Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986

by Cahena (v3. 1)

  Your enemies came to eat you up, but they flee unfed.

  They worship one god, they call him almighty,

  But your gods are many and great.

  Your gods hold your land for you,

  Make war for you to save your peace.

  You will live, will prevail.

  The enemy cries out, all is fate,

  All is foreordained —

  Their foreordained fate is loss, is flight, is ruin.

  The voices say the truth,

  And the truth we believe.”

  She muted the harp strings with her spread hand. Deafening applause rose all around, from men and women. “Sing again!” cried the listeners, but the Cahena smiled and shook her head so that the black torrent of her hair tossed.

  “Let’s have Bhakrann sing to us,” she said. “I’ve heard him sing now and then, when the mood was on him. He makes good songs.”

  “Let me be excused from this thing,” protested Bhakrann. “I can’t play the harp, anyway.”

  “I’ll play for you,” said the Cahena, and struck a ringing chord.

  “Wait, let me choose my words,” said Bhakrann. He closed his eyes, and his bearded lips moved soundlessly. “All right,” he said after a moment.

  The Cahena played the tune she had made, and Bhakrann sang, harshly but with spirit:

  “They came, yes!

  They came to fight us, conquer us,

  Their eyes and beards were fierce, their weapons were bright.

  Loud they called on their god to throw us down —

  And what then?”

  “What then?” yelled a Djerwa warrior from where he sat listening. Bhakrann sang on, without breaking rhythm:

  “Their god did not hear them.

  We met them and turned them around there,

  And they ran before us, frightened, in dread of death,

  In dread of the death we showed them, brought upon them.”

  Bhakrann’s voice rose, not tuneful but exulting:

  “See, they run, they run, and we run after them,

  Make them run faster, faster,

  Make them afraid,

  Make them find the shortest way back

  To their own place, far far away.”

  He stopped and lifted his hands and bowed, and again there was mighty applause. The Cahena tucked the harp under her white-sleeved arm to clap her hands.

  “Now, Wulf!” she cried.

  “Wulf!” came back the happy voice of Daphne.

  “Wulf!” came the deep-chested shout of Bhakrann. “I sang, Wulf! Now you sing!”

  Others urged him, women and men. Wulf was embarrassed. He spread his big hands in appeal.

  “But I’ve never done such a thing in my life,” he said to the Cahena. “I’ve never improvised a song —”

  “But I improvised, and so did Bhakrann,” she rallied him, smiling. “Don’t disappoint us now.”

  “Well…”

  She was right, he must do it. This was the Imazighen way, and he must sing. The Cahena was strumming the harp again. He sang, because he must:

  “There is also the Cahena!

  Our queen, our prophetess, our chieftainess —

  Who more beautiful, more wise, more strong?

  War, and she strikes like the lightning;

  Peace, and she smiles like the bright rising of the sun.

  Splendor is hers,

  Wisdom is hers,

  Power, mighty power, is hers,

  Our great queen, our Lady Cahena.”

  Then the applause, deafening cries from the women and men who had heard him. “Wulf! Wulf!” they called to him. “Sing again!”

  He lifted his hands, as though in surrender, and smiled and shook his head. “Thank you, but I can’t think of anything else. Let me go back and eat supper with my friends.”

  “No,” said the Cahena, handing the harp back to its owner. “You’ll eat supper with me. There’s a lot to decide about tomorrow.”

  “A council?”

  “Just the two of us. We’ll give orders to the chiefs later.”

  He walked with her to the big captured tent. “You’re a poet,” she said.

  “I could only sing what I thought.”

  “Yes, that’s what poetry is.”

  A guard with a javelin saluted them, and they went in and closed the tent flap behind them. Carpets covered the ground inside. There was a table, with dishes of food upon it, and a brass lamp with a pale yellow flame. Fragrant perfume hung in the air.

  “Eat first or talk first?” Wulf asked her.

  “Eat and talk later.”

  Her slender hand was on his arm. She led him toward where a figured hanging curtained off a rear corner of the tent. Within the chamber it made, cushions were spread, with a coverlet over them. A soft whisper crept in the air, like faraway voices.

