The Gathering of the Storm

17

He sat to one side of the council ring on his plain wooden throne, his great fists clenched round the carven horsehead finials, his eyes blazing. In the centre of the ring stood a dark wooden chest. The chieftains and captains sat round the circle, and beyond gathered more and more curious people. Sitting close to the king’s right hand was his brother, Bleda.

Bleda had said little to him since his return, apart from a polite and formulaic expression of happiness to see him safely returned. But Attila knew why. His brother was complaisant about surrendering the throne to him for now, because he knew that before long he himself would occupy it, with the help of Byzantine arms. Last night, while Bleda lay sozzled in his tent door, a crust of vomit down his front, his unwatched wives mysteriously absent from his tent, Orestes had stepped quietly over the blubbery prostrate form and quickly searched within. He found what he wanted in moments. A little olivewood box, of pleasing Greek craftsmanship, he noted approvingly, containing four scrolls. Letters from the court of Emperor Theodosius, in the customary flowery and flatulent Byzantine style. The first letter began: ‘To Our Beloved Brother, Bleda, son of Mundzuk, son of Uldin the Great, Our Most Favoured Confederate, Our Bulwark against the Eastern Hordes, Our Most Highly Esteemed Ally, Lord of All Scythia under Theodosius, Vice-Regent of Almighty God upon Earth, and Our Very Dear Brother in Christ. Greetings.’

So Bleda was officially a Christ-worshipper now, was he? Orestes grinned and returned the scrolls to the box. Wonders would never cease.

As the light-footed Greek stepped out of the tent-door, he had thought how easy it would be to lean down and open Bleda’s throat. It could be blamed on one of his wives, tripping gaily back from her night with her lover, only to find this pig of a husband blocking the entrance to her tent and to her life. She could be lightly whipped and then pardoned. But no. The traditional fate for Bleda: an accident while out hunting, an arrow carelessly fired.

Attila glanced at his brother and smiled benevolently. The idiot. Who had fathered this grub? What rancid womb had borne him, this retard from the farrow of a retard sow? Bleda smiled blearily back at him. When would Bleda sit upon this throne?

When mule foaled, when foal flew, when an arrow drew blood from the moon.

He turned away from Bleda and began to unfold his plan to his chieftains.

No doubt, he said, as pasture was growing scarce under the mouths of so many horses and cattle and sheep, they should be thinking of breaking camp and turning south, to the winter pastures beside the Caspian Sea.

Grizzled, bow-legged old Kouridach of the Hepthalite Huns nodded and stroked his long, narrow beard. ‘The Caspian winter pastures will be fine and green. These steppes are eaten bare. We are happy to serve, but we must soon return east, or go south for winter pastures.’

Charaton agreed. ‘The Huns are not a people to live in clotted masses, like ants.’

Attila nodded slowly. ‘Yet finer pastures by far await us to the west.’

The chieftains eyed him.

‘By the banks of the Roman Danube, in the territory they, in their arrogance, call Trans-Pannonia, beside the Tisza river. The Hungvar.’

‘Our people pastured their horses there before, in my youth,’ put in Chanat from the other side of the tent. ‘Long ago, when we were allies of Rome, in Uldin’s day. When we fought against our ancient enemies, the Germanic tribes of Rhadagastus, and cut them to pieces on the plains of Italy.’

‘That was long ago indeed,’ said Attila.

‘But since then they have driven your people back east,’ said Kouridach.

‘Driven?’ said Attila. ‘The Romans do not drive my people anywhere, like cattle.’ Only now did he turn slowly to face Kouridach’s direction, and the look in his eyes was pitiless.

Kouridach’s gaze dropped to ground. In the voice of this king, this leader of men, there was the sound of a terrible fury under iron control.

