Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986

by Cahena (v3. 1)

  Perhaps that should not have put an end to the conversation, but it did. They rode on and kept riding on for some time, without any talk.

  * * *

  III

  They passed other shabby little farmsteads with clumps of date and olive and almond trees and one settlement, a clump of mud huts; but they did not stop anywhere, and were alone on the road.

  “We’ve not spoken to anyone since that old farmer,” said Zeoui.

  “Nobody’s so witless as to ride toward Carthage,” said Bhakrann. “The word must have spread about how the town fell, and everybody who wasn’t caught is going the other direction, like us.”

  “Except that old farmer,” reminded Zeoui.

  “He doesn’t think of anything except his barley field and his goats,” said Wulf. “Poor old fellow, I hope he doesn’t get hurt.” He tipped up his water bottle to take a mouthful.

  “Save what water you can,” cautioned Bhakrann. “We may make a dry camp tonight. And the sun must be hot on your head, after you threw away that turban to show us you weren’t a Moslem. Take this.”

  He sidled his horse over, holding out a big linen kerchief patterned brown and black. Wulf draped it shawl-fashion on his head.

  “That makes you look more like a Djerwa,” commented Tifan. “Let your beard grow, to be like us.”

  Far ahead, a gap was visible in the knobby westward range.

  “When do we meet your friends?” Wulf asked.

  “Another day, perhaps, beyond that pass.” Bhakrann drew rein. “Let’s lead our horses awhile. It’ll rest them and stretch our legs.”

  They walked awhile in the evening light, holding the bridles. Bhakrann asked questions. Wulf told of being in the Frankish wars, then in border skirmishes around Constantinople, of the more recent fighting with Moslems outside and inside Carthage. He described the Frankish and Byzantine schools of arms and tactics. Bhakrann responded with talk of Imazighen methods, throwing or stabbing with javelins and using big knives at close quarters.

  “Yet Okba got through you, rode all the way to the eastern sea,” Wulf reminded him. “I’ve heard how he rode his horse into the ocean and mourned because he couldn’t conquer lands beyond — he seemed to think there were lands beyond. You didn’t stop him there.”

  “We stopped him when he came back,” said Bhakrann. “I put my javelin right where his neck and shoulder came together.”

  “You told me that, but they said it was done by someone called the son of the Cahena. Are you her son, Bhakrann?”

  “She calls me her son. How do the horses seem, friends? Let’s ride awhile now.”

  A warm breeze had come up. Haggard rocks and knolls rose to either side of the way. The far-off range darkened under the sinking sun, with tints of sea green and russet and purple, with seamy streaks of gilt where the light touched ridges.

  They reached a dry, jagged fold in the ground, with a fringe of scrubby trees. Bhakrann lifted his hand.

  “We’ll stop here,” he announced. “See if there’s water, Zeoui.”

  They dismounted. Zeoui slunk along the gully where a stream had run, his long beard thrusting down. He knelt, pawed at one place and then another, moved a few steps onward. He dug with his broad dagger. Cham tethered his horse and came to help.

  “You thought there’d be water?” Wulf asked Bhakrann.

  “We’ve found it here before this, even in dry times like now,” Bhakrann raised his voice. “How does it look, Zeoui?”

  Zeoui lifted a handful of dark earth. Bhakrann nodded.

  “That looks damp,” he said. “The horses already smell water. Tie them up until we make sure.”

  Wulf unsaddled his mount and patted the lather-streaked flank. Bhakrann attended to the horses of Zeoui and Cham as well as their own.

  “Here it is,” called Zeoui triumphantly, from where he had dug to almost the length of his arm into the stream bed.

  Wulf tied his bridle to a thorn bush and walked over to see. Cham and Zeoui straightened from the wide hole they had scooped. A flow of milky mud churned there. Cham bailed it out with a brass basin and let more trickle in. Again he bailed. “We can drink it pretty soon,” he said.

  Saddles and wallets and blankets were carried to the shade of the thicketed bank. “Let’s have a fire,” said Bhakrann, picking up dry branches. Wulf, too, moved here and there, gathering an armful. Bhakrann struck flint and steel to ignite a scrap of tinder, laid on dry twigs, and fed larger pieces as the flame rose.

