Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986 (21 page)

“My approval hasn’t been sought, and neither has
yours. Come, I want you to meet somebody.”

They went down to the lower level and out in the
great open arena, where horses of the guard details were picketed. Djalout led
the way to a sort of makeshift tent of striped cloth, pegged against the wall.
Before it sat a small misshapen man, cross-legged, scanty-bearded,
staring at them.

“This is Shua, Wulf.” Djalout made the
introductions. “He’s been in
Egypt
, he’s watched Hassan’s preparations, and he can tell us
some interesting things.”

Shua got up. His thin legs were bowed, his back
rose in a hump almost as high as his head. His dark, wrinkled face looked like
a fuzzy raisin. His eyes were so bright that they almost bit.

“You’re welcome here, Shua,” said Wulf. “Where are
you
from,
and what’s your calling?”

Shua stamped crookedly to where a horse stood
tethered. Like Shua, it was brownish black and, like Shua, it was misshapen.
Its legs were grotesquely
knuckled,
it was deeply
swaybacked under its old saddle. Its head on its scrawny neck was as blunt as a
melon. Shua groped in a saddlebag and brought out a gleaming round crystal.

“I’m from
Ethiopia
,” he growled. “Your Moslem troublemakers haven’t come
there yet. By trade, I’m a soothsayer.”

“We hope you can say sooth,” said Djalout
politely.

Shua squatted at his little tent. He was almost as
tall sitting as he had been standing. He glared at his crystal ball.

“Say sooth?” he repeated. “I wanted to see what
sooth you say here. I’ve heard of the wisdom and power of your Queen Cahena, of
all the gods you worship. I came to find out, and I find nothing.”

“You think we haven’t any skills,” suggested Wulf.

“Maybe you had them once, but where did they go
from you?” flung back Shua. “I made my journey, I wanted to learn and profit.
But nothing I do has any response. Look here.”

He held out the crystal on his palm. “Look at it.
Think of the future, what it may hold. Look hard, think hard.”

Wulf studied the shining globe. Bright motes
seemed to stir in it, to form a pulsing cloud. Wulf looked. The cloud grew dim,
melted away.

“You see?” grated Shua. “No, you don’t see. There
should have been a figure, somebody with a broom, sweeping to make ready for a
vision. And after that —” He clamped the crystal in skinny fingers. “No
good, not here! You don’t have any gods or spirits or angels or devils.
Nothing!”

“It makes things pleasantly uneventful,” said
Djalout.

“I’m a scholar, a soothsayer, looking for truth,”
yammered Shua. “Truth — what is truth?”

“Ah,” said Djalout, “that question was once asked
by a Roman official named Pontius Pilate, of a troublesome agitator named
Jesus. Pilate didn’t wait for an answer, which might have been illuminating.”
He smiled down on Shua. “What do you plan to do, now that you’re disappointed
in us here?”

“I’m leaving, but not for
Ethiopia
just yet,” said Shua. “I want to go to that Tomb of the
Christian Woman I hear about, see the nature of things there. I’ll leave
tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” approved Djalout. “Come and eat with us.”

At dawn Shua loaded his patient, deformed horse
with a bundle of supplies, hoisted himself astride, and rode away. Djalout and
Wulf watched.

“I want to hear of his adventures when he comes
back,” said Djalout. “If be does come back, that is.”

The Cahena called a council to consider all reports
of Hassan and his line of fortresses where, said Bhakrann, reinforcements kept
trickling in. Ketriazar told how he and Daris had fought and driven Lartius’s
men and had destroyed fields and orchards there and elsewhere along the coast.
“It’s a desert up there now,” Ketriazar said happily. “Those soft city people
can find out how to live in the wilderness. It’ll toughen them up.”

“We ran them like rats at Cirta,” added Daris.
“You should have been there, Wulf, with that big old widow-making sword of yours.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t,” said Wulf, and the Cahena
turned her brilliant eyes upon him.

“Why are you glad of that?” she challenged.

“Lady Cahena, I get sick of killing,” he said.
“War has been my trade ever since I was a boy, but I see that war gets nobody
anywhere. I wish we could stop it, among ourselves and with the Moslems.”

“I thought that war was your great study in life,”
she said.

