Sunbird (89 page)

^{'It is finished, Huy,' he choked, but Huy picked him up bodily and carried him into the entrance. He propped him against the wall of the cavern.}

^{'Bakmor,' he panted, and pushed his head back to look into his face. Bakmor's eyes looked back at him without seeing, dead and glazed. Huy let the handsome head drop forward, and stood up.}

^{'Here they come,' shouted Lannon, and Huy hefted the axe and leapt to Lannon's side to meet the first dark rush of bodies into the passage. The four of them - Lannon, Huy and two legionaries -- held the entrance long enough to clog it with piles of dead warriors.}

^{Then the archers came up and the first volley of arrows swept the passage. One of them struck a legionary in the throat, and he fell with a dark gush of blood from the mouth.}

^{'No cover in here,' Huy shouted. 'Back to the temple.' They raced back along the passage, and the next volley whistled amongst them. One struck Huy's helmet and glanced away to light sparks off the wall beside him, another found the seam in the last legionary's breastplate and lodged in the bone of his spinal column. His legs collapsed under him. Desperately he clawed his way after Huy, dragging his crippled body by the sheer strength of his arms alone.}

^{'Your favour, my lord,' he screamed, in terror of the castrating blade, the ripping of his bowels while he still lived. 'Don't leave me for them, Holiness.'}

^{Huy checked his run, and shouted, 'Go on, Lannon. I'll follow you.' He went back, and the legionary saw him coming.}

^{'Baal's blessing on you, Holiness,' he cried, and tore his helmet loose, bowing his head forward to expose the neck. '}

^{'Find peace!' Huy told him, and cut his head from the trunk with a single stroke of the axe, turning to run again as he did so. An arrow hit Huy in the face below the eye, glancing off the bone and sliced him open to the ear, dangling there by the barb in the fleshy skin.}

^{Huy tore it loose as he ran after Lannon. Together they crossed the cavern of Astarte, their footsteps echoing from the domed walls; skirting the still green pool, they reached the door of the temple as the next flight of arrows hummed around them. Lannon stumbled slightly, and then they were into the temple.}

^{'Can we hold them here?' Lannon gasped.}

^{'No.' Huy stopped to catch his breath. 'The archives!' Then he looked at Lannon. 'What is it, Majesty?'}

^{'I also am hit, Huy.' The arrow stood out of the joint of his armour near the left armpit. The angle of penetration was such that Huy felt a cold gust of despair. The arrowhead must lie close to the heart. It was mortal, no man could recover from a wound of that nature.}

^{'How is it?' Lannon demanded.}

^{'There is no pain, Huy. It cannot be too bad.'}

^{'You're lucky,' said Huy, and snapped off the shaft, leaving a short stub protruding from the wound.}

^{'Come,' he said, and with a gentle hand on Lannon's arm led him back through the temple into the archives.}

^{'The sun door?' Lannon asked.}

^{'Only at the very end,' said Huy. 'Only when all else fails.' And he steered Lannon into one of the stone recesses.}

^{'Your face.' Lannon stared at Huy in the uncertain light of the torches, as though he had noticed the gaping slash across his cheek for the first time.}

^{'No doubt it's an improvement,' Huy grunted as he tore a strip from his tunic and knotted it into a crude sling for Lannon's left arm.}

^{'Can you use it?' he asked and Lannon worked his fingers, opening and closing them.}

^{'Good,' Huy nodded, and placed the tang of Lannon's shield in his left hand. The sling would help support the weight of it.}

^{Huy cocked his head, listening to the stealthy footsteps, the whispered voices and the clink of weapons within the temple of Astarte.}

^{'They are coming,' he said. 'It will not take them long to find the passage.'}

^{As he spoke the first of them stepped through the entrance from the guard room, and peered into the archives. The wavering light of the smoky torches in their wall brackets emphasized the man's size. He was huge and black, shiny with grease and paint, and Huy smelled him, a warm musky smell like that of a predatory cat.}

^{Huy stepped out of the recess into the light, and in Vendi shouted a challenge at him. The warrior came bounding down the passage at Huy, and their shields came together with a clash that echoed through the temple.}

^{Huy felt the spear blade sting his side, but the lance on the tip of the vulture axe bit in deep, touching bone, and the warrior slid down off the steel.}

^{Lannon limped out of the recess and took his place on Huy's left hand, they stepped over the shivering twitching corpse and went down the passage side by side to meet the rush of dark bodies that came at them.}

^{Manatassi stood in the temple of Astarte. It was after midnight but there were many torches burning and the halls were crowded with warriors, so many that Manatassi had ordered the interior walls torn out of the building to give them access to the mouth of the tunnel.}

^{The dark, evil-looking stone mouth which had already swallowed up so many of his men, was where the two fighting devils of Opet still held out, defying all his efforts to dislodge them. Even now they were dragging dead and badly wounded from the entrance. One of them had his right arm lopped off above the elbow. He made no sound as he clutched at the stump, but his eyes were huge and white in the torchlight.}

^{Manatassi knew what weapon had inflicted that wound, and his anger and his hatred smouldered hotly, warring with the superstitious dread that gripped him.}

