Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986 (14 page)

“That river is where we’ll meet them,” said the
Cahena. “The Nini they call it; I don’t know the Imazighen name. I don’t see
them approaching over there. We’ll halt here and form for any
action,
we pick the place to fight them.”

The stream was broad and shimmery and, from the
way a horseman splashed across, it was shallow and firm-bottomed. The horseman
was Bhakrann, sweaty and hard-panting as he reined in beside the Cahena and
Wulf. He pointed across the water.

“Look there,” he bade them.

The land beyond was fairly level, with coarse
grass in bunches and tufts of timber. In the distance stirred a dark mass of movement.

“There they are,” wheezed Bhakrann. “I was among
them. I’ve been there so many times that Hassan knows me, thinks I’m one of
them — once he saluted me as a friend. I heard him give orders that they ride
to that opposite bank in battle formation and stop for the night, staying in
their saddles.”

“He’s a fool,” said the Cahena. “We’ll dismount to
wait.”

“He promised them victory,” went on Bhakrann. “I
rode here as if I were his scout, then I outran other scouts and came to tell
you.”

The Cahena hurried messengers to order all
elements of her force to halt a hundred yards or so from the river and to call
the chieftains to her. Those chieftains came at a gallop and dismounted to kiss
her shadow in the evening light. Wulf joined them in a group around her.

“We’ll wait for their charge here, probably at
first light,” she announced. “Our line of spearmen on foot will sleep in
formation, three deep. The mounted companies will camp behind them, unloose the
saddle girths but not take the saddles off, and keep their weapons to hand. No
fires anywhere, eat cold rations. And every fourth man will be on watch, with
reliefs every two hours. I won’t sleep at all myself, won’t even pitch my
tent.”

“I won’t sleep, either,” Wulf volunteered.

“Nor I,” said Daris.
“Nor I, nor
I,” said Yaunis and Ketriazar.

“What shall I do with my archers?” asked Lartius.

“Group them at our far left, just behind the
spearmen there,” directed the Cahena. “The enemy won’t have their shields to
guard them from that angle. Send for Jonas; have him bring his archers to join
those others.”

She looked levelly at one chieftain after another.

“I suggest that everybody pray to whatever gods or
spirits he worships,” she said. “Send that word through the army.”

All hurried away to do that.

Over across the river, the great blotch of the
invading host had halted. It stretched left and right, as far as Wulf could
see. The sun had set in the west.
A tenseness
crept
into the dusk.

At the place where Wulf’s camp was made, Djalout
spread his bedding.

“Prayer, she’s said, to any kind of god,” said
Djalout. “Do you pray?”

“Do you?” asked Wulf, without answering the
question.

“Which god should I pray to? I was born a Jew, I
professed Islam,
I
went to
Egypt
and was a Christian there.”

He stroked his beard as he spoke, and Wulf stroked
his own.

“Jews, Moslems, Christians,” Wulf said. “They all
worship what once must have been the same ruler of heaven and earth. Maybe
there’s just one god for all those faiths, under different names.”

“Where those faiths rule, yes.”
Djalout nodded.
“But what about out
here?
What god listens out here?”

“I don’t know,” said Wulf. He raised his voice:
“Susi, don’t worry about my horse. I’ll make a little tour before I turn in.”

He mounted and rode at a walk along the great
extension of the spearmen. There were thousands of them, their three
close-ordered lines extending for two miles or so. Those of Lartius’s command
chattered together, somewhat nervously, and here and there one of them drank
from his wine bottle that had been forbidden on the march. Beyond, with the
line formed by Yaunis, there was less noise. He heard murmurs, as though of the
prayers urged by the Cahena. He thought of what Djalout had said about gods. To
whom, to what, should Wulf pray? He hadn’t prayed since leaving
Carthage
.

Turning, he walked his horse back to where the
Djerwa had taken possession.

Those spearmen had lain down side by side, muffled
in cloaks, except for those on guard. A hundred yards or so behind the triple
line were gatherings of horsemen, riders and beasts at rest. He saw young
Uchia, some paces to the rear of the prone spearmen, sitting with hands clasped
around his updrawn knees, his head sunk between his shoulders. Wulf smiled in
the dark. There sat a tired young man, drowsing after the long march that had
brought him to the battle he craved.

And Wulf saw something else, moving down the bank
in the shadows behind Uchia, a something itself strangely shadowy.

Wulf stared. It was a something taller than a man,
a gnarled, angle-jointed body of a
something, that
stooped to brood over Uchia. Its massive head sprouted great curved horns. It
was Khro.

