by Wilbur Smith
The ford was held as Lannon had predicted. It was held by a force that Huy guessed was not less than twice his own, and while they attempted to hack their way through the attacks upon the flanks and rear never let up. Twice Huy pulled his axemen and infantry out of the reddened mud of the ford to rest and reform. By now the day was baking hot and the legionaries were tiring.
Lannon had received a spear-thrust in the face which had opened his cheek to the bone, a wound that looked uglier than it really was and his beard was thick with blood and dust. A physician was stitching the wet lips of the wound closed when Huy joined the group around the king, and Lannon dismissed his anxious inquiry with a chuckle.
‘It will leave an interesting scar.’ Then without moving his head he told Huy, ‘I have discovered the solution to the mystery, Huy, and there it is!’ He pointed across the stream to the closest of the two hills. The crest was just out of random arrow range, perhaps 500 paces away. Although the slopes of the hill were forested the crest was a dome of rounded bare granite, and upon the dome stood a small group of men. They were gathered about a central figure.
Huy would always remember him as he was that fateful noon on the hilltop beside the ford. The distance did not dwarf him as it did the men about him. In some strange fashion it made his physical presence more imposing. He was a huge man, fully a head and shoulder taller than his com-panions. The sun shone on the oiled black muscles of his chest and arms, and a tall head-dress of blue heron feathers stood wind-tossed and proud upon his head. He wore a short kilt of leopard tails around his waist, but Huy did not need that to know he was a king.
‘Ah!’ he said softly, and he felt something stir in him, a cold sliding thing like an uncoiling snake. On the hilltop the Vendi king made a sweeping gesture, and then stabbed towards the ford with his heavy war spear. It was clearly the delivery of a command, and from the group around him a messenger broke away and raced down the slope of the hill carrying the order.
‘At last the tribes have found a leader,’ said Huy. ‘I should have guessed it earlier.’
‘Take him for me,’ Lannon commanded. ‘I want him. Nothing else is important. Take that man for me.’ And Huy heard a new tone in Lannon’s voice. It puzzled him and he glanced at his king. He saw it then. It was not the pain of his crudely stitched cheek that made dark shadows play in the pale blue eyes. For the first time in all the years Huy knew that Lannon was afraid.
Huy timed it carefully for the last hour before dark, for the last of the day when the shadows were long and the light uncertain. During the afternoon he skirmished at the ford in half-cohort strength, but in the thick forest on the banks of the stream he held his main strength in reserve. He let them rest during the heat of the afternoon, let them eat and drink and sharpen their blades while he made his preparations. He chose fifty of his finest, selecting them by name from the ranks and he took them well back where they would be screened from prying eyes on the heights beyond the stream.
From the bottoms of the cooking-pots they scraped the thick black soot and mixed it into a thick paste with cooking oil. There was not enough to darken the skins of fifty men so for their arms and legs they used the black mud from the river. They were all of them stripped stark naked when the slave chains were shackled about their throats, but instead of the iron pins a thin dry twig was used to close the links on every collar. They could not take shields with them, and they smeared their weapons with a thick coating of black mud to hide the twinkle and flash of naked metal, then they strapped them to their backs so they could run empty-handed.
‘You are slaves, not legionaries,’ Huy told them. ‘Run like a slave, scamper like a beaten dog.’
When they broke from the trees and ran for the river with half a century of legionaries in pursuit, they howled with terror and the carefully aimed arrows pattered around them. They reached the bank 500 paces upstream from the ford. As they blundered across, still linked together by the slave chain, the Vendi king from his vantage point saw their escape and sent two large parties of archers and spearmen to screen their crossing.
A fierce bloody little battle flared up on the river bank, and under cover of the tumult Huy got his group over the river and into the shelter of the forest on the far bank. There was a thin detachment of tribesmen in set positions amongst the trees, but by the time they realized the deception Huy’s band had dropped their chains and cut into them in a silent murderous rush.
