Attila: The Gathering of the Storm

by William Napier

  And now I wander in the woods

  When summer gluts the golden bees,

  Or in autumnal solitudes

  Arise the leopard-coloured trees;

  Or when along the wintry strands

  The cormorants shiver on their rocks;

  I wander on, and wave my hands,

  And sing, and shake my heavy locks.

  The grey wolf knows me; by one ear

  I lead along the woodland deer;

  The hares run by me growing bold.

  They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter

  round me, the beech leaves old.

  Attila was no such sorrowful king nor idle folk tale. He was a living myth to his people, dressed in flesh and blood, back from the wilderness to dwell among them, and they beheld his glory.

  World-bestriding conquerors are furious in their youth, and as impatient as youths even if they make old age. Alexander had conquered the world by twenty-nine. Hannibal faced and destroyed the flower of Rome in the field when he was but thirty, and Caesar chafed bitterly at not having brought the world to its knees before him by the same age. Attila was one with these men of world-hunger. But he was in his forties before he even tasted power. Some say he could have exercised that iron will of his and deposed Ruga far earlier taking the crown of the Huns and setting it on his own broad head. One glare from those leonine eyes, and not a man of the tribe would have dared oppose him. But Attila was wiser than that. He knew that patience is the nomad’s greatest weapon. He watched. He waited. And when he finally rode back into the camp of his people, it seemed that he not only had might but right on his side, having been preserved in the wilderness for so long. What trials and tribulations he must have faced there. And so his return only seemed the more extraordinary, the more miraculous. All the warriors of his tribe then believed in him, in a way they had never believed in Ruga, or even tough old Uldin before him. He was consort of the mountains, he was friend of the desert and brother of the waste places. There blew through him that same invisible wind that blew from heaven and coloured the shamans’ dreams. With him at the head of their armies, none could oppose them. That was what they believed, and he knew it. ‘An army that believes in something - anything - will always defeat an army that believes in nothing.’

  His army would believe in him.

  4

  LITTLE BIRD

  It was as Chanat had foretold. Hearing somehow - in the voices of the wind, perhaps - of the things that had transpired in the camp of the Huns, and the return of the Prodigal Son, come murdering his own uncle with his bare hands and a rusting arrowhead - Little Bird reappeared.

  Impossible to say if he had aged at all, or how many summers his life had counted now. His raven-black hair was streaked with random grey, but his face still had the strange bright innocence of a child, though he might have been forty, or sixty. The skin stretched thin over his broad Asiatic cheekbones, his colour was high and hectic, and his eyes were as darting and bright and malicious as a mink’s. He had no facial hair nor shadow of it anywhere. Even for a Hun he was as smooth-cheeked and innocent as a boy. He wore his hair up in a topknot after the fashion of the people, but tied with a scrap of bright flowery silk like a woman. He wore a string decorated with little animal skulls round his neck, and bangles and bracelets, also like a woman. He tipped his head to left and to right as he talked, mocking both himself and the man he addressed. His clothes were bright and tattered, and his ripped goatskin shirt, loosely laced, was decorated across his chest and right around the back with coarsely drawn little black stick-men.

  When he threw his cloak off and danced, spinning on the spot, his nostrils filled with sweet hemp smoke, his eyes rolling back in his head and his arms held wide, the stick-men whirled round and blurred together, and it was as if there was no distinction between one and another but all men merged together, some ascendant and some descendant on the wheel of fortune, but none in the end more than a brief black blur in the white light of eternity.

  He addressed King Attila. The king was at his fireside, eating with a handful of his chosen men. Chanat and Orestes sat close by, and also young Yesukai and wily Geukchu.

  Little Bird sat uninvited among the men and held his hands together like a Christian at prayer and smiled sweetly at the king.

  ‘Great Tanjou,’ he said, ‘what an ascent you have made in the world of dreams, who only seven days’ since would not have been allowed into camp even to lick out King Ruga’s night-bowl!’

  Attila eyed the madman over the legbone he was gnawing. ‘Welcome back, Little Bird,’ he rumbled.

  ‘My lord!’ protested Yesukai.

  ‘Holy and untouchable you may be, boy,’ growled Chanat, fixing his dark eyes on the little shaman from under his arched black brows, ‘but if you—’

  ‘Hark!’ squealed Little Bird, staring at Chanat wide-eyed. ‘The old bag of bones comes back to life and speaks. I thought you were dead long since, old Chanat.’

  Chanat made to seize him by his dancing topknot and drag him away into the darkness, holy man or no, but Attila held out his arm. ‘Words, words, words,’ he said.

  Little Bird looked away from Chanat with a sneer, and then resumed his sickly sweet smile as he gazed at King Attila again. His voice was singsong and ridiculous.

  ‘A wanderer and an exile upon the earth you were, Lord Widow-Maker, and a detested pariah dog amongst men, with your noble brow cruelly marked with the three shameful scars of a traitor. How far and fast you have climbed in the world of dreams! But one can fall as well as rise, for there is no knowing the will of the wicked and wayward gods, and conquests and triumphs in this world of dreams have all the longevity of virginity! Though doubtless Great Tanjou, oh my Attila, Little Prince of Everything and Nothing - doubtless the gods will favour you especially, and you will live for ever and conquer all the world. Of course you will.’

