Year of the Hyenas

by Brad Geagley

“I’m sorry for being so late, but the servants just brought it to me. I don’t know what kept them.” She placed the bowl on the tiled floor of the reception room and unsealed the jar of beer. The aromatic yeastiness of it caressed his nostrils. He was immediately very thirsty.

  “Join me?” he said, indicating the beer.

  “N-no,” she answered reluctantly, “My husband…”

  “I was hoping we could talk.”

  Her eyes flickered. “About what?”

  He gestured, indicating the village around them. “This place. Hetephras. You.”

  “Me?” she said with a tiny laugh. “I’m hardly interesting. I haven’t left this village since the day I was married.” Her voice suddenly sounded old, and she dropped her head. She leaned against the stuccoed wall, staring moodily out the opened door.

  He wondered at the change in her. Gone was her former flirtatiousness. He lifted the jar of beer to his lips, and stared at her over the rim.

  She turned and watched him drink. “Is it to your taste?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “There’s a flavor… what is it?”

  “We add coriander and some other herbs to it. Not as fine as the beers you get in Thebes, I imagine. But then, what could be?”

  Semerket shook his head ironically, and quoted the words of the poem, “ ‘What do they say, they who are so far from Thebes? They spend their days blinking at its name. If only we had it, they say…’”

  Her eyes became hard as basalt. “I’ll have it,” she said firmly. “Soon.”

  Semerket dipped his fingers into the fava beans and tasted the same pungent herb that was in the beer. “What would you do with it?” he asked her, swallowing. “It’s a sad place. The people there are angry, grasping—like all cities.”

  “But the festivals! The bazaars, where you can buy the world if you want. The inns, where people laugh and sing all night long…” From the rapture in her sultry tenor she may as well have been saying “moonlight!” or “kisses!”

  “And the foreigners…” she continued in the same breathless fashion, “…from as far away as India and Cathay, I’ve heard. What excitement!”

  Semerket yawned, intensely sleepy. He was feeling the effects of being awake since before dawn. “The beggars, the cheaters and tricksters, the fat greasy priests…”

  She laughed, and the sound was quivery to him, like oil on water. “You can’t discourage me. You’ve just forgotten how wonderful it is because you’ve lived in Eastern Thebes always, I’ll wager. I’m going to live there, too, one day. See if I don’t. I’m leaving this little turd of a place, and I’m never looking back.”

  Semerket did not dispute her. His head fell to his chest, and he struggled to keep his eyes open. “I’m sorry…” he muttered. “So tired…”

  “Let me help,” Hunro whispered. She put his arm around her shoulders and hoisted him to his feet. Semerket found himself leaning on her surprisingly strong frame, stumbling toward the back room of Hetephras’s house. Setting him on a bench, she unfurled his pallet. Helping him lie down, she covered him with some light skins that had belonged to the old priestess. Did her lips graze his? He was not even aware when she left…

  It seemed like hours later when he woke, but not much time could have elapsed, judging from the omnipresent din of the village. Somewhere a child wailed. From around the corner came the sawing of wood, a carpenter working late into the night. Someone doused a cooking fire, its loud sizzle accompanied by clouds of acrid smoke. Words of conversations too distant to be clearly understood floated to him in the dark, punctuated on occasion by the odd, shrill laugh. He heard a group of men, whispering, their heavy tools clanking together in the night. The men were soon gone, apparently going down a side alley.

  How did these tomb-makers sleep, Semerket wondered, so tightly packed together for all of their lives? It was a wonder they did not murder each other more often.

  And then, from somewhere close by, he caught the sounds of a couple arguing, their voices scarring the dark. He fought to keep slumber at bay, straining to listen, and their angry words came to him in slurred phrases, like screams from hyenas.

  “…gave it to me… Why not? You never… stingy, good-for-nothing—”

  “…imbecile!”

  “…talking to Khepura again… don’t care… leaving you!… across the river!”

  There was a sharp slap. An outraged wail in the dark, then the sounds of a real physical fight commenced. Punches and more slaps. Curses. Oaths. Silence. Semerket was about to drift off, but then there came to him different sounds.