^{He had learned enough about the gods of Opet while he was a slave to know their vast powers, their strengths and cruelties. He feared them, and he knew that he stood now in the stronghold of these terrible gods, in their holy place.}

^{He remembered now hearing of this underground place beyond the temple of Astarte, he knew that a death curse guarded it.}

^{Clearly this was the reason why they had taken sanctuary here, in this dark hole.}

^{His anger cooled, chilled by religious awe. He knew the white gods were watching him. He wanted to end it now, destroy this place and go - however, two doomed but stubborn men defied him.}

^{'Fire!' he said. 'Smoke them from their den like wild dogs.'}

^{They built the fire in the entrance of the tunnel, and fed it with green branches, and dense acrid smoke filled the temple and the tunnel. They ringed the tunnel entrance, coughing and choking in the smoke, and they held their weapons ready, knowing that no man could live in there. This must bring them out, surely - but an hour passed with no movement through the smoke.}

^{The fire burned down into a smouldering pile of logs, and the smoke cleared gradually. Manatassi ordered it quenched with water from the pool, and once again they stared into the dark passage from which wisps and streamers of smoke still drifted.}

^{The floor of the passage was still carpeted with the dead, but there was no sign of life.}

^{Manatassi subdued his religious awe, and abruptly snatched a torch from the hand of one of his warriors. Holding it high above his head, he stepped over the hot and sizzling logs and into the passage.}

^{He picked his way amongst the dead, and the floor was puddled and sticky with blood that clung to his bare feet. The torch threw yellow light into each of the stone recesses with their burdened shelves. Manatassi knew what the earthenware pots contained. He had assisted Huy often enough with the scrolls.}

^{He looked for sign of him now, but there was none. Only the black bodies, and the empty recesses.}

^{He reached the end of the passage and the torch lit the engraved image. Manatassi recognized it as the symbol of the sun god, and his courage melted at this tangible evidence of divine influence.}

^{On the floor below the image something caught his eye, sparkling in the torch light.}

^{He suppressed a gasp. It was the vulture axe, laid like an offering before the god image - and the place was empty.}

^{They had gone to their gods. They had cheated him of his revenge, and led him into deadly peril, into a direct confrontation with supernatural forces.}

^{Manatassi backed away, until the god image merged into the darkness and he turned and ran from the place into the hall of the temple of Astarte. There he looked back at the mouth of the tunnel.}

^{'Bring me masons from amongst the freed slaves. Seal off that entrance. It is evil. Seal it.'}

^{They ran to obey, and Manatassi's courage -- his anger and his hatred - returned to him.}

^{'I will destroy this evil. I place a curse upon this place, upon these cliffs. A curse that will last for ever. His voice rose into a scream. 'Burn it. Burn it all. Destroy it. It is an evil to be cleaned from the earth and from the minds of men, for ever.'}

^{So the masons sealed off the entrance to the tomb of the kings. They worked with all the skill that the men of Opet had taught them, and when they were finished the entrance had vanished.}

^{Then Manatassi destroyed the city. He slew every single living thing and threw them on the fires which raged through the lower city for many days. Then he looked at the walls and the towers, and he pointed with his iron claw. They tore it down block by massive block. The walls and the sun towers and the beautiful temple of Astarte. They went down to the very foundations. They lifted the flagged pavings. They tore out the stone wharves of the harbour. Working like a million ants they razed the city until no trace of it remained. They carried each block of masonry up to the cavern and dropped it into the bottomless green pool. They took the entire city and gave it to the goddess, and the pool was so deep - or the goddess so eternally greedy - that it was swallowed without a trace and the level of the green clear waters rose not a finger's width.}

^{When Manatassi marched from Opet, eastwards to complete the destruction of the empire, he left nothing behind him but piles of loose ash which the wind was already scattering in pale runs of dust.}

^{Manatassi spread his regiments like a net across the four kingdoms, with the command to destroy all trace of the cities and the mines and the gardens built by the men of Opet. But his hatred had burned low now, like a forest fire when the trees are gone. The hatred had left him hollow and blackened and dying, his huge battered frame a husk, even the smoky yellow eyes dull and uncaring.}

^{He came to Zimbao, the great walled city of the middle kingdom, and the men of Opet were dead. The city like his own body was untenanted, empty and deserted.}

^{Manatassi wrapped himself in a fur kaross and lay down beside the watch fire, and in the morning his body was stiff and cold.}

^{They buried him outside the walls, and then they quarrelled and fought, for Manatassi had named no successor. Each war captain named himself, and the army of Manatassi split into a hundred tribes.}

^{In time Manatassi and the city of Opet faded from the memory of men.}

^{When Xhai the bushman was an old man and he knew he was dying, he came back to Opet. The lake had vanished, its shores were twenty miles from the red cliffs and the waters were brackish and shallow and sunwarmed.}

^{Xhai walked over the spot on which the temple of Baal had stood without recognizing it, until he saw the cleft in the red rock leading to the cavern of Astarte.}

^{He camped beside the pool, building a small fire and sitting over it mumbling to himself in the manner of old men. When his memories paraded before him they were magnified and magnificent, and he sought to capture and fix them.}