Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986 (16 page)

The women postured to and fro. At both sides away
from the fire, groups of warriors sat and watched.

“A victory dance,” muttered Djalout.

The dancers were not naked this time, though they
were dressed sketchily enough. Daphne twirled and quivered there, her hair
flying and whipping as though in a gale. Suddenly she stood still and flung up
a hand.

“Lady Cahena!” she cried loudly, and prostrated
herself. The others bowed and knelt. The Cahena walked toward them from the big
tent. She wore a white robe that both swayed and clung, and around her temples
was bound a narrow white fillet. Wulf wondered if these things were captured
from the enemy, too.

“No,” she called. “Go on with your dance. I came
to watch.”

“Sing to us, Lady Cahena,” pleaded a woman.

“Sing! Sing!” chorused others.

The Cahena smiled. “Well, if you wish it, why not?
Do I see a harp there? Let me have it.”

The harp was brought. The Cahena took it, struck
the strings, and listened. She tightened one, another, and again struck a
chord. All waited silently.

Now she picked the strings,
evoked a melody of minors.
She sang,
richly, tunefully:

“I hear, I hear
;
Voices whisper in the shadows. They say
,
Your people are strong, wise, brave.
Your enemies came to eat you up, but they flee unfed.
They worship one god, they call him almighty
,
But your gods are many and great.
Your gods hold your land for you
,
Make war for you to save your peace.
You will live, will prevail.
The enemy cries out, all is fate
,
All is foreordained —
Their foreordained fate is loss, is flight, is ruin.
The voices say the truth
,
And the truth we believe.”

She muted the harp strings with her spread hand.
Deafening applause rose all around, from men and women. “Sing again!” cried the
listeners, but the Cahena smiled and shook her head so that the black torrent
of her hair tossed.

“Let’s have Bhakrann sing to us,” she said. “I’ve
heard him sing now and then, when the mood was on him. He makes good songs.”

“Let me be excused from this thing,” protested
Bhakrann. “I can’t play the harp, anyway.”

“I’ll play for you,” said the Cahena, and struck a
ringing chord.

“Wait, let me choose my words,” said Bhakrann. He
closed his eyes, and his bearded lips moved soundlessly. “All right,” he said
after a moment.

The Cahena played the tune she had made, and
Bhakrann sang, harshly but with spirit:

“They came, yes!
They came to fight us, conquer us
,
Their eyes and beards were fierce, their weapons were bright.
Loud they called on their god to throw us down —
And
what then?”

“What then?” yelled a Djerwa warrior from where he
sat
listening.
Bhakrann sang on, without breaking
rhythm:

“Their god did not hear them.
We met them and turned them around there,
And
they ran before us, frightened, in dread of death,
In dread of the death we showed them, brought upon them.”

Bhakrann’s voice rose, not tuneful but exulting:

“See, they run, they run, and we
run after them,
Make them run faster, faster,
Make them afraid,
Make them find the shortest way back
To their own place, far far away.”

He stopped and lifted his hands and bowed, and
again there was mighty applause. The Cahena tucked the harp under her
white-sleeved arm to clap her hands.

“Now, Wulf!” she cried.

“Wulf!” came back the happy voice of Daphne.

“Wulf!”
came
the
deep-chested shout of Bhakrann. “I sang, Wulf! Now you sing!”

Others urged him, women and men. Wulf was
embarrassed. He spread his big hands in appeal.

“But I’ve never done such a thing in my life,” he
said to the Cahena. “I’ve never improvised a song —”

“But I improvised, and so did Bhakrann,” she
rallied him, smiling. “Don’t disappoint us now.”

“Well…”

She was right, he must do it. This was the
Imazighen way, and he must sing. The Cahena was strumming the harp again. He
sang, because he must:

“There is also the Cahena!
Our queen, our prophetess, our chieftainess —
Who
more beautiful, more wise, more strong?
War, and she strikes like the lightning
;
Peace, and she smiles like the bright rising of the sun.
Splendor is hers
,
Wisdom is hers,
Power, mighty power, is hers,
Our great queen, our Lady Cahena.”

Then the applause, deafening
cries from the women and men who had heard him.
“Wulf!
Wulf!” they called to him.
“Sing again!”

He lifted his hands, as though in surrender, and
smiled and shook his head. “Thank you, but I can’t think of anything else. Let
me go back and eat supper with my friends.”

