The Sunbird

by Wilbur Smith

  Lannon joined him, still half-asleep, cursing as he struggled with his armour and helmet.

  ‘What is it, Huy?’ he demanded.

  ‘I do not know,’ Huy admitted, and they stood staring at the strange light which grew brighter, until they could clearly see each other’s features.

  ‘The harbour,’ said Huy, understanding at last. ‘The fleet. The women.’

  ‘Merciful Baal,’ gasped Lannon. ‘Come!’ And they ran together.

  Manatassi had taken the tubes from the beached galleys before he burned them. A little experimentation had shown him how they worked. It was a simple procedure, dependent mostly upon current and wind direction. He had carried the tubes overland, and installed them in the bows of a pair of captured fishing-boats, whose slave crew were skilled seamen and eager to join Manatassi.

  The on-shore wind had suited his purpose ideally and carried the boats silently into the mouth of the harbour of Opet. He had personally gone aboard one of the boats and he stood now in the stern wrapped in a leopard-skin robe, watching with fierce and hungry eyes as the jets squirted upon the surface of the wind-chopped water and burst into flame.

  Carried on the wind the flame swept into the harbour in a solid wall, roaring like a waterfall and lighting the sky with a false dawn.

  Huy stood beside Lannon upon the wharf. The entire basin of the harbour was filled with tall yellow flame, roaring hungrily, the black smoke clouds blocking out the starry sky and rolling in thick evil-smelling billows across the city.

  The galleys of Habbakuk Lal stood like islands in a sea of fire. The decks were crowded with the women and children of all the noble families of Opet, and their screams carried over the dull furnace roar of flame.

  The watchers upon the shore were unable to offer any escape to them, they looked on helplessly while from the alleyways the lowly ones who had been denied passage hooted and screeched with laughter.

  The flames caught upon the wooden hulls and the mooring lines, racing upwards to the crowded decks.

  Like ants upon a piece of rotten firewood, they scrambled and milled aimlessly, until the circle of flame tightened about them and shrivelled them.

  One of the galleys began drifting in towards the shore. Its anchor lines were burned through, and the wind pushed it so it turned and swung gently, its mast and rigging traced in outlines of yellow fire. Upon the high castle at the stern, clinging together with their blonde hair shining in the firelight, stood Helanca and Imilce, the twin daughters of Lannon Hycanus.

  Before the galley touched the stone wall of the quayside, the flames had smothered it, and the girls were gone.

  Manatassi watched intently, the firelight glinting on those fierce yellow eyes. When the last flames had died and only the burnt-out hulks of the galleys still smouldered, he lifted his iron hand in command. The two fishing-boats hoisted sail and bore out, close on the wind, northwards to where Manatassi’s army was stirring like an awakening monster in the dawn.

  This was the mood in which to fight the last battle, this fine blend of sadness and anger, Huy thought as he strode with Lannon along the ranks. The sun was up, throwing long shadows on the pale brown grass of the plain. On their left stretched the cheerful azure of the lake, flecked with crests of white by the morning breeze. The water fowl flew low in loose V-formations, white against the cloudless blue of the high heavens. On their left rose the rugged rampart of the cliffs, touched with subtle shades of rose and pink and capped with dark green vegetation.

  Huy, looking at lake and cliff, saw them only as points on which to anchor his flanks.

  Ahead, in front of the walls, the land was open, with low scrub and a very few big shady trees; it sloped gently from cliff to lake shore, a Roman mile wide. It was a clear front from which no surprise could spring, although it undulated in a series of low rises like the swell of a sleepy ocean.

  In their rear were the buildings and streets of the lower city, a maze of low clay walls and flat roofs, while further back rose the massive stone walls of the temple, and above them showed the tops of the sun towers.

  This then was a good place in which to fight the last battle, this attenuated front with firm flanks and an open line of retreat.