‘Under Ruga,’ Attila said, ‘as well you know, the Huns withdrew east in exchange for Roman gold, like slaves doing Rome’s bidding in all self-abasement. When Rome wanted a troublesome, rebellious boy got rid of, that detestable Ruga did their bidding for more gold.’ He glared around at them. ‘But neither decree from Rome nor chests of gold will keep us from our chosen pastures. Who owns the earth? We Huns are a free people of the steppes and we come and go as we please.’

‘And if the Romans think otherwise?’

‘Then we should bow before them, yes?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Kouridach, shifting a little in his seat, ‘perhaps this empire of Rome is appointed by a higher power. Is it not one of their myths that they are blessed by the gods?’

Charaton concurred. ‘Surely so great an empire, which has lasted so long, and seen so many generations of men arise and pass – surely it must have the favour of the gods? Is it right to ride against it? Are their gods not powerful? Perhaps it would be wrong to ride against it. Perhaps the bounds of this empire are set for eternity.’

No one dared look at Attila. Not Chanat, not Orestes, no one.

His voice could have scoured the skin off a man. ‘Then let us bow before Rome! Let us content ourselves with our permitted Caspian pastures. Perhaps in spring, we might make one or two little mouse-like raids upon the northern borders of Sassanid Persia, to remind ourselves that once we were warriors. Those Sassanid kings who mount to their thrones on golden footstools, and sit there dangling their divine feet in silver bowls filled with rosewater, chilled with handfuls of snow brought down by their numberless slaves from the Zagros mountains. How terrible they are, those Sassanid kings, and how right we are to fear them!

‘And after our little mouse-like raids we should disband again. For this many nomads to flock together is bad wisdom. The wandering Huns were meant for the lonely tents and the wide spaces, but not for high ambitions or mighty conquests of nations! When the Huns flock together it is like the gathering of ravens by the winter sea. A storm is presaged. Is it not so?’

They hardly knew how to respond. One or two nodded in cautious and kingly agreement. Others murmured among themselves, putting careful points, attending politely to the elders, nodding in agreement, and many began to concur that perhaps there really was nothing to be done for now but go their separate ways, with hearts rejoicing inwardly at the marvellous discovery of the Sword of Savash, and at this newfound unity among all the tribes and kindred of the Huns.

Suddenly Attila was on his feet, the Sword of Savash in his powerful fist. He drove it daggerlike into the dusty ground. ‘That is what I think of your wisdom!’ he roared.

Not a few of his listeners pressed back on their stools in fear. The crowd beyond stirred. The sky above seemed to grow darker.

‘I tell you, a storm is presaged! A storm such as the world has never seen. A storm from the east.’ He flung his arms wide. ‘We fellow Huns and brothers-in-arms, we are that storm. You say we are too many. I say no, we are enough. You say we ride south. I say no, we ride west, to settle back upon the Hungvar, where we pastured our horses in the proud days of King Uldin. But not as allies of Rome. Not this time. As enemies.’

He rounded on Chanat. ‘You were within the empire once. You went there, to the emperor’s court in Ravenna.’

Chanat cast his mind back to that long ride to Ravenna. He grimaced. ‘I remember Ravenna. It smelt bad, like a camp ditch after a month without rain.’

‘And are you telling me now that this rotten stinking cadaver of an empire still has jurisdiction over the Hungvar? You, old Kouridach, whom I took for a wise man: that Rome has jurisdiction over the whole earth? Who gave it jurisdiction? Who permitted it suzerainty?’ His fury grew, and those closest to him felt it, like the dark, bruised sky overhead, waiting to burst.

‘Who set the bounds to this vaunted empire that you hold in such craven dread? Him who laid the foundations of the earth? Did he set the bounds, as the Romans in their arrogance and impiety proclaim? No!’ His great fist crashed down upon the lid of the chest with such violence that they thought it might splinter beneath that hammerblow. His voice roared out, and the very walls of the tents around the council ring seemed to bat in the wind of his passion. Their ears were seared. His voice was the voice of thunder and darkness. They listened in awe, pressed back into their seats. The people beyond were spellbound. He paced among them, his eyes burning into their quavering souls, his rage and power like that of an un-caged lion. It was as if someone had put a torch to a huge bonfire in the centre of the circle, and it now blazed up and threatened to scorch and then engulf them all.