Then they were through with nothing opposing them to the foot of the command hill. Bunched up, and hidden by the forest, Huy led them at a run around the back of the hill. They had moved fast, and he rested them here for a few minutes. The mud had washed from legs and arms during the crossing of the river and the soot and oil was streaky with sweat giving them a wild and desperate appearance.
The clamour of the fighting at the river had died away and the forest was silent and still as Huy led his band up the back slope of the hill. There were sentries posted here, but they were inattentive and did not see the weird blackened figures amongst the forest shades until it was too late.
Below the bare dome of granite Huy waited again, listening for the diversion which Lannon had promised. The distant yells and tiny scraping sound of metal from the ford were almost blanketed by the distance and the intervening bulk of the hill.
Huy said softly, ‘Now, All together.’ And they burst from the forest edge and went racing away up the granite dome. Huy led them easily, bounding ahead with the loping long-armed gait of an old bull baboon.
When he was twenty paces from the crest, the Vendi king sensed his presence and turned to face Huy. He shouted a warning to his staff, and Huy went at him like a terrier at the throat of a lion. Two of the king’s bodyguard leapt to intervene, but Huy flicked a casual axe stroke at them, rolling his wrist slightly in mid-stroke so the blade whimpered as it changed direction, killing the one guard cleanly and taking the spear arm of the other away above the elbow with a single cut. They fell aside and Huy went on to take the king.
He was a big man, perhaps the biggest Huy had ever met, and his skin was a shiny purplish black. The muscles of shoulder and arms were bunched and knotted. The sinews of his neck stood out starkly, corded into the heavy bone of his jaw. His head was round as a river-washed boulder, and without head-dress the scalp was bald and polished black.
He moved to meet Huy, sliding in on thick black legs with his leopard-skin kilts swirling, crouching slightly with the stabbing spear held underhand, the blade glistening hungrily for the softness of Huy’s belly. He moved with leopard speed, reacting instantly to Huy’s attack, and there was a sense of savage power and energy about him that checked Huy’s charge and made him whirl instinctively to the side, just as the blade of the stabbing spear slashed upwards through nothingness where Huy’s belly should have been.
The huge black man grunted as his stroke died in air, and his tawny yellow eyes fastened on Huy. He struck again and Huy hopped aside as the point hissed past him, and Huy reached out as he sprang and ran the stabbing point of the axe across the giant’s exposed ribs. The purple black skin opened and for an instant white bone showed in the depths of the wound before the rush of dark blood obscured it. The king bellowed at the sting of it, and he struck and slashed and cut at the dancing gadfly before him. Each stroke wilder, each charge more reckless as Huy goaded him, watching for his moment. It came and suddenly Huy was through the circle of the spear.
With the point of the axe he probed for the femoral artery in the giant’s groin, running the engraved steel into the tight flesh half an inch too far to the right, missing the artery but dropping the king to one knee. Huy twisted out of close contact. The axe flew high and Huy went into the kill stroke aiming at the round black skull of the kneeling king, a stroke which would split him to the chest.
‘For Baal!’ he shouted, sending the axe down from on high. Then in full stroke he changed. He never knew what impulse it was that made him check, made him twist the weapon, presenting the flat of
the blade and not the edge, holding the stroke half back so that the side of the axe cracked against the king’s skull with enough force to topple him forward senseless onto his face but not enough to stove in the bone of the great round head.
Huy jumped back and with one quick glance made certain that the Vendi king’s train were all lying lifeless on the dome of granite, and his legionaries were grouped around him resting on their bloody swords. The surprise had been complete and overwhelming.
Huy turned and ran to the highest point of the hill. Naked and filthy with soot and mud he brandished his axe above his head, and his band cheered and waved their weapons also. From the ford a trumpet began to blare the advance, and immediately the call was taken up and shrilled from cohort to cohort.
Huy watched Lannon lead the first wave across the ford. The legion crashed into the leaderless tribesmen who opposed them, and drove through them with scarcely a check, splitting them and driving them back against the hills in a disorganized rabble. They had seen their king cut down and there was no spirit left in any of them.
From the hilltop Huy watched Lannon commit his last two reserve cohorts at exactly the right moment. The tribesmen broke and made a rout of it. Throwing aside their weapons they streamed back in a wailing panic-stricken mob into the bottleneck between the hills.
