by Wilbur Smith
Using an anvil of ironstone and a set of special hammers Zingala forged the lion’s paw with its five massive iron claws and its pad of solid metal. He filed and dressed and polished it, then he reheated it and tempered it in the blood of a leopard and the fat of a hippopotamus.
One of the skilled leather-workers built a socket of green elephant hide and shaped it to fit the stump of Manatassi’s right arm. The iron claw was fixed securely into the leather socket and when it was strapped to Manatassi’s stump it made a fearsome artificial limb.
Khani, the paramount ruler of Vendi and foppish half-brother of Manatassi, was with his woman when the iron claw tore the top off his skull. The girl beneath him screamed and fainted with the shock of it.
Sondala, the king of Buthelezi, had many subjects, a multitude of cattle, a little grazing-land and even less water to carry his people and his kine through a season of drought.
He was a small wiry man, with quick nervous eyes and a ready smile. Of all the tribes along the great river his was the latest to come out of the north, and he was crushed between the powerful Vendi tribe on the one hand and those white-robed, long-bearded brown-skinned Dravs on the other. He was a desperate man, ready to listen with both ears to any proposition.
He sat in the firelight and grinned and darted quick eyes at the gaunt godlike figure across the hut from him - this king with the ruined face, and bird’s feet and clawed hand of iron.
‘You have twelve regiments, each of 2,000 men,’ Manatassi told him. ‘You have five flowerings of maidens each of 5,000. You have, at the latest count, 127,000 cattle, bulls, cows, calves and oxen.’
Sondala grinned and wriggled uneasily, amazed at the accuracy of the Vendi king’s intelligence.
‘Where will you find food and grass and drink for such a multitude?’ Manatassi asked, and Sondala smiled and listened.
‘I will give you grazing, and land. I will give you a land rich with fruit and lush with grass, a land over which your people will march for ten generations without finding the limits of it.’
‘What do you want of me?’ Sondala whispered at last, still grinning and blinking his eyes quickly.
‘I want your regiments to command. I want your spear in my hand. I want your shield to march beside me.’
‘If I refuse?’ Sondala asked.
‘Then I will kill you,’ said Manatassi. ‘And take your regiments, and all five flowerings of your maidens, and all your 127,000 cattle, except for ten which I will sacrifice upon your grave as a mark of respect to your ghost.’ Manatassi grinned then also, and it was such a terrible baring of teeth in that battered face that Sondala’s own smile froze.
‘I am your dog,’ he said hoarsely, and he knelt before Manatassi. ‘Command me.’
‘There is but one command,’ said Manatassi softly. ‘And that command is, OBEY!’
In the first year Manatassi made treaties with the Vingo, the Satassa and the Bey. He fought the Xhota in a single devastating battle, employing tactics so revolutionary and relentless that the Xhota king and his wives and courtiers and princes were taken twenty minutes after battle was joined. Instead of massacring the menfolk, and taking the women and cattle as was the custom, Manatassi had only the king and royal family strangled, then he assembled the defeated regiments, still intact and under their own commanders, and he made them swear their allegiance to him. They thundered it in massed voice that seemed to shake the leaves in the trees and rock the hills upon their foundations.
In the second year, after the rains had passed, Manatassi marched westwards as far as that desert coast on which a cold green surf raged eternally. He fought four great battles, strangled four kings - treated with two others, and added almost a hundred thousand warriors to his regiments.
Those close to the great black beast knew that he seldom slept. It seemed there was some driving force within him that denied him rest or pleasure. He ate food without tasting it, in the perfunctory manner in which a man might throw a log upon the fire merely to keep it burning. He never laughed, and smiled only when a task was performed to his satisfaction. He used women with a swift brutality that left them trembling and weeping, and he shared companionship with no man.
Only once did his lieutenants see him show the emotions of a man. They stood upon the tall yellow dunes at the western limit of the land. Manatassi was apart from them draped in the leopard-skin of royalty and with the blue heron feathers of his head-dress fluttering in the cold breeze that came off the sea.
