by Wilbur Smith
Tanith licked her long tapered thumb and forefinger with the tip of a pink tongue, then examined her hand with interest, twisting it from side to side to catch the light.
‘There is nobody else that the king can trust to send on this mission. It is a matter of grave importance.’
‘I am sure,’ Tanith murmured, still examining her hand. ‘Just as there was no other who could go with him to stick fish.’
‘Now, Tanith,’ Huy explained reasonably. ‘Lannon and I have been companions since our childhood. We used to go out to the islands often in the old days. It was like a pilgrimage to revisit our youths.’
‘While I sit here with a bellyful of your child, alone.’
‘It was but five days,’ Huy pointed out.
‘But five days!’ Tanith mimicked him with her cheeks flushing, signalling the change of her mood from ice to fire. ‘I swear on my love of the goddess, that I do not understand you! You profess your love for me, yet when Lannon Hycanus crooks a finger you run to him, panting like a puppy dog and roll on your back that he may tickle your belly!’
‘Tanith!’ Huy began to grin. ‘I swear you are jealous!’
‘Jealous, it is!’ Tanith cried, and snatched up the fruit bowl. ‘I’ll give you jealous!’ She hurled the bowl, and while it was in flight she was reaching for fresh missiles.
Old Aina, nodding in the sunlight at the end of the terrace, awoke in the midst of the storm and joined Huy in flight. They found shelter behind an angle of the wall, and from there Huy cautiously reconnoitred the field and found it deserted, but he could hear Tanith weeping somewhere in the house.
‘Where is she?’ quavered Aina.
‘In the house,’ answered Huy, combing fruit from his beard and mopping at wine stains on his tunic.
‘What is she doing?’
‘Weeping,’ Huy said.
‘Go to her,’ commanded Aina.
‘And if she attacks me again?’ Huy asked nervously.
‘Spank her,’ instructed Aina. ‘Then kiss her.’ And she gave him a toothless but utterly knowing grin.
‘Forgive me, Holy Father,’ whispered Tanith and her tears were warm and wet upon Huy’s neck. ‘It was childish of me, I know, but every moment I spend away from you is a piece of my life wasted.’
Huy held her, stroking her hair, gentling her, and his chest felt congested and swollen with the strength of his love for her. He was close to tears himself as he listened to her voice.
‘Is it not possible for me to go with you this time?’ She made one last appeal. ‘Please, Holy Father. Please, my love.’
Huy’s response was regretful but firm. ‘No. I go fast and hard, and you are already in your third month.’
She accepted it at last. She sat up on the couch and dried her eyes. Her smile was only a little lopsided as she asked, ‘Won’t you tell me again of the arrangements you have made for the baby?’
She sat beside him, soft and warm, with her pale skin glowing over the faint bulge of her belly and the new heaviness of her breasts m the lamplight. Her eyes were intent as she listened, and she nodded and smiled and exclaimed as Huy told her how it would be - of the foster mother he had selected in the cool and healthy air of the hills, on the estate at Zeng. He told her how the child would grow healthy and strong, and how they would visit it there.
‘It?’ Tanith demanded playfully. ‘Never it, my lord - her!’
‘Him!’ Huy corrected and they laughed. But beneath Tanith’s laughter the sadness persisted. This was not the way it would be. She could not see this, she could not catch the happiness of it, could not hear the laughter of a child nor feel the warmth of its little body against her.
For a moment the dark curtains of time opened, and, as sometimes happened, she glimpsed the future, saw dark shapes and men and things that terrified her.
She clung to Huy and listened to his voice. It gave her comfort and strength, and at last she asked softly, ‘If I fetch your lute, will you sing for me?’
And he sang the poem to Tanith, but there were new verses now. Every time he sang it, there were new verses.
Marmon was the captain of the north, governor of the northern kingdom and commander of the legions and forts that guarded the northern border. He was an old friend of Huy’s, thirty years his senior but with the bond of scholarship between them. Marmon was a keen military historian, and Huy was helping him with a manuscript history of the third war with Rome. He was a tall bony man with a fine mane of silver hair of which he was inordinately proud. He kept it shampooed and neatly clubbed. His skin was smooth as a girl’s and firmly drawn over the prominent bones of his skull, but the shivering sickness had yellowed the tone of his complexion and yellowed the whites of his eyes also.