‘Who decreed that the Hun people should not wander the earth as they will? Who forbade their wanderings? Who set the bounds on where they might pasture their horses? Who set the fences? Him who made the earth? No!’ Again that mighty fist crashed down. ‘Astur the All-Father, who made the earth, gave it to us and to all men, equal and without distinction under the right and God-made Sun, as he gave us souls, as he gave us life and breath and freedom to ride the livelong day over the unbounded plains. He set no fences. He made no petty laws. He built no customs houses, established no river crossings and toll-roads and imposts, decreed no payment of taxes to idle parasites in their pristine white robes in their gorgeous palaces. He made us free as he made all men free. He forged no chains for us, his children. His delight is not in the lifeless laws of the Romans, in the debates of their senators and the petty decrees of their courts. I have seen these Romans myself, and I would have you remember it well. With the clear and undimmed eyes of my childhood I saw those contemptible pygmies of men in their cities. I smelled the stink of their fetid streets. How dare you conflate their pompous pronouncements in their courts of law, their paper bills and levies of taxation, with the will of the everlasting gods! How dare you!

‘I have seen their chests and bribes of gold, my brothers!’ He gave the chest a furious kick. Its ironbound lid flew open, and they saw that it was filled with dully shining coins. His burning eye fell on Bleda, and Bleda looked away. ‘That is all their power amounts to!’ He slammed the lid shut again. ‘I know all, all! Their bribery of Ruga, their collusion in the murder of Mundzuk, my father, this you know – you all know – as I, too, know the truth of it. Shuffle with guilt you may, but then cast it off! You wonder: do I not hate my people? Do I not scorn them for their cowardice and passivity? Where have been the glorious battles and triumphs of the Huns these past three decades, during my long and bitter exile when I laboured and suffered in the wilderness? No, I do not scorn them. I love my people as a king must love his people if he would lead them with all conviction. And I would cover them in glory. They are a great people. They are an untamed horse-people of the plains, and they will come down on Rome like wolves on the fold.’

His voice grew still more in strength, a booming, rumbling bass reverberating in every head there. Abruptly he took a stride forward, set one mighty hand round the throat of old Kouridach and shook him. The others were astonished but powerless, immobile. Even had he torn into the old chieftain’s neck and ripped his head from his shoulders there and then, as it seemed to them in his frenzy he might do, none would move. He had killed many a man with his bare hands before. Now he shook Kouridach like a thing of rags, like an old pelt, words still pouring from him in violent oratory the while, and then let him drop back onto his stool and turned away, still ceaselessly carrying them all forward on his torrent of baleful words. Not persuading them by any sophistry, but battering them into submission with sheer rhetoric, with an almost divine anger at their stupidity, their smallness of spirit and pettiness of mind. Whether or not they agreed with him in their intellects, their hearts swelled and burned within them at his words. They would do his bidding. They could do no other but follow this storm-force of nature, powerless as husks of wheat driven before the wind.

He released the choking Kouridach and turned away.

‘Do not mutter to me, old Kouridach of the once-proud Hepthalite Huns, that Astur the All-Father has pronounced and approved the imperium of Rome, or decreed that she was destined to decide the fate of the world since before the world began. Astur did not bid us obey Rome’s paltry man-made laws, or hoard its gold in lieu of our own glory. Then who? Who is this power you so dread, which forbids us from pasturing our horses on the European plain where we have pastured them many a winter before as in my grandfather King Uldin’s time?

