feet and the swish of their war-kilts he heard a vast susurration of voices and movement. Blending with this was the lowing of many cattle, the air quivered with sound and movement, a hive murmur which warned him of the presence of a great multitude.
At last they stopped him. He stood weary and thirsty in the hot sun with the raw-hide rope cutting into his wrists and his bruises and grazes aching. Time passed slowly in the silence of waiting men.
At last a voice called out loudly, and Huy’s nerves jumped. The voice was in Vendi demanding, ‘Who seeks the lion-clawed, who seeks the bird-footed?’
Huy remained silent, waiting for some indication of how to behave, and to his surprise he felt the cool touch of iron at his wrists and a blade sawed through his bonds. He rubbed his fingers, wincing at the flow of blood. Then he lifted his hands to the blindfold, expecting another blow, but none came and he loosed the cloth and blinked uncertainly in the bright sunlight.
His eyes adjusted quickly, and he felt his heart lurch with shock at what he saw. Huy stood at the centre of a wide plain, a slightly concave bowl of land rimmed in with low hills.
Except for a circular open area a hundred paces across, at the centre of which Huy now stood, the land was black with warriors. Huy gazed in awe at this multitude, and he could not begin to reckon their numbers. He would never have believed that the land could support such numbers, it was unreal, completely nightmarish - and the quality of unreality was heightened by the menacing stillness of the black hordes. Only the feathers of their head- dresses stirred in the sluggish wash of heated noonday air.
The heat and the press of humanity threatened to suffocate him, and he looked about him desperately as though seeking an avenue of escape. Storch stood near him, and he carried the vulture axe on his shoulder. Huy felt a weak flutter of anger for the man’s treachery, but somehow it seemed unimportant in the enormity of this fresh experience.
Storch was not looking at him, instead he was watching a group of Vendi war captains who stood about a low mound of earth at the end of the clearing. The mound was bare, but compelled the attention of them all, like an empty stage before the principals appear.
Again the voice demanded, ‘Who seeks the Great Black Beast, who hunts the lion?’
The heated silence and stillness persisted, then suddenly the multitude stirred and sighed as a man stepped up onto the mound.
The tall crown of heron feathers on his head and the height of the mound upon which he stood made him god- like. His robes of leopard skin hung to the ground about him, and he stood as still as a tall tree in a rustling plain of grass as the royal salute shook the foundations of earth and sky.
Storch carried the vulture axe to the mound and laid it at the king’s feet, then he backed away, and the king looked across the open ground at Huy.
Huy drew himself up, trying to ignore the aches of his body, trying not to limp as he approached the mound and looked up at Manatassi.
‘I should have guessed.’ he said in Punic.
‘You should have killed me,’ said Manatassi, and from the folds of his robes he lifted the iron claw. ‘Instead of arming me with this.’
‘You do not understand,’ Huy said. ‘Your life was not mine to take. I made an oath.’
‘Still a man who lives on his word,’ Manatassi said, yet Huy looked in vain for the traces of mockery in his voice,
‘There is no other way to live.’ Huy felt tired now, he faced his certain death with resignation. He did not really have the energy to debate it.
Manatassi made a gesture with the claw, indicating the massed ranks of his army.
‘You see what a spear I have forged?’
‘Yes,’ Huy nodded.
‘Who can stand against me?’ Manatassi asked.
‘Many will try,’ said Huy.
‘You amongst them?’
And Huy smiled. ‘I do not think I will have the chance to do so.’
Manatassi looked down at the little hunchback in his tattered tunic, his beard matted and the bruises on his face and arms, soiled and beaten, but not humble as he discussed his own fate.
‘Not one of my men understands us,’ Manatassi told Huy. ‘We can speak freely.’
Huy nodded, puzzled, but interested in this change of mood.
‘I offer you life, Huy Ben-Amon. Come to me, give me the love and duty you have given to the Gry-Lion of Opet and you will live to be an old man.’
‘Why do you choose me?’ Huy asked.
‘I have waited for you. I knew you would come. My spies have watched for you, but it was fate that delivered you so neatly into my hands.’
‘Why me?’ Huy repeated.
‘I need you,’ Manatassi said simply. ‘I need your learning, I need your understanding, and your humanity.’
‘You forgive me the taking of your hand?’ Huy asked.
‘You could have taken my life,’ Manatassi answered.
‘You forgive the slave lash and the mines of Hulya?’