Suddenly one of the war captains exclaimed aloud and pointed out across the green waters. From out of the banks of silver sea fret, looming like a ghost ship through the mist, sped one of the galleys of Opet. With her single square sail bellied by the trade winds, and her banks of oars beating rhythmically, she sped in silence towards the north on her long voyage of trade to Cadiz.
Again a captain exclaimed, and they all looked towards the king. His face shone and dripped with sweat, and his jaws clenched and ground his teeth together with a sound like rock on rock. His eyes were burning mad as he watched the passage of the galley, and his body shook and shuddered with the strength of his hatred.
The captain ran to aid him, thinking him stricken with sudden fever. He touched the king’s arm.
‘High-born,’ he started, and Manatassi turned upon him in raging madness and struck him down with the iron claw, ripping half his face away.
‘There,’ he screamed, pointing with the claw at the disappearing galley. ‘There is your enemy. Mark him well.’
Each day brought its own excitements, its secret delights and ventures - and its happiness. It did not seem five years since she and Huy had become lovers, so swiftly had the years sped. Yet it was so, for the Festival of the Fruitful Earth was almost come around once more.
Tanith laughed aloud at the memory of her seduction of Huy, and she made her plans to repeat the performance during the coming Festival. Beside her Aina mumbled a question, peering at her quizzically from the depths of her hood.
‘Why do you laugh, child?’
‘I laugh because I am happy, old mother.’
‘Oh, to be young once again. You do not know what it is like to grow old.’ Aina began one of her monologues, and Tanith led her through the bustle of the harbour area, past the low taverns and the taunting street girls to where steps were cut into the stone jetty. She danced down the steps and leapt lightly to the deck of the small sailing craft moored to one of the iron rings in the jetty.
Coming out of the tiny cabin, dressed in rough fisherman’s clothes and with a scarf tied about his head. Huy was too late to help her aboard.
‘You are late.’
‘For your impertinence I shall punish you, just as soon as it is safe,’ Tanith warned him.
‘I look forward to it,’ Huy grinned, and helped old Aina over the gunwale, while Tanith ran forward to cast off the head lines.
Huy was perched in the stern with the steering oar tucked under his arm, and Tanith sitting as close beside him as she could without touching. She had thrown off her cloak, and wore now a light cotton tunic edged with gold thread and belted with a solid gold chain, a name-day gift from Huy.
Her hair billowed out behind her like black smoke, and her cheeks were flushed. Huy kept glancing at her, and each time she looked at him and laughed for no reason.
The wind was fine on their beam, and as they ran close-hauled for the islands the wind whipped droplets from the bow wave into their faces, and the water was cold in the warmth of the sun. Huy ran the vessel neatly through an almost invisible channel in the reeds, and they emerged into a quiet and sheltered lagoon whose surface was covered with the dark green pads of the water lilies and starred with the blue and gold of their blossoms. Water fowl paddled and dabbled and flighted over and upon the quiet waters.
They were out of the wind here and Huy took up a long pole from the deck and, standing in the stern, he poled them across the lagoon to the beach of dazzling white sand. Jumping out into knee-deep water he hauled the
vessel up onto the beach.
Amongst the polished black boulders above the beach Huy rigged a sun shelter with a strip of sail, and he helped Aina across the sand and installed her beneath the shelter.
‘A bowl of wine, old mother,’ he suggested solicitously.
‘You are too kind. Holiness.’
They left her there, snoring quietly in the shade, and they walked hand in hand along the ribbon of beach, beyond the curve of the bay. Under the ivory palms Huy spread a cloak on the firm clean sand, and they rid themselves of their clothing and lay together talking and laughing and making love.
Then they bathed together in the clear warm lake water, and, as they lay in the shallows with the wavelets flopping lazily over them, shoals of silvery finger-long fish came to nibble at their naked skin. Tanith laughed and kicked at the tickle of their toothless mouths.