“No,” said the Cahena, handing the harp back to
its owner. “You’ll eat supper with me. There’s a lot to decide about tomorrow.”

“A council?”

“Just the two of us.
We’ll give orders to the chiefs later.”

He walked with her to the big captured tent.
“You’re a poet,” she said.

“I could only sing what I thought.”

“Yes, that’s what poetry is.”

A guard with a javelin saluted them, and they went
in and closed the tent flap behind them. Carpets covered the ground inside.
There was a table, with dishes of food upon it, and a brass lamp with a pale
yellow flame. Fragrant perfume hung in the air.

“Eat first or talk first?” Wulf asked her.

“Eat and talk later.”

Her slender hand was on his arm. She led him
toward where a figured hanging curtained off a rear corner of the tent. Within
the chamber it made, cushions were spread, with a coverlet over them. A soft
whisper crept in the air, like faraway voices.

“But first,” he heard her say.

Her hands busied themselves at the fastenings of
the neck of her robe. Its fabric flowed down her, fell in a circle around her
feet. The filtered light from beyond the hanging put a soft glow on her
tawny-golden nakedness.

“Take off your things, too,” she said.

“Daia,” he spoke her name.

They loved each other, tenderly and thoroughly and
knowledgeably. They knew each other’s body and they thought they knew each
other’s heart. “Wulf, Wulf,” she whispered at the height of their ecstasy, and
“Daia,” he said back to her, the name forbidden to all others, the loveliest
name he knew. Afterward, they washed each other from a captured silver basin.
She donned her white robe again, he put on his clothes, and they went out to
supper in the main tent. It had grown cold but it was good — sliced roast meat
with a hot sauce, a salad of cucumbers, Moslem wheat bread, olives, and
raisins. As they ate, they talked of what must be done next.

A vigorous advance to press those beaten, fleeing
Moslems,
was Wulf’s advice, with patrols of scouts to show
the way. Behind the strong, steady front line would come more squadrons, ready
to strengthen the van in case the Moslems tried to make a stand anywhere, and
captures of all stores of food and equipment, on which they would subsist as
they marched, as they fought if there was any fighting to do. But if the
Moslems continued their demoralized retreat, pursue them, even all the way to
the sea.

“That’s wisdom,” the Cahena praised him, putting
an olive between her red lips. “You’re a strategist, Wulf. You’re a poet, too.
How beautifully you sang about me.”

“That was a clumsy effort,” said Wulf. “As for my
strategy, it’s only basic. You flatter me too much.”

The sun was down outside. Chill crept into the
air. The Cahena found herself a cloak of blue cloth with a beaded desigu and
gave Wulf another captured cloak, black and white wool with gold thread shining
in it. Swathed in these, they went out into the night.

Fires shimmered, camping warriors sang happily. At
one fire the principal chiefs gathered. Ketriazar and Daris wore Moslem
garments, and their beards bristled triumphantly. Yaunis bowed low to kiss the
Cahena’s shadow in the fireglow. Lartius was there, in a beautiful embroidered
mantle. He looked tired, but he looked smug.

“We’ve beaten them,” he exulted.
“Destroyed them.”

“We’ve only begun to destroy them,” said the
Cahena. “There’ll be more to do, and we’ll have to do it right. Let Wulf
explain.”

Wulf sat and elaborated on what he had outlined to
the Cahena, about a strong, advancing line with scouts in front and reserves
close behind. Perhaps, he said, a concentration of force at the center. If the
Imazighen could drive through the midpoint of the retreating host, that host
might be rolled up to right and left and virtually finished off.

“What do we do with prisoners?” asked Lartius.

“Take their weapons and money and horses, and then
let them find their way to wherever they started out at us,” said the Cahena.
“They can tell the story of how we can’t be beaten. But keep any officers you
catch; we can use them. Wulf, what became of that interesting young Arab,
whatever his name is?”

“Khalid ibn Yezid,” said Wulf. “He’s under guard,
off there to the rear.”

“He took defeat gracefully, and he’s well spoken,”
said the Cahena, almost musingly. “You others might like him.”

“I don’t like any Moslem,” declared Ketriazar.
“The only interest I have in a Moslem is where his neck and shoulders come
together, the right place to put my sword.”

“I want no prisoners killed,” said the Cahena, an
edge in her voice.

