Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986 (13 page)

“Mine, too,” added Daris.
“When can we expect Yaunis and Lartius?”

“Tomorrow,” said the Cahena.
“Yaunis,
then Lartius.
I see them coming, in my mind. Now, who’s this?”

Zeoui interrupted, prostrating himself and then
saying that the scouts had met a prowling stranger and were bringing him to
account for himself. Two other warriors brought forward a lanky, youngish man
with a short, dark beard and a hooded Imazighen cloak. He gestured protest as
Zeoui accused him of spying.

“No, great lady and great chiefs, I’m a simple
herdsman,” he said in accented Imazighen. “I lived at the shore near
Carthage
. When Hassan, that Arabian general, called for every man
to join him, I got on my horse and ran away. I want to fight on your side.”

The Cahena gazed at him. “What’s your name?”

“My name’s Barha, lady.” He gulped nervously. “It
was my father’s name before me.”

“Barha?” she repeated, her gaze burning upon him.

She took a twig from the pile of firewood and
slowly drew a line in the sandy earth before her, then another line and
another. Watching, Wulf saw that she made a figure like a skeleton. She studied
it,
then
turned her eyes back to the man who called himself
Barha.

“Is this a way to lie to queens?” she said, in the
Arabic Wulf had taught her. “Isn’t a lie hateful to your Allah?”

“I swear —”

“You’re a Moslem and an Arab from
Arabia
,” she
cut him off. “You were sent to spy us out. Your true name is…”

Again she studied the skeleton figure she had
drawn.

“Your name is Ali ibn Jafar,” she pronounced.
“A spy.”

The fellow shook as he bowed almost to the ground.

“Lady, you have read me through and through,” he
quavered. “Nothing is hidden from you. Yes, I’m Ali ibn Jafar, in your hands.
If you kill me, it’s the will of Allah. But Allah is merciful.”

Bhakrann scraped a laugh and dropped his hand to
his hilt. “Lady Cahena, let me take off his head.”

“No,” said Ketriazar, teeth shining like a wolf’s.
“Let me.”

“I speak here and decide here,” the Cahena said
coldly. “Did this man come on a horse? Give it back to
him,
let him go tell Hassan what he’s spied out here. You Arab, what will you tell
him?”

Ali ibn Jafar gestured, open-palmed. “That your
men look ready and well armed.”

“How many of us will you say?” was her next
question.

The captive’s eyes roamed over the great sprawl of
camps.
“Somewhere around twenty-five thousand of you.”

“That’s a good estimate,” the Cahena said.
“Bhakrann, go with him and see him safe through our lines.”

“As you command,” said Bhakrann glumly, and rose
to depart with the scouts and the spy. The chiefs watched them go. At last
Ketriazar spoke:

“Lady, your wisdom is great, but what wisdom was
that?”

“Oh, I don’t like to see unarmed, helpless men
killed,” she said. “Let him go and report what he has to report.”

“Even our numbers here?”
persisted
Ketriazar.

“That’s all right,” put in Wulf. “He made his
guess before Lartius and Yaunis got here. Hassan won’t know about that
reinforcement.”

Ketriazar grimaced. “I didn’t think,” he
confessed.

“No, you didn’t,” agreed the Cahena coldly. “Wulf
thought. Wulf knew what was in my mind. It would do everyone good to learn how
to think. Now you see
,
this Arab prowler will be of
help to us, not to his own friends.”

She closed her eyes. “Voices speak,” she
whispered. “I hear them — in Arabic.” She looked up. “Will a good gift come to
us from the enemy?”

The evening chill set in. Here and there was
singing. Wulf heard the patter of drums, the minor wail of flutes, but not the
wild music that had accompanied the dance of the women. He returned to his own
fireside and slept with his feet to the warm glow and his cloak wrapped around
him. Once he woke, because someone stood near him.
The
Cahena?
No, Daphne, the smith’s daughter. She stood silently for
moments,
then
moved away.

Next morning, cattle and goats were cut up into
steaks for the warriors. Yaunis and his men trotted in just after
noon
,
were welcomed and assigned an area to unsaddle and camp. A scout came in to say
that the Moslems were advancing from
Carthage
, a mighty host of them, with great camel trains of
supplies. They were perhaps five days away.

