by Wilbur Smith
“Will there be fledglings in the nest?”
“Yes,” said Taita. “The falcons have bred. The young are almost ready for flight. We will find your bird there.” Silently he told himself, Or the god will reveal other mysteries to us.
In the darkness before dawn they loaded the waterskins and the saddlebags onto the horses, then swung up bareback behind them. Taita led the way, skirting the cliff face and taking the easy route up the hills. By the time the sun was above the horizon they had left Gebel Nagara far below them. When Nefer looked ahead he started with surprise: there ahead of them was the faint outline of the mountain, blue against the blue of the horizon, still so far off that it seemed insubstantial and ethereal, a thing of mist and air rather than of earth and rock. The sensation that he had seen it before overcame Nefer, and for a while he was at a loss to explain it to himself. Then it came rushing back and he said, “That mountain.” He pointed it out. “That is where we are going, is it not, Tata?” He spoke with such assurance that Taita looked back at him.
“How do you know?”
“I dreamed it last night,” Nefer replied.
Taita turned away so that the boy would not see his expression. At last the eyes of his mind are opening like a desert bloom in the dawn. He is learning to peer through the dark curtain that hides the future from us. He felt a deep sense of achievement. Praise the hundred names of Horus, it has not been in vain.
“That is where we are going, I know it is,” Nefer repeated, with utmost certainty.
“Yes,” Taita agreed at last. “We are going to Bir Umm Masara.”
Before the hottest part of the day, Taita led them to where a clump of ragged acacia thorn trees grew in a deep ravine, their roots drawing up water from some deep source far below the surface. When they had unloaded the horses and watered them, Nefer cast around the grove and within minutes had discovered sign of others who had passed this way. Excitedly, he called Taita over and showed him the wheel-marks left by a small division of chariots, ten vehicles by his reckoning, the ashes of the cooking fire and the flattened earth where men had lain down to sleep with the horses tethered to the acacia trunks nearby.
“Hyksos?” he hazarded anxiously, for the dung of the horses in their lines was very fresh, not more than a few days old—it was dry on the outside, but still damp when he broke open a lump.
“Ours.” Taita had recognized the tracks of the chariots. After all, he had made the first designs of these spoked wheels many decades before. He stooped suddenly and picked up a tiny bronze rosette ornament that had fallen from a dashboard and was half buried in the loose earth. “One of our light cavalry divisions, probably from the Phat regiment. Part of Lord Naja’s command.”
“What are they doing out here, so far from the lines?” Nefer asked, puzzled, but Taita shrugged and turned away to cover his unease.
The old man cut short their period of rest and they went on while the sun was still high. Slowly the outline of Bir Umm Masara hardened and seemed to fill half of the sky ahead of them. Gradually they could make out the etching and scarification of gorge, bluff and cliff. As they reached the crest of the first line of foothills, Taita checked his horse and looked back. Distant movement caught his attention, and he held up his hand to shade his eyes. He could see a tiny feather of pale dust many leagues out in the desert below. He watched it for a while and saw that it was moving eastward, toward the Red Sea. It might have been thrown up by a herd of moving oryx, or by a column of fighting chariots. He did not remark on it to Nefer, who was so intent on the hunt for the royal falcon that he could not tear his eyes from the silhouette of the mountain ahead. Taita thumped his heels into the flanks of his horse and moved up beside the boy.
That night, when they camped halfway up the slope of Bir Umm Masara, Taita said quietly, “We will make no fire this night.”
“But it’s so cold,” Nefer protested.
“And we are so exposed here that a fire could be seen for ten leagues across the desert.”
“Are there enemies out there?” Nefer’s expression changed, and he gazed down over the darkening landscape with trepidation. “Bandits? Raiding Bedouin?”
“There are always enemies,” Taita told him. “Better cold than dead.”
After midnight when the icy wind woke Nefer, and his colt, Stargazer, stamped and whinnied, he rolled out of his sheepskin blanket and went to calm him. He found Taita already awake, sitting a little apart.
