by Cliff Graham
“Nekhbet gets her first feast!” Training Master Horem cried, referring to the vulture goddess.
Soon after, a few men broke ranks and tried to return the way we came, but Horem taunted them. “May you be favored in your cowardly escape! But know that you will not find relief by turning back. The nearest water is ahead, not behind!”
But the desperate men had become delusional and did not hear him. We never saw them again.
“Nekhbet will be too fat for her feathers tonight!” Horem shouted, increasing his pace until he was running around us in circles, singing the battle song of the Scorpions regiment. We hated him bitterly and yet could not help but admire him.
My feet were torn and bloody ribbons now. Every time I put my weight on one of them a hundred daggers stabbed my heel.
And the hours crawled on.
Once I tripped and fell, and they passed over me. For the briefest moment, I am ashamed to admit that I contemplated lying still and letting death embrace me. But I was stopped by Training Master Horem, who came up beside me after everyone had passed and kicked me directly in the kidney. The shocking pain woke me from my stupor.
“You are not done suffering yet, Kenazzite! I will not let you die until you have performed the Kiss of the Scorpion! Yes, that is a much better death for you!”
I was so thirsty and delirious that I couldn’t fathom what he meant by the Kiss of the Scorpion. What fresh terror would that be?
The sun set and we did not slow down. I continued to run into delirium, hallucinating that I was swimming in a cold mountain pond, and that I would get out, shivering, with a tray of cold berries laid out for me, and I would be fed those berries by an attractive woman as my head lay in her lap.
Sand in my eyes. I dug at them. No pond. No cold berries. No attractive woman anywhere in sight.
Men died all around us.
My anger at Training Master Horem was deep, and I believe it was the only thing that kept me alive that night
All that night we ran, until daybreak when Horem let us stop at a well and have a drink. Slowing down even for a moment made me pass out, as did the others, and we were kicked in the face, and punched, and struck with rocks until, bloody and gagging, we stood up again to keep running forward into the endless cursed desert.
The sun rose. The heat grew more intense fast. There seemed to be nothing left of my feet to run on, only bloody stumps of bone.
At some point that next day we arrived back in the camp. Of the original group, only fifteen remained. Everyone else was left in the desert for dead.
We fifteen who still lived were allowed to drink from a bucket of day-old goat’s milk that had already curdled in the heat. But we did not care. It was liquid and it was nourishment, even though we immediately retched it back up.
Training Master Horem walked up and stood above us. His shadow cast over my face, and I looked up to see him grinning wickedly.
“A Red Scorpion must know how to find his way in the desert. There are three pillars of rock out there”—he pointed in the general direction we had just come from—“and you must find them all by tomorrow morning. They are pillars of three different types of rock, so we will know if you are lying by what you bring back. Bring back rocks from all three pillars and we will know that you succeeded. Fail to bring them back by the end of the first watch tomorrow and you will be sent back.”
My weak mind finally let me comprehend this. What about directions? How was it possible to find these pillars if they had no training—?
Wait, I told myself. The others did have training. They had spent three years in the armies and learning many skills. This was simply an extreme test of those skills. I had none of that training, however.
I staggered to my feet as Horem watched me.
“Good fortune to you, Kenazzite,” he sneered.
With no idea as to where I should run, no water and no food, I simply headed into the west.
A high point. Find a high point.
I squinted against the harsh glare and covered my eyes.
A dune rose in the distance. I decided that if I could make it to that dune I could at least get a bearing.
I don’t remember how long it took me. I don’t remember anything about the rest of the day. I only know that I reached the top of the dune after passing out from lack of water several times, and then wandered back into the desert looking for a pile of rocks.
I woke up in the middle of the night, my face buried in the sand. When had I fallen asleep? I sat up and blinked at the stars above. A cool desert breeze passed over my skin, reviving me a bit.
I felt something in my hand and looked down.
A black stone was clenched in my grip.
I had no idea how I had gotten it. Did I reach a pillar and not remember it? When? Where was I?
Something skittered through the sand nearby. I searched for it a moment but saw nothing. How I longed for at least a viper to slither past me so I could kill it and drink its blood.
The skittering sound again, and I turned and saw that it was indeed a viper making its way across the sand nearby.
I gagged as I tried to swallow, my mouth too dry and swollen to allow it. I clenched the black rock in my hand and held it in front of me while I approached the snake.
It seemed to sense me and increased its speed. I fell several times as I chased it. I was making it angrier by the moment, until finally it coiled up, turned, and erupted toward me.
I don’t know what I was thinking pursuing it so closely, for I was lost to delirium by then. I had no time to react to the strike. I only survived it because its fangs struck against the rock I was holding instead of my hand or arm.
Terrified, I cried out, yet all I could think about was getting something to drink. I began seeing the viper as a tube full of water and not a deadly adversary.
I had to defeat it. As it slithered away from me after its strike, I moved in from behind, reaching out to grab it by the tail when I tripped and fell directly on its back.
