The Sunbird

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘But, Tanith, the gods’ answer was favourable. Don’t you see, now we need feel no guilt.’

  ‘I never felt guilt, then or now. But, Holiness, I will feel wrath beside which that of the gods will pale if again you risk your life needlessly.’

  Huy turned to her, and shook his head with mock sorrow.

  ‘Oh Tanith, what would I ever do without you?’ And her stern expression softened.

  ‘My lord, that question will never arise.’ And at that moment the empty wine bowl slipped from the old priestess’s fingers and spun on one end across the mud floor. Its circles narrowed, until it settled into silence and the priestess let out a long contented snore and bowed forward. Huy caught her and eased her backwards onto the cushions. He laid her out comfortably, and arranged her robe modestly about her. She was smiling and burbling and whistling in her sleep.

  Huy straightened up and Tanith stood close beside him. They turned to each other and embraced, coming together slowly and carefully. Her lips had a glossy feeling, cool and firm. Her soft hair brushed his cheeks, and her body pressed boldly against his.

  ‘Tanith,’ he whispered. ‘Oh Tanith, there is so much I want to tell you.’

  ‘My Lord, your voice is the most beautiful I have ever heard. Your wisdom and wit are celebrated throughout the four kingdoms - but please do not talk now.’

  Tanith pulled gently out of his embrace, took his hand and led him softly from the room.

  Over the months that followed, Tanith’s chaperone developed a peculiar taste for Huy’s wine. At the temple feasts she was wont to disparage the quality of the wine served by the Reverend Mother, comparing it most unfavourably against the other, and she would always end with a word of praise for the Holy Father himself.

  ‘A dear, dear man,’ she would tell her audience. ‘None of the nonsense you find with some of the others. Did I ever tell you about Rastafa Ben-Amon, the Holy Father in the reign of the forty-fourth Gry-Lion when I was a novice? Now there was a one!’ Her old eyes went a little misty, and she drooled a thread of saliva.

  ‘Drink!’ She said with outraged virtue. ‘Fight! And other things.’ Then she nodded sagely. ‘A terrible, terrible man!’ And she grinned fondly at her ancient memories.

  From the leather pipe, with its pitch-sealed joints, feeble gusts of air puffed like the dying breaths of a dinosaur. Driven by the great bellows at the surface, the circulation of fresh air had lost most of its force here, seventy feet below.

  Timon leaned against the sweating rock surface, pressing his face to the hose outlet gasping at that scanty trickle of air in the hellish heat and sulphurous atmosphere of the underground workings. He was lean, every rib showed clearly through the black skin, each sinewy muscle was outlined. His head was skull-like, with gaunt cheekbones and deep eye-sockets in which the smouldering fires of his indomitable spirit still burned.

  All fat and spare flesh had been burned off him by the ceaseless toil and the heat. Even now a sheen of moisture squeezed from the pores of his skin, highlighting the scars which criss-crossed his back and curled around his rib-cage -scars that patterned his arms and legs, scars long healed into thick ridges and shiny grooves, scars fresh and pink, scars still thick-scabbed and oozing. The chain shackles hung loosely at his neck and wrists and ankles. They had rubbed coarse calloused circles around his neck and limbs, slave marks that he would carry to his grave.

  He sucked in the air, his chest pumping, swelling and subsiding, the ribs beneath the skin fanning open and closing. Around him the smoke swirled, dimming the lamp flames. The heat was a violent shimmering thing, and the rock at the face glowed still, although the fires had burned to thick beds of ash.

  For five days now they had been attempting to break up this intrusion of hard green serpentine rock which was obscuring the gold reef. Sixteen men had died in the attempt, suffocated by the steam and smoke, struck down by flying shards of exploding rock or merely overcome by the heat to fall swooning onto the glowing floor and to sizzle while their flesh stuck to the hot rock and came away in stinking slabs from the bone.

  From the shaft above him, dangling on a plaited reed rope, one of the water-bladders was lowered to him. Made from the whole skin of an ox, carefully stitched and with the joints waterproofed with pitch the bladder contained forty gallons of liquid, a mixture of sour wine and water.