“More or less, but I’ve studied other things, and
wish I’d studied them better.”

The Cahena listened to more reports of how the
northern country had been laid waste, and frowned over Lartius’s defiance.
“Well,” she said at last, “he may hold on top of his mountain, but his crops
are ruined. He’ll have to leave Cirta, and we’ll move in and raze it.
How about Yaunis?”

“He didn’t like to obey, but he did,” said
Ketriazar. “Packed up his people and went away with their herds and their
tents. I tried to talk to him, but he didn’t listen.”

“Let him sulk until he sees my wisdom,” said the
Caheria. “Or, should I say, Khalid’s wisdom.”

“You flatter me, Lady Cahena,” said Khalid, with
his smile.

“Wulf, you and Bhakrann will scout to see to the
destruction of the crops,” went on the Cahena. “Go tomorrow morning, and get a
good rest tonight.”

Wulf rested only part of the night, because Daphne
came stealing in to him. So tenderly she treated him, so passionately, that he
felt guilty again that he did not utterly love her. She was so good.

Wulf was busy in the months that followed. The
Cahena sent him northward to the seacoast, where details of Ketriazar’s and
Daris’s men busily destroyed trees and crops and dismantled fishing villages.
The inhabitants scowled but did not dare resist.

The land parched and grew bare. Smaller
settlements obeyed the Cahena. They told Wulf that they would harvest one more
crop of grain, pick the last fruit from their trees, then destroy everything
and wander. They knew the hunting life.

Wulf talked to various wise men and women, who
missed wonders they had known. They could not guess the weather, could not
foretell what hunting parties would bring back to eat. When the Cahena heard
his report, she was more or less pleased. He talked to Djalout.
over
cups of the good wine Djalout always found for them.

“What do you think of all this?” Djalout asked.

“I think nothing, I just obey orders. The Cahena
tells me what to do, and I do it.”

Djalout stroked his beard. “I wonder what voice
she hears these days, other than the voice of Khalid. What do you think of
him?”

“He has the ear of the Lady Cahena.”

“Is that enough for you, Wulf?”

“It has to be enough.”

Djalout smiled creasily. “Well, maybe the Moslems
will come back and starve in a starved land. If that happens, if we can turn
them back, maybe we can grow food and have towns again. I don’t presume to
forecast.”

And there was Daphne, always Daphne. She came to
Wulf whenever she could. He made love to her and wished he could talk to her.
But she was not like the Cahena in talking. Or like the Cahena in lovemaking.
There had never been one like the Cahena, in anything.

He had much to do. He drilled the men in various
formations with javelins and stabbing spears, lest they grow rusty. He saw to
bringing in supplies from far to the south, and paid for them. By now the
Cahena had set up relays of riders to bring reports from all regions of the
lands she ruled, and Wulf heard messages from Daris and Ketriazar; their tribes
adjusted well to the old roaming, hunting life. From Yaunis came querulous
complaints — his people did not like being primitive. From Lartius at Cirta came
no word at all.

“Lartius is sulking,” said the Cahena. “Let him
sulk until he sees the wisdom of what we’re doing.”

“Yes,” agreed Khalid, his eyes upon her.

Shua the Ethiopian came drifting back to Thrysdus,
grotesque on his grotesque horse. Wulf and Djalout entertained him and he
grumbled to them.

“I’ve been to that Tomb of the Christian Woman,”
he told them, scowling into a cup of Djalout’s wine. “It’s empty. The people
graze their flocks around it and tell tales of whatever it was you managed to
kill there. I take it that life isn’t so interesting in those parts, not
anymore.”

“Not any more,” Wulf echoed him.

“The women, for instance,” resumed Shua sourly. “A
traveler wants women to divert and refresh him. Don’t
stare,
I’ve probably had more women in my time than the two of you together. But out
there in your burned-over desert the women try to do old magics, old rites, and
nothing comes of that. They complain about how they live. When the last grain
is gone from the last harvest, what will be left to eat? Love, they say, isn’t
worth talking about. Their love gods don’t appear. Maybe their love gods have
vanished somewhere to a place where wonder still abides.”

“Ah,” crooned Djalout. “Any woman I may have once
loved is now grown old and probably boresome.”

