Attila: The Gathering of the Storm Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Part I - THE COMING OF THE KING

  Chapter 1 - THE STONE HORSEMAN The steppes of Scythia, near the River ...

  Chapter 2 - THE BURNING TENT

  Chapter 3 - THE CHOSEN MEN

  Chapter 4 - LITTLE BIRD

  Chapter 5 - THE RAID ON TANAIS

  Chapter 6 - THE SPIES

  Chapter 7 - THE EMPRESS AND THE GENERAL

  Chapter 8 - THE NEW ROME

  Chapter 9 - THE STORY OF ATHENAÏS

  Chapter 10 - THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM

  Chapter 11 - THE BARBARY COAST IN FLAMES

  Chapter 12 - THE PRINCESS AND THE SLAVE-GIRL

  Chapter 13 - THE DOOM OF ROME

  Part II - THE BINDING OF THE TRIBES

  Chapter 1 - THE SWORD OF SAVASH AND THE TRIBUTE KINGS

  Chapter 2 - RIDING EAST: MEMORIES OF CHINA

  Chapter 3 - THE FATE OF THE MERCHANTS FROM PERSIA

  Chapter 4 - THE VILLAGE

  Chapter 5 - THE BUDUN-BORU: THE PEOPLE OF THE WOLF

  Chapter 6 - THE TRIBUTE, IN WEIGHT NOT LESS THAN A MAN

  Chapter 7 - A FEW YARDS OF GREY DESERT

  Chapter 8 - THE CAPTURED, THE WOUNDED AND THE DAMNED

  Chapter 9 - GOOD MEDICINE, BAD MEDICINE

  Chapter 10 - HUSBANDS AND WIVES

  Chapter 11 - THE COLUMN OF THE NORTHERN WEI

  Chapter 12 - THE MOUNTAINS

  Chapter 13 - THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM OF THE SYPHILITIC GOD-KING

  Chapter 14 - BAYAN-KASGAR

  Chapter 15 - HOMECOMING

  Chapter 16 - THE SICKNESS OF ELLAK, THE POWER OF ENKHTUYA

  Chapter 17 - ATTILA SPEAKS, THE COUNCIL LISTENS

  Part III - THE HUNGVAR

  Chapter 1 - RIDING WEST

  Chapter 2 - THE IDIOT CHILD

  Chapter 3 - A PUNITIVE EXPEDITION

  Chapter 4 - IN THE COURT OF THE VISIGOTHS: A GAME OF CHESS

  EPILOGUE

  Praise for Attila: the Gathering of the Storm

  ‘[A] rip-roaring account of the boyhood of Attila the Hun, a tale jam-packed with epic set pieces, bloody battles, a fair bit of history and the requisite lusty interludes ... [a] gripping novel’

  Daily Mail

  ‘William Napier has a genius for making the blood-dimmed chaos of ancient history into the very stuff of thrilling narrative’

  Tom Holland, author of Rubicon and Persian Fire

  ‘He brings the fifth century back to horrible life and convincingly sets up the major players of the time for the turmoil that will have the world rocking on its axis ... Attila’s a winner’

  Sunday Sport

  ‘William Napier’s rattling good yarn ... Napier tells a great story, complete with smells and sounds, and lots of gore. The battle descriptions are particularly good . . . I couldn’t put it down’

  Big Issue

  William Napier is the author of two previous novels. He lives in Wiltshire and travels widely. He is currently working on the final novel in the Attila trilogy.

  Attila: The Gathering Of The Storm

  WILLIAM NAPIER

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  An Orion ebook

  An Orion paperback

  First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Orion

  This paperback published in 2007 by Orion Books Ltd,

  Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette Livre UK company

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © William Napier 2007

  Map © John Gilkes 2007

  Copyright © William Napier 2007

  Map © John Gilkes 2007

  The right of William Napier to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner .

