Sunbird (54 page)

^{Lannon came out of the darkness, still filthy with dust and dried blood.}

^{'Wine! Sunbird, for the love of a friend.' He pretended to stagger with thirst, and Huy passed both amphora and bowl to him. Scorning the bowl Lannon drank directly from the neck of the jug and wiped his beard on his arm.}

^{'I come with news,' he grinned. 'The bag was 1,700 head.'}

^{'How many of them men?'}

^{'Fifteen men died, and there are some wounded - but was it not worth it?'}

^{Huy did not answer, and Lannon went on.}

^{'There is more news. Another of my javelins has struck the mark. Annel has missed her moon.'}

^{'The southern air must be beneficial. All four of them with child in two months.'}

^{'It is not the air, Sunbird,' Lannon laughed and drank again.}

^{'I am pleased,' said Huy. 'More of the old blood for Opet.'}

^{'When did you ever care for blood, Huy Ben-Amon? You are pleased to have more of my brats to spoil - I know you.' Lannon came to stand behind Huy. 'You are writing,' he said, unnecessarily. 'What is it?'}

^{'A poem,' said Huy modestly.}

^{'What of?'}

^{'The hunt - today's hunt.'}

^{'Sing it to me,' commanded Lannon and dropped onto Huy's fur bed, with the amphora still grasped by the neck.}

^{Huy fetched his lute, and squatted on the reed mat. He sang, and when he had finished Lannon lay quietly on the bed staring out through the opening of the tent into the night.}

^{'I did not see it like that,' he said at last. 'To me it was just a taking, a harvest of flesh.'}

^{He was silent again.}

^{'I have displeased you?' Huy asked, and Lannon shook his head.}

^{'Do you truly believe that what we did today has destroyed something that will never be replaced?' he asked.}

^{'I do not know, perhaps not - but if we hunted like that every day, or even once every ten days, would we not soon turn this land into a desert?'}

^{Lannon brooded quietly over the half-empty amphora for a long while, then he looked up at Huy and smiled.}

^{'We have taken sufficient meat. We will not hunt again this year - only for ivory.'}

^{'My lord, has the wine jug stuck to your hand?' Huy asked softly, and Lannon stared at him for a moment then laughed.}

^{'A trade, Sunbird, another song and I will give you wine.'}

^{'A fair trade,' Huy agreed.}

^{When the amphora was empty, Huy sent one of his ancient slaves for another.}

^{'Bring two,' suggested Lannon. 'It will save time later.'}

^{At midnight Huy was soft from the wine, and desolated by the beauty of his own voice and the sadness of his own song. He wept, and Lannon seeing him weep, wept with him.}

^{'I will not have such beauty recorded on the skin of beasts,' cried Lannon with the tears cutting runnels through the dust on his cheeks and pouring into his beard. 'I will have a scroll made of the finest gold, and on it you will inscribe your songs, my Sunbird. Then they will live forever to delight my children and my children's children.'}

^{Huy stopped weeping. The artist in him aroused, his mind quickly assimilating the offer which he knew Lannon would not remember in the morning.}

^{'I am truly honoured, my lord.' Huy went to kneel at the side of the bed. 'Will you sign the treasury order now?'}

^{'Write it, Huy, write it now, this instant,' Lannon commanded. 'I will sign it.'}

^{And Huy ran for his writing pallet.}

^{The column moved on slowly in a great circle-to the south and east through the southern plains of grass. It was a land of such limitless dimensions that the fifteen-mile column was as significant as a file of safari ants. There were rivers and ranges of hills, forests and plains teeming with game. The only men they met were the garrisons of the king's hunting camps. Their task was primarily to provide a steady supply of dried meat for the multitudes of slaves that were the foundation of the nation's prosperity.}

^{They crossed the river of the south* six months after departure from the city of Opet and 100 miles beyond they reached the range of thickly forested blue mountains** which marked the border of the southern kingdom.}

^{* Limpopo River ** Zoutspansberg}

^{They went into camp at the mouth of a dark rocky gorge that tore its way through the heart of the mountains, and Lannon and Huy with a cohort of infantry and archers took the precipitous path through the gorge. It was an eerie place of tall black stone cliffs hanging high above the roaring frothing torrent in the depths below. It was a cold dark place where the warmth of the sun seldom penetrated. Huy shivered, not from the cold, and clutched his axe firmly. He prayed almost continually during the three days that they marched through the mountains for it was most certainly a place frequented by demons.}

^{They camped on the southern slopes of the mountains and built signal fires, sending the smoke aloft in tall columns that could be seen for fifty miles. To the southward stretched a land as vast as that to the north.}

^{Looking out across its golden rolling grasslands and its dark green forests, Huy felt a sense of awe. 'I would like to go down into that land,' he told Lannon.}

^{'You would be the first,' Lannon agreed. I wonder what it holds. What treasures, what mysteries?'}

^{'We know there is a Cape to the far south with a flat-topped mountain where the fleet of Hycanus IX was destroyed, but that is all we know.'}

