Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986
Page 2
“No, he’s not a Moslem,” said a man with red lights in his beard. “He’s smooth-shaven, or he was a few days back.”
The man nudged his horse’s brown flank and came closer, staring at Wulf. His hard, bony face was chopped with scars. Its hairy chin narrowed forward from massive jaws. High cheekbones and heavy brows clamped blazing blue eyes. His nose was as lean as a knife blade. Jeweled plugs winked at his earlobes. “I’m Bhakrann,” he said. “Stop calling us Moors. The Romans call us that.”
“The Arabs call you Berbers,” said Wulf.
“That means the voice of a lion, and we can be lions. We call ourselves the Imazighen. That was our name since the world began. Our tribe of the Imazighen is the Djerwa.”
“I’ve heard some talk about the Djerwa,” said Wulf, looking from one to another, his hand close to his sword hilt.
“He wears a Greek tunic,” said the gaunt man. “I don’t like Greeks either. They’re too apt to change sides. I say he’s a spy for those Moslem bastards, back there burning Carthage down.”
“Can a Saxon fight?” inquired Bhakrann, as though he hoped so, and Wulf spread his hard lips in a grin to show his square teeth.
“Try me,” he invited cheerfully. “One of you after another, on all of you at once if the Djerwa don’t fight fair.”
The gaunt man at the left hurled his javelin.
Instantly Wulf rocked to his right. As the javelin sang past, he shot out his left hand and clutched it in midair. All four of the Djerwa yelled. Wulf studied the weapon quickly. It was five feet long, and its wrought-iron head made up a third of that length. The point and both edges were rigorously whetted. The tough, oiled wood of the haft was clamped with turns of copper wire, about an inch apart. Into the butt was set a heavy iron spike. Poising it, Wulf grinned dryly at the man who had thrown it.
“Sell me your javelin.” He spoke the worst insult a man of that race could hear.
The man’s face knotted in fury, then went blank and open-mouthed. For Bhakrann suddenly roared with laughter.
“Greek or Moslem or Saxon, he’s not afraid,” Bhakrann whooped. “Hai, ready of hand and tongue!” His deep-set eyes twinkled. “I might approve of this Wulf — didn’t you say that was your name? You make jokes in the face of death.”
“That was no joke,” snarled the one whose javelin Wulf had caught.
“You started it, Cham,” said Bhakrann, still laughing. “Let’s say he finished it, without feeding your javelin back to you. Maybe we’ll all be friends yet.” Again the red glint in his beard as he cocked his head. “Wulf the Saxon, eh? You’re right, you’d hardly be a Moslem spy, wearing Moslem clothes and riding a Moslem saddle.”
“I needed those to help me get away,” said Wulf again, still poising the javelin. If they made a rush, a quick throw might pierce Bhakrann, then his sword against the others. But there was no rush, not while Bhakrann smiled like that.
“Tell us how you did get clear,” Bhakrann invited. “You only said you killed one of them outside Carthage.”
“I killed several inside Carthage, while they were taking it.” Wulf began to feel easier, though not much. “I commanded some half-born, half-bred volunteers — shopkeepers, porters and so on. The enemy got in and my men ran and I couldn’t fight all those people alone. So I ran, too, and hid awhile under a heap of baskets in a shed. Then I came up, holding up a finger and saying ‘Allah.’”
“And stayed several days,” said Bhakrann, holding his javelin but holding it low. “Did you hear them talk? Do you know Arabic as well as you know Imazighen?”
“I’ve always learned languages quickly. I heard some officers talking with their general, on the street as I passed by. He said he wanted Carthage totally ruined, then he’d lead his army out to conquer the country. He questioned some prisoners.”
“Their general,” Bhakrann echoed. “Isn’t his name Hassan ibn an-Numan? What does he look like, and what did he ask about?”
“He’s middle-sized, with a gray beard,” said Wulf. “He has a green turban — he must have been to Mecca. He asked those prisoners who was the greatest prince among the Moors.”
“The Imazighen,” Cham corrected him sourly.
“He called them Berbers. One prisoner said that the greatest leader, the most powerful, was a queen called the Cahena.”
