Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986

by Cahena (v3. 1)

  The Cahena made herself a little tent of a cloak and a saddle blanket, propped on sticks. The others huddled close to the fire, wrapped in mantles. Men of both escorts took turns at watching and tending the fire. They sang softly, plaintively.

  Wulf lay wakeful. A bird, or perhaps a big insect, chirped in a palm. The dark of night was not so dark. Small green lights showed in pairs, like eyes. The sentinels put more wood on their fire and one of them sang:

  “What god may hear, help us;

  Protect us, what god may hear…”

  The eyelike green sparks gave back, but stayed in sight. Wulf dozed, wakened, again saw the lights prowling. Over him, close over him, fluttered a big bat, snatching bugs in midair. Those ribbed wings were what devils wore, in pictures Wulf had seen.

  At dawn, the lights did not show. Wulf was glad of that as he ate a barley cake for breakfast and rode on with the others. He reflected that when he and the Cahena came back, they would have only half as many in their party. He hoped that they would camp somewhere else.

  Noon, and Yaunis and his men ambled off on a side trail. The Cahena led on, and as the sun sank they saw where Cirta was.

  Here was a town much bigger than Tiergal, built on a conelike height. It had neat stone houses up the slope and at the top. A river tumbled to bracket two sides of the place. An old, old road with troubled stone paving led in. Two armed guardsmen moved as though to bar the way, then saw the Cahena and fell down to kiss the shadow of her passing horse. The party entered the town. The houses were of cut stones, probably salvaged from Roman ruins. People recognized the Cahena and murmured applause. On the main street, past shops with canvas-shaded fronts, they came to a sort of palace.

  It was a broad building, also of reclaimed stones, with hammered iron bars on the windows and a tall porch with ancient pillars. The guards at the door kissed the Cahena’s shadow, then took charge of the horses. Inside, a portly eunuch made obeisances. He was the first eunuch Wulf had seen since leaving Carthage. Then a man strode into the hail and louted low before the Cahena.

  “Wulf, this is Lartius. He is chief here and over other towns,” the Cahena said, making introductions. “Lartius, Wulf is my military adviser.”

  Lartius looked to be in his forties, as tall as Wulf, but elegantly slender. His smooth-shaven face had slightly hollowed cheeks and a shallow jaw. His eyebrows made a single black bar above his nose. His tunic was liberally patterned with gold thread. His half boots were far more finely made than Wulf’s own.

  He offered Wulf a sinewy right hand with jeweled rings on three of its fingers. “Welcome,” he said grandly. “We hear all the way to Cirta how you’re a fighter and a planner.” Again he bowed to the Cahena. “Will you come to my parlor? It’s dinnertime. I’m honored to entertain you.”

  The eunuch led the Cahena’s warriors away somewhere. Lartius conducted the Cahena and Wulf into a spacious chamber with lounges and polished tables, and wall-paintings of horsemen hunting bulls and lions. He gestured them to seats and clapped his hands loudly. Another eunuch appeared, and Lartius commanded him to send in dinner.

  That dinner was fetched in by three serving-girls, all of them sleekly naked except for brief loin coverings and embroidered slippers. They swayed and giggled as they served hot roast meats and wheat bread. “Our wheat flour comes from Carthage,” said Lartius. “When can we get more?”

  “When we capture Carthage and open trade again,” said the Cahena, eating a morsel.

  The girls poured wine into silver goblets. They smiled at Wulf, were gravely careful in serving Lartius and the Cahena. Lartius lifted his goblet.

  “Here’s to our success against this invasion,” he said. Now he looked at the Cahena, furtively admiring her. Wulf detected honey in the wine and did not feel that it was improved thereby. The swaying girls cleared away the dishes. Lartius watched them go, and drank again.

  “War’s inevitable, eh?” he said. “How do we fight them?”

  “Which means, you’ll help us,” said the Cahena.

  “Of course. My towns can muster maybe twelve thousand. I’ll command in person.”

  “I’ll command,” corrected the Cahena, in the gentlest and most musical of voices. “Wulf here will tell you how we’ll fight.”

  Lartius arched his fingertips together. “Go ahead, Wulf.”