  “But first,” he heard her say.

  Her hands busied themselves at the fastenings of the neck of her robe. Its fabric flowed down her, fell in a circle around her feet. The filtered light from beyond the hanging put a soft glow on her tawny-golden nakedness.

  “Take off your things, too,” she said.

  “Daia,” he spoke her name.

  * * *

  XVI

  They loved each other, tenderly and thoroughly and knowledgeably. They knew each other’s body and they thought they knew each other’s heart. “Wulf, Wulf,” she whispered at the height of their ecstasy, and “Daia,” he said back to her, the name forbidden to all others, the loveliest name he knew. Afterward, they washed each other from a captured silver basin. She donned her white robe again, he put on his clothes, and they went out to supper in the main tent. It had grown cold but it was good — sliced roast meat with a hot sauce, a salad of cucumbers, Moslem wheat bread, olives, and raisins. As they ate, they talked of what must be done next.

  A vigorous advance to press those beaten, fleeing Moslems, was Wulf’s advice, with patrols of scouts to show the way. Behind the strong, steady front line would come more squadrons, ready to strengthen the van in case the Moslems tried to make a stand anywhere, and captures of all stores of food and equipment, on which they would subsist as they marched, as they fought if there was any fighting to do. But if the Moslems continued their demoralized retreat, pursue them, even all the way to the sea.

  “That’s wisdom,” the Cahena praised him, putting an olive between her red lips. “You’re a strategist, Wulf. You’re a poet, too. How beautifully you sang about me.”

  “That was a clumsy effort,” said Wulf. “As for my strategy, it’s only basic. You flatter me too much.”

  The sun was down outside. Chill crept into the air. The Cahena found herself a cloak of blue cloth with a beaded desigu and gave Wulf another captured cloak, black and white wool with gold thread shining in it. Swathed in these, they went out into the night.

  Fires shimmered, camping warriors sang happily. At one fire the principal chiefs gathered. Ketriazar and Daris wore Moslem garments, and their beards bristled triumphantly. Yaunis bowed low to kiss the Cahena’s shadow in the fireglow. Lartius was there, in a beautiful embroidered mantle. He looked tired, but he looked smug.

  “We’ve beaten them,” he exulted. “Destroyed them.”

  “We’ve only begun to destroy them,” said the Cahena. “There’ll be more to do, and we’ll have to do it right. Let Wulf explain.”

  Wulf sat and elaborated on what he had outlined to the Cahena, about a strong, advancing line with scouts in front and reserves close behind. Perhaps, he said, a concentration of force at the center. If the Imazighen could drive through the midpoint of the retreating host, that host might be rolled up to right and left and virtually finished off.

  “What do we do with prisoners?” asked Lartius.

  “Take their weapons and money and horses, and then let them find their way to wherever they started out at us,” said the Cahena. “They can tell the story of how we can’t be beaten. But keep any officers you catch; we can u
se them. Wulf, what became of that interesting young Arab, whatever his name is?”

  “Khalid ibn Yezid,” said Wulf. “He’s under guard, off there to the rear.”

  “He took defeat gracefully, and he’s well spoken,” said the Cahena, almost musingly. “You others might like him.”

  “I don’t like any Moslem,” declared Ketriazar. “The only interest I have in a Moslem is where his neck and shoulders come together, the right place to put my sword.”

  “I want no prisoners killed,” said the Cahena, an edge in her voice.

  “My people take very few prisoners,” said Daris from beside Ketriazar. “Very few indeed.”

  Djalout came up to join them. “Lady Cahena, I’ve been making an inventory of captured valuables,” he said. “The men have been good at bringing them in, only a few Arab coins sticking to their fingers. Here, I brought this to show you.”

  His old hand held it out. It was a ropelike string of glowing pearls, all round and white except one at the center. That was glossy black, the size and shape of a pigeon’s egg.

  Lartius leaned to look. “They’re worth a fortune,” he said.

  The Cahena took the pearls, fastened them with a gold clasp, and hung them around her neck. The black pearl glistened richly upon her bosom. She touched it with her finger.

