Sunbird (51 page)

^{Slowly it crawled towards him, its breath drumming in the mighty throat, dragging its paralysed hind quarters, dying but still deadly.}

^{'Die,' thought Lannon, watching it with fascination, crushed by the conflict, unable to move. 'Die,' he thought. 'Please die.' And suddenly the final spasm caught the giant cat. Its back arched, the legs stiffened, claws ripping into the earth, the mouth opened wide and pink, and it groaned. One last long pitiful groan, and it died.}

^{The half circle of watchers shouted, a cheer that was lost in the great silence of the swamps, and they began moving forward slowly towards the tiny figure of the king out on the grassy plain. But Huy was running. On legs too long for his crumpled trunk he seemed to dance over the ground, his long black tresses flowing out behind him and the vulture axe on his shoulder.}

^{He was halfway to where Lannon sat bowed in the grass when the second gry-lion stood up from where it had lain concealed behind the carcass of the nearest buffalo, Huy saw it and shouted as he ran.}

^{'Lannon! Behind you! Beware!'}

^{Lannon looked back and saw it. It was the female, lighter in colour, daintier in build, but notoriously more savage than the male. It moved towards Lannon with the deadly concentration of a stalking cat.}

^{'Baal speed me!' Huy prayed as he ran towards his prince, and saw him trying to struggle to his feet. The gry-lion was slinking low along the ground, moving forward in short dashes.}

^{Huy ran with all his might, driven by horror and fear for his prince, Lannon was on his feet now, reeling weakly away from the stalking cat. The movement triggered the hunting reflex of the gry-lion, it closed remorselessly.}

^{Huy shouted at it. 'Here!' he yelled. 'Come!' And the cat noticed him for the first time. It lifted its head and looked at him. The fangs glinting long and pale, the eyes yellow and splendid.}

^{'Yes!' shouted Huy. 'Here I am!' He saw Lannon stagger and fall, dropping out of sight into the grass, but he watched the beast. Saw the tail stiffen and the head drop. It began its charge, and Huy checked his.}

^{He stood to meet the gry-lion, braced on long powerful legs, with the axe on his shoulder, and he let the cat come straight.}

^{As it closed he fastened his gaze on the black diamond pattern between the gry-lion's eyes, and he adjusted his grip on the axe, settling it carefully.}

^{The axe went up and the gry-lion covered the last few paces in a soft roan-coloured blur of fluid movement, towering over the little hunchback.}

^{'For Baal!' howled Huy and the axe moaned in flight. The blade cracked into skull, buried in the gry-lion's brain and was instantly torn from his grip as the full weight of the dead beast smashed into his chest.}

^{Huy came back from deep down and tar away along a tunnel of roaring darkness, and when he opened his eyes Lannon, Hycanus, the forty-seventh Gry-Lion of Opet, knelt over him in the sunlight.}

^{'The fool,' said the king, his own face bruised and swollen, caked with drying blood. 'Oh! The brave little fool.'}

^{'Brave, yes,' whispered Huy painfully. 'But fool never, Majesty.' And saw the relief dawn in Lannon's eyes.'}

^{They spread the wet skins of the two gry-lions on the main mast of the flagship, and Lannon Hycanus received the oaths of allegiance from the heads of the nine houses of Opet while reclining on a couch of soft fur beneath them. Huy Ben-Amon carried the cup of life, despite the protests of his king.}

^{'You must rest, Huy. You are badly wounded, I believe the ribs of your chest are stove--'}

^{'My lord, I am the cup-bearer. Would you deny me that honour?'}

^{Asmun was the first of the nine to make oath. His sons helped him from the litter, but he shrugged away their hands as he approached Lannon.}

^{'In respect of the snow upon your brow, and the scars of your body, you need not kneel, Asmun.'}

^{'I will kneel, my king,' replied Asmun, and went down on the deck in the sunlight. Baal must witness the oath of this frail old man. When Huy held the cup of life to his lips he sipped it, and Huy carried the cup to the king. He drank and then offered it back to Huy.}

^{'Drink also, my priest.'}

^{'It is not the custom,' Huy demurred.}

^{'The King of Opet and the four kingdoms makes the custom. Drink!'}

^{Huy hesitated a moment longer, then lifted the cup and took a long draught. By the time Habbakuk Lal, the last of the nine, came forward the cup had been refilled five times with the heavy sweet wine of Zeng.}

^{'Do your wounds still trouble you?' Lannon asked softly as Huy brought the cup to him for the last time.}

^{'Majesty, I feel no pain,' Huy replied and then giggled suddenly and spilled a drop of wine down the king's chest.}

^{'Fly high, Sunbird,' laughed Lannon.}

^{'Roar loudly, Gry-Lion,' said Huy, and laughed with him. Lannon turned to the nobles who crowded the steering deck.}

^{'There is food and drink.' The ceremony was over, Lannon Hycanus was king. 'Habbakuk Lal!' Lannon picked out the big ginger-bearded seaman with his freckled and sea-brined face.}

^{'My lord.'}

^{'Will you weigh, and set for Opet?'}

^{'A night run?'}

^{'Yes, I wish to reach the city before noon tomorrow, and I trust your seamanship.'}

^{Habbakuk Lal inclined his head at the compliment and the heavy gold earrings dangled against his cheek. Then he turned on his heel, and stumped across the deck, bellowing orders at his officers.}