They went to lie in the sun and dry themselves, and Huy looked up at Tanith standing over him. Her hair was sodden and dangled in heavy black ropes down her back and breasts. The sun had brought a glow to her shoulders, and there were water drops clinging in her eyelashes. She stood proudly under his scrutiny, and she cupped her breasts, one in each hand.
‘Do you see ought different about me, Holy Father?’ She asked in her teasing voice, so that Huy smiled and shook his head.
‘Look closer,’ she invited him, and it seemed then that her breasts were fatter and more pointed, he noticed also that they were marbled with bluish veins beneath the white skin.
‘Yes?’ Tanith asked, and ran her hands down her body to cradle her belly.
‘And here?’ she asked. ‘Anything different here?’ And she puffed out her stomach, laughing at him.
‘You are getting fat,’ Huy reprimanded her, giving her back her laughter. ‘You eat too much.’
Tanith shook her head. ‘What I have in here, Holy Father, certainly never went in through my mouth.’
Slowly the laughter dried up in the back of Huy’s throat, and he gawked at her.
Huy lay in the darkness and he was still stunned and bemused. It still seemed impossible that some of the seed which he had sown so carelessly should have taken root; were not the priestesses of Astarte instructed in the secret ways of preventing just such an occurrence? This was really an event to rank with earthquake and storm and defeat in battle. Something would have to be done about it, something radical.
Lightly Huy’s mind touched upon the thought of the grisly old hags who lived along the harbour front, whose job it was to rectify such blunders. Instantly he rejected the idea.
‘No.’ He spoke aloud, and then listened to the sound of Tanith’s breathing, hoping he had not woken her. He began to moderate his plans, perhaps it was not necessary for such radical action, perhaps he could arrange for another shrine to be consecrated in a remote area of the kingdom, and there, away from prying eyes and busy tongues, she could bear his son. It would be simple enough to find a foster mother, someone he could trust. There were many of the veterans of his legion, men maimed in battle, now living the simple life on one of Huy’s estates. Men who would lie and steal and cheat and die for him. Men with fruitful wives, whose breasts were fat and full enough to feed another little lodger.
There they could go as often as the opportunity arose to be with their son. He could imagine it already, the happiness and the laughter, and his son kicking and gurgling, fat-bellied in the sunlight.
Stealthily Huy reached beneath the bed covers, lightly his hand settled on Tanith’s naked belly and he began to explore it.
‘You cannot feel anything yet,’ Tanith whispered, ‘I didn’t do the things the priestesses taught me. That was very wicked of me, wasn’t it? Are you angry with me, my lord?’
‘No,’ said Huy. ‘I am very pleased with you.’
‘I thought you would be,’ chuckled Tanith contentedly, and snuggled against him, and then she added drowsily, ‘I mean, once you got used to the idea.’
The knocking and shouting woke them both and Huy bounded from the couch and snatched up the vulture axe before he was properly awake. Once the initial confusion had quieted, and the house slaves had satisfied themselves by shouted challenge and loud reply that the midnight callers were a contingent of the royal guard, Huy put aside the axe and lit another lamp.
‘Holy Father.’ One of the body slaves pounded on the door of the bedchamber.
‘What is it?’
‘The king’s guard. The Cry-Lion cannot sleep. He bids you take your lute and attend him.’
Huy sat on the edge of the couch and cursed softly but meaningfully, running his fingers through his beard and curls, trying to knuckle the sleep from his eyes.
‘Did you hear me, Holiness?’
‘I heard you.’ growled Huy.
“The Gry-Lion said that they were to accept no excuse, and to wait while you dressed, and to escort you to the palace.‘
Huy stood up and reached for his tunic, but held his hand as he saw Tanith watching him. Her eyes were enormous in the lamp light, and with her hair in cloudy disorder she looked like a child. Huy lifted the bed clothes and slipped in beside her.
‘Tell the king that my picking finger is sore, my throat is raw, my lute strings are broken - and I am drunk,’ he shouted, and took Tanith in his arms.
Sheikh Hassan rinsed his fingers in the silver bowl and dried them on a square of silk.
