Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986

by Cahena (v3. 1)

  “How do you order us, Wulf?” she asked.

  “Up that rocky height behind,” he said. “The horses can’t go up, for us or for those people coming. Up above, arrange our line, two deep, and wait for them to come into close range before we throw javelins. We’ll signal for that. Have we a trumpet?”

  “Here’s one we captured from them,” said Bhakrann, showing the instrument.

  “A blast on that for the javelin throwing.” Wulf gestured to his companions. “Let’s get them started up there.”

  They scrambled up through the rocks, and the formation was quickly drawn up at the top, one line in open order and a second line behind. The men had sheaves of javelins. They stuck them into the earth within quick reach. All glared toward where the Moslems approached. Wulf walked along his double line. The Cahena paced beside him, and Ketriazar and Bhakrann followed.

  “Where shall we take position?” the Cahena asked. She had taken the trumpet from Bhakrann.

  “More or less at the middle, where their main charge will come,” Wulf said. “There’s still time for you to try to escape from here.”

  “Would you come?”

  “Not when the battle’s almost here.”

  “Then I won’t run, either.”

  The vast formation flowed on the level ground below them. Wulf could see individual men and horses. They came at a slow trot — they had marched far that day, and must fight now at the end of the march. A concerted shout rose among them. Wulf came back to the center of his own position. He slung his shield to his left arm and loosened his sword in its sheath. The Cahena breathed at his side. She bore a javelin in her right hand, the trumpet in her left. Her eyes shone. She was ready.

  The Moslems had halted their close-drawn approach. They were dismounting, a great swarm of them. Some held the horses, the others moved into a close line, with another line and another line behind. In front of these paced officers. There were shouted orders, and a deafening cry of “Allah!” and the great press of men moved forward and upward on the rough ascent.

  Wulf stood at his own forefront, tense and gazing. Up they came from below. Blades flashed, shields poised. Nearer, nearer. He measured the distance with his eye. He looked at the Cahena.

  “All right,” he said. “Sound that trumpet.”

  Its note blared out, strident, penetrating. The men in Wulf’s line raised their own cry:

  “There is also the Cahena!”

  And the air was full of whizzing javelins. Men of the charging phalanx went down. Others shoved forward to take the places of the fallen. More javelins, a flying flock of them, and more men going down. The Moslems strove against the storm. Here they were, bristling beards, glaring eyes.

  “Everybody get a man!” bawled the voice of Bhakrann, and Bhakrann rushed forward. The sword that had been Okba’s made deadly play against the blade of an enemy. Another Moslem rushed to his comrade’s aid and went down under a slashing blow. But yet another buried his point in Bhakrann’s chest, and Bhakrann, too, went sprawling. All that in swift seconds, as Wulf leaped into the fight.

  Everywhere the clash of combat, javelins, swords, loud voices shouting war cries. Wulf faced a man in a white turban, a man with teeth clenched in the darkness of his beard, a curved sword upflung. Wulf beat the descending steel aside and thrust to the throat, cleared his point as his man almost somersaulted away. He engaged another swordsman, when a javelin darted to transfix the man’s chest. The Cahena was there to strike that blow, even as a dozen Moslems drove upon her and Wulf.

  A blow struck shatteringly on his face. He heard the crunch of bone. He slammed to earth, and did not feel it come up to meet him.

  * * *

  XXVI

  Consciousness came back to Wulf, laggingly, uncertainly, as though it was not quite sure of the way. First he could hear something, voices above him. Then he could feel, he ached and quivered. He opened his eyes, and he had blurred vision. Bearded, turbaned men leaned above him. One stooped and touched his face.

  “Can you stand up?” asked the man, not unkindly. “Our general wants to talk to you, if you can talk.”

  Wulf spat out a mouthful of blood. “I can talk,” he managed. “Let’s see if I can stand.”

  He drew a deep breath. It hurt, but he judged that he had no broken ribs. He managed to sit up. Hands were upon him, helping him to rise. He stood with feet braced wide. His head throbbed like a gong. He drew another breath, another.

  “All right, take me to him,” he said.

  One of them pointed the way. The others, five or six, thronged around Wulf, their hands on the hilts of their crooked swords. The evening sun beat down hotly. Corpses lay everywhere. Wulf took staggering steps, then his legs grew steadier. He let himself be escorted to where other men stood, fifteen or twenty.