  Still Attila did not react.

  Little Bird sighed. He sat cross-legged in the dust and wagged his head in vexation. Then he looked up and said in a more normal voice, ‘So, Great Tanjou, where have you been? What have you done?’

  Attila set down the legbone and wiped his lips. ‘Everywhere,’ he said. ‘And everything.’

  Little Bird liked the answer and smiled. ‘And why did you not return earlier?’

  ‘You know that. The law of the tribe was against me.’

  ‘Such a lord as yourself,’ put in Geukchu smoothly, ‘need have no fear of the law.’

  ‘Do not flatter me,’ said Attila, not even looking at him, his eyes still fixed on Little Bird. ‘I am not superior to all laws. Nor to all lawgivers.’

  There was a silence in the night. Little Bird understood his words.

  ‘Besides,’ said Attila, ‘there were other things for me to do.’

  ‘What things have you done?’ asked Little Bird, his voice quieter.

  Attila’s voice, too, was quiet. ‘What things have I not done?’

  The fire crackled. The men around him sat expectant, almost fearful, their eyes upon him. Only Orestes looked at the ground, while his king murmured strange and ancient words.

  ‘I have been a king, I have been a slave,

  I have been a warrior, madman, fool and knave,

  A dewdrop in the grass, an eagle on its nest,

  And a thousand thousand heads have lain upon my breast.’

  ‘These are the words of a shaman,’ whispered Little Bird.

  Attila nodded. ‘You were nine years in the wilderness and on the heights of the holy Altai, Little Bird. But I was thirty. And thirty years is a long time.’

  Little Bird shifted where he sat.

  ‘Look into my eyes.’

  Little Bird turned away.

  ‘Look into my eyes.’

  Little Bird looked, and he did not like what he saw. Those eyes yellow and leonine in the firelight. That gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun. He had seen such eyes before. But not in the face of a man.

  Little Bird stared at hi
m a moment longer, then, saying not a word more, he vaulted to his feet like a young acrobat and hurried away among the darkening tents.

  The other men, too, felt some nameless dread, and made their obeisances and went soon after in silence with heads lowered. All departed except Chanat, who remained at the fireside, and faithful Orestes, lying back upon the ground with eyelids closed.

  Attila gazed long into the fire, and the fire danced in his eyes.

  After some time Orestes spoke. Turning to Chanat he said, ‘Friend, tell me about Little Bird.’

  Chanat thought for a long time, then said, ‘I remember the story of Little Bird from when I was still a young man. It is a story that has never left me.’ He pulled up some grass, stripped off the seeds and held them in his palm and considered them, before he leaned forwards and blew them from his hand. ‘When he was a young man . . .’ He watched the grass seeds fall into the fire and die.

  Attila sat cross-legged on the other side of the fire, staring into the embers, hands upturned on his knees, as brooding and silent as a stone god.

  ‘When he was young he was just as crazy,’ said Chanat, ‘but not in the way he is now. He was a crazy young boy, with a head full of visions and dreams. Then he met a girl, at a khurim, a feasting meet. She was very beautiful. At first she scorned him utterly.’ Chanat smiled. ‘How cruel and haughty she was to him! To test his spirit, of course. Like all women she was flattered beyond measure that a man adored her. But she was cruel to him with her tongue, as is the way of the Women of the People. She whipped him and berated him mercilessly. “You puny little man!” she would yell at him in her high girlish voice so that all the camp could hear and laugh. “I despise you and the very earth you walk on! Your hands are like a girl’s, you tremble at the mewing of a lamb, a single raindrop on your nose affrights you. Oh, how I detest you!” Her gift of invective was great, as is the way with women when aroused.’

  Orestes laughed silently. His eyes were open now, searching among the stars.

  ‘But Little Bird’s gift of flattery and charm was greater. Words and songs and poems and extravagant similes flowed from his lips like the waters flow from the heights of the Tavan Bogd, the Five Kings, in springtime. Bright and sparkling words, a strong current to sweep a young girl away. And so in time she was swept away. Little Bird was without doubt an embarrassment and a catastrophe on the ball field or on the field of the bow. She, Tsengel-Düü her name was, meaning Little Sister of Delight, she would cry out, “Oh, you are an embarrassment and a catastrophe among men, Little Bird! What woman would be foolish enough to have you for a husband? She must needs be deaf and blind and older than a hundred years, your lovely wife who is waiting for you now, you walking disaster of a man!”

  ‘But at night by the firelight he would adore her and compliment her and do it all with a bright gleam in his eye and a bold mirthful-ness, rather than that solemn slavish hopeless hangdog yearning which all women find repellent. He flattered her and charmed her, confident as if he knew that in the end he would win her. And so of course he did. They were wed, and soon her belly grew round, and Little Bird’s happiness was beyond all bounds and all sense. There was a craziness to it that could have spilled out at any moment into jealousy or worse. But instead ...’ Chanat pulled up more grass stems. ‘Instead, he went into the woods one day. This was in high summer and the People were high to the north on the edge of the forests, hunting roe deer and boar - game was good.

