Huy did not answer, and Lannon went on.
‘There is more news. Another of my javelins has struck the mark. Annel has missed her moon.’
‘The southern air must be beneficial. All four of them with child in two months.’
‘It is not the air, Sunbird,’ Lannon laughed and drank again.
‘I am pleased,’ said Huy. ‘More of the old blood for Opet.’
‘When did you ever care for blood, Huy Ben-Amon? You are pleased to have more of my brats to spoil - I know you.’ Lannon came to stand behind Huy. ‘You are writing,’ he said, unnecessarily. ‘What is it?’
‘A poem,’ said Huy modestly.
‘What of?’
‘The hunt - today’s hunt.’
‘Sing it to me,’ commanded Lannon and dropped onto Huy’s fur bed, with the amphora still grasped by the neck.
Huy fetched his lute, and squatted on the reed mat. He sang, and when he had finished Lannon lay quietly on the bed staring out through the opening of the tent into the night.
‘I did not see it like that,’ he said at last. ‘To me it was just a taking, a harvest of flesh.’
He was silent again.
‘I have displeased you?’ Huy asked, and Lannon shook his head.
‘Do you truly believe that what we did today has destroyed something that will never be replaced?’ he asked.
‘I do not know, perhaps not - but if we hunted like that every day, or even once every ten days, would we not soon turn this land into a desert?’
Lannon brooded quietly over the half-empty amphora for a long while, then he looked up at Huy and smiled.
‘We have taken sufficient meat. We will not hunt again this year - only for ivory.’
‘My lord, has the wine jug stuck to your hand?’ Huy asked softly, and Lannon stared at him for a moment then laughed.
‘A trade, Sunbird, another song and I will give you wine.’
‘A fair trade,’ Huy agreed.
When the amphora was empty, Huy sent one of his ancient slaves for another.
‘Bring two,’ suggested Lannon. ‘It will save time later.’
At midnight Huy was soft from the wine, and desolated by the beauty of his own voice and the sadness of his own song. He wept, and Lannon seeing him weep, wept with him.
‘I will not have such beauty recorded on the skin of beasts,’ cried Lannon with the tears cutting runnels through the dust on his cheeks and pouring into his beard. ‘I will have a scroll made of the finest gold, and on it you will inscribe your songs, my Sunbird. Then they will live forever to delight my children and my children’s children.’
Huy stopped weeping. The artist in him aroused, his mind quickly assimilating the offer which he knew Lannon would not remember in the morning.
‘I am truly honoured, my lord.’ Huy went to kneel at the side of the bed. ‘Will you sign the treasury order now?’
‘Write it, Huy, write it now, this instant,’ Lannon commanded. ‘I will sign it.’
And Huy ran for his writing pallet.
The column moved on slowly in a great circle-to the south and east through the southern plains of grass. It was a land of such limitless dimensions that the fifteen-mile column was as significant as a file of safari ants. There were rivers and ranges of hills, forests and plains teeming with game. The only men they met were the garrisons of the king’s hunting camps. Their task was primarily to provide a steady supply of dried meat for the multitudes of slaves that were the foundation of the nation’s prosperity.
They crossed the river of the south* six months after departure from the city of Opet and 100 miles beyond they reached the range of thickly forested blue mountains** which marked the border of the southern kingdom.
* Limpopo River ** Zoutspansberg
They went into camp at the mouth of a dark rocky gorge that tore its way through the heart of the mountains, and Lannon and Huy with a cohort of infantry and archers took the precipitous path through the gorge. It was an eerie place of tall black stone cliffs hanging high above the roaring frothing torrent in the depths below. It was a cold dark place where the warmth of the sun seldom penetrated. Huy shivered, not from the cold, and clutched his axe firmly. He prayed almost continually during the three days that they marched through the mountains for it was most certainly a place frequented by demons.
They camped on the southern slopes of the mountains and built signal fires, sending the smoke aloft in tall columns that could be seen for fifty miles. To the southward stretched a land as vast as that to the north.
Looking out across its golden rolling grasslands and its dark green forests, Huy felt a sense of awe. ‘I would like to go down into that land,’ he told Lannon.
‘You would be the first,’ Lannon agreed. I wonder what it holds. What treasures, what mysteries?‘
‘We know there is a Cape to the far south with a flat-topped mountain where the fleet of Hycanus IX was destroyed, but that is all we know.’