  Wulf talked about more javelins per man and stout spears planted against charging cavalry. Lartius nodded approval, rather grandly.

  “I have men who can fight on foot or on horseback,” he said. “And some archers.”

  “Archers?” repeated Wulf eagerly.

  “We’ve had good archers since earliest times. We hunt with arrows, even kill lions. Will bows be good in this fight?”

  “Yes,” said Wulf. “Formations of them on the wings to shoot into an attack, then to fall back and shoot over the front formations into the thick of the enemy. Bring archers if you can.”

  “I can,” was Lartius’s lofty promise.

  More talk, about communications with all tribes, about scouts from Cirta to watch for possible Moslem moves toward the coast. Lartius named some of his followers as good scouts. Wulf wondered how good they were. They all drank more wine, and the Cahena said that she was weary from her journey.

  Lartius rose and led them to broad stone steps, and up. Curtained doors lined the hall above. “Here is where I hope you’ll be comfortable, Lady Cahena,” he said, pulling a curtain wide. In the half-light beyond showed another curtain at the rear.

  “An entry, with the main chamber behind,” said the Cahena, peering. “I want Wulf to sleep in this entry as a guard.”

  Lartius blinked. “A guard, here in my own house?”

  “I’ll rest easier with one,” she replied gravely. “Wulf is alert and trustworthy.”

  “Very well,” said Lartius. “I’ll send a mattress for you, Wulf. Then good night, and a pleasant rest.”

  Lartius strode away. The Cahena went in and passed the inner curtain. Wulf waited at the door until one of the fat eunuchs brought a wadded mattress and a quilt. Wulf put the mattress in the outer chamber and sat on it to doff his boots and tunic, and laid his unsheathed sword on the floor beside him. Stretching out, he relaxed his muscles and reviewed in his mind all the things that he and Lartius had said.

  Then, a rustle from the Cahena’s chamber. She came out and lay on the mattress beside Wulf. He did not know whose arms reached out first, his or hers.

  * * *

  XI

  The Cahena and Wulf were dressed and out in the corridor by sunrise. They summoned their warriors and ate a hasty breakfast of hot bread in the big room downstairs. Lartius joined them, sleepy-eyed in a rich green robe. One of the eunuchs brought parcels of food for their homeward journey, and Lartius bade the Cahena a ringing farewell.

  “What do you think of Lartius?” the Cahena asked Wulf as they rode. Her tone was utterly businesslike. Nobody could have guessed how tempestuous she had been with him the night before.

  “I don’t know yet. It was my first meeting with him,” Wulf replied. “I wonder if he’ll really fight.”

  “I wonder that, too. His people haven’t fought much. Oh, maybe little actions against smaller chiefs, little clashes with robber bands. I hope our Imazighen can teach his men to fight.”

  “We might bring them down to us and see how they form up and act,” Wulf suggested.

  “Good,” she agreed. “Now, if we make good time, we’ll pass that campsite where things were uneasy. Just stop to fill bottles and water the horses, then on to camp a good way below.”

  Late in the afternoon they came to the water hole to replenish skin bottles. Vultures scoured the sky again. The party felt glad to ride on. At sunset it stopped at a hollow where grass grew for grazing, and sat down to eat what Lartius had provided. There were rolls of fine wheat bread, with slices of cold meat and dried figs and grapes. Wulf slept well.

  Up at dawn again, breakfast on the remains of supper, and southward up the
tufty-grassed slope of Arwa. As the sun dropped low, they saw the houses of Tiergal. Coming near, Wulf heard music. Some sort of flute wailed, drums beat, voices sang. “What’s this?” he asked one of the escort.

  “The people celebrating,” was the reply.

  “Celebrating what?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll find out.”

  The main street was thronged with people in grotesquely gaudy dress. There were cries and snatches of song. Wulf hurried to his cave, put his horse in Susi’s charge, and walked back to the center of town.

  People yelled at him through masks of garishly painted cloth or leather. Some wore heads of wild dogs, bears, homed goats. Somebody in fluttery red and white draperies rushed to him, the hideous mask showing big wooden tusks. Up came two hands to pluck the mask from the smiling face of Daphne, the smith’s daughter.

