by Wilbur Smith
‘Baal speed me!’ Huy prayed as he ran towards his prince, and saw him trying to struggle to his feet. The gry-lion was slinking low along the ground, moving forward in short dashes.
Huy ran with all his might, driven by horror and fear for his prince, Lannon was on his feet now, reeling weakly away from the stalking cat. The movement triggered the hunting reflex of the gry-lion, it closed remorselessly.
Huy shouted at it. ‘Here!’ he yelled. ‘Come!’ And the cat noticed him for the first time. It lifted its head and looked at him. The fangs glinting long and pale, the eyes yellow and splendid.
‘Yes!’ shouted Huy. ‘Here I am!’ He saw Lannon stagger and fall, dropping out of sight into the grass, but he watched the beast. Saw the tail stiffen and the head drop. It began its charge, and Huy checked his.
He stood to meet the gry-lion, braced on long powerful legs, with the axe on his shoulder, and he let the cat come straight.
As it closed he fastened his gaze on the black diamond pattern between the gry-lion’s eyes, and he adjusted his grip on the axe, settling it carefully.
The axe went up and the gry-lion covered the last few paces in a soft roan-coloured blur of fluid movement, towering over the little hunchback.
‘For Baal!’ howled Huy and the axe moaned in flight. The blade cracked into skull, buried in the gry-lion’s brain and was instantly torn from his grip as the full weight of the dead beast smashed into his chest.
Huy came back from deep down and tar away along a tunnel of roaring darkness, and when he opened his eyes Lannon, Hycanus, the forty-seventh Gry-Lion of Opet, knelt over him in the sunlight.
‘The fool,’ said the king, his own face bruised and swollen, caked with drying blood. ‘Oh! The brave little fool.’
‘Brave, yes,’ whispered Huy painfully. ‘But fool never, Majesty.’ And saw the relief dawn in Lannon’s eyes.‘
They spread the wet skins of the two gry-lions on the main mast of the flagship, and Lannon Hycanus received the oaths of allegiance from the heads of the nine houses of Opet while reclining on a couch of soft fur beneath them. Huy Ben-Amon carried the cup of life, despite the protests of his king.
‘You must rest, Huy. You are badly wounded, I believe the ribs of your chest are stove—’
‘My lord, I am the cup-bearer. Would you deny me that honour?’
Asmun was the first of the nine to make oath. His sons helped him from the litter, but he shrugged away their hands as he approached Lannon.
‘In respect of the snow upon your brow, and the scars of your body, you need not kneel, Asmun.’
‘I will kneel, my king,’ replied Asmun, and went down on the deck in the sunlight. Baal must witness the oath of this frail old man. When Huy held the cup of life to his lips he sipped it, and Huy carried the cup to the king. He drank and then offered it back to Huy.
‘Drink also, my priest.’
‘It is not the custom,’ Huy demurred.
‘The King of Opet and the four kingdoms makes the custom. Drink!’
Huy hesitated a moment longer, then lifted the cup and took a long draught. By the time Habbakuk Lal, the last of the nine, came forward the cup had been refilled five times with the heavy sweet wine of Zeng.
‘Do your wounds still trouble you?’ Lannon asked softly as Huy brought the cup to him for the last time.
‘Majesty, I feel no pain,’ Huy replied and then giggled suddenly and spilled a drop of wine down the king’s chest.
‘Fly high, Sunbird,’ laughed Lannon.
‘Roar loudly, Gry-Lion,’ said Huy, and laughed with him. Lannon turned to the nobles who crowded the steering deck.
‘There is food and drink.’ The ceremony was over, Lannon Hycanus was king. ‘Habbakuk Lal!’ Lannon picked out the big ginger-bearded seaman with his freckled and sea-brined face.
‘My lord.’
‘Will you weigh, and set for Opet?’
‘A night run?’
‘Yes, I wish to reach the city before noon tomorrow, and I trust your seamanship.’
Habbakuk Lal inclined his head at the compliment and the heavy gold earrings dangled against his cheek. Then he turned on his heel, and stumped across the deck, bellowing orders at his officers.