  “Let’s get back to talk about tomorrow,” she said. “Up at the first touch of light before dawn, everyone ready to move. Now, attention to orders for each of you.”

  The orders she gave showed that she had well estimated the warriors of each chieftainship, their organization, their behavior in battle. She finished and rose, and all rose with her.

  “Now, I want to visit the wounded, wherever they are,” she said. “Come with me, Djalout. No, Wulf, you needn’t come. You’ve ridden hard, fought hard. Get some rest for your work tomorrow.”

  Away she walked into the dark. Wulf returned to his own campsite. The horses drowsed, Susi and Gharna lay swaddled and asleep, but Bhakrann rose on an elbow. “Ahi,” he greeted Wulf.

  “Ahi, Bhakrann. If you’re going to ask about tomorrow, we’ll do more of the same. Pursuit and mopping up.”

  “She thinks we’ll succeed?”

  “She knows we will,” said Wulf.

  “She knows everything.”

  “Yes,” said Wulf. “Everything.”

  He drew off his boots and tunic and lay on his back. He was weary, but he was happy. Thinking of the Cahena, he imagined her nestled there beside him. He went to sleep and did not dream.

  When he wakened, swiftly, clear-headed, it was still dark but the stars faded in the east, a message that dawn was coming. He rose. Bhakrann was already on his feet, on the far side of the last embers of the fire.

  “Come here,” said Bhakrann softly. “I want to show you something.”

  Wulf joined him, over where Gharna lay snoring. Bhakrann pointed at the ground, and Wulf stooped to look. There in soft earth were the deep prints of divided hoofs, two and two and two, where they led away. Wulf knew those prints.

  He and Bhakrann walked back together, to their side of the camp. They stood and looked at each other in the growing light.

  “We’ll still lose lives,” said Wulf at last.

  “Then you know who came and looked at Gharna, don’t you?” said Bhakrann. “Wulf, I begin to understand you when you say you hate war.”

  “Don’t tell Gharna,” said Wulf.

  “Of course not.”

  Neither of them had spoken the forbidden name of Khro.

  Wulf put on his boots. Bhakrann set a brass bowl of water on the coals and fed on more wood. When the water heated, he trickled in some dried, crumpled leaves of a plant Wulf did not know. They drank the brew and ate scraps of Moslem bread. Susi and Gharna woke and shared with them. Then came the bridling and saddling of the horses, the putting on of armor. All around them, warriors were doing the same, were mounting, forming ready for action. Bhakrann went away to summon his scouts and move ahead of the main bodies.

  “Ride close to me, Gharna,” said Wulf, swinging into his own saddle. “I won’t be in the thick of things today, and neither will you.”

  “Whatever you command,” replied Gharna.

  Dawn peeped over the distant horizon. Subehiefs yelled orders, the squadrons went forward. Wulf joined the Cahena, with Mallul and a party of aides and couriers.

  “Ride with me,” the Cahena said to Wulf. “Observe anything you can. What orders you give will be obeyed as though they came from me.”

  “All I can think of just now is to see that the enemy doesn’t pull together to make a stand,” he said.

  “We’ll watch for that.”

  The host moved forward and so did the Cahena’s party. In the distance moved busy dark dots, an open line of them, Bhakrann’s scouts. No sign of Moslems, not just then.

  They left the pools and streams; they were on the dusty, tree-tufted plain. The advance was steady, all elements keeping touch at the flanks. The Cahena’s party came at a brisk walk, sometimes trotting to keep in command position. Couriers constantly sped this way and that to tell chieftains what to do, what to look for.

  They passed huts and clusters of huts. Hysterically joyous people came out to meet them, telling of the arrogance of Moslems as Hassan’s host advanced, the demoralization of the same men in retreat. There were prostrations to kiss the shadow of the Cahena’s horse, invocations of spirits and gods with names strange to Wulf. The Cahena spoke kindly to such people and ordered that captured food be given to those in need.

