The river was 300 paces wide at this point, a dirty green flow of water between steep banks which were thickly wooded and covered with reed and dense vegetation. The rafts were carried down to the river’s edge and attached to the looped lines. The legion boarded in groups of fifty, and the elephants walked away with the line drawing the rafts smoothly across the river.
The crossing went with well-drilled precision - it was not the first time a legion had crossed the great river. There were a few minor incidents - two hoplites fell from their rafts and sank swiftly beneath the weight of their armour, one of the rafts capsized a struggling mass of men and equipment into the shallow water beside the bank but all waded to safety, a legionary entangled his arm in one of the lines and had it neatly severed below the elbow - but the crossing was completed before mid-afternoon and Lannon turned to Huy:
‘Bravely done, my Sunbird. Now explain to me your order of march.’
Huy left a cohort to hold the crossing, and to act as a base for his stores, a pile of dried meat and corn in leather bags. His legion would be tired, hungry, and perhaps hard pressed on its return and if all went as was planned, there would also be many thousands of extra mouths to feed.
Then behind a screen of light infantry and archers he began his march on the barbarian town of Kal. Here the weeks of training and hardening during the march from the Zeng-Hanno showed. For although the ground was broken and heavily forested, the legion moved swiftly in compact columns, covering the ground at a pace that pushed a steady five miles behind them every hour. Ahead of them the scouts insured that no one would carry a warning to the town. The few hundred herders and hunters and root gatherers that were met with by the scouts were dispatched with a silent shower of arrows or a swift clean axe stroke. Their bodies lay where they had fallen beside the track, and the columns trudged on past them with hardly a sidelong glance. Huy saw that they were well-formed men and women, dressed in kilts of animal skins and with tribal scars on their cheeks and breasts. Like most of the tribes from the north their skins were a very dark blueish black. Some of them had mutilated their teeth by filing them to a sharp point like those of a shark, and the men were armed with throwing spears and light axes with half-moon-shaped blades.
The legion halted after dark, and ate cold cooked meat and corn cakes from their pouches while the wine- carriers moved amongst them filling the bowls.
‘Look.’ Huy touched Lannon’s shoulder and pointed towards the northern hills. The sky glowed, as though the moon was rising from the wrong direction. It was the reflected light from thousands of cooking fires.
‘A rich harvest,’ Lannon nodded. ‘Just as the witch prophesied.’
Huy stirred uncomfortably at the mention of Tanith, but remained silent.
‘Her words have troubled me - I’ve spent many nights pondering them.’ Lannon wiped his greasy fingers and lips, before he reached for the wine bowl. ‘She preaches death and darkness and betrayal by a friend.’ He rinsed his mouth with wine and spat it on the ground before drinking.
Huy murmured, ‘She did not preach, Majesty - she replied to a question.’
But Lannon said, ‘I believe she is evil.’
‘Sire!’ protested Huy quickly.
‘Do not be misled by a pretty face, Huy.’
‘She is young, innocent,’ he began but saw Lannon leaning towards him and peering into his face, and he stopped.
‘What is this witch to you, my Sunbird?’
‘As a maid, she means nothing. How could she, she belongs to the goddess,’ Huy denied his love, and Lannon leaned back and grunted sceptically.
‘It is as well - you are wise in all things but women, my friend. You must let me guide you.’
‘You are always kind,’ Huy muttered.
‘Keep away from that one, Huy. Be warned by one who loves you, she will bring you nothing but sorrow.’
‘We have rested long enough.’ Huy stood up and settled the strap of his axe about his wrist. ‘It is time to march.’
After midnight they crested the low line of hills that formed the first slope of the escarpment, and before them spread a wide-open basin of land through which the dark river Kal meandered. The basin was moon-washed silver and blue, and the smoke from 10,000 cooking fires spread like a pale sea mist across the river, lying in layers in the still night air.
The fires had died to pin-points of dull red that speckled the town, and the huts were dark and shapeless, scattered thickly without plan or pattern, a vast agglomeration of primitive dwellings.
‘He estimated 50,000 - and he’s not far wrong.’ Huy looked out across the basin, and beside him Lannon asked:
‘How will you proceed?’ And Huy smiled in the moonlight.
‘You taught me how to hunt game, my king.’
His cohort commanders came for their orders, cloaked and helmeted and grim. Huy ordered out a thin screen of light infantry and covering bowmen to the east. During the day the scouts had captured 4,000 of the rangy little scrub cattle belonging to the Vendi.
‘Take the cattle with you. You remember Hannibal’s ruse in Italia, it will serve us as well upon the great river.’
Lannon laughed delightedly and clapped Huy’s shoulder when he had explained it. ‘Fly for me, Sunbird.’
‘Roar for me, Gry-Lion,’ Huy grinned back at him as he settled and buckled his helmet.
Silently Huy led 4,500 of his heavy infantry and axemen around to the west and lay them in a crescent shape at the edge of the forest beyond the town. Huy slept for an hour and when one of his centurions shook him awake he was stiff and cold with the night dew.
‘Stand to!’ he ordered quietly, and the word was passed from mouth to mouth. There was a stirring and a dark