  ‘In the forest it is said he met a raven. The raven sat on a low branch and spoke to Little Bird and greeted him as his brother, and Little Bird asked him what news. The raven said, “The past is done, but much is to come.” Little Bird asked him what he meant. And the raven said that he, Little Bird, would kill his beloved with his own right hand. Little Bird stared and stammered, then he ranted and screamed, “Never, never, never!” He swore that he would rather see the whole People destroyed and the sun blotted out from the sky than do any harm to his beloved for she was his heart and his life and the fairest in all the plains from the holy mountains to the western sea. He cursed the raven as a fiend sent to torment him. The raven looked at him with his bright black eyes and said that, all the same, Little Bird would kill her. At that Little Bird grew furious beyond all reason, as if a wood demon had taken possession of him, and he drew his knife and struck down the raven with a single blow across the throat. The bird fell to the ground stone dead. Little Bird turned and whirled and threw his head back and yelled defiance up at the blue sky.

  ‘When he had calmed a little he looked back, and there was no raven lying there. Instead, there was his beloved, stretched out on the forest floor with her throat cut.’

  The horror and mystery of the story was in the very air around them.

  Chanat raised his head. ‘Little Bird tried to kill himself three times after that. Each time he failed - something prevented him. He stopped eating but it made no difference. Even today, you will notice, he hardly eats at all. And since then, Little Bird has been crazier or wiser than all other living men. Or perhaps both. Something was taken from him that day when he killed her. But something was given to him, too. Though everything that was precious to him was snatched away by the hand of heaven, in exchange, some vision was vouchsafed.’

  Chanat brooded a while, then said softly, ‘I would not have the vision that was vouchsafed to Little Bird that day for all the world. I am happy to have the ignorance of a child, and for the ways of the world and the gods to remain hidden from me still.’

  He blew the last of the grass halms from his hand and got slowly to his feet. He made to walk away, but looked back one last time and said quietly, ‘Respect him, though. He has journeyed far.’

  5

  THE RAID ON TANAIS

  It was mid-afternoon on the following day and Orestes was crossing the camp when a terrible shrieking came from the royal tent.

  He drew his sword immediately and burst in, to see two of the younger royal wives in a ferocious argument, face to face, immediately in front of where Attila sat on a stool. They seized each other by the hair and began a vicious catfight. The sound of their shrieks was augmented by the sound of Attila roaring with laughter at the spectacle, sitting back on his stool with folded arms.

  Then he caught sight of Orestes and came over, still grinning broadly.

  ‘We have work to do,’ he said. He glanced back. ‘Besides, one can only watch women fighting for so long.’

  Outside he mounted his favourite dusty skewbald, Chagëlghan, and summoned Geukchu to him.

  ‘It is time to build a fitting royal palace.’

  Geukchu bowed low. ‘An honour that I dream not of, my lord. You shall have the finest shining white tent from here to the Iron River.’

  ‘I shall have the finest royal palace from here to Lake Baikal,’ said Attila. ‘Built of carved and polished wood, with many rooms for many wives and servants. As for my own throne, let it be of plain and sober build.’

  ‘Wood?’ repeated Geukchu.

  ‘Wood.’

  ‘My lord,’ said Geukchu, ‘the nearest woodlands to our beloved grasslands are a good two days’ ride to the north, and the people of the woods are not our brothers.’

  ‘Then take your bows and your swords, and the best wagons for transport. I am leading a raiding party east. We will be no more than a week. The palace will be built upon my return.’

  He pulled his horse round and rode away.

  ‘A raiding party?’ said Orestes, running after him.

  Attila glanced back and growled with irritation, ‘Get on a horse, man.’ Then he nodded. ‘Eastwards, to the Byzantine trading-station at the mouth of the Tanais.’

  ‘But . . . it isn’t the season for furs.’

  ‘Furs?’ he said mockingly. ‘It’s not furs we need. It’s Greeks.’

  Minutes later the king rode out of the camp and eastwards into the lawless steppelands with just four men for company: faithful Orestes, young Yesukai, the handsome Aladar, and Csaba, the
skinny, far-eyed dreamer. Old Chanat sulked like a boy at not being chosen.

  Many thought that he must be crazy to ride off with so little escort and bodyguard, two or three days to the east and into the lands of unknown tribes and nomad bands, now guarding fiercely what pitiful pastures remained at the parched and hungry end of summer. But none dared say it.

  They rode well armed, but with supplies for only a day.

  The Hun warriors’ fingertips were raw with having pulled the bowstring for gruelling hours and days of target practice, under the watchful eye of Orestes, both at standstill and at full gallop; and the soft insides of their left arms were likewise grazed red-raw. But now Attila allowed them to wear leather guards on their left arms, and leather fingerloops, and they fired better each day. The muscles in their arms and chests ached but hardened under the repeated strain of that bowstring and that springing, lethal bow.