Free Dragon Magic by Andre Norton Page A

blurred misery of pain, which had fogged his mind after the war ax had smashed against his skull at the taking of Napata, City of Kings. Later, when his wits had returned to him, he had found himself a war captive, sold as a slave. Ah, that was a drinking of bitterness!
    There is no medicine to cure hatred, and he hated hotly those who had taken but not killed him at Napata, as well as the trader who had bought him, and those jostling around him now. He might not yet wear the lion-claw scars of a warrior across his cheeks, but he had fought in the defense, his bow well drawn until the arrows failed and the Egyptian forces broke in, those Egyptians who hated all the men of Nubia since the days Piankhay had shown them to be only shadow men in battle and had taken their throne.
    The Nubians had held that throne, too, until generations later, Pharaoh Tanwetamani had at last been driven south once more, but not by Egyptians! No, it had taken the Assyrian war host to do that. This time, along with the Egyptians who had stormed Napata were mainly barbarians, white-skinned sea rovers, clanless men who had taken service in the north.
    Not that they had found the men of Napata, or Meroë, easy meat.
    Sherkarer’s lips flattened against his teeth in a silent snarl. Ay, they had paid a full price for the sacking of the city. Though to remember that did not ease his heart now, since he was not among those who had managed to retreat farther south to Meroë.
    He had no bow, no sword hung in a shoulder sling ready for his drawing, no ax to hand. He was as those men on the wharf stripped to breechclouts, working to haul up the largest piece of cargo in the ship which had come up river at early dawn. That cargo—Sherkarer shivered.
    He knew the wild hunters of the marshes south of Meroë. Had he not, from the time he stood upon his two feet and ran about his mother’s courtyards, heard the strange tales they could spin? For his mother was Bartare, Princess of Meroë, grand-daughter to the Candace, the Queen-Mother. At her court gathered all those who came and went into far lands, that she might hear what they had to tell and report it to Napata.
    In those days, merchants from the caravans to the gulf ports, men out of the south where there were many strange and almost unbelievable things, told their stories and the scribes wrote them down. So the marsh hunters had talked of the lau—the demon-monster of the swamplands—until at last the Candace had decreed that this thing be captured and brought to her that she might make an offering of it to Apedemek. And Pharaoh Asopleta, her Son by the Favor of Amun, gave his seal to that order.
    When the Great Voice speaks, men obey. It had taken a full year and twenty days more. Men died in ways the survivors would not speak of save in whispers, looking over their shoulders to the right and left as they did so. Finally the lau was brought caged to Meroë. Those who saw it knew that it could only be a demon, for no normal beast would have had such an appearance. Yet it had been netted by men, put in a cage, carried north.
    So who could doubt the courage of any man out of Nubia?
    Sherkarer, looking now upon that cage set on rollers, that curtained cage, wondered what those about him would think if the matting screen about it should suddenly fall and they could see what manner of creature they transported. He wished that would happen, for he was sure he would see all this company flee.
    He thought again of the past, the days at court, before his enslavement.
    He remembered well how the lau had been sent from Meroë to the palace of the Candace at Napata. And Sherkarer had gone with the party guarding it. His mother had wished to bring him so to the attention of the Great Lady, thus to take the first step along the road of her future favor.
    He had pleased the Candace, though the lau had not. For she straightway ordered it covered again after she looked upon it, taken away to the temple of Apedemek. But