“That prisoner told the truth,” said another rider, a man with a long face and a long beard.
“What else did he tell those Moslems?” asked Bhakrann.
“He said that the Cahena ruled all the tribes on Arwa, a mountain some days of travel off yonder.” Wulf jerked his head westward. “That if they could conquer her and her people, no others would give him much trouble.”
Bhakrann gazed at Wulf. “Do you know who the Cahena is?”
“I couldn’t help but hear about her.”
“Ahi,” crooned Bhakrann. “What did you hear?”
“Cahena means sorceress in Arabic.”
“It means prophetess in Hebrew,” said Cham. “Priestess.”
“I’ve wondered about that,” said Wulf. “I’ve never heard that the Jews had priestesses.”
“We’re the Imazighen,” said Bhakrann. “We know Jewish beliefs, but we have other beliefs, too.”
“And I’ve heard that she’s more than a hundred years old.”
“Nothing like that old,” said Bhakrann. “What else?”
“That she beat and killed other Moslem generals who came here — Okba ibn Nafa and Zoheir ibn Cais. That she drove the Moslems out of their holy city Cairouan. I’d heard that before, and the prisoner told it again. I don’t think the Cahena’s name was new to Hassan.”
“Just what is her name exactly?” challenged Bhakrann. “She’s called the Cahena — prophetess or sorceress or priestess, whatever you like — but what’s her real name?”
Wulf shook his head, and his sweaty hair flopped. “I never heard it.”
“I never heard it either,” said the long-faced Djerwa.
“Her name isn’t spoken,” explained Bhakrann, sitting his horse easily by now. “She’s called the Cahena, that’s all. If anybody says her true name out loud, he dies.” Bhakrann peered under a broad palm. “I see trees and a house yonder. Let’s dismount and lead our horses there. They’re tired. They can drink, and we can talk.”
Wulf dismounted with the others and gave the javelin back to Cham, who grimaced. The four Djerwa slung their shields to their saddles, and Wulf took time to see that the shields were of thickened leather, rimmed in iron or brass and painted with geometric figures. The exposed left arms of the four displayed scabbarded knives strapped to the forearms. They tramped toward the cluster of palms, leading their horses. Wulf took time to study these, too.
They were all smaller than his own bay. They were lean and stringy, and would not have been lovely even if they had been well groomed. The saddles were high-pomeled, with girths both forward and to the rear. Behind each cantle rode a cloth-bound bundle.
“All right, what do you think of our horses?” asked Bhakrann, walking at Wulf’s left. Cham moved at Wulf’s right. Wulf felt escorted, perhaps guarded.
“I doubt if they could jump a wall or a hollow as well as a horse from Arabia,” replied Wulf.
“But they can last longer on a journey,” said Bhakrann. “They don’t need much to eat, they’ve slept in the open all their lives. They run well — we kept up with you all the way from outside Carthage. By tonight they’ll have gone about fifty miles, and tomorrow they’ll be ready to start again. I wonder if yours will feel up to it.”
Which meant that Wulf and his horse would be with them tomorrow.
“I’ll care for mine,” Wulf assured Bhakrann. “I wouldn’t want to be afoot in this country,” and he looked across coarse tussocks and scattered boulders.
“You’ve come far across the world,” Bhakrann observed. “You escaped being killed by Moslems, then by us. Call yourself lucky.”
“Call yourselves lucky, too,” sa
id Wulf at once, and Cham snorted, but again Bhakrann laughed.
“I say again, you’re ready of tongue. You act like a fighter. If that’s your trade, you couldn’t have come among better fellow tradesmen. So this Hassan wants to hunt for us, eh? Well, let him find us. We’ve beaten his sort before this.”
“Okba, then Zoheir.” Wulf nodded. “Okba marched all the way west to the outer sea. Then he came back and got killed, with all his men.”
“How do the Moslems think of Okba?” asked Cham.
“I gave him his martyrdom personally.” Bhakrann grinned. “Killed him with my own hand. That’s his sword on my saddle.”
Wulf looked. It was a handsomely curved Arabian sword, in a scabbard of leather. Its hilt sparkled with jewels.
