Warlock: A Novel of Ancient Egypt (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  “Did Taita know it was here?” Mintaka asked.

  “How could he have known?” Nefer replied.

  “You told me once that he knows everything.” And Nefer was silenced. He looked back to cover his uncertainty, and saw the dust of the pursuit close behind, rising to mingle with the yellow glare of the sunless sky.

  “It matters not at all. How can it avail us?” he asked. “We might be able to defend those rocks for a very little while, but there are hundreds of Trok’s men. This is almost the end.” He touched the waterskin that hung from the rail beside him. It was almost empty, not even enough left to keep the horses alive for another day.

  “We must trust Taita,” Mintaka said, and he laughed bitterly.

  “It seems the gods have deserted us. Who else is there to trust but Taita?”

  They went forward, with the horses down to a hampered walk. Behind them they heard the faint sounds of the pursuit: the cries of the captains urging their troopers to keep the line, the jingle of loose equipment and the groan and whine of dry wheel hubs.

  At last they came up under the hill of black- and ochre-colored rock. It was a hundred feet high and the accumulated heat radiated from it like a bonfire. Not a single plant had found a foothold on it, but the wind had carved fissures and cracks in its cliffs.

  “Drive the chariots close in against the cliff,” Taita ordered, and they obeyed. “Now free the horses and bring them this way.” Taita set the example by leading his own team around the angle of the rock face. Here there was a deep fissure with sheer sides cutting into the rock pile.

  “This way.” He led them as far as they could go along the sandy floor of the deep, vertical crack. “Now make the horses lie down.”

  All cavalry horses were trained to perform this trick. At the urging of their handlers they lowered themselves to their knees and then, grunting and blowing, they went flat on their sides on the floor of the fissure.

  “Like this!” Taita told them. He had brought a bedding roll from the chariot. With strips torn from it he blindfolded the horses to keep them quiet and submissive. Then he drove a javelin deep into the loose earth and used it as an anchor to tie down the horses’ swathed heads and prevent them from rising again. The others followed his example.

  “Now bring what remains of the water. ’Tis a pity there is not enough to give the horses a last drink, but we will need every drop for ourselves.”

  Almost as if he knew of its existence, Taita led them to a shallow overhang in the cliff. The headroom under the overhang was so low that anyone trying to enter would have to go down on hands and knees.

  “Use the loose scree from the cliff to wall this in.”

  “A zareba wall?” Nefer looked puzzled. “We cannot defend this place. Once we are in the cave we could not even stand, let alone swing a sword.”

  “There is no time to argue.” Taita glared at him. “Do as I tell you.”

  Nefer’s nerves were raw with fear for Mintaka, and he was wearied by the hardships they had lived through these last days. He glared back at Taita. The others watched with interest: the young bull challenging the older one. The seconds drew out until abruptly Nefer realized his own foolishness. Only one person could save them now and he capitulated. He stooped and picked up a large rock from the scree pile and staggered with it to the shallow cave. He placed it in position and ran back for another. The others joined in the work. Even Mintaka carried her share of the rough lumps of schist. The skin of her hands was raw and torn before they had closed in a narrow space behind the wall.

  “What do we do now?” Nefer asked stiffly, still smarting from his encounter with the Magus.

  “Drink,” said Taita.

  Nefer poured from the skin into a leather bucket and handed it to Mintaka. She took a few sips, then offered it to Taita.

  He shook his head. “Drink, and drink deep.”

  When they had all drunk as much as their stomachs would hold, Nefer turned on Taita again. “What now?”

  “Wait here,” Taita ordered and picking up his long staff, he began to climb the jagged side of the hillock.

  “What about this zareba?” Nefer shouted after him. “What purpose is it to serve?”

  Taita paused on a narrow ledge thirty feet above them and looked down. “Your Majesty will know when the time comes.” Taita began to climb again.

  “A hiding-place? A tomb, perhaps?” Nefer called sarcastically after him, but Taita did not answer or look back.

  He climbed without rest or pause until he reached the peak of the hillock. He stood there gazing back in the direction from which Trok would come.

