Sunbird (74 page)

^{Naked, except for the belt which held his axe, Huy looked out across the river. Timon was out of range of the archers on the bank, he was halfway across to the island in the time which it had taken Huy to strip.}

^{Huy dived cleanly from the bank, and struck the water flat on his belly. Then he was swimming, dragging himself through the bloody water with those long thick arms and churning the surface white with his powerful legs.}

^{On the island Timon had found weapons The throwing spears of the charred bodies that lay thick upon the ground.}

^{As Huy found his footing and waded ashore, Timon hurled the first of them. Huy deflected the spear with a swing of his axe, catching the spear-blade full on the great butterfly-shaped head, swatting the spear out of the air as though it were an insect.}

^{Again Timon threw, and again - but now Huy was charging him across the rocky, corpse-strewn ground, and each thrown spear was caught neatly upon the head of the axe and sent spinning aside to fall harmlessly on the rocky earth.}

^{In desperation Timon stooped and picked up one at the round river boulders as large as a man's head. He lifted it over his head with both hands, and stepped forward as he threw it. The rock caught Huy a glancing blow on his shoulder, and knocked him down on his back with the axe skidding away from his hand.}

^{Timon charged at him, careless in his anger and hatred. Huy bounced off the earth, flipping himself forward like a thrown javelin.}

^{The top of Huy's head crashed into Timon's body just below the rib-cage and the air of his lungs rushed out of his throat in a gasp of agony. Timon doubled up and dropped to his knees, clutching at his chest with both hands.}

^{Huy stood over him, and bunched his hand in the manner of the gladiators. He struck Timon with the bony hammer of his fist just below the ear, and Timon toppled forward senseless to the rocks.}

^{'I cannot kill you, Timon,' Huy's voice came to him through grey mist, and from a great distance. 'Though you deserve death as no one else has done before you. You have betrayed my trust. You have carried the sword against me and my king - you deserve to die.'}

^{Huy's face came into focus, and Timon found himself tying on his back with arms outstretched. He tried to move and found himself bound. Leather thongs were knotted tightly about his fingers and pegged down to the earth, holding him captive. He rolled his head and found himself on the north side of the island, hidden from watchers on the south bank and alone with Huy.}

^{On the rocks beside him a small fire of driftwood burned. Huy had lit it from a smouldering remnant, and in it was heating a broad spear-head with its shaft snapped off short.}

^{'There is little time. Soon my men will come to find me, and then it will be out of my hands,' Huy explained reasonably. 'I have made an oath to my gods, so I cannot give you the punishment which you have earned. Yet I have a duty to my king and my people. I cannot let you carry the sword against us again.}

^{'The Romans had an answer for this, and though I hate all things of Rome, I must use their methods now.'}

^{Huy stood up, and leaned over Timon.}

^{'I made a mistake with you. No man can ever tame the wild leopard.' Huy held the vulture axe in his right hand. 'You were never Timon, you were always Manatassi. You are as different from me as the colour of my skin is different from yours. There was never a bond between us, it was illusion, for though our mouths speak the same language, our ears hear the sounds differently.}

^{'Your destiny is to seek the destruction of all that I hold dear, all that my people have built and tended. My destiny is to protect it, with my very life's blood.' Huy paused, and there was true regret in his heart as he went on. 'I cannot kill you, but I must make sure that you never carry the sword again.'}

^{The vulture axe sang, and Timon screamed once, and then whimpered softly as his severed right hand twitched and trembled like a dying animal on the scorched earth of the island.}

^{Huy fetched the heated spear blade from the fire and sealed off the pumping blood vessels of the stump in a hissing puff of stinking smoke. Then he cut the thongs that still bound Timon.}

^{'Go,' he said. 'You must trust yourself to the river now. My men will come to search the island soon.'}

^{Timon dragged himself down the beach, and at the water's edge be looked back at Huy. His huge black body was scarred and ravaged, and his eyes were terrible.}

^{Slowly he lowered himself into the water, holding the raw stump of his arm across his chest. The current took him, and his head dwindled to a speck upon the wide river, until it was swept beyond the bend below the fort. Huy watched it out of sight, then he stooped and picked up the severed hand from the ground and dropped it onto the fire and piled dry driftwood upon it.}

^{Bakmor had dug his cremation pits along the bank of the river, and he and Huy passed along the ranks of fallen warriors laid upon their last couch of wood. It was the ceremony of farewell, and Huy paused and looked down at old Mago. In death the garrison commander had a dignity which he had lacked in life.}

^{'How sweet is the taste of glory now, Mago?' Huy asked him softly, and it seemed that Mago smiled in his sleep.}

^{Huy sang the praise of Baal, and then he lit the funeral fires with his own hand.}

^{Tanith was not upon the walls to welcome him when they marched back to the fortress of Sett, but Huy found her in her own chamber. She had been weeping and her face was pale, with dark blue smears beneath her eyes.}

^{'I feared for you, my lord. My heart burned within me, but I did not weep. I was very brave through it all. Through all the horror of it. It was only when they told me that you were safe that I cried. Isn't that silly?'}

^{Holding her close, Huy asked, 'Was it like the poets sang it? Was it glorious and heroic?'}