  Cham and Zeoui brought the basin full of water to the fireside. Bhakrann drank, then Wulf, then Tifan. The water was only slightly clouded with silt. Back went Zeoui to refill the basin, while Cham and Tifan enlarged the makeshift well. It overflowed into a low place in the stream bed. Cham and Tifan skillfully built a dam of earth and stones to contain the water. Bhakrann leaned above them to inspect.

  “Soon there’ll be enough for the horses to drink,” he decided. “You should see it here after the spring rains, Wulf; it runs deep enough to drown a man.”

  “Can you always get water by scratching for it?” asked Wulf.

  “Almost always,” Cham said.

  “Then wells could be dug all around and the land could be farmed,” said Wulf. “All this earth needs is water.”

  “Farm here?” Cham sniffed. “Not me.”

  Tifan brought the half-filled water basin to the fire, where big pieces of wood were burning down to coals. Zeoui took a slice of dried meat from a pouch, wiped the blade of his knife, and chopped the meat into the water. He set the basin on stones at the edge of the fire to heat “Do you have any food?” he asked Wulf.

  Wulf found a big wad of dried dates in the wallet of his captured saddle. His companions grunted their applause and broke off bits of the mass to eat. Zeoui watched the meat in the basin, and when it began to seethe he rummaged from somewhere an onion, which he minced up and added. Tifan brought a package of pale-grained couscous. He measured handfuls into the basin and stirred the whole with a peeled twig.

  “What I’d like is an ostrich egg,” he commented.

  “That’s for women and children,” said Cham. “I’ll be satisfied with what we have here.”

  “A cucumber would help it along,” said Zeoui.

  “You never had a cucumber in your life,” Cham sneered. “You’ve always lived on the mountaintop eating couscous, and if you could get clabbered milk you’d think you were at a wedding.”

  The others laughed, and Wulf wondered why it was funny.

  The sun had set behind the mountains to westward and the moon had risen, almost full. The air grew chill. Zeoui dragged the basin of stew away from the fire to cool. Bhakrann stooped above the tank where the water had collected and called for the horses to be brought to drink. After that, each rider noosed a line around his mount’s neck and tied it where it could crop the scanty grass. Then the party squatted and ate from the basin, using fingers to pick out bits of meat and pinches of couscous. The mealy pellets had swelled and softened. They tasted good.

  Bhakrann, sitting with Wulf, wiped his mouth. “That sword you wear,” he said. “I haven’t seen it yet.”

  Wulf rasped the blade from its sheath and handed it across. It was a straight, heavy weapon, longer than Wulf’s arm, a good three fingers broad at the cross hilt and tapering to a keen point. Both edges were honed razor sharp. Bhakrann handled it respectfully.

  “Is this better than a curved sword?” he asked.

  “In some ways, yes. I’m used to it. It can stab to a heart or split a skull.”

  “These marks on it — writing, are they? I can’t read writing.”

  “My name, in Greek. It was made for me in Constantinople.”

  Bhakrann passed it back. “I’ll be interested to see you use it.” He gazed at the moon. “That’s light enough to travel by, but I don’t expect any Moslems right away. And we can use some sleep.”

  “I’ll watch first,” volunteered Tifan.

  “And I’ll watch last, an
d wake us up at the first ray of the sun,” said Bhakrann. “Our fire’s pretty much down to coals. Keep it going, but not bright enough to make some stranger curious.” He looked at Wulf. “If you’ve learned any prayers in all those places you’ve been, say them and sleep well.”

  Wulf hollowed out the earth with his hands, into a depression to fit his body, and wrapped himself in the captured cloak, with his head on his saddle and his feet to the fire. Looking up, he studied the patterns of the stars. Did they mean anything? He had heard astrologers talk about them, but he could not remember what the talk had been, or if it had sounded convincing. He drifted away into slumber.

  He woke to a touch on his shoulder and sat up quickly, his hand on his sword.

  “It’s Zeoui,” said a quick voice. “This is next to last watch, for you to stand. When the moon’s moved far enough, wake Bhakrann.”

  Wulf rose. Zeoui moved away to his own bed. Wulf drew his cloak against the chill and mounted the brushy bank above the camp.

