Sunbird (81 page)

^{'Wait!' cried Tanith. 'Let her go!'}

^{'Release her,' ordered Lannon.}

^{Tanith went to the old priestess and kissed her gently on the forehead and cheek. Aina was sobbing.}

^{'Forgive me, child. I am sorry. I would have told them. Forgive me.'}

^{'Gently, old mother. Gently now.' Tanith led her to the doorway and pushed her tenderly out of the chamber. She went back to them and spoke to the king.}

^{'I will tell you his name - but you alone.'}

^{'Leave us,' commanded Lannon, and the Divine Council rose and filed from the chamber.}

^{'When they were alone Tanith said the name, proudly and defiantly, and she saw Lannon reel as though it had been a physical blow.}

^{'How long has he been your lover?' he asked at last.}

^{'Five years,' she answered.}

^{'So, he said, seeing the answer to many questions. 'It seems we shared his love then.'}

^{'Nay, Majesty.' Tanith shook her head. 'I had all of it.'}

^{You are wise to speak of it as past,' Lannon told her. He turned away to stand by the casement, and looked out across the lake. Nothing must come between us, he thought, I need him. I need him.}

^{'What will it be, Majesty? Poison or the secret dagger? How will you kill a priestess of Astarte? Have you forgotten that I belong to the goddess?'}

^{'No,' said Lannon. 'I have not forgotten, and I will send you to her, on the tenth day of the Festival of the Fruitful Earth. You will go as the messenger of Opet to the Gods.'}

^{'Huy will not allow it,' whispered Tanith in horror.}

^{'Huy is in the north - a long way from the pool of Astarte.'}

^{'He will hate you for it, always. You will lose him forever,' Tanith warned him, but he shook his head.}

^{'He will never know that I ordered it so. He will never know that you betrayed him, told me his name.' He smiled then, a cold and golden smile. 'No, it is you that will lose him, and I that will have him. You see, I need him, and my need is more important than yours.'}

^{He had been borne in a litter at first, while he was unconscious and then later when he was still too weak to march, so he did not know for how long and in what direction they had travelled.}

^{Even later when he was forced to walk, they bound and blindfolded him, so that he was aware only of the press of their bodies about him and the stench of sweat and the rancid fat with which they smeared their skin. There was no answer when he spoke, and rough hands urged him forward, and a spear blade pricked him when he baulked.}

^{He had been badly beaten and bruised, there were still lumps and gashes in his scalp, and his body was grazed and painfully wrenched, but he had taken no serious wounds, no deep spearthrust nor broken bones. It was as though they had carefully avoided dealing him a killing or crippling injury despite the fact that he had piled the corpses of their comrades in wind-rows about him, the vulture axe taking cruel toll before they overwhelmed him.}

^{On the first night when they camped he began a tentative investigation of his position with escape in mind, but then when he tried to shift his blindfold enough to see out, a heavy blow in the face dissuaded him. They fed him a handful of boiled corn and a strip of badly aired meat, gamey and rank with bacon beetle. Huy ate it hungrily.}

^{In the morning they were marching before the dawn, and when Huy felt the sun's warmth on his cheek and saw the light through his blindfold, he repeated the praise of Baal silently and asked the god for his help.}

^{Later that day he was aware of the ground levelling beneath his feet as though they journeyed across an open plain, and there was the smell of cow dung and smoke and humanity. Over the thudding rhythm of his escorts' bare feet and the swish of their war-kilts he heard a vast susurration of voices and movement. Blending with this was the lowing of many cattle, the air quivered with sound and movement, a hive murmur which warned him of the presence of a great multitude.}

^{At last they stopped him. He stood weary and thirsty in the hot sun with the raw-hide rope cutting into his wrists and his bruises and grazes aching. Time passed slowly in the silence of waiting men.}

^{At last a voice called out loudly, and Huy's nerves jumped. The voice was in Vendi demanding, 'Who seeks the lion-clawed, who seeks the bird-footed?'}

^{Huy remained silent, waiting for some indication of how to behave, and to his surprise he felt the cool touch of iron at his wrists and a blade sawed through his bonds. He rubbed his fingers, wincing at the flow of blood. Then he lifted his hands to the blindfold, expecting another blow, but none came and he loosed the cloth and blinked uncertainly in the bright sunlight.}

^{His eyes adjusted quickly, and he felt his heart lurch with shock at what he saw. Huy stood at the centre of a wide plain, a slightly concave bowl of land rimmed in with low hills.}

^{Except for a circular open area a hundred paces across, at the centre of which Huy now stood, the land was black with warriors. Huy gazed in awe at this multitude, and he could not begin to reckon their numbers. He would never have believed that the land could support such numbers, it was unreal, completely nightmarish - and the quality of unreality was heightened by the menacing stillness of the black hordes. Only the feathers of their head-dresses stirred in the sluggish wash of heated noonday air.}