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN : 978 1 4091 1673 8

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  Acknowledgements

  Among the many books read and consulted, the most useful were two recent studies, Peter Heather’s The Fall of the Roman Empire and Bryan Ward-Perkins’s The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Both scholars agree that Rome really did fall, that the West thereafter collapsed into a terrible Dark Ages; and Heather argues that it was the Huns who were largely to blame.

  The verses on the ancient Irish King Goll are taken from The Madness of King Goll by W. B. Yeats, while the verse on p 299 is from The Curse of Cromwell. Claudian’s hymeneal hymn is genuine. The other verses are my responsibility.

  More personal thanks to Jon, Genevieve and Angela at Orion for all their enthusiasm, encouragement and patience; to Lizzie Speller and Bywater for help with my small Latin and less Greek; to Patrick Walsh, best of agents, as ever; to the helpful staff of various libraries, including Shaftesbury Public Library and the London Library; and to Iona, for great forbearance, and for everything else, too.

  To Iona

  LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  Characters marked with an asterisk were real historical figures. The rest might have been.

  Aëtius* (pronounced Eye-EE-shuss) - Gaius Flavius Aëtius, born 15 August, 398, in the frontier town of Silestria, in modern-day Bulgaria. The son of Gaudentius, Master-General of Cavalry, and himself later Master-General of the Roman Armies of the West

  Aladar - Hun warrior, the son of Chanat, and one of the eight chosen men

  Amalasuntha* - only daughter of King Theodoric of the Visigoths

  Athenais* - daughter of Leontius, a Professor at Athens, and later the wife of the Emperor Theodosius II

  Attila* - born 15 August 398. The King of the Huns

  Bayan-Kasgar - general and later king of the People of Oroncha

  Bela - Hun warrior, one of the eight chosen men

  Bleda* (pronounced BLAY-da) - Elder brother of Attila

  Candac - Hun warrior, one of the eight chosen men

  Chanat - Hun warrior, one of the eight chosen men

  Charaton (pronounced Karaton) - chief of the White Huns

  Checa* - Queen Checa, first wife of Attila

  Csaba - Hun warrior, one of the eight chosen men

  Dengizek* - eldest son of Attila

  Ellak* - second son of Attila

  Enkhtuya - a witch of the Kutrigur Huns

  Galla Placidia* (pronounced Galla Pla-SID-ia) - born 388. Sister of Emperor Honorius, mother of Emperor Valentinian III

  Genseric* - born 389 near Lake Balaton, modern-day Hungary. King of the Vandals from 428

  Geukchu - Hun warrior, one of the eight chosen men

  Honoria* - born 422, daughter of Galla Placidia, sister of Valentinian III

  Honorius* - born 390. Emperor of the Western Empire until 423

  Juchi - Hun warrior, one of the eight chosen men

  Kouridach (pronounced Kuridak) - chief of the Hepthalite Huns

  Little Bird - a Hun shaman

  Mundzuk* - older brother of Ruga, and briefly King of the Huns

  Noyan - Hun warrior, one of the eight chosen men

  Orestes* - a Greek slave by birth, and lifelong companion of Attila

  Pulcheria* - sister to the Emperor Theodosius II

  Ruga* - younger brother of Mundzuk, a
nd later King of the Huns

  Sky-in-Tatters - chief of the Kutrigur Huns

  Theodoric* - son of Alaric, and himself King of the Visigoths, 419-451

  Theodoric the Younger* - the first of Theodoric’s six sons

  Theodosius II*, nicknamed ‘Kalligraphos’, the Calligrapher - Emperor of the Eastern Empire, 408-450

  Tokuz-Ok, ‘Nine Arrows’ - God-King of the People of Oroncha

  Torismond* - the second of King Theodoric’s six sons

  Valentinian* - born 419, Emperor of the Western Empire, 425-455

  Yesukai - Hun warrior, one of the eight chosen men

  PROLOGUE

  Thirty years passed after the Hun boy, Prince Attila, was sent into exile, and the world knew an uneasy peace. What he experienced during that exile in the unimaginable wastes of Scythia, with only his faithful Greek slave Orestes for company, none can tell. But one can surmise well enough. For scripture warns us that man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. And exceptional men are born to exceptional sorrow.