  He peered here and there across the softly lighted plain. No movement. After a while he sought the well and slapped water on his stubbly cheeks. Then he returned to the bank and again he looked in all directions. Among the stones at his feet he found one that he liked and drew his great sword to whet it. He sharpened the whole front of the blade, then edged the back.

  Swaddled in his cloak, he meditated on his present situation and wondered if it was good or bad. Bhakrann had called him lucky that he hadn’t had to fight with all four of these Djerwa. But fighting would come with Moslems, and now that he was with the Djerwa he would be on their side. He respected Moslem warriors, but did not fear them. He’d killed too many for that, in Asia and here in Africa. As to that Imazighen chieftainess, the Cahena, Bhakrann and the others seemed to worship the very mention of her name. How would it be, fighting at a woman’s orders? Probably he’d find out, and soon. The Moslems never let the road grow up in grass before they followed it.

  He strolled over to see where his horse drowsed, its feet planted and head lowered. It had kept up all of a long day with the hardy animals of his companions. He and the horse had more or less learned each other, did well together. That horse would second him well against an enemy. He went to put wood on the fire.

  The soaring moon flooded the plain and the heights with pallor. When he judged it had moved westward for two hours, he sought Bhakrann’s sleeping place. “Bhakrann,” he called, and at once Bhakrann woke, grinning up.

  “Go back to sleep,” he said, and came to his feet in a single swift motion. Wulf lay down again and slept as soon as his head found the saddle. He felt safe with Bhakrann on guard.

  He woke to hear Bhakrann shouting. They all rose, strapping on weapons and shaking out cloaks. Bhakrann dived into a leather bag and brought out fistfuls of flat, dull-colored biscuits. “I saved these for breakfast,” he said.

  Wulf’s biscuit was the size and shape of a clay saucer and almost as hard to chew, but he managed with swallows of water. They filled their bottles and rode away toward the mountains that did not seem so far away in the dawn.

  They had ambled for something more than an hour when Cham, riding at the rear, raised his voice:

  “Look back there!”

  Over a rise half a mile behind them came horsemen.

  “Are they some of us?” asked Tifan.

  “Hardly,” said Bhakrann grimly. “We’re the only scouts sent here to study things. Look, they’re moving faster, want to catch up.”

  Wulf reined half around, but Bhakrann caught his bridle.

  “You said you don’t know any friends in a strange place,” he reminded, “and we don’t know those riders. Six, it looks like — no, seven. Head for the pass. Less room for them to surround us there.”

  They kicked the flanks of their horses and went swiftly onward. Behind them, the strangers also quickened their pace.

  “You have good eyes, Tifan,” called Bhakrann. “Can you make them out?”

  Tifan set his bearded chin on his shoulder. “They wear turbans,” he shouted back “And green and yellow and blue cloaks. Moslems!”

  “Make it to the pass!” thundered Bhakrann.

  They galloped for it, but Wulf did not urge his horse to its utmost. He looked at the hurrying pursuers. One of them, perhaps the lightest rider on the fastest charger, drew ahead of his mates. He waved something like a purple banner on a stick Wulf checked his horse, to fall back from his own companions.

  “Faster!” Bhakrann bawled at him, but Wulf paid no attention.

  That Moslem rider scuffled toward him at top speed. His fine chestnut horse ran like a gazelle. He had left his party behind by many lengths and gained on Wulf, waving that stick that now was recognizable as a lance, with a streamer of cloth upon it. Again Wulf slowed his retreat.

  The Moslem had churned more than two hundred yards ahead of his party. He screamed some sort of shrill war cry. Wulf reined to leftward, circled, and came around to face him.

  He saw the chestnut strive close, saw the rider, wiry and active as a monkey, poise the spear. That rider wore a white turban wound on a steel cap with a spike at the top. Wulf drew his sword to poise it on his thigh. He’d have to do this man’s business quickly. They came at each other. Wulf saw the staring eyes, the tossing black beard beneath the turbaned headpiece. The spear lifted. Wulf nudged his horse’s flank to slip to the side. The spear darted. He nudged his horse’s flank to send it to the side. He struck the spear out of line, shot past, and whirled to come up on the man’s left.