“I’ve had my successes, in places where my magic
worked.” Shua’s eyes glittered. “Love is
magic,
it
must have magic to exist. Now, there’s your Lady Cahena, as beautiful a woman
as I’ve ever seen. Does she love? Wulf, you’ve been a close companion to her,
does she love?”

“How should I know?” Wulf parried the question.

“What about that pretty young gallant of hers,
Khalid? Do they love?”

“He advises her, and she takes his advice,” said
Djalout. “It was on his advice that she scorched all the land, destroyed the
towns, to leave the invaders no plunder anywhere.”

“That was bad advice,” said Shua. “The people
don’t like it. They scold the Cahena’s name. I gather that some of them have
sent messages to the Moslems, hint that the Moslems would be welcome. How’s
that for news?”

“Sad news, but not totally surprising,” said
Djalout gravely. “I daresay that Wulf isn’t totally surprised, either.”

“Wulf seems to obey your Queen Cahena in
everything,” said Shua. “Maybe he loves her and doesn’t dare say so.”

“You’ve been arguing that love is dead here, like
all magic,” Wulf reminded him. “I wonder if you think that the death of that
creature at the Tomb of the Christian Woman brought all this new aspect of
life.”

“It helped, it helped,” growled Shua. “Now, my
friends, I want to go back home to
Ethiopia
, where we can still have magic.”

“
Ethiopia
,” said Wulf. “It’s an old country, a proud one.”

“Yes, we’re proud,” Shua told him. “Our kings are
descended from Solomon and Queen Balkis. Shabak came from
Ethiopia
to be pharaoh of
Egypt
. We’ve a right to be proud.”

Wulf and Djalout found supplies for Shua’s journey
and bade him good-bye and good luck.

“He left in comparative good humor,” commented
Djalout. “He liked you, Wulf, your philosophies.”

“You think I’ve become a philosopher?”

“I think you’ve always been a philosopher. Well,
Shua’s gone, but yonder I see Bhakrann, back from one of his hostage-trading
trips.” Bhakrann greeted them gloomily, but brightened when Djalout poured him
wine.

“Good,” said Bhakrann, smacking his lips over the
cup. “Those Allah worshippers give you good things to eat, but nobody has wine
except maybe in secret. And Hassan gets hard to bargain with.”

“For hostages?” asked Wulf.

“He’ll pay, but he wants to pay what he wants to
pay. I asked him for swords, and he had none to spare.” Bhakrann gritted his
teeth.
“None to spare?
Why, he has bundles of swords,
tied up like faggots of firewood. He won’t let them go.”

“He wants them for his own men,” suggested
Djalout.

“Yes, and he has lots of men. They crowd his
string of forts. More men, I judge, than he had when we fought him and whipped
him. He’ll come against us again. A woman defeated him, and he wants revenge.”

As Wulf pondered this, a messenger came to say
that the Cahena summoned him to discuss an assignment.

She sat in her chamber with Mallul and Khalid.
“You’re to visit Yaunis and other peoples to the west,” she said. “To see how
they obey me. If the Moslems come again, I want them to starve wherever they
invade.”

“You’ll see to that,” put in Khalid. “Speak
plainly to the people. Explain our reasons and remind them what will come of
disobedience.”

Wulf stared at him. “You’re giving me orders, are
you?”

“His orders are my orders,” said the Cahena.

Wulf shifted his gaze to her. “I obey orders from
you, not from Khalid or anybody else.”

“Then obey my orders,” she said bleakly. “Ride out
tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Wulf said after her. “Yes.”

Daphne was with him that night, enveloping him
with caresses. She wanted to go with him on his mission, and pouted when he
said that that was out of the question. Between kisses, she said that she had
been drilling archers in a field outside of Thrysdus, teaching them a harrow
formation to send blizzardlike flights of arrows.

“But they’re not the best archers,” she complained.
“Archers should be trained from when they’re children. Those bowmen from Cirta
are better.”

“Cirta doesn’t approve of what we’re doing,” said
Wulf.

“Doesn’t approve of what we’re doing? You mean,
like this?”

Her arms were around him. She laughed as he responded.
She was so good.