  The sounds of a couple making love.

  He jolted awake again. What strange people these tomb-makers are, Semerket thought. Yet even the sounds of furtive lovemaking could not keep sleep at bay. His ka strained to flee his body. With a long sigh he let it loose and closed his eyes.

  WHETHER IT WAS his profound exhaustion or because he was in a strange place, wakefulness and sleep soon became blurred. Sometime after the fifth hour, when the village was at its most quiet, Semerket finally slipped into something resembling slumber.

  Only moments later, however, he gave a great start, his ka rushing to rejoin him, his eyes jerking open. He had heard something—the latch on Hetephras’s door being opened.

  Fiercely he quieted his heart, willing it to beat at a more subdued tattoo. Concentrating, he heard nothing more than the noises he expected to hear at night in the desert. A kite-bird whistled high above. Somewhere a cow lowed in a distant paddock. A vole, or maybe a scorpion, scuttled nearby. He closed his eyes once again, convinced that he had heard nothing out of the ordinary.

  But just as sleep began to pluck once more at his eyelids, he heard a different noise—the deep, primordial breathing of some huge beast, too low to even register as a sound. Semerket sat up, staring into the dark, hearing the sonorous panting growing louder as it came into the house through the front door. Semerket’s ears grew numb with fear as a feral animal reek oozed into the room, bringing with it the rank and bloody odor of the hunt.

  Silently, Semerket threw back the skins. In three strides he was at his small sack of belongings. Throwing it open, careful not to make a noise, he felt about in the dark for his curved knife. The weapon would provide little protection, but it was all he had.

  The knife was not there.

  Only then did he remember that Naia had taken it from him on the night of the festival, when he had howled his drunken rage and grief at her door.

  He tried to call out for help, but his throat was so constricted by fear he managed no more than an absurd croak. Semerket peered into the dark, trying to find a weapon, anything, with which to defend himself. Then he saw her, and froze.

  The lioness entered the room, rubbing her spine against the lintel like any ordinary house cat. In the dark, its coat emitted a kind of golden light. Semerket saw her clearly now, muscles taut beneath her fur, long strands of red saliva stringing from her fangs.

  Death has come for me, he thought; this is what it looks like.

  Though he had sought death so keenly just a short time before, every part of him now shrieked for his life. He didn’t want to die like this, torn to pieces by fang and claw. He backed slowly away from her. Her yellow eyes glittered, and the lioness lowered herself into a crouching stance. Slowly she advanced on him.

  He ran—to the rear of the house, past the kitchen, to the stairway leading to the roof. The lioness snarled and leapt after him. Semerket climbed swiftly. He was on the roof of the village now, emerging into the most profound darkness he had ever experienced. No moon lit the sky. Taking refuge behind a huge urn used to collect rain water, he waited. His eyes began to pick out bits of detail—the distant torches at the village’s southern gate, the outline of a Medjay tower beyond, and farther away the fires of Eastern Thebes, throbbing on the other side of the river.

  The communal roof over the village was a patchwork quilt of many differing levels; occasionally a small second story had been added to s
ome of the homes. He thought if he could just sprint to one of them, he could pound on the doors for help.

  But then he saw that the lioness had somehow silently scaled the side of the building from below, to perch on the top of the small wall that surrounded Hetephras’s home. He could hear the lioness’s low, even panting, like the scrape of millstones. Slowly he peeked at her from behind the urn.

  She saw him, and dropped to the roof from the wall. She was going to leap—

  A prayer suddenly bubbled up to Semerket’s lips, one that every Egyptian child spoke upon waking from a nightmare. “Come to me, Mother Isis! Behold, I am seeing what is far from my city!”

  The lioness sprang with a terrible roar. Semerket threw his arms over his head, falling onto the roof, waiting for the kiss of her teeth—

  The impact of cat and man never occurred. In the ensuing silence, Semerket forced himself to peer from beneath his clenched hands. He was again in Hetephras’s house, atop his bedroll. Behind him, there was a slight noise. He whirled around with a gasp. It was a house cat, obviously a pet, for it did not shy away from him.

