Attila:The Scourge of God

EIGHTEEN

Whips in right hands, reins in left, Attila and Bleda, flanked by their seconds, faced each other across the forest clearing. Attila’s attendant was young Balamir, Bleda’s a middle-aged warrior of hulking physique. Raising his hand, the latter called out, ‘No weapons other than whips; no strikes on the face; the contest to continue until one surrenders.’ He glanced at each opponent, who nodded in turn; then his hand swept down.

The long lash of the whip trailing behind him, Attila circled the glade, never letting his eyes leave his brother, who matched his movements as though their mounts were connected by an invisible axis. Bleda was afraid, Attila could tell: there was sweat beading his unhealthily plump features, and a nervous grin had replaced his habitual crafty smirk. Also, he was out of condition and beginning to run to fat; since becoming joint ruler, Bleda had felt free to indulge a gluttonous trait. Despite being physically at a disadvantage, Bleda had had no choice but to accept his brother’s challenge to a duel. A refusal, if broadcast, would have branded him a coward — a fatal tag for a Hun, especially if he were a ruler.

Fighting with whips required expertise (acquired only through long and arduous practice), courage, and cool judgement. Each flick, because it could not be quickly repeated, had to count — hopefully forcing one’s opponent to retreat, or landing a blow. Blows could inflict wounds varying from angry weals to frightful lacerations.

Slowly tensing his right arm, Attila judged his moment carefully, then struck. The whip-lash buzzed through the air like an angry viper, to smack against Bleda’s shoulder, ripping away a strip of clothing and skin. Bleda shouted in surprise and pain; he riposted, but not quickly enough, allowing Attila to weave aside, then send his lash snaking across to land a second blow, this time across Breda’s rib cage. The duel continued, the long lashes hissing, coiling, and snapping. Attila’s superior skill enabled him to score hit after hit, while avoiding Bleda’s clumsier strokes.

Attila had no wish to cause Bleda serious injury, merely to teach him a lesson for his presumption, and to force him to disclose certain information he was keeping from Attila. Balamir had said that subsequent to Bleda’s Council meeting, but prior to Attila’s return from his pilgrimage, he had several times observed Bleda engaged in earnest conversation with leading members of the Council. At Attila’s request, the young Hun had, at some risk to himself, managed to eavesdrop on one further such conversation, by listening outside Bleda’s tent under cover of darkness. The voices had been too low for him to glean much, but it had sounded as if they were discussing conditions to be imposed on the Eastern Empire, regarding the peace treaty the Council had voted to resume. Excluding Attila from these secret deliberations — by which the terms of the treaty would become set firm — was an insult not to be borne; hence Attila’s challenge to his brother.

Bleda was tiring, his strokes becoming wilder and more desperate. Fear and hatred showed in his eyes; and something else, which Attila could not immediately read — a look of cunning calculation? Too late, Attila saw his brother nod imperceptibly; then he felt his whip tighten against its stock and resist his pull. Whirling round in the saddle, he saw that Bleda’s burly second had gripped the lash by the middle. Even as he looked, the accomplice wound the tail section round his waist, to provide an anchor. Balamir flung himself at the man, only to be knocked senseless by a massive blow to the temple. A sudden stinging pain across his nose and cheeks, accompanied by a loud crack, made Attila turn towards Bleda. His brother’s apprehensive expression had changed to a triumphant leer, as he drew back the whip to deliver a second stroke. The first, had it landed two inches higher, would have blinded his opponent.

Attila reacted with lightning speed. His horse, trained to interpret and obey the smallest signal, backed swiftly in response to the pressure of his master’s knees. With enough slack now to wield it, Attila smashed his whip-stock into the face of Bleda’s second. Howling with pain, the man released the whip and staggered back, clutching his shattered jaw. So quickly did all this happen that when Attila turned back to his brother, the latter’s whip hand was still moving back. Naked terror showed in Bleda’s face; he struck out frantically. Ignoring the pain, Attila took the blow on his forearm, then grabbed the lash and, with a violent wrench, tore the whip from his brother’s grasp. Flinging it to Balamir, who was picking himself up gingerly from the ground, Attila snarled in a voice thick with rage and contempt, ‘Watch, brother. Watch — and learn what happens to a traitor when he crosses Attila.’ Unhurriedly and systematically, he began to hunt the injured man with his whip.

