Desert Oath

by Oliver Bowden

  Lying there, Khensa turned her head to me. I lay between her and Aya. ‘And that,’ she said, in a low voice, avoiding a whisper that could carry in the distance and betray us, ‘is where Menna has been hiding for …’ She thought. ‘Five summers now. A long time, but he hasn’t got careless. Yet. Look …’

  Pointing, she directed our attention to a ledge directly below us, where a sentry with a bow slung across his back kept guard, pacing back and forth along the outcrop. As we watched, he stopped, turned to face over the settlement below and then cupped his hands to his mouth and let out a bellow, a strange sound like the call of a hawk, but also unmistakably human.

  In return came an answering bellow, another hawk sound in reply.

  ‘From the sentry at the other side of the mount,’ explained Khensa. ‘They do it at night to keep each other awake, and by day just to check in.’ She pointed at the buildings. ‘The smaller one is a storeroom of some kind,’ she explained, her voice still low. Aya and Tuta strained to hear. Seti was elsewhere, looking for other routes. ‘Next to it, the larger building, is where Menna’s men are billeted, six of them, including two sentries, one out east, the other just below us. The third building, that’s Menna’s personal quarters. He shares it with his lieutenant, a man we believe is called Maxta. Most of them I don’t recognize but Maxta was there that night. You probably would have seen him. He has a crooked eye.’

  It was as though a giant hand gripped me, and for a moment I couldn’t move, held hostage by a powerful and overriding memory. The same man who had crept into my room the night of the attack? It had to be.

  Khensa ushered us away from the edge, and we formed a circle, doing all our talking in low voices. ‘And what of Menna?’ I asked. ‘Is he the horror of rumour? Have you seen him up close?’

  Squatting there in the shingle on the mountainside, Khensa chuckled drily. ‘Don’t tell me you ever believed all that stuff about sharpened human teeth?’

  I shook my head, but my burning cheeks betrayed the lie. I didn’t need to look to know that Aya’s face had broken into a broad grin. Next thing I knew, I felt her taunting finger poking into me. I shot her a look and she smiled back, the moment sending a warmth through me.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ continued Khensa, ‘much as it pains me to destroy any childhood myths, but Menna has normal teeth. He is still powerful, though, but his influence has receded. Ten summers ago he had three times as many men at his disposal, not to mention adherents all over the country. This summer? We kill him. Soon.’

  She held her breath for a moment, and finally let the air out, slow and measured. The strain of her self-imposed mission clearly had taken a toll on her, but she still carried on. Resolute. Unyielding.

  ‘Menna may have lived on in the memories of those in Siwa, but out here, out in the real world, he is a spent force, and the reason for that is my people. All this has been achieved at such great cost. And Menna lives because, although we are both reduced in strength, he is less reduced than we are. It’s as simple as that. We’ve been watching him, waiting for the right moment to strike, and one of the things that Neka has told us is that Menna and his people may be about to leave …’

  Khensa tensed, listening. From below came the noise of a chariot arriving. It was followed by the sounds of a struggle, and a cry that seemed to flutter up towards us, as though seeking our ears. In the next instant, Khensa had scrambled to the edge in order to look out over the encampment, with the rest of us not far behind.

  Looking down, we saw two men dragging another, a Nubian, from the chariot to the smaller of the three buildings. His head hung between his shoulder blades. Even from this far up we could see he was in a bad way.

  ‘Neka,’ hissed Khensa. ‘Gods, they have Neka.’ Her hand curled into a fist against her thigh, and in the second or so before she composed herself, I saw that it shook with rage and frustration. ‘They tortured him,’ she said, and I heard the anger in her voice, underlined with frustration and impotence.

  Just then Seti returned. He’d taken a different route at the mountain to check for Menna’s sentries. Khensa scooted over to him. He saw straight away there was something wrong, angling his head slightly to look at her with a guarded expression. ‘What is it, Khensa? What is wrong?’

  She didn’t waste words. Didn’t bother trying to honey-coat the news. ‘They have Neka in one of the buildings. He’s already been tortured. They will likely torture him more.’

