The Forest of Myrrh (Imhotep Book 3)

by Jerry Dubs

  Yuya’s scouts had counted the warriors in Tadjoura. There were more than a hundred, perhaps two hundred. And the expedition would have fighters, too. Yuya had twenty warriors.

  So we will make more arrows. We will gather more rocks.

  Yuya had never had cause to worry. He would fight and he would win.

  When the strangers arrive there will be a welcoming ceremony. Gifts will be exchanged. Cows will be roasted. There will be feasting and drinking and dancing and couples will pair off and then there will be sleep, the sleep of exhaustion.

  Yuya watched a boy holding a short fishing spear dart into the water and stab at something. He raised the empty spear out of the water and then he bent close to the water to spot his prey.

  They will fall asleep and we will walk into their camp and begin the killing. We will kill the soldiers while they sleep and then the women.

  The boy stabbed again, this time raising his spear with a fish impaled on its tip. He turned and ran, knees high, toward the beach.

  We will take the children as slaves.

  Stretching his huge arms, Yuya turned and disappeared into the shadows.

  - 0 -

  “We need more canoes,” Ahmose said as he watched the natives of Ta Netjer beach their boats.

  “We can use the rafts to carry the gifts,” Nehsy said.

  Ahmose shook his head and walked along the beach. “I’ve sent my pilot to examine the straits. If we understand them, and that is a huge if, and if they know what they are talking about,” he looked toward the canoes and snorted, “then the water isn’t deep enough for our ships to enter the lake.”

  “Why not use the canoes?” Imhotep asked as he walked beside the admiral, his feet slipping in the soft sand and his staff sliding across shells and rocks.

  “They divide us,” Ahmose said. “And the archers have no steady base. We need to keep our soldiers in useful groups, not scattered among little canoes. Why, they could overturn the canoes, sacrifice a few of their rowers, and for all I know they might be wonderful swimmers so they wouldn’t even lose them, and we could lose the few men we have. We would be at their mercy.”

  He stopped walking and glared at Imhotep. “If we had a real army, then the ruler of the civilized world wouldn’t be in danger, would she?”

  Imhotep looked back at the encampment. Pharaoh Hatshepsut and Akila were holding court in a large tent. The women of the village had queued up to bring them gifts, most of them little more than trinkets, Akila had told him, wood carvings and strings of shells. They might be growing bored, but they certainly didn’t seem to be in danger.

  “We could dredge the opening,” Nehsy said. “Isn’t that something we could do?”

  Ahmose snorted. “If we had navy engineers. And the right tools. Maybe, maybe,” Ahmose said. Then she shook his head again. “No, if we can’t get the ships into the lake then we should travel on foot, follow the shoreline to this city ... ”

  “Tadjoura,” Nehsy offered.

  “Tadjoura,” Ahmose repeated. He stopped and turned to Nehsy. “Is that man learning our language? And what of the others, don’t any of them know our language?”

  Nehsy glanced at Imhotep and then said, “As it turns out, Lady Akila seems to understand some of their language.”

  Ahmose looked from Nehsy to Imhotep. “Truly?”

  Nehsy said, “Yes, she has even organized classes. Several of the younger soldiers seem to have a gift for their words.”

  “Good, good,” Ahmose said, turning to continue pacing the shore. “We’ll check the straits, get everyone together on the ships or on land, and get this expedition back on track.” He stopped and looked back toward the encampment. “They don’t seem to have an army, or any real soldiers,” he said.

  - 0 -

  Ahmose’s pilots decided that if the ships were lightened they would be able to navigate through the straits and so they began to reboard the ships the next morning, leaving the food, supplies and trade goods to follow on rafts pulled by the native canoes.

  Pharaoh Hatshepsut, having grown fond of Kasmut, the elderly woman whom Imhotep and Nehsy had selected to serve as village leader, insisted that the woman and her grandchildren ride with her on the lead ship.

  “Very wise, pharaoh,” Ahmose had said as Nehsy leaned to Imhotep and whispered, “He considers them hostages.”