^{'It was horrible,' Tanith whispered. 'Horrible beyond my dreams of horror. It was ugly, my lord, ugly enough to make me despair of beauty.' She was silent then, remembering it all again. 'You poets never tell of the blood, and the wounded screaming and - all the other things.'}

^{'No,' Huy agreed. 'We never do.'}

^{In the night Huy woke and found that Tanith was sitting beside him on the couch. The night lamp was trimmed low and her eyes were dark pools in her face.}

^{'What troubles you?' Huy asked, and she was quiet a few seconds before she spoke.}

^{'Holy Father, you are so gentle, so kind. How could you do what was done today?'}

^{Huy pondered the reply a moment.}

^{It was my duty,' he explained at last.}

^{'Your duty to slaughter those wretches?' Tanith asked incredulously.}

^{'The law is death to rebel slaves.'}

^{'The law is wrong then,' Tanith declared hotly.}

^{'No.' Huy shook his head. 'The law is never wrong.'}

^{'It is!' Tanith was close to tears again. 'It is!'}

^{'The law is all we have that saves us from the void, Tanith. Obey the laws and the gods and you need never fear.'}

^{'The laws should be changed.'}

^{'Ah!' Huy smiled. 'Change them, by all means, but until they are changed, obey them.'}

^{In the dawn of the next morning Lannon Hycanus arrived at Sett. He arrived at the head of two full legions in battle array, and fifty elephants of war.}

^{'I fear I have been greedy, sire,' Huy told him at the gates. I left you not a single one.' And Lannon shouted with laughter and embraced Huy, turning to his staff with an arm still about Huy's shoulders.}

^{'Which of you was it said that Ben-Amon would not fight?'}

^{That night while he was still sober Huy sang the ballad he had composed to commemorate the Battle of the River of Blood, and Lannon wept at the telling of it, and when it was done he cried out to his own staff.}

^{'Three against 30,000 - it will always be our shame that we did not fight with Huy Ben-Amon that day at Sett.'}

^{Lannon stood. 'I give you the new Commander-in-Chief of all the legions of Opet. I give you Huy Ben-Amon, Axeman of the Gods.'}

^{Then king and priest got very drunk together.}

^{Gondweni was one of the 200 tributary chiefs of the Vendi, and his territory bounded on the broken land of the Kal Gorge, the land of the outcasts. He was fat and prosperous, and because he was a prudent man he regularly left small gifts of salt and meat at a place in the hills where the outcasts came for it. Also because he was a prudent man he gave food and shelter to solitary travellers journeying to the hills or returning from them, and when they left his town the memory of their passing went with them.}

^{Thus a tall gaunt stranger sat one night at his hearth and ate his food and drank his beer. Gondweni sensed power and purpose behind the impassive scarred visage with the fierce yellow eyes. He felt an unusual affinity for this man and he talked more freely than was his wont. Although he spoke the language of Vendi, the traveller seemed to know nothing of the politics and affairs of the tribe, not even the name of the paramount king who had succeeded Manatassi when he was carried off by the white devils from across the river.}

^{'Of Manatassi's six brothers, five died swiftly and mysteriously after drinking of a special brewing of beer, prepared by the middle brother, Khani. Khani alone survived the feast.' And Gondweni chuckled and nodded and winked knowingly at the stranger.}

^{'He is now our king, the Great Black Bull, the collector of the tribute, the Thunder of Heaven, the fat lecher of Vendi with his 500 wives and his fifty young boys.' Gondweni spat forcefully into the fire, and then drank from the beer pot before passing it to the stranger. When he took it Gondweni saw that the stranger's right hand was missing and he steadied the pot with the stump.}

^{'What of Manatassi's councillors, his war captains, his blood brothers?' the stranger asked. 'Where are they now?'}

^{'Most of them are in the bellies of the birds.' And Gondweni drew a forefinger across his throat expressively.}

^{'Most of them?'}

^{'Some went over to Khani and ate his salt - others spread their wings and flew.' Gondweni pointed out into the hills which showed like the black teeth of an ancient shark against the moon sky. 'Some are my neighbours, chiefs of the out-casts, paying tribute to none, and waiting in the hills for they know not what.'}

^{'Who are they?'}

^'Zingala.'

^{'Zingala, the ironsmith?' the stranger demanded eagerly, and Gondweni's expression changed. He turned on the stranger a hard stare.}

^{'It seems to me you know more than is safe,' he said softly. 'Perhaps we should sleep now.' He stood up and pointed out a hut. 'There is a sleeping mat laid out for you, and I will send a young girl for your comfort.'}

^{The stranger's need was like a raging storm on the girl's unresisting body, battering and driving, and Gondweni heard her crying out in pain and fear. He lay awake, troubled and restless, but in the dawn when he went to the stranger's hut the girl lay crumpled in exhausted sleep and the man was gone.}

^{A deep gorge split the mountains, so deep that the path was dark and moss-covered and slippery underfoot. At the head of the gorge a fall of silver spray plunged down from the cliffs above, and the wind drove it in a fine cold mist into Manatassi's face as he climbed upwards.}