Attila: The Gathering of the Storm

by William Napier

  ‘I am your king, and you are my people. You will fight for me, and I will die for you. And we shall conquer to the shores of the western ocean, and to the islands in the Middle Sea, and none shall stand against us.’

  The people with one voice gave a great cheer, and at last it began to rain.

  Attila’s eyes glittered with something like amusement. Behind him, the blackened ruins of the royal tent began to hiss and smoke and settle under the heavy, battering raindrops like some great animal breathing its last.

  3

  THE CHOSEN MEN

  He took a lance from one of the attendant warriors, speared Ruga’s severed head where it lay gaping in the dust and held it aloft.

  ‘Orestes,’ he said. ‘The chosen men.’

  The Greek slave came riding to the front of the crowd and, as if at random, picked eight men from the crowd. One of them was the youth he had seen step forward. The other seven he had observed just as closely.

  They stood expectant.

  ‘Your horses,’ said the king.

  They ran to get them from the corral.

  Attila’s gaze roved round the circle. He nodded at a fine blue tent opposite, with carved wooden tentposts and a colourful pennon fluttering from the summit.

  ‘Whose tent?’ he demanded.

  After a pause an old man stepped forward, with wrinkled visage, soft white hair and cunning, wary eyes.

  ‘It is mine,’ said Attila. He nodded down at the young girl he had brought out of the flames, who was standing anxiously nearby. ‘She is yours.’

  A low ripple of laughter ran through the crowd. For it was well known that the old man, Zabergan by name, was an atrocious miser who cared only for the size of his herds, for his nurtured hoards of hacksilver and his oddments of gold, and his fine blue tent. As for wives and women, he had never seen reason to go to the expense of having more than one: his old wife Kula, a terrible baggage but cheap to run. And though this gift of a young girl was coltishly long-legged and pretty, the people knew that old Zabergan would far rather have cold bars of silver in his bed than a warm young body. Dourly the old man thanked the king and glared at the poor girl as she shuffled close to him.

  Attila grinned and commanded the people to depart.

  The eight chosen men returned, mounted now.

  The grin faded.

  The men shivered under the glare from those leonine eyes.

  ‘And your bows,’ he rasped.

  His voice scoured the air between them, and some wanted to protect their ears with their hands at the sound. Then they broke and trotted bemusedly back to their tents, their horses almost tripping each other in their riders’ hurry to bring forth their bows. They returned with faces flushed like scolded schoolboys’.

  Attila lined them up and demanded to know their names.

  ‘Yesukai,’ said the first, bright-faced, eager. He was the young man Orestes had seen move towards the burning tent after Attila. Attila regarded him. Even now, as he gave his name, he looked as if he wished to step forward, impatient with youthful energy. Hurried, impulsive, courageous, loyal. Attila nodded. He would die young.

  Attila stepped his horse sideways.

  ‘Your name?’ he rasped again.

  The second was Geukchu. He had cautious, intelligent eyes, a slightly crooked mouth, and was about the same age as Attila. Untrustworthy, certainly; but one who could use his brains.

  There were three brothers: Juchi, Bela and Noyan, the three sons of Akal. Young and powerfully-built, expressionless, shy. They would never command armies, or the love of beautiful women; but they would fight and die for each other in battle. They were strong together.

  There was Aladar, the tallest there, on the tallest horse. Lean but muscular, grave and handsome, with his long black oiled hair and his fine moustache. The women would go crazy over him.

  ‘How many wives in your tent, man?’

  Aladar smiled faintly. ‘Seven too many.’

  He would never have peace from women, this one. But there were enough scars on his arms to tell his king that this was no mere tent-lounger, wanting only to lie all day and all night with his seven wives while they covered him with their kisses, caresses, and fatal invisible chains.

  There was Candac, a little plump around the middle but with powerful arms and a certain resolution in his round, well-fed face. This one might after all have the trick of command. He would die old.

  And there was Csaba, who looked frail and dreamy and no doubt liked poetry and played a lute he had had since childhood. Probably just the one wife, whom he adored beyond embarrassment, kissing and embracing her even in public view. Attila knew the type. One moment he might be singing lullabies to a kitten. The next he would be going berserk on the battlefield, the limbs of his enemies flying, his head full of quite another kind of poetry. Half mad, for certain. But the half mad could fight, strong scarred arms or not.

  Attila nodded again. Orestes had, as always, chosen well.

  They rode out onto the plains under charcoal skies and beating rain. It was still only mid-afternoon on that tumultuous day, but it was as dark as a winter dusk. Some of the men looked askance at being led out into such a downpour, some of them bare-headed. But their leader showed no sign of hesitation. With his burned horse steaming in the rain, his face barbarically streaked with rain and smuts from the fire, he had ridden into and out of, like some creature protected by heaven, his sardonic eyes glittering under the dripping brow of his black felt kalpak, none felt inclined to question his leadership.