Screaming, pleading for mercy, Bleda’s accomplice stumbled about the glade, vainly trying to escape the terrible whip, which snapped and sang, laying flesh open to the bone with every cut, and gradually reducing him to a tattered scarlet horror. Eventually, he swayed, seemed to stiffen, then with a loud cry flung up his hands and collapsed, as his heart stopped beating.

‘Play me false again, brother,’ Attila grated, ‘and I swear I’ll kill you, too. Now, tell me the terms that you and your friends in the Council have decided to impose upon the East.’

The setting for the signing of the treaty with the Eastern Empire, near the city of Margus in the Eastern province of Upper Moesia, was tranquil and beautiful: a grassy plain surrounded by tall mountains clothed in forests of oak, beech, and chestnut. Attila and Bleda, with a sizeable retinue consisting of armed warriors and the leading members of the Hun Council, all mounted, confronted the Roman delegation from Constantinople. The latter, perhaps hoping to flatter and mollify the Huns, and thus secure more favourable terms, had proceeded from Margus to the meeting-place on foot. The Roman party was made up of two ambassadors, Plinthas, a general of barbarian origin but of consular rank, and the quaestor¹ Epigenes, a wise and experienced statesman; a clutch of secretaries and officials; and a number of young Germans from important families, fugitives who had sought refuge in the Eastern Empire when the Huns conquered their homelands. This last group looked distinctly apprehensive.

Epigenes, a tall and dignified man clad in the robes of his office, opened the proceedings. ‘Welcome, Your Majesties,’ he said with a smile, addressing Attila and Bleda. ‘My master, Theodosius, the second of that name, Emperor of the East Romans, fourteen times Consul, Calligrapher,² bids you welcome and trusts you are in good health. He sends you word that it is his sincere wish that the good relations formerly existing between our two peoples can be re-established, and that the unfortunate, ah, misunderstanding that arose concerning your German conquests, and the fugitives therefrom, be put behind us and forgotten.’

Bleda opened his mouth to answer, but Attila silenced him with a look, and made reply: ‘A misunderstanding, Roman, which will cost your master dear. As to forgetting, that will happen only when we have received full reparation from your government for forming an alliance with our rebellious German subjects, and for affording refuge and protection to those of them who fled.’

‘That is fair,’ conceded Epigenes. ‘The Emperor is willing to make reasonable compensation for any wrongs we may have done you. We would know your terms.’

‘One: the right of our people to trade freely on your side of the Danubias,’ stated Attila roughly. ‘Two: a fine or ransom of eight gold pieces for every Roman captive who escaped from us. Three: your Emperor to renounce all treaties with the enemies of the Huns. Four: an annual contribution of seven hundred pounds’ weight of gold to be paid us by your government. Five: all fugitives now under your protection to be returned.’

Gasps of astonishment among the Huns, and of consternation from the Romans, greeted this declaration. ‘Seven hundred pounds — that’s twice what the Council and I decided!’ protested Bleda. ‘They’ll never pay it — they can’t; they haven’t the resources. And fines for escaped prisoners, the return of the fugitives — what will that gain us? We’re better off without them; anyway, how could they begin to track down and identify prisoners? This is folly, brother. We could end up with nothing.’

Privately, Attila worried that Bleda might be right, and that this might be pushing the Eastern delegates too far. But to reverse any damage Bleda had done his reputation, he had little choice but to come up with some radical proposals. These, in terms of financial gain for the Huns, must be a clear improvement on any conditions thought up by Bleda and the Council. They must also demonstrate that Attila not only could act independently of his brother but was the dominant sibling.

‘This is intolerable!’ snarled General Plinthas, his hand moving to his sword-hilt. ‘That unwashed savages should dictate such terms to Romans — it’s an insult to the majesty of the Empire.’