The anchors came up over the stern, and the drummer on the forecastle of the flagship struck the hollow tree trunk with the wooden drumstick, beating out the rhythm for the racing start.
Three swift, two slow, three swift. The bank of oars dipped and swung and rose and swung forward and dipped to the beat. In perfect unison, an undulating movement, like the wet silver wing-beats of a great water bird. The long narrow hull slicing boldly through the sunset blush of lake water, the clean run of the wake streaming out behind her, the standard of house Barca hoisted at the crosstree of her masthead and her high castles fore and aft standing tall and proud above the papyrus banks on either hand.
As she swept past the other vessels of the fleet they dipped their standards, and fell in behind the flagship. Each of them holding their station meticulously in line ahead, the steersmen leaning on the rudder oar and the drum-beats booming out across the lake.
His hobbling gait was all that betrayed Huy’s discomfort as he moved from group to group upon the torch-lit deck, with each of them he pointed the bottom of the wine bowl to the starry bright night sky, and bounced the ivory dice across the deck.
‘Damn your luck,’ laughed Philo, but the laughter did not hide the anger in his brooding gypsy dark features. ‘Am I mad to dice with a favourite of the gods?’ But he stacked gold upon the board, covering Huy’s pile, and Huy scooped the dice and threw the three black fish again. Philo pulled his robes closer about him and moved away with the laughter and the shouted gibes of the watchers following him.
The bright white star of Astarte had set when at last Lannon and Huy stood together beneath the spread skins of the gry-lions and looked about the deck. It was a battlefield when the battle is spent. The bodies lay strewn about in the torch light, lying where they had fallen, loose and senseless. A wine bowl rolled back and forth with the easy motion of the ship that still sped on into the darkness.
‘Another victory,’ Lannon spoke thickly, peering blearily around at the carnage.
‘A notable victory. Majesty.’
‘I think,’ Lannon began, but did not finish. His legs buckled under him. He swayed and swung forward. Huy caught him neatly as he fell, and settled him across one shoulder. Ignoring the pain in his chest he lifted the king and carried him down to the main cabin below the deck. He dropped Lannon on the bed, and arranged his limbs and head more comfortably. A moment longer he stayed, hanging over the supine figure.
‘Sweet sleep, my beautiful king,’ he blurted and turned to stagger away to his own cabin. The slave girl rose at his entrance.
‘I have set out your writing pallet,’ she told him, and Huy peered at the scroll, ink bowl and stylus under the hanging lamp.
‘Not tonight.’ He started towards the bed, lost direction, crashed into the bulkhead and bounced backwards. The slave girl ran to help him, and steered him into port.
Huy lay on his back and looked up at her. She was one of Lannon’s household. Huy wished he could afford one like her, but she would fetch ten fingers of gold at the least.
‘Is there anything else, my lord?’ she asked. She was a pretty little thing with dark soft hair and pale ivory-yellow skin. Huy closed one eye the better to focus on her.
‘Perhaps,’ he said shyly. ‘If you will help a little.’ But his aspirations were too ambitious, and in a few moments his snores shook the ship to its keel. The girl rose, pulled on her robe and for a moment smiled down at him before she slipped out of the cabin.
In the darkness before dawn Huy stood on the forecastle of the galley and worked the axe, keeping it in flight, humming and hissing in the gloom. He felt the sluggish old wine in his veins begin to course faster, the sweat broke out on his body that the cool lake air could not quench. He changed hands smoothly on the cut
, and the great axe sang. The dullness in his head lightened and the sweat poured now, streaming down his muscled legs and arms, over the bull-humped back, soaking the loin-cloth, running into his eyes, and Huy began to dance, lightly he spun and leapt and weaved, and still the axe flew.
Dawn was pinking the sky when at last he stopped and leaned upon the axe. His breath steamed and gasped in the cold stream of air, but his blood raced through his body and he felt like a man again.
In the cabin one of Lannon’s slave girls scraped the sweat from his body with the gold strigil that was a gift from Lannon. Then she rubbed him down with perfumed oil, plaited and set his hair and beard, and held a loose unbelted robe of white linen for him.
