by Wilbur Smith
‘Then the sooner you send them the better,’ I pointed out, and turned to Serrena. ‘Your Majesty, you have heard the possible odds that Utteric may be able to bring against us. I need your help to raise all the men and chariots we can lay our hands upon before we march on Utteric’s lair at Ghadaka.’
‘Of course you need only ask, Tata.’
‘Thank you, my dear.’ I took her arm and walked her along the parapet. ‘I think Weneg’s estimate of Utteric’s military strength is wildly exaggerated. The notion that he has built a mighty castle on the Red Sea without us knowing about it becomes more preposterous the more I think about it. A building on the scale he suggests would take decades to erect and it would require tens of thousands of workmen. I assure you that if such a fortress existed I would have known all about it many years ago. It should not take me too long to get the facts. In the meantime we will be able to assemble the strongest force available to oppose Utteric.’
When Utteric had departed from Luxor at the beginning of his conflict with Hurotas and Rameses, and moved down the Nile to the delta to seize the fortress at Abu Naskos, he stripped the city of Luxor of most of its chariots and archers. He left only the armaments that he deemed necessary for General Panmasi to quell and subdue the city in his absence. These, together with the chariots that King Hurotas had given us when we left Abu Naskos, came to a total of 111.
These then were all the vehicles which were available to us now for the assault on Utteric’s great and impregnable castle of Ghadaka, with its hundred thousand savage inmates. That night I sat with Queen Serrena Cleopatra Rameses on the walls of the city of Luxor, beside one of the watch fires eating hard cheese which we roasted on long skewers until it was runny. Then we washed it down with a red wine that we warmed on the same fire.
‘So, you think I am slightly demented?’ I asked Her Majesty.
‘That is not what I said, Tata.’ She shook her head primly. ‘I said I think you are stark raving mad!’
‘You say that simply because I changed my mind?’
‘No, I say that because only a crazy man mounts an attack on an impregnable fortress with a hundred-odd chariots, and no siege equipment of any kind.’
‘You don’t have to come with me,’ I pointed out.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.’ She smiled. ‘You may just succeed. Then I would never forgive myself.’
We left Luxor while it was still dark the following morning. It took us three days’ hard riding to reach the rim of the Great Rift Valley, which fell to the shores of the Red Sea, halfway towards the centre of the earth. We had a splendid view out across the sea, which is actually a dirty blue in colour. It is bounded on its eastern side by pitch-black beaches, which may be the reason why they call it the Red Sea. You would be amazed at how perverse and stupid ordinary people can be.
After we had watered the horses and fed them from the nosebags we started down the escarpment. However, we had not descended halfway when we spotted two riders climbing the steep path towards us. They were still a mile or more below us but both Serrena and I recognized them: Serrena because she is a divine even if she does not know it, and I because I have superb eyesight.
Both of us gave our mounts a touch of the spurs and galloped to meet them. ‘Hey now, Batur! What cheer, Nasla?’
‘I have learned not to argue with you, my lord,’ Batur said as he came level, and his younger brother agreed with him:
‘It must be so boring to always be right.’
‘There is no castle then?’ I felt jubilant at being proved correct once again.
‘There is no castle,’ Batur concurred. ‘But there is something a hundred times worse. We did not dare approach it closer than half a league. You will not want to do so either. Even Utteric’s men have fled and left him there alone. We spoke with them when we met them on the road. They thought that we still paid allegiance to Utteric so they spoke freely. They are returning to Luxor to place themselves at the mercy of Pharaoh Rameses.’
‘You try my patience, Batur!’ I warned him. ‘If there is no castle, where then has Utteric sequestered himself. Speak up, fellow!’
‘He has taken refuge in a leper colony, my lord.’ He turned in the saddle and pointed back the way he had come from the sea. ‘There, in that tiny village named Ghadaka. He is alone, except for several hundred lepers. None of his men would stay with him. They think that he is now mad. I disagree with them. I believe that Utteric has been crazy since the day of his birth.’ He spoke without a smile.
