‘I have a mind to defy the prophecy and lead an expedition southwards beyond these mountains - what say you, Huy?’
‘I would not counsel it, my lord,’ Huy answered formally. ‘No good ever comes of challenging the gods, they have damnably long memories.’
‘I expect you are right,’ Lannon conceded. ‘Yet I am sorely tempted.’
Huy changed a subject which was making him uncomfortable, he should never have broached it.
‘I wonder when they will come.’ He looked up at the smoke from the signal fires streaming up into the calm blue of the midday sky.
‘They will come when they are ready,’ Lannon shrugged. ‘But I wish they would make it soon. Whilst we wait, we will hunt the leopard.’
For ten days they hunted the big spotted cats which abounded in the misty cliffs and woody gorges of the mountains. They hunted with specially trained hounds and lion-spears. They would run the quarry with the pack, until it was cornered or bayed and they would then surround it and close in until the charge was provoked.
Then the man selected by the leopard would take the snarling, slashing animal on the point of his spear. Two of the hunters were killed in those ten days - and one of them was a grandson of Asmun. the old nobleman. He was a fine brave lad and they all mourned, although it was a good and honourable death. They cremated his body, tor he had died in the field, and Huy sacrificed for a safe passage of his soul to the sun.
On the eleventh day, in the dawn after Huy had greeted Baal, and they had breakfasted and were dressing and arming for the hunt, Huy noticed the agitation and restlessness of the little bushman huntmaster, Xhai.
‘What is it that troubles you, Xhai?’ he asked him in his own language, which he now spoke with authority.
‘My people are here,’ the bushman told him.
‘How do you know that?’ Huy demanded.
‘I know it!’ Xhai answered simply, and Huy hurried through the camp to Lannon’s tent.
‘They have come, my lord,’ he told him.
‘Good.’ Lannon laid aside his lion-spear and began stripping his hunting armour. ‘Call the stone-finders.’ And the royal geologists and metallurgists came hurrying to the summons.
The meeting place was at the foot of the mountains where thick forest ended abruptly at the edge of a wide glade.
Lannon led his party down amongst the rocks and at the edge of the glade they halted, and threw out a protective screen of archers. In the centre of the glade, well out of arrow-shot of the forest edge or the rocky slope, a pole had been driven into the soft earth and the tail of a reed buck dangled from it like a standard. It was the sign that the trade could begin.
Lannon nodded to his senior path-finder, Aziru, and Rib-Addi, master of the royal treasury. The two of them walked out into the glade unarmed and with two slaves following them. The slaves each carried a leather bag.
At the foot of the pole was a dried gourd which contained a handful of bright pebbles and stones of various colours ranging from glassy to fiery red.
The two officials examined each stone, rejecting some by dropping them in a neat pile on the earth, selecting others by returning them to the gourd. Then from the leather bags they doled out glass beads into a pottery jar which they placed beside the gourd. They withdrew to the rocky slope where Lannon and his archers stood.
The waited until a dozen tiny figures left the edge of the forest and approached the pole. The troop of little bushmen squatted beside the gourd and jar and there was a long heated debate before they withdrew to the forest once more. The two officials went out into the glade and found gourd and jar untouched. The offer had been refused. They added a dozen iron arrow-heads to the offering.
At the third attempt a bargain was struck when the bushmen accepted the beads and arrow-heads and copper bangles, leaving the stones to be collected.
Then another batch of stones was set out beside the pole and haggled over. It was a tedious business which occupied four whole days, and while they waited Huy added considerably to his knowledge of geology.
‘From where do these sun stones come?’ he asked Aziru, as he examined a yellow diamond the size of an acorn which had been traded for a pound’s weight of glass beads.
‘When sun and moon show together in the sky, then it may happen that their rays mingle and become hot and heavy. They fall to earth, and if they strike water then they are quenched and freeze into one of these sun stones.’ Huy found this explanation utterly convincing.
‘A love-drop of Baal and Astarte,’ he whispered with reverence. ‘No wonder then that they are so beautiful.’ He looked up at Aziru. ‘Where do the pygmies find them?’
‘It is said that they search in the gravel beds of the rivers, and also the edge of the lakes,’ Aziru explained. ‘But they are not adept at recognizing the true sun stone and their offerings contain many common stones.’
When the bushmen had traded their entire gathering of diamonds, they offered for sale the unwanted children of the tribe. These little yellow mites were left bound and shivering with terror beside the trading pole. The slave masters, experts in appraising human flesh, went out to examine them and offer payment. The pygmies were much in demand as slaves, for they were tractable, loyal and hardy. They made excellent hunters, guides, entertainers, and, strangely, children’s companions.
Xhai stood behind his tall yellow-haired king and watched the trade, exactly the bargaining which had been conducted over him as a child.
At the end of the fourth day the treasury of Opet had acquired five large pottery jars of fine diamonds. Trade in these stones was a jealously guarded monopoly of the ruling house of Barca. In addition there were eighty-six bushman children between the ages of five and fifteen years. They were wild slaves, and had to be bound until tamed.
Huy devoted himself almost entirely to their welfare during the return across the mountains. With the help of
