‘For years we have been at the mercy of that people,’ she said. ‘Where they camp now, east, down by the river, we are forbidden to take water. Only this bitter lake is ours now, as if the gods made the river for them alone.’ She thumped her stick in the dust. ‘Did the gods do so?’
‘They did not,’ Attila said. ‘The rivers were made by the gods for all men alike and without distinction. Every land was made for the nomad riders of the world. The Western Lands were not made by the gods to be an empire for Rome, yet they shut out the poor of Asia from their green pastures and gentle woods and guard them as jealously as misers in their caves. The forests of Europe, the plains and the great rivers of Scythia, the mountains of Asia – they were all made alike without fence or demarcation for all men alike and without distinction.’ He spoke over his shoulder for his followers as well. ‘Remember this when you come into your kingdom, when you look on the great walls and towers and the numberless armies of Rome and your hearts freeze within you.’
One or two of the younger warriors laughed nervously at his words. One or two.
‘But that is not the worst,’ said the old woman, shaking her stick and setting it in the dust again. She would not let this nomad king go until she had spoken. She demanded he listen to her. ‘There is the tribute we must pay them, every eighth day. We must take a carcase that we have hunted, in weight not less than a man, or else we must take one of our own sheep or cows. Every eight days.’ She thrust her hand out, palm open and empty. ‘What have we left? Four cows, some broken-winded oxen, a huddle of goats, some sheep – aye, and some blowfly with ’em. How can we continue to pay this tribute and not end by paying with our lives? The winter is coming. Already our children and infants sicken with hunger. But they do not care, those people, the Budun-Boru. They are devils – devils born of devils.’
Attila considered, then gave orders for two of the packhorses to be unladen, and he distributed amongst the poor villagers aarul, some fat hunks of mutton on the bone and some goat meat. They stood and looked up silently, as if pleading for they knew not what, exhausted, their eyes as dry as dust.
He gave the order for his men to turn about and they rode round the north side of the wretched lake and onward.
As they rode away Chanat said, his voice bitter, ‘They will have to break camp and move.’
‘The world is wide,’ said Attila. ‘All the tribes are on the move.’
‘And the great tribes trample the little as they ride.’
Attila nodded. ‘They will bump into the defences of the empire, as the Goths did before them, and starve and die there in their vast, ragged camps on the banks of the Danube, looking across into the promised land of Europe.’
They glanced back one last time. In the eye of a reddening sandstorm from the south-west, the tattered villagers stood looking after them with hopeless longing, too weak to move, hands clutching the smaller withered hands of their offspring standing by their sides, sheltering from the coming sandstorm in their parents’ shadows. Emaciated children naked but for coverings of fine dust, the sun going down on them, the shadows lengthening. And then they would be lost to sight over the rim of the earth as if they had never been.
‘The world is as it is,’ said Attila. ‘And it will not be made otherwise. ’
‘And yet…’ said Chanat.
Attila wrenched at his reins. Even Chagelghan seemed to hesitate, looking back pitifully into the sandstorm in some sudden and unequine access of remorse.
‘We did not ride out to be nursemaids to the wretched of the earth,’ growled Attila. ‘Those are not our people.’
‘But we could shelter from the storm among them,’ said Chanat. ‘And perhaps tomorrow…’
‘Chanat,’ said Attila with a sigh. He bowed his head so low that his chin rested on his chest. ‘Your kingly nobility and magnanimity make my bowels ache.’
‘Chanat is as he is,’ said the old warrior, grinning delightedly, ‘and he will not be made otherwise.’ He pulled his horse round once more and rode back into the coming storm.
Little Bird lingered nearby. ‘My lord Widow-Maker is growing a heart!’ he sang in his piping, childlike voice above the rising wind. ‘But have a care, my lord, have a care! The larger and softer your heart, the easier the target for your enemies’ arrows.’
They took shelter in the lee of the village huts with their cloaks wrapped round their faces and their heads dropped low to keep out the scouring red sands. But Attila and Chanat and Orestes were pulled into one tattered hut by the old woman with the stick. She shooed them into the darkness of her hut, latched the door and threw some fresh faggots on the fire in the centre of the hut. They sat around it cross-legged in the smoky gloom, listened to the howling wind, and drank the fermented ewe’s milk – she called it arak – that she passed around in a cracked bowl.
As the fire crackled into life again, they saw she was very old. She still seemed sprightly, though, and her bright little eyes, hard and enamelled like a snake’s, still twinkled in her wrinkled visage. Her cheeks were furrowed and crisscrossed crazily with deep wrinkles, like land ploughed in darkness by a lunatic. But when she pulled her shawl back off her head they saw she still braided her long white hair with a few coloured braids like a vain young girl, and they smiled.
Attila passed the bowl to her courteously.
‘So,’ he said, ‘the Kutrigur, the raiders. How many are they?’
She took a long drink and smacked her lips, which were thin and withered with age and the desert wind. She smiled. Then she took another, set the bowl down and wiped her lips with the corner of her shawl.
‘How many?’ she said. She held her arms wide. ‘Many.’
He knew what that meant. It meant there was no word in her language for such a great number.
‘For each of us,’ he pressed her, ‘how many of them?’
She picked up the bowl again, emptied it, and ordered Orestes to fill it up from the leather pitcher in the corner. Orestes looked at Attila. Attila looked amused. Orestes did as he was ordered.
‘How many for each of you?’ she said. ‘Enough.’ She cackled. ‘Ten of them for each of you.’
‘A thousand.’
‘Perhaps twenty.’
Attila looked at Chanat. ‘Perhaps two thousand, she says.’ Chanat grimaced. ‘My lord, we cannot-’
Attila smiled faintly. ‘We stay, as you desired, brave Chanat. But do not be anxious. Thorns make strong allies.’
Chanat frowned.
Attila said to her, ‘When do they return? The raiders?’
She shook her head. ‘It is ours to go to them. In two days’ they are due another tribute.’ She spat into the fire with impressive force, and the fire sizzled and cowered under her bitterness.
‘Two days,’ said Attila. ‘Then tomorrow we will go and find a carcase for them.’
The old woman looked puzzled.
Attila laughed.
The next day was still after the storm, the high tableland parched and sandblasted, looking like the coat of a mangy wild dog and more desolate than ever. Attila took four of his men, Orestes and Chanat, Yesukai and Geukchu, and they rode slowly eastwards towards the low country and the river where the Kutrigur were camped. It was very cold.
They came down off the high stony plateau onto a flat plain of grey grass dotted with stone cairns like the petrified stumps of trees of some long-vanished forest. The bitter wind keened among the cairns and the rose-grey light of dawn was no more than a chill ribbon of sky on the far horizon. They rode trailing long shadows that flickered and danced upon the grass, and they moved uneasily among the cairns, the memorial ovoo s of nameless nomadic people, decorated and hung with coloured plaits of wool, scapulae of sheep and skulls of birds, rocks with strange patterns etched into them, whorls and ridges and curlicues, as if the shapes of ancient seashells were trapped within them.
Then there arose on their right hand sharp mountains of dark-grey shale, with late yellow and purple bindweed and vetch still clinging to life in the sunwarmed crannies. High on the slopes of the mountains they saw a file of Bactrian camels crossing from left to right, ruminating on cud as they went. The horsemen stopped and watched the creatures, their big soft feet noiseless on the flat stone, their aristocratic melancholy, their threadbare nobility, enduring here on nothing amid the wind and the stones.