I
As soon as the litter was ready they helped Meren on to it and started back to Tamafupa. They had been moving for a short time when Fenn called to Taita: 'There are strange men up there, watching us.' She pointed across the dried-up river course. On the skyline stood a small group of men. Fenn counted them swiftly. 'Five.'
They were dressed in loincloths, but their torsos were bare. They all carried spears and clubs. Two were armed with bows. The tallest among them stood at their head. He wore a headdress of red flamingo feathers.
Their bearing was arrogant and hostile. Two of the men behind the chief seemed wounded or injured: they were being supported by their comrades.
'Magus, they have been in a fight,' Shofar, one of the litter-bearers, pointed out.
'Hail them!' Taita ordered. Shofar shouted and waved. None of the warriors showed any reaction. Shofar shouted again. The chief in the flamingo headdress lifted his spear in a gesture of command and immediately his men disappeared from the skyline, leaving the hillside deserted.
A distant chorus of shouts broke the silence that followed their departure.
'That comes from the town.' Fenn turned quickly in that direction.
'There has been trouble.'
When they had left Taita at the Red Stones, Kalulu's bodyguards carried him down the river valley towards Tamafupa. He was in such distress that they went slowly and carefully. They halted every few hundred yards to let him drink from his gourd of medicine, to wet his face and wipe it with a damp cloth. Measured against the arc of the sun, it was almost two hours before they started the climb from the valley towards the gates of Tamafupa.
As they entered a thicket of dense kittar thorn a tall figure stepped onto the pathway. Kalulu and his women recognized him, not only by his headdress of flamingo feathers. The women lowered the litter to the ground and prostrated themselves.
'We see you, great chief,' they chorused. Kalulu struggled up on one elbow, and stared at the newcomer with trepidation. Basma was paramount chief of all the Basmara tribes that inhabited the land between Tamafupa and Kioga. Before the coming of the strangers who had built the temple and raised the Red Stones from the depths of the lake, he had been a mighty ruler. Now his tribes were scattered and his rule disrupted.
'Hail, mighty Basma,' Kalulu said respectfully. 'I am your dog.' I Basma was his bitter rival and enemy. Until this time Kalulu had been protected by his reputation and status. Even the chief of the Bslsmara had not dared to harm a shaman of his power and influence. However, Kalulu knew that ever since the damming of the Nile, Basma had been waiting for his opportunity.
'I have been watching you, wizard,' Basma said coldly.
'I am honoured that such a mighty chief would even notice my humble existence,' Kalulu murmured. Ten Basmara warriors stepped out of the thicket and formed up behind their chief.
'You have led these enemies of the tribe to Tamafupa. They have taken over my town.'
'They are not enemies,' Kalulu replied. 'They are our friends and allies.
Their leader is a great shaman, much more learned and powerful than I am. He has been sent here to destroy the Red Stones and to make the Nile flow again.'
'What feeble lies are these, you pathetic legless thing? Those men are the same sorcerers who built the temple at the mouth of the river, the same wizards who called up the wrath of the dark spirits, who caused the lake waters to boil and the earth to burst open. They are the ones who conjured up the rocks from the depths, and blocked off the great river, which is our mother and our father.'
'That is not so.' Kalulu hopped off his litter and balanced on his stumps to confront Basma. 'Those people are our friends.'
Slowly Basma raised his spear and pointed it at the dwarf. This was a gesture of condemnation. Kalulu looked at his bodyguards. They were not members of a tribe subservient to Basma, one of the many reasons he had selected them. They came from a warrior tribe far to the north.
However, when it came to a choice between himself and Basma he could not be certain in which direction their loyalty would sway. As if in answer to his unspoken question, the eight women tightened their ranks around him. Imbali, the flower, was their leader. Her body might have been carved from anthracite. Her jet skin was anointed with oil so that it glowed in the sunlight. Her arms and legs were sleek with fine flat muscle. Her breasts were high and hard, decorated with an intricate pattern of ritual scarification. Her neck was long and proud. Her eyes were fierce. She loosened the battleaxe from the loop at her waist. The others followed her example.
'Your whores will not save you now, Kalulu,' Basma sneered disdain
fully. 'Kill the wizard,' he shouted at his warriors, and hurled his spear at Kalulu.
Imbali anticipated the throw. She jumped forward, swung the battle axe in her right hand and hit the spear in mid-air, knocking it straight upwards. As it fell back she caught it neatly in her left hand and raised the point to meet the rush of warriors. The first man ran on to it, transfixing himself just below the sternum. He reeled backwards into the man coming up behind him, knocking him off balance. Then he dropped on to his back and lay kicking with the shaft of the spear standing out of his belly. Imbali leapt gracefully over his corpse, and caught the man behind him before he could recover. She swung the axe in a rising stroke that lopped off his spear-arm neatly at the elbow. She pirouetted and used the momentum to decapitate a third man as he rushed forward. The headless corpse dropped into a sitting position, the open arteries sending up a tall fountain of bright red, then flopped over and bled into the earth.
Shielding Kalulu, Imbali and the other women fell back quickly and picked up the litter by its rawhide carrying straps. Then using it as a battering ram, they charged into the Basmara. Their war-cry was a shrill ululation as the axe blades whistled and fluted, then thudded into flesh and bone.
Basma's men rallied swiftly. They met the women with a wall of locked shields and threw their long spears at their heads. One went down, killed outright with a flint point through her throat. The others raised the litter and hammered it into the line of shields. Both sides heaved against each other. One of the Basmara dropped to his knees and stabbed up under the bottom edge of the litter into the belly of the girl at the centre of the line. She released her grip and reeled backwards. She tried to turn away but her assailant jerked his spear free and stabbed again, aiming for her kidneys. The blow went in deep and the girl screamed as the blade slipped alongside her spine crippling her instantly.
Kalulu's bodyguards retreated a few steps, filled the gap left by the wounded girl and held the litter steady. The