  The effect on Seti was profound: agitated one second, looking as though he was about to throw himself over, the next moment about to scramble down the mountainside.

  ‘We go,’ he was saying. ‘We go to rescue him.’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Khensa firmly. She was younger than him – it occurred to me that, of our group, only Tuta was her junior – but her words had authority and they were enough to silence Seti – for the moment at least.

  With him quiet, Khensa drew us in. ‘Right, we get down off the mountain and then we discuss what we do before we go attracting attention to ourselves. And you,’ she indicated Seti, ‘don’t do anything rash or we all die.’

  Reluctantly he agreed. The five of us turned and made our way back down the mountain.

  31

  At the foot of the mountain, Aya, Tuta and I stood to one side as the two Nubians faced one another, neither in the mood to back down.

  ‘I’m going in there,’ roared Seti. It had all been stored up as we descended and now it came pouring out. ‘Neka is my brother. He’s not just my brother in the tribe, but my brother in blood. Remember your words by the fire? Remember how you talked about the importance of blood and how bonds cannot be denied? Well, don’t deny it to me now.’

  Khensa put her hands to his arms and they shook with his fury. ‘Not without a plan. You’ll be cut down. A sentry at the entrance road. One above your head. Not to mention the men billeted in the camp. Oh, you’re the best I’ve seen with a bow, and by the gods you’d take a few of them with you, but you are still just one man. You would die, your child would be fatherless and Neka would die, too, and what would be the point of that? Menna would rise again.’

  He pulled free of her. ‘Then what do you suggest? Leave Neka there? Or perhaps we should return to Thebes and ask your sick grandfather and my pregnant wife to join us? I’m not alone, don’t you forget. What about you? What about your friends from Thebes?’

  Khensa planted the shaft of her spear in the ground and swung to look at us as though seeing us for the first time, and I opened my mouth to speak, wanting to impress on her that we could be useful to them. But it was Aya who replied, ‘We can do it. Let us prove it to you.’

  Khensa shook her head, levelling a finger. ‘There are so few Medjay left, you think I want to be responsible for killing the one who might be the last? No thank you.’

  ‘You’ll be responsible for helping his transformation into one,’ insisted Aya. Her words surprised me, yet warmed my heart. I didn’t think she’d believe in what the Medjay represented. Perhaps it was that what I wanted was enough for her.

  ‘It’s suicide. Of the five of us, only two have …’

  ‘What?’ probed Aya.

  Khensa took a deep breath, fixing her with a steady gaze. ‘All right. Have you ever killed anybody? Has he?’

  Aya shook her head and took a deep breath. I knew this. I knew she was settling in for an argument that she would not give up.

  ‘Is that what being a Medjay is all about, then? It’s all about killing people? That’s the qualification you need?’

  Her words were pointed, but not angry. An honest, sincere question.

  ‘No,’ shot back Khensa, though I could see she was listening to Aya. ‘But when killing is required then Medjay must be able to do so without flinching, without second thoughts, and in the full knowledge that his or her course of action is the only one available to them. Could you do that, Bayek?’ She came close and put her hand to my chest. ‘Is it in there to do that?’

  I thought a
bout the man with the crooked eye – Maxta, I now had a name for him. I thought about Menna, and my father, and being a Medjay. I thought about Tuta’s father, and how he’d terrorized his family for so long. A family which, not long ago, I had seen happy and safe.

  I straightened, ever so slightly – I knew my answer. And Khensa being Khensa, she saw before I could even speak. She gave me a look, acknowledgement, a touch of relief, and then Seti chimed in before she could speak again, quaking with restrained emotion. ‘You know what they’ll be doing, don’t you, Khensa? You know what they’ll be doing to him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘But our brother won’t talk. Neka will die before he’ll tell them where we’re living.’

  ‘Die?’ blazed Seti. ‘I’m not going to let that happen, and nor should you.’

