Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986 by Cahena (v3.1) Read Free Book Online

camp.” Her javelin pointed. “I want a guard there where
stream bends. Above the guard, water for drinking. Below him, water for the horses and camels and anyone who wants to bathe or
wash clothes. You,” she said to a tall man, “go and give that order.”
    The man strode quickly to his horse and rode along
the line, beckoning others to ride upstream with him. The Cahena turned her
slanted eyes back to Wulf.
    “I knew you were coming,” she said, with sudden
music in her voice. “In a little while there’ll be something for supper. You
come — you, too, Bhakrann — and we’ll talk some more.”
    She turned and left him, her companions with her.
Their javelins fenced her like a clump of reeds. Wulf watched, his hand on the neck of his horse. He had time to see what shone on the red
flag. It was a geometric pattern of glass beads.
    “You should have knelt and kissed her shadow,” muttered
Bhakrann beside him. “You’re ready enough to stay alive in most places, but you
were in danger then. She might have had you killed offhand.”
    “Why wasn’t I killed?” asked Wulf.
    “If she’d pointed a finger, there’d have been half
a dozen javelins in you — too many to dodge. But her spirits seem to speak for
you. Anyway, remember you’re with the Imazighen now. When we eat with her, bear
yourself becomingly. I take it you’ve traveled enough to pick up good manners.”
    “I’ll do my best,” promised Wulf, and Bhakrann’s
beard twitched in a grin.
    “ Hai,
and your best is pretty good. We’ll camp here for the
night, or maybe half of it. She might have us marching any moment.”
    The moon rose, broad and pale, across the flat
land to the east, while the sun dived behind the western ridge. Horsemen were
strung like pickets on the far side of the stream. Several others headed off
into the distance.
    “There go some to join the scouts we left,”
Bhakrann said. “Good men, with the sense to see without being seen. Let’s go
and see some people ourselves. You’ve been wondering what the Imazighen are
like, haven’t you?”
    They remounted their own horses.
    Far and wide over the sweep of the ridge, men were
camping. They gathered in small bands, half a dozen or so to each, with horses
staked to crop the scanty grass. Javelins were stuck in the earth, pair by
pair. The men squatted without fires in the dusk, eating what they had brought
with them and drinking from skin bottles.
    Bhakrann hailed those groups, one after another.
At last he paused where swarthy men with tufts or tussocks of beards sat in a
circle. Several of them rose, and one spoke:
    “Bhakrann, do you know when we’re going to fight?”
    “Not yet, but it’s coming. Wulf, these men are Djerwa, which means they’re the best we have.”
    Teeth glittered in the beards, like chips of
quartz.
    “This is Wulf ,“ Bhakrann
said. “He’s a Saxon, from a long way across the sea and across the land beyond that.
He and I are friends. Watch Wulf when we fight. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
    “Does he fight our way?” asked another man.
    “He fights his own way, and it’s a good way,”
snapped Bhakrann.
    He and Wulf rode to another squatting place, spoke
to the men there, and visited more. At last Bhakrann wheeled toward the river
again. The sun had set. Moonlight washed the landscape. The air grew chillier.
    “I think she’s ready to eat, Wulf
,“ said Bhakrann, pointing to where a rosy hint of light showed beyond
some sort of screen. “She doesn’t want to be kept waiting for that, or anything
else.”
    “Wouldn’t it be good for me to meet a few more of
these people?” Wulf asked.
    “Those you’ve met are telling about you to others.
The whole camp will get to know your name and that I’ve said you can fight.
Let’s ask somebody here to keep an eye on our horses.”
    On foot they approached the soft red light. It
showed by the river, well away from the other little camps. It was shut in,
Wulf saw, with cloaks or