  - 0 -

  The ships moved slowly through the straits, the passage so narrow that the sailors could scrape the passing rocks with the tips of their oars.

  Imhotep was aboard the lead ship with Admiral Ahmose. Akila rode with Pharaoh Hatshepsut and Kasmut in the second ship. Ty and Nehsy, both busy comparing the inventory of the trade goods with what was offloaded and compiling a new list of the few goods they had received, rode in the third ship.

  Taking advantage of the first time that he was alone with Admiral Ahmose, Imhotep said, “I saw that Pharaoh Hatshepsut was dressed as Horus when she came on shore.”

  Ahmose nodded. “She fought beside Thutmose I, long life! Just a little girl, barely able to see over the top of the chariot and he took her to Sinai to fight.”

  Imhotep thought a moment, trying to pick his words carefully. Although he had been trusted and respected during his years with King Djoser, Imhotep had quickly learned it was never wise to confront the king.

  “Horus is a great fighter,” Imhotep offered.

  “This is still a trading expedition, if that is what you’re getting at,” Ahmose said. They were standing amidship, giving Ahmose the best vantage point to watch the bow and stern and both sides of the ship.

  He reached up now and wrapped a hand around one of the sail ropes.

  “We don’t know what we will find here, Lord Imhotep,” Ahmose said. “We could be greeted as gods, we could be ambushed. I think pharaoh should have stayed in Waset, but she is here. And I mean to protect her. It helps if the natives here are a little intimidated, it could put off ideas of attacking us.”

  Imhotep bowed his head, giving in to the reality of the ancient world.

  Interrogation

  The rock python was getting restless. Its massive coils moved across each other, its eyes searched the cage and the green beyond, its tongue flicked and curled as it gathered the world to its mouth.

  Tied to a tree beside the cage, the woman alternated between staring in horror at the snake and looking in dread at the backs of the men hunched around a dead camp fire.

  She had been taken this morning while carrying water from the river to her home. A dirty powerful hand had clamped around her face, large arms had wrapped around her and lifted her off her feet. She had kicked and tried to bite, but the hand on her face grew tighter and the arms around her had squeezed tighter, cutting off her breath until she had gasped and died.

  But not the long death, no, this had been a short death. It had ended a few minutes ago and now she was staring at a giant snake and the backs of strange men. Hearing a noise she turned her head and saw a giant emerge from behind a tree.

  One of his huge hands was on his penis, shaking it as if it were a snake itself. Seeing that she was awake, he changed direction to come to her. He stopped in front of her and put a hand on her throat, the fingers pressing enough to make her uncomfortable but not enough to cut off her wind. Then he reached up with his other hand and pulled at the gag that covered her mouth.

  She breathed deeply and he shook his head, tightening his grip on her throat in warning.

  She nodded her understanding, but his hand kept its firm grip on her throat.

  “How many strangers are arriving?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  His grip tightened.

  “Has your king sent for other warriors?”

  “I don’t understand you,” she said in her language.

  Yuya looked over his shoulder at the men who were watching from the cold fire. They shrugged and shook their heads.

  Yuya pointed to himself and then at the other men. He held up his free hand
and opened it to show five fingers. Then he made a fist, opened his hand to show five more. Then he stared at her.

  “I don’t know what you want,” she gasped.

  The sounds made no sense to Yuya. There was a woman back in Kerma who spoke like this, with meaningless sounds. Some people thought that she was talking with the gods. Others thought that Seth had damaged her. She could do many things a woman could do, but she was slow and her eyes had no life in them.

  This one didn’t look the same. There was fear in her eyes and she moved quickly. Yet she made meaningless sounds.

  Yuya looked down at the snake. The shape of Kasta’s body was gone now, the shoulders and hips no longer making bumps in the snake’s long throat. But nothing had come out the other end. Yuya knew that all animals ate and all animals shit.

  The snake hasn’t so that means that Kasta is still inside him and the snake isn’t ready to eat again, even though more than a week has passed. But maybe snakes are different from cows and dogs and sheep and people, Yuya thought. They don’t have legs and they don’t make sounds.