He was one of the empire’s most trusted generals, and for two days he and Huy discussed the situation along the border, poring over a clay-box map of the territory so that Marmon could show Huy exactly where each piece of the puzzle fitted in. Marmon’s fine-boned hands touched each of the counters, or drew out the lines and areas of disturbance and dispute, while Huy listened and asked his questions.
At the end of the second day they ate the evening meal together, sitting up on the ramparts of the fortress for the sake of the cool evening breeze. A slave girl anointed their limbs with perfumed oil to discourage the mosquitoes and Marmon filled Huy’s wine bowl with his own hands, but did not drink himself. The shivering sickness damages a man’s liver, and for him wine turns to poison.
Huy thanked Baal for the immunity that the gods had given him against the ravages of this disease which flourished in the hot lowlands of swamp and river. Huy’s mind chased after the thought: Why did the disease kill some, cripple others and leave others untouched? Why did it strike only in the lowlands, and leave the cool uplands untainted? He must think about it more, try and find answers to these questions.
However, Marmon was talking again now and Huy stopped his mind from wandering, brought it back to the problem in hand.
‘I am at last building up a system of spies upon which I can rely,’ Marmon was saying. ‘I have men with the tribes who report to me regularly.’
‘I should like to meet some of them,’ Huy intervened.
‘I would rather that you did not, Holiness,’ Marmon began, then noticed Huy’s expression and went on smoothly. ‘I expect one of them to report within the next few days. He is my most reliable informant. A man named Storch, a Vendi, an ex-slave. Through him I am recruiting a body of spies across the river.’
‘I will speak with him,’ said Huy, and the conversation changed, Marmon asking advice of Huy about his manuscript. As old friends they talked on, until darkness had fallen and the servants lit torches for them. At last Marmon asked deferentially, ‘My lord, I have been petitioned by my officers. Some of them have never heard you sing, and those who have wish to hear it again. They are importunate, Holiness, but I trust you will bear with them.’
‘Send to my quarters for my lute.’ Huy shrugged with resignation, and one of the young officers stepped forward with the lute.
‘We have already presumed. Holy Father.’
Huy sang the songs of the legions, the drinking and marching songs, the bawdy songs and the songs of glory. They loved it. The officers crowded silently about Huy on the ramparts, and in the courtyard below the common soldiers gathered with their faces upturned, ready to come crashing in with the chorus.
It was late when an aide pressed through the throng and spoke quietly to Marmon. He nodded and dismissed the aide before whispering to Huy, ‘Holiness, the man I spoke of has come.’
Huy set aside the lute. ‘Where is he?’
‘In my quarters.’
‘Let us go to him,’ suggested Huy.
Storch was a tall man, with the distinctive willowy grace displayed by so many of the Vendi, but the smooth velvety black skin of his shoulders was marred by the thickened scars of the slave lash.
He noticed Huy’s glance and adjusted his cloak to cover
the ugly cicatrice, and it seemed to Huy there was a flash of defiance in his eyes although his face was handsome and impassive.
‘He speaks no Punic, Marmon explained. ’But I know you speak the dialect.‘
Huy nodded, and the spy looked at him a moment longer before he addressed Marmon. His voice was quiet, without either anger or accusation.
‘It was our agreement that no other should see my face,’ he said.
‘This is different,’ Marmon explained quickly. ‘This is no ordinary man, but the High Priest of Opet and the General of all the armies of the king.’ Marmon paused. ‘This is Huy Ben-Amon.’
The spy nodded, his face still showed no expression, not even when Huy spoke in Vendi.
They talked for an hour, and at the end of it Huy turned to Marmon, speaking in Punic.
‘This disagrees with much else you have told me.’ Huy frowned and knocked his knuckles irritably against the table top. ‘This man has heard nothing of a god with lion claws, nor of regiments of trained warriors armed with the weapons of the Drav.’
