The Sunbird

by Wilbur Smith

  A man stepped out onto the white beach, and walked alone up the bank to where the sheikhs waited beneath the fig tree. The very fact that he came without an escort was a mark of contempt, a sign of his strength and invulnerability.

  He wore a cloak of leopard skin and sandals upon his feet but he carried no ornament nor weapon. He stood tall and gaunt over the sheikhs, and they seemed to shrink in significance beside his bulk.

  He looked at them with the fierce yellow eyes of a bird of prey, eyes that seemed to rake their souls.

  ‘I am Manatassi,’ he said in a soft deep rumble. ‘I am the Black Beast.’ They had known enough not to be surprised that he spoke their language fluently.

  ‘I am Hassan, Sheikh of Sofala, Prince of Monomatapa and Viceroy of the Chan Emperor.’

  ‘You love the yellow metal,’ Manatassi said it like an accusation and Hassan was taken off balance. He blinked and glanced at Omar.

  ‘Yes,’ said Omar. ‘We love it.’

  ‘I will give you enough to glut you,’ said Manatassi.

  Omar licked his lips, an unconscious expression of greed, and he smiled.

  ‘You must have much of the precious stuff?’ Hassan asked, this direct approach to trade was distasteful. This man was a savage, he did not understand the niceties of diplomacy. Yet gold was worth a little gaucherie, especially in the quantities this self-styled black beast hinted at. ‘Where does it come from?’

  ‘From the treasure house of Lannon Hycanus, Gry-Lion of Opet and king of the four kingdoms,’ said Manatassi, and Hassan frowned quickly,

  ‘I do not understand you.’

  Then you are stupid,‘ said Manatassi, and Hassan flushed dusky rose beneath his brown skin and a retort rose swiftly to his lips, but he felt his brother’s cautionary fingers press his wrist.

  ‘Explain it to me,’ said Omar. ‘Do you intend to war with Opet?’

  ‘I will destroy them - destroy their people, their cities and their gods. I will leave not a trace of them, not a single living one.’ The giant Negro began to tremble, a little white spittle wet his full purple lips and a light sheen of sweat greased his battered features.

  Omar smiled delicately. ‘We heard of a battle at a place named Sett.’

  Manatassi roared, a sound of pain. He leaped towards the sheikh and from under his cloak he drew the clawed iron hand and held it in Omar’s face. Omar scrambled backwards, and clung to his brother.

  ‘Do not mock me, little brown man, do not mock me, or I will tear out your liver.’

  Omar moaned with terror and sweat ran down into his beard.

  ‘Peace,’ Hassan intervened hurriedly. ‘My brother meant only to remark that the legions of Opet will be difficult to destroy.’

  Manatassi gulped for air, still shaking with his rage. He turned away and walked to the edge of the island and stared down into the water. His shoulders heaved, and his chest panted for air, but slowly he calmed himself and came back to them.

  ‘Do you see them?’ He pointed to his army that still darkened the hills.

  ‘Numbers alone - will they be sufficient?’ Hassan asked. ‘You challenge a mighty foe.’

  ‘I will show you,’ said Manatassi, and he lifted the iron claw. Instantly one of his war captains ran from the canoe and knelt before him.

  Manatassi spoke a few words in the Vendi language and pointed out at the river. The captain sprang to his feet with an expression of joy lighting his dark face. He saluted, went bounding away down the bank, leapt into the bows of the canoe and was sped swiftly across to the north bank.

  The sheikhs watched with puzzled interest as a new movement began amongst the massed warriors on the far bank. They moved forward in two thick columns, swarming into the water, and Hassan exclaimed mildly, ‘They carry no weapons.’

  ‘They are naked,’ added Omar, and his terror ebbed and was replaced by an erotic interest as he watched the black columns move out into the shallows. Like the horns of a buffalo they circled one of the sandbanks, and though the chest-deep water hampered them, yet the manoeuvre was completed before the old bull hippopotamus woke from his gargantuan slumber to find himself surrounded.

  He lumbered to his feet and glared about him with his piggy pink eyes. Five tons of solid flesh, clad in a thick grey hide, splotched with pink upon the belly. His legs were short and thick and powerful, and when he opened his jaws to bellow he exposed great yellow fangs of ivory which could bite a war canoe in half.