  He closed his eyes, tired of thinking. Then he looked back at the woman. Her eyes had followed his and were locked on the snake. Now she shifted her eyes to him and began to shake her head wildly.

  The snake moved against the cage, the scales rasping across the wood.

  Yuya looked at the snake again. Unable to wrap its body around anything, its strength was useless. It could push against the cage, but the wood wouldn’t yield. Yuya knew that if the snake could only coil around the wood it would be able to crush it.

  He pressed his fingers against the woman’s throat. Cocking his head he looked at his hand. If he didn’t use his thumb, then he wouldn’t be able to grip, he would be like the snake, unable to coil around the wooden slats of the cage.

  He pushed his thumb against the woman’s throat. She gasped. He squeezed now, his fingers on one side of her throat, his thumb on the other. He had never thought about that before. His fingers, strong as they were, were useless without something to push against.

  The woman quivered and there was a stink as she emptied herself.

  Yuya looked from his hand to her face. Her jaw was slack, her eyes had no fear now. The lips were parted, but no breath entered or left her body. He pulled his hand away from her crushed throat and turned to the men at the center of the encampment.

  “Get me another person from the village,” he said. “And make sure they speak our tongue.”

  King Parahu and Queen Ati

  “There is another one!” the lookout called late in the afternoon after all the ships had passed into the lake and wound their way westward.

  Admiral Ahmose tilted his head upward and shouted, “We can see the boats! We can see the people on shore! Come down from the mast!” He looked out across the lake at the growing number of boats.

  They had entered the lake accompanied by three native canoes. Soon another small boat joined them, and then another and another. Now there were so many canoes circling the ships that Ahmose wouldn’t have been surprised if the ship's long oars started to hit them instead of the water.

  “At least they aren’t armed,” he said, leaning against the gunwale and staring toward the approaching shore. He glanced over his shoulder. Only half of the men onboard the ship were rowing. The soldiers were sitting on the benches, dressed for battle. They each carried one of the long, curving khopesh blades, a short shield, a short, stabbing spear.

  “No,” Imhotep agreed. “They look peaceful.” He glanced at Admiral Ahmose’s soldiers and then back at the shoreline. There were a growing number of people there, including women and children.

  He couldn’t help but think of the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors on the shore of the Aztecs’ empire.

  - 0 -

  The water was deep enough for the ships to cautiously nudge their way to an unsteady looking wooden pier.

  While the other four ships in the small armada waited off shore, Ahmose’s ship docked and a squad of ten soldiers disembarked. They formed a protective line across the pier and Ahmose and Imhotep stepped off the ship.

  Ahmose turned and waved the ship away, making room for the next ship.

  “I want the soldiers to form a wall at the edge of the pier,” Ahmose told Djehuty, commander of the soldiers.

  “Yes, Admiral Ahmose,” Djehuty said, bowing and then running to the front of the sqaud of soldiers.

  Eyes darting from the growing crowd to the water, Ahmose muttered to himself, “And I want all the ships ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”

  Standing by Ahmose, Imhotep squinted at smoke that rose behind the shuffling crowd. He sniffed and said, “I think I smell something roasting, Admiral Ahmose. Hopefully we won’t be leaving too quickly. I’m tired of eating fish.”

  - 0 -

  The final ship was tied to the pier and the fifth squad of soldiers jumped onto the wooden dock and formed up behind the other men.

  Although he now had fifty battle-tested soldiers of the Two Lands at his command, and although there appeared to be only civilians waiting on land, Admiral Ahmose continued to look worriedly at the shore.

  He took a final glance at the restless crowd and turned to the ship to greet Pharaoh Hatshepsut and Akila.

  Akila disembarked first. She was dressed as royalty: golden bands on each arm, a pristine, pleated dress made of a large rectangle of linen, the lower two-thirds wrapped about her torso, the top third draped down over her outstretched arms, the corners wrapped around her back and knotted in front beneath her breasts.