At that moment the handsome young Bakmor, with the two cohorts which had driven the captured cattle to the great river, marched out of the forest. He deployed the cohorts neatly across the only line of retreat open to the tribes. His return was timely indeed, and Huy watched him with grudging professional approval as he made his dispositions. As the sun touched the horizon in a splendour of red and purple the trumpets sounded the advance once again, and the slaughter and the slave-taking lasted until after midnight.
Huy crossed his legion and the host of wild slaves, using the elephant-drawn rafts at Sett. After the battle at the ford the return march had been unopposed. The regiments of the Vendi had been shattered, all their war chiefs killed or captured and Lannon was jubilant.
He told Huy, ‘My Sunbird! It was more than I asked of you. Even I did not guess that such a dangerous enemy had grown up upon my borders. It we had left him another year, only the gods know how deadly he might have become.’
‘Baal smiled upon me,’ Huy disclaimed modestly.
‘And so does Lannon Hycanus,’ Lannon assured him. ‘What was the harvest, Sunbird? Has old Rib-Addi made the accounting yet?’
‘I hope so, my lord.’
‘Send for him,’ Lannon commanded, and Rib-Addi came with his scrolls and his ink-stained fingers and his untrusting little book-keeper’s eyes. He read out the lists of cattle and slaves of each grade, every one of them carefully categorized by the slave-masters.
‘The prices will be much depressed, sire,’ Rib-Addi pointed out pessimistically. ‘For the other legions have taken a great tribute from all the tribes across the river. It will be two or three years before the markets of Opet have absorbed this mass of wealth.’
‘Nevertheless, the prize money taken by the Sixth Ben-Amon must be considerable, Rib-Addi.’
‘As my lord says.’
‘How much?’ Lannon demanded.
Rib-Addi looked alarmed, ‘I could only hazard a guess, Majesty.’
‘Guess, then,’ Lannon invited him,
‘It could be as much as 25,000 fingers - and as low as—’
‘You would smell dung in an alabaster jar of perfume,’ Lannon chided the old man. ‘Do not give me your low figure.’
‘As my lord pleases.’ Rib-Addi bowed, and Lannon turned to Huy and clasped his shoulder.
‘Your share is one part in a hundred, Sunbird. Two hundred and fifty fingers - you are a rich man at last! How does it feel?’
‘It does not sicken me,’ Huy grinned at him, and Lannon laughed delightedly as he turned back to Rib-Addi.
‘Write in your book, old man. Write that Lannon Hycanus sets aside half of his share of the prize. He makes it over as an award to the legion commander, Huy Ben-Amon, for his conduct of the campaign.’
‘My lord, that is one part in twenty,’ Rib-Addi protested vehemently. ‘It is an award of over 1,000 fingers!’
‘I have learned my figures also,’ Lannon assured him, and the book-keeper might have protested further, but he saw Lannon’s expression.
‘It shall be written,’ he mumbled, and Huy came to kneel before his king in gratitude.
‘Up!’ Lannon ordered him, smiling. ‘Do not grovel for me, old friend.’ And Huy went to stand beside Lannon’s stool, as the king called each of the officers who had acted with distinction and made the awards.
Huy was lost in a trance of avarice, hardly able to credit his fortune. He was rich - rich! He must sacrifice to the gods this very day. A white bull, at the least. As Rib-Addi had pointed out, the market was flooded and Huy would be able to get one cheaply. Then he remembered that he no longer had to stint.
He could afford any luxury he had ever coveted, and still have enough over for an estate on the terraces of Zeng, a share in one of Habbakuk-Lal’s trading galleys. A seat on one of the gold-mining syndicates, a secure income for life. No more patches in his tunics, no more bullying his household to cut down on the consumption of meat, no more of the cheap sour wines from the harbour taverns. And then his mind jumped, no more reliance on Lannon’s hospitality and on the goodwill of his young slave girls. He would have one of his own - no, damn it, two - three! Young and pretty and pliant. He felt his body stir. He could afford a wife now, even the daughters of the noble houses might turn a blind eye to his back when dazzled by such a pile of the golden metal.