I was struck dumb. It was probably the first time in my life this had ever happened to me. Without another word I dismounted from my horse and walked away down the slope until I found a convenient rock, which I settled on moodily and looked down on the settlement of Ghadaka. This was a straggle of single-room thatched huts, no more than fifty or sixty in number, spread out at intervals along a half-moon-shaped beach. Nearby the huts I made out a small gathering of human beings who were huddled in a grove of palm trees. It was impossible to tell the men from the women. They were all heavily draped with cloaks that covered their heads and faces completely. They sat as still as corpses.
I was afraid. For the first time I can ever remember I was afraid of death; of that silent and eerie type of dying I saw being played out on the beach below where I sat. I was aware of my divine birth, but now I was uncertain, or rather I was not certain enough to act upon that notion and enter the living death of a colony of lepers.
Suddenly I was aware of the lightly perfumed presence of Serrena sitting beside me and the silken touch of her hand on my forearm.
‘You and I have nothing to fear,’ Serrena said softly. I turned and looked into her eyes. She knew; it was as simple as that. She knew about our divine state, despite all my earnest endeavours to protect her from that knowledge. She knew, and because of that I believed again.
It was enough. I took Serrena by her hand and drew her to her feet. ‘You are not content to leave Utteric’s punishment to the gods?’ I asked her, but she shook her head.
‘You know that I am not content with that. I have sworn an oath to Utteric and to myself.’
‘Then let the two of us go down and make good your oath.’
We went back to where we had left our horses and rode to rejoin the chariots where they waited with the brothers Batur and Nasla.
Early on the morrow, Serrena and I took five chariots laden with food and the staples of life and we drove down the escarpment to the point just above the beach and the sea where a pair of dilapidated gates hung open on their hinges. To one side of them stood a signboard on which was displayed the following dire warning: ‘Go no further, O you who love the gods and the life they have granted you! Beyond this point you will find only sorrow and weeping.’
The charioteers pulled their vehicles over and unloaded their goods in silence and unconcealed trepidation, piling the sacks of grain and dried meats in jumbled disorder on the side of the track. While they worked they cast nervous glances towards the thatched roofs of the village that stood above the beach. As soon as they were done they put the lash to their horses and galloped away up the escarpment to where the brothers were waiting to guide them back to the city of Luxor.
Serrena and I were now alone. We rode on into the village of lepers. Hooded heads with masked faces peered out at us from the doorways of the hovels as we passed. These openings were without doors, and the unpainted clay walls were without windows. Nobody hailed or called after the two of us as we rode on towards the palm grove above the beach. The silence was profound and heavy with despair.
Serrena steered her horse closer to mine until our stirrups were touching, and she murmured just loud enough for me to catch her words, ‘How will we ever find Utteric if he is wearing a hood and mask like all these other inmates?’
‘Don’t worry about us finding him,’ I replied. ‘You and I are the two people whom he hates most in all the world. All we have to do is flaunt ourselves, and he will find us. But be
alert. When he comes he will be fast and we will have almost no warning.’
In the grove we found the same clusters of silent figures we had seen from the heights of the escarpment. They seemed not to have moved or shown any other signs of life, except one or two of the masked heads rotated slightly as they followed our progress through the grove. We stopped at last where their numbers seemed slightly more concentrated; by that I mean they were almost a dozen strong.
‘Who is in charge here?’ I asked in the graveyard tones which seemed appropriate to this setting. The silence that followed my question seemed even heavier than it had been before.
Then suddenly there was a cackle of weird laughter, and one of the hooded figures replied to my question, ‘Hecate, the goddess of the dead, is still fighting with Anubis, the god of the cemeteries, for that honour.’ I was not certain which one had answered me, but he or she raised a few bitter laughs.
‘Do you have anything to eat?’ I tried again.
‘If you are hungry you can eat the same coconut husks I ate last week; they should be partially digested by now!’ one of the faceless creatures called out. This time the laughter was louder and more derisive. Serrena and I waited for it to abate.