  Timon doused his leather cloak in the filthy warm water of the wooden trough beside him, then one at a time he lifted his feet and dipped them into the trough, soaking his leather leggings and the sandals. The soles of the sandals were reinforced with five thicknesses of leather to withstand the heat of the rock floor. Timon threw the cloak across his shoulders, bound the linen cloth over his mouth and nose, took one last breath from the air pipe and held it. Then he ducked under the dangling water bladder and took the weight on his shoulders. Reaching up, he jerked loose the tail of the knot that held it, and, bowed under the weight of liquid, he staggered up the tunnel.

  As he approached the face, the wet soles of his sandals began spluttering and stinking. He could feel the heat through the thick leather. Heat from the rock walls hammered at him, a physical force against which he had to fight his way forward.

  There was little time in which to work. Already his abused lungs were pumping painfully, but he dared not draw a breath of this poisonous smoke-laden air. The heat was scalding the exposed skin on his arms and face, his feet were agony as the rock burned away the protective soles.

  Against the face of the drive, he eased the bladder from his shoulder. He moaned with the pain as his careless elbow touched the rock, searing away an inch of skin and leaving the pink raw flesh exposed.

  He lowered the bladder to the floor, whirled and ran back through swirling fumes and heat down the tunnel with his chains jangling loosely under the cloak. This was the moment when men died, when the hot rock ate through the water bladder too swiftly, before the bearer was out of the danger area.

  Behind Timon the bladder popped, forty gallons of liquid drenched the hot rock, the sudden contraction of the strata shattered the surface, the rock burst explosively and a sharp sliver of it hit Timon in the back of the head, a glancing razor touch that sliced down to the bone of his skull. He staggered, knowing that to fall on this burning floor was to die horribly. He kept his feet while with his senses reeling he reached the water trough and plunged his head quickly into the filthy scummy water. Then with dirty water and fresh blood streaming down his back, he clutched the air pipe with both hands and panted into it. He was coughing and retching and his eyes were blinded with the tears of pain.

  It took him minutes to recover a little of his strength, and he staggered to the ladder that led to the level above. As he climbed, the next water bladder was being lowered, and he squeezed himself against the side of the narrow shaft to allow it past. He climbed fifty feet in darkness and then crawled over the edge into a dimly lit low-roofed cavern.

  The slave-master saw him grovelling on the lip of the shaft.

  ‘Why have you left your station?’ And the long lash of the hippo-hide kiboko curled wickedly around Timon’s ribs. He writhed at the sting of it.

  ‘My head,’ he gasped. ‘I’m hurt.’ And the slave-master stepped closer to him, stooping to examine the clotted cut in the back of Timon’s scalp from which dark blood still welled. He grunted impatiently,

  ‘Rest, then.’ And turned to a row of ten squatting slaves. They were all incorrigibles, wearing the same heavy chains as Timon, and their bodies were also scarred and abused. The slave-master selected one of them, prodding him with the sharpened point of the whip.

  ‘You next. Quickly now. The slave stood, and shuffled to the mouth of the shaft, moving stiffly for the damp of the workings was in all their bones. At the edge of the shaft the slave paused and peered fearfully into that dreadful fuming pit.

  ‘Move!’ grunted the slave-master and the kiboko whistled and clapped against his flesh. He went down the ladder.

  Timon dragged h
imself to the low bench against the wall. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. His lungs ached with the smoke and the cut in his scalp burned and stung. None of the other slaves looked at him. Each man was sunk in his own private hell, uncaring and silent. Beside Timon a man began to cough, a monotonous hacking sound, and a little bloody saliva wet his lips and glistened in the lamp light. He was dying of the lung sickness of the miners. The dust of powdered rock had filled his lungs, solidifying like concrete and turning his lungs to stone. None of them moved, none of them spoke.

  The younger slave-master paced restlessly back and forth before them. He was a swarthy bearded man, part Yuye, a freedman as like as not. He wore a linen tunic with light body armour, enough to turn a dagger’s point, and an iron helmet to protect his skull from the rough roof of the tunnel. At his waist were belted a short iron sword and a slave club studded with iron nails. He was tall and hard-looking, with flat sinewy muscle in his arms and legs. A cruel man, selected to work with the incorrigibles because of his brutality. There were always two of them. The other slave-master was an older man with a frosting of grey in his beard and a pale sickly-looking face. But he was big in the shoulder, and dangerous, as cruel as the younger man and more experienced. From above, five bladders of liquid were lowered into the shaft, and five times a thick rush of steam swirled from the dark mouth as they were used to quench the heated rock.