  There was no great strew of dead bodies on the ground, as there had been the day before. The Moslems were not standing to fight. On the way, the army passed an ancient tomb structure, a cone of fitted rocks fully twice a man’s height. Wulf checked his horse to look at it. There had been a closed doorway to the east, now partially opened, its loose stones scattered. Perhaps Moslems had dug there, looking for possible treasure. But they had not opened a way big enough to enter. What had stopped them? Fear? At the top of the tomb two jagged points of rock stabbed out to north and south. Horns? Like the horns of Khro? Wulf grimaced and rode on to catch up with the Cahena.

  She pointed. “Action up there ahead.” Wulf saw a swirl of horsemen almost a mile away, and instantly put his own mount to a gallop to get there. Susi and Gharna hurried behind him.

  He heard shouts, he saw combat, javelins against curved swords. His own weapon sang out of its scabbard, and he hurried to get into the thing. Fairly flying, he was there, saw a Moslem wheel to face him, lifting a bow with arrow on string. It sang past him, and then he was close in, cutting the man into a flying fall to the ground. Wulf spared a glance to make sure that his stroke had killed, then looked behind him.

  Someone else was down. Gharna.

  The other Imazighen had put the surviving Moslems to flight. Wulf dismounted to look at Gharna. The blank face turned up. The arrow had struck Gharna’s very heart, had driven in half its length. So close had been the range that Gharna’s mail jacket had been pierced like cloth.

  Susi was there, too, wide-eyed. His hand trembled as it held his bridle. “At least death was quick,” he quavered. “What do we do?”

  “Bury him here,” Wulf ordered. “Stop a couple of men to help you; tell them I said for them to help. Find big stones to put on his grave, to keep wild dogs and hyenas from digging him up. Then come on and find me again. I’ll be up ahead somewhere.”

  He made haste to rejoin the Cahena’s party. Briefly he told her why he had stopped.

  “Then you lost a good servant,” she said. “I knew him, I’m sorry about him.”

  “He looked after me,” said Wulf. “He knew about horses. But it was going to happen — there were hoof tracks beside him where he slept last night.”

  The Cahena glanced at him sharply. “Don’t say the name.”

  “I wasn’t going to say the name. But I think of some things I’ve talked about with Djalout. About gods; when people don’t worship them anym
ore, do they become spirits of evil? Spirits that destroy? Did that happen to the hoofprint maker?”

  “Please,” she said, and he had never heard her use the word to him. “Don’t talk about it. Let’s follow on, see what’s happening.”

  What was happening was the utter routing of the Moslems. None of them waited to meet the triumphant advance except those who were too weary, too poor in spirit, to get away. Such men grumpily held up their hands in token of surrender. Among them were commanders of companies or squadrons or battalions, recognizable by their handsome dress. The Cahena ordered these prisoners kept, and told common warriors to go east and try to find their friends.

  The pursuit was hardly pursuit by now. The Moslems had scuttled away to a far horizon. Warriors of the various tribes gathered in abandoned baggage camels, whole herds of riderless horses, stacks of abandoned weapons. Wulf saw valuable spoils, too, gold and silver coins in pouches, jewelry. These were fetched together and carried along under guard. The Cahena had ordered that, and her orders were strictly obeyed.

  In camp that night, the Imazighen warriors slept on their arms. The Cahena did not call Wulf inside her big captured tent. She sat outside, in the light of a small fire, and conferred with her principal chieftains. Bhakrann reported after a busy day of scouting, to speak of what they would approach.

  “We’ll come below Cairouan — they’re abandoning it — and to the south is that place they call EI-Djem,” he said. “A day or so, and we’ll be there.”

  “Thrysdus is the name,” said Djalout, “where the Romans had an important garrison town, and maybe the third biggest circus in all their empire.”

  “If the Moslems leave Cairouan, we’ll ignore it for the moment,” said the Cahena. “Send squadrons to occupy, and go on to Thrysdus. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it. I’ll see it now.”

  They watched her — Wulf, Djalout, Mallul, Ketriazar, Daris, Yaunis, Lartius. She declared her coming to Thrysdus with all her usual confidence. In a moment of silence around the fire, Wulf heard the softest of soft voices, like a mutter in a dream. Her spirits were speaking to her, telling the future. He had never learned to be used to those voices, nor to anything else about the Cahena.