It snapped up and bit toward me, and this time I knew I was dead. But Yahweh spared me again, as the viper had already emptied its poison sacs after the first strike. It, too, was short of water and could not replace its poison fast enough.
The fangs dug into my forehead. I frantically pulled on the creature, but its curved fangs were hooked into the flesh of my head. I panicked and pulled it so hard that the fangs tore out of my skin.
I kept attacking it, much like the giant, and smashed against its head with the black rock as hard as I could. We were on sand, and I had nothing solid to strike the head against, but I flogged and flailed and then made a solid enough blow with the rock that the snake appeared stunned and rolled over several times.
I raised the rock high, took careful aim, and smashed its head with it. The snake finally went still.
I tore at its scaly hide with the sharp edge of the rock until I saw blood and hungrily sucked at the opening. The warm, rancid blood made me retch and gag, but it was liquid. It was something.
After I sucked all I could out of the snake, I felt sick in my gut, but it had given me enough of a push to try to find my way to the next pillar.
I searched all around me. Everything looked exactly the same. No landmarks. No pillars of rocks. Just an endless desert night.
I positioned myself facing Thuban, the northern star. Finding it, for I knew at least that much of navigation by starlight, I knew if I could walk straight to my right, I would be heading east for the river, wherever it was.
I would find some water, revive myself, and go back out and find the pillars. I staggered onward for hours. I began to panic that I had not reached the river yet. Dawn was coming and then the end of the first watch. If I didn’t have all three stones, I would be sent away. I could not bear the shame.
The sun rose, and I finally reached the plateau above the river. I rushed down the side of it, rolling many times and cutting up my arms and back as I fell. I ran desperately to the river.
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br /> At last I reached it and plunged my head below the surface, caring nothing for crocodiles or anything else that might be there. I took deep drinks, retched them back up, then paced myself with slower sips. I could have swallowed the river, I promise you that.
I was revived immediately and, drinking as much as my stomach could handle, was back on my feet and running for the desert like a drunken man.
I saw and heard no one else. I climbed the bluff over the river and scrambled up the highest dune I could find.
I shielded my eyes and searched the horizon for any sign of a rock pillar.
Nothing.
The sun was rising fast. There was no way that I would make it back before the second watch began.
I was heartbroken. Devastated. I’d had no possible way to succeed in joining the Red Scorpions. It was designed to fail for people like me, who had never even been taught the basics of navigation on land.
I was surprised at how bitter I felt. That moment of glory in the market where I had killed the Canaanite giant had infected me more deeply than I realized. I wanted that praise, craved that attention. It fed me as a young man. It was the very air around me. I did not know at the time how dangerous and flighty a mistress it could be.
No, at the time I was furious with myself. I had no choice but to simply return to the camp and get my gear. Lord Akan would be upset that I had failed, but I did not care anymore. No one would be more upset than I.
I trudged back to the camp. Now that I was near the river again I knew exactly where I was. Soon the pyramids loomed ahead, taunting me with their white sparkling beauty.
I walked into the camp and to the tent of the Red Scorpions. Inside, I found Training Master Horem and several other instructors.
“Do you have your stones?” Horem asked me.
I shook my head and held out the black one. “I only found one. I will go and get my things and be gone.”
Horem stared at the rock in my hand. So did the other instructors. Their expressions became outright shock.
“How did you get that?” Horem asked me, standing.
“I . . . found it out there.”
“Who did you bribe?”
“Bribe? What do you mean?”
Horem turned to the others. “Is that one of the stones?”
One of them picked it up and studied it.
“Polished. Cut like an arrowhead. The pillar is believed to be covered in the sands of the centuries. Only the help of a god could have brought it here. It cannot be found without the help of the gods.”
Horem studied me carefully. “In all of my years of selection for the Red Scorpions, no one has ever found the black pillar. No one.”
I was utterly confused. “But you said there were three pillars we had to find—.”
“The other two pillars do not exist. We send everyone on a fool’s mission just to see who quits. Only the black one is out there, and . . .” His jaw clenched. “And it is said that whoever finds a stone from it is favored by the gods.”
Of all the stunned people in that tent, none was more stunned than I. I searched my mind for any memory of finding the pillar. I remembered nothing, of course. Only the thirst and heat and the wandering among the eternal shape-shifting dunes.
I put the black stone down on the table in front of them. “So then I pass this challenge? Where are the others?”
“All of them failed like you were supposed to, but they gave up hours ago. They are by the well, waiting for the next selection.”
Training Master Horem handled the stone a moment himself. He handed it to one of the other men.
“Take this to the generals. They will want to know about it and consult the priests.” He looked back at me, his expression once again stern and angry. “Get back outside with the others. I will be out for the next challenge.”
7
Kiss of the Scorpion
Over the next forty days, we knew only suffering. We ran endless distances. We carried things until our arms nearly fell off. We were thirsty. We slept nights under the stars with no shelters—even when the khamsin blew through, its wall of sand and darkness and wind obliterating everything in sight. Training Master Horem stalked me like a devil after the black stone incident. But he was hard on everyone, not just me.