  ‘Enough!’ the younger slave-master bellowed down, and the slave crawled up out of the pit and lay on the edge coughing and retching. He was filthy with ash and sweat and mud, and he vomited a little yellow bile into the mud.

  ‘Take him away,’ ordered the slave-master and two of them shambled forward and dragged him away to the bench.

  The younger slave-master’s eyes travelled along the row, and they stiffened into awareness, each trying to will the choice away from himself.

  ‘You.’ The sharp point of the whip dug spitefully into Timon’s ribs. ‘You did not finish your shift.’

  There was no right of appeal, protest was folly, Timon had learned long ago. He stood up, and shuffled to the shaft. He steeled himself to the descent, but the delay was too long, and the hippo-hide whip seared its white flash of agony across the tenderness beneath his armpit.

  It began as a reflex of pain, Timon lifted his arms to protect himself and the chains swung. In a sudden orgasm of anger and pain, Timon whirled the heavy links just as the slave-master swung the next whip stroke. The chain wrapped about the slave-master’s forearm and the bone snapped with a sharp brittle sound.

  He backed away with a startled cry, and his broken arm dangled loosely at his side. Behind him the older man drew his sword. It came out of the scabbard with a harsh rasp. He was fifty paces away down the tunnel.

  Two of them now, for the younger man was groping left-handed for his sword. Somewhere beneath the slave dullness, the blankness of the slave animal mind, a spark burned. Huy Ben-Amon’s training came back to Timon: of two enemies -separate them and attack the weaker first.

  Flailing the chain Timon leapt at the younger slave-master, and the man went down in the mud.

  Timon leapt over him, and caught the second man’s sword stroke on the iron shackle at his wrist. The blow jarred him to the shoulder, and numbed his arm, but he ran in under the next stroke and threw a twist of the chain about the man’s throat. He drew tight and held it.

  The older man dropped his sword and clutched desperately at Timon’s hands, at the links of iron that were strangling him.

  Timon found that he was growling like a dog as he jerked and twisted the chain tighter. Suddenly the slave-master’s hands dropped away, his tongue fell out between slack and swollen lips and there was the sharp acrid odour of faeces as his sphincter muscle relaxed. Timon let him down onto the floor, and picked up his sword from the mud.

  He turned to the younger slave-master who had crawled to his knees, still stunned. He had lost his helmet, and he was cradling his broken arm against his chest.

  Timon stood over him and with the short sword chopped his skull open. The slave-master fell face downwards into the mud.

  Timon stood back and looked about the drive quickly. From the first blow to the last only ten seconds had passed, and there had been no outcry.

  Timon looked down at the sword in his hand, the blade was dulled with mud and blood, but he felt the despondency of abject slavery fall away. He felt the spark burst into flame, felt himself become a man again.

  He looked at the other slaves sitting on the bench. Not one of them had moved. Their eyes were dull, incurious. They were not men. Timon felt a chill as he looked at them. He needed men. He must have men.

  There was one of them. His name was Zama. A young man of Timon’s age. A wild slave, taken beyond the river. He had not worn his chains for a year yet. Timon stared at him, and saw his eyes come into focus, saw his chin lift and the muscles in his jaw clench.

  ‘Hammer!’ Timon commanded. ‘Bring a hammer!’ Zama stirred. It was an effort of will for him to break the pattern of slavery.

  ‘Hurry,’ said Timon. ‘There is little time.’

  Zama picked up one of the short-handled iron-headed mining adzes, and stood up from the bench.

  Timon felt his heart soar within him. He had found a man. He held out his wrists, with the bloody sword in his hand.

  ‘Strike off these chains,’ he said.

  Lannon Hycanus was pleased, but trying not to make it obvious. He stood by the window, and looked down towards the harbour where five galleys lay against the stone jetty. Lannon twisted a curl of his beard about one finger, and smiled secretly.