  To the front of that group stood Hassan ibn an-Numan al Ghassani. He wore chain mail, with a checkered cloak over his shoulders. His turban was green — of course he had been to Mecca — swathed around a steel-spiked helmet. His sword hung sheathed at his side. His white beard had a fleck of blood at his left jaw.

  Beyond Hassan and his companions, the land was full of the victorious Moslems. Some seemed to be tending wounded men. Wulf looked past Hassan. Mallul was there, his head swathed in a Moslem turban. With Mallul stood Khalid.

  “Your name is Wulf, they told me,” said Hassan, in Arabic.

  “I am Wulf the Saxon.”

  Hassan stroked his beard. “Stand away from him. You planned these battles and you fought in them, fought very well indeed. You’re too brave to die.”

  “Nobody’s too brave to die.”

  “Are you thirsty?” asked Hassan. “Give him water.”

  A listener thrust a skin bottle into Wulf’s hand. Wulf drank eagerly. The water spread inside him, seemed to heal him a little. His hand to his face felt half-dried blood. His nose was smashed flat.

  “I admire bravery,” Hassan was saying. “You should be one of us. You should be a true believer and strike those hard blows to the glory of Allah.”

  “I believe in nothing,” said Wulf.

  Hassan frowned. “They told me you were a Christian.”

  “I was.”

  “A Christian.” Hassan shook his head slowly. “But there is no god but Allah, the giver of mercies. See” — and he gestured. “The Cahena’s son has accepted the true faith.”

  “Mallul,” said Wulf. Mallul stood motionless.

  “His new name is Abd-ar-Rahman,” said Hassan. “Wulf, do not say, there are three. Repeat after me: There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.”

  “There is no god,” said Wulf, and drank water again.

  Hassan’s companions surged forward, muttering. Hassan lifted a gaunt hand to quiet them.

  “Perhaps you worshipped the Cahena,” said Hassan. “But she’s dead. Her head was cut off. Show him.”

  To one side lay something under a bunched cloak. Wulf had not seen it before. An officer leaned down to twitch the cloak away.

  There lay her severed head. The skin was ashy pale, the eyes were closed. The hair tumbled, gleaming black. It was as though she lay asleep, peaceful, trusting. Hassan looked, too.

  “She must have been the most beautiful woman in the world,” he said. “Like a houri in Paradise.”

  “You’ll send her head to your caliph in Damascus, won’t you?” said Wulf. “He can thank his Allah that she’s not a threat anymore. You found out her secrets, you tricked her people into deserting her. Even then, you had to kill her because she wouldn’t run. The only way to beat her was to kill her.”

  Again the grouped men around Hassan snarled, but Hassan did not snarl.

  “That’s true, by Allah,” he told Wulf. “Cover her head up again, you. She fought me, once I had to run for my life. She drove me and took prisoner eighty of my companion train.”

  “I was there when it happened,” said Wulf, gathering strength from his rising fury. “You and your army ran like deer. I helped
capture your officers. We sold them back to you, two or three at a time — sold them all except Khalid.” He gazed at Khalid. “Let Khalid fall on his face and kiss the ground,” he said. “Her shadow is still on this ground.”

  “In the name of Allah, let’s kill this prisoner,” said one of the listeners.

  “Wait,” said Hassan; and to Wulf, “Words like that can condemn you to death.”

  “All right, kill me.”

  “Don’t die an infidel,” Hassan almost pleaded. “Live among us in the true faith, be great among us. Say after me: There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.”

  “There is no god,” said Wulf again.

  Hassan smiled. It was a wry smile. “What if we kill you, then?”

  “I’d be dead and out of your reach.”

  “Unbelievers are cast into hell.”

  “Agh!” Wulf spat blood. “Don’t try to tempt me with heaven or frighten me with hell. I’m tempted by nothing, I’m afraid of nothing, I believe in nothing. I’m wounded. I don’t have so much as a knife.” His voice rose. “Let your men kill me. If I had a sword or a club, not one of them would dare come within my reach.”

  “You’re as bold a speaker as I’ve ever heard,” said Hassan, “and I think you’re a true speaker with what you said just now. But you know they call me the Good Old Man, and I’m going to try to deserve that. Where’s my physician?”

  He beckoned to one of his officers.

  “Take Wulf away and treat his wounds and bandage them,” Hassan ordered. “If he can travel, give him a horse and set him free. He couldn’t raise ten men to fight us now.”

  “With ten men I’d fight you,” said Wulf.

