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.
Aetius 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
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 Aetius 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.
‘Aetius, 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 Aetius 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.’
Aetius 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 Ruga. 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.
Then King Ruga did a very strange thing. Slowly and, some who watched might have said, with profound sadness, he walked over to the boy, who remained unmoved and seemingly unafraid. The burly, full-bearded warrior-king reached out and laid his hands on the boy’s shoulders. He looked down at him with an expression that appeared to mingle anger, pride, sorrow and the deepest affection. And then he said, in a soft, deep, rumbling voice that few who strained to listen could hear, ‘Your brother Bleda is a fool, Attila.’
The boy looked up then.
Ruga held his shoulders more tightly. ‘I would have made you my heir,’ he whispered. He blinked his bleary eyes and said even more softly. ‘I would have given you everything. I would have given you my kingdom and my nation, and dominion over the steppelands from the Holy Mountains to the shores of the Roman River. For never will I have sons of my own, nor know another to match your matchless spirit. And now, instead, I should order you put to death… ’
Ruga turned away, and his broad, fur-clad shouders seemed to slump, like the curved, weakened shoulders of an old man.
‘Let them go,’ he said. ‘Let them all go – except Prince Attila.’
Just then, when it seemed that the ordeal was over and the grim sentence was passed, a blur of a figure came tumbling over in the dust towards the king, and sprang to his feet in the centre of the circle. It was Little Bird, and all his attention was on Gamaliel.
‘Why, father, do not set free this old fool here with the long grey beard!’ he cried. ‘For he knows too much, too much. He is come to torment me, to torment all of us, with his wise and grave old sayings, about how the gods are just. His words are like flies which bother my weary ears.’