“We’ll march to meet them tomorrow,” announced the
Cahena. “What’s keeping Lartius?”

Lartius arrived in the evening. His columns of
horsemen wore finer garments than any of the other tribes, and Lartius himself
displayed a fine coat of gold-mounted mail, which must have made him
uncomfortably warm. With his personal retinue came two of his pretty
servant-girls, and two pudgy, puffing eunuchs. He protested against marching
the next day with but a night’s rest for his followers, but the Cahena insisted
and he fell silent.

In the first light of the next morning, the Cahena
formed her army for a new advance.

The columns spread themselves, a hundred yards or
so
apart,
and crept like great dark snakes. Their
front reached miles, from horizon to horizon. Wulf, riding with the Cahena at
the head of the Djerwa, looked right and left and reflected that never had he
seen such a host. There must be thirty-five thousand men. Wulf had seen
considerable military gatherings at
Constantinople
once or twice, but only in close-drawn, pretentious
parades, never a purposeful going to battle across whole landscapes.

The Cahena’s swift messengers headed here and
there with orders. Lartius and his followers jogged next to the Djerwa. Once or
twice Lartius made his way across at a summoning signal, to hear what the
Cahena told him and to nod assent. Far ahead of the columns ambled the
far-flung open line of Bhakrann’s
scouts,
ever
observing to where, at the east, Mount Arwa dwindled its slope toward level,
grove-dotted open country.

They passed small villages of mud-plastered huts,
where the inhabitants hailed them loudly. Several men in tattered tunics came
on hardy horses to join them. There was a midmorning halt to rest the horses
and mules and camels. Somebody told the Cahena that Lartius’s men were drinking
deep from skin bottles of wine and laughing raucously. The Cahena furrowed her
brow as she listened.

“Ride over there, Wulf,” she ordered. “Tell
Lartius that wine drinking on the march must stop.”

Wulf went. Lartius himself had a skin bottle to
his lips. He shook his elegant head at Wulf.

“You’re a good warrior and leader,” Lartius
drawled, drinking again, “but I’m chief of my people. I don’t take orders from
you.”

“It’s not my order,” said Wulf evenly. “It’s the
Cahena’s.”

“Then I’ll wait to hear it from her, not you.”

“Come over to her with me,” said Wulf, and Lartius
did so. The Cahena spoke to Lartius apart. Wulf did not hear what she said, but
apparently it was decisive. Lartius bowed acceptance and returned to his men to
order no more wine drinking until camp was made.

There was a longer halt at blazing
noon
,
and at midafternoon a short one again. Wulf dismounted to walk his horse part of
the way. The Cahena sent him to visit the column from Cirta, to see that
Lartius’s followers left their wine bottles alone. Before sundown the whole
widespread multitude was halted where there were scatterings of trees and
brush, with springs here and there.

The warriors dug crude wells for more water, not
too muddy for their beasts to drink. Wulf helped Susi and Gharna rub down the
tired horses and picket them where there was grass. Djalout tethered his mule
and dumped a roll of bedding next to Wulf’s.

“The Cahena stopped drinking on the march, but
we’re not marching now,” he said. “I’ve brought a jug of wine and a jar of
honey.”

Young Uchia, the Djerwa subchief Wulf remembered,
also came to the fire where Susi toasted barley cakes and grilled strips of
meat on green twigs. Uchia fairly beamed his excitement.

“War,” he said, savoring the word. “I wasn’t old
enough for those wars the Imazighen used to fight among
themselves
,
before the Cahena united us. I’m looking forward to my share of this fighting.”

Wulf gazed at him and remembered that Uchia had
asked if the Cahena foresaw his fate in the coming campaign, and that she had
not answered the question.

“I hope you come out of it well,” said Wulf.
“We’re having supper — will you join us?”

“I’ll be honored.”

Uchia sat down and ate heartily. “Where do we meet
them?” he asked.

“I understand there’s a river a day’s march from
here, a river the Moslems call the Nini,” said Wulf. “Our scouts say it would
be a good place to come face to face with them.”

