The Gathering of the Storm

Part II
THE BINDING OF THE TRIBES
1

The news spread like a plains fire from the Danube to the shores of the Aral Sea: the Sword of Savash had been found!

Savash was the Hun god of war, and it was told in legend that whoever found his sword should wield power over all the earth.

The tale of its discovery was strange.

A shepherd was out on the plains when he saw that one of his animals had cut its foot. He followed the trail of blood back through the grass and a beautiful sword half-buried in the ground. Fine scrollwork, a sinuous, tapering blade, the like of which he had never seen before. Superstitiously he took it back to Attila, and the king seized his opportunity. Raising the sword above his head, he declared that the Sword of Savash had been found.

One man alone among the crowds did not cheer but stared, and then his usual impassive features took on a look of shock. It was Orestes the Greek. He alone among all those cheering people saw that the sword the king held aloft was none other than the sword given to the boy Attila, by a Roman general called Stilicho.

An act of grossest cynicism? The duping of his own people by their cunning, unprincipled king? Dazzling them with a magical ‘sword of the gods’, really forged in some imperial armoury in Italy, in the heartland of their enemies?

But no. It was not so simple. The shock on Orestes’ face gradually settled into acceptance again.

Attila often liked to murmur the mysterious rhyme, ‘Whether we fall by ambition, blood or lust, /Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.’

Orestes understood his blood-brother of old well enough by now.

Attila proclaimed himself King of all the Huns from the Danube to the Wall of China. He received Indian pearls and eastern silks and Baltic furs in tribute. At night he stood and addressed his people in the midst of their feasting, and told them that their empire would soon cover the whole world; and they believed in him.

A great altar of wood was built, as high as the king’s palace. Many animals were slain, and the altar was sprinkled with the blood and fat of sheep and cattle and horses.

In the days that followed, upon hearing the news that spread eastwards over the vast plains of Scythia, many came to visit and pay their respects: petty princelings, rulers over tiny, scattered bands of White Huns from the shores of the Caspian, bow-legged chieftains of the Hepthalite Huns from beside the Aral Sea. From even further east came others who hardly looked like Huns at all, and dressed, you would say, more like bandits than kings. They came on their tough little horses from the lush green grasslands in the shadows of the Tien Shan mountains, and bowed to King Attila, and then they stood again and hugged him as a long-lost friend. He received the same fond greetings from those desert Huns who came from south of the Holy Altai, and the unspeakable deserts of the Takla Makan.

His people’s hearts grew large to see how widely loved and known their king was among all the wide-wandering Hun peoples, and they began to guess where he had ridden in exile, and what sufferings he must have endured and what feats he must have performed to have won the hearts of so many. Like a hero from the mythology of the people. Like Tarkan himself, when he performed his Seven Labours to win the hand of the Tanjou of Baikal’s beautiful daughter, whose beauty had petrified every other suitor into a pillar of sandstone.

Attila received them all gracefully, and showed them the magical sword, which, kneeling, they kissed in silence and awe. Yet more impressive was the demeanour of the man who held the sword. Those hard tribal leaders of the plains and the mountains and the deserts knew well enough that any charlatan could wave a pretty sword aloft and claim it was the Sword of Savash. But here was no charlatan. Here was a man who radiated such power that it thrilled through their bones as they stood before him, like some wild contagion. This was the half-legendary son of Mundzuk, sent far eastwards into exile long ago. They had heard the tale. And now here he stood, king in his own right, possessing an aura of kingship which made the lesser princelings stand proud with fear and devotion. So the camp of King Attila grew.

White Huns and Yellow Huns, riven with feuding and enmity by ancient tradition, gathered among the tents of the People of Attila, and at his urging, his careful persuasion, or sometimes his fiery oratory, they began to see themselves as one mighty people, united by blood, language and the worship of their ancestors, the heroic Sons of Astur.

The gathering of the scattered tribes turned into a full-scale festival of the people, and went on for days, and then weeks. From dawn to dusk there were games and celebrations, and all evening there was feasting and drinking among the tents of the Huns. In the hot summer night in the shadows there were new liaisons formed between the sons of Attila and the daughters of the princelings, and vice versa. And in the morning many a young maiden’s cheeks (though maiden no more) were flushed, and her eyes were cast down in shame, mingled with remembered pleasure; and many a young man’s eyes kept wandering from the game in hand to a girl sitting meekly on the sidelines, and many a ball was fumbled, to the huge scorn and mockery of his fellow players.

