‘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.’
Huy twinkled at them like a mischievous gnome, and tore another leg from the carcass of the duck.
In the middle of the morning they reached the shallows and Habbakuk Lal went forward to pilot the ship through the narrow channel. Water hyacinth, papyrus and a dozen other varieties of vegetation threatened to clog the lifeline of Opet. The channel boats pulled out of the lane as the ten great ships flew past on their silver-wet wings. The officers saluted the standard of Barca at the masthead with a clenched fist, but the slave gangs who were doomed for ever to fight the lake weed stood dumbly and watched with patient animal eyes.
Closer to Opet now they began passing the fishing fleet, the nets coming in over the side with fish shining silver in the mesh like captured stars, and the white clouds of gulls shrieking and fussing overhead.
Then the cliffs came up on the horizon, glowing dusky red in the sunlight and the rail was crowded with those who were enjoying this moment of homecoming.
Mursil, the huntmaster, came to Lannon on the steering deck and knelt briefly.
‘You sent for me, Majesty.’
‘Yes - and the pygmy.’
‘He is here, King.’
‘I promised you a reward. Name it.’
‘My lord, I have three wives. All of them avaricious.’
‘Gold?’
‘If it please you, my lord.’
‘Huy, write an order on the treasury for five fingers of gold.’
‘May Baal shine upon you always!’
‘What of the pygmy?’
Mursil called the little yellow bushman to him, and Lannon examined him with interest.
‘What is he named?’
‘Xhai, my lord.’
‘Does he not understand the language?’
‘No, my lord, he speaks only his own primitive tongue.’
‘Ask him what he desires - freedom, perhaps?’
‘He does not understand the idea of freedom. He is like a dog, Majesty. Deprive him of a master and you deprive him of the reason for life.’
‘Ask him what he wants.’
Mursil and the bushman spoke for a long while in that birdlike chittering tongue, before the huntmaster turned back to the king.
‘It is a strange request.’
‘Name it.’
‘He wishes to hunt with the slayer of the gry-lion.’
Lannon stared at the bushman, who grinned at him with the beguiling candour of a child.
‘He thinks, my lord, and you will forgive the impertinence,’ Mursil was sweating a little, ill at ease, ‘he thinks you are a god, and he wants to belong to you.’
Lannon let out a bull roar of laughter and slapped his thigh.
‘So be it then. He is elevated to a master of the royal hunt - with the pay and privileges. Take him, Huy. Teach him to speak the language, or failing that learn to speak his!’
‘All the strays and cripples,’ thought Huy ruefully. His household was filled with them, whenever he had accumulated sufficient gold tor a luscious young slave maid it went on another who was too old or infirm to justify his keep and who was consigned by his master to the pool of Astarte. At least the pygmy would have his pay as a huntmaster to help with the costs.
Lannon dismissed the subject and turned back to the rail. The mother city came up over the horizon at last. The walls of the temple shone a ruddy rose in the sunlight, and the lower city was brilliant white, the walls of the houses painted with the ash of the lake shellfish.
The war fleet of Opet streamed out from the harbour to meet them. The shields and helmets of the legionaries sparkled in the sun as each ship in turn wheeled across the flagship’s bows with the gilt work on her arrow-sharp prow catching the sunlight. They saw the raw skins hanging below the standard of house Barca and a cheer roared out across the water.
The flagship led them into the harbour, still scudding to the drive of her banked oars. Habbakuk Lal aimed at the stone jetty below the city where the crowds thronged the shore. The entire population of the city was out in their best and most brilliant robes, shrieking and cheering their new king from 100,000 throats.
At the last possible moment Habbakuk Lal dropped his hand in a signal to the drummer and steersman. The
