The Quest - Smith Wilbur (читать лучшие читаемые книги TXT) 📗

'A hundred at least, maybe more. We are in for some rich sport, I warrant you,' Meren said, with anticipation. The Chima were armed with an assortment of clubs and flint-headed spears. The bows slung across their shoulders were small and primitive. Meren judged that they would not have the draw weight to kill a man at more than thirty paces. Then his eyes narrowed: one of the leaders carried an Egyptian sword slung over his shoulder. The man behind him wore a leather helmet, but of an archaic design. It was puzzling, but there was no time to ponder it now.

The head of the Chima formation came level with the white stone he had placed beside the road as a range marker. Now the entire left flank was exposed to the Egyptian archers.

Meren glanced left and right. The eyes of his men were fixed on him.

He dropped his raised right hand sharply, and his archers jumped upright.

As one man they drew their bows, paused to make good their aim, then loosed a silent cloud of arrows to arc high against the sky. Before the first struck home the second cloud rose into the air. The arrows fluted so softly that the Chima did not even look up. Then, with a sound like raindrops falling on the surface of a pond, they dropped among them.

The Chima did not seem to realize what was happening to them.

One stood gazing down, perplexed, at the shaft of the arrow protruding from between his ribs. Then his knees buckled and he crumpled to the ground. Another was staggering in small circles plucking at the arrow that had buried itself in his throat. Most of the others, even those who had received mortal wounds, did not seem to grasp that they had been hit.

When the third flight of arrows dropped among them those still on their feet panicked and bolted, screaming and howling, in every direction,

like a flock of guinea-fowl scattering under the stoop of an eagle. Some ran straight towards the wadi and the archers dropped their aim. At close range none of the arrows missed their mark: they struck deep into living flesh with meaty thumps. Some went right through the torso of the primary target, and flew on to wound the man behind him. Those who tried to escape up the hill ran into the palisade of kittar thorn bushes. It stopped them in their tracks, and forced them back into the hailstorm of arrows.

'Bring up the horses!' Meren yelled. Fenn and the other girls dragged them forward by the head ropes. Taita swung on to Windsmoke's back, while Meren and his men slung their bows and mounted.

'Forward! Charge!' Meren bellowed. 'Take the blade to them.' The horsemen bounded up the side of the wadi on to the level ground and, shoulder to shoulder, charged at the disordered rabble of Chima, who saw them coming and tried to turn back up the slope. They were caught between the thorn wall and the glittering bronze circle of swords. Some made no attempt to escape. They fell to their knees and covered their heads with their arms. The horsemen stood in the stirrups to stab them.

Others struggled in the thorns like fish in the folds of a net. The troopers cut them down as if they were firewood. By the time they had finished their grisly work, the slope and the ground below it were thickly strewn with bodies. Some Chima were writhing and groaning, but most lay still.

'Dismount,' Meren ordered. 'Finish the work.'

The troopers moved quickly over the field, stabbing any Chima who showed a spark of life. Meren spotted the man with the bronze sword still slung across his back. Three arrow shafts stood out of his chest.

Meren stooped over him to retrieve the sword, but at that instant Taita shouted, 'Meren! Behind you!' He used the voice of power, and Meren was galvanized. He leapt up and twisted aside. The Chima lying behind him had feigned death: he had waited until Meren was off-guard, then he jumped to his feet and swung at him with a heavy flint-headed club. The blow narrowly missed Meren's head but glanced off his left shoulder. Meren pivoted in close, blocking the weapon's next swing, and drove the point of his sword clean through the Chima, transfixing him from sternum to backbone. With a wrench of his wrist, he twisted the blade to open the wound, and when he jerked it clear, a great gush of heart blood followed it.

Clutching his damaged left shoulder Meren bellowed, 'Kill them all again! Make sure of them this time.'

Remembering their comrades hanging like sheep on slaughter racks,

I

the troopers went to work with gusto, hacking and stabbing. They found a few Chima hiding in the kittar thickets and dragged them out, squealing like pigs, to the slaughter.

Only once he was certain of them would Meren allow his men to pick over the corpses and gather up their own spent arrows for reuse. He himself was the only casualty. Bare to the waist, he sat with his back to a tree-trunk while Taita examined his shoulder. There was no bleeding, but a dark bruise was spreading over it. Taita grunted with satisfaction.

'No bones broken. In six or seven days an old dog like you will be as good as new.' He anointed the shoulder with a salve, and twisted a linen bandage into a sling to hold the arm comfortably. Then he sat beside Meren as the captains brought the spoils they had gathered from the Chima dead, and laid everything out for them to examine. There were carved wooden lice combs, crude ivory trinkets, water gourds and packets of smoked meat, some still on the bone, wrapped in green leaves and tied with bark string. Taita examined it. 'Human. Almost certainly the remains of our comrades. Bury it with respect.'

Then they turned their attention to the Chima weapons, mostly clubs and spears with heads of flint or obsidian. The knife blades were of chipped flint, the handles wrapped with strips of uncured leather. 'Rubbish!

Not worth carrying away,' Meren said.

Taita nodded agreement. 'Throw it all on the fire.'

At last they examined the weapons and ornaments that were clearly not of Chima manufacture. Some had evidently been taken from the corpses of the four ambushed hunters - bronze weapons and recurve bows, leather helmets and padded jerkins, linen tunics and amulets of turquoise and lapis-lazuli. However, there were others of greater interest, well-worn old helmets and leather breastplates of a type that had not been used by Egyptian troops for decades. Then there was the sword that had almost cost Meren his life. Its blade was worn, the edges chipped and almost destroyed by rough sharpening against granite or some other rock. However, the hilt was finely worked and inlaid with silver. There were empty seatings from which precious stones had been prised or had dropped out. The engraved hieroglyphics were almost obliterated. Taita held it to the light and turned it from side to side, but he could not make out the characters. He called for Fenn: 'Use your sharp young eyes.'

She knelt beside him and pored over the engravings, then read out haltingly, 'I am Lotti, son of Lotti, Best of Ten Thousand, Companion of the Red Road, General and Commander in the guards of the divine Pharaoh Mamose. May he live for ever!'

'Lotti!' Taita exclaimed. 'I knew him well. He was second in command under Lord Aquer of the expedition that Queen Lostris sent from Ethiopia to discover the source of Mother Nile. He was a fine soldier.

So, it seems that he and his men reached at least as far as this place.'

'Did Lord Aquer and all the rest die here, and were they eaten by the Chima?' Meren wondered.

'No. According to Tiptip, the little priest of Hathor with six fingers, Aquer saw the volcano and the great lake. Besides, Queen Lostris placed a thousand men under his command. I doubt the Chima could have slaughtered them all,' Taita said. 'I believe that they caught off-guard a small detachment under Lotti as they did our men. But did the Chima destroy a whole Egyptian army? I think not.' While the discussion continued, Taita was surreptitiously watching Fenn's expression. Whenever the name of Queen Lostris was mentioned she frowned, as though seeking an elusive memory that was tucked away somewhere in the depths of her mind. One day it will all return to her, every memory of her other life, he thought, but he said aloud to Meren, 'We shall probably never know the truth of Lotti's fate, but his sword is proof to me that we are indeed following the trail to the south that Lord Aquer blazed so long ago. We have spent too much time here already.' He stood up.