Among the soldiers, the outburst of joy subsided into tired grins all round.
‘That’s marvellous, sir!’ said Malchus. ‘The battle half won already!’
Aetius drawled, still grinning despite his words, ‘Of course it’s not, you dolt – that’s absolute bollocks. The Vandal ships were never more than a side-show. The battle’s less than a hundredth won. But morale is everything. Now, back to your posts.’
Hobnailed boots rang on stone. ‘Sir!’
No more Hun attacks came that afternoon, and towards evening the sky clouded and it drizzled again. In the greying light, Aetius stood on the tower and gazed out. A mosquito hummed nearby. He slapped his neck. Heavy clouds rolled in from the south, the wind got up, and it began to rain harder. He flung an oiled woollen cloak round his aching shoulders. The rain drummed the plains to an indistinct mist. Tonight he might actually get some sleep.
An hour later, and the rain still fell. Out there beyond the moat, its surface stippled like pewter by the rain, the Huns’ ten thousand tents were camped amid mud and swamp. Many bodies had been burned, but many of the Hun dead still lay round about. The stench must be awful in that rough camp. Was it wrong to pray to the God of Love to bring pestilence on men? Yet remember the plagues of Egypt, Aetius prayed.
23
In his tent Attila sat glowering, digesting the news that the Vandal fleet had been destroyed. No, it was no more than a side-show, but it was damnable news nevertheless. Astur’s punishment, perhaps, for his beloved People having allied with Teutons, ancient enemies? But Attila refused to believe that. All the world would be united under his rule one day. Astur still spread his mighty wings over their heads. The sword of Savash still shone brightly. Attila himself liked to forget its spurious provenance, and treated that sword as a holy thing. So faiths grow.
A warrior appeared in the tent door, crouching low. Attila glared at him. All news was bad news these days.
‘Speak.’
‘The Lord Aladar, Great Tanjou. He has the shivering sickness.’
This, too.
In a matter of hours, it seemed, the pestilence had swept through the camp. Unaccustomed to living so densely packed together amid so many numberless tents, unaccustomed to stagnation, accustomed only to the rapturous solitude of the clean and windswept plains, the Hun people found living in a foul-smelling city of felt and canvas disgusting. And their bodies sickened from it along with their souls.
Attila had summoned their families from the north before the frozen Scythian winter, to join them here on the plains and witness their victory. Living like the barbarians of old, warriors, ancients, women and children all together; a mighty host of perhaps half a million, stripping the land bare, looting and pillaging for their daily bread, and yet there was never enough. Hunger and pestilence stalked the camp. The rivers were foul with their refuse. Now many, even the strongest of the warriors, lay sick with fever in their tents, vomiting and shaking uncontrollably. Then within hours, unbelievably, though it seemed they had done no more than drink too much koumiss, or eat bad meat, the next thing they were dead. Widows wailed, pyres burned, and the news kept coming to Attila. He turned away. The enemy must not know. Did they not suffer, too, behind their city walls?
The pyres grew larger, the dead were many, and more of the People were falling ill by the hour. How could this be happening, beneath the great protective outspread wings of Astur the All-Father? Yet the air was heavy, and the wings of the Eagle God stretched from horizon to horizon were a louring grey. They did not seem wings to give shelter to men. The witch Enkhtuya recited many spells and performed many shadowy rituals. For a while the rain ceased and the sun shone, and the mosquitoes hummed by night, and at dawn under the rising sun the wet earth and the befouled rivers stank the worse; and then the rain came again. How the People longed for the peace of the dry and windy plains.
Now the Lord Aladar was sick, handsome Aladar, with his seven wives too many.
‘And, Great Tanjou,’ said the warrior, still crouched, his voice hesitant and afraid, ‘Queen Checa.’
Attila raised his head, his deep-set eyes unblinking, his thoughts inscrutable.
Queen Checa lay on her back with her eyes barely open, her fine, high-cheekboned face drawn into a tightness painful to behold. Attila ordered the women out and knelt by her side. He was in there all night and all the next day. That was why the Hun attack on the city came to a halt. The siege no longer seemed to concern him. His remaining generals, old Chanat, Geukchu, Noyan and Orestes, awaited their orders. But none came.
At dusk the King emerged from the Queen’s tent and stood outside a while, breathing heavily, looking at the ground.
Orestes eventually went to him. He knew what had happened. He was still framing in his mind what he might say – what worthless consolation he might give – for Attila had loved his first wife very much. She had married him when he was no more than an exiled and penniless prince by birth, a bandit chieftain by trade, and she had stayed with him all those bitter years, bearing him sons and daughters, riding with him, salving and tending his many wounds. There had been a deep, unspoken love between them.
Before Orestes could speak, Attila shrugged his powerful shoulders, raised his head and said, ‘All men must die. And all women, too.’ Then he strode away.
Checa was buried without great ceremony at the edge of a flattened orchard. Attila showed no emotion, but a light had gone from his eyes.
Aladar, too, lay on his sickbed, his eyes red-rimmed, his face streaked with sweat, his fine long raven hair plastered to his cheeks.
Chanat entered his tent.
‘Father,’ he murmured.
Chanat knelt beside him. His ribcage heaved with sobs.
Aladar became agitated. ‘Father, I see such terrible things.’ He tried to sit up, but was too weak. His voice rasped hoarse and desperate. ‘I see this tent on fire. I see the whole world on fire. I see the People crucified all along a barren track across a desert. I see even Astur himself ’ – his voice shuddered – ‘a great eagle, with an arrow-’
‘Hush, boy, hush,’ said Chanat, laying his rough hand across his son’s forehead. ‘It is the fever. It is all a fever dream.’
Slowly the agitation subsided, and when Aladar spoke again his voice was calm, though he still fought for every breath. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘let me not die in sickbed. Let me not die like a woman in childbed.’
Chanat clasped his son’s hands in his own and bowed his head and nodded.
Then he called the wives in, and had them bath their lord one last time, and anoint him with oil, and comb his long hair and his fine black moustache. They dressed him in his finest robe, as he stood clinging to the tent post for support, ashen-faced, his vision swimming, his forehead running with sweat, breathing in short, painful gasps. At last he was dressed. He kissed each of his wives chastely on the top of their heads, and commended his sons and daughters to their care, and was helped outside by his aged father.
His mother wept and would not be comforted, trying to cling to him, though if she had he would have fallen like a day-old fawn. In the end she dropped to the earth and buried her face in the dust, her sobs terrible to hear. Two of Aladar’s wives came with little bowls of red and black paint, and brushed his hair back and decorated his face with the symbols of war.
A mounting-block was brought and he was helped up into his wooden saddle by his peers, Orestes and Noyan. He rode the finest white horse of the eastern steppes. He clasped the reins in his left hand, and they handed him a spear which he clasped in his right. His father mounted another horse and reined in beside him. Aladar’s head was bowed and he sagged in the saddle.