Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986 (11 page)

“This is a good campsite,” offered Wulf. “Wood,
water —”

“A place of the dead,” said Yaunis. “The water’s
all right, but a night here can be unpleasant.”

Supper was dished up. “Place of the dead,” Wulf
echoed Yaunis. He looked at the scattered white things and saw that they were
bones.

“Spirits come here,” said Yaunis. “Many must have
died here long ago — died violently. I’ve never heard when or why. But when
it’s dark, they walk. Let’s pick up more wood, keep the fire going.”

Wulf went to gather dead branches and paused to
look at a scatter of pallid bones. They had belonged to a great wild boar, a
beast that must have weighed four hundred pounds, with tusks like curved daggers.
Even a lion might pause before attacking such a foe. What had killed it? High
in the evening sky, vultures plied back and forth, their motionless wings
spread wide.

The Cahena made herself a little tent of a cloak
and a saddle blanket, propped on sticks. The others huddled close to the fire,
wrapped in mantles. Men of both escorts took turns at watching and tending the
fire. They sang softly, plaintively.

Wulf lay wakeful. A bird, or perhaps a big insect,
chirped in a palm. The dark of night was not so dark. Small green lights showed
in pairs, like eyes. The sentinels put more wood on their fire and one of them
sang:

“What god may hear, help us
;
Protect us, what god may hear…”

The eyelike green sparks gave back, but stayed in
sight. Wulf dozed, wakened, again saw the lights prowling.
Over
him, close over him, fluttered a big bat, snatching bugs in midair.
Those ribbed wings were what devils wore, in pictures Wulf had seen.

At dawn, the lights did not show. Wulf was glad of
that as he ate a barley cake for breakfast and rode on with the others. He
reflected that when he and the Cahena came back, they would have only half as
many in their party. He hoped that they would camp somewhere else.

Noon
, and Yaunis and his men ambled off on a side trail. The
Cahena led on, and as the sun sank they saw where Cirta was.

Here was a town much bigger than Tiergal, built on
a conelike height. It had neat stone houses up the slope and at the top. A
river tumbled to bracket two sides of the place. An old, old road with troubled
stone paving led in. Two armed guardsmen moved as though to bar the way, then
saw the Cahena and fell down to kiss the shadow of her passing horse. The party
entered the town. The houses were of cut stones, probably salvaged from Roman
ruins. People recognized the Cahena and murmured applause. On the main street, past
shops with canvas-shaded fronts, they came to a sort of palace.

It was a broad building, also of reclaimed stones,
with hammered iron bars on the windows and a tall porch with ancient pillars.
The guards at the door kissed the Cahena’s shadow,
then
took charge of the horses. Inside, a portly eunuch made obeisances. He was the
first eunuch Wulf had seen since leaving
Carthage
. Then a man strode into the hail and louted low before the
Cahena.

“Wulf, this is Lartius. He is chief here and over
other towns,” the Cahena said, making introductions. “Lartius, Wulf is my
military adviser.”

Lartius looked to be in his forties, as tall as
Wulf, but elegantly slender. His smooth-shaven face had slightly hollowed
cheeks and a shallow jaw. His eyebrows made a single black bar above his nose.
His tunic was liberally patterned with gold thread. His half boots were far
more finely made than Wulf’s own.

He offered Wulf a sinewy right hand with jeweled
rings on three of its fingers. “Welcome,” he said grandly. “We hear all the way
to Cirta how you’re a fighter and a planner.” Again he bowed to the Cahena.
“Will you come to my parlor? It’s dinnertime. I’m honored to entertain you.”

The eunuch led the Cahena’s warriors away
somewhere. Lartius conducted the Cahena and Wulf into a spacious chamber with
lounges and polished tables, and wall-paintings of horsemen hunting bulls and
lions. He gestured them to seats and clapped his hands loudly. Another eunuch
appeared, and Lartius commanded him to send in dinner.

That dinner was fetched in by three serving-girls,
all of them sleekly naked except for brief loin coverings and embroidered
slippers. They swayed and giggled as they served hot roast meats and wheat
bread. “Our wheat flour comes from
Carthage
,” said Lartius. “When can we get more?”

“When we capture
Carthage
and open trade again,” said the Cahena, eating a morsel.

The girls poured wine into silver goblets. They
smiled at Wulf, were gravely careful in serving Lartius and the Cahena. Lartius
lifted his goblet.

“Here’s to our success against this invasion,” he
said. Now he looked at the Cahena, furtively admiring her. Wulf detected honey
in the wine and did not feel that it was improved thereby. The swaying girls
cleared away the dishes. Lartius watched them go, and drank again.

“War’s inevitable, eh?” he said. “How do we fight
them?”

“Which means, you’ll help us,” said the Cahena.

