scythia, many came to visit and pay their respects: petty princelings, rulers over tiny, scattered bands of White Huns from the shores of the Caspian, bow-legged chieftains of the Hepthalite Huns from beside the Aral Sea. From even further east came others who hardly looked like Huns at all, and dressed, you would say, more like bandits than kings. They came on their tough little horses from the lush green grasslands in the shadows of the Tien Shan mountains, and bowed to King Attila, and then they stood again and hugged him as a long-lost friend. He received the same fond greetings from those desert Huns who came from south of the Holy Altai, and the unspeakable deserts of the Takla Makan.
His people’s hearts grew large to see how widely loved and known their king was among all the wide-wandering Hun peoples, and they began to guess where he had ridden in exile, and what sufferings he must have endured and what feats he must have performed to have won the hearts of so many. Like a hero from the mythology of the people. Like Tarkan himself, when he performed his Seven Labours to win the hand of the Tanjou of Baikal’s beautiful daughter, whose beauty had petrified every other suitor into a pillar of sandstone.
Attila received them all gracefully, and showed them the magical sword, which, kneeling, they kissed in silence and awe. Yet more impressive was the demeanour of the man who held the sword. Those hard tribal leaders of the plains and the mountains and the deserts knew well enough that any charlatan could wave a pretty sword aloft and claim it was the Sword of Savash. But here was no charlatan. Here was a man who radiated such power that it thrilled through their bones as they stood before him, like some wild contagion. This was the half-legendary son of Mundzuk, sent far eastwards into exile long ago. They had heard the tale. And now here he stood, king in his own right, possessing an aura of kingship which made the lesser princelings stand proud with fear and devotion. So the camp of King Attila grew.
White Huns and Yellow Huns, riven with feuding and enmity by ancient tradition, gathered among the tents of the People of Attila, and at his urging, his careful persuasion, or sometimes his fiery oratory, they began to see themselves as one mighty people, united by blood, language and the worship of their ancestors, the heroic Sons of Astur.
The gathering of the scattered tribes turned into a full-scale festival of the people, and went on for days, and then weeks. From dawn to dusk there were games and celebrations, and all evening there was feasting and drinking among the tents of the Huns. In the hot summer night in the shadows there were new liaisons formed between the sons of Attila and the daughters of the princelings, and vice versa. And in the morning many a young maiden’s cheeks (though maiden no more) were flushed, and her eyes were cast down in shame, mingled with remembered pleasure; and many a young man’s eyes kept wandering from the game in hand to a girl sitting meekly on the sidelines, and many a ball was fumbled, to the huge scorn and mockery of his fellow players.