‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You did save my life. And my uncle will lade you with so much gold in gratitude that you won’t even be able to walk out of the camp!’
It took two ponies to drag the leaden weight of the boar’s head on its hazelwood travois. Two of the boys rode, and two of them walked, swapping places every hour or so. The three others tried to insist that Attila, at least, should ride, with his torn thigh muscle and his cut back, but he insisted on walking his fair share like the rest of them.
It was an arduous progress, and it was late the following night when they made it back into the camp of the Huns, so only the few warriors on nightwatch greeted their return.
But the next morning when people awoke and came blearily out of their tents, there in the middle of the camp, set on the back of a high-wheeled wagon to exaggerate its size still further, was a monstrous boar’s head, as big as any man or woman of the People had ever seen. Beneath the wagon lay four exhausted, grimy, travel-stained boys, huddled together under a heap of coarse woollen horse-blankets, fast asleep.
The people gathered around in open-mouthed amazement, some of the bolder reaching out to touch the boar’s great muzzle, or even tap its white fangs with their knuckles where its bloody jaws hung open. And they began to murmur among themselves.
The boys awoke to the sound, and crawled out from under the wagon and stood and stared. When they realised what was taking place, they began to grin and accept the many slaps on the arm or back, and agree that, yes, it was a terrific, and incredibly dangerous, feat that they had managed. They had slain the Monstrous Boar of the Northern Woods, and dragged it, or at least its severed head, all the way home to show the People with their own disbelieving eyes.
Two burly men of the tribe plucked Attila into the air, set him on their shoulders, and began to parade him around, while the women sang and ululated in praise of his great feat of arms. Other men had killed boar, they sang, but Attila had killed the King of the Boar. The sun shone bright from the bold eyes of Prince Attila. Surely there was no warrior in the land like Prince Attila.
Some of the women called out bawdy comments, saying that they would be happy to have a son by him any time, if he cared to visit their tent one night . . . Attila grinned and waved and lapped it up, his injured thigh and back forgotten for the moment. Meanwhile, the other three tried not to look too resentful: their contribution to the death of the boar was wholly ignored in favour of the People’s prince. Then the parade suddenly came to a halt, the singing died away, and an ominous silence settled heavily upon the crowd.
There stood King Ruga, flanked by his personal guard. He did not sing and ululate at his nephew’s great achievement. He did not hail him as the killer of the King of the Boar, or declare that the sun shone bright from his bold eyes. He stood grimly before him, folded his beefy arms across his chest, set his face grimly, and said nothing.
Attila slid down from the men’s shoulders, wincing as he took his weight on his torn thigh muscle again, and stood before him.
‘We slew a boar,’ he said, waving at it as casually as he could.
Ruga nodded. ‘So I see.’
‘And the slaveboys and the Roman boy, they slew it, too. In fact, they saved my life. The debt of the Royal Blood of Uldin is upon their heads, and I have given them their freedom.’
Ruga was silent for a long while. Then he repeated slowly, softly, ‘You have given them their freedom?’
Attila nodded, hesitantly, his eyes falling away from the king. ‘That is to say . . . ’ His voice weakened and tailed off. He knew he had made a mistake.
The voice of Ruga roared out across the circle, and the very sides of the surrounding black tents shivered under the blast, and as he roared he strode towards the suddenly cowering boy. ‘It is not yours to give a slave his freedom! It is in the gift of the king!’ With a gigantic backhanded swipe of his fist he knocked Attila into the dust. ‘Unless you think that you are an equal of the king, now? Is that it, boy?’ He planted his felt-booted foot hard on the boy’s chest, knocking the wind from his lungs, and roared again, ‘Is that it? Boar-slayer? Upstart? Malformed whelp from your mother’s womb?’
All Attila’s ardent spirit died under the righteous wrath of his uncle, and he turned his face into the dust and did not reply.
Suddenly Ruga looked across at the Roman boy, and the people were baffled. A few had glimpsed what Aëtius had done, as had the hawk-eyed, bearded king. Almost despite himself, Aëtius had taken a step forward when he saw Attila knocked to the ground, and his hand had reached for his sword.
Little Bird, with his bird-bright eyes, had seen, and seemed to think it funny. ‘White boy draw a sward, father! White boy draw a sward!’
‘Peace, madman,’ growled Ruga, brushing the capering fool aside. ‘You talk of nothing.’
‘Everything is nothing,’ said Little Bird sulkily, and sat in the dust.
Ruga turned his lowering gaze back to Aëtius. ‘Approach me with your weapon, would you, boy?’ he rumbled.
Aëtius faltered and stopped, but he did not step back. And he said, so quietly that only the very closest could hear, ‘Do not hurt him.’
‘Do you give me orders, boy? The days when the Huns took orders from the Romans are long gone. Aye, and if I were to mete out just punishment to you, for the sins that your people committed in their maltreatment of this boy, this prince of the royal blood - for all his impudence - I would have you stripped of your skin in a trice, and your bleeding carcasses dumped on the anthills of the steppes to be picked clean down to its meagre bones! A pretty death for such a high-born boy, eh? Eh? Answer me, boy.’
