In that instant the mood of the four boys changed, and they were suddenly dancing around in the forest glade as four equals, slapping one another’s hands and punching the air, whooping like the most barbarous tribesmen in all of Scythia. They hopped and hollered round the huge, bloody mound of the slain boar, and seized their swords and their broken spears again and stabbed at it ceremonially as they circled. They shouted defiance at the boar’s ferocious soul, and even at the unknown gods who made such a creature of blood and horror and set it on the earth with a smile to be a terror and a torment to all men. They smeared themselves and one another with boar’s blood, and then a primordial paste of boar’s blood and moist forest earth, and howled at the high blue sky glimpsed through the waving light green leaves of the springtime canopy. Four different languages chaotically mingled, Greek and Celtic, Latin and Hun, but all crying the same angry defiance, the same bloodstained defiant triumph over life and death.
At last they fell exhausted to the forest floor and gradually regained their breath, their composure, and their awareness of difference and hierarchy. As their hot blood cooled, and their taut-strung limbs relaxed, they even said prayers, each of them. They prayed to the spirit of the boar, begging forgiveness, and to those nameless spirits behind the curtain of the world who made the boar, who bent and formed its curved spine in their iron hands, set with black bristles, who made its thundering hooves, and shaped its terrible ivory tusks.
Attila ordered the two slaveboys to make a fire, and began to slash the boar’s flanks, pulling away the thick hide to reveal the dark pink flesh, the meaty haunches of its powerful hind legs. They spitted the meat on greenwood twigs and roasted them over the fire. Despite the boar’s vast size, the four ravenous boys still made considerable inroads into its carcass, before they sank back into the leaves, unable to eat a mouthful more, and fell asleep.
When they awoke it was growing dark. They warmed themselves by building up the fire, by roasting yet more meat, although none of them felt they could eat another thing, and by taking it in turns to hack at the boar’s massive neck. With only their lightweight swords it was hard work, and each boy hacked himself to the point of sweating exhaustion.
‘But we can’t leave it here,’ said Orestes. ‘They’ll never believe us.’
It was strange that he, like Cadoc, now presumed to speak his opinions before the masters asked for them. But an ease had settled over the four that would not have been possible in court or camp.
Attila nodded. ‘All that meat’s going to waste, anyhow. But we have to take the head back.’
After nearly an hour of hacking and slicing through hide, sinew, muscle and bone, at last the mighty head fell free of the neck. There was some discussion about how to get it back, for the head alone must have weighed nearly two hundred pounds. At last it was decided to build a rough travois of strong hazel sticks, drag the boar’s head onto it, make it secure with more hazel twigs hooped over the top, and haul the travois back to the camp of the Huns, changing ponies every hour or so.
‘We’ll be the heroes of the People,’ said Orestes excitedly.
‘The envy of every man there,’ said Cadoc.
‘And the dream of every woman,’ chuckled Attila.
The other three all looked more or less embarrassed.
Attila grinned. ‘What, none of you have ever done it? To a woman?’
The two slaveboys flushed deeply. Aetius shook his head.
Attila settled back and grinned. ‘Well, well.’ It was good to feel powerful. He liked that feeling. After a while he said, ‘So you miss home?’
Aetius looked up and saw he was talking to him.
‘You pine for Rome?’
Aetius pulled a face. ‘I miss Italy,’ he said. ‘Rome is-’
‘Rome’s a cesspit,’ said Attila.
‘And you escaped it.’
‘I escaped it,’ said Attila. ‘No offence, but… your soldiers are useless. Mostly.’
The two boys eyed each other a little warily, then Attila laughed. Aetius didn’t.
‘And you,’ said Attila, rolling onto one elbow and waving regally at the two slaveboys. ‘You two. You’ll go free and laden with gold the moment we get back to camp.’
They stared.
Orestes stammered, ‘But – but I’ve nowhere else to go.’
Attila said seriously now, ‘You want to stay, Greek boy? Stay with the dreadful Huns, who eat raw meat and never have baths and refuse to bow to the meek dying and rising god of the Christians?’
Orestes looked down.
‘Then stay you will,’ said Attila. ‘But slave no more.’
Aetius was sitting cross-legged opposite Attila, watchful and wary as ever. He thought how like a king the boy already sounded, grandiloquently dispensing judgements and freedom and gold to left and to right with regal carelessness and magnificence.
‘And you,’ said Attila, turning to Cadoc, ‘you’ll go free, too. You almost saved my life.’
‘I did save your life,’ blurted Cadoc indignantly.
For a moment Attila stared at the dark-eyed slaveboy, and Aetius wondered if he might not erupt in fury at this impertinence, like his fiery uncle. But then he laughed, and they all relaxed. None of them wanted to see Attila lose his temper.
‘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 resentfuclass="underline" 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.