Sunbird (52 page)

^{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 and 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.}

^{In place of cavalry were the elephants. Huge, ugly-tempered beasts, who struck terror into the hearts of the enemies of Opet when they charged with the archers in the castles upon their backs loosing a shower of arrows as they came on. In battle frenzy, however, they could wreak as much havoc amongst their own army as that of the enemy, and their handlers were equipped with a mallet and spike to drive into the brains of the berserk animals. Lannon took twenty-five of these beasts upon his march.}

^{With him went his high priest and a dozen lesser priests, engineers, physicians, armourers, cooks, slaves and a huge flock of camp followers: merchants, prospectors, gamblers, soothsayers, liquor-sellers and prostitutes. The bullock train carrying the tentage and supplies stretched for seven miles, while the whole unwieldy column spread out over fifteen miles. This was no problem in the huge unpeopled grass plains of the south with their plentiful supplies of water and forage, but when Huy Ben-Amon stood on a low hill with his king and saw the slow straggling mass coming down out of the north he thought of the time when they would turn north again in a great circle amongst the forests and broken country along the great river. Such a collection of wealth would be a sore temptation to the pagan war bands from the unknown lands beyond the river. He told Lannon his misgivings and Lannon laughed, crinkling his pale blue eyes into the sun.}

^{'You think more like a soldier than a priest.'}

^{'I am both.'}

^{'Of course.' Lannon dropped a hand on his shoulder. 'Not for nothing the command of the sixth legion - well, Huy, I have thought much of this march. In the past, it has always been a great time-waster and a sorry expense on the treasury of Opet. My march will be different. I intend to turn a profit.'}

^{Huy smiled at that magic word, the one understood by all in Opet, noble or commoner, king or priest.}

^{'I intend to make this a different type of march. In the south kingdom we will hunt - hunts such as you have never conceived, and the meat will be smoked and dried and sold to the houses and mines to feed their slaves. We will hunt also for elephant. I would like my army to have 200 of these animals to meet the threats from the north of which you have just reminded me.'}

^{'I had wondered at the multitude of empty wagons that follow us.'}

^{'They will be filled before we turn northwards again,' Lannon promised. 'And when we pass through the gardens of Zeng, I will change the garrisons there, leaving these men in their place. Troops who stay too long in one billet grow lazy and corrupt. At Zeng I will meet the emissaries of the Dravs from the east and renew our treaty with them.'}

^{'But what of the north?' Huy came back to his original question.}

^{'From Zeng we will march north in battle array. The women and the others will be sent home to Opet along the road through the middle kingdom. We will come to the river with two full legions to reinforce the two already there, and we will cross the river on a burning and slave-taking raid that will warn the tribes beyond that a new king reigns in Opet.'}

^{Lannon turned and glared towards the north, and his mane of golden and red hair and beard shone in the sunlight.}

^{'For a hundred years now they have plagued us, and we have been too soft with them. Each year they have grown more numerous, more daring. I will show them the iron of my hand, Sunbird. I will show them that the river is held by a barrier of bright steel, and they will press against it at their cost.'}