Khro, attention riveted upon Uchia.
Selecting Uchia.
Khro, with horns like the
crescent moon, with a jutting bull-muzzle, with gauntly splayed shoulders, with
uncouthly straddled legs.
Light from somewhere in the sky picked up a
glint in the fixed eyes.

Wulf sat his saddle and watched. The Minotaur must
have been like that in its Cretan labyrinth, when Theseus groped his way to it
and killed it. Might Khro be the ghost of the man-devouring monster Theseus had
killed,
risen
here to do more evil? But Khro could be
faced and driven. There had been the crude picture on the tomb at last night’s
camp, the horned thing running from the charioteer. On sudden impulse, Wulf
rasped his sword out of its sheath. He twitched his rein and rode straight in.

For one moment he saw Khro plain, horrible. Then
Khro went blurred, vanished before his eyes like a puff of smoke. Khro was
gone, would not face Wulf,
would
not choose him for
death. Khro had faded to somewhere else, to choose others.

Wulf shrugged his big shoulders to keep from
shivering, and sheathed his sword again. He was safe from Khro, but many would
die in the coming battle. Wulf mourned those deaths and wondered if Khro
visited the Moslem array, singled out victims there.

He dismounted upslope from where his companions
slept, and loosened his saddle girth and stroked the horse’s head and spoke
soothingly to it. The other horses slept, standing with planted hoofs, like the
good saddle horses they were. Wulf slowly paced on foot, behind the lines of
recumbent warriors.

He had said, with the Cahena, that he would not
sleep that night. And he could not sleep now. How could he, when he had seen
Khro on the prowl?

Wulf sat on tufty grass for a space, sat in the
dark not far from Uchia, half sprawled in his sleep. The warriors lay in their
lines. They did not stir. They might have been lines of dead, struck down where
they had stood in battle. It might be like that tomorrow, if the Moslems
prevailed.

Nobody made a sound. If the men on guard prayed as
they had been ordered to, they did not pray aloud. Wulf thought again of what
Djalout had said, how perhaps other gods ruled here than the civilized deities
of
Israel
, Christianity, Islam. There was Khro, for instance, Khro
the messenger of death, who might have been a god once, who now crept in the
dark before a battle to choose those who would die.

What happened to gods when their peoples perished,
or turned away after other faiths? Did gods die then? What had happened to the
gods of
Greece
and
Rome
, of
Babylon
and
Canaan
, what about the three hundred and sixty grotesque idols at
Mecca
, one for every day of the Arabian year, before Mohammed
cast them out? It might be unchancy to be a god when worship stopped, when
prayers were chanted no more, when the odor of incense, of sacrificial blood
died out of the air above the altar. In Wulf’s
England
the church was strong, but here and there the people still
built the Beltane fires, stayed awake all night to welcome midsummer, trembled
in fear of the spirits out and wandering on the eve of All Hallows.
And what about here, with the Imazighen bowing to gods of all
sorts?
How long could those gods live and prevail?

Wulf’s eyes were wide awake in the night. He did
not feel weary, not even when he got up on his feet and paced here and there.
He looked off to where the Cahena must be awake, too, thinking of what dawn
would bring. She knew, she said, that her people would triumph, that from the
Moslem host would come a gift of help, of inspiration. She was sure of victory,
and Wulf was sure, too. But the fight would be terrible, spreading far over the
land, a greater battle than any he had ever seen, had ever imagined.

Wulf had said to Bhakrann that he did not love
war, and he had said the truth. War was ugly. But when it came upon you, you’d
better be good at it.

To pass that long night, anticipating and
preparing, was an exercise in endurance. It was like wearing a way through
rock. Wulf glanced to where Djalout slept, remembered that conversation about
gods. The Christian Deus, the Hebrew Yahweh, the Moslem Allah — all of them
somehow the same to begin with, all of them versions of a spirit all-powerful
and all-knowing, perhaps with a blizzard of beard, with hands that could hold
the sun and moon and stars.
Perhaps with a smile caught deep
in that beard, with kind, understanding eyes.
No need to tremble before
such a presence. But here, Djalout had said, other gods reigned, obscure,
grotesque, dubious. Would they, those strange and terrible ones, decide the
victory tomorrow, the defeat tomorrow?

Wulf cursed the thought away. He would be fighting
men, not gods or devils. Moslems were strong in war, but he had killed Moslems
in his time and would kill Moslems when morning came. The Cahena had sworn that
he, Wulf, would live through whatever happened. Uchia, slumbering yonder, had
been given no such promise. And Khro had focused fatal attention upon poor
young Uchia.

