ear-hole in the great bony skull and find the brain.
‘I know you prefer the bow to the spear, Holy Father,’ Mursil murmured respectfully. ‘As for me, my old arm can no longer draw.’
‘Thank you, huntmaster.’
‘The quivers are full. I have tested and selected each of the arrows,’ Mursil assured him, and Huy followed Lannon to where his war elephant knelt. It was a rangy old cow, more steady than the bull in the heat of battle, more reliable and even-tempered than the bull in the hunt.
Huy followed Lannon up into the castle. There was room for three men in the wooden box. The arrow quivers were fitted to the outside, but with the arrow-heads standing up ready to the hand. The javelins were racked on the front of the castle and Lannon selected one and tested it thoughtfully.
‘A nice balance,’ he judged it, and then looked down to where his huntmasters waited anxiously, each of them eager for the honour of riding with the Gry-Lion. Lannon glanced over them, but his eye stopped on Xhai. He nodded, and with pathetic gratitude the pygmy scrambled up the elephant’s side.
With a heavy lurch that threw Huy against the edge of the castle, the elephant came up on its feet. They looked down from the majestic height of nearly eighteen feet, and the driver goaded the old cow into a stately swaying walk. They took the trail down towards the escarpment of the valley.
‘I have selected a good place for it,’ Lannon told Huy. ‘Where the steep path comes out suddenly into a small flat bowl. We will wait for them there.’
Huy looked back and saw the other war elephants following them. Twenty of them in single file, ears flapping, trunks swinging they trundled sedately along. The huntsmen in the castles were checking and testing their weapons, and chattering excitedly.
‘For what do we hunt, my lord?’ Huy asked. ‘Calves or ivory?’
‘Calves first. The elephant trainers have asked for two dozen youngsters between five and ten years old. We will capture those this morning, for it will be the breeding herds that come up out of the valley first. Then later we will hunt for ivory. The scouts report many fine bulls scattered along the great river.’
The saucer which Lannon had selected was hemmed in with steep broken ground. It was circular in shape, perhaps 500 paces across. The elephant road came into it through a narrow rocky pass, crossed the saucer and climbed out of it up a steep pitch to the high ground above. The saucer was thickly wooded, and Lannon placed his war elephants in ambush, concealing them about the perimeter of the bowl in the good cover. The war elephants were forced to kneel for better concealment, and while they waited Huy and Lannon breakfasted on cold corn cakes, cheese and roast salt beef washed down with red wine. It was a hunter’s meal, taken in cover with the mounting excitement of the chase sharpening their appetites, and as they ate they kept glancing up at the lookouts on the high ground above the saucer whose task it was to watch for and to signal the approach of the herds.
The dew was still on the grass when a figure waved frantically from the skyline above them, and Lannon grunted with satisfaction and wiped the grease from his fingers and lips.
‘Come, my Sunbird,’ he said, and they mounted the kneeling elephant once more.
It was a long wait that stretched and tightened their nerves, then suddenly little Xhai stirred expectantly beside Huy and bis dark amber eyes snapped.
‘They are here,’ he whispered, and almost immediately a single wild elephant came out through the rocky portals of the pass and paused on the lip of the saucer. It was an old cow, grey and lean and tuskless. Suspiciously she looked about the saucer, lifting her trunk to sample the air and then blowing the sample into her mouth against the olfactory glands in her upper lip. The breeze was behind her, a soft dry movement of air that carried the smell of waiting men away from her, and she lowered her trunk and moved forward.
From the pass behind her poured an avalanche of great grey bodies.
‘Breeding herd,’ murmured Lannon, and Huy saw the calves at heel. They ranged in size from almost full grown to not much bigger than a large pig. The smaller they were the more noisy and mischievous, squealing and frolicking and chasing between the legs of their mothers. Huy smiled at the attempts of one to suckle from his moving mother, groping for the teats between her front legs with his miniature trunk until in exasperation the mother picked up a fallen branch and swatted him mercilessly across the rump. The calf squealed and fell in at her heels again, demure and chastened.
The saucer was full of wild elephants now, their grey humped backs showing above the thick bush as they streamed along the ancient road to safety.
Lannon leaned forward and touched the driver on the shoulder, and the war elephant rose beneath them lifting them high so that they could look down from their castle upon the quarry. All around the saucer, the war elephants rose from cover with the armed men upon their backs. They closed in on the herd quietly, the squealing and uproar from the calves blanketing their approach until they were right in amongst the herd.
Lannon selected a young cow with a half-grown calf and leaning out from the castle he hurled his javelin into her neck, aiming for the great arteries there. The cow squealed in pain and alarm, and bright red arterial blood blew in a cloud from the tip of her trunk. She reeled backwards, mortally wounded, and from the other castles a torrent of missiles flew into the herd. Hundreds of huge bodies burst into flight and the forest shook and rang with their trumpeting and their frantic efforts at escape.
Despite his promise to the gods, Huy did not raise his bow, but watched in awful fascination the slaughter of the terrified beasts. He saw an old cow, bristling with arrows and javelins charge one of the war elephants and knock it down on its knees; the men were hurled from the castle to fall beneath stampeding hooves, and the old cow tottered away to fall and die, still in her battle rage. He saw a calf, hit in error, trying to tear the arrow from its own flank and squealing pitifully as the barbs clung stubbornly in the flesh. He saw another calf attempting vainly to rouse its dead mother, tugging at her with its little trunk.
Lannon was shouting with excitement, hurling his javelins into the neck and spine with that deadly accuracy that dropped the great grey bodies in profusion about them.
One of the herd mothers charged them from the side; a bad-tempered old queen as big and as strong as their mount, she bore down on them. Lannon swung to face her, braced himself and threw, but the old queen lifted her trunk and the javelin struck it squarely, biting deep into that pulpy sensitive member just below the level of her eyes. She squealed in agony but never faltered in her run, and regretfully Huy lifted his bow. He knew she would charge home, and that only death would stop her.
The old queen lifted her head and trunk high, bracing herself for the impact of her charge. Her mouth was wide