  The little party in the gully at the foot of the hillock watched him, some puzzled, some with hope and one angrily.

  Nefer roused himself. “Fetch the javelins and the rest of the weapons from the chariots. We must be ready to defend ourselves.” He ran to where they had left the chariots. He came back with an armful of javelins, and Meren and Hilto followed behind him similarly laden.

  “What is Taita doing?” he asked Mintaka. She pointed up at the crest.

  “He has not moved.”

  They stacked the weapons, then settled down at the entrance to the rough shelter. All their eyes went up to Taita again.

  He was outlined against that dreadful sulfur sky. Nobody spoke, nobody moved, until they heard that dreaded sound again. They turned their heads to listen to the faint rattle and squeal of chariot wheels, hundreds of them, the voices of men, sometimes muffled by the dunes, at others clear and menacing.

  Slowly Taita raised both arms and pointed them to the sky. All their eyes followed the movement. In his right hand he held his staff, in the left the Periapt of Lostris, and at his throat he wore the gift of Bay.

  “What is he doing now?” Hilto asked, in an awed tone. Nobody answered him.

  Taita stood as still as if he had been chiseled out of the living rock. His head was thrown back, his hair fluffed out silver on his shoulders. His robes were belted up, so that his thin shanks were exposed. He looked like an old bird at roost.

  The heavens swirled with low, heavy cloud. The light was transient, fading as the hidden sun was covered more heavily, flaring as the clouds thinned and fumed.

  Still Taita did not move, his staff aimed at the pregnant belly of the heavens. The sound of the approaching column became clearer still, and suddenly there was a distant blare of a ram’s horn trumpet.

  “That is the battle call. Trok has seen Taita,” Mintaka said quietly.

  Trok shouted at his trumpeter, “Sound the advance!” but the warlike sound seemed to be swallowed up by the empty desert and the low, angry heavens.

  “Wait!” said Ishtar the Mede. He was watching Taita’s tiny figure on the peak of the rock hill. “Wait!”

  “What is it?” Trok demanded.

  “As yet I cannot fathom it,” Ishtar said, without taking his gaze off the Warlock, “but it is pervasive and powerful.”

  The column remained halted, every man in it staring at the figure on the peak with awe. A terrible silence fell on the desert. There was no sound at all. Even the horses were still—there was no rattle or jingle of equipment.

  Only the sky moved. It formed a whirlpool over the head of the Magus, a great turning wheel of smoldering cloud. Then slowly the center of the whirlpool opened like the single eye of an awakening monster. From the heavenly eye a shaft of dazzling sunlight burst forth.

  “The eye of Horus!” Ishtar breathed. “He has called up the god.” He made a sign of protection, and at his side Trok was silent and rigid with superstitious dread.

  The brilliant shaft of light struck the peak, and lit the figure of the Warlock like a bolt of blinding lightning. Around his head it spun a nimbus of silver radiance.

  He made a slow circular pass with his long staff, and the Hyksosian charioteers cringed like curs under the whip. The clouds opened wider, and the sky was clear. The sunlight danced on the dunes and was reflected like a sheet of polished bronze into the
ir eyes, dazzling and blinding them. They lifted their shields or their hands to protect their eyes from the strange radiance, but they made no sound.

  On the peak Taita described another deliberate circle with his staff, and there was a sound at last: soft as a lover’s sigh, it seemed to issue from the very heavens. Men’s heads turned questioningly as they sought the source.

  Once again Taita gestured and the sigh became a soughing, a gentle whistling. It came from the east, and slowly all their heads turned toward it.

  Out of that strange, cloudless brilliance, they saw it coming. It was a solid dun wall that reached from the earth to the highest heavens.

  “Khamsin!” Trok whispered the dread word.

  The wall of airborne sand marched toward them with a terrible deliberation. It undulated and pulsed like a living creature, and its voice changed. No longer a whisper, it became a rising howl, the voice of a demon.