“Look!” he ordered, and pointed down onto the lowland. There was a distant glimmer and flicker of light. “A campfire,” Taita said.
“They might be one of our own divisions. Those who made the tracks we saw yesterday.”
“They might indeed,” agreed Taita. “But then again, they might be somebody else.”
After a long, thoughtful pause Nefer said, “I have slept enough. It’s too cold, anyway. We should mount again and move on. We don’t want the dawn to catch us here on the bare shoulder of the mountain.”
They loaded the horses and in the moonlight found a rough path made by wild goats that led them round the eastern shoulder of Bir Umm Masara, so that when the light began to strengthen they were already out of sight of any watchers in the distant encampment.
The chariot of Ammon Ra, the sun god, burst furiously out of the east, and the mountain was suffused with golden light. The gorges were dark with shadow, made more somber by the contrast, and far below the wilderness was vast and grand.
Nefer threw back his head, shouted with joy, “Look! Oh, look!” and pointed up past the rock peak. Taita followed his gaze and saw the two dark specks, turning in a wide circle against the heavens. The sunlight caught one, so that it glowed for a second like a shooting star.
“Royal falcons.” Taita smiled. “A mating pair.”
They unloaded the horses and found a vantage-point from which they were able to watch the circling birds. Even at this distance they were regal and beautiful beyond Nefer’s ability to express it. Then suddenly one of the birds, the smaller male, the tiercel, broke the pattern of flight, and angled up against the wind, his leisurely wingbeats taking on a sudden ferocity.
“He has discovered,” Nefer shouted, with the excitement and joy of the true falconer. “Watch him now.”
When it began the stoop was so swift that to have taken the eye off it for even a moment would have meant missing the kill. The tiercel dropped down the sky like a thrown javelin. A single pigeon was coasting unsuspectingly near the base of the cliff. Nefer recognized the moment when the plump bird became suddenly aware of the danger, and tried to avoid the falcon. It turned so violently toward the safety of the rock face that it rolled over onto its back in full and frantic flight. For an instant its belly was exposed. The tiercel tore into it with both sets of talons, and the big bird seemed to dissolve in a burst of puce and blue smoke. The feathers drifted away in a long cloud on the morning wind and the falcon bound on, locking his talons deep into his prey’s belly, and plunged with it into the gorge. The killer and his victim hit the rocky scree slope only a short distance from where Nefer stood. The heavy thud of their fall echoed off the cliff and resounded down the gorge.
By this time Nefer was dancing with excitement, and even Taita, who had always been a lover of the hunting hawks, gave voice to his pleasure.
“Bak-her!” he cried, as the falcon completed the ritual of the kill with the mantling: he spread his magnificently patterned wings over the dead pigeon, covering it and proclaiming the kill as his own.
The female falcon came down to join him in a series of graceful spirals and landed on the rock beside her mate. He folded away his wings to let her share the kill, and between them they dismembered and devoured the carcass of the pigeon, ripping into it with their razor-sharp beaks and pausing between each stroke to lift their heads and glare at Nefer, with those ferocious yellow eyes, while they gulped down the bloody fragments of flesh and bone and feathers. They were fully aware of the presence of the men and horses, but toler
ated them as long as they kept their distance.
Then, when all that was left of the pigeon was a blood spot on the rock and a few drifting feathers, and the usually sleek bellies of the falcons were crammed with food, the pair launched into flight again. Wings flogging now to carry them, they rose up the sheer cliff face.
“Follow them!” Taita hitched up his kilt and scampered over the treacherous footing of the scree slope. “Don’t lose them.”
Nefer was faster and more agile, and he kept the rising birds in sight as he raced along the shoulder of the mountain beneath them. Below the peak the mountain was split into twin needles, mighty pinnacles of dark stone, terrifying even from below. They watched the falcons rise up this mighty natural monument, until Nefer realized where they were headed. Where the rock overhung, halfway up the eastern tower, there was a V-shaped cleft in the stone face. Stuffed into it was a platform of dried branches and twigs.