I will not bore you with the rest of it. Our armies have done the same, more or less. I have trained them much like the Egyptians trained me.
There were two more experiences that I will tell you about before I made it to the end. They taught me much about myself. About my ability to endure, to handle fear and pain, and therefore the lessons that I apply to our own troops as we conquer our promised land.
About halfway through the forty days, I found myself in the ranks at full attention near the chariot pitch. There was a tent canvas fully stretched out on the ground in front of us. We were standing around it, waiting for the training masters to appear.
Training Master Horem emerged from his tent and walked to the edge of the canvas.
“This is the Kiss of the Scorpion,” he said, as easily as if he were telling us it might rain later. We looked at him, then at the canvas. There was nothing there. I laughed to myself.
Training Master Horem heard me laugh and walked over to me. He leaned in and touched his forehead to mine. I stared straight ahead and did not move.
“Caleb will be our first volunteer,” he said, leaning against me as he shouted loud enough for all to hear. “We will see if he is indeed favored by the gods.”
I had not been able to lose that hated title. The others used it to mock me, none more gleefully than Training Master Horem. They were convinced I had cheated somehow.
He stepped back and gestured for me to walk into the middle of the canvas.
I stepped cautiously onto the canvas and walked to the middle. Everything about this experience was warning me that danger was extreme and imminent, but the scene could not have looked more tame and unassuming.
I crouched into a fighting stance and waited for whatever was going to happen. My short sword was up and poised. Were they going to attack me all at once? I looked at the line of faces around the canvas, some of them my fellow recruits, some of them training masters, and above them all on his platform like an enthroned god himself, Training Master Horem stood with his arms crossed.
At one edge of the canvas the group parted. Two men carrying a wide brass basin walked forward.
They turned the brass basin over on its side and dumped out the contents. I squinted to see what it was . . . and then felt my insides grow cold with dread.
Hundreds and hundreds of scorpions, that fiend of the desert, crawled over each other in a pile. Immediately the training masters took hold of the edge of the canvas and pulled it up, then jerked it down quickly, snapping the cloth and sending the entire mass of scorpions flying toward me. I turned and tried to run out of the way, but all of the men were lifting their end and I found myself facing a slope of canvas all around me that I could not climb. I slid backward—right into the middle of the canvas where the scorpions awaited me.
Hold still, I begged myself. Hold still.
It did no good. Their tails reared up and lashed out at me, and I felt a dozens stings on my legs and torso. One stung my forehead before I could stand.
Rivers of pain. Oceans of it.
Their poison flooded into my blood and I knew I was a dead man, but I did not care because death was far preferable to this pain.
More stings.
I somehow got to my feet. My mind was dim.
The sword. I still had it.
I plunged the tip down into the canvas and ripped a hole in the bottom while the men continued shaking the edge of it, bouncing the scorpions all around me.
I could feel myself blacking out. I knelt and crawled through the hole I’d cut, swatting away scorpions with my hand. I crawled under the canvas handbreadth by handbreadth. My eyes were now swollen shut, my throat constricting.
Without seeing it, onl
y feeling it, hands finally grabbed me and pulled me up.
My breath rattled and wheezed. It felt as though my lungs were being crushed. The stings were like smelting rods from the furnace that had been shoved under my skin.
I heard someone saying, “. . . has more of them on him! Get them off—”
I felt a splash of water hit me, then another. Someone was throwing it on me.
I felt rough bristles of some kind of brush scraping against my torso and face. My eyes were still too swollen shut to see anything. A burning hot oil of some kind splashed down my head onto my shoulders. The pain was so intense that I finally had to kneel down.
Then I passed out.
I remember dreaming. It had to be the scorpions’ poison, but it was a dark nightmare that I began having in those years, and it was always the same. I have had it from time to time ever since, but I understand it differently now.
In the dream, there is a blood-red sunset in the west. I am walking into a lagoon of the Nile. The water is perfectly calm and warm. I make no ripples as I submerge, still walking forward, the liquid covering my ears.
I hear the underwater sounds of reeds swaying. Hippos shuffling through mud. Crocodiles splashing as they enter to hunt. I continue walking.
Deeper underwater I go. I do not feel the need to breathe. No, air is meaningless down here. Only darkness matters.
The water grows colder. Something massive passes nearby, but I do not see what it is, only feel the current ripple in the black.
There is no light anymore. I move forward willingly.
Soon I am standing on the bow of a boat. It is built with black wood and is draped in black linen. But the boat is underwater, like I have been, and not on the surface where it should be.
Why? I do not even think about it. I only stare ahead as we plunge the depths, the dark ship passing through darker waters.
Into the night we go, and I begin to see strange things. The water turns a deep red around me, it smells foul and I wince at it, suddenly realizing that I am underwater and feeling the urge to gag and gasp for breath and claw my way to the surface. What is the red water?