^{'I have a mind to defy the prophecy and lead an expedition southwards beyond these mountains - what say you, Huy?'}

^{'I would not counsel it, my lord,' Huy answered formally. 'No good ever comes of challenging the gods, they have damnably long memories.'}

^{'I expect you are right,' Lannon conceded. 'Yet I am sorely tempted.'}

^{Huy changed a subject which was making him uncomfortable, he should never have broached it.}

^{'I wonder when they will come.' He looked up at the smoke from the signal fires streaming up into the calm blue of the midday sky.}

^{'They will come when they are ready,' Lannon shrugged. 'But I wish they would make it soon. Whilst we wait, we will hunt the leopard.'}

^{For ten days they hunted the big spotted cats which abounded in the misty cliffs and woody gorges of the mountains. They hunted with specially trained hounds and lion-spears. They would run the quarry with the pack, until it was cornered or bayed and they would then surround it and close in until the charge was provoked.}

^{Then the man selected by the leopard would take the snarling, slashing animal on the point of his spear. Two of the hunters were killed in those ten days - and one of them was a grandson of Asmun. the old nobleman. He was a fine brave lad and they all mourned, although it was a good and honourable death. They cremated his body, tor he had died in the field, and Huy sacrificed for a safe passage of his soul to the sun.}

^{On the eleventh day, in the dawn after Huy had greeted Baal, and they had breakfasted and were dressing and arming for the hunt, Huy noticed the agitation and restlessness of the little bushman huntmaster, Xhai.}

^{'What is it that troubles you, Xhai?' he asked him in his own language, which he now spoke with authority.}

^{'My people are here,' the bushman told him.}

^{'How do you know that?' Huy demanded.}

^{'I know it!' Xhai answered simply, and Huy hurried through the camp to Lannon's tent.}

^{'They have come, my lord,' he told him.}

^{'Good.' Lannon laid aside his lion-spear and began stripping his hunting armour. 'Call the stone-finders.' And the royal geologists and metallurgists came hurrying to the summons.}

^{The meeting place was at the foot of the mountains where thick forest ended abruptly at the edge of a wide glade.}

^{Lannon led his party down amongst the rocks and at the edge of the glade they halted, and threw out a protective screen of archers. In the centre of the glade, well out of arrow-shot of the forest edge or the rocky slope, a pole had been driven into the soft earth and the tail of a reed buck dangled from it like a standard. It was the sign that the trade could begin.}

^{Lannon nodded to his senior path-finder, Aziru, and Rib-Addi, master of the royal treasury. The two of them walked out into the glade unarmed and with two slaves following them. The slaves each carried a leather bag.}

^{At the foot of the pole was a dried gourd which contained a handful of bright pebbles and stones of various colours ranging from glassy to fiery red.}

^{The two officials examined each stone, rejecting some by dropping them in a neat pile on the earth, selecting others by returning them to the gourd. Then from the leather bags they doled out glass beads into a pottery jar which they placed beside the gourd. They withdrew to the rocky slope where Lannon and his archers stood.}

^{The waited until a dozen tiny figures left the edge of the forest and approached the pole. The troop of little bushmen squatted beside the gourd and jar and there was a long heated debate before they withdrew to the forest once more. The two officials went out into the glade and found gourd and jar untouched. The offer had been refused. They added a dozen iron arrow-heads to the offering.}

^{At the third attempt a bargain was struck when the bushmen accepted the beads and arrow-heads and copper bangles, leaving the stones to be collected.}

^{Then another batch of stones was set out beside the pole and haggled over. It was a tedious business which occupied four whole days, and while they waited Huy added considerably to his knowledge of geology.}

^{'From where do these sun stones come?' he asked Aziru, as he examined a yellow diamond the size of an acorn which had been traded for a pound's weight of glass beads.}

^{'When sun and moon show together in the sky, then it may happen that their rays mingle and become hot and heavy. They fall to earth, and if they strike water then they are quenched and freeze into one of these sun stones.' Huy found this explanation utterly convincing.}

^{'A love-drop of Baal and Astarte,' he whispered with reverence. 'No wonder then that they are so beautiful.' He looked up at Aziru. 'Where do the pygmies find them?'}

^{'It is said that they search in the gravel beds of the rivers, and also the edge of the lakes,' Aziru explained. 'But they are not adept at recognizing the true sun stone and their offerings contain many common stones.'}

^{When the bushmen had traded their entire gathering of diamonds, they offered for sale the unwanted children of the tribe. These little yellow mites were left bound and shivering with terror beside the trading pole. The slave masters, experts in appraising human flesh, went out to examine them and offer payment. The pygmies were much in demand as slaves, for they were tractable, loyal and hardy. They made excellent hunters, guides, entertainers, and, strangely, children's companions.}

^{Xhai stood behind his tall yellow-haired king and watched the trade, exactly the bargaining which had been conducted over him as a child.}