“The nest!” Nefer shrieked. “There is the nest!”
They stood together, heads thrown back, watching the falcons alight, one after the other, on the edge of the nest, and begin to heave and strain to regurgitate the pigeon flesh from their crops. Another faint sound came to Nefer on the wind that soughed along the cliff face: a chorus of importunate cries from the young birds demanding to be fed. From this angle he and Taita could not glimpse the falcon chicks, and Nefer was hopping with frustration. “If we climb the western peak, there,” he pointed, “we should be able to look down into the nest.”
“Help me with the horses first,” Taita ordered, and they hobbled them, and left them to graze on sparse clumps of mountain grass nurtured by the dews carried by the breeze from the distant Red Sea.
The climb up the western peak took the rest of the morning, but even though Taita had unerringly picked out the easiest route around the far side of the peak, in places the drop beneath them made Nefer draw in his breath sharply, and look away. They came out at last onto a narrow ledge just below the summit. They crouched there for a while to compose themselves, and to stare out at the grandeur of land and distant sea. It seemed that the whole of creation was spread beneath them, and the wind moaned around them, tugging at the folds of Nefer’s kilt and ruffling his curls.
“Where is the nest?” he asked. Even in this lofty and precarious place, high above the world, his mind was fixed on one thing only.
“Come!” Taita rose and shuffled sideways along the ledge with the toes of his sandals overhanging the drop. They made their way round the angle and slowly the eastern peak came into view. They looked across to the vertical rock face only a hundred cubits away, but separated from them by such an abyss that Nefer swayed with vertigo.
On this side of the gulf they were slightly higher than the nest, and could look down upon it. The female falcon was perched on the edge, obscuring its contents. She turned her head and stared implacably at them as they rounded the shoulder of the peak. She raised the feathers along her back, as an angry lion lifts his mane in threat. Then she let out a wild cry and launched herself out over the drop, to hang almost motionless on the wind, watching them intently. She was so close that every feather in her wings was clearly revealed.
Her movement had exposed the interior of the cleft that contained the nest. A pair of young birds was crouched in the cup of twigs and branches lined with feathers and the wool of wild goats. They were fully fledged already, and almost as large as their mother. As Nefer stared across at them in awe, one raised himself and spread his wings wide, then beat them fiercely.
“He is beautiful.” Nefer groaned with longing. “The most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
“He practices for the moment of flight,” Taita warned him softly. “See how strong he has grown. Within days he will be gone.”
“I will climb for them this very day,” Nefer vowed, and made as if to go back along the ledge, but Taita stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“It is not something to enter into lightly. We must spend a little precious time in planning it carefully. Come, sit beside me.”
As Nefer leaned against his shoulder Taita pointed out the features of the rock opposite them. “Below the nest the rock is smooth as glass. For fifty cubits sheer there is no handhold, no ledge on which to place a foot.”
Nefer tore his eyes from the young bird and peered down. His stomach churned, but he forced himself to ignore it. It was as Taita had said: not even one of the rock hyrax, those furry, sure-footed rabbit-like creatures that made these lofty places their home, could have found a footing on that pitch of vertical rock. “How can I get to the nest, Tata? I want those chicks—I want them so.”
“Look above the nest.” Taita pointed across. “See how the cleft continues upward, to the very top of the cliff.”
Nefer nodded—he could not speak as he stared at the perilous road Taita was showing him.
“We will find a way to reach the summit above the nest. We will take up the harness ropes with us. From the top I will lower you down the crack. If you wedge your bare feet and bunched fists sideways into the opening they will hold you, and I will steady you with the rope.”
Still Nefer could not speak. He felt nauseated by what Taita had suggested. Surely no living person could make that climb and survive. Taita understood what he was feeling and did not insist on a reply.
“I think…” Hesitantly Nefer started to refuse, then fell silent and stared at the pair of young birds in the nest. He knew that this was his destiny. One of them was his godbird, and this was the only way to achieve the crown of his fathers. To turn away now was to deny everything for which the gods had chosen him. He must go.