‘We have brought you food.’ Serrena stood in the stirrups and her voice carried to everyone in the grove. ‘Smoked pork and dried fish! Loaves of millet and sorghum! As much as you can eat!’
Immediately a deep and bitter silence fell over the grove, broken only when one of the robed figures jumped to her feet and threw back the hood that covered her face. It was a terrible and haunting sight. Her nose and ears had been eaten away by the disease, and so had her upper lip so that her mouth was fixed in a perpetual grin like that of a skull. One of her eyelids was gone while the other was tightly shut. The open eye was vividly bloodshot. The stink of her rotting flesh was wafted to us on the sweet sea breeze. I felt my gorge rise, and I swallowed painfully.
‘You wicked creatures,’ she screeched at us with tears streaming from her lidless eye down her ravaged cheek, ‘coming here as you have to mock our plight. Why speak to us of food when you know there is none? Have you no pity or mercy? What have we ever done to you that you should treat us so?’
Serrena turned to her and her voice throbbed with compassion. ‘I have brought you and all your companions food, I swear it to you in the name of the goddess Artemis! Five cartloads of food await you beside the signboard of welcome to your village. If you are too sick I shall bring it to you and feed it to you with my own hands …’
An exclamation of hunger and hope went up from the throng, laughter mingled with cries of despair or pain as they dragged themselves to their feet and hopped or hobbled towards the gates to seek the miracle that Serrena had promised them.
When they fell Serrena and I came up behind them to lift them to their feet and help them up into the saddle of our horses and carry them on. The first shouts of delight and disbelief rose from the front row of the crowd as they came upon the piles of food.
They fell to their knees and ripped the sacks open with shaking fingers. Those whose fingers had already been eaten away by the disease tore them open with their teeth and stuffed the food into their mouths through tattered and bloody lips.
The outcry was heard in the cottages further from the entrance gates and the inmates were drawn to it instinctively like hiving bees. The weakest of the lepers, those who were far gone with the disease, were knocked off their feet but they tried to crawl on their hands and knees to find a few crumbs of bread. The stronger of them fought each other like dogs for a shred of dried sausage.
Even Serrena and I were separated in the melee: not by very far but nevertheless by too far. So she called to me urgently in the Tenmass, the secret language of the divines, ‘Beware! He is close.’
‘How do you know?’ I called back in the same dialect.
‘I can smell him.’
I have learned not to underestimate Serrena’s sense of smell. It is more acute than that of any hunting hound.
I darted a glance around and saw at once that there were at least four hooded figures close to me in the press of humanity. I had two knives on my person. In a sheath on my right hip I carried my main hunting knife. This was a double-edged weapon with a blade just under a cubit in length. I could reach it with my right hand. Then at the small of my back under my cloak I had a second blade only half that length but I was able to reach it with either hand. However, right at this very moment I was caught in a logjam of humanity – sick and stinking humanity at that – and forced to adopt an inelegant stance that left the narrow area behind my left shoulder unprotected. I struggled to free myself enough to turn and cover my back.
I called again urgently to Serrena in the Tenmass, ‘Is my left shoulder clear?’
‘Drop!’ she called back and there was a tone of urgency in her voice such as I had never heard before. Immediately I let my legs fold under me, and I slid down into the press of churning feet and legs; some of them were covered with long skirts stained with dried blood and pus; others were naked and thick with leprous sores and running ulcers. All of them were shoving and pushing at each other.
Just above my head a human hand was wielding a knife, stabbing and slashing blindly at the space where I had been standing only seconds before. I recognized the hand by the description that Serrena had given me so vividly in the amphitheatre of Luxor when Utteric had been shot down by an arrow, only to arise again from the dead so miraculously. It was a lovely hand, smooth and almost femininely graceful, that belonged to the epitome of evil.