“You’re awake,” said Bhakrann, strolling up to
stand beside Wulf. “So am I. You and I don’t need to sleep before a fight.”

Wulf had taken a leather bottle in his hand. “Have
some wine,” he invited, and Bhakrann took the bottle and drank, and Wulf had a
swallow himself.

“There’s an iron taste to your wine,” Bhakrann
said. “Many will taste iron pretty soon. I’m ready. I wish it was happening
now.”

Wulf strained his eyes to peer across the darkened
river. He saw red glows here and there — the enemy had campfires, while the
Cahena’s host lay in deep night. “I’m as ready as you are, Bhakrann,” he said,
“but I don’t particularly look forward to it. I’ve come a long way across the
world, fighting. It’s lost whatever novelty it might have had when I started
out twelve or thirteen years ago.

“You’re bored with it,” suggested Bhakrann.

“Not exactly.
I’d better not be bored when I’m going to have to fight
for my life.”

Bhakrann chuckled. “You’ve been seeing too much of
Djalout,” he said. “You’re beginning to talk like him. Now, I’m going to walk
around here and there. Care to come along?”

They strode, side by side, between the close-drawn
triple rank of sleeping spearmen and the silent bivouac of men and horses up
the bank to the rear.
Here and there moved javelin-bearing
men on guard, craning their necks to look beyond the river.

“Our Djerwa will fight to win,” said Bhakrann.
“What do you expect from all those city people with Lartius?”

“I’ll have to wait and see,” replied Wulf.
“Anyway, he brought archers, and maybe they’ll do something. The Cahena sent
the few archers from Tiergal to form up with the ones that Lartius brought.
Jonas is with them.”

“And so is his daughter Daphne,” said Bhakrann.
“She’s a fine-looking young woman, have you noticed?”

“I have.”

Wulf fancied he heard a murmur of voices somewhere.
He had heard that sort of murmur before, when the Cahena had called it up in
her inner cave at Tiergal. He frowned. Did he imagine it?

“We’ll win,” he said fiercely, to Bhakrann and
all the
world. “Whip
them,
show
them a quick way back from here. The Cahena says so.”

Bhakrann showed his teeth in a smile. “You believe
what she says about it, then?”

“Yes,” said Wulf.

“You believe everything she says about anything?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve become an Imazighen,” said Bhakrann.
“A Djerwa.
I believe, too. We’ll win, and you and I will
live to see it.”

Djalout’s talk about deities here in their own
land — Wulf remembered that talk.

“‘Happy he who knows the country gods,’” he quoted
aloud.
“‘Pan and old Sylvanus and the sisterhood of the
nymphs.’”

“What did you say?” asked Bhakrann.

“It was Virgil who said it,” replied Wulf. “I read
it in his
Georgics.”

“That’s right, you can read. I told you I
couldn’t.”

Wulf smiled, feeling relaxed for the first time
that night. “Maybe when this war business is over, I’ll teach you your
letters.”

They dawdled along to the flank of the Djerwa
formation. A young officer of Lartius’s following met them and asked what they
thought the morning would bring. A mounted scout came to join them. It was
Zeoui. He reported that he had been across the river and that the Moslems were
waking up.

“They’re forming in three big bunches,” said
Zeoui. “They’re thicker than fleas on a goat and a lot more dangerous. They’ll
try to hit us all along our line.”

“We’ll be ready,” said Bhakrann, and he looked up
at the stars. “It’s almost morning. You from those Cirta people, better go get
them on their feet. Tell them not to be any more afraid than they can help.”

The officer headed away. “Look after your own men
and their fears,” he said over his shoulder.

Wulf made swift strides back toward the center of
the Djerwa position. The Cahena was there, surrounded by aides. He knew her
robe-draped outline, even in the dark.

“I know what they’ll try to do, and where,” she
said when Wulf told the news brought by Zeoui. “Their middle force will come
straight across here.” Her eyes were bright in the
darkness,
her face seemed to be carved skillfully, nobly, out of stone. “Get the men
ready,” she said.

Wulf shouted orders. He heard Uchia and other
subchiefs repeat them, all the way left and right. The dark shapes of the
spearmen rose, holding their triple line. Wulf ran to his horse, tightened the
saddle girth. “Good horse,” he said, touching the sleek neck. He hurried into
his mail jacket and put on the helmet Bhakrann had given him. Susi and Gharna
readied their own mounts, slung their sheaves of javelins at their backs.