“Nini,” said Djalout, dripping honey on a bit of
barley cake. “Those Moslems keep giving their own names to our places. Maybe
they think that gives them a title. Out there to the east there’s Thrysdus, the
old Roman town and circus arena. When the Moslems captured it, they started
calling it El-Djem.”

“Which I take to be the Arabic word for a council,
a gathering,” said Wulf.

“We’ll scatter whatever gathering they’ve made
there,” declared Uchia. “Drive them out and take the place back.”

Subdued songs rose from other camps. To Wulf, they
sounded like hymns. Perhaps they were hymns, prayers to various gods. Supper
was finished. Uchia thanked Wulf and departed to his own camp. Djalout and the
others spread their bedding. As Wulf arranged his own couch, one of the
Cahena’s women came to tell him that her mistress asked him to come and join
her.

He followed the woman to where the Cahena’s small
tent was pitched. “Come in,” her soft voice called, and he entered and dropped
the door-curtain behind him.

The ridge of the tent was no more than five feet
above the ground, and he stooped beneath it. She sat on cushions, in her dark
blue robe that clung so closely that he knew she wore nothing inside it. Her
breasts stirred under the fabric. She took his hand strongly and drew him down
beside her.

“Quick, quick,” she whispered. “We don’t have much
time.”

They hurried their lovemaking, were done, it
seemed, before they had well begun. Afterward, she drew her robe back around
her and sat and held his hand.

“I had to have you,” she said, “to give me
strength. Your strength is my strength. The voices I hear, they promised that.”

Wulf kissed her long fingers. “I don’t understand
about those voices.”

“I don’t exactly understand them myself, but I’ve
always heard them.”

“Are they the voices of the dead?” he suggested.

“Who can tell? Don’t the dead know everything?
Maybe they’re the voices of my ancestors.
Or of spirits that
don’t exactly live or die like men and women.
They say we’ll beat the
Moslems and drive them back all the way they’ve dared come. And we’ll take from
them something that will make us great. But now you must go. We can’t be found
here together. I wish you could stay all night, but go now. We march again at
dawn.”

As he tramped off in the dark toward his own fire,
he felt as if he had been dismissed. She had needed him, had said she had
needed him. But when lovemaking was done, when she needed him no more, she had
told him to go. Obediently, he had gone.

But was it like that? She had said that they
mustn’t be found together, by some chance caller, some bringer of messages. She
must hide her loves. Nobody must suspect. Did anyone suspect?
Bhakrann?
Wise Djalout?
Wulf
earnestly hoped not.

Lying down, he turned his mind to other things. He
thought of young Uchia, so eager to go into battle and win. Wulf remembered his
own first fight, long ago in his teens, somewhere in Frankish lands. He had
looked forward to that adventure, but not as to
a merrymaking
.
Wry, wise Abbot Hadrian, at home in
England
, had warned that war and violence were grim things, and
he, Wulf, had learned at first hand that this was true. It would be true when
they got hand to hand with Hassan’s Moslems. Uchia would find out.

“Are you awake, Wulf?” came Djalout’s voice from
beyond the fire.

“Wide awake,” said Wulf where he lay. “And so are
you.”

“Old men have a hard time sleeping. King Solomon
notices that somewhere in his writings. I wondered what the Cahena told you.”

Wulf grimaced to himself. “Why, as to that,” he decided
to say, “she’s sure we’ll defeat the Moslems. She spoke of her voices.”

“And what are those voices?”

Wulf knew that Susi and Gharna were awake and
listening. “She seemed to wonder if they’re the voices of the dead,” he
replied. “She felt that the dead know everything.”

“We won’t know if they do until we’re dead
ourselves,” said Djalout.
“If we know anything then.”

“Are you afraid of death, Djalout?”

“Me, at my age?
If I’m to be afraid of death, I won’t have time for
anything but being afraid. If it so happens that I’m killed in this coming
battle, I only hope it’s quick and easy.”

One of the others, Susi or Gharna, caught his
breath sharply.