  “We’re having fun,” she cried. “We’re worshipping.”

  “Worshipping what?” Wulf asked her.

  “Oh, everything. We’ll dance. Come dance with me.”

  “Maybe in a while.” He looked to where the Cahena had dismounted, people clustering to fall down and touch masked faces to her shadow. Her hands waved greetings. Suddenly all fell back to the sides of the street.

  “There’ll be a play,” Daphne said. “A show, look!”

  Women ran and screamed. They were pursued by long-robed men with turbans wound Moslem fashion. Other men rushed out to face these. That party wore hooded Djerwa capes. They threw toy javelins made of reeds, with feathers for points. The men impersonating Moslems fell and lay as if dead. A thunder of applause went up.

  Daphne was gone. Djalout drifted close to Wulf.

  “It’s good to see them happy in their worship,” he said.

  “Somebody said they worship everything,” said Wulf.

  The music of flute and drum rose cheerfully.

  “Perhaps not everything,” Djalout said. “I doubt if you’ll hear many addresses to Yahweh or Jesus, certainly none to Allah. There are plenty of older gods to invoke.”

  Someone with a long-beaked bird mask hurried past.

  “Maybe those beast-headed gods came all the way from Egypt,” Djalout was saying. “Yonder went something like Thoth, though probably not so well educated. The dog-headed one over there might hark back to Anubis.”

  The Cahena stood in front of a shop, smiling to her people. Couples formed in the street and moved to the music.

  “I don’t see anyone with a bull’s head,” Wulf remarked.

  “And you won’t, and don’t say the name. Nobody wants to be reminded of that one, including me.”

  Daphne ran up, the hideous mask on her face again. “You said you’d dance with me,” she hailed Wulf, and caught his hand and led him into the maze of posturing, stamping celebrants.

  The music twittered and swirled. Wulf did not find it difficult to dance. He had often danced in other parts of the world. He and Daphne stepped it out face to face, swung around each other back to back, then face to face again. He saw the Cahena watching, not smiling now. At last he bowed himself away and headed for his cave again. Daphne was disappointed, he guessed. Surely the Cahena was not disappointed that Wulf had left the dance.

  At home, he mended a worn bridle rein. A servingwoman brought him bread and goat’s cheese and a vase of milk. He ate with good appetite. As he finished the last morsel and drained the last drop, Mallul walked in to say that the Cahena required his presence at a council.

  He found her sitting in the big chamber with Ketriazar and Daris and two Djerwa subchiefs. Zeoui of Bhakrann’s scouting party stood at attention to make a report. He told of being in wrecked Carthage, pretending to be a volunteer for the Moslem army. Hassan had addressed a mob of recruits to say that conquering the Imazighen — Maghrabi, Hassan had called them — would give the victors a whole generation of beautiful women. “Like the houris of paradise,” Hassan had promised. Listening, Ketriazar and Daris and Wulf looked at one another, then at the Cahena, who was so beautiful.

  “If they wait for women until they beat us, they’ll go womanless forever,” vowed Ketriazar at last. “Lady Cahena, what did Lartius promise you up at Cirta?”

  “Twelve thousand men,” she replied. “With what we can raise, that should be enough to beat this Hassan, this so-called good old man.”

  “You’re sure, Lady Cahena?” asked Daris.

  “I’ll make sure. You can watch. Zeoui, go back to Bhakrann. Say that I thank him for the good spy work he’s doing.”

  Zeoui departed. The Cahena rose.

  “I’ll make sure,” she said again. “I’ll call the spirits to tell me.” She pointed to a black curtain at the far corner. “Mallul, go and lift that.”

  Mallul crossed the floor and tucked the curtain up. Wulf saw a deep shelf cut in the rock, set with faintly twinkling objects.

  “Come close,” said the Cahena.

  They followed her to the shelf. She knelt at a brazier on the floor, scraped flint and steel for a spark to kindle a clutch of broken twigs. When it blazed up, she put on kindling, then handfuls of charcoal. They watched as a red glow was born, sending up a writhing thread of vapor.