“Okba captured Koseila, one of our chiefs,” Bhakrann elaborated. “Treated him like a slave. Koseila escaped to where we were watching Okba’s march — the Cahena directed us. We knew everything Okba did, every step and instant. A few days later we rushed him and martyred him, as you put it. But you can hear about that later. About you, how did you happen to be in Carthage?”
Walking with them, Wulf told how he had fought as a boy in the country of the Franks, as a young man at Constantinople against both Christians and Moslems, and again at Carthage when the Moslems attacked there. Bhakrann asked questions, and Wulf said he had been an officer to train diffident Greeks and Byzantines for battle, then to lead them in the slovenly defense. He described the sack of the cities, men butchered, women screaming in hysterical terror, children herded away like sheep.
“They’re shipping those children to Damascus,” said Wulf. “Abd al-Melik likes lots of slaves.”
“Who’s Abd al-Melik?” asked the long-faced Djerwa.
“Their caliph,” replied Wulf. “Master of all Moslems and, he likes to say, of all the world.”
“Not this part of the world,” growled Cham. “We’ve showed the Moslems a short way out of here before, and we can do it again.”
They led the horses among warty hummocks, tufted with coarse grass and thorny bush. Up ahead, the palms grew big and grateful in their sight. In the shade crouched a small, square hut of rocks and dried mud, from the door of which peered a grizzled old man. Bhakrann called out to reassure him, and asked for water.
The gray-tussocked face ventured out, then the scrawny body, leaning on a forked staff like a crutch.
“Trouble’s coming this way,” Bhakrann told him, “and you’d better let us tell you about it.”
The old fellow limped toward him. “Trouble, master?”
“I am Bhakrann.”
The name meant something to the old man, for he bowed respectfully. “What’s happening?” he quavered.
“The Moslems have chewed up Carthage,” said Bhakrann. “When they finish robbing and burning, they’ll come here to take the land. But let us water our horses.”
The oldster led them among palms and acacias to his well, stone-ringed and shaded. They dipped with a wooden bucket to fill a clay trough, and while the horses gulped gratefully the men passed the bucket from hand to hand. Wulf drank and doused his hot head. Three goats watched intently from a pen of poles. Wulf and the others dragged on the bridles to keep the horses from drinking too fast and too much.
“Could we have some food?” Bhakrann asked the farmer.
“But I don’t have anything fit for great men to eat.”
“We’ll eat anything. If it’s offered by a friend, we’ll pay for it like friends.”
They sat under the trees, holding their horses. Wulf studied the little homestead. There was a patchlike field of barley, a few date palms and almond trees. Grape vines straggled on rails. In the midst of the barley field a grinning donkey skull rode on an upright pole, its eyeholes staring darkly, to ward off devils. The old man limped out with a traylike basket. It held a stack of limp flaps of bread, some bunches of raisins, a patterned clay jug.
“Thank you, uncle,” said Bhakrann. “One of you pay him.”
“Let me,” said Wulf.
He found a silver Byzantine coin in his belt-pouch and put it into the skinny hand. Eyes above gray whiskers widened. The old man put the coin to his mouth. Maybe he kissed it, maybe he bit it to make sure of its metal.
“You’re too kind, master,” he mumbled.
They took food and talked. Wulf broke a piece of bread. It was of coarse barley meal, probably stirred up with water and toasted on a clay tile. He ate hungrily, for he had had very little food in captured Carthage. His companions talked to him with casual goodwill, as though there had never been a thought of fighting him. Cham passed him raisins. The long-faced one said his name was Tifan. The fourth Djerwa was Zeoui, a short, thick-shouldered man with a brown beard. Wulf drank from the jug. It was goat’s milk, nutty and fresh.
Bhakrann had flung off his cloak, showing a coarse-woven tunic faced on chest and arms with slips of iron. To his left wrist was strapped a knife, around his neck hung a copper collar set with uncut jewels. As he munched, he spoke to their hovering old host.
“When the Moslems come, hold up one finger like this.” Bhakrann pointed skyward with a forefinger like a truncheon. “Hold it up and say, ‘Y’allah il Allah.’”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, there’s no god but Allah. Say that and nothing else.”
“They’ll think I’m crazy,” protested the old man.