Wulf left next morning. He took half a dozen
Djerwa riders along, including Cham and Smarja. As they left Thrysdus, another
man rode at a lope to join them. It was Mallul.

“I want to come with you, see what happens,” he
told Wulf.

Wulf wondered if Mallul would be a spy on him.
“Did she send you?” he asked.

“No, I said I wanted to join you, and Khalid
thought that was good, so I was given permission.”

Wulf gazed off toward distant knolls. “Khalid gave
you permission?”

“He suggested it, and my lady mother granted it.”
Mallul, too, stared away for a moment. Then: “Don’t you like Khalid?”

“Do you?” parried Wulf.

“We get along well together. He knows so much. He
and I talk in Arabic, and he’s been teaching me to write in Arabic, too. Yes, I
like Khalid.”

The party crossed great expanses of what once had
been good farmland. It was bare now, dusty now, and a spell of hot weather made
it bleakly ugly. When they camped at the sides of streams, they filtered the
sluggish, murky water through a cloth before they drank it. Here and there they
found encampments of people, small family groups. Men seemed meditative, women
were shy,
children
looked gaunt. Mallul talked to
these people, eloquently assured them that the Cahena had their interests at heart.
They heard him and said little in reply.

Wulf came to where Yaunis and his people lived.
They had returned to their town, rebuilding huts and tending crops. Yaunis
greeted Wulf courteously and answered questions by Mallul.

“You don’t seem to be obeying orders,” said
Mallul.

“Wait until the Moslems come,” Yaunis said. “If
they should get this far, we could set fire to our homes, our grain, destroy
everything within hours. As well wait till then as do it now.”

“You wouldn’t be here to see to it,” reminded
Wulf. “If the Moslems come, you’ll be with us in the east to fight them.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” said Yaunis
impatiently. “I’ve never turned my back on .my duty. But it’s hard to destroy
all your own food and shelter. Lartius feels the same way at Cirta.”

Wulf looked Yaunis up and down.Yaunis wore a
handsomely patterned tunic and a jeweled chain. His beard was carefully trimmed
to a point. Wulf remembered how Yaunis had talked of visiting
Carthage
, appreciating
Carthage
, the
Carthage
that again had been destroyed. After a moment, Wulf asked,
“Is that the word you want me to take back to the Cahena?”

“Yes. She’ll understand.”

“She may understand much better than you’ll like,”
said Wulf, and departed.

Wulf’s companions protested as he led them by the
southern trail toward Tiergal, and liked it even less when he ordered camp made
at the palm-fringed spring where once the Cahena’s escort had been aware of
strange voices and appearances. They kept watch that night, in pairs, but no
disturbance came. The haunted spring was haunted no more. The magic of the
whole country had vanished.

He turned his march eastward and reached Thrysdus.
The Cahena heard what Yaunis had said, and frowned over it.

“He’s slow to obey, and I’d have expected better
of him,” she said. “It’s not so strange that Lartius isn’t trustworthy, but
Yaunis — I’ll have to bring him back into line. Where’s Khalid? Bring him
here,
I want his views on this.”

Wulf left her talking earnestly to Khalid, and
found Djalout and Bhakrann idling among the horses grazing in the arena. He
told them of his interview with Yaunis. Bhakrann scowled.

“Yaunis has always wanted the city life,” he said.
“It would do him good to live in the open, chasing deer and picking up snails.
Will he stay with us?”

“I’m not sure,” Wulf confessed.

“Which means you suspect he won’t stay,” said
Djalout. “If he and Lartius desert us, there will go nearly half of our
fighting force. And the Moslems will be coming again.”

“My scouts say that more men show up almost every
day at Hassan’s line of forts,” said Bhakrann. “And he collects big mountains
of supplies — food, weapons, everything. Maybe making this land into a desert
won’t starve him. He’ll bring along his own lunch. How do we fight them, Wulf?”

“It’ll take some doing,” said Wulf. “I must think
about it.”

“We must all think about it,” said Djalout.
“Thinking is difficult — that is why so few people do it. We try to consider
the nature of reality and then the nature of wonder.”

“And sometimes we find both those natures the same,”
said Wulf, and Bhakrann blinked at him.

“The things you say are strange things until you
say them,” he vowed.