‘He seeks to impress us with his show of strength,’ Omar, his younger brother, murmured. Hassan glanced at him. His brother was a famous dandy. His beard was washed and perfumed and combed until it glistened, his robes were of the finest silk and his slippers and vest were heavy with embroidery of silk and gold thread. On his finger he wore a pigeon’s-blood ruby the size of the top joint of a man’s thumb. He was misty-eyed from the bhang pipe beside him on the cushions. A dandy perhaps, and a pederast certainly, but nevertheless the possessor of a fine mind and an intuitive perception upon which Hassan relied heavily.
They sat together beneath the ancient fig tree with its widespread branches and its deep dark shade. The dhow that had brought them to this meeting was beached on the white sand of the island below them, and from their vantage point they could look across the channels and sandbanks and slow pools of the great river to the north bank.
There were troops of sea-cow lying on the sandbanks half submerged in the shallows. Huge grey shapes, like river boulders upon which the white egrets perched unconcernedly.
On the north bank a thin ribbon of dark green vegetation grew along the river, but gave way immediately to the bare brown hills beyond. The country here had a blasted and desolate look to it. The hills were bleak and barren with rounded crests. The earth showed through the sparse dry grass, and the dead trees writhed and held their naked branches to the sky, trees drought-stricken and long dead.
However, as the sheikhs watched so the scene changed. Over the hills spread a dark shadow as though a storm cloud had blotted out the sun.
‘Yes,’ said Omar. ‘This show is to open our ears to his words.’
Hassan spat a stream of bright red juice into the dust, and wiped his beard with silk as he watched the bare hills come to life, watched the dark shadow spread. He had never before seen such a vast concourse of humanity. The regiments and squadrons moved into orderly ranks until they covered the hills. Hassan was nervous, but his face was calm, his eyes grave and only the long brown fingers that fidgeted on the jewelled hilt of his dagger betrayed his disquiet. He had not expected anything like this. He had come to this place expecting to discuss trade and mutual boundaries with the new black emperor who had emerged out of that mysterious and little-known land beyond the river. Instead he had found himself confronted with one of the largest armies the world had ever seen assembled. He wondered if Alexander himself had ever commanded such a multitude.
Omar drew on his bhang pipe, held the smoke and then let it trickle thinly from his nostrils.
‘He seeks to impress us,’ he repeated, and Hassan’s reply was brus
que.
‘If that is his intention, then he succeeds. I am impressed.’
Still the regiments came pouring over the skyline in thick but orderly columns. They wheeled and fell into the pattern of the whole as though a single mind directed them, the way shoals of fish or flights of migrating birds react to unspoken commands. Indeed, this seemed to be not a gathering of individuals but a single organism, sprawling but well coordinated. Hassan watched it and shivered in the noon heat of the valley.
Upon the north bank all movement ceased, and a massive stillness settled over the serried ranks of black warriors. The stillness seemed more menacing than the preceding movement, and an expectant hush filled the valley, a sense of mounting tension which became unbearable, until Hassan swore and made a gesture as though to rise.
‘I will not pander to the whims of a savage. This is an insult. We will go. He must come to us if he wishes to talk.’ But the gesture never matured, and he sank back upon the cushions and fretted in silence until his brother spoke.
‘It seems,’ said Omar, ‘that the world we know has changed, brother. What was true yesterday, is true no longer.’
‘What is your advice?’
‘Let us find the new truths, and examine them. It is possible that we shall still find something to our advantage in all of this.’
On the hills opposite them there was a disturbance, a stirring of the ranks, the way the tops of tall reeds move when a lion passes through. The sheikhs strained their eyes, calling out to their guards for advice of what was happening, but any reply was lost in an ocean of sound. The earth shook beneath the stamp of hundreds of thousands of feet, the air quivered with the drumming of spears on shields, and from the densely packed hills a single voice from the throats of that black multitude roared the royal salute to a king.
The storm of sound rolled across the valley, and died in echoes against the sky and the southern hills. Again the stillness and silence, then a large war canoe with fifty rowers a side was launched from the sandbank and shot across the green waters towards the island.