‘I will tell you of this power. I lived under its shadow, when I was a helpless child, and I have spied on and patrolled that power through the many eyes of my spies since my return. The power you dread is a whining puppet-emperor called Valentinian – the drooling offspring of incest and wine – and his mother, Galla Placidia her name, a cold, green-eyed monster with icicles for teats. That inbred buffoon, her son, I shall slaughter like a diseased sheep before his mother’s very eyes. This royal family is my bane, they hunted me through Italy like an animal, they slew my father: my curse is upon them. I shall cut them and their seed off for ever, their blood and their lives are forfeit. You Hun princes who dread him, how dare you dread him! Him and his armoured footsoldiers who move like snails over the battlefield and are marshalled like so many performing beasts of burden. Who are these Romans to dictate to us where we may pasture our horses and pitch our tents?

‘You speak of the Emperor of Rome as if he were Astur himself.

‘Blasphemy!’ The fist crashed down yet again. The voice scorched the air and their ears burned with his words.

‘You sit and puzzle and ponder like old women over who made the laws and dictates of Rome. Who established it as lord of the earth, robed in imperial purple. You propose to settle on the Hungvar in all timidity, if at all, with the permission of Rome. And you will allow Rome to be your rule and ruin. To tax your kin and kine, as Rome taxes and leeches the lifeblood from all its subject peoples, using that tax to pay its legions to oppress you further! Do you not see? Do you not see a great evil? Yet you would bend your necks to this yoke? A tariff on your horses’ every footfall, a capitation on every ewe in your flock, your very breath excisable. Because this is the fiat and firman of the gods?

‘Blasphemers!

‘It is Astur and the gods above who made the earth and forged the chains of the mountains, who established the bounds of the lands under the sun and poured in the tumultuous seas from their earthen vessels. Have you not heard? Have you not heard the poets and the shamans tell it often enough by the campfire in the night, or were you too drunk with koumiss to open your ears?

‘Have you not understood the will of him who made the jaws of the leopard? Him who forged the iron hooves of the warhorse, who crumpled the Five Kings in his hand, who brought us into this world which he made from a clot of his own blood. Who stretches the sky over our heads as a canvas, who spits forth lightning, who roars in the thunder, whose tears are the rain that drums the plains into an impenetrable mist. Who set the stars to burn in the heavens, who cut the moon from silver and the sun from gold, who crushed the life out of the dead places of the Kyzyl Kum with his fists – you know them well, my captains, those red sands and those desert places, I have shown you them all! Who forged the chains of the Tien Shan, who breathed fire on the deserts of the Takla Makan and burned the life out of them, who tore up the earth and rent canyons with his claws, who laughed to see the raging lion in the waste places, who rejoiced at the stampede of the saiga, at the thunder of their thousand thousand hooves. Who moulded the untold deeps of Lake Baikal, and made creatures to dwell there, huge and silent and glassy-eyed, which no man shall ever see or dream of even in his wildest dreams or nightmares. All, all is for the joy and delight of God, who is vaster than you dare to grasp in your petty imaginings. You think the Emperor of Rome, that pocky, whining whelp, is appointed by him and so should command our obedience! We are the sons of Astur the Father of All! It is blasphemy so to tremble before any mortal man with the god of our fathers at our side. Dare, dare… His delight is not in those who chain and punish and restrict, but in those who dare…

‘You have heard his voice in the beating of the shaman’s drum, you have seen him turn the steppes to ice with one cast of his hand, and with another bring them to life again and strew them with all the colours of spring. Out of his hands came the sun and the stars, the constellations in their courses, the night time and the bright day. Can the Emperor of Rome, howsoever decked in majesty and arrayed in the beauty of gold and rubies, send forth lightning by imperial decree? Can he number the sands of the shore? Does the eagle mount up at his command, and the hawk stretch out her wings towards the south? Can he bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? He is mere mortal flesh, and you dare to sit before me here and tell me that you fear him as if he were a god. Do you so fear man that you do not fear Astur? Do you condemn his ways, do you disannul his judgement?

‘Blasphemers!

‘He scorns the multitude of the city, and the range of the mountains is his pasture. The multitudes in the city know him not, because they have chosen to dwell in a little false world made by man. Who has given the warhorse strength, and clothed his neck with thunder? He scents the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, the shouting of the gleaming battle lines.