  He broke into a cumbersome gallop, leaving deep hoof prints in the soft white sandbank, and he charged at the wall of black bodies that cut him off from the deep pool of the river. He entered the shallows, churning up a wake of foaming white water, while ahead of him the wall of black men solidified and thickened as the line bunched up to receive and absorb his charge.

  The bull went into them at full gallop, and human bodies were flung about like chaff in a whirlwind. His jaws clashed as he chopped at them, and when he drove forward it seemed that nothing could stay such devastating power. He must burst through them and find safety in the deeps of the river. Yet they swarmed about him, from the sides and rear, and his charge slowed perceptively, although his bellows seemed louder and the champing of ivory tusks cutting through living flesh carried clearly to the watchers on the island.

  Manatassi stood quietly, leaning forward slightly, with a small frown upon his scar-riven brow, and his eyes were yellow and watchful.

  In the river the water creamed and flashed and sparkled. The bull’s bellows took on a new note, a hint of panic, and he was no longer visible beneath the swarming naked bodies. It was like a scorpion attacked by army ants, creatures only a small fraction of his size smothering him with their numbers. The sunlight glittered on the wet bodies, and the bull’s forward progress was arrested. He was transformed into a struggling ball of human bodies, while around him the water turned dark brown with blood, and the mauled bodies fell away like poisoned black ticks from the body of an ox. They floated down on the sluggish current, while others swarmed forward eagerly to replace them.

  Now, miraculously, the striving knot of men and beast began to move towards the island; leaving the debris of death behind them, they moved slowly through the shallows.

  They reached the island, and came from the water - 1,000, perhaps 2,000 men, carrying the exhausted but still struggling hippopotamus bodily from the river and up the bank. The bull slashed viciously from side to side, and all within reach of his jaws died, while the bull’s head and the inside of his mouth were clotted with the bright blood of his victims.

  Leaving a thick trail of dead and terribly maimed men behind them, they carried the bull to where Manatassi stood waiting. The war captain came forward unsteadily. He was weak from loss of blood for he had lost one arm above the elbow, taken away by a single bite of those terrible jaws.

  He handed a stabbing spear to his king. Manatassi walked forward, and while his men held down the terrified monster, he stabbed it in the throat. Finding the jugular vein with the first thrust, the bull died in a burst of dark blood and a cry that rang against the hills.

  Manatassi stepped back and watched impassively as his men dispatched their wounded with swift mercy, and when the war captain came and knelt before him clutching the severed stump of an arm to his chest and begged for the honour at the hand of his king, a bright pride burned briefly in Manatassi’s eyes. He made the mercy stroke, crushing the man’s skull with a single blow of the iron claw, then he walked back, and smiled bleakly as he saw the sheikh’s amazement.

  ‘That is my answer,’ he said, and after a while Hassan asked, ‘What do you want of us?’

  ‘Two things,’ Manatassi replied. ‘An undefended passage of the river through your territory for my armies. You must forsake your pact of mutual defence with Opet - and I want iron weapons. My smiths will take another ten years to arm so many men. I want weapons from you.’

  ‘In return you will deliver to us the gold of Opet. and the mines of the middle kingdom?’
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br />   ‘No!’ Manatassi snarled angrily. ‘You may take the gold. I have no use for it. It is a cursed metal, soft and useless. You may take all that Opet has, but,’ and he paused, ‘the mines of the middle kingdom will never be worked again. No more will men go down to die unnaturally in the earth.’

  Hassan wanted to protest. Without the gold of the middle kingdom his own reason for existing would vanish. He could imagine the rage of the Chan Emperor denied his trade routes with the land of gold. Omar’s fingers warned him gently, their soft insinuating touch speaking clearly.

  ‘There will be another time to argue.’ And Hassan heeded the warning, he choked back the protest and instead he smiled at Manatassi.

  ‘You will have your weapons. I will see to it.’

  ‘When?’ demanded Manatassi.

  ‘Soon,’ promised Hassan, ‘as soon as my ships can return from the land across the eastern seas.’

  Lannon had aged these last few years, Huy thought. Yet the change was flattering, the new lines that care had chiselled dispelled the prettiness from his features and had given him dignity. Around the mouth there was the same petulance, the pout of the spoiled child, but one had to look closely to find it.