  “And now,” she said, so softly that Wulf barely heard her. She had taken a skin pouch from the shelf and from it tweaked powder to throw into the brazier. Green flame sprang up around the edge.

  “And now,” she said again, and threw in another pinch. Red fire rose within the ring of green. A whisper came into the air, as of stealthily chanting voices.

  The fire gave light to show the figures on the shelf. They were small, crudely modeled images of dried clay, with animal heads. One had a dog’s head, one a boar’s head, and so on. Wulf saw no bull’s horns to be an image of Khro.

  The Cahena cast in yet more powder. White, dazzling fire shot high at the center of the brazier. Its light showed more of the things on the shelf. At one end stood a rough model of a seven-branched candlestick. A crucifix of dark wood, with the white figure spread against it, hung on the rock at the opposite end. Judaism and Christianity, their symbols among the collection of gods.

  The Cahena bowed above the brazier. The colored lights played on her face. The whispers were there, all around her. She, too, spoke, but Wulf did not hear her words. The green and red and white flames sank, and abruptly they died. The Cahena lowered the curtain over the images, and they all went back to sit on the cushions.

  “We’ll win,” she said. “They said that we will.”

  “Is it to be a bloody battle?” asked Ketriazar.

  “Yes, and many will die in it.”

  “Hai!” grunted Ketriazar. “Will I die in it?”

  “Not you,” the Cahena assured him. “Nor you either, Wulf.”

  “Shall I die?” asked a young subchief of Ketriazar’s following, a sinewy, brown-bearded man named Uchia.

  The Cahena stared at him. “Many will die,” she said again, without answering the question. “But many will live and win.”

  She said it assuredly, as she might have said that the morning sun would rise in the east, off in the east where invasion gathered.

  “We’ll win,” she said again. “They’ll run, those who are lucky enough to be able to run.” Her bright eyes were confident. “That’s all for now. But stay here, Wulf.”

  The others bowed to kiss her lamplit shadow and went out. Wulf stood there and she stood before him. She took his hand in hers. She was as sure of him as she was sure of that victory to come.

  She led him to the inner chamber. In the high moment of their embrace, she sang in his ear, “Wulf, Wulf.”

  Later, passion gentled, they lay side by side and she said, “We belong to each other.” Wulf silently wondered about belonging. That meant possession, ownership. Did she own him, did he own her? All that he could think was that no woman he had ever loved had been like her. No woman could be like her.

  She had said that he had come to her at the command of the spirits she talked to. Maybe that was true.
Spirits must be everywhere, trying to talk to living people, and she knew the gift of hearing them.

  “I want you to teach me Arabic,” she said.

  “Yes,” he promised.

  Next morning was foggy, but Wulf called the men of Tiergal and nearby settlements for drill. Jonas was there, and Wulf’s men Susi and Gharna, all with javelins and a larger spear each, all with cudgels to practice swordplay. Djalout watched, heavily cloaked against the damp, leaning gracefully on his staff. Wulf formed the men three deep, the first rank kneeling, the second crouching, the third standing erect. At his command they slanted the big spears forward, butts rammed into the earth. They made a formidable hedge, those keen-pointed, deadly spears. Other ranks stood behind, javelins ready to throw. Wulf took them out of formation, brought them back again and again. They moved and took position well. They learned.

  Afterward, there was fencing with cudgels. Jonas and several others were proficient, could serve to train smaller groups. The men liked the exercise and called for Wulf to fence with them. Smiling, he took a length of touchwood and competed with one after another, disarming them, threatening blows on head or elbow. They cheered him loudly. He was their master at arms; they loved him and at the same time feared his great strength, his dismaying skill. Later they threw javelins at targets, far better than he could have done.

  When they sweated despite the morning chill, Wulf dismissed them and told them to report tomorrow. He and Djalout walked away.

  “You teach them to kill,” said Djalout, his smile in his beard. “To kill horses that don’t deserve it, to kill men who sometimes do. How does that fit your peaceful Christianity? You’re a Christian, I believe.”

  “A sort of loose one,” said Wulf. “Yet Christ said he didn’t bring peace on earth, but a sword.”

  “I know, I’ve read your gospels. But he spoke figuratively, religiously.”