^{The heat and the press of humanity threatened to suffocate him, and he looked about him desperately as though seeking an avenue of escape. Storch stood near him, and he carried the vulture axe on his shoulder. Huy felt a weak flutter of anger for the man's treachery, but somehow it seemed unimportant in the enormity of this fresh experience.}

^{Storch was not looking at him, instead he was watching a group of Vendi war captains who stood about a low mound of earth at the end of the clearing. The mound was bare, but compelled the attention of them all, like an empty stage before the principals appear.}

^{Again the voice demanded, 'Who seeks the Great Black Beast, who hunts the lion?'}

^{The heated silence and stillness persisted, then suddenly the multitude stirred and sighed as a man stepped up onto the mound.}

^{The tall crown of heron feathers on his head and the height of the mound upon which he stood made him god-like. His robes of leopard skin hung to the ground about him, and he stood as still as a tall tree in a rustling plain of grass as the royal salute shook the foundations of earth and sky.}

^{Storch carried the vulture axe to the mound and laid it at the king's feet, then he backed away, and the king looked across the open ground at Huy.}

^{Huy drew himself up, trying to ignore the aches of his body, trying not to limp as he approached the mound and looked up at Manatassi.}

^{'I should have guessed.' he said in Punic.}

^{'You should have killed me,' said Manatassi, and from the folds of his robes he lifted the iron claw. 'Instead of arming me with this.'}

^{'You do not understand,' Huy said. 'Your life was not mine to take. I made an oath.'}

^{'Still a man who lives on his word,' Manatassi said, yet Huy looked in vain for the traces of mockery in his voice,}

^{'There is no other way to live.' Huy felt tired now, he faced his certain death with resignation. He did not really have the energy to debate it.}

^{Manatassi made a gesture with the claw, indicating the massed ranks of his army.}

^{'You see what a spear I have forged?'}

^{'Yes,' Huy nodded.}

^{'Who can stand against me?' Manatassi asked.}

^{'Many will try,' said Huy.}

^{'You amongst them?'}

^{And Huy smiled. 'I do not think I will have the chance to do so.'}

^{Manatassi looked down at the little hunchback in his tattered tunic, his beard matted and the bruises on his face and arms, soiled and beaten, but not humble as he discussed his own fate.}

^{'Not one of my men understands us,' Manatassi told Huy. 'We can speak freely.'}

^{Huy nodded, puzzled, but interested in this change of mood.}

^{'I offer you life, Huy Ben-Amon. Come to me, give me the love and duty you have given to the Gry-Lion of Opet and you will live to be an old man.'}

^{'Why do you choose me?' Huy asked.}

^{'I have waited for you. I knew you would come. My spies have watched for you, but it was fate that delivered you so neatly into my hands.'}

^{'Why me?' Huy repeated.}

^{'I need you,' Manatassi said simply. 'I need your learning, I need your understanding, and your humanity.'}

^{'You forgive me the taking of your hand?' Huy asked.}

^{'You could have taken my life,' Manatassi answered.}

^{'You forgive the slave lash and the mines of Hulya?'}

^{'Those I will never forgive,' Manatassi snarled, his face twitching and the eyes glaring smoky yellow. 'But they were not your doing.'}

^{'You forgive the massacre at Sett?' Huy persisted.}

^{'You are a soldier, you could do nothing else '}

^{Manatassi was still trembling, and Huy sensed how narrowly he skirted the abyss, but he felt compelled to explore this man's strength - and weakness.}

^{'What would you have of me. then?' Huy asked.}

^{'March beside me,' said Manatassi.}

^'Against?'

^{'Against Opet and its monstrous cruelties and terrible gods,' Manatassi urged him. 'With you beside me and this army at my back I will rule the world.'}

^{'I cannot do that,' Huy shook his head.}

^{'Why not? Tell me why. It is evil, it must be destroyed.'}

^{'It is mine.' said Huy. 'My land, my people, my gods - therefore they cannot be evil.'}

^{'I thought you were a man of reason,' Manatassi snarled.}

^{'Reason can carry a man just so far, and then he must trust to his heart,' said Huy.}

^{'You refuse me, then?'}

^'Yes.'

^{'You know that you choose death?'}

^'Yes.'

^{Manatassi raised his hand, the iron claw glowing in the sunlight, and Huy knew that when the hand fell he would die. He steeled himself to meet it as calmly as he had dealt it.}

^{Manatassi turned away. Then after a moment he sighed, and his shoulders beneath the thick scars heaved.}

^{'You spared me,' said Manatassi. 'I shall spare you.'}

^{Huy felt weak with relief. He had not wanted to die, and he allowed himself at last to think of Tanith and the child. Now he would still see his son, and his heart soared.}

^{'Go back to Opet. Go back to your king. Tell him that Manatassi, the Great Black Beast, marches out of the north to destroy him.'}