“Of course.
My towns can muster maybe twelve thousand. I’ll command in
person.”

“I’ll command,” corrected the Cahena, in the
gentlest and most musical of voices. “Wulf here will tell you how we’ll fight.”

Lartius arched his fingertips together. “Go ahead,
Wulf.”

Wulf talked about more javelins per man and stout
spears planted against charging cavalry. Lartius nodded approval, rather
grandly.

“I have men who can fight on foot or on
horseback,” he said.
“And some archers.”

“Archers?” repeated Wulf eagerly.

“We’ve had good archers since earliest times. We
hunt with arrows, even kill lions. Will bows be good in this fight?”

“Yes,” said Wulf. “Formations of them on the wings
to shoot into an attack, then to fall back and shoot over the front formations
into the thick of the enemy. Bring archers if you can.”

“I can,” was Lartius’s lofty promise.

More talk, about communications with all tribes,
about scouts from Cirta to watch for possible Moslem moves toward the coast.
Lartius named some of his followers as good scouts. Wulf wondered how good they
were. They all drank more wine, and the Cahena said that she was weary from her
journey.

Lartius rose and led them to broad stone steps,
and up. Curtained doors lined the hall above. “Here is where I hope you’ll be
comfortable, Lady Cahena,” he said, pulling a curtain wide. In the half-light
beyond showed another curtain at the rear.

“An entry, with the main chamber behind,” said the
Cahena, peering. “I want Wulf to sleep in this entry as a guard.”

Lartius blinked.
“A guard, here
in my own house?”

“I’ll rest easier with one,” she replied gravely.
“Wulf is alert and trustworthy.”

“Very well,” said Lartius. “I’ll send a mattress
for you, Wulf. Then good night, and a pleasant rest.”

Lartius strode away. The Cahena went in and passed
the inner curtain. Wulf waited at the door until one of the fat eunuchs brought
a wadded mattress and a quilt. Wulf put the mattress in the outer chamber and
sat on it to doff his boots and tunic, and laid his unsheathed sword on the
floor beside him. Stretching out, he relaxed his muscles and reviewed in his
mind all the things that he and Lartius had said.

Then, a rustle from the Cahena’s
chamber.
She came out and lay on the
mattress beside Wulf. He did not know whose arms reached out first, his or
hers.

The Cahena and Wulf were dressed and out in the
corridor by sunrise. They summoned their warriors and ate a hasty breakfast of
hot bread in the big room downstairs. Lartius joined them, sleepy-eyed in a
rich green robe. One of the eunuchs brought parcels of food for their homeward
journey, and Lartius bade the Cahena a ringing farewell.

“What do you think of Lartius?” the Cahena asked
Wulf as they rode. Her tone was utterly businesslike. Nobody could have guessed
how tempestuous she had been with him the night before.

“I don’t know yet. It was my first meeting with
him,” Wulf replied. “I wonder if he’ll really fight.”

“I wonder that, too. His people haven’t fought
much. Oh, maybe little actions against smaller chiefs, little clashes with
robber bands. I hope our Imazighen can teach his men to fight.”

“We might bring them down to us and see how they
form up and act,” Wulf suggested.

“Good,” she agreed. “Now, if we make good time,
we’ll pass that campsite where things were uneasy. Just stop to fill bottles
and water the horses, then on to camp a good way below.”

Late in the afternoon they came to the water hole
to replenish skin bottles. Vultures scoured the sky again. The party felt glad
to ride on. At sunset it stopped at a hollow where grass grew for grazing, and
sat down to eat what Lartius had provided. There were rolls of fine wheat
bread, with slices of cold meat and dried figs and grapes. Wulf slept well.

Up at dawn again, breakfast on
the remains of supper, and southward up the tufty-grassed slope of Arwa.
As the sun dropped low, they saw the houses of Tiergal.
Coming near, Wulf heard music. Some sort of flute wailed, drums beat, voices
sang. “What’s this?” he asked one of the
escort
.

“The people celebrating,” was the reply.

“Celebrating what?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll find out.”

The main street was thronged with people in
grotesquely gaudy dress. There were cries and snatches of song. Wulf hurried to
his cave, put his horse in Susi’s charge, and walked back to the center of
town.

People yelled at him through masks of garishly
painted cloth or leather. Some wore heads of wild dogs, bears, homed goats.
Somebody in fluttery red and white draperies rushed to him, the hideous mask
showing big wooden tusks. Up came two hands to pluck the mask from the smiling
face of Daphne, the smith’s daughter.

“We’re having fun,” she cried. “We’re
worshipping.”

“Worshipping what?” Wulf asked her.

“Oh, everything.
We’ll dance. Come dance with me.”

“Maybe in a while.”
He looked to where the Cahena had dismounted, people
clustering to fall down and touch masked faces to her shadow. Her hands waved
greetings. Suddenly all fell back to the sides of the street.