Then suddenly he remembered Tanith, and the phantom slave girls and wives faded back into the mists of his imagining. His spirits plunged sickeningly. The priestesses of Astarte were dedicated to the goddess, they could never marry. Suddenly Huy did not feel as rich as he had a moment before.
‘Do you not hear your king when he speaks?’ Lannon demanded, and Huy started guiltily.
‘My lord, I was dreaming. Forgive me.’
‘It is no longer necessary to dream,’ Lannon told him.
‘What was it the Gry-Lion asked?’
‘I said we should send for the barbarian - we can deal with him before the legion assembles.’
Huy looked around at his cohorts drawn up in an open square before the leather awning under which Lannon sat. The legions’ standards glittered in the sunlight, and the officers stood at ease before their men. They waited expectantly, and Huy sighed quietly.
‘As the Gry-Lion wishes.’
‘Order it so,’ Lannon commanded.
They had chained him at wrists and ankles, as well as at the throat. The slave-masters could pick a dangerous one at a glance, and two of them held him in leash by the chains from his throat collar.
He was as big as Huy remembered, and his skin even darker, but he was a young man. This came as a shock to Huy, he had thought of him as being in his prime years but this was an illusion. The man’s physical bulk and his commanding presence made him older than his years.
Huy saw how he had fought against his bonds, tearing his own flesh, smearing the skin on the unyielding iron shackles, and the wound in his groin had been crudely dressed with leaves and bark. There were the first watery yellow discharges of putrefication soiling the dressing, and the flesh around it looked hard and swollen. Although he limped, although the chains jangled mockingly at every pace, and although the slave-masters braced against him as though he were a captured animal, there was no mistaking that he was a king. He stood before Lannon and lowered his head slightly on the thick sinewed neck. His eyes were ferocious, even the whites were smoking yellow and covered with a fine lacework of blood vessels, and he stared at his captors with a hatred that was a palpable thing.
‘You captured this - this great black beast, Huy?’ Lannon returned the giant’s stare. ‘Without help, you took him?’ Lannon shook his head with wonder and turned to Huy, but
Huy was watching the Vendi king.
‘What is your name?’ Huy asked softly, and the big round head swivelled towards him, the fierce eyes held his
‘How do you have the tongue of Vendi?’
‘I have many tongues,’ Huy assured him. ‘Who are you?’
‘Manatassi, King of the Vendi,’ And Huy translated for Lannon.
‘Tell him he is king no longer,’ Lannon snapped, and Manatassi shrugged and smiled. His smile was a frightening thing for although the thick purple lips drew back to expose strong white teeth, yet his eyes still smoked with hatred.
‘Fifty thousand warriors of Vendi call me king still,’ he answered.
‘A slave king of a slave people,’ Lannon laughed, and then to Huy. ‘What of him, Huy? Is he not a dangerous enemy? Can we afford to let him live?’
Huy tore his gaze from the slave king and considered the question, trying to think logically but finding it difficult, Huy had conceived a sudden but powerful proprietary interest in Manatassi. He was impressed with the man’s power and presence, with the military skills he had displayed, with the cunning and cleverness and the strange smouldering depths of him. Huy had taken him, he could claim him, even from Lannon, and he was strongly tempted to do so now, for he sensed that here was some extraordinary opportunity. To take this man and educate him, civilize him - what might be made of him! He felt an excitement as a new idea tried to struggle to the surface of his mind.
‘I think not,’ Lannon answered himself. ‘From the first moment I saw him, on the hill above the ford, I knew he was dangerous. Deadly dangerous. I do not think we can let him live, Huy. He would make a fine messenger to the gods. We will dedicate him to Baal and send him as a messenger to express our gratitude for the outcome of the campaign.’
‘My lord,’ Huy dropped his voice for Lannon alone, ‘I have a feeling about this man. I feel I could enlighten him, teach him the true gods. He is young, my lord, I could work upon him, and when we are ready we could return him to his people.’