  Semerket, breathing hard, lay back down on his pallet. It had been a dream, probably the trick of wine vapors still festering in his blood. His breathing became calmer, and he laughed out loud.

  A dream lion, nothing more.

  The cat came over to snuggle beside him on his bedroll. He fell asleep to the rumble of its purrs.

  THE KNOCKING WOKE HIM. Dazed, he shook his head to clear it of cobwebs. What hour was it? Glancing up through the clerestory windows to the slit of sky above, he found the sun impossibly high overhead. He sprang to his feet, and the cat leapt away, accompanying him to the courtyard.

  Khepura waited for him a few steps down the alley. “I’m here to tell you that the elders are assembled at Neferhotep’s house,” she said, “to consider your request to question the villagers.”

  “Request?” he asked. He was still half in the land of sleep. He thought it odd that a directive from the vizier should be considered a request.

  “You said you wanted to meet them,” she went on accusingly. “I heard you myself.”

  “Yes, but—” He was irritated. Nevertheless it was probably best not to appear too high-handed. At that moment the cat slipped through the door, heading in the direction of the kitchens.

  “Sukis!” cried Khepura. “She’s come back!” The cat turned and regarded the head woman with palpable scorn.

  “Last night, in fact. She gave me quite a start, too.”

  “She was Hetephras’s cat. We haven’t seen her since the priestess went missing.” She bent to scratch the beast’s ears, but it shied from her hand, backing into a corner and hissing. “Sukis! What’s the matter with you?” said Khepura, offended. The cat ran down the corridor.

  Shrugging, Khepura turned again to Semerket. “Well, are you coming?”

  “I’ll be there,” he said. The head woman walked back down the narrow main street, in the direction the cat had gone. Then Semerket remembered and yelled after her, “Khepura—?”

  She did not turn around, merely saying over her shoulder, “Five houses down, at the end of the alley.”

  Moments later he was standing in Neferhotep’s dark front room. Seven men waited for him, none of them very old despite their designation as “elder.” They gravely told him they were the elected heads of the village clans. Khepura as head woman had a place on the council as well, along with Neferhotep as chief scribe. Khepura informed them that she would speak for the absent Paneb, who was at the royal tomb, and proceeded to do so. “Paneb opposes any investigation into the village,” she declared.

  Semerket raised an eyebrow. “Why should he?”

  “It’s an insult, that’s why,” Khepura said flatly. “To believe that any of us had anything to do with such a crime…” Her nostrils flared with indignation. Though she meant her expression to connote dignified outrage, she resembled nothing so much at that moment as an irate water buffalo caught in a thicket. “It was some brigand or other criminal who murdered Hetephras—if that’s what really happened—not any of us from the village.”

  “It’s strange,” Semerket said, almost to himself, “I would have thought that Paneb would be the first to demand an inquiry.”

  One of the elders coughed, a man smeared with slurry stains. “I am Sneferu, potter to Pharaoh,” he introduced himself quietly, leaning forward. “Why do you say that Paneb should desire this inquiry?”

  Semerket was surprised the situation needed explaining. “Because Hetephras was his aunt, for one thing,” Semerket said.

  Sneferu looked sideways at the other elders. They fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment and then broke into soft chuckles. Noticing Semerket’s shocked expression, they immediately resumed their sober demeanors. “But we are all nephews of poor Aunt Hetephras,” Sneferu said.

  Semerket blinked.

  Sneferu held his hands wide, attempting to explain. “Oh, he was her true nephew by blood. But as tomb-makers we’ve rarely been allowed to leave here, and so we marry our cousins. In this village, we’re all related in some way or another.”

  The elders grunted to show their approval of Sneferu’s words.

  The sun had reached mid heaven, and the temperature had climbed with it. Looking away, Semerket spied Hunro at the doorway of a distant room, listening. He nodded a surreptitious greeting. She instantly stepped back into the concealing darkness.

  “Yet the vizier sent me here to make an inquiry and I must insist on it.” Semerket stood up from the bench, crossing his arms in front of him.