  Hassan looked at him with gentle eyes. “Go with Allah,” he said. “Go with whatever god you want to worship, you whose life I’ve spared.”

  The physician came and took Wulf’s arm to lead him away.

  “Take your hands off of me, I can walk,” Wulf snapped at him. And to Hassan he said, “Thank you for nothing. My life is nothing.”

  He walked away with the physician.

  When old Wulf the Saxon finished his story of love and war, midnight was long past, black and chill, in the camp of the Franks outside the little village of Tours. The fire in Charles Martel’s tent had burned down to pale-red coals. The great horse had settled in sleep. The big wine jug on the table was nearly empty. Charles Martel stroked his mustache and gazed at Wulf.

  “So you loved her,” he said.

  “I did,” said Wulf. “Maybe there at the last, she loved me again.”

  “This Khalid,” said Charles Martel. “Did you ever cross his path afterward?”

  “Yes, he was leading some riders up a mountain pass in Granada. I had men enough to surprise him and wipe him out.”

  “Killed him, did you?” prompted Charles Martel.

  “Khalid was easy to kill.”

  “And that son of your Cahena, you said the Moslems named him Abd-ar-Rahman. Is he their general here?”

  “Abd-ar-Rahman’s not an uncommon name among Moslems, but I’ve thought this one was once Mallul. I can’t be sure.”

  Charles Martel poured the last of the wine into their cups, and they drank.

  “Anyway, you and a few followers got across those straits somehow, and kept fighting,” said Charles Martel.

  “Fighting,” growled Wulf. “Senseless. I’ve been sick of it for years.”

  “But I’m going to profit by what you’ve said about fighting,” Charles Martel assured him. “If they want battle tomorrow, they’ll get it. I’ll wake up my officers and give them orders. We’ll use your plan — form a long line of big men with big lances in their hands, to break up a cavalry charge. And behind that line, mounted men, for a countercharge It’s a simple-sounding thing, but it has to be explained, the way you’ve explained it.”

  “Yes,” said Wulf.

  “We’ve had a long night of it,” said Charles Martel. “We ought to get what rest we can. You may lie down here. Take some of these cloaks and furs and make yourself up a bed.”

  “Thanks, I will.”

  “But one thing more. You’ve been helpful beyond measure, and I’m indebted to you. Tell me what I can do to repay you.”

  “You said we’d fight them tomorrow,” Wulf reminded him. “Fight at close quarters. Just put me up to the front, where the fighting will be hottest.”

  Charles Martel blinked at him. “Where the fighting will be hottest? Look here, Wulf, where the fighting’s hottest will be hot, or I miss my guess. That’s just the place where you could get yourself killed.”

  Wulf set down his empty cup.

  “I know,” he said.

  * * *

  Note to the electronic edition, 2002

  Manly Wade Wellman was born in 1903 in Angola (Africa), the son of a physician, but came to the United States before entering school. He started selling fiction in 1927, contributing to a wide variety of pulps, his stories in Weird Tales being the best remembered from that era. His books included science fiction, westerns, many novels for young adults, and works of history and biography. Wellman also wrote for comic books, including Captain Marvel and The Spirit. Wellman married fellow writer Frances Garfield.

  Wellman became friends with Arkansas folklorists, and for a time served as Assistant Director of the WPA New York Folklore Project. After service in World War II, he moved to North Carolina. In the 1950s Wellman’s best-known stories, a series grounded in mountain folklore about a guitar-playing wanderer named John, began appearing in Weird Tales and continued in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. These were collected as Who Fears the Devil? (1963), a volume later revised and expanded as John the Balladeer (1988).

  Toward the end of his life Wellman wrote several novels about John and about another series character from his pulp days, amateur occult investigator John Thunstone. His last work, Cahena, a historical novel with some fantastic elements, was published shortly after his death in 1986.

  Wellman’s short fiction was collected during his lifetime in Worse Things Waiting (1973) and Lonely Vigils (1981). Another collection, The Valley So Low (1987), appeared posthumously. Recently Night Shade Books has been reprinting this material and more in a series projected to run to five volumes:

  The Third Cry to Legba and Other Invocations

  The Devil Is Not Mocked and Other Warnings

  Fearful Rock and Other Precarious Locales

  Sin’s Doorway and Other Ominous Entrances (forthcoming)

  Owls Hoot in the Daytime and Other Omens (forthcoming)