  Lannon strode along the ranks. There was a spring and purpose in his step that belied his tired eyes and grief-sick face; the face of a man who had seen his family burn to death while he stood by. Huy followed a pace behind him, walking with the long-legged crabbing gait which was so familiar to them all. The axe was on his shoulder, and the armour shaped to his bowed back was highly polished and sparkled in the sunlight. Bakmor and a group of officers followed him.

  The legions were drawn up into their battle formations, and Huy could find no fault with the placing. The light infantry thrown out in a screen, each man armed with a bundle of javelins as well as his side arms. Behind them were placed the heavy infantry, big men armed with axe and war-spear, carrying a great weight of armour, these men were the backbones of the legions. When hard-pressed, the light infantry could retire through their ranks, and let the enemy spend themselves upon this solid reef of armour.

  In the rear were the archers. Drawn up in neat blocks from which they could deliver massed flights of arrows over the heads of the infantry.

  Behind them again were the baggage boys, ready with the bundles of fresh javelins and arrows, bags of cold meat and corn cakes, amphorae of water and wine, spare helmets, swords and axes, and those other items which the battle would expend or destroy.

  At first Lannon’s procession along the ranks was in silence. The men at ease, resting on their weapons, many with their helmets removed, some of them munching a last mouthful of food, all of them with that surface calm of the veteran who has walked many times with old Dame Death, who knows well her whore’s face and the smell of her breath. Many of them still showed the recent marks of her claws upon their bodies, but there was no sign of fear on their faces, no shadows in their eyes.

  Huy felt a humbleness when he met their steady gaze, a pride when one of them grinned and called out, ‘We’ve missed you, Holiness.’

  ‘It’s good to be back,’ Huy told him, and there was a growl of assent from those who heard him. Huy passed on, a ripple of animation followed him now.

  Quick banter, in which Lannon and the officers joined.

  ‘Leave a few for us, Sunbird,’ a grizzled old centurion shouted.

  ‘I think there will be enough for all of us,’ Huy grinned at him.

  ‘Too many?’ another voice called out.

  ‘Not enough,’ Lannon answered. ‘For none of those who oppose us is named Ben-Amon.’

  They cheered then lustily, and it was taken up all along the line from cliff to lake. New waves of sound and shouting followed them as they went to take their place at the centre of the line upon a rise of higher ground where they could see over the whole field.

  Above their heads the standards stood, gaudy with gleaming gold and silken multi-coloured tassels, and at their backs the hundred men of the temple guard. Huy looked over the precisely laid-out cohorts with the sun sparkling on their helmets and weapons, and thought that these were good men with which to fight the last battle, good men in whose company to die.

  He loosened his helmet and lifted it from his head, holding it in the crook of his arm.

  ‘Wine here!’ he called, and baggage boys came scampering to them with bowls and amphorae. It was the best of Huy’s own stocks, rich and red as the blood which would soon soak this field.

  Huy saluted his officers with a raised bowl, then turned to Lannon. They looked at each other for a long moment.

  ‘Fly for me, Bird of the Sun,’ said Lannon softly.

  ‘Roar for me today, Lion of Opet,’ Huy answered him and they drank and broke the bowls and laughed together for the last time. The men about them heard them laugh, and taking courage from it they looked to the north.

  Manatassi came in the middle of the bright hot morning. He came on a front that filled the
plain from lake shore to cliff foot. He came singing with 500,000 throats, and the rhythmic slapping of bare feet and war rattles which rolled across the sky like the thunder of the heavens. He came in orderly ranks, spaced to give each man fighting space, but the rank behind pressed hard upon that ahead, ready to close any gap in the line, to show a solid unbroken front.

  He came in rank upon countless rank, so there was no end to his advance, and the singing was deep and murmurous.

  He came like the shadow of storm clouds moving stately and slow across the land, he came dark as night and numerous as the grass of the fields, and the singing took on a harsher more menacing sound.

  Huy settled his helmet and tightened the strap. He untied the leather sheath from the vulture axe and watched Manatassi advance on a million moving legs like a single vast black animal topped with a froth of feather head dresses, and the spear blades sparkled like multiple insect eyes in the blackness.