Taita sensed the moment when the boy beside him accepted the task and thus became a man. He rejoiced deep in his heart, for this also was his destiny.
“I will make the attempt,” Nefer said simply, and rose to his feet. “Let us go down and prepare ourselves.”
The next morning they left their rudimentary camp and started upward while it was still dark. Somehow Taita was able to place his feet on a path that even Nefer’s young eyes could not discern. Each of them carried a heavy coil of rope, plaited from linen and horsehair and used to tether the horses. They had also brought one of the small waterskins: Taita had warned that it would be hot on the pinnacle once the sun reached its height.
By the time they had worked their way round to the far side of the eastern pinnacle the light had strengthened and they could see the face above them. Taita spent an hour surveying the route up it. At last he was satisfied. “In the name of great Horus, the all-powerful, let us begin,” he said, and made the sign of the god’s wounded eye. Then he led Nefer back to the point he had chosen from which to begin the ascent.
“I will lead the way,” he told the boy, as he knotted one end of the rope around his waist. “Pay out the rope as I go. Watch what I do, and when I call you, tie it to yourself and follow me. If you slip I will hold you.”
At first Nefer climbed cautiously, following the route that Taita had taken, his expression set and his knuckles white with tension as he fastened on each hold. Taita murmured encouragement from above, and the boy’s confidence grew with each move upward. He reached Taita’s side and grinned at him. “That was easy.”
“It will grow harder,” Taita assured him dryly, and led up the next pitch of rock. This time Nefer was scampering behind him like a monkey, chattering with excitement and enjoyment. They stood below a chimney in the rock face that tapered near the top into a narrow crack.
“This is like the climb you will have to make down to the nest when we reach the top. Watch how I wedge my hands and feet into the crack.” Taita stepped up into the chimney and went up slowly but without pause. When the chimney narrowed he kept on steadily, like a man climbing a ladder. His kilt flapped about his skinny old legs, and Nefer could see up under the linen to the grotesque scar where his manhood had been cut away. Nefer had seen it before, and grown so accustomed to it that the terrible mutilation no longer appalled h
im.
Taita called to him from above, and this time Nefer danced up the rock, falling naturally into the rhythm of the ascent.
Why should it not be so? Taita tried to keep his pride within reasonable bounds. In his veins runs the blood of warriors and great athletes. Then he smiled and his eyes sparkled as though he were young again. And he has had me to teach him—of course he excels.
The sun was only halfway up the sky when at last they stood together on the summit of the eastern peak. “We will rest awhile here.” Taita took the waterskin from his shoulder and sank down.
“I am not tired, Tata.”
“Nevertheless, we will rest.” Taita passed him the skin and watched as he gulped down a dozen mouthfuls. “The descent to the nest will be more difficult,” he said, when Nefer stopped for breath. “There will be nobody to show you the way, and there is one place where you cannot see your feet when the rock leans away from you.”
“I will be all right, Tata.”
“If the gods allow,” Taita agreed, and turned away his head as if to admire the glory of mountain, sea and desert spread below them but in fact so that the boy would not see his lips move as he prayed. “Spread your wings over him, mighty Horus, for this is the one you have chosen. Cherish him, my mistress Lostris, who has become a goddess, for this is the fruit of your womb and the blood of your blood. Turn your hand from him, foul Seth, and touch him not, for you cannot prevail against those who protect this child.” He sighed as he reconsidered the wisdom of challenging the god of darkness and chaos, then softened his admonition with a small bribe: “Pass him by, good Seth, and I will sacrifice an ox to you in your temple at Abydos when next I pass that way.”
He stood up. “It is time to make the attempt.”
He led the way across the summit and stood on the far lip, looking down at the campsite and the grazing horses, which were rendered tiny as new-born mice by the drop. The female falcon was in flight, circling out over the gorge. He thought there was something unusual in her behavior, particularly when she uttered a strange, forlorn cry, such as he had never before heard from a royal falcon. There was no sign of her mate, though he searched the heavens for him.