“Better to be thought crazy than to be knocked on the head,” put in Tifan. “I hear that the Moslems more or less respect crazy people.”
“Yes.” Wulf nodded. “Some of their chief saints seem to have been mad. Including Mohammed himself, as I judge.”
“He’s had able followers,” said Bhakrann, red glints in his beard.
The farmer clucked at his goats. Wulf and the four Djerwa ate every crumb of the food and drained the milk jug. Then they filled their water bottles. At last Bhakrann pronounced the horses sufficiently rested, and they rode back toward the trail. The farmer leaned on his stick and gazed after them.
Bhakrann rode beside Wulf and asked knowledgeable questions about the Moslems. How many were at Carthage? Perhaps twenty-five thousand, Wulf guessed, with more coming from both land and sea. What were their arms? Wulf described scimitars, metal-faced shields, spiked helmets, lances and bows. What about their cavalry? It was splendid, a large part of the total force, much of it mounted on fine horses from Arabia. The Moslems conquered their nations on horseback. Wulf’s captured bay was a fair example of their riding stock.
“And I still think that an Arabian horse is big enough to knock down one of yours at close quarters,” he said.
“We have javelins to keep them from getting to close quarters,” said Bhakrann. “They’ve come galloping after us before this, I told you, and some were lucky enough to gallop away again.”
Wulf looked westward to the mountains. “When will we see your people?”
“Oh, some days yet. We started a march this way as soon as we heard of the siege of Carthage. We four were ordered ahead to have a close-hand look.”
“How many can you muster against the Moslems?” asked Wulf.
“About what you say they have, twenty-five thousand or so. Of course, a big army means a whole nation of camp followers who can’t fight. What we’re bringing along now isn’t like that — no women and children. They stayed behind to look after the cattle and sheep and goats, back beyond on the Arwa. But if we draft the men from all the tribes, lots of their families will come, too. No stopping them, worse luck.”
Wulf gazed at the heights again. They seemed a trifle closer, but only a trifle, dun touched with green and shadows of blue.
“Is that your Arwa?” he asked.
“No, the Arwa’s much bigger, and about two hundred miles on from where we are. Say two hundred and fifty from where Carthage is getting to be a thing of the past.”
“Delenda est Carthago,” quoted Wulf, more or less to himself.
“Huh?”
“Did this Cato do anything but talk?”
“He was good at war and he was good at the law, and a good farmer,” Wulf said. “He taught people how to make a good loaf of bread, better than what we had just now. And he wanted Carthage destroyed, and it happened, and now it’s happening again. Meanwhile, that Arabian general Hassan wants to find the Cahena.”
“I said she wouldn’t be hard to find,” said Cham from behind Wulf. “But she’ll be damnably hard to beat.”
They ambled along for some moments, thinking about that.
“The Cahena,” said Wulf at last. “We talked about how that means priestess in Hebrew. And the name of your tribe, the Djerwa, sounds Jewish. Are you of the Jewish faith?”
“We have some of that,” replied Bhakrann. “We respect a lot of various gods and keep their feasts and thank them when there’s something to be thankful for.”
“Like the Cahena?” suggested Wulf.
“Like her,” said Bhakrann.
“She calls us her sons,” put in Zeoui, “if we do something to make us worth calling that. About gods, I’ve heard the Moslems yell out Allahu akhbar, God is great. But there’s also the Cahena.”
“We’ve yelled that back to them,” said Bhakrann. “There’s also the Cahena.”
“She must be a great queen,” said Wulf.
“Judge for yourself when we show you to her,” Bhakrann bade him. “She’ll want to talk to you about the Moslems, hear the things you know about them.”
“She’s the Cahena,” said Tifan. “That’s enough for us.”
“It will be more than enough for General Hassan,” said Zeoui.
“Meanwhile,” said Wulf to Bhakrann, “what’s your Cahena going to think of me when we meet?”
“Probably she knows about you already, and is deciding what to think about you.”
Wulf stared across at him. “You mean, she has second sight? Knows things in advance?”
“She knows everything, more or less, when she puts her mind to it,” said Bhakrann weightily. “Spirits speak to her.”