Attila took several fresh young wives himself from among the visiting tribute peoples, and they said that they were running out of different names for all his children. It was thought they numbered over two hundred, but no one was quite sure. He presided over it all with unshakeable serenity and iron will. To some of his closest followers, to Chanat and to Candac, it seemed as if the whole camp of the Huns was turning into chaos – and at the end of summer, too. Soon they would have to move to their winter pastures, but the people and their horses and herds were so many that any new pastures would be quickly exhausted. The people of Ruga had numbered no more than three or four thousand in all, with as many horses and sheep again. Now they were ten times that number, and the surrounding steppelands were already grazed bare. The king’s advisers were filled with foreboding at quarrels breaking out over pastureland, quarrels turning into blood-feuds and full-scale internecine war. Little Bird, true to form, sang bloody little songs and rhymes to a half-broken lyre to that end.

But Attila’s smiling serenity never faltered, as if all this celebratory chaos were merely part of a wider plan whose lineaments lay hidden in his breast. Already his followers seemed to trust him. Even Chanat, spitting in the dust and muttering that no good would come of it, knew in his heart that his king saw further than he – further than any man he had ever known.

‘We are too many,’ he grumbled. He and his king and a few of the chosen men were standing on a small mound looking out over the sprawling camp. ‘There is not enough pasture for us all. We are too many.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Attila. He smiled. ‘We are too few.’

He summoned the heads of the different clans to him and they stood round the mound expectantly. It was time for them to bid him farewell and return to their homelands, but Attila had other plans.

‘Those among you who must move to fresh pastures may do so. But they will return to our camp in the spring. This is good pasture when the snows have melted.’ He pointed up at the moon, still a sliver in the early-morning sky. ‘When that moon has waxed and waned twelve times and no more, I will return.’

He told them nothing else.

His brother Bleda he bade govern wisely in his absence. Bleda grunted and nodded.

He made up a body of a hundred men. He selected his eight chosen men, and also his two eldest sons, Dengizek and Ellak, who looked as pleased as puppies. The other ninety Orestes picked from the ranks. Attila had the ten leaders start drilling their own warbands as he had drilled them. He ordered his sons to choose two hundred of the best horses from the corral. Each man would have one horse to ride and one pack-horse, carrying weapons, arrows, tents, provisions. He ordered the women to get busy.

For three days they worked tirelessly. The men hunted marmot out on the steppes and brought them in piles to the women round the campfires. The women worked expertly with their sharp little knives, chattering and laughing incessantly but falling silent any time a man came within earshot. The man would hesitate and waver and then walk away uneasily. What did women talk about all day? The women exchanged secretive smiles.

They flayed the marmot flesh from the skin and smoked it strung out high above the fires. They hung the hides likewise in the dry sun, strung up in gaunt leather shapes like decapitated bats. They drew mare’s milk, rich and creamy and frothing, and poured it into huge sacks of stiff leather. They simmered goats’ milk and poured it into fine cloth bags hanging from wooden posts. The clear yellow whey ran freely down into leather pails at the foot of the posts for making yogkhurt for tomorrow, and with the remaining white curd they made aarul, dried curd cheese that would keep for many weeks out on the steppes.

They inspected the meat store and dismissed the lean black meat with scornful cries of ‘Khar makh!’ choosing instead the large white cudgels of mutton fat barely streaked with shards of meat, such as are loved by the nomad peoples of all harsh lands, to keep their menfolk alive upon the freezing plains they must ride and through the bitter days and nights they must endure.

The last evening before they left, some of the clan elders sat cross-leggged on the ground round their dung fires, wrapped in their patched old horse-blankets, and shook their heads and mumbled that he was crazy, this one. This was no season to be riding out on some fool’s errand, the Sword of Savash in his hand or no. The frost-giants and the ice-giants were stalking southwards from the legendary northlands where there dwelt monstrous white bears taller than the tallest firs. Those terrible giants of ice and frost were covering miles with each stride, freezing the earth beneath huge feet as they came. The People should be fleeing southwards before them, making for the winter pastures. This was no season to be riding out on a war party.

But this one, they said, was no ordinary man. The fire of war burned in his eyes the long year round.

There was little ceremony to mark their going. In the night shamans slaughtered a chosen lamb and cut it open. They took a handful of bloodfilled intestine, a shive of heart, a shin bone and a gobbet of fat and threw them spitting onto the fire for the gods. Little Bird was near, a clay pipe in his hand and hemp smoke issuing from his nostrils, his flamed eyes shining bloodily in the firelight.

The omens were good. They went to the king’s palace to tell him, but he wasn’t interested.

He spent the last night alone in the palace with Queen Checa.

Some said they heard them arguing in the night. Some said they heard the shrill, fierce voice of Queen Checa saying she had not borne his weight on her, and then borne the pangs of childbirth for him nine months later, and given suck from her own breast for two more years, for him now to ride off with her beloved young sons on some wild quest and lose them! Those who heard her voice marvelled at how well it carried. How sustained and forceful was the voice of Queen Checa! They listened for the deeper, slower voice of their king, or perhaps for the sound of lashes and blows. But none came.

