Sunbird (49 page)

^{Lannon wiped out the bowl with a piece of millet bread, popped it into his mouth, and washed it down with the last of the wine. He sighed with content, and smiled at Huy.}

^{'Sing for me, my bird of the sun.'}

^{Huy Ben-Amon squatted on the deck at the foot of the prince's bed. He held his lute in his lap, and crouched over it.}

^{The curve of his back exaggerated the attitude, the long tar-black tresses of hair hung forward to hide his face, his massively developed arms seemed too powerful for the long delicate fingers that held the lute. He struck a note, and a listening hush fell upon the night. The footsteps overhead ceased, two slave girls ceased their work and came to kneel beside Lannon's bed, the arguing voices from the ship anchored alongside quieted, and Huy sang.}

^{His voice rang sweetly across the dark waters, and the prince and the fleet listened. Dark shapes moved to the rails; of the nearest ships and stood quietly there looking across at the flagship. On the cheeks of one of the pretty slave girls stood tear-drops that glistened in the lamp light, when Huy sang of a lost love. Then she smiled through her tears when Huy changed the song to one of the bawdy marching tunes of the Sixth Legion.}

^{'Enough. Huy looked up from his lute at last, 'There will be work tomorrow, my lord.'}

^{Lannon nodded and touched one of the slave girls on the cheek. Immediately she stood up and loosed the shoulder strap of her linen tunic, letting it fall from her body. She was young and lithe, her body almost boyishly slim in the lamp light. She stooped and gathered her robe, dropped it across the bench beside the door and stepped naked into Lannon's bed. The other girl went to snuff the lamp, and Huy rose from the deck with his lute slung on his shoulder.}

^{A voice hailed from the darkness, a great bull bellow from the edge of the papyrus beds that carried across the water to the flagship.}

^{'Open your lines for a friend!'}

^{'Who calls himself friend?' One of the guards shouted a challenge, and the reply was bellowed hoarsely.}

^{'Mursil, huntmaster of house Barca.' And Lannon was out of his bed in one bound.}

^{'He has come!' he exclaimed, flinging his cloak over his shoulders and hurrying to the companion ladder with Huy scampering beside him.}

^{A small canoe bumped alongside and Mursil came up through the entry-port as Lannon and Huy reached the deck, a huge figure, gross and apelike with his big beefy round face ruddy from sun and wine.}

^{The ship was awake now. Her officers swarming up onto the deck, new torches flaring to light the scene as day, the bustle and hum of excitement affecting them all.}

^{Mursil saw Lannon and hurried to him down the aisle which opened for him across the crowded deck. He was followed closely by a pygmy figure, a tiny brown naked manikin that looked about him from slanted eyes in obvious terror at these unfamiliar surroundings.}

^{'My lord.' Mursil opened his cloak and dropped heavily to one knee in front of Lannon. 'I bring good news.'}

^{'Then you are welcome.'}

^{'This one,' Mursil reached behind him and dragged the little bushman forward, 'this one has found what we seek.'}

^{'You have seen it?' Lannon demanded.}

^{'The tracks of his paws only, but this one has seen the beast itself.'}

^{'If it is true, you will be well rewarded, both of you,' promised Lannon Hycanus and turned to grin triumphantly at Huy.}

^{'The gods have decided. House Barca will have its chance once more.'}

^{The sky was only a shade lighter than the black brooding swampland, the dawn-flighting duck ghost-whistled unseen overhead and each minute the light strengthened.}

^{Half a mile out on the open plain a herd of buffalo grazed in a dark bunch. Heads down, tails swinging lazily, they moved back steadily towards the tall dense banks of papyrus reed.}

^{They moved faster as the light strengthened, hurrying to reach the sanctuary of the reed-beds, 200 huge bovine shapes with their armoured heads and bunched black shoulders. Dawn's first light showed the white tick birds which hovered above the dark herd in a cold pink sheen. The swampy earth smoked with mist and the endless banks of papyrus stood frozen in the hush of dawn, for once their fluffy white heads were not nodding and dancing - except where something moved amongst the reeds.}

^{Following its track the papyrus heads stirred, an opening and closing movement that set them nodding briefly before settling into stillness once more. The movement was sedate and yet so weighty that it betrayed the size of the animal which stalked beneath it.}

^{The big bull buffalo that led the herd, stopped suddenly fifty yards from the edge of the papyrus bed. He lifted his nose high and spread his ears wide beneath the heavy boss of horn. With little suspicious piggy eyes he examined the bed of reeds ahead of him. Behind him the herd stopped also, alerted by his stillness.}

^{The gry-lion came out of the reeds at full charge, a blur of soft roan-brown, an animal as tall and almost as heavy as the quarry it hunted. It crossed the open ground so swiftly that the bull had only begun to turn away before the gry-lion was on him.}

^{It landed on his back, curved yellow claws hooked through thick black skin and flesh at shoulder and haunch. The long fangs sank into the back of the buffalo's neck, holding it steady while one paw reached forward and grasped the bull's nose. A single powerful wrench twisted the black neck back against the holding fangs, the spine snapped with a sharp report and the bull folded in full run.}

^{Before he went down the gry-lion had left him, dropping lightly to the ground, seeming hardly to touch it before he was in the air again, a long arcing leap, flashing soft brown against the pink dawn sky to land easily across the back of an old black cow that ran beside the bull.}