  His silent foreign manservant slave rode uncomplaining just behind him, head bare and half bald, his skull shining wet. And then Chanat, the aged warrior of the tribe, his long hair a coarse grey mane still streaked darkly here and there, his long moustache luxuriant, a darker grey over his wide, set mouth. He was now in his seventh decade, perhaps, his eyes weakening, his hearing not so sharp as it was, but his body as lean and wiry as ever. His broad forehead bore deep wrinkles. All aged fast in the bitter cold of winter and the blistering heat of summer on those steppes, where the winds blew forever across the swaying and shimmering grasslands. But Chanat’s deepset eyes burned bright with inner fire again, and brighter than ever now as he rode proudly behind his new king. His big fist clutched his bow without a tremor, and he no longer doubted that he could draw it as well as any there. The copper torc still held tight around his muscular throat and nothing about him showed the slackness or defeat of age.

  Attila pulled back beside him. ‘The one called Aladar. He is a son of yours.’

  Chanat smiled proudly. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘He’s almost as handsome as his father.’

  ‘Almost.’ He ruminated. ‘That was a good night when he was begotten.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Attila.

  The king rode with the long lance over his shoulder, the mangled burden of old king Ruga’s head impaled on the end, dripping pink rain. At last he stopped and twirled the heavy burden around as if it were no more than a straw, and stuck the butt of the lance into a marmot hole in the ground. The severed head with its gaping mouth, its fine earrings still hanging from its lobes, its remnants of hair plastered flat to the great skull, silver raindrops beaded in its beard, stared back at them through the grey bars of rain.

  Attila pulled his horse round and hazed them back fifty yards or more.

  ‘Now!’ he bellowed into the wind and the rain. ‘A tenth of the gold in the chest to the first man to hit the target!’

  With reluctance and even dread at first, but then with increasing, yelling competitiveness, their blood stirred by the barbarity and goldlust of the scene, the men milled around and took turns at trying to hit the head. None could do it. The wind played havoc with the flights. While they milled and fired, their arrows flying far to left or right or slithering through the wet grass and lost, Attila pulled back and observed.

  After some minutes he rode forward, pushing his horse between the others. He seized a bow and a
single arrow from Candac, the plump but tough-looking man on a white gelding. The eight chosen men fell back and watched as the king nocked the arrow to the bow and in one smooth, rapid movement, barely pausing to sight along the shaft, let fly. The bowstring hummed and the arrow flew askance then curved slightly in the prevailing wind, veered inwards and punched straight through the ghastly head on the lance, fell out and curved down into the sodden grass beyond.

  The men stared.

  He tossed the bow back into Candac’s lap.

  ‘One day, you will all shoot as well as that,’ he said. ‘One day soon.’

  Then he wheeled and turned back towards camp.

  The head would remain impaled on the lance out on the plain, as a lesson for men and a breakfast for the crows.

  When the storm had abated and the clouds broken apart to show the blue sky again, he drove them out onto the plain once more. One of the wives called out that her husband would be no good for honouring her as she deserved that night: he would be tired out.

  He called them to a halt and looked over them. Then he heeled his horse furiously and galloped back and forth, like a commander before a battle rousing his men, hurling his bitter words into their faces.

  ‘How do the Chinese call us?’ he roared. ‘How are we known in their records? How do they name us in their ancient annals?’ He pulled up violently before them and spat the words of insult full in their faces. ‘The Waste Wanderers! The Milk Drinkers!’

  The men flinched and their faces darkened. They knew how despised they were in the cities of the civilised world, in the golden heart of China: that country whose very name it was ill fortune for any Hun to speak. Or far away in the mysterious empires of Persia and Rome, of which they had heard such strange tales.

  ‘In Rome,’ he roared, ‘how are we described in the histories of those swollen-headed tyrants of the western world? “A vile, ugly and degenerate people” - in the books of one Ammianus Marcellinus. Were he not dead already, he would be the first to be skewered lengthwise on a stake when we enter Rome!’

  The men muttered their approval.

  ‘To the Chinese, we are “the Stinking Ones”. We drink nothing but milk and eat nothing but meat, they say, and we stink like animals and they wrinkle their delicate noses at us. In Chinese, our very name is traduced! And we Huns, we Hunnu, we the People, become the Xioung Nu. And what does this make us in the language of the Chinese? The Bad Slaves!’

  Their blood boiled within them. Their horses champed and whinnied, stepping their forefeet nervously in the long wet grass. Voices rose from the huddled men in an angry, buzzing murmur.

  He rode in dangerously close to Csaba and fleered in his face, ‘Are you a slave?’

  Csaba yelled back at him in defiance.

  ‘O Stinking Ones!’ Attila roared out over them. ‘O Accursed Wanderers of the Earth, despised outcasts from the Great Wall to the Western Sea. Offspring of the Devil, Spawn of Witches and the Demons of the Wind, know how deeply you are hated! And how is that immemorial hatred to be repaid? With nice politicking, with polite debate?’

  The men scowled their response.