“My people take very few prisoners,” said Daris
from beside Ketriazar.
“Very few indeed.”

Djalout came up to join them. “Lady Cahena, I’ve
been making an inventory of captured valuables,” he said. “The men have been
good at bringing them in, only a few Arab coins sticking to their fingers.
Here, I brought this to show you.”

His old hand held it out. It was a ropelike string
of glowing pearls, all round and white except one at the center. That was
glossy black, the size and shape of a pigeon’s egg.

Lartius leaned to look. “They’re worth a fortune,”
he said.

The Cahena took the pearls, fastened them with a
gold clasp, and hung them around her neck. The black pearl glistened richly
upon her bosom. She touched it with her finger.

“Let’s get back to talk about tomorrow,” she said.
“Up at the first touch of light before dawn, everyone ready to move.
Now, attention to orders for each of you.”

The orders she gave showed that she had well
estimated the warriors of each chieftainship, their organization, their
behavior in battle. She finished and rose, and all rose with her.

“Now, I want to visit the wounded, wherever they
are,” she said. “Come with me, Djalout. No, Wulf, you needn’t come. You’ve
ridden hard, fought hard. Get some rest for your work tomorrow.”

Away she walked into the dark. Wulf returned to
his own campsite. The horses drowsed, Susi and Gharna lay swaddled and asleep,
but Bhakrann rose on an elbow.
“Ahi,”
he greeted Wulf.

“Ahi,
Bhakrann. If you’re going to ask about tomorrow, we’ll do more of the same.
Pursuit and mopping up.”

“She thinks we’ll succeed?”

“She knows we will,” said Wulf.

“She knows everything.”

“Yes,” said Wulf.
“Everything.”

He drew off his boots and tunic and lay on his
back. He was weary, but he was happy. Thinking of the Cahena, he imagined her
nestled there beside him. He went to sleep and did not dream.

When he wakened, swiftly, clear-headed, it was
still dark but the stars faded in the east, a message that dawn was coming. He
rose. Bhakrann was already on his feet, on the far side of the last embers of
the fire.

“Come here,” said Bhakrann softly. “I want to show
you something.”

Wulf joined him, over where Gharna lay snoring.
Bhakrann pointed at the ground, and Wulf stooped to look. There in soft earth
were the deep prints of divided hoofs, two and two and two, where they led
away. Wulf knew those prints.

He and Bhakrann walked back together, to their
side of the camp. They stood and looked at each other in the growing light.

“We’ll still lose lives,” said Wulf at last.

“Then you know who came and looked at Gharna,
don’t you?” said Bhakrann. “Wulf, I begin to understand you when you say you
hate war.”

“Don’t tell Gharna,” said Wulf.

“Of course not.”

Neither of them had spoken the forbidden name of
Khro.

Wulf put on his boots. Bhakrann set a brass bowl
of water on the coals and fed on more wood. When the water heated, he trickled
in some dried, crumpled leaves of a plant Wulf did not know. They drank the
brew and ate scraps of Moslem bread. Susi and Gharna woke and shared with them.
Then came the bridling and saddling of the horses, the
putting on of armor.
All around them, warriors were doing the same, were
mounting, forming ready for action. Bhakrann went away to summon his scouts and
move ahead of the main bodies.

“Ride close to me, Gharna,” said Wulf, swinging
into his own saddle. “I won’t be in the thick of things today, and neither will
you.”

“Whatever you command,” replied Gharna.

Dawn peeped over the distant horizon. Subehiefs
yelled orders, the squadrons went forward. Wulf joined the Cahena, with Mallul
and a party of aides and couriers.

“Ride with me,” the Cahena said to Wulf. “Observe
anything you can. What orders you give will be obeyed as though they came from
me.”

“All I can think of just now is to see that the
enemy doesn’t pull together to make a stand,” he said.

“We’ll watch for that.”

The host moved forward and so did the Cahena’s
party. In the distance moved busy dark dots, an open line of them, Bhakrann’s
scouts. No sign of Moslems, not just then.

They left the pools and streams; they were on the
dusty, tree-tufted plain. The advance was
steady,
all
elements keeping touch at the flanks. The Cahena’s party came at a brisk walk,
sometimes trotting to keep in command position. Couriers constantly sped this
way and that to tell chieftains what to do, what to look for.