  His body was as young and hard as it ever had been, however, and as he stood now, stark naked in the bows, in the attitude of the harpooner, every muscle in his back and shoulders stood out clearly beneath the oiled skin. The sun had gilded his body to a dark honey gold and only his buttocks were a creamed ivory where his breech clout had protected them. He was a beautiful creature, favoured beyond all others by the gods, and Huy compared this body to his own and felt a despair within him.

  Words began to form in his mind, a song to Lannon, an ode to his beauty. As he poled the skiff silently and smoothly over the still waters of the lake the words tumbled about in his mind, like wind-blown leaves, then they began to fall into patterns and the song was born.

  In the bows Lannon signalled with his free hand without looking around, still poised, staring down into the waters and Huy turned the skiff with an expert thrust of the pole. Suddenly Lannon’s body unleashed its pent-up energy in a fluid explosive thrust, an uncoiling of tensed muscles as he hurled the long harpoon down through the surface. The water bulged and swirled, and the line coiled in the bottom of the skiff began tearing out over the side, hissing away into the water.

  ‘Ha!’ shouted Lannon. ‘A fair thrust! Help me, Huy!’ And together they jumped to the line, laughing with excitement and then swearing at the pain of scorched fingers as the line ran through them. Together they slowed the heavy run of the fish. The skiff was moving out into the lake as the fish sought the deep water, dragging them with it.

  ‘In Baal’s holy name, stop him, Huy,’ Lannon panted. ‘Don’t let him get out there and sound on us, we’ll lose him for a certainty. And they threw their combined weight on the line. The muscles in Huy’s arms and shoulders bunched and corded like a sack of pythons, and the fish turned.

  They brought him up swirling and kicking in circles under the skiff and when his huge whiskered head broke the surface Lannon shouted, ‘Hold him!’ And Huy took a turn of the line about his wrist and braced his body against the weight, the skiff heeling dangerously as Lannon snatched up the killing club and aimed a blow at the glistening black head.

  The surface exploded as the fish went into its death-throes, and water cascaded over them drenching them both.

  ‘Hit him!’ yelled Huy. ‘Kill him!’ And half blinded with spray, Lannon hammered at the enormous snout. Some of the blows were wild, crunching against the side of the skiff and splintering the planking.

  ‘Not the boat, you fool. Hit the fish! ’ shouted Huy, and at last the fish was dead, hanging in the water beside the boat.

  Laughing and panting and cursing, they got a heavy line through its gills and dragged it aboard, slithering in over the gunwale, slimy and black with a belly of bright silver, and bulging eyes. The whiskers above its gaping mouth still twitched and quivered as it filled the bottom of the boat, twice as long as Huy and with a body too thick to encompass within the circle of his arms.

  ‘It’s a monster,’ panted Huy. ‘The biggest I have ever seen.’

  ‘You called me a fool,’ said Lannon.

  ‘Nay, Majesty, I was talking to myself,’ grinned Huy, and he unstoppered the amphora and poured wine for them.

  Lannon lifted his bowl to Huy, and grinned at him over the rim.

  ‘Fly for me, bird of the sun.’

  ‘Roar for me, Gry-Lion.’ And they drained the bowls at the same time, then laughed together like children.

  ‘It has been too long, Huy,’ Lannon told him. ‘We must do this more often. We grow old too swiftly, you and I, our cares and duties envelop us and we are caught in a web of our own making.’ A shadow passed across Lannon’s eyes, and he sighed. ‘I have been happy these last few days, truly happy for the first time in many years.’ He looked up at Huy almost shyly. ‘You are good for me, old friend.’

  He reached out and clasped Huy’s shoulder awkwardly. ‘I do not know what I would do without you. Don’t ever desert me, Huy.’

  Huy flushed, clumsy in his embarrassment, this was a mood of Lannon’s to which he was unaccustomed. ‘Nay, Majesty,’ he answered huskily, ‘I will be with you always.’ And Lannon dropped his hand and laughed, echoing Huy’s embarrassment.

  ‘Sweet Baal, but we grow sentimental as girls - is it old age do you think, Huy?’ He rinsed his wine bowl over the side, making a great show of it, and avoiding Huy’s eyes. ‘There are still fish in the lake, and an hour or two of the day left, let us use it.’