“There’ll be a play,” Daphne said.
“A show, look!”

Women ran and screamed. They were pursued by
long-robed men with turbans wound Moslem fashion. Other men rushed out to face
these. That party wore hooded Djerwa capes. They threw toy javelins made of
reeds, with feathers for points.
The men impersonating
Moslems fell and lay as if dead.
A thunder of applause went up.

Daphne was gone. Djalout drifted close to Wulf.

“It’s good to see them happy in their worship,” he
said.

“Somebody said they worship everything,” said Wulf.

The music of flute and drum rose cheerfully.

“Perhaps not everything,” Djalout said. “I doubt
if you’ll hear many addresses to Yahweh or Jesus, certainly none to Allah.
There are plenty of older gods to invoke.”

Someone with a long-beaked bird mask hurried past.

“Maybe those beast-headed gods came all the way
from
Egypt
,” Djalout was saying. “Yonder went something like Thoth,
though probably not so well educated. The dog-headed one over there might hark
back to Anubis.”

The Cahena stood in front of a shop, smiling to
her people. Couples formed in the street and moved to the music.

“I don’t see anyone with a bull’s head,” Wulf
remarked.

“And you won’t, and don’t say the name. Nobody
wants to be reminded of that one, including me.”

Daphne ran up, the hideous mask on her face again.
“You said you’d dance with me,” she hailed Wulf, and caught his hand and led
him into the maze of posturing, stamping celebrants.

The music twittered and swirled. Wulf did not find
it difficult to dance. He had often danced in other parts of the world. He and
Daphne stepped it out face to face, swung around each other back to back, then
face to face again. He saw the Cahena watching, not smiling now. At last he
bowed himself away and headed for his cave again. Daphne was disappointed, he
guessed. Surely the Cahena was not disappointed that Wulf had left the dance.

At home, he mended a worn bridle rein. A
servingwoman brought him bread and goat’s cheese and a vase of milk. He ate
with good appetite. As he finished the last morsel and drained the last drop,
Mallul walked in to say that the Cahena required his presence at a council.

He found her sitting in the big chamber with
Ketriazar and Daris and two Djerwa subchiefs. Zeoui of Bhakrann’s scouting
party stood at attention to make a report. He told of being in wrecked
Carthage
, pretending to be a volunteer for the Moslem army. Hassan
had addressed a mob of recruits to say that conquering the Imazighen —
Maghrabi, Hassan had called them — would give the victors a whole generation of
beautiful women. “Like the houris of paradise,” Hassan had promised. Listening,
Ketriazar and Daris and Wulf looked at one another, then at the Cahena, who was
so beautiful.

“If they wait for women until they beat us,
they’ll go womanless forever,” vowed Ketriazar at last. “Lady Cahena, what did
Lartius promise you up at Cirta?”

“Twelve thousand men,” she replied. “With what we
can raise, that should be enough to beat this Hassan, this so-called good old
man.”

“You’re sure, Lady Cahena?” asked Daris.

“I’ll make sure. You can watch. Zeoui, go back to
Bhakrann. Say that I thank him for the good spy work he’s doing.”

Zeoui departed. The Cahena rose.

“I’ll make sure,” she said again. “I’ll call the
spirits to tell me.” She pointed to a black curtain at the far corner. “Mallul,
go and lift that.”

Mallul crossed the floor and tucked the curtain
up. Wulf saw a deep shelf cut in the rock, set with faintly twinkling objects.

“Come close,” said the Cahena.

They followed her to the shelf. She knelt at a
brazier on the floor, scraped flint and steel for a spark to kindle a clutch of
broken twigs. When it blazed up, she put on kindling, then handfuls of
charcoal. They watched as a red glow was born, sending up a writhing thread of
vapor.

“And now,” she said, so softly that Wulf barely
heard her. She had taken a skin pouch from the shelf and from it tweaked powder
to throw into the brazier. Green flame sprang up around the edge.

“And now,” she said again, and threw in another
pinch. Red fire rose within the ring of green. A whisper came into the air, as
of stealthily chanting voices.

The fire gave light to show the figures on the
shelf. They were small, crudely modeled images of dried clay, with animal
heads. One had a dog’s head, one a boar’s head, and so on. Wulf saw no bull’s
horns to be an image of Khro.

The Cahena cast in yet more powder. White,
dazzling fire shot high at the center of the brazier. Its light showed more of
the things on the shelf.
At one end stood a rough model of a
seven-branched candlestick.
A crucifix of dark wood, with the white
figure spread against it, hung on the rock at the opposite end.
Judaism and Christianity, their symbols among the collection of
gods.