“The sun’s coming up,” Bhakrann roared somewhere.
“They’ll be coming up, too. Let’s all get at least one of them apiece.”

Rosy light showed far to the east. Wulf saw the
great spread of the enemy force on the far shore of the stream. He reined over
to take a leader’s place in front of a ready formation of the Djerwa cavalry.
Swiftly he slung his shield to his left arm and loosened his great sword in its
sheath. Over yonder, the Moslems had drawn into great, clotted masses.
Many Moslems, many.

“Ulululallahu akhbar!”

That war cry thundered up from thousands of
throats. There they came, at a gallop. They were at the brink, they splashed
across. The sun’s bright rim had risen off there behind them. Wulf could see
individual riders in the charge, close together, weapons flashing above their
heads.

“Allahu akhbar —”

God is great, they yelled, they believed. Here they
came, the crowd of them, straight at the waiting line.

“There is also the Cahena!” roared back the
spearmen, into the hurrying faces of the enemy.

“Stand to it!” Wulf heard the excited cry of
Uchia, there on foot with the triple line. Here came the rushing horses, and
then up rose the stout, slanted spears, each with its butt driven hard into the
soil, a sudden deadly hedge. And the horses came upon the points with a crash
like falling timbers, and they screamed with agony as they impaled themselves.

Hoofs and heads and manes tossed. Gray, brown, and
black bodies crashed down. Riders flew from their saddles. More riders
clattered from behind, and the second and then the third lines planted their
weapons to meet that headlong assault. Here and there the men on foot were
borne down, but the charge had been thrown into a bloody confusion. Fallen men
and horses built into a floundering wall. Rear elements stumbled and broke
against it.

“It worked!” cried Wulf. “Now —”

He lifted his sword high and urged his war horse
forward. Spearmen fell away to right and left before him, running to find their
own mounts and join the counterattack. A wordless howl beat up from the men
riding behind Wulf. He saw Uchia on foot to one side, and even as Wulf saw him
Uchia went down under the frantic blow of a Moslem scimitar. Riding in, Wulf
sped a swift slash and down went the slayer, across Uchia’s body. Wulf put his
horse to a mighty jump over two chargers that struggled in crippled pain on the
ground, and drove in among the discomfited Moslems beyond.

Most of those were splashing back across the
river, but some made a stand against him. He blocked a blow with his shield and
slid his own point into the adversary’s shaggy throat. “Ohoy!” yelled Wulf, the
Saxon battle shout. His companions hurled javelins with deadly accuracy. Enemy
riders swung away from that tumbled press of death and terror.
They ran, they were demoralized.
They fled across the river.
Wulf led his men after them.

“There is also the Cahena!”

That was Bhakrann, cutting down a Moslem. Wulf,
speeding past him, spared a look to the left. Over acres of ground, Moslems
retreated. Lartius had managed to tam them back. It must be happening
everywhere. Hassan’s army, put to that overconfident charge, had been stopped,
was being routed.

Wulf sent his horse churning across the shallow
river. Here and there on the far side, Moslems held up their hands in token of
surrender. Imazighen warriors snatched the weapons from such captives, pushed
them from their horses,
herded
them toward the river,
away from the battle that suddenly was not so much of a battle.

“Don’t kill any prisoners,” Wulf shouted to one
group.

“We won’t,” came back a cheerful bawled assurance.
“The Cahena says not to.”

Others spurred to join Wulf. They rode toward a
knot of Moslems that had stopped, trying to oppose the pursuit. Wulf was the
first to charge into that party, hewing as he charged. But he had ceased to be
a commander, had become just a death-dealing warrior. Fighting thus, with one
and then another, he had lost touch with the main aspect of the action. Anyway,
the enemy was running again, and he checked his panting horse to watch. This
battle, what was it all about? Why had these strangers come all the way from
Carthage
, come all the way from the east beyond, intruding into the
very mouth of hungry death?
Senseless, senseless.
Now
they ran. Senseless the battle had been, like all battles.

He and his followers reached a little cluster of
farmhouses. Past that, the Moslems flogged their horses to a lathery sweat,
with miles of level ground ahead, ground dotted with groves and strung with
little streams. Up overhead soared vultures, their wings motionless in flight,
looking for the dead meat provided them here. Wulf pressed his men after that
retreating army. Wulf sweated, too. He steamed inside his mail and under his
helmet, and his beard felt clammily wet. He spared a look to either flank.
Moslems ran everywhere, except for those who would run no more, who lay
motionless and waited for the vultures. The Cahena’s forces harried the
retreat.