‘Where were you when he made the iron talons of the eagle, the curved yellow beak and the amber studs of his eyes, and breathed life into him and bid him go forth to be the terror of all birds under heaven? When he made the kicking hooves of the wild ass, the white teeth of the wolf, the claws of the bear, the tusks of the boar, the shoulders of the bison? Do you claim equality with their power? What folly, then, to claim equality with him who forged them in the furnaces of heaven before you were made! What were you then? You were less than a baby’s cry.

‘He made the tiger, the chief of the ways of god, with his bones of adamant and his sinews of steel. What can you compare to him? Will he make supplications to you? Will he speak soft words to you? And will he be a gentle plaything for your maiden daughters?’ Attila laughed and the sound carried far over the heads of his numberless listeners and was terrible. ‘Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is his. And he has given it to all men, equally and without distinction.

‘Bounds and laws, degrees and distinctions, toll-roads and customs-houses, exactions and imposts, the law’s arraignments and the court’s decrees, the solemn pronouncements of kings and chamberlains and eunuchs and all the petty panoply of man’s deluded government on earth – what have these to do with the high eternal ways of god? You fools! These arrangements and orderings of man, which seem so noble and grand, overawing all but the true rebels and sons of god, elicit nothing but scornful laughter from the throat of the All-Father. Do you not know? And the pompous articulations by which kings and governments tell the people that they are appointed of god – do you not know? These are the scandalous jokes of god. And this sword? Did it come from god? Did it so?’

He pulled it abruptly from the ground where it had stuck and tossed it clattering onto the chest with extravagant contempt. Then he glared around balefully, as dangerous as a maddened bull in the arena, challenging them to find the bright steel vein of truth in the tangle of his taunting words and contradictions, and to make sense of the rage he vented on them. Few now believed anything of that strange decorated sword. It was, after all, just a sword. But they believed all the more in him.

It even seemed to some of them there that the thunderous voice that filled the council ring and even the whole camp, a camp so vast yet barely big enough to contain him and his primeval fury, the voice that demanded Who, Who…? It seemed to some that that voice was the voice of Astur himself, and they feared him beyond the power of words to tell. All the rumours that he was as much shaman as king, as much wizard and witch-born spirit as mortal flesh and blood, filled them with terror and at the same time with growing elation. It was not only the power of his words, of his voice, of his blazing presence. It was the intimation that he was party to something that they dreaded and could not understand, but only worship.

With him at the head of their horsemen, nothing could stand…

He dropped his voice, and said with a note almost of sadness, ‘They have taken the earth from you, my people. And with it, it seems, your hearts. But I will win back the earth, and with it your wild hearts.

‘The earth is the gift of the gods and everything that is in it, and not a possession since time before time of the Romans. It is not the great-hearted and eternal gods who bid men huddle in stinking cities and behind defensive walls and make laws and bounds and fences. The gods gave men the earth for their home. The wide green measureless inexhaustible earth! And the great sky above, look you, the measureless and eternal sky! It is Astur who forged it all out of a clot of his own blood, it is the Great Mother who bore the living creatures from her womb, She is the amber butterfly on the birch tree, she is the dewdrop in the early sunlight, there! There! You know these things in your hearts, why do I tire my voice in telling you? These are the wellsprings of power in the world, these are life, and kings and governments are something other than life. We shall ride west and break down the walls and fences of the Romans, my friends. That is our destiny. That is the decree of Astur. I have promised you gold, glory, empery, and you shall have them all, in abundance. In good measure, pressed down, and running over!’ He laughed harshly, as if at some private joke. ‘You have ridden with me this far, and you shall have your reward. Let the way of the Hun horsemen be the way of all the world. And as for those lawyers and tax-gatherers and senators and conniving politicking courtiers and murderous plotting eunuchs in those perfumed courts of Rome, may their throats be slit open by our very children! May their bloated white bodies be hung from the battlements of their burning cities and scorned even by the crows!’