  He goaded them. ‘With gifts of silk and gold to our natural, god-ordained masters in Byzantium, perhaps? With solicitous, smooth-tongued embassies? With meek and slavelike acceptance, with humble abasement, as befits such stinking slaves as we?’

  Already swords were unsheathed from their leather scabbards and raised aloft, blades flashing in the blue air.

  ‘How is this lofty contempt best countered, my beloved people? My Stinking Ones?’

  Even as he spoke, he snatched his recurved bow from his shoulder and nocked an arrow to its string faster than the eye could see, and loosed it into the startled midst of them. His aim was sure and the arrow flew straight and struck Geukchu squarely on his buckler. The warrior looked down startled, but it was a light draw and the arrow did not make headway.

  Attila pulled himself up in his saddle and roared out over the heads of his men, weapon held high, ‘By our horses and our bows the world will know us!’

  The men chorused back the ancient Hun war-cry, and the earth trembled under them as they curved and galloped away over the steppes in the rush of their fury.

  He brought them back to him and marshalled them and drilled them for the rest of that day and on into the dusk, telling them that soon they would be drilling warbands of their own. He mocked them and poured scorn upon them, goading them into ever more competitive zeal. He commanded them to see how fast they could fire a dozen shots. The chosen men snatched and strained back at their quivers, fumbling for single arrows, eyeing the nocks in the ends of the arrows before fitting them carefully, sighting along their arms, drawing back the bowstring steadily. Most took two or three minutes to fire their dozen arrows. At standstill.

  At last in his impatience he surged forward. One hapless warrior, burly, sausage-fingered Juchi, was still struggling to fire his last arrow. Attila struck out with his fist and dashed arrow and bow together to the ground. Juchi’s horse flared its nostrils and trotted backwards into the mass of warriors behind. They laughed. Juchi scowled.

  Attila seized twelve arrows in his left hand.

  ‘Now watch,’ he said, suddenly going quiet. ‘Orestes,’ he called over his shoulder.

  The Greek rode away some distance, thrust his long spear into the ground and hung his buckler loosely by its leather strap from the butt.

  All watched, transfixed.

  Attila took his bow in his left hand, the dozen arrows still bunched up in the same fist. He turned sideways on to them. He did not eye the arrows, he seemed only to touch them, to feel the nock with his thumb. He drew each arrow out of his fist and into the string, and straight back against the straining curve of the bow in one long, easy movement. He let fly, and was already drawing the second arrow from his fist and nocking it afresh. The first arrow struck the tossing buckler dead centre. He wasted no time pulling the string back to his cheek and trying to sight along the arrow, but held the bow at an angle nearly sideways and pulled the string into his chest. To his heart. Drawing the bow thus meant no chance of it getting caught or bumping into his thighs or saddle.

  ‘At what point does a galloping warrior loose his arrow?’

  They stared back dumbly.

  ‘Only when all four of his horse’s hooves are off the ground. Only then does he inhabit a tiny moment floating through the air, smooth and free, when the arrow flies true. Loose an arrow when your horse is bumping over the hard ground and you are jolting in the saddle, and you will miss.’

  The men looked at each other. Some grinned. Now he was testing their credulity.

  Then suddenly he was at a gallop, circling the buckler on the spear at a furious pace, his horse low and straining into its bit, ears flat back, teeth bared, and their king in his animal fury likewise. They saw as he blurred by them how he continued to pull and loose the arrows in swift, easy movements and how each arrow flew and struck the swinging buckler on its strap. Some, staring closely as he fired, could have sworn that what he said about firing in that split second when his horse was entirely in the air, free of the hard ground, was quite true . . .

  He pulled up and looked back. The buckler was stuck with eleven arrows. The twelfth had split the spear-haft.

  From drawing the first arrow to firing the last had taken perhaps thirty seconds. No, even less - their faces were blank with disbelief. He had fired an arrow every three seconds or so, at stand and at full gallop, it made no difference. It seemed an almost supernatural performance.

  He looked over them, his chest heaving, a wide smile on his face now. ‘Oh my Stinking Ones,’ he said gently, ‘you too will learn to shoot like that. And you will be the terror of the earth.’

  ‘My brother Bleda?’ Attila said to Chanat as they rode back.

  ‘In his tent.’

  ‘Bring him to me.’ They rode on. ‘And Little Bird?’

  Chanat shook his head. ‘He still lives. He’s not be
en seen all summer. But he’ll be back.’ He nodded. ‘Now he will be back.’

  Bleda had grown fat, and most of his hair had fallen out, but his expression was the same as ever. Greedy, sleepy, conniving, resentful, sly.

  Attila embraced him warmly.

  ‘My brother,’ slurred Bleda. He was already drunk, for it was after sundown. ‘A great return. I always longed to see that traitor slain.’

  ‘And now we rule together,’ said Attila, holding his arms tightly and shaking him. ‘We two brothers, we two sons of Mundzuk. We shall rule the people together, for there is much to do.’