  Hatshepsut wore a similar dress, but one of finer, more transparent linen and over her shoulders she wore a cape dyed deep blue. The cape was cut to reveal her throat, which was adorned with a wide, beaded necklace. She wore, Imhotep saw with a grimace, the dark blue war crown.

  Once the women were on the pier, Ahmose nodded to the army commander who barked orders to the soldiers. Slowly and in unison, the soldiers walked to the end of the pier and then onto the rocky shore. They formed two lines, spreading out to the left and to the right, the men holding shields in one arm and short, stabbing spears upright against their shoulders. A tight leather belt held their khopesh swords.

  While the men assembled on the beach, a heavy drum began to sound from deep within the village. Its booming notes were answered by another and then another, each of them a quarter beat behind the first.

  As the slow pounding became louder and faster the crowd turned to watch a procession of armed men wind its way from the village to the shore.

  “Lord Imhotep,” Hatshepsut said.

  He turned to her and bowed his head.

  “As you said ... as you insisted ... this is a peaceful trading mission.”

  “Yes, Pharaoh Ma’at-Ka-re,” he said using her throne name and speaking loudly over the pounding of the drums.

  “Very good,” she said. With conscious effort she refused to acknowledge the pounding drums and the advancing warriors. Smiling grimly, she said, “Please lead us to the friendly natives.”

  Imhotep leaned on his staff and looked at Akila for a moment and then bowed to Pharaoh Hatshepsut. “As you wish.”

  He turned and, his wooden staff clacking on the wooden boards, he walked to the edge of the pier.

  “Captain Djehuty,” he said to the commander of the soldiers.

  “Yes, Lord Imhotep?” The captain glanced at Imhotep and then was unable to resist turning his head to look at the soldiers advancing through the parting crowd.

  “I would like eight of your men to come with me.”

  “Would you like my sword?” Djehuty said as he reached to his waist to retrieve his sword.

  Imhotep quickly put his hand on Djehuty’s arm to prevent him from drawing the weapon. “No, thank you, Djehuty. I won’t be needing a sword.” He raised his voice slightly and added, “None of us will. This is a peaceful mission.”

  Djehuty studied him for a moment and then turned and nodded at the nearest sq
uad commander.

  - 0 -

  King Parahu resisted the urge to stroke his long, upward curving beard. Walking three steps in front of Queen Ati, her breathing already grown heavy from the short walk down the slight slope to the beach, he wondered who these strangers were.

  Their ships had been spotted several days ago, appearing as if by magic, floating on beams of light on the endless, ever-shifting waters beyond the eastern edge of Pwenet at the very edge of the world. A fisherman from the coast had seen the boats and after recovering from the shock, he had run to the village and spread the news: Strangers had climbed down the ladder of light from the heavens.

  “Should we rest a moment?” he asked, pausing to look back at his wife, his words barely audible over the pounding drums.

  Ati’s mouth, a frown of concentration, slid into a smile and Parahu’s heart nearly broke.

  Her eyes, her mouth, her voice, her spirit were those of the beautiful, adventurous girl he had taken as a wife twenty years ago. But her body housed demons of the earth. Her arms and legs were covered with sagging rolls of flesh. Her breasts, swollen from giving birth to their two sons and daughter, had swollen and dropped even more. Her buttocks, never small, had taken on so much weight and protruded so far from her hips that they looked like the back of a river cow.

  And yet, she remained his Ati. Generous but commanding, playful but thoughtful, forgiving but iron-willed.

  He was king, but she ruled Pwenet. And the people loved her; they loved how her spirit refused to yield to her hideous disfigurement.

  “We can rest at the shore,” Ati said now, her voice determined. She tugged at her yellow dress, the movement bringing a thin clatter from the bracelets that covered her forearms.

  He nodded and turned to resume his slow march toward the strangers.

  - 0 -

  Imhotep stifled a gasp when he saw King Parahu and Queen Ati. Blinking quickly, he experienced a flashback to a memory that he knew should have surfaced when he and Akila talked about the Land of Punt.