  He had never in all his life seen a sight to compare with Manatassi in his full power. This is a worthy foe with whom to fight the last battle, he thought, for there will be no dishonour in defeat by such a one.

  Manatassi rolled on deliberately past the markers which Huy had placed on his front to measure the range; 200 paces, 150 - and the dust from a million stamping feet rose as a bank of fire-golden smoke over the horde, blanketing them so that they seemed to appear endlessly out of the moving shifting loom of it.

  Huy felt his mouth drying out, and the tingle of his blood as it sped through his tensed body. He lifted the vulture axe high, and glanced left and right to make certain that each commander of the archery had seen the signal.

  One hundred and fifty paces, the black tide washed towards him and the singing changed again, rising, shrilling into the blood trill, the high ululation as chilling as any sound Huy had ever heard. He felt the hair on his forearms and at the back of his neck come erect, and his bowels seemed to drop out of his body.

  They came on still, trilling, stamping, drumming with spear on shield, head-dresses dipping and tossing, and Huy stood with his axe held aloft.

  One hundred paces, and Huy brought down the axe and instantly the air was filled with the soft fluting, the whistle of the wings of wild duck at dusk.

  The arrows rose and arched over and fell into them in thick dark flights like that of the locust, and a growl came out of the blackness, the growl of the beast, but it came on steadily into the javelins, seeming to pass through them unscathed for the gaps in the front were instantly filled and the fallen were hidden by the dense mass of bodies passing over them.

  Huy’s light infantry melted away before this massive advance, falling back through the heavies behind them, and Manatassi rolled weightily into Huy’s front.

  It seemed as though nothing could check it, it was too heavy, too wide and deep and strong. It must burst through this line of bright helmets.

  Then unbelievably the blackness was no longer moving forward, but piling up on itself like a log jam in a river. The ranks pressing forward violated the fighting space of those in the van, catching them in a struggling mass, throwing them onto the prickly metal hedge that was Huy’s front line.

  Suddenly it was drawing back, sucked away like the wave of the sea from a steep beach.

  Immediately the javelin men advanced through the heavies to harass the retreat, while the cry of the centurions carried clearly to Huy as they repaired their line.

  ‘Close up here!’

  ‘Javelins here!’

  ‘Fill that gap!’

  ‘Men here! Men here!’

  Manatassi drew back, and bunched, gathered himself like a humping wave and surged forward again, struck and pressed hard, gained a yard of ground and drew back again, gathered himself, started forward gaining momentum and crashing into Huy’s front once more.

  At noon Lannon and Huy were forced from their vantage point, as the fighting surged about their feet. The standards moved back.

  An hour after noon, Huy ordered the last of his reserves into the line, holding only the temple guard under his own hand in a bunch around the battle standards. Still the black waves burst upon the line with a terrible unvarying rhythm, like the ground swell of the ocean.

  Huy gave them ground slowly, drawing back each time just enough to reaffirm his line. It was stretched so finely now, that it seemed each new rush of blackness must rip through it, but still it held.

  Then they were into the lower City, fighting back along the streets, and Huy was cut off from visual contact with the battle as a whole. It was merely a narrow street plugged with a knot of legionaries, holding back a steady rush of black warriors.

  For the first time that day Huy was drawn into the fighting. A small group of wild-eyed black men burst through the rank ahead of him; they were shiny with sweat and grease, their faces painted with stripes of white ochre, making them appear monstrous and unreal.

  Huy cut them down quickly, and ordered a squad of the temple guard into the gap they had opened.

  He knew then that the battle was out of his control. He and Lannon were isolated in a cell of fighting men, able only to direct those of their men within sound of their voices.

  From some distant part of the field came an animal roar of triumph, and Lannon caught Huy’s shoulder and shouted into his ear, ‘I think they have broken through.’ And Huy nodded.

  The set battle was over now. Huy knew that through many gaps in his shattered line the enemy was pouring. It would become a rout now. The miracle had not taken place - the last battle was lost.