‘Excuse him, my lords,’ broke in Epigenes hastily. ‘His manners have been formed in camps not courts.’ He paused, then went on, a note of pleading in his voice. ‘But his rudeness is perhaps understandable. These are indeed heavy terms. Too heavy, I think.’

‘His manners are of no consequence,’ said Attila indifferently. ‘You think our terms heavy? Perhaps you would prefer to see your cities in flames, and your people massacred or enslaved.’

‘You would have us sail between Scylla and Charybdis!’ exclaimed the quaestor bitterly. He fought for composure, then continued more calmly, ‘Permit us to return to Constantinople, to put your terms to the Emperor. My authority, I fear, does not extend to accepting such conditions.’

Attila, who had been prepared for such a reaction, considered his response carefully. If he allowed the Romans to return to Constantinople without having signed the treaty, negotiations would drag on and on, because Theodosius — flattering himself that he was playing a masterly political game of cat and mouse — would procrastinate endlessly. The Eastern Empire was wealthy; to pay the subsidy demanded would hurt, certainly, but could surely be managed without emptying the imperial coffers. To safeguard his reputation with the Huns (and therefore preserve the viability of his Great Plan for his people) Attila must convince the Roman ambassadors that they had no choice but to sign the treaty. Now. And to achieve that, he must provide them with an object-lesson which would leave them in absolutely no doubt as to his utter determination and capacity for ruthlessness in pursuit of his aims. This, although it had cost him much agony of spirit, he was also prepared for.

‘If parting with gold distresses you,’ he suggested, unable entirely to prevent the scorn from showing in his voice, ‘perhaps parting with the fugitives would cause you less concern.’

‘Betray those we are sworn to protect? Never!’ shouted Plinthas. ‘That would be to make a travesty of Roman honour. We spit on such-’

‘Hush, friend,’ interrupted Epigenes, laying a hand on the general’s arm. ‘We have no choice, shameful though it is to have to admit it.’ Turning to Attila, he declared heavily, ‘Take them; they are yours.’

On Attila’s signal, Hun warriors surrounded the young Germans and removed them from the Roman group. ‘What shall we do with them, Lord?’ the escort’s leader asked Attila.

‘Crucify them,’ ordered Attila, his voice impassive.

‘No!’ roared Plinthas, making to draw his sword. Several of his own party restrained him forcibly, though he continued to struggle and protest.

Some of the Huns swiftly felled trees and constructed rude crosses, while others dug pits to secure their bases. The unfortunate youths were bound by wrists and ankles to the beams, and spikes were driven through their hands and feet, pinning them securely to the wood.

In a horrified silence broken only by the curses of Plinthas and the cries of the victims, the Romans watched as the crosses with their human burdens were hauled upright, then dropped into the holes prepared for them. Attila willed his face to remain a stone-like mask, while rage and pity warred within him. Rage that his brother’s folly had forced him to this action; pity for the young men sacrificed. He told himself that only an act of spectacular cruelty, calculated to spread terror throughout the Eastern Empire, would persuade the Romans, those masters of prevarication, to accept his terms without delay. And such a demonstration was also necessary to prove his authority to the Huns, after Bleda’s attempts to weaken it.

It worked. The Huns immediately began to show him awed respect, far exceeding anything they accorded Bleda. That same day, in the lovely flower-starred meadow where the condemned fugitives groaned upon their crosses, the Romans signed the treaty.

That night, alone in his tent, for the first and last time in his life Attila wept. What was it Wu Tze had said to him? ‘You will be a strong ruler, but will you also be a kindly sage?’ Well, he had shown he could be strong. To survive, and therefore to have any hope of implementing his vision, he had had to demonstrate that strength in an act of graphic brutality. As for being a kindly sage, perhaps that was a role no barbarian leader, however much he wanted it, could aspire to. Through no fault or wish of his own, the iron, he felt, had begun to enter his soul.

¹ Magistrate.

² An astonishing title, bestowed on Theodosius on account of the beautiful handwriting he displayed in transcribing religious books.