“Maybe death will be just a sound sleep,” went on
Djalout. “I’ll try to sleep now. Conversation with you is always stimulating,
Wulf.”

Silence then.
Wulf could not think of anything particularly stimulating
that he himself had said. He thought of the Cahena, how silkily smooth was her
skin, how soft was her voice, how abandoned her passion. Sleep came at last. It
was sound sleep, such as Djalout half expected when life came to an end.

But he woke quickly, as usual, in gray dawn. Susi
was building up the fire to toast barley cakes and heat water for herb tea.
Gharna fussed with the horses. Djalout was up, too, talking to his mule. Wulf
pulled on his boots and washed his face and hands in a pool of gritty water,
then ate a hearty breakfast. He wiped his mouth and strode to report to the
Cahena.

Her chieftains were there, Ketriazar and Daris and
Yaunis and Lartius, listening to her orders.

“Choose all your best men on their best horses,”
she directed. “Form them in elements to ride ahead, make for that river, and
form there ready for action. The slower companies will follow those faster ones
and come to back them up.”

“My slow riders will straggle,” said Lartius.

“No they won’t,” the Cahena almost flung back.
“Someone will bring up the rear and make the stragglers keep up.”

“Who’ll have that authority?” Lartius asked.

“You,” she said at once.

His eyes started, his joined black eyebrows rose.
“But I should be at the head of my men —”

“You’ll keep the stragglers moving,” she cut in.
“If you can’t, nobody can. We’ll need every man in this coming fight.”

Wulf listened. Who would think that she could be
so assured at council and also so passionately tender at love, who but Wulf
himself? Ketriazar spoke plaintively:

“Must I ride at the rear, too, Lady Cahena?”

“Not you,” she said. “I know your Madusi people,
you’ll lead them and they’ll keep up. The same goes for Yaunis and for you,
Daris.
Any more questions?”
She waited, and nobody
spoke. “All right, form up and start eastward.”

The chiefs hurried away. Wulf waited. “Maybe you
want me to be at the rear, to keep the elements closed up,” he suggested.

She shook her head and smiled. How sweetly she
smiled.

“You’ll ride at the front,” she said.
“At my side.
You’ll comfort me by being near.”

“And you’ll comfort me,” he felt compelled to say.

“Comfort,” she echoed, almost inaudibly.
“A beautiful word.”

The columns formed across the stretch of the
camping grounds. The sun was well above the far eastern horizon as they moved
out. Wulf rode with the Cahena and Mallul in front of the first company of the
Djerwa warriors. Those warriors looked ready. Wulf gazed to the men from Cirta
at the left. Ahead of them rode someone in bright silver-mounted armor, on a
black horse. He gestured importantly to those behind him. It wasn’t Lartius;
Lartius was behind the rearmost formations, where the Cahena had ordered him.
Lartius would dislike that assignment profoundly. What would be the effect on
his men from Cirta and his other towns?

They marched sometimes at a walk, sometimes at a
trot, caring for the horses. Again and again scouts rode in to report no sign
of the enemy as yet. There were occasional villages, scatters of houses with
planted fields and fruit trees in blossom. As with the villagers yesterday,
there were cries of welcome, of encouragement. The Cahena sent couriers to
order several rest stops. At
noon
, as Wulf
stood beside his horse and munched dried figs, Bhakrann trotted in from the
east, dismounted, and spoke.

“They’re coming,” he said. “Not as fast as us —
they stop and pray, five times a day.”

“Yes,” said Wulf.
“At dawn,
noon
, midafternoon, sunset, and nightfall.
That last comes when they make camp. Do their prayers take
so long?”

“Throughout a march of days,
quite a time.
I’ve been right among
them,
I’ve bowed down with them so as not to attract any
notice. But they’re a big army, bigger than us, as I judge.”

“The Cahena says we’ll win, and so do I.”

“You two should outnumber their Allah. Do you have
any more of those figs? Thanks. It’s been hard to pick up rations among the
Moslems.”

The afternoon was cloudy and the air somewhat
close, but the advance kept on. Wulf’s hair and beard were damp with sweat. To
judge by their horses, those were getting weary when, in the late afternoon,
wide, bright water showed ahead.