  Neferhotep deftly interrupted. “Please, please—don’t be hasty. We’re not forbidding this investigation. Not at all.” He looked around with a glance, letting his sharp gaze rest significantly on Khepura. “But we have our traditions, too. All we’re saying is that we must debate the issue together as elders. Even the vizier will understand this.”

  Semerket was nonplussed. Never before had he encountered so phlegmatic a crowd, particularly one that had only recently learned that a relative had been brutally slain. Usually the victim’s relations would be screaming for vengeance at the tops of their lungs in some public place. Suspicion flooded through him.

  “How long, do you think,” he asked, “before Hetephras’s angry spirit howls through this village, seeking vengeance?” A note of incredulity crept into his voice. “Ghosts of murder victims are the angriest spirits of all. They vex your crops, cause illness in your children. They can even stopper the gods’ ears against your prayers. Why do you risk it?”

  Sneferu was about to say something, but Khepura coldly cut in before he could speak. “Hetephras’s spirit will understand the need for the elders to debate this issue, even if you do not.” Her clipped voice was dismissive. “Why, she was gone three days before any of us even knew she was missing, and in that time no ghost—” Khepura’s words dissolved into silence. She had said too much and looked desperately at Neferhotep to rescue her.

  Semerket’s eyes were black isinglass. “She was gone three days before you noticed she was missing?”

  No one said a word.

  “When did you report her disappearance?”

  Again, no one spoke. Semerket had his answer. “You mean… no one did report it.”

  Khepura was the first to recover her speech. “You needn’t be so accusing,” she said. “Hetephras tended shrines all over these hills. It was commonplace, her being gone so long.”

  One of the elders spoke up, his enthusiasm getting the better of him. “Why, before the gods afflicted her with blindness, we often didn’t see Hetephras for weeks at a time.”

  Khepura winced at his words, her lips forming silent curses. Neferhotep cupped his head in his hand. Seeing their reactions, the elder who had spoken became confused. “What?” he asked. “What did I say?”

  “She was blind?” Semerket’s black eyes shone harshly.

  “But this is no secret,” the elder insisted defensively. “Everyone
knew it!”

  “I want to understand this,” Semerket said quietly. “A blind old lady—your aunt—wanders the hills for three days with everyone knowing about it—and not one of you thought to inquire after her when she didn’t come home?”

  The elder clapped his mouth shut. He suddenly understood the import of what he had burbled.

  “It was Rami’s job to accompany her,” said Khepura into the void. “But don’t blame him. When he arrived at her house that day, she had already gone up the mountain. Hetephras could be very stubborn, you know.”

  Neferhotep at last spoke up, smiling apologetically. “This is all very interesting, but I’m afraid I can’t allow this line of questioning to continue, friend Semerket—not until after the elders have debated.”

  Semerket shot the scribe an irritated glance. “When will you have debated?”

  “Tomorrow, or by the end of this week,” Neferhotep answered. “No later.”

  SEMERKET WENT WALKING through the Place of Truth, which is what the tomb-makers had named their small town. Though prevented from opening his formal inquiry, he could still do a bit of exploration on his own. The tomb-makers were chary of him, but no one challenged his reason for being there. Nevertheless he let the vizier’s seal swing prominently on his chest to discourage any potential confrontations.

  He first made a mental map of the village. By pacing from end to end he estimated that it held about a hundred families, each house sharing walls with its neighbor’s. He also noticed that some families, including Hunro, had added a second story to their home.

  Semerket tried to imagine what the Place of Truth would look like from a hawk’s point of view. It would be a single building shaped like an immense tortoise, he fancied, with tapered ends and a wide middle. The crooked main street he stood in, so narrow he could touch both walls, was its spine, and the multiple alleyways that led to the east and west were its ribs. The roofs, being flat and uneven, were the plates on the beast’s gigantic shell.

  Retracing his steps, he realized that he was being pursued. Hetephras’s cat, Sukis, followed him through the streets. When he paused to gaze around at the sights, she paused with him, sitting down to assiduously groom her yellow coat. He bent to stroke her, and she wound herself around his ankles, mewing.