‘No, Marmon agreed. ’This section of the river is quiet. Our reports come from farther east.‘
‘You have spies there?’ Huy asked.
‘Some, Marmon nodded, and Huy thought a moment.
‘I will move eastward then,’ Huy made up his mind. ‘I will march at dawn.’
‘The patrol galley will arrive in five days.’
‘I will see nothing from the deck of a galley. I will go on foot.’
‘I will have an escort waiting for you before the rise of the sun,’ Marmon offered.
‘No,’ Huy rejected the offer. ‘I will move faster, and draw less attention to myself if I travel alone.’ He glanced again at Storch. ‘This man can serve as a guide, if he is as reliable as you say.’
Marmon relayed Huy’s order to the spy and ended, ‘You may go now. Eat and rest, and be ready before the sun.’
When he was gone Huy looked after Storch for a long moment then asked. ‘How much do you pay such a one?’
‘Very little,’ Marmon admitted. ‘Salt, beads, a few copper ornaments.’
‘I wonder why he does it,’ Huy said softly. ‘Why he works for us when the scars of the lash are fresh upon his body.’
‘I am no longer amazed by the acts of men,’ said Marmon. ‘I have seen too much strange behaviour ever to question a man’s motives.’
‘I never cease to do so,’ murmured Huy, still looking after the spy, troubled by the man’s treachery which jarred so harshly on Huy’s own sense of honour.
Huy’s efforts to find out more about the spy over the next four days met with but small success. Storch was a silent man, speaking only when he was questioned directly, and then answering with words barely sufficient for the occasion. He never looked directly at Huy; his eyes focused to one side of Huy’s face and he looked beyond.
Huy found him a disconcerting companion, though he clearly knew every bend of the river and every fold of the ground over which they travelled.
They called at two of the forts upon the south bank, and from the men who garrisoned them Huy gleaned much firsthand intelligence. Twice they found the sign where large parties of men had crossed the river on mysterious business, and there were other small indications of secret activity which heightened Huy’s feelings of unrest.
It disturbed him that these signs were in contradiction of Storch’s assurances of quiet and stable conditions beyond the river.
They travelled swiftly and silently, slipping like a pair of forest spirits through the dense valley bush. They travelled much in the cool of evening and night and rested in the hissing heat of noon. They ate little, husbanding the contents of the corn bag and not wasting time upon the hunt.
On the fourth day they reached the summit of a small granite hillock from which they could survey a huge area of the valley floor, a panorama that stretched from escarpment to escarpment and only shaded away into the blue haze of distance. Before them the river made a mighty bight towards the south, a wide glittering loop of many miles that twisted back upon itself.
Although the loop was some twenty or twenty-five miles around, yet across the neck was less than five and beyond it stood the squat solid block of another garrison. The smoke from the cooking fires rose in a pale blue feather into the still, hot air.
Huy looked at the twist of the river for a long time, seeing the choice as between a full day’s hard slogging or a quick cut across the neck of the loop with its attendant risk.
‘Storch,’ he said, ‘can we cross the river? Are there men of the tribes here?’
The spy looked away from Huy’s scrutiny, hiding any expression. He sat very still, squatting upon the granite dome beside Huy - and Huy thought he had not understood the question.
‘It would be shorter to cut across the bend. Is it safe?’ he asked again, and Storch replied, ‘I will find out. Wait here for me.’
He returned an hour before dark and led Huy down to the river bank. Hidden in the reeds was a narrow dug-out canoe. The woodwork was rotten with worm, and it stank of old fish. Huy’s suspicion flared.
‘Where did you find this?’
‘There is a family of fishermen camped down stream.’
‘How many?’
‘Four of them, Storch replied.
‘Vendi?’
‘No, men of Sofia.’
‘Warriors?’
‘Fishermen. Old men with grey heads.’
‘You told them about me?’
‘No.’
Huy hesitated, peering into the blank stare of Storch’s eyes, trying to find a hint of treachery there.
