Free Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West by Ian Watson

plague and its signs and its possible sources.
    The coffee was less than half drunk when a
runner came to Arwe’s door and jabbered.
    Having heard the man’s gasped words, Arwe
went into a semi-trance while he took the messenger’s head in his
hands, and licked delicately at his face like a snake, and sniffed
him, and chanted for a long while, his eyes rolling up whitely.
Then he issued orders.
    The black throne on its bamboo poles was
brought.
    “What interests you,” Yaqob translated, “has
come to… it’s the name of a village half a day’s travel from here,
I think. You’ll see what you most wish, if you dare.”
    “Surely the old man means plague!” exclaimed
Sadiq. “Allah is great to let us witness this so soon. It might
have taken years. And surely He will protect you and me, otherwise
He would not offer this example so willingly, that we may probe and
seek understanding.”
    Hakim nodded, yet thought to himself: If
it is His will, Allah shall indeed safeguard me because of my
mission. But you too, good Sadiq? Not inevitably.
    A big woven basket containing bread hung from the
back of Arwe’s throne as his four porters bore him from the
village, accompanied by Hakim, Sadiq and Yaqob. Spears and bows lay
alongside the throne on either side, in case the porters suddenly
needed to set down their burden and become warriors. A couple of
other armed villagers paced alongside, also one of the Arabs’
slaves, burdened with gourds of water stoppered with leaves. Men
clutching bows were now guarding the approach to the village with
much more vigilance than Hakim had previously seen. There’d been a
lull for many months in sporadic hostilities with a community an
hour away to the west; evidently the runner’s news from the south
had caused Arwe to alert the sentries.
    The Priest-Witch chuckled dryly, for he had
noticed Hakim noticing.
    By way of Yaqob: “From today if a stranger
approaches, even if he appears full of health, the guards will
shout once, Go away! If the stranger ignores this, then they
will kill him with arrows and leave his body where it lies for a
moon and a week.”
    Hakim’s heart leapt within his chest. At
last! Arwe was displaying rare knowledge on the subject of plague.
The Priest-Witch understood the period between plague putting its
seed into a person, and the harvest of that seed suddenly flaring
up! Typically, Arwe had refrained from saying this directly but
only dropped a hint, no doubt to see whether Hakim would beg for
clarification. At times the old man could be so miserly with
information! Well, hard-won wisdom was after all Arwe’s source of
power. Yet occasionally he would offer a surprise nugget of
knowledge, as if perhaps he wished to spin out his visitors’ stay
for his own stimulation. What more did the Priest-Witch know
about plague? Possibly much more than Hakim had gleaned from
the libraries of the civilised world!
    “Guba isn’t with us,” commented Sadiq. “We
say that it’s foolish to carry both eggs in the same hand.” Which
Yaqob translated.
    “I shall never die from plague,” declared
Arwe, “even though my death is surely due.”
    Considering Arwe’s greatly advanced years, in
fact overdue, Hakim reluctantly admitted. Allah, preserve this
useful pagan a while longer!
    “Nor will my successor ever die from
plague!”
    How could he be so sure? But Hakim
believed the Priest-Witch, ecstatically sensing great knowledge and
power nearly within his own grasp.
    Hakim beheld the aftermath of a hell-on-Earth. The
survivors, if any there were, must have fled into the forest.
    Red-mouthed hyenas were feeding on scores of
corpses sprawled higgledy-piggledy among deserted huts; corpses
that even from a distance looked ugly and suppurating, and seemed
to have been tossed hither and thither as though by demons who had
also foully tormented them. Beside this scene even the massacres of
war might seem clean, almost merciful yet also, Hakim knew, far
less effective.