At dawn Attila emerged and gave one last order. His sons Dengizek and Ellak would not go, after all. The two boys hung their heads in deep gloom, standing outside the royal palace. Then Queen Checa herself appeared between her sons, smaller than they, in her long quilted gown, her hair scraped neatly back. She looked out over the assembled troop and nodded and smiled her firm smile. Her eyes met those of her husband and he turned away.

He ordered the horses into line and rode at the head with his guard of chosen men. Wives rushed out to dab milk on the foreheads of the warriors’ horses for luck, and some wept. Others told them to bring back many scalps. Children ran about laughing excitedly, waving sheaves of grass or little wooden rattles, or throwing long blades of feathergrass like spears.

They left in light autumn rain.

After only half a mile or so, Little Bird came galloping up alongside the king. ‘So, you ride out without your two fine sons today?’

Attila grunted and said nothing.

‘What is it they say in Rome? As I recall, a jest Orestes told me of. Some jest among those powerful, white-haired senators. “Rome rules the world. We rule Rome. And our wives rule us!”’ Little Bird pondered earnestly. ‘Do you think this is truly the case in Rome, Great Tanjou, my totipotent lord and master? In fact, might it not be the case in all countries and kingdoms of the world?’

Attila said nothing for a while. Then he told Little Bird to get back to the camp with the other women. Little Bird laughed, wheeled his horse round and vanished back over the plain.

When they had gone it was as though the spirit had departed, the hearth-fire gone out in the camp.

Before long it was as the elders had feared. The summer fat of the land was ended, the livestock grew thin and lean, the wind blew colder daily, and then disease broke out: dry scab, mange, glanders killing the asses and the horses and threatening to spread to the people. The cattle reeled at the water courses from mad staggers. Even the sheep and the goats, toughest of all animals, were badged and patched with infestations of lice, their raucous calls reduced to dry, malnourished croaks, drinking in deadly liver fluke at the edge of the fouled autumn streams. There was great dread among the tents that not only would quarrels break out, but so also would the terrible tarvag takal , the plague of buboes, which comes, it is said, from eating sick marmot and kills even the strongest man or woman in days.

A man from another clan was killed by one of Attila’s men in some argument over a woman, and a full-scale blood-feud was only narrowly avoided with lavish gifts of horses, fine rugs and gold. Slowly the other clans, who had come in such high hopes to worship the Sword of Savash, began to drift away desultorily east and south.

‘Remember to return after twelve moons, as your master, Attila Tanjou, bade you!’ called Little Bird after the retreating wagons. ‘Little Bird himself waits humbly for the master!’

Little Bird took refuge from the disconsolate tribe among the children, whom he loved. They sat around him cross-legged, tiny children with their perfectly round Hun faces and rosy cheeks and wide eyes, while he spun them such tales – of mountains that fought each other by spewing burning molten rock and huge boulders out of their mouths; of mammoths that tunnelled underground as fast as horses gallop, and so caused earthquakes in the world of men.

Then he stopped abruptly, and leaned over sideways in his extraordinary way, touched his ear to the ground, and opened his eyes wide with astonishment. The children’s eyes grew wider still. Little Bird said that he could hear ants fighting, two whole miles away. He sat up. ‘Over there,’ he pointed, ‘on the other side of that hillock. Can’t you hear? It is a terrible fight. They are fighting bitterly over who should be king of the hillock. By nightfall many of the bravest ants will be dead.’

The clever children laughed at this nonsense, while the foolish and gullible children looked sad and anxious for the ants. Though perhaps the sad and anxious children were not so foolish after all. Those who think, laugh. Those who feel, weep.

Little Bird told them another story to console them, about a family of mice with whom he was on friendly terms, who were great travellers. They sailed on the Sea of Ravens in seashells, and travelled over the snowbound wastes in winter on little sleds made from blades of grass.

When the children had finally curled up and fallen asleep beside the campfire, Little Bird sighed and took himself away and sat high on his favourite sandy bluff, looking out on the dark sea of grass, and sang: ‘When hunger bites us daily and the wind blows from the north,

And the saiga in their autumn coats go by,

And only sickness stays with us,

Then Little Bird the Wise

Sits apart and talks with his only friend, the sky.’

The next morning Little Bird was seen trembling by a dead dung-fire in the early dawn, and one of the women asked him if he was sick.

‘Nightmares, nightmare upon nightmare,’ said Little Bird, staring fixedly into the powdery ashes of the dead fire. ‘Dreaming of snakes again. Snakes coiled about my throat and about my head. About my heart.’ He closed his eyes and his voice dropped to a whisper. ‘They will be the death of me.’