But Aëtius said no more. He took a single step back, dropped hands at his sides, and lowered his eyes to the ground.
The people looked warily on, anxious lest the king’s wrath should turn against them, too. He was only one man, and they were thousands, and tens of thousands, yet the will of Ruga, like the will of all the kings of the Huns, and perhaps all kings among men, was as real and powerful as an iron rod on your back, and none but the very strongest might oppose it.
Ruga stepped back from Attila and looked angrily around at his people. None met his gaze.
At last he gestured at his prostrate nephew, and said to his guards, ‘Take him and his dear Roman boyfriend, too, and lash them to the wagon out on the plains. The two slaves - and they are slaves still - they shall serve in my tent henceforth, And woe betide you,’ he called across to the wide-eyed Orestes and Cadoc, ‘if you should spill so much as a drop of koumiss when you refill my royal goblet, do you hear?’
Ruga turned on his heel and strode back to his great adorned pavilion, and the chastened people shuffled slowly away. The two slaves crept uncertainly after the king.
And the two boys, Roman and Hun together, were led out by a group of spearmen, and walked for three miles across the baking steppe, until they came to a high flatbed wagon, the grass grown long about its solid wooden wheels. There they stripped the boys naked, and lashed them flat on their backs across the bed of the cart, even their necks and heads tied so tightly that they could not turn away from the sun. And they left them there, to burn and then freeze for a day and a night.
‘Well,’ said Attila companionably, when the guards had ridden away back to camp and they had only the whispering wind and the burning sun for company.
‘Well,’ said Aëtius.
‘Here we are.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Are you thirsty?’
‘Of course I’m thirsty. Have you got any water?’
There was a pause. Then for some reason, from the fear before and now the long pain of the day and the night that lay ahead of them, they began to laugh. They laughed hysterically, until the tears ran over their cheeks.
Attila said, ‘Stop, stop, we need to conserve our water,’ but they only laughed the more.
Eventually the laughter died on their lips, and the tears dried on their cheeks, and they fell silent.
The
sun burnt down. They screwed their eyes shut, but the red and orange sun cooked through their lids. Their lips began to dry and crack, and their cheeks and foreheads to burn.
‘Keep your mouth closed,’ said Attila. ‘Breathe through your nose.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Aëtius.
‘We’ll survive this.’
‘Damn right we will.’
Towards dusk they heard a sound in the long grass, not far away. For a moment they hoped it might be the guards, come back to release them, Ruga having relented of his harshness. But no, Ruga never relented of his harshness.
‘What is it?’ croaked Aëtius, his throat as rough as the skin of a shark.
Attila snuffed the air, and his insides gave a lurch of fear. ‘Golden jackal,’ he whispered. ‘Pack of them.’
The Roman cursed, the first time Attila had ever heard him do so, then said, ‘Can they get up?’
Attila tried to shake his head, but of course he couldn’t. ‘Don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Make a loud noise if they do.’
As dusk settled over the vast and lonely plains, the two boys lay in taut silence, hearing and smelling the rank hot smell of the golden jackals as they snuffled round the wheels of the cart, raising their damp noses into the air and sniffing the warm, salty aroma of sunburnt human flesh.
Although unable to raise or turn their cruelly bound heads, the boys knew that the jackals were just below them, their slender, powerful jaws drooling, slavering into the long grass. And both boys imagined the same thing: the feel of those sharp white teeth as the creatures tore at their stomachs, pulled the skin aside, and delved their long muzzles into their innards, devouring their rich, bloody livers and spleens as they lay there, still alive. Or the jackals nuzzling lower, and feeding on their sunburnt, exposed . . .
Whether it was simply a warm gust of air, or whether it was truly a jackal, its forefeet up on the side of the wagon beside his head, its hot canine breath wafting over his face, Attila would never know. But with sudden urgency he said, ‘Now - shout!’
The boys broke into a frenzied shouting, as loud as their blistered and sun-parched throats could manage. When they stopped shouting they could still hear the distant whimpering and yikkering of the jackal pack, far off now and curving away into the feathergrass.
But they would be back.
Throughout many more hours of dusk and night, Attila and Aëtius lay side by side, driving the jackals away with their panicked, grating voices raised to shouts. It would be only a matter of time before the jackals realised that shouting was all they could do, and then . . . But the jackals never did realise.
Flies and mosquitoes came out and bit them from head to toe. Moths fluttered up from the long grass and sipped the crusted saltwater that lay on their skins. Towards dawn both boys were shivering so badly in the chilly steppeland night, that their chattering teeth sounded like the call of two giant cicadas in the day.
But they had survived. Dawn was coming up, surely - and soon the warriors would come to unbind them, and sling them semi-conscious across the croups of their horses and ride them back into camp.
As the first pale grey of the dawnlight washed up over the steppes from the east, Attila lay in a pained, wretched half-dream, and he thought he dreamt of a voice he knew, saying, ‘Don’t tell me - you’re in trouble again.’