They passed huts and clusters of huts. Hysterically
joyous people came out to meet them, telling of the arrogance of Moslems as
Hassan’s host advanced,
the
demoralization of the same
men in retreat. There were prostrations to kiss the shadow of the Cahena’s
horse, invocations of spirits and gods with names strange to Wulf. The Cahena
spoke kindly to such people and ordered that captured food be given to those in
need.

There was no great strew of dead bodies on the
ground, as there had been the day before. The Moslems were not standing to
fight. On the way, the army passed an ancient tomb structure, a cone of fitted
rocks fully twice a man’s height. Wulf checked his horse to look at it. There
had been a closed doorway to the east, now partially opened, its loose stones
scattered. Perhaps Moslems had dug there, looking for possible treasure. But
they had not opened a way big enough to enter. What had stopped them?
Fear?
At the top of the tomb two jagged points of rock
stabbed out to north and south.
Horns?
Like the horns
of Khro? Wulf grimaced and rode on to catch up with the Cahena.

She pointed.
“Action up there
ahead.”
Wulf saw a swirl of horsemen almost a mile
away,
and instantly put his own mount to a gallop to get there. Susi and Gharna
hurried behind him.

He heard
shouts,
he saw
combat, javelins against curved swords. His own weapon sang out of its
scabbard, and he hurried to get into the thing. Fairly flying, he was there,
saw a Moslem wheel to face him, lifting a bow with arrow on string. It sang
past him, and then he was close in, cutting the man into a flying fall to the
ground. Wulf spared a glance to make sure that his stroke had killed,
then
looked behind him.

Someone else was down.
Gharna.

The other Imazighen had put the surviving Moslems
to flight. Wulf dismounted to look at Gharna. The blank face turned up. The
arrow had struck Gharna’s very heart, had driven in half its length. So close
had been the range that Gharna’s mail jacket had been pierced like cloth.

Susi was there, too, wide-eyed. His hand trembled
as it held his bridle. “At least death was quick,” he quavered. “What do we
do?”

“Bury him here,” Wulf ordered. “Stop a couple of
men to help you; tell them I said for them to help. Find big stones to put on
his grave, to keep wild dogs and hyenas from digging him up. Then come on and find
me again. I’ll be up ahead somewhere.”

He made haste to rejoin the Cahena’s party.
Briefly he told her why he had stopped.

“Then you lost a good servant,” she said. “I knew
him, I’m sorry about him.”

“He looked after me,” said Wulf. “He knew about
horses. But it was going to happen — there were hoof tracks beside him where he
slept last night.”

The Cahena glanced at him sharply. “Don’t say the
name.”

“I wasn’t going to say the name. But I think of
some things I’ve talked about with Djalout. About gods; when people don’t
worship them anymore, do they become spirits of evil?
Spirits
that destroy?
Did that happen to the hoofprint maker?”

“Please,” she said, and he had never heard her use
the word to him. “Don’t talk about it. Let’s follow on, see what’s happening.”

What was happening was the utter routing of the
Moslems. None of them waited to meet the triumphant advance except those who
were too weary, too poor in spirit, to get away. Such men grumpily held up
their hands in token of surrender. Among them were commanders of companies or
squadrons or battalions, recognizable by their handsome dress. The Cahena
ordered these prisoners kept, and told common warriors to go east and try to
find their friends.

The pursuit was hardly pursuit by now. The Moslems
had scuttled away to a far horizon. Warriors of the various tribes gathered in
abandoned baggage camels, whole herds of riderless horses, stacks of abandoned
weapons. Wulf saw valuable spoils, too, gold and silver coins in pouches,
jewelry. These were fetched together and carried along under guard. The Cahena
had ordered that, and her orders were strictly obeyed.

In camp that night, the Imazighen warriors slept
on their arms. The Cahena did not call Wulf inside her big captured tent. She
sat outside, in the light of a small fire, and conferred with her principal
chieftains. Bhakrann reported after a busy day of scouting, to speak of what
they would approach.

“We’ll come below Cairouan — they’re abandoning it
— and to the south is that place they call EI-Djem,” he said. “A day or so, and
we’ll be there.”

“Thrysdus is the name,” said Djalout, “where the
Romans had an important garrison town, and maybe the third biggest circus in
all their empire.”

“If the Moslems leave Cairouan, we’ll ignore it
for the moment,” said the Cahena. “Send squadrons to occupy, and go on to
Thrysdus. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it. I’ll see it now.”