‘No,’ said Huy, ‘we will not cross. We will go around the long way.’ It was a test. He waited for Storch’s reaction, waited for him to argue, to attempt to persuade Huy to make the crossing.
‘It is for you so say,’ Storch nodded, and began to cover the canoe with reeds.
‘Very well,’ Huy agreed, ‘take me across.’
Storch used the current to angle the frail little craft across the river. Ahead of them the cormorants beat the water with their wings in their frenzied efforts to launch into flight, while the chocolate and white jacanas scurried across the lily pads and the sinister log-like shapes of the crocodiles slid down the bank into deep water.
They landed on a muddy beach heavily trodden by the hooves of the game that drank here, and Storch hid the canoe. He led Huy up the bank, and into a glade of bright poisonous green swamp grass. They waded waist-deep through the thick clutching stems, and the ground was soggy and yielding underfoot.
In the centre of the glade Storch stopped abruptly and motioned Huy to stand still. He cocked his head in a listening attitude. They stood frozen for a long time, then Storch cautioned Huy to remain where he was and he moved forward.
A hundred paces from Huy, Storch stopped again, but now he turned and looked back at Huy.
For the first time his face showed expression, a wild exultation, a bright burst of triumph.
He lifted his right arm and pointed at Huy, a gesture of denunciation, and he shouted out in Vendi, ‘There he is! Take him!’
The grass of the glade rustled and shook as though a high wind blew across it, and from their places of concealment rose rank upon rank of Vendi warriors. Their shields overlapped, their lines formed concentric circles about Huy, ringing him in completely, and the plumes of their head-dresses were the foaming crest of a menacing wave about him.
Like the tightening of a strangler’s fist upon the throat, the rings of warriors closed in on Huy. Wildly he glared about him, seeking an avenue of escape. There was none, and he stripped the leather guard from the blade of the vulture axe and flew like a terrier at the throat of a black bull.
‘For Baal!’ he shouted his defiance as he charged into the solid mass of warriors.
‘The air in here is foul,’ Lannon complained, sniffing at it. ‘Is there no way in which we can drive ventilation shafts to the surface?’
; ‘Majesty!’ Rib-Addi could not hide his horror. ‘Think what that would mean. Workmen in here. He made a wide gesture that took in the entire length of the treasury. ’Can you imagine what tales they would take with them to inflame the greed of every brigand in the four kingdoms.‘
It was for this reason that the location and contents of the royal storehouse were such a closely guarded secret. The best-kept secret in the empire, known only to the king, the High Priest and Priestess, Rib-Addi and four other officials of the treasury.
‘I would have them sent to the gods immediately they had completed the task,’ Lannon explained reasonably.
Rib-Addi blinked with surprise. He had not envisaged such a sweeping solution to the problem. It took him a moment’s beard-scratching and deep thought to unearth his next objection.
‘A ventilation shaft would provide entry for thieves and rodents and damp. All these would damage and destroy.’
‘Oh, very well.’ Lannon dismissed the subject, knowing well that Rib-Addi resisted change merely because it was change. What had been good for the past two hundred years, must be good for the next two hundred.
Lannon watched as the latest shipment of finger ingots from the mines of the middle kingdom was reverently added to the piles of gold already laid down in the recess of the treasury. Rib-Addi noted the quantities meticulously in his scroll, and Lannon affirmed the entry by scrawling his personal sign beside the entry.
The four trusted officials filed out of the long chamber with its piles of treasure. While they climbed the flagged stairs, Rib-Addi sealed the iron gate. He pressed the Gry-Lion’s mark into the clay tablet, then he and Lannon climbed the stairs and passed through the sun door into the state archives. Lannon closed the door, and the massive slab swung into its seating with a solid clunk.
Lannon made the sun sign at the god’s image upon the door, then with Rib-Addi beside him discoursing as ever on wealth in its many manifestations, he passed down the length of the archives. The shelves were loaded with the records of the kingdom, and there was little space left. Soon he must turn his mind to an extension of these catacombs, how to enlarge them without destroying or damaging the existing structure.