  In the room behind him Rib-Addi was reading in his prim and precise voice, combing his fingers through his scraggly grey beard.

  ‘Into Opet this day from the southern plains of grass, fifty-eight large tusks of ivory, in all sixty-nine talents.’

  Lannon turned quickly, a scowl masking his pleasure.

  ‘You attended the weighing?’ he demanded.

  ‘As always, my lord,’ Rib-Addi assured him, and his clerks looked up from their writings, saw the Gry-Lion’s expression soften and they grinned and bobbed their heads ingratiatingly.

  ‘Ah!’ Lannon grunted, and turned back to the window, while Rib-Addi resumed his reading. The voice was monotonous, and Lannon found his attention wandering although his subconscious was alert for a false note in the book-keeper’s voice. Rib-Addi had the habit of raising his voice slightly whenever he reached a portion of the accounting which might cause the Gry-Lion’s displeasure - a lower return, an estimate unfulfilled - and immediately Lannon pounced on him. This convinced Rib-Addi that the Gry-Lion was a financial genius, and that he could hide nothing from him.

  Lannon’s mind drifted away, picking idly at stray thoughts, turning over mental stones to see what scurried out from under. He thought of Huy, and felt a cold breeze ruffle the surface of his contentment. There was a flaw in their friendship. Huy had changed towards Lannon, and he searched for the reason. He discarded the thought that it might be the aftermath of their long estrangement. It was something else. Huy was withdrawn, secretive. Seldom would he spend his nights in the palace, sharing the dice and wine and laughter with Lannon. Often when Lannon sent for him in the night, instead of Huy arriving with his lute slung on his shoulder and a new ballad to sing, the slave would return with a message that Huy was sick or sleeping or writing.

  Lannon frowned now. and at that moment he heard the telltale rise in Rib-Addi’s voice and he swung around and glared at them.

  ‘What?’ he bellowed, and their faces were yellow-white with fright. The clerks ducked their heads over their scrolls.

  ‘My lord, there was a heavy fall of rock in the southern end of the mine,’ Rib-Addi stuttered. It ceased to amaze him that from a mass of figures Lannon would instantly pounce on a ten per cent decrease of output from one of the dozens of tiny mines of the middle kingdom.

  ‘Who is the overseer?’ Lannon demanded, and ord
ered the man replaced.

  ‘It is carelessness, and I will not have it so,’ Lannon told him. ‘The yield is affected, valuable slaves wasted. I would rather spend more on shoring timber, it is cheaper so in the end.’

  Rib-Addi dictated the order to one of the clerks, and Lannon turned back to the window and his thoughts of Huy. He remembered how it had been before, how Huy’s presence had provided the zest that made each triumph more valuable, and each disappointment or disaster easier to surmount. All the good things happened when Huy was there.

  In a rare moment of self-honesty Lannon realized that Huy Ben-Amon was the only human being that he could look upon as a friend.

  His position had isolated him from all others. He could not approach them for the warmth and comfort that even a king needs. His wives, his children feared him. They were uneasy in his presence, and left it with obvious relief.

  In all his kingdom there was only one person with the blend of courage, honesty, and disregard of consequence which allowed him to live in the king’s presence without shrivelling.

  ‘I need him,’ Lannon thought. ‘I need him much more than he needs me. Everybody loves him, but he is the only one who truly loves me.’ And he grimaced as he remembered how Huy had defied him, and it was he, Lannon Hycanus the forty-seventh Gry-Lion of Opet, who had suffered most during the estrangement.

  ‘I will not let him go again,’ he vowed. ‘I will not let him draw away from me like this.’ And his self-honesty persisted. He saw that he was jealous of his priest. ‘I will destroy anything which comes between us. I need him.’

  He thought of this latest journey of Huy Ben-Amon’s. Was it truly a matter of such urgency that the High Priest must travel 400 miles, taking with him two cohorts of his legion and the priestess and oracle of Opet, to consecrate some minor shrine to the goddess at a desolate garrison outpost in the northern kingdom? Lannon thought it more likely that Huy was leaving Opet for some devious reason of his own, and the result was that Lannon was bored, lonely and irritable. Huy knew that Lannon had planned a feast for his name-day.