‘Empires are not won by late sleeping!’ he roared at the tent entrances, leaning down from his saddle. ‘Shake your old bones, Bayan-Kasgar! You will never become rich and beautiful by lying there in your tent breaking wind! To the council ring! There is war to be planned!’
Then he vanished in a cloud of dust to torment Sky-in-Tatters, who was still sunk in boozy slumber between his two favourite wives.
Poor Bayan-Kasgar, feeling very far from a beautiful wolf this morning, crawled out from his tent, ratcheted himself upright and looked blearily out on the world.
He gazed out over steppes with that burnished silver horizon, strange for late summer, already promising cold to come. Overhead the sky was slate-grey and heavy, bad for headaches. Amid the tents the dung fires still smoked forlornly, and in the corrals the horses stood with dew on their backs and their damp heads hung low. Everywhere, roused unwillingly from sleep by their leader’s tireless and furious energy, men were awakening with foul tongues and parched throats, bitter stomachs, throbbing heads, as tired as men of a hundred. After less than three hours’ sleep, tempers were frayed.
But they stumbled obediently from their tents nonetheless, knowing that this king’s decree, of all decrees, would brook no argument. Within their tents, many wives turned over again and sighed with relief and slept.
17
He sat to one side of the council ring on his plain wooden throne, his great fists clenched round the carven horsehead finials, his eyes blazing. In the centre of the ring stood a dark wooden chest. The chieftains and captains sat round the circle, and beyond gathered more and more curious people. Sitting close to the king’s right hand was his brother, Bleda.
Bleda had said little to him since his return, apart from a polite and formulaic expression of happiness to see him safely returned. But Attila knew why. His brother was complaisant about surrendering the throne to him for now, because he knew that before long he himself would occupy it, with the help of Byzantine arms. Last night, while Bleda lay sozzled in his tent door, a crust of vomit down his front, his unwatched wives mysteriously absent from his tent, Orestes had stepped quietly over the blubbery prostrate form and quickly searched within. He found what he wanted in moments. A little olivewood box, of pleasing Greek craftsmanship, he noted approvingly, containing four scrolls. Letters from the court of Emperor Theodosius, in the customary flowery and flatulent Byzantine style. The first letter began: ‘To Our Beloved Brother, Bleda, son of Mundzuk, son of Uldin the Great, Our Most Favoured Confederate, Our Bulwark against the Eastern Hordes, Our Most Highly Esteemed Ally, Lord of All Scythia under Theodosius, Vice-Regent of Almighty God upon Earth, and Our Very Dear Brother in Christ. Greetings.’
So Bleda was officially a Christ-worshipper now, was he? Orestes grinned and returned the scrolls to the box. Wonders would never cease.
As the light-footed Greek stepped out of the tent-door, he had thought how easy it would be to lean down and open Bleda’s throat. It could be blamed on one of his wives, tripping gaily back from her night with her lover, only to find this pig of a husband blocking the entrance to her tent and to her life. She could be lightly whipped and then pardoned. But no. The traditional fate for Bleda: an accident while out hunting, an arrow carelessly fired.
Attila glanced at his brother and smiled benevolently. The idiot. Who had fathered this grub? What rancid womb had borne him, this retard from the farrow of a retard sow? Bleda smiled blearily back at him. When would Bleda sit upon this throne?
When mule foaled, when foal flew, when an arrow drew blood from the moon.
He turned away from Bleda and began to unfold his plan to his chieftains.
No doubt, he said, as pasture was growing scarce under the mouths of so many horses and cattle and sheep, they should be thinking of breaking camp and turning south, to the winter pastures beside the Caspian Sea.
Grizzled, bow-legged old Kouridach of the Hepthalite Huns nodded and stroked his long, narrow beard. ‘The Caspian winter pastures will be fine and green. These steppes are eaten bare. We are happy to serve, but we must soon return east, or go south for winter pastures.’
Charaton agreed. ‘The Huns are not a people to live in clotted masses, like ants.’
Attila nodded slowly. ‘Yet finer pastures by far await us to the west.’
The chieftains eyed him.
‘By the banks of the Roman Danube, in the territory they, in their arrogance, call Trans-Pannonia, beside the Tisza river. The Hungvar.’
‘Our people pastured their horses there before, in my youth,’ put in Chanat from the other side of the tent. ‘Long ago, when we were allies of Rome, in Uldin’s day. When we fought against our ancient enemies, the Germanic tribes of Rhadagastus, and cut them to pieces on the plains of Italy.’
‘That was long ago indeed,’ said Attila.
‘But since then they have driven your people back east,’ said Kouridach.
‘Driven?’ said Attila. ‘The Romans do not drive my people anywhere, like cattle.’ Only now did he turn slowly to face Kouridach’s direction, and the look in his eyes was pitiless.
Kouridach’s gaze dropped to ground. In the voice of this king, this leader of men, there was the sound of a terrible fury under iron control.
‘Under Ruga,’ Attila said, ‘as well you know, the Huns withdrew east in exchange for Roman gold, like slaves doing Rome’s bidding in all self-abasement. When Rome wanted a troublesome, rebellious boy got rid of, that detestable Ruga did their bidding for more gold.’ He glared around at them. ‘But neither decree from Rome nor chests of gold will keep us from our chosen pastures. Who owns the earth? We Huns are a free people of the steppes and we come and go as we please.’
‘And if the Romans think otherwise?’
‘Then we should bow before them, yes?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Kouridach, shifting a little in his seat, ‘perhaps this empire of Rome is appointed by a higher power. Is it not one of their myths that they are blessed by the gods?’
Charaton concurred. ‘Surely so great an empire, which has lasted so long, and seen so many generations of men arise and pass – surely it must have the favour of the gods? Is it right to ride against it? Are their gods not powerful? Perhaps it would be wrong to ride against it. Perhaps the bounds of this empire are set for eternity.’
No one dared look at Attila. Not Chanat, not Orestes, no one.
His voice could have scoured the skin off a man. ‘Then let us bow before Rome! Let us content ourselves with our permitted Caspian pastures. Perhaps in spring, we might make one or two little mouse-like raids upon the northern borders of Sassanid Persia, to remind ourselves that once we were warriors. Those Sassanid kings who mount to their thrones on golden footstools, and sit there dangling their divine feet in silver bowls filled with rosewater, chilled with handfuls of snow brought down by their numberless slaves from the Zagros mountains. How terrible they are, those Sassanid kings, and how right we are to fear them!
‘And after our little mouse-like raids we should disband again. For this many nomads to flock together is bad wisdom. The wandering Huns were meant for the lonely tents and the wide spaces, but not for high ambitions or mighty conquests of nations! When the Huns flock together it is like the gathering of ravens by the winter sea. A storm is presaged. Is it not so?’