He came up on the steering-deck just as the order to heave to was passed to the fleet, and they swung towards the east to await the coming of the sun with the slave oarsmen collapsing thankfully over their oars. As the sun showed over the horizon Huy led the praise chant to Baal. Then there was breakfast on the open deck with the company squatting on mats of plaited reeds. Huy looked at their faces, grey and crumpled, baggy-eyed and bad-tempered. Even Lannon was pale and his hands shook as he breakfasted on a bowl of warm milk and honey.
Huy started on millet cakes dripping with oil and honey, then he ate a large smoked and salted lake bream, and when he called for a broiled duck reeking with rank wild garlic and more millet cakes the company watched him with awe. Huy ripped the duck to pieces and forced an expression of relish as he ate, for he was jealous of his reputation.
Philo spoke for them all when he cried at last ‘Great Baal! You insult not only your own belly but mine as well.’ And he jumped up and hurried below.
‘He is right,’ Lannon laughed for the first time that day. ‘You look like a child who has drunk nothing more poisonous than his mother’s milk.’
‘He was weaned on red Zeng wine, and he cut his teeth on the blade of a battle-axe.’
‘If the lake was wine he would lower the level so we could walk across.’
Huy twinkled at them like a mischievous gnome, and tore another leg from the carcass of the duck.
In the middle of the morning they reached the shallows and Habbakuk Lal went forward to pilot the ship through the narrow channel. Water hyacinth, papyrus and a dozen other varieties of vegetation threatened to clog the lifeline of Opet. The channel boats pulled out of the lane as the ten great ships flew past on their silver-wet wings. The officers saluted the standard of Barca at the masthead with a clenched fist, but the slave gangs who were doomed for ever to fight the lake weed stood dumbly and watched with patient animal eyes.
Closer to Opet now they began passing the fishing fleet, the nets coming in over the side with fish shining silver in the mesh like captured stars, and the white clouds of gulls shrieking and fussing overhead.
Then the cliffs came up on the horizon, glowing dusky red in the sunlight and the rail was crowded with those who were enjoying this moment of homecoming.
Mursil, the huntmaster, came to Lannon on the steering deck and knelt briefly.
‘You sent for me, Majesty.’
‘Yes - and the pygmy.’
‘He is here, King.’
‘I promised you a reward. Name it.’
‘My lord, I have three wives. All of them avaricious.’
‘Gold?’
‘If it please you, my lord.’
‘Huy, write an order on the treasury for five fingers of gold.’
‘May Baal shine upon you always!’
‘What of the pygmy?’
Mursil called the little yellow bushman to him, and Lannon examined him with interest.
‘What is he named?’
‘Xhai, my lord.’
‘Does he not understand the language?’
‘No, my lord, he speaks only his own primitive tongue.’
‘Ask him what he desires - freedom, perhaps?’
‘He does not understand the idea of freedom. He is like a dog, Majesty. Deprive him of a master and you deprive him of the reason for life.’
‘Ask him what he wants.’
Mursil and the bushman spoke for a long while in that birdlike chittering tongue, before the huntmaster turned back to the king.
‘It is a strange request.’
‘Name it.’
‘He wishes to hunt with the slayer of the gry-lion.’
Lannon stared at the bushman, who grinned at him with the beguiling candour of a child.
‘He thinks, my lord, and you will forgive the impertinence,’ Mursil was sweating a little, ill at ease, ‘he thinks you are a god, and he wants to belong to you.’
Lannon let out a bull roar of laughter and slapped his thigh.
‘So be it then. He is elevated to a master of the royal hunt - with the pay and privileges. Take him, Huy. Teach him to speak the language, or failing that learn to speak his!’
‘All the strays and cripples,’ thought Huy ruefully. His household was filled with them, whenever he had accumulated sufficient gold tor a luscious young slave maid it went on another who was too old or infirm to justify his keep and who was consigned by his master to the pool of Astarte. At least the pygmy would have his pay as a huntmaster to help with the costs.
Lannon dismissed the subject and turned back to the rail. The mother city came up over the horizon at last. The walls of the temple shone a ruddy rose in the sunlight, and the lower city was brilliant white, the walls of the houses painted with the ash of the lake shellfish.