  Khensa clasped both hands at the shaft of her spear and rested her forehead against it. Her tribal feathers hung like palm fronds; strips of leather dangling from her wrist bracers danced in the breeze as she thought hard. Then suddenly she roused herself, strode to our cart and, to my surprise, plucked from it my bow. I started to speak, to protest, when she tossed it to Seti. ‘Look at it,’ she snapped, ‘feel the tension.’

  I coloured as the Nubian inspected my bow.

  ‘It’s not a bad attempt,’ said Seti, though you could tell he wasn’t impressed. He passed it back. ‘The tension needs improving, that’s all. My sister, all that matters here … Do you trust these people?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then trust them to do this for us.’

  Khensa was about to reply when we heard a noise that carried from within the mountain.

  Something that silenced us.

  Something that ended the argument there and then.

  A scream.

  32

  We waited for night to fall. It was a full moon. Khensa and Seti had disappeared briefly, and when they returned both wore white face chalk. I pulled a quizzical face. ‘To honour our gods,’ she explained, and then added with a toothy grin, ‘and to inspire fear in our enemies.’

  Now we split up: Seti working his way upwards, his job to silence the sentry on the ledge; the rest of us were to travel around the base of the mountain to the east and neutralize the sentry there.

  After that, it was a case of being quiet and waiting until Menna’s men had eaten well and drunk even more fulsomely so that they would be dead to the world when we made our move.

  The five of us crept around the mountain until we reached a point where it opened out into the track that led into the encampment. As we came closer to our destination, Khensa moved ahead, indicating single file to ensure we hugged the stone, making ourselves part of the landscape as we beetled slowly and quietly nearer the entrance. She blinked and I could see she was still mentally counting.

  Now we were as close as we dared. We were some fifty feet or so away from the sentry who was leaning on an outcrop with a bow across his back, facing away from us. We’d been hearing the hawk call as we approached the entrance but now I wondered if he’d fallen asleep, because it’d been a while since the last one.

  But no.

  It came. A sound that seemed to fall from the heavens, echoing into the vast blackness of the desert beyond – a sound that was in its own way lonely until the sentry not far from us stood from where he reclined on the outcrop and responded.

  I looked at Khensa. Her eyes were half closed in concentration, counting still, but that last alert seemed to have been the one she was waiting for, and I saw her swallow. Ready. She glanced to us, nodded affirmation. Ready. Stay there. Wordless commands.

  And then, silently, she hefted her spear and set off at a run, feet padding silently on the hard ground, moving like a ghost through the night, spear hand drawing back ready to let loose on the run.

  He can’t have heard her. It was inconceivable. Either way, something – perhaps some extra sense – made him stand and turn, and in the light of the moon he saw Khensa approaching and opened his mouth, perhaps to yell a warning to the sentry, perhaps to challenge her. Who knows? Neither course of action would have helped him.

  In the next second the only sound in the night was of his gurgling, a death rattle exhaled from around the point of Khensa’s spear which was embedded in his neck. He fell, feet scrabbling, just as Khensa reached him and knelt. She obscured our view but I saw a knife and the gurgling stopped.

  For a moment or so we all listened, wondering if Seti had done his job and taken care of the first sentry. Each of us dreaded the sound of the hawk call, but it never came. Satisfied, Khensa passed the sentry’s bow and arrows to Aya, a look of mutual understanding passing between them.

  Now, conscious of a moonlight that threw our shadows along the path, we moved fast but quietly towards the compound. Here the track opened out and the buildings that this afternoon we’d seen from our vantage point above were now close at hand. Inside them the enemy slumbered – hopefully with sufficient soundness that we would not wake them.

  Away to our left were stables, chariots, horses. Khensa gave a low whistle, at which Tuta and Aya came together and then, keeping to the wall of the bowl, moved around in the direction of the stables.

  Khensa touched my arm. ‘It’s good to have you here, Bayek,’ she whispered.

  I was remembering her reservations. ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I do.’