^{The anchors came up over the stern, and the drummer on the forecastle of the flagship struck the hollow tree trunk with the wooden drumstick, beating out the rhythm for the racing start.}

^{Three swift, two slow, three swift. The bank of oars dipped and swung and rose and swung forward and dipped to the beat. In perfect unison, an undulating movement, like the wet silver wing-beats of a great water bird. The long narrow hull slicing boldly through the sunset blush of lake water, the clean run of the wake streaming out behind her, the standard of house Barca hoisted at the crosstree of her masthead and her high castles fore and aft standing tall and proud above the papyrus banks on either hand.}

^{As she swept past the other vessels of the fleet they dipped their standards, and fell in behind the flagship. Each of them holding their station meticulously in line ahead, the steersmen leaning on the rudder oar and the drum-beats booming out across the lake.}

^{His hobbling gait was all that betrayed Huy's discomfort as he moved from group to group upon the torch-lit deck, with each of them he pointed the bottom of the wine bowl to the starry bright night sky, and bounced the ivory dice across the deck.}

^{'Damn your luck,' laughed Philo, but the laughter did not hide the anger in his brooding gypsy dark features. 'Am I mad to dice with a favourite of the gods?' But he stacked gold upon the board, covering Huy's pile, and Huy scooped the dice and threw the three black fish again. Philo pulled his robes closer about him and moved away with the laughter and the shouted gibes of the watchers following him.}

^{The bright white star of Astarte had set when at last Lannon and Huy stood together beneath the spread skins of the gry-lions and looked about the deck. It was a battlefield when the battle is spent. The bodies lay strewn about in the torch light, lying where they had fallen, loose and senseless. A wine bowl rolled back and forth with the easy motion of the ship that still sped on into the darkness.}

^{'Another victory,' Lannon spoke thickly, peering blearily around at the carnage.}

^{'A notable victory. Majesty.'}

^{'I think,' Lannon began, but did not finish. His legs buckled under him. He swayed and swung forward. Huy caught him neatly as he fell, and settled him across one shoulder. Ignoring the pain in his chest he lifted the king and carried him down to the main cabin below the deck. He dropped Lannon on the bed, and arranged his limbs and head more comfortably. A moment longer he stayed, hanging over the supine figure.}

^{'Sweet sleep, my beautiful king,' he blurted and turned to stagger away to his own cabin. The slave girl rose at his entrance.}

^{'I have set out your writing pallet,' she told him, and Huy peered at the scroll, ink bowl and stylus under the hanging lamp.}

^{'Not tonight.' He started towards the bed, lost direction, crashed into the bulkhead and bounced backwards. The slave girl ran to help him, and steered him into port.}

^{Huy lay on his back and looked up at her. She was one of Lannon's household. Huy wished he could afford one like her, but she would fetch ten fingers of gold at the least.}

^{'Is there anything else, my lord?' she asked. She was a pretty little thing with dark soft hair and pale ivory-yellow skin. Huy closed one eye the better to focus on her.}

^{'Perhaps,' he said shyly. 'If you will help a little.' But his aspirations were too ambitious, and in a few moments his snores shook the ship to its keel. The girl rose, pulled on her robe and for a moment smiled down at him before she slipped out of the cabin.}

^{In the darkness before dawn Huy stood on the forecastle of the galley and worked the axe, keeping it in flight, humming and hissing in the gloom. He felt the sluggish old wine in his veins begin to course faster, the sweat broke out on his body that the cool lake air could not quench. He changed hands smoothly on the cut, and the great axe sang. The dullness in his head lightened and the sweat poured now, streaming down his muscled legs and arms, over the bull-humped back, soaking the loin-cloth, running into his eyes, and Huy began to dance, lightly he spun and leapt and weaved, and still the axe flew.}

^{Dawn was pinking the sky when at last he stopped and leaned upon the axe. His breath steamed and gasped in the cold stream of air, but his blood raced through his body and he felt like a man again.}

^{In the cabin one of Lannon's slave girls scraped the sweat from his body with the gold strigil that was a gift from Lannon. Then she rubbed him down with perfumed oil, plaited and set his hair and beard, and held a loose unbelted robe of white linen for him.}

^{He came up on the steering-deck just as the order to heave to was passed to the fleet, and they swung towards the east to await the coming of the sun with the slave oarsmen collapsing thankfully over their oars. As the sun showed over the horizon Huy led the praise chant to Baal. Then there was breakfast on the open deck with the company squatting on mats of plaited reeds. Huy looked at their faces, grey and crumpled, baggy-eyed and bad-tempered. Even Lannon was pale and his hands shook as he breakfasted on a bowl of warm milk and honey.}

^{Huy started on millet cakes dripping with oil and honey, then he ate a large smoked and salted lake bream, and when he called for a broiled duck reeking with rank wild garlic and more millet cakes the company watched him with awe. Huy ripped the duck to pieces and forced an expression of relish as he ate, for he was jealous of his reputation.}

^{Philo spoke for them all when he cried at last 'Great Baal! You insult not only your own belly but mine as well.' And he jumped up and hurried below.}

^{'He is right,' Lannon laughed for the first time that day. 'You look like a child who has drunk nothing more poisonous than his mother's milk.'}

^{'He was weaned on red Zeng wine, and he cut his teeth on the blade of a battle-axe.'}

^{'If the lake was wine he would lower the level so we could walk across.'}