The Cahena bowed above the brazier. The colored
lights played on her face. The whispers were there, all around her. She, too,
spoke, but Wulf did not hear her words. The green and red and white flames
sank, and abruptly they died. The Cahena lowered the curtain over the images,
and they all went back to sit on the cushions.

“We’ll win,” she said. “They said that we will.”

“Is it to be a bloody battle?” asked Ketriazar.

“Yes, and many will die in it.”

“Hai!”
grunted Ketriazar. “Will I die in it?”

“Not you,” the Cahena assured him. “Nor you
either, Wulf.”

“Shall I die?” asked a young subchief of Ketriazar’s
following, a sinewy, brown-bearded man named Uchia.

The Cahena stared at him. “Many will die,” she
said again, without answering the question. “But many will live and win.”

She said it
assuredly,
as
she might have said that the morning sun would rise in the east, off in the east
where invasion gathered.

“We’ll win,” she said again. “They’ll
run,
those who are lucky enough to be able to run.” Her
bright eyes were confident. “That’s all for now. But stay here, Wulf.”

The others bowed to kiss her lamplit shadow and
went out. Wulf stood there and she stood before him. She took his hand in hers.
She was as sure of him as she was sure of that victory to come.

She led him to the inner chamber. In the high
moment of their embrace, she sang in his ear, “Wulf, Wulf.”

Later, passion gentled, they lay side by side and
she said, “We belong to each other.” Wulf silently wondered about belonging.
That meant possession, ownership. Did she own him, did he own her? All that he
could think was that no woman he had ever loved had been like her. No woman
could be like her.

She had said that he had come to her at the
command of the spirits she talked to. Maybe that was true. Spirits must be
everywhere, trying to talk to living people, and she knew the gift of hearing
them.

“I want you to teach me Arabic,” she said.

“Yes,” he promised.

Next morning was foggy, but Wulf called the men of
Tiergal and nearby settlements for drill. Jonas was there, and Wulf’s men Susi
and Gharna, all with javelins and a larger spear each, all with cudgels to
practice swordplay. Djalout watched, heavily cloaked against the damp, leaning
gracefully on his staff. Wulf formed the men three deep, the first rank
kneeling, the second crouching,
the
third standing
erect. At his command they slanted the big spears forward, butts rammed into
the earth. They made a formidable hedge, those keen-pointed, deadly spears.
Other ranks stood behind, javelins ready to throw. Wulf took them out of
formation, brought them back again and again. They moved and took position
well. They learned.

Afterward, there was fencing with cudgels. Jonas
and several others were proficient, could serve to train smaller groups. The
men liked the exercise and called for Wulf to fence with them. Smiling, he took
a length of touchwood and competed with one after another, disarming them,
threatening blows on head or elbow. They cheered him loudly. He was their
master at arms; they loved him and at the same time feared his great strength,
his dismaying skill. Later they threw javelins at targets, far better than he
could have done.

When they sweated despite the morning chill, Wulf
dismissed them and told them to report tomorrow. He and Djalout walked away.

“You teach them to kill,” said Djalout, his smile
in his beard. “To kill horses
that don’t
deserve it,
to kill men who sometimes do. How does that fit your peaceful Christianity?
You’re a Christian, I believe.”

“A sort of loose one,” said Wulf. “Yet Christ said
he didn’t bring peace on earth, but a sword.”

“I know, I’ve read your gospels. But he spoke
figuratively, religiously.”

“The Moslems are religious enough about it,” Wulf
reminded. “They spread faith by the sword. They’ll kill you if you don’t accept
their Allah.”

“True.” Djalout nodded. “Come have the
noon
meal with me.”

They ate almonds, dried dates and figs, and barley
bread with honey, and drank good wine. Afterward Wulf went to the Cahena’s
council chamber, where she and Mallul sat to learn Arabic. He taught them
numbers from one,
wah,
up to a thousand,
alf.
He made them
say simple words for hot and cold and fire and water and so on. Both were quick
at learning a new language, though not so quick as Wulf himself.

“What’s the word for surrender?” asked Mallul.
“The command to surrender?”

Wulf told him, and Mallul repeated it. “I’ll make them
surrender to me,” he vowed.

“Another lesson tomorrow, after I’ve drilled the
men,” promised Wulf.

The damp autumn passed in such exercises, and
winter set in, chilly and sometimes heavy with clouds. Fires burned in the
houses, the people wore heavy, hooded capes. Wulf repeatedly inspected the
storehouses of grain and other provisions. He made a trip southward to
Ketriazar’s town, a place mostly of heavily woven tents with leaves and
branches piled on the roofs. Ketriazar took Wulf to see his stark Medusi
warriors drill at planting spears for a hedge against cavalry, at throwing
javelins, at riding headlong in attack formations. Gaunt, bushy-bearded Daris
was there, too.