^{Lightly as a humming bird flashing from flower to flower, the gry-lion had killed again. Bone breaking sharply in the dawn, the victim carrying the great lion forward in the press of galloping buffalo, and as the cow died the gry-lion was gone, flitting to the next, killing again in one fleeting movement and flitting again.}

^{Six times the gry-lion killed before the surging, plunging, panicking herd had run 300 paces. Then he let them run, the thunder of their hooves dwindled, a far bank of papyrus swallowed them and they were gone.}

^{The gry-lion stood in the silky light of dawn. His long, black-tufted tail still slashed from side to side with the thrill of the hunt. Every muscle was tight and swollen and the great beast half crouched, the flat snakelike head lifted as though to counter the weight of those long white fangs that curved down almost to touch the fluffy fur of his chest.}

^{The face mask was elaborately patterned in black and startling white, an effect that enhanced the golden glowing savagery in the wide-set eyes, but the whiskers and eyelashes were long white bristle, and seemed to soften the animal's expression. However, when it stood up from its crouch, with the short ruff of mulberry-brown mane along its back still fully erect, any illusion of softness vanished.}

^{As tall as a man, and as heavy as a horse, armed with those legendary fangs and claws, this was the most dangerous cat that all nature's twists and evolutions had ever produced.}

^{The cat turned and paced back to where its last victim lay in the short grass of the plain. It stood over the dead buffalo, and it seemed impossible that such a large animal could move as swiftly as this one had at the height of the hunt.}

^{The gry-lion lifted its head, the massive jaws parted, the long pink tongue curled out between those unbelievable fangs, and it roared.}

^{It was a sound that seemed to shake the purple skies of dawn, that made the earth shudder and ruffled the quiet waters of the great lake.}

^{In the dawn, upon the narrow muddy beach beside the reed banks, Huy Ben-Amon greeted his god. Huy wore light hunting armour of leather, a leather breastplate and arm-guards over a short linen tunic and bronze-studded leather kilt, but his weapons were laid aside, for he was about to offer the sacrifice, to send a messenger to great Baal. A messenger to carry the request of Lannon Hycanus to his god. The prince and his nobles were gathered in a half circle about the priest, all of them facing the eastern sky. Baal showed the tip of his fiery orb above the horizon, and they lifted their hands to him. Fingers spread in the sun-sign.}

^{'Great Baal,' Huy called the greeting in sweet shimmering tones that seemed must carry to the sky. 'Your children greet you!' Huy's swarthy, beak-nosed features were lit by a mystic glow which gave him a strange beauty.}

^{'We have come to this place to choose a king for your people and we ask your blessing on our endeavours.' Huy knew his gods intimately, and though he loved them yet he knew their all too human weaknesses. They were vain, inconsistent, touchy, greedy and sometimes bone-lazy. They must be flattered and cajoled, bribed and jollied along, they needed special ceremony and display to capture their jaded interest and attention, sacrifice, which Huy personally found revolting, to assuage their lust for warm blood. It was not enough that sacrifice was made, it must be made in all the correct forms before the gods would accept it, and as one of his lesser priests led the white bull forward Huy wondered if he had done the right thing in persuading Lannon to offer an animal rather than a slave. The gods preferred human blood, but Huy had argued with Lannon that a bull now and the promise of a slave later might be more effective. Huy had no compunction in bargaining with the great immortals, especially if it delayed the moment when he must look into the terrified, pleading eyes of a doomed slave. In the five years that Huy had directed the religious life of Opet, not more than 100 human messengers had been sent to the gods. Whereas there had been times in the city's history when that number had been sent at a single ceremony.}

^{'We send you a fine white bull to carry our message.' Huy turned and approached the animal. It was of the short stocky Opet type, white and grey dappled, with a fat hump on its shoulders and wide straight horns. It stood quietly as Huy took the vulture axe from one of his priests. The circle of nobles drew back a little, giving the axe space to swing and the blood to spurt.}

^{'Great Baal, receive our messenger!' Huy shouted, and the axe went up, reflecting the low rays of the sun from its flashing blade. It hissed angrily as it fell, and the bull's thick neck severed cleanly, the head seeming to leap from the trunk. Headless, the body fell to its knees and the blood pumped and gushed.}

^{Huy leaned upon his weapon in the typical stance of the resting axeman.}

^{'A sign, great Baal!' Huy shouted, making it more a demand than a request. 'Give your children a sign!' And his voice was tiny in the immensity of swamp and sky and water. The timeless silence of the swamps fell upon them, the silence of the ages in the smoky purple dawn.}

^{A flight of spur-winged geese passed overhead, wings beating heavily, long necks outstretched, silhouetted darkly against the rosy streamers of sun-touched mist. Huy watched them hopefully, tempted to claim them as god-forms.}

^{'A sign, great Baal!' He thrust aside the temptation, but his irritation was increasing. The sacrifice had been meticulously performed right down to the single clean stroke of the axe - was this to be one of those occasions when the god's attention had wandered, or was he being obstinate, pig-headed? A hippopotamus splashed and snorted out in the bay, and Huy turned towards it expectantly, but the fat grey sea-cow merely fluttered its ears like bees' wings, then submerged with a swirl.}

^{'A sign, great Baal!' The third and final request, and almost immediately it was answered.}

^{A sound rose from beyond the papyrus beds that startled the water birds into flight, that shook the fluffy white heads of the reeds, that seemed to roll across the heavens like thunder. A sound such as none of them had ever heard before. The roaring of the gry-lion.}