In the awkward position I found myself I was unable to reach either of my own weapons. Utteric’s knife swept past my face and went on to slash open the scabrous naked thigh of one of the others in the throng. Blood spurted from the wound and I heard the victim scream in pain. This seemed to goad Utteric into a frenzy. He hacked and stabbed wildly, wounding another woman.
I reached up as the knife swept over my head and grabbed Utteric’s wrist with my left hand, and as soon as my grip was secure I used my right hand as well to cover his on the handle of the knife. I had him in a wrist lock from which he could not escape. I twisted his wrist back upon itself until I heard the ligaments popping, and Utteric shrieking in agony.
I hoped that this cry would guide Serrena to us; and I twisted harder. He squealed again at an even more gratifying volume. Then abruptly the scream was cut off, and the tension went out of his body and limbs. He legs folded beneath him and, still in my grip, he collapsed on top of me. I rolled him over and I saw the hilt of the blue sword protruding from the small of his back with the ruby in the hilt aglow with celestial fire. It was perfectly placed to penetrate his kidneys and separate his spinal column.
Serrena dropped to her knees beside me. ‘Is it Utteric?’ she demanded. ‘Please, Artemis, let it be the right one we have killed!’
‘There is only one way to be certain,’ I answered her, and I reached out for the leper’s hood that covered his head, and tore it away. Then I rolled him onto his back and in silence we stared at the face of the dying man.
His features could have been noble like those of his brother Rameses, but they were not. They were sly and crafty.
Or they might have been kind and thoughtful like that of his brother, but they were cruel and demented.
I stood and placed my foot on Utteric’s back to hold him still while I withdrew the glittering blue blade from his clinging flesh. Then I reversed my grip on the hilt and offered it to Serrena. ‘Do you want to finish it?’ I asked her; but she shook her head and replied in a whisper:
‘I have had enough bloodshed to last me a long time. You do it for me, Tata darling.’
I stooped and took a handful of the thick dark curls at the back of his head. I lifted his face out of the dust so that I would not damage the blade when I hacked through his neck into the stony earth under him. With my other hand on the hilt I touched the back of his neck lightly with the edge to measure my stroke. So sh
arp was it that the pale skin parted in a thin red line to give me an aiming mark. Then I lifted the blade high and swung down again unhurriedly. It made a soft snicking sound as it parted the vertebrae. Utteric’s corpse flopped into the puddle of his own blood, while I lifted his severed head high and spoke into his face. ‘May you suffer a thousand deaths for every one that you have perpetrated!’
Then I knelt and wrapped the head in the leper’s hood which Utteric had used to conceal himself.
‘What will you do with it?’ Serrena asked as she watched me. ‘Will you burn it or bury it?’
‘I will hang it on the entrance tower of the Garden of Joy alongside that of Doog the Terrible,’ I said, and she smiled again.
‘My Lord Taita, you are simply incorrigible!’
Serrena insisted on staying on at the leper colony of Ghadaka. She recorded the names of every one of the inmates and promised that they would be provided with food and the other essentials of life for as long as they lived. Then she tried to alleviate their suffering by all and every means she could conjure up, and wept for them when they died. Of course she prevailed on me to remain with her.
By the time I could get her agreement to accompany me back into the other world which we had left ten days had passed. Those lepers who were still able to walk accompanied us halfway up the escarpment. They wept and shouted their gratitude to Serrena when at last they were forced to turn back to their pestilent hovels beside the sea.
When we finally reached Luxor one of the first things that Serrena did was to arrange for regular shipments of food and medications to be sent to Ghadaka. All this was despite the other demands on her time and goodwill, such as the preparations for the ascension of herself and Rameses to the thrones and crowns of the realm.
Of course King Hurotas and Queen Tehuti capitulated to the entreaties of Rameses and Serrena to remain in Luxor for the festivities leading up to the coronation. General Hui and his wife Bekatha decided to follow this excellent example. Then the fourteen petty kings headed up by Ber Argolid of Boeotia in Thebes decided that there was no good reason for them to hurry away to their kingdoms, especially as these were now firmly in the grip of winter.