  In the first volume of my chronicle, I, Priscus of Panium, told of Attila’s boyhood as a hostage in Rome, of his escape and flight through an Italy ravaged and laid waste by the Goths, and of his doomed return to his Hun homelands. In this, my second volume, I shall tell of what came thereafter: of Attila’s return from the haunted wilderness, and the blood-darkened day on which he made himself king; and of how he gathered all the tribes of his own and kindred peoples and welded them into an army vast and terrible enough to fulfil his final ambition. To turn upon the Empire of Rome, that hated Empire which had tormented his boyhood, destroyed his youth, and humiliated his people during the long years of his exile. To make all ready for his long-meditated and apocalyptic vengeance.

  Then let our story resume.

  Part I

  THE COMING OF THE KING

  1

  THE STONE HORSEMAN The steppes of Scythia, near the River Borysthenes, autumn, AD 441

  The old Hun warrior pulled his mount to a halt and squinted eastwards. The strange horseman was still there. He had been there for a day and a night under the hot sun and the cold moon and he had not moved. There was something about him not of this world and the old warrior shivered.

  It was the Month of Storms, though no storms had come yet, and the sky was growing dark with waiting. The wind gusted hard through the brown and dying feathergrass, and in the watercourses of the steppes, dried by six months of summer sun, it whipped up spiral devils of forlorn dust. Grey clouds shifted restlessly in the sky, the horses in the corrals were skittish and high-tailed, and the dogs cocked their ears and whimpered uneasily under the wagons. It was a day of expectation, of pent-up energy. Behind the curtain of the world the spirits were once again stirring and awakening, considering in their minds some fresh irruption of their limitless power and playfulness into the world of men, which men might wonder at and worship but never understand.

  Some said later, after the dreamlike events of that day, that they had seen lightning come sheer out of the sky where no thunder-clouds were. Others had seen the shadow of a gigantic eagle pass over the earth, near the gravemound out on the plain.

  The unknown horseman sat his squat little skewbald stallion on top of the long grave-mound of Mundzuk, the brother of old King Ruga, who had died thirty years ago or more. The songs of the tribe used to say that Mundzuk had not died, but had been miraculously snatched away into heaven by a giant eagle, Astur himself, the Father of the Gods. They said that Mundzuk was taken off, with hecatombs of slain horses and all his most beautiful wives and slavegirls, in the noonday of his strong manhood into the Eternal Blue Sky, to live with his ancestors for ever, fighting and feasting until world end. Mundzuk never passed through the portals of death like men of mortal flesh.

  But after a while King Ruga began to tire of hearing the people sing Mundzuk’s praises, and made his displeasure known. Nowadays few in the tribe remembered so much as Mundzuk’s name. Three decades was a long time among a people where a woman, so they said, was old at twenty.

  The aged warrior remembered, gazing out across the plains towards the grave-mound. And although his old, watery eyes, squinting into the dry steppe wind, could make out little of the strange horseman’s form or features, something about the way he sat, so still and strong, made him shiver. As still and strong as a stone. Time was when the Hun warrior would have kicked his horse forward without a moment’s hesitation and galloped over to the intruding stranger, pulling an arrow from his quiver and knocking it to his bow as he rode. Who was this lone spectre from the steppes who came and sat his horse on the very grave-mound of one of the dead Kings of the People and asked no leave? Chanat was old now, and he hesitated to pull back that powerful bowstring. He would ride back to the camp and tell what he had seen. Soon enough he would die in battle like a man. He prayed to the gods for such a death every night. But not today. Not in a lonely skirmish out on the steppes with an unknown horseman, and none to witness or hymn his passing.