  “Khamsin!” The word was yelled from chariot to chariot. They were no longer warriors hot for war, but small terrified creatures in the face of this destroyer of men, cities and civilizations, this eater of worlds.

  The column of chariots lost its formation and broke up into fragments as the drivers wheeled their teams and tried to run from the danger.

  As soon as they left the narrow path of harder ground the sand sucked down their wheels. Men leaped from the cockpits and abandoned their vehicles, leaving the horses in the traces. Instinctively the horses sensed the menace and reared and screamed, trying to escape by kicking themselves free of the traces.

  The khamsin bore down upon them inexorably. Its voice changed from a howl to a bellow. Men ran before it in mindless panic. They slipped and fell in the loose sand, dragged themselves up and ran on. They looked back and saw the great storm come on apace roaring like a crazed monster, rolling and roiling upon itself, twisting curtains of sand, brazen where the sunlight struck them, dun and somber where their own mountainous heights shaded them.

  Taita stood with his arms and staff outstretched and watched the army below him engulfed. He saw Trok and Ishtar still frozen like a pair of statues in the sunlight, and then, as the front of the storm reached them, they were gone with magical swiftness, they and all their men, chariots and horses, gone in the rolling billows of the khamsin.

  Taita lowered his arms, turned his back on the monster and, without haste, started down the hillock. His long legs spanned the difficult places and he leaned upon his staff as he stepped from ledge to ledge.

  Nefer and Mintaka were standing hand in hand at the base of the cliff. They welcomed him with a bemused expression, and Mintaka’s tone was subdued and incredulous as she asked, “You called up the storm?”

  “It has been brewing all these last days,” Taita said, his face neutral and his tone equivocal. “You have all remarked the heat and the dolorous yellow mists.”

  “No,” said Nefer. “It was not in nature. It was you. You knew and understood all along. You called it up. And I doubted you.”

  “Go into the shelter now,” said Taita. “It is almost upon us.” His voice was lost in the shrieking cacophony of the khamsin. Mintaka led the way, crawling into the low, narrow cave through the opening in the rude wall. The others followed her, crowding into the tiny space. Before he entered, Hilto handed in the almost empty waterskins.

  In the end, only Taita stood outside the shelter. Almost as though the storm was his creature, his face was intent as it loomed over him. It struck with a force that made the living rock around them seem to quiver and vibrate and Taita was gone, his tall figure obliterated. The first gust lasted only a few seconds, but when it passed Taita was still there, unmoved and serene. The storm gathered itself bellowing, like a berserk monster, and as it hurled down on them in all its terrible majesty Taita stooped through the opening and sat with his back to the inner wall.

  “Close it up,” he said, and Meren and Hilto blocked the entrance with the rocks they had placed at hand.

  “Cover your heads,” said Taita, and wound his headcloth over his face. “Keep your eyes closed, or you will lose your sight. Breathe carefully through your mouth or you will drown in sand.”

  The storm was so overwhelming that its first front picked up Trok’s chariot and rolled it over with the horses screaming as the lashing shaft broke their backs.

  Trok was thrown free. He fought his way to his feet, but the storm struck him down again. He managed to pull himself up, using all his brute strength, but he had lost all sense of direction. When he tried to open his eyes he was blinded by sand. He did not know in which direction he was facing, or where he should try to escape. The storm was swirling upon itself so that it seemed to be coming from every direction at once. He dared not open his eyes again. The khamsin ripped at his face, and its harsh rush abraded the skin from his cheeks and lips until he covered them with his headcloth.

  In the turmoil of sand and wind Trok screamed, “Save me! Save me, Ishtar, and I will reward you beyond your greediest dreams.”

  It seemed impossible that anyone could have heard his cry in the deafening uproar. Then he felt Ishtar seize his hand and squeeze it hard to caution Trok to hold fast.

  They stumbled on, at times sinking to the knees in the sand, which ran like water. Trok tripped over an obstacle and lost contact with Ishtar. When he groped for him in panic he touched the object that had tripped him, and realized that it was one of the abandoned chariots lying on its side.