In his dream, he opened his eyes, and looked up at the swimming, familiar face above him, and croaked, ‘Don’t tell me you travelled all this way, just to see me.’
Then the face was grinning, upside down over him so that it looked all wrong, and a sharp blade was cutting the ropes that bound him, and the blood was flooding back with agonising needles into his bloodless hands and feet and flowing hotly under the skin of his scalp.
Aëtius was cut free, too, and after some minutes of gasping and rubbing their wrists, the boys were offered water in leather flagons. They tried to guzzle it down, but the flagons were snatched back after only a mouthful each. Only then did they sit painfully up, and stare at their rescuers.
‘Is it really you?’ said Attila at last.
‘It really is,’ he nodded.
‘And you didn’t come here just to see me.’
He shook his head. ‘No, I came here to see my boy. And to take him home.’
‘Your boy?’ Slowly it dawned on him. ‘The slave? The Celtic boy?’
He nodded.
‘But,’ blurted Attila, ‘but he saved my life!’
Lucius grimaced. ‘Like father, like son,’ he said laconically.
5
THE LOST ANDTHE SAVED
When the boys’ limbs at last felt mobile, they climbed down stiffly from the cart, and Lucius chucked them each a tunic to put on.
‘I know some of you barbarians fight stark naked,’ he said, ‘but . . . ’
‘I’m no barbarian,’ said Aëtius haughtily and in perfect Italianate Latin, far more correctly accented that Lucius’ own, with its soft, Celtic burr.
Attila grinned and pulled his tunic on over his head.
‘And you are . . . ?’ asked Lucius.
‘Aëtius, son of the late Gaudentius, master-general of cavalry on the Pannonian frontier.’
Lucius was taken aback. ‘I knew something of your father. He was reputed a good commander.’
‘He was,’ said Aëtius stiffly.
‘Well,’ said Lucius. ‘And you are a hostage of peace here with the Huns? They are keeping you well, clearly.’
Attila snapped, ‘Rather better than the Romans keep their hostages, I think.’
Lucius was silent.
‘And who’s he?’ said Attila, jerking his head at Lucius’ silent companion.
‘Cievell Lugana,’ said the old man with the long grey beard. His eyes twinkled at the boy, not unkindly. ‘At least, that is what I am called today.’
Attila eyed him curiously, then shrugged and turned towards the camp. ‘Your son,’ he said. ‘And there’s another slave. They’re in the great pavilion of the king. At least, they’ll be sleeping round the back. Take them both - take Orestes, too, my slave.’
Aëtius looked sharply at Attila, but Attila looked back calmly. ‘It is better for him,’ he said. ‘It will not be easy for me here henceforth.’
Lucius considered for a while and then said, ‘We’ll see.’
They left their horses tethered lightly to the wagon, and they crept in silence and darkness towards the camp of the Huns.
Cadoc was dreaming, huddled under a fleabitten horseblanket at the back of the king’s pavilion.
The old man who called himself Gamaliel, or Cievell Lugana, and by many other names, smiled over him and murmured, ‘Time to wake up, song-maker, bird-catcher, Dreamer of Dreams, of the line of Bran, with the words of the world on your lips . . . ’
Lucius knelt and shook Cadoc awake, and the boy opened his eyes wide, and flung his arms round his father’s neck. And they both wept, even as the father held his hand clamped over the boy’s mouth for silence.
When the little group of six emerged round the front of the king’s pavilion, there were torches burning, for the dawnlight was still dim and cold and grey. They were surrounded by a hundred warriors or more, arrows knocked to their bowstrings, arrowheads gleaming coldly in the torchlight. For though the camp of the Huns might stand without walls, no group of armed strangers could creep in under darkness and not be noticed by the keen-eyed spearmen on watch.
For the second time in a day and a night, Attila faced his uncle in defiance, but this time he was one of six and he had more to fight for than merely his own pride. Lucius had come on an unimaginable journey this far to take back his abducted son, and he would not let him go home empty-handed.
There was a breathless silence across the camp of the Huns, and over the natural arena formed by the ranks of watching tribespeople, spellbound at this moment of terrible drama. All eyes switched back and forth between the small figure of the boy Attila and the hulking, bear-skinned figure of his uncle, King R
uga. The crackling battle of wills taking place between them was almost visible in the air in its intensity.
‘Uncle . . . ’ began the boy at last.
‘You have led armed strangers into my kingdom,’ said Ruga. ‘You have shown them the way into my camp. You have brought them to the felt walls of my pavilion with their swords drawn. You would see me slain in my sleep like a beast, Attila?’
Attila tried to protest, but Ruga spoke over him. ‘You have betrayed the People, O my nephew and my blood. You have opposed my word, and you have shamed and humiliated me before all the warriors of the tribe.’
The boy never flinched, though by the law of the tribe any man there could have drawn a knife at any moment and slain him where he stood, for he was a pronounced traitor. But he did not stir.
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