  On the mound, the horseman turned his head a little, and seemed to stare fixedly towards the old warrior. Chanat couldn’t see his expression. His eyes were old and weak. But the horseman bristled with a fierce, still energy, waiting to be unleashed. The wind ruffled his horse’s cropped mane, and the horseman’s dark hair whipped back and forth across his face. There was energy even in the way his fist held his rope reins bunched. Even in the way he gripped his horse’s flanks between his thighs. There was something in it of stone and iron, and nothing so soft as flesh.

  The stone horseman raised his right arm and flicked his hand, just once, in a gesture of unmistakable command. He let his arm drop again and looked away, waiting. The old warrior could do no other but the stranger’s bidding. He who had obeyed no man’s word but King Ruga’s for thirty years or more, heeled his pony and rode towards the mound.

  The stone horseman turned back as he approached and looked down at him evenly. The warrior came to a halt before him. He looked up into the horseman’s face a little while, fighting against belief. But no! It could not be!

  The horseman was perhaps in his middle forties. He wore a short fur cloak knotted at his throat with a knot of rawhide. The cloak must once have been as glossy and dark as a mink’s pelt, but was now grey and dusty with the dust of the plains. On his head a pointed felt kalpak, a cap in the Hunnish style, was drawn down low over his wide brow. His hair fell thick and dark and streaked with grey over shoulders ridged with muscle. His dark eyes glittered beneath his brows, but any humour there was of the fiercest and most sardonic kind. His nose was strong and bony, and told of beatings and batterings received over many long years. His mouth was set extraordinarily hard, and his chin was covered in thin wisps of greying beard. He wore bright gold rings in his ears. His copper-skinned arms appeared beneath his cloak, bare to the shoulder but for two bands of silver, high round his biceps. His muscles were large and as hard as stone. His forearms were corded with thick veins and bunched with more sinew, as strongly shaped as a blacksmith’s but a good deal more scarred. His right arm, especially, was as lined and crosshatched as a butcher’s chopping board.

  Beneath the dusty cloak he wore only a battered jerkin of black leather, knotted down the front, and below that crossgartered breeches and tattered deerskin boots. From a thick leather belt round his waist hung a Hunnish chekan, a short hatchet with a curved and spiked iron head, and a blackened rope lasso. At the other side hung a fine sword, more of Persian or Byzantine than of Hunnish make, with elaborate gold scrollwork in the handle and a scratched leather scabbard that betrayed a shape something like a Spanish blade, with a sinuously swelling then tapering blade and a long, lethal point. Crossways on his back he carried a leather quiver of arrows and the short, lethal sprung bow of the steppes. His hands were bunched into fists on the pommel of his crude wooden saddle, knotted and gnarled with thick veins, the hands of a very strong man. The skin was as weathered and aged as the wind-furrowed skin of his face. All told of a ma
n who had endured years of ice storms and bitter desert winds and maddening noonday suns, and ridden on unbeaten, unbowed.

  ‘So,’ said the stone horseman, his voice a soft rasp. ‘Chanat. Still alive.’

  Chanat said nothing. For an old man, it was true, was nothing but a burden and a shame to his people; he should have died sword in hand on some bright, bloody battlefield long ago.

  ‘I, too,’ said the horseman. ‘Still alive, and come home to claim my own.’

  It was him after all. Chanat looked up again. It was him.

  There was another horseman approaching from the east. This other was about the same age, perhaps a year or two younger. He rode a small bay mare. Battered and travelstained as the other, but lighter in his saddle, his eyes keen and darting, his head bare and his narrow, almost monkish skull balding on top, the fair hair cropped close at the sides. His stubbled cheeks and chin as well as his colouring said that he was no Hun, but he too carried a short Hunnish bow and two quivers on his back, cross-strapped. Even after all this time, Chanat thought he remembered him. The slave-boy, a Greek, one of those fair-skinned Greeks. His master’s faithful servant through all those exiled years of who knew what mysteries, horrors and griefs. The servant bowed his head to Chanat. Chanat nodded back.