‘For Baal!’ he shouted, sending the axe down from on high. Then in full stroke he changed. He never knew what impulse it was that made him check, made him twist the weapon, presenting the flat of the blade and not the edge, holding the stroke half back so that the side of the axe cracked against the king’s skull with enough force to topple him forward senseless onto his face but not enough to stove in the bone of the great round head.
Huy jumped back and with one quick glance made certain that the Vendi king’s train were all lying lifeless on the dome of granite, and his legionaries were grouped around him resting on their bloody swords. The surprise had been complete and overwhelming.
Huy turned and ran to the highest point of the hill. Naked and filthy with soot and mud he brandished his axe above his head, and his band cheered and waved their weapons also. From the ford a trumpet began to blare the advance, and immediately the call was taken up and shrilled from cohort to cohort.
Huy watched Lannon lead the first wave across the ford. The legion crashed into the leaderless tribesmen who opposed them, and drove through them with scarcely a check, splitting them and driving them back against the hills in a disorganized rabble. They had seen their king cut down and there was no spirit left in any of them.
From the hilltop Huy watched Lannon commit his last two reserve cohorts at exactly the right moment. The tribesmen broke and made a rout of it. Throwing aside their weapons they streamed back in a wailing panic-stricken mob into the bottleneck between the hills.
At that moment the handsome young Bakmor, with the two cohorts which had driven the captured cattle to the great river, marched out of the forest. He deployed the cohorts neatly across the only line of retreat open to the tribes. His return was timely indeed, and Huy watched him with grudging professional approval as he made his dispositions. As the sun touched the horizon in a splendour of red and purple the trumpets sounded the advance once again, and the slaughter and the slave-taking lasted until after midnight.
Huy crossed his legion and the host of wild slaves, using the elephant-drawn rafts at Sett. After the battle at the ford the return march had been unopposed. The regiments of the Vendi had been shattered, all their war chiefs killed or captured and Lannon was jubilant.
He told Huy, ‘My Sunbird! It was more than I asked of you. Even I did not guess that such a dangerous enemy had grown up upon my borders. It we had left him another year, only the gods know how deadly he might have become.’
‘Baal smiled upon me,’ Huy disclaimed modestly.
‘And so does Lannon Hycanus,’ Lannon assured him. ‘What was the harvest, Sunbird? Has old Rib-Addi made the accounting yet?’
‘I hope so, my lord.’
‘Send for him,’ Lannon commanded, and Rib-Addi came with his scrolls and his ink-stained fingers and his untrusting little book-keeper’s eyes. He read out the lists of cattle and slaves of each grade, every one of them carefully categorized by the slave-masters.
‘The prices will be much depressed, sire,’ Rib-Addi pointed out pessimistically. ‘For the other legions have taken a great tribute from all the tribes across the river. It will be two or three years before the markets of Opet have absorbed this mass of wealth.’
‘Nevertheless, the prize money taken by the Sixth Ben-Amon must be considerable, Rib-Addi.’
‘As my lord says.’
‘How much?’ Lannon demanded.
Rib-Addi looked alarmed, ‘I could only hazard a guess, Majesty.’
‘Guess, then,’ Lannon invited him,
‘It could be as much as 25,000 fingers - and as low as—’
‘You would smell dung in an alabaster jar of perfume,’ Lannon chided the old man. ‘Do not give me your low figure.’
‘As my lord pleases.’ Rib-Addi bowed, and Lannon turned to Huy and clasped his shoulder.
‘Your share is one part in a hundred, Sunbird. Two hundred and fifty fingers - you are a rich man at last! How does it feel?’
‘It does not sicken me,’ Huy grinned at him, and Lannon laughed delightedly as he turned back to Rib- Addi.
‘Write in your book, old man. Write that Lannon Hycanus sets aside half of his share of the prize. He makes it over as an award to the legion commander, Huy Ben-Amon, for his conduct of the campaign.’
‘My lord, that is one part in twenty,’ Rib-Addi protested vehemently. ‘It is an award of over 1,000 fingers!’
‘I have learned my figures also,’ Lannon assured him, and the book-keeper might have protested further, but he saw Lannon’s expression.
‘It shall be written,’ he mumbled, and Huy came to kneel before his king in gratitude.
‘Up!’ Lannon ordered him, smiling. ‘Do not grovel for me, old friend.’ And Huy went to stand beside Lannon’s stool, as the king called each of the officers who had acted with distinction and made the awards.
Huy was lost in a trance of avarice, hardly able to credit his fortune. He was rich - rich! He must sacrifice to the gods this very day. A white bull, at the least. As Rib-Addi had pointed out, the market was flooded and Huy would be able to get one cheaply. Then he remembered that he no longer had to stint.
He could afford any luxury he had ever coveted, and still have enough over for an estate on the terraces of Zeng, a share in one of Habbakuk-Lal’s trading galleys. A seat on one of the gold-mining syndicates, a secure income for life. No more patches in his tunics, no more bullying his household to cut down on the consumption of meat, no more of the cheap sour wines from the harbour taverns. And then his mind jumped, no more reliance on Lannon’s hospitality and on the goodwill of his young slave girls. He would have one of his own - no, damn it, two - three! Young and pretty and pliant. He felt his body stir. He could afford a wife now, even the daughters of the noble houses might turn a blind eye to his back when dazzled by such a pile of the golden metal.
Then suddenly he remembered Tanith, and the phantom slave girls and wives faded back into the mists of his imagining. His spirits plunged sickeningly. The priestesses of Astarte were dedicated to the goddess, they could