  We looked up and saw that Seti had taken up position on the ledge opposite. Just seeing him there with his bow in one hand and an arrow in the other gave me fresh confidence. Khensa too, I think, because at that moment she indicated to me and we began to make our way to the cluster of buildings in the middle of the basin.

  We were out in the open now, feeling exposed and vulnerable as we crossed to the storehouse, I glanced to my left to see that Tuta and Aya had begun their work, harnessing a horse to one of the chariots. We’d need it: with Neka hurt we would require transport. Besides, the plan was to leave Menna and his men without means of returning to Thebes.

  We reached the storehouse and stopped, looking at one another as we steeled ourselves, half expecting a cry to go up. Nothing came as we breathed easy and inspected the storehouse door, which was locked with a wooden spike hammered into a loop in the sturdy wood. Wordlessly we began to loosen it, moving it as gently as we could from side to side, working it loose. Some moments later the spike was free and the door unlocked. It squeaked and we screwed up our faces at the sound, which to us was like a clap of thunder in the camp.

  Then the door was open, and for the first time we were glad of the moonlight which flooded inside as we stepped in the door and saw Neka.

  He would have looked like his brother Seti had it not been for the eye closed by a huge bulbous bruise and the grazes on his cheeks and forehead. On his chest was a series of knife wounds, as though delivered one agonizing, painstaking cut after another.

  And yet, when he saw us, his good eye opened wide and his parched lips drew back in a smile, the sight of it sending a wave of relief over us. Even though his hands and feet were bound he managed to sit up.

  ‘Seti?’ he whispered.

  ‘Covering us from the ledge,’ replied Khensa, going to her knees, drawing her knife and opening Neka’s bonds in one movement.

  He massaged his hands, touched his eye and winced.

  ‘How bad is it?’ asked Khensa. Hesitant fingers went to the wounds on Neka’s chest but he caught her hand and held it there.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his good eye clouding over, ‘they hurt me, but they were only just getting started. Tomorrow, they said, that was when the real fun would begin.’ He indicated me. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘This is Bayek, son of Sabu,’ said Khensa quickly, helping him to his feet. ‘He and his friends are helping us. Come on, it’s time to get you out of here.’

  ‘Oh, I’m leaving all right,’ growled Neka, his expression turning dark, ‘but I’m leaving with Menna’s head on the end of that spear you’re carrying.’

 
; Khensa shook her head, fast and determinedly. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re outnumbered. You’re hurt. This mission is to get you out of here safely and that’s exactly what I intend to do.’

  ‘What do you think my brother would say?’

  Khensa thinned her lips. I think we all knew exactly what his brother would say if he were here now.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for an opportunity to hit him …’ pressed Neka.

  ‘We need a better opportunity …’ She trailed off and I could tell she was starting to think about it. Despite the risk to the few of her people left, she was seriously considering it.

  ‘It’s here, Khensa, it’s here in the palm of our hands, the chance to take down Menna for good. You brought reinforcements.’ He jerked his head at me, sensing he could convince her. ‘We’re already inside the compound. The sentries are dead, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That leaves seven more men. Five in that building, Menna and his lieutenant in the other one. We’ve got the area covered from above. We’ve got warriors here. We’ve got the element of surprise. Now is the time, Khensa. Let’s finish this.’

  She raised her chin. Needed no more persuading. ‘You want to kill Menna for what he’s done to you, do you?’ she said, her fingers tracing the wounds on his chest.

  He flinched. ‘Yes, sister of mine, yes. I do.’

  She looked at him for a moment, gaze piercing and steady. And shook her head, ever so minutely.

  ‘This I refuse. The killing of Menna falls to me. Those are my terms. Accept them or not, it’s up to you.’

  There was the beginnings of a smile. He nodded, weaving back slightly – trusting her judgement. ‘You drive a hard bargain. I agree to your terms. Give me your bow and let’s go.’

  She did as asked, and after Neka took a few gradually steadying steps, we headed out.

  33

  Easy success was quickly taken from us. It was all for the sake of a man having a piss. Whatever plan formulated by Khensa and Neka might well have worked were it not for that bladder bursting with beer.