The war fleet of Opet streamed out from the harbour to meet them. The shields and helmets of the legionaries sparkled in the sun as each ship in turn wheeled across the flagship’s bows with the gilt work on her arrow-sharp prow catching the sunlight. They saw the raw skins hanging below the standard of house Barca and a cheer roared out across the water.
The flagship led them into the harbour, still scudding to the drive of her banked oars. Habbakuk Lal aimed at the stone jetty below the city where the crowds thronged the shore. The entire population of the city was out in their best and most brilliant robes, shrieking and cheering their new king from 100,000 throats.
At the last possible moment Habbakuk Lal dropped his hand in a signal to the drummer and steersman. The ship spun on her heel, with every oar clawing at the water to drag her to a halt, her side lightly touching the stone jetty. Lannon Hycanus and his train stepped ashore.
Lannon’s wives were the first to greet him. Nine of them, one from each of the noble houses, young matrons of the blood, proud and beautiful. Each one came forward to kneel before Lannon, and call him ‘sire’ for the first time.
Huy looked at them with a heart that ached. These were not the pliant, brainless slave girls whose company was all he had ever known. These were full women. He needed someone like that to share a life with, and he had tried so hard. He had carried his suit to every one of the great houses of Opet, and had it rejected. They could see no further than his back, and he could not blame them for it.
The dignity of the occasion was abruptly shattered by a loud chorus of ‘Hoo! Hoo!’ and the twins broke away from their nursemaids and raced each other across the jetty. Ignoring their father and the gathered nobles, they ran to Huy and danced about him, tugging at his robe and demanding his attention. When he picked them up they competed so fiercely for his kisses that it developed into a hair-pulling bout. The nursemaids flew to the rescue and dragged them away.
Imilce’s hands still locked in Helanca’s golden tresses, and from the scowl on Lannon’s face Huy knew that there would be retribution and that those plump little bottoms would soon be glowing red. He wished there was some way he could prevent it.
Huy slipped away into the crowd. On the way to the temple he haggled for a chicken with one of the merchants and struck a good bargain. After he had sacrificed he went to his own house in the precinct of the priests between the outer and inner wall of the temple. His household were all there to meet him, doting and doddering, fussing about him with their grey heads an
d toothless gums. All agog for the news of his latest exploits, demanding the story of the hunt, while they bathed and fed him.
When at last he escaped to his sleeping quarters to rest, he had not lain tor long when the four eldest princesses arrived. Aged from ten to six, they broke through the feeble defences of his slaves and invaded his room as if by right.
With a sigh Huy abandoned rest and sent one of them to fetch his lute, and as he began to sing the slaves, one at a time, crept into the room and sat quietly along the wall. Huy Ben-Amon was home again.
In the year 533 from the founding of Opet, six months after he had taken the gry-lion and claimed the four kingdoms. Lannon Hycanus, the head of house Barca, left the city of Opet and went out to march around his borders, a custom that would bind his claim irrevocably. He was twenty-nine years old in that spring, a year older than his high priest.
He marched with four of his wives, the childless ones, hoping to change their status upon the two-year journey. He took with him two legions each of 6,000 hoplites, light infantry, axemen and archers. The legions were composed mostly of Yuye freedmen with officers from the noble families of Opet. These legions were organized along the Roman lines, in the manner that Hannibal had adopted during his campaign in Italia. There were ten cohorts to a legion and six centuries to a cohort. They were uniformed in leather body armour with conical iron helmets and circular leather shields studded with bronze rosettes. On their legs and feet they wore leather greaves and nailed sandals, and they sang as they marched.
The officers were more magnificently appointed as befitted their noble origins. Their armour was of bronze and their cloaks were of fine linen dyed purple and red, and they marched at the head of their divisions.
There was no cavalry. In 500 years no attempt to bring horses from the north had succeeded. Every one of the animals had succumbed to the sea voyage, or surviving that had died soon after arrival at Opet of a mysterious disease that made their coats stand on end and turned their eyeballs to bloody red jelly.