  In the dusk they returned to where their old shack stood, neglected and forlorn beneath the graceful ivory palms above the beach. As Huy poled the skiff around the point of the island, and they cleared the reed banks, they saw the galley lying at anchor in the bay. The royal standard of house Barca stood at her masthead, and there were lamps burning at stem and stern. The reflections of the lamps danced on the dark waters, and the sound of voices carried clearly to them.

  Huy stopped the skiff and leaned on the pole, and in silence they stared at the long ship. Then Lannon spoke.

  ‘The world has found us out, Huy.’ And his voice was tired and resigned. ‘Hail them for me.’

  The lamp hanging in its chain from the roof of the stern cabin lit their faces unnaturally, highlighting cheeks and noses but leaving the eyes in shadow. Their faces were grim as they gathered about the table, and listened to the messenger from the north. Although he was young, an ensign in his first year of military service, yet he had the poise of high birth and he gave his report lucidly.

  He described the ripples of unrest that had lapped along the northern borders in the last few weeks, small incidents, movements of large bodies of men seen at a distance, the smoke and fires of vast encampments. Spies reported rumours of strange occurrences, of a new god with the talons of an eagle and the claws of a lion, who would lead the tribes to a land of grass and water. Scouts had watched the sailing of many Drav vessels along the eastern reaches of the great river, an unusual coming and going, talk of secret meetings between nobody knew whom.

  There was a restlessness, a vast stirring and muttering, a sense of pressures and tensions building, of secret affairs afoot. The itching of storm clouds gathering and lightning brewing. Things felt but not understood, signs pointing into the unknown.

  Lannon listened quietly, frowning a little, his chin propped on his fist and his eyes in shadow.

  ‘My commander bids me tell you of his fears that you might find all this fancy and starting at the hooting of owls.’

  ‘No.’ Lannon brushed aside the boy’s plea for his report to be taken seriously. ‘I know old Marmon better than that. He does not call out snake for an earthworm.’

  ‘There is more,’ said the boy, and he laid a leather bag upon the table. He loosed the drawstring and shook out a number of metal objects.

  ‘One of the river patrols surprised a pa
rty of pagans attempting to cross in the night. They carried these, all of them.’

  Lannon picked up one of the heavy spear-heads, and examined it curiously. The shape and workmanship were distinctive and he glanced up at Huy.

  ‘Well?’ he asked and had his own opinions confirmed when Huy answered,

  ‘Drav. No doubt of it.’

  ‘Carried by the pagans?’

  ‘Perhaps they were taken from dead Dravs, or stolen.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Lannon nodded. He was silent a while longer then he looked up at the young officer. ‘You have done well,’ he said and the lad flushed with pleasure. Lannon turned next to Habbakuk Lal. ‘Can you take us on another night run to Opet?’ And the admiral smiled and nodded.

  Lannon and Huy stood together at the stern rail and watched their island merge into the darkness as the galley drew swiftly away, leaving its wake shimmering in the light of the moon.

  ‘I wonder when we will next return here, Huy,’ Lannon asked softly, and Huy moved restlessly beside him but did not answer. ‘I feel as though I am leaving something behind here. Something valuable which I will never find again,’ Lannon went on. ‘Do you feel it also, Huy?’

  ‘Perhaps it is our youth, Lannon. Perhaps these last few days were the end of it.’ They were silent then, swaying to the easy motion of the galley under oars. When the island was gone Lannon spoke again.

  ‘I am sending you to the border, Huy. Be my eyes and ears, old friend.’

  ‘It is not for long, my heart,’ Huy apologized, although Tanith had said nothing, and was fully engaged in daintily devouring a bunch of purple grapes. ‘I will be back before you know I have gone.’

  Tanith pulled a face as though one of the grapes were sour, and Huy studied her face with exasperation. It was serene and lovely and as unyielding as that of the goddess herself.

  Huy had come to know all of Tanith’s moods, every expression or tilt of the head that heralded them. He had watched with fascination as she changed from child to full woman, from bud to ripe bloom, and he had studied her with the patience and dedication of love, but this was one mood he had not learned how to distract.