  ‘Fall back on the temple?’ Lannon shouted the question and again Huy nodded. The army of Opet was no more, it was reduced to hundreds of isolated groups of desperate men locked shoulder to shoulder and back to back in their last fight, a fight from which there would be no surrender, from which death was the only surcease.

  They gathered the temple guard about them, and moved back along the street, keeping a steady pace, close up and in hand, offering a solid carapace of shields to the enemy.

  Manatassi’s hordes were in their rear now, between them and the temple. They had put fire into the lower city, and the flames were taking a swift grip. The streets through which Huy marched were choked with terrified citizens and groups of wild blood-spattered warriors. Huy drove through all of them, his shields locked in the testudo formation, immune to the press of black men at the rear and the greasy billows of black smoke which spread over him.

  The main temple gate was open and undefended. The guards had fled, the temple enclosure was empty and silent. Huy and ten men held the steps, while Lannon had the gates swung closed, and at the last instant Huy raced back with his men through the closing gap.

  They were resting on the bloody weapons, loosening helmets, wiping the sweat out of their eyes.

  ‘The east gate?’ Huy demanded of Lannon. ‘It is held? Did you send men to close it?’

  Lannon stared at him with dismay, his silence answering Huy’s question eloquently.

  ‘You men!’ Huy picked a group with a quick wave of his arm. ‘Follow me.’ But it was too late. Across the temple enclosure black warriors were streaming through the smaller gate.

  ‘Testudo!’ shouted Huy. ‘Back to the cavern.’ They formed the tortoise again, and moved like an armadillo with metal scales across the enclosure while the warriors swarmed about them, unable to pierce the shell. Smoke from the burning city eddied about them, choking them, blinding them.

  Suddenly the man beside Huy cried out and grabbed at his groin. Blood spurted out between his fingers and he dropped to his knees. The ground over which they were advancing was strewn with dead warriors cut down by the head of the tortoise. They had to step over them. Dozens of these bodies who had been feigning death came suddenly to life, rolling quickly onto their backs and stabbing up under the skirts of the men above them.

  Huy shouted a warning, but it was in vain. The enemy were inside the body of the tortoise, leaping to their feet, thrusting and hacking about them,
forcing Huy’s men to turn and defend themselves, exposing their backs to the warriors on the outside.

  The tortoise disintegrated into a mob of individuals, and the black swarm poured over them as hiving bees.

  ‘With me!’ Huy gathered Lannon, Bakmor and a few others about him and they broke out of the mob in a tight bunch and raced for the cleft of the cavern. The smoke was thick and oily, choking them so they coughed as they ran. Huy swung the axe, cutting a path for them and five of them reached the entrance to the cavern but Bakmor had taken a thrust through the ribs. He pressed one fist to it, trying to staunch the flow of life blood. Huy changed the axe to his other hand, and helped Bakmor up the steps into the mouth of the cleft. His blood ran down Huy’s side, it felt hot and gelatinous. On the top step Bakmor stumbled to his knees.

  ‘It is finished, Huy,’ he choked, but Huy picked him up bodily and carried him into the entrance. He propped him against the wall of the cavern.

  ‘Bakmor,’ he panted, and pushed his head back to look into his face. Bakmor’s eyes looked back at him without seeing, dead and glazed. Huy let the handsome head drop forward, and stood up.

  ‘Here they come,’ shouted Lannon, and Huy hefted the axe and leapt to Lannon’s side to meet the first dark rush of bodies into the passage. The four of them - Lannon, Huy and two legionaries — held the entrance long enough to clog it with piles of dead warriors.

  Then the archers came up and the first volley of arrows swept the passage. One of them struck a legionary in the throat, and he fell with a dark gush of blood from the mouth.

  ‘No cover in here,’ Huy shouted. ‘Back to the temple.’ They raced back along the passage, and the next volley whistled amongst them. One struck Huy’s helmet and glanced away to light sparks off the wall beside him, another found the seam in the last legionary’s breastplate and lodged in the bone of his spinal column. His legs collapsed under him. Desperately he clawed his way after Huy, dragging his crippled body by the sheer strength of his arms alone.