  He screamed for Ishtar, staggering in a circle, and Ishtar’s hand grabbed his beard and led him on. He was scorched by sand, blinded by sand, drowning in sand.

  He fell to his knees and Ishtar hauled him up again, ripping out a handful of his beard. He tried to speak, but when he opened his mouth the sand rushed in and he choked. He knew he was dying, that no man could survive this terrible thing that had them in its grip.

  It seemed endless, their tormented journey to nowhere. Then, abruptly, he felt the force of the wind diminish. For a minute he thought that the storm had already passed them by, but the roar had not abated—to the contrary, it seemed still to be rising. They staggered onward, reeling and bumping into each other like two drunkards trying to lead each other home from the tavern. Still the wind-force dropped. In a vague and confused way Trok thought that somehow Ishtar had worked a spell to shield them, but then a sudden gust almost lifted him off his feet and broke the grip that Ishtar had on his beard. He crashed into a wall of rock with such force that he felt his collar-bone break.

  He dropped to his knees and clung to the rock, like a child to its mother’s breast. How Ishtar had brought them to it he neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was that the cliff above them was breaking the full force of the storm. He felt Ishtar kneel at his side and pull up his tunic until it covered his head. Then Ishtar pushed him down flat in the shelter of the cliff and lay down beside him.

  In the tiny cave Nefer crawled close to Mintaka and took her in his arms. He tried to speak to her, to comfort and encourage her, but both their heads were swathed with cloth, and the wind drowned out all sound. She laid her head on his shoulder and they clung to each other. They were entombed in the roaring darkness, dumb and blinded and half suffocated. Each hot breath they drew had to be strained through cloth and taken only a sip at a time to prevent a rush of talcum-fine sand passing between their lips.

  After a while the roar of the wind deafened them and dulled all their other senses. It went on and on, without ceasing or relenting. They had no way to judge the passage of time, except the tiniest awareness of light and darkness through their closed eyelids. To mark the arrival of the day there was a faint rosy aura; when night fell it faded into utter darkness. Nefer had never known such complete and endless dark. If it had not been for Mintaka’s body pressed close to his, he thought that he would have gone mad.

  Every once in a long while she stirred against him and answered the pressure of his arms with her own. He might have slept, but there were no dreams, just the roaring of the khamsin and t
he darkness.

  After another long while he tried to move his legs, but he could not. In a blind panic he thought he had lost control of his body. That he was weak and dying. He tried again with all his strength, and managed to move his foot and toes. Then he knew that he was entrapped by the sand that was filtering into their shelter through the chinks in the zareba wall. It had already piled up as high as his waist. They were slowly being buried alive. The thought of that insidious death filled him with terror. With his bare hands he scraped away enough sand to be able to move his legs, then did the same for Mintaka.

  He felt the others working at the same task in the crowded cave, trying to fight back the sand, but it trickled in like water. It was deposited on them from the dense clouds of swirling dust.

  And the storm raged on.

  For two days and three nights the wind never relented. During this time Nefer managed to keep back the sand just enough to move his head and his arms, but his lower body was encased solidly. He could not begin to dig himself out, for there was nowhere to which he could move the sand.

  He reached up one hand and touched the stone roof inches above his head. He ran his fingers across it, and realized it was slightly domed. Their heads were in this small space, but the sand had sealed off the cave entrance so that no more sand could penetrate. But he could still hear the storm bellow endlessly.

  He waited. At times he felt Mintaka sobbing quietly beside him and tried to comfort her with a gentle pressure of his arms. The air trapped with them in the tiny head space became fetid and stale. He thought that soon it would no longer keep them alive, but some fresh air must have been filtering through the sand, for although each breath was a struggle they were still alive.

  They drank most of the water that remained in the waterskins, leaving only a tiny amount in the bottom. Then the thirst came. Even though they were unable to move their bodies to use up moisture, the hot dry sand and air sucked it out of them. Nefer felt his tongue slowly cleave to the roof of his mouth. Then it began to swell so his breathing, already difficult, became almost impossible because of the huge spongy thing that filled his mouth.