  The Moslem, too, spun his mount, so swiftly that it turned on its rear legs. Wulf rode close and slashed off the lance’s head with a sweep of his sword. He clamped his knees to his saddle and slid his point straight into the middle of the black beard.

  As the Moslem tumbled in a flutter of garments, Wulf cleared his point. He heard a quavering cry. His comrades came racing back. Another whoop, almost like an echo, from the oncoming Moslems. An arrow sang past Wulf’s head. He swiveled his horse to meet the onslaught.

  At that moment the Djerwa launched their javelins in a single flight. Loud they yelled as two of the Moslems bounced from their saddles, transfixed. The others did not wait to meet Bhakrann’s charge. They rode away, as swiftly as they had come.

  Bhakrann pulled up and sprang to earth to drag his javelin free from a fallen body. The other Djerwa chased after the horses from which three enemies had been struck, heading them off and catching them. Wulf, too, dismounted to look at the man he had stabbed. That man was stone dead, his teeth clenched on a lock of his beard. A great gout of blood soaked his yellow tunic. The fleeing Moslems made speed for the high ground to eastward.

  “Hai, they run from us!” exulted Tifan, an, bringing back one of the captured horses.

  “We ran from them as long as they outnumbered us,” said Bhakrann. “We’d have kept on running if Wulf here hadn’t stopped to fight. Now they’ll hurry back and report to their friends. Here,” — he beckoned to Cham and Zeoui, who led the other two captured horses — “come here where I can talk to you. You three take these horses of theirs, they’re faster than yours. Their swords, too, and their food and water bottles. Cham’s your chief, he’ll give the orders. Head back yonder and see how many of them are coming.”

  “More than those we chased away?” asked Cham.

  “You don’t think that just seven were invading all by themselves,” Bhakrann answered, withering him. “Those were the fastest and most daring scouts, out of a force that probably thinks it’s big enough to wipe out anything this far from Carthage and beyond. See what’s to be seen. Wulf and I will head through the pass, and you can catch up and report when there’s something worth reporting.”

  Cham and Zeoui and Tifan plundered the bodies of the Moslems for weapons and steel caps and mounted the horses they had taken. Bhakrann and Wulf held the bridles of the animals they had left and watched them ride away.

  “I haven’t had time to say you reaped that fellow like a ta
g of barley,” Bhakrann remarked. He gazed down at the body. “That’s a good mail shirt under his tunic. You might like it.”

  “None of these three wore armor big enough for me,” said Wulf. “Maybe some of your friends would like them.”

  “Help me get them off these carcasses.”

  They draped the shirts over the saddle of the horse Cham had left. Then they mounted, Bhakrann leading one spare horse, Wulf two, and rode away toward the pass.

  They reached it well before noon. It was a good travelway through the chain of heights, and seemed to be much used. Ambling, they talked. Bhakrann told of the two battles in which Moslems had been beaten, in which Okba, then Zoheir, had been killed. His story sounded as if the Moslems had been considerably outnumbered.

  “How did they form line of battle?” asked Wulf.

  “They didn’t. We struck Okba’s camp before he could form anything. And as soon as Zoheir saw how many we were, he ran. But not fast enough.”

  “Didn’t Koseila get killed?”

  “He got into the fight too far ahead of the rest. Like that man you killed just now. You use a sword well.”

  “When you turn your head in the sun, your beard has a red light,” said Wulf.

  “Yes,” Bhakrann growled. “Yes, it does. Speaking of beards, I see you’re letting yours grow. You won’t look so strange among us. By the way, you seem to think we had it easy in those battles.”

  “Easier than you’ll have it now,” said Wulf. “They’ll bring a big army, and they’ll have all the money and equipment of Egypt behind them, and behind that all the resources of the other places they’ve conquered.”

  “That’s a long way to bring such a load of things,” said Bhakrann. “Maybe we’ll have their plunder when the fighting’s over.”

  The road through the pass was hard-packed. Bhakrann said that trading caravans went through to Carthage and elsewhere. Wulf looked at the heights to either side. Eight or ten camels might have traveled the pass abreast, but no more than that.

  “Good,” he said aloud.

  “What’s good?” asked Bhakrann.