by Wilbur Smith
He stood up quickly and started toward them. Instantly Mintaka tried to jump to her feet, but he kicked her down again. “None of that, you bitch,” he croaked, and seized a handful of her thick sand-drenched hair. He dragged her after him through the sand until he could reach the waterskin. Then he had to drop her. He placed one huge sandalled foot on her back again, reached for the waterskin and held it between his knees while he unfastened the wooden stopper. He lifted the nozzle to his lips and let the warm, brackish liquid flow down his throat.
Although she was face down in the sand Mintaka realized that Trok was engrossed in his craving for water. She must act before he had satisfied it and turned his full attention on her. She knew that he had suffered more humiliation than he could bear and that he would kill her now rather than let her escape him again.
Desperately she reached out to the bundle of weapons stacked against the rock. Her fingers closed around the shaft of a javelin. Trok was still drinking with his head thrown back, but he felt her movement and lowered the waterskin just as Mintaka twisted to stab up at his belly and groin with the short but deadly weapon. However, the blow was aimed from her prone position under him and lacked force.
Trok saw the bright bronze point flash and, with a startled exclamation, jumped back to avoid it. “You treacherous little slut!” He dropped the waterskin and lunged for her, but the moment his weight was off her Mintaka jumped up. She tried to slip past him and run out of the gully into the open desert, but he cut her off and reached for her with his long arm. He caught the hem of her tunic, but she leaped aside. The linen tore in his fingers and she twisted away from him, but he still had her trapped in the gully.
He lumbered after her, but she ran to the cliff wall and started to scale it, lithe and quick as a cat. Before he could catch her she was out of his reach. She went up swiftly and he could not hope to follow her. He picked up the javelin she had dropped and hurled it up at her, but he was using his left hand and there was little power in the throw.
Mintaka ducked as the javelin flew over her head and struck the rock in front of her face. She climbed faster, driven by fear. Trok staggered to where the other weapons were stacked, and grabbed another javelin. He threw again. It missed her by a hand’s width.
Trok grunted with fury and frustration and snatched a third javelin, but at that moment Mintaka reached a ledge in the cliff and crawled over it out of his sight. She lay there pressing herself to the rock. She heard him raving and swearing at her. Even in her distress she was sickened by the filthy words he sent after her.
Then another javelin flashed over where she lay and clattered against the rock face above her. It dropped back on to the ledge and she grabbed it before it could fall back to the gully floor. She peered over the edge of the ledge, ready to duck back.
Trok was staring up at her uncertainly, his injured arm dangling at his side. When her head appeared his face contorted with rage and the pain of his injury, and he started forward as if to climb up to her.
She showed him the point of the javelin. “Yes, come up,” she hissed at him, “and let me stick this in your great hog belly!”
He stopped. He would have to climb and defend himself with only one arm. He saw that her threat was real. While he hesitated, Mintaka began to scream again. “Nefer! Taita! Hilto! Help me!”
Her voice echoed off the cliff and rang down the gully. He looked about him nervously, as if expecting to see a rush of armed enemies coming at him. Suddenly he reached a decision. He picked up the waterskin and slung it over his shoulder. “Do not think you can evade me forever. One day I will sample all the delights of your body and afterward I will give you as a plaything to my troopers,” he shouted up at her. Then he tried to mount the mare, but she was still too weak to support his bulk and collapsed under him.
Trok hauled himself to his feet and lumbered away down the gully.
Mintaka feared that his withdrawal might be a trick. She dared not descend from her perch on the cliff. She screamed wildly, “Nefer! Help me.”
She was still screaming when Nefer came racing back to her down the rocky gully, a sword in his hand, Hilto and Meren close behind him.
“What is it?” Nefer demanded, as she slid down the cliff into his arms.
“Trok!” She sobbed with relief to feel him hold her safely. “Trok is alive. He was here.”
She blurted out an account of what had happened, but before she had ended Nefer was giving orders to the others to arm themselves and prepare to go after Trok.
Taita had come back to join them. He stayed with Mintaka while the three men followed Trok’s footprints in the sand as cautiously as if they were tracking a wounded lion. They moved along the base of the cliff until they reached the fissure where Trok had weathered the fury of the khamsin. Nefer examined the disturbed sand and interpreted the signs. “Two of them,” he said. “They were buried by the storm, as we were. They dug themselves out. One waited here.” He picked up a thread of wool that had adhered to the rock, and held it to the light. “Black.” It was a color seldom worn by Egyptians. “Almost certainly the Mede.”
Hilto nodded agreement. “Ishtar would have the witchcraft to survive the storm. ’Tis certain he saved Trok, just as Taita saved us.”
“Here.” Nefer stood up and pointed out the sign. “Carrying the waterskin, Trok returned to find the Mede, and they went this way.”
They followed the footprints a short way out into the desert. “They have gone west. Back toward Avaris and the Nile. Will they ever reach it?”
“Not if I catch up with him.” Nefer said grimly, and hefted the javelin he was carrying.
“Majesty.” Hilto was respectful but firm. “They have the waterskin and a long start. They will be well away from here by now. You dare not follow without water.”
Nefer hesitated. Though he saw the sense in what Hilto said it galled him sorely to let Trok escape. From what Mintaka had told him, Trok was injured and would not be too dangerous an opponent, even though Nefer himself was still weak.
In the end he turned aside and ran to the top of the nearest dune. Shading his eyes he looked westward, along the string of footsteps on the pristine, windswept sands until in the distance, half a league or more away, he made out two tiny figures moving steadily toward the west. He watched them fiercely until they disappeared in the wavering heat mirage.
“There will be another time,” Nefer whispered. “I will come for you. I swear it on the hundred sacred names of Horus.”
They found and uncovered another sixteen of the buried chariots. With such an abundant supply of water and food, horses and men recovered swiftly. In addition, they had uncovered many more corpses of Trok’s troopers. From these they were able to dress themselves. Nefer altered a pair of sandals to fit Mintaka, whose injured feet were almost completely healed.
By the tenth day they were ready to move. The four remaining horses were not strong enough to drag the chariots back through the loose sand, so Nefer decided to use them as pack horses, and load them with as much water as they could carry.
At nightfall, leading the horses, they started out across the dunes. Although the mare could not carry Mintaka’s weight as well as her load, Nefer rigged a leather strap around the horse’s shoulders and insisted that Mintaka hang onto this to help herself through the soft footing.
The khamsin had altered the landscape so greatly that Taita had to navigate by the stars. They kept going steadily through the whole of that night, and the one that followed. Before dawn on the second day they reached the old caravan road. It had been obliterated in places by the khamsin, but before they had gone much farther the light strengthened and they saw the cairn of stones that marked the crossroads ahead.
They discovered that, since the storm had ended, someone had been on the road before them. Two pairs of footprints led westward along the road, heading back toward the Nile valley and Avaris. One pair was large, the other smaller. Taita and Nefer examined them carefully.
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��This one is Trok. Nobody else has feet like that, the size of a Nile barge. Mintaka was correct. He is injured, on his right side. He favors it as he walks.” Taita read the sign. “As yet I cannot be certain about the other. Let us see if he leaves some clue as to his identity.” They followed the tracks as far as the marked cairn.
“Ah! There!” Close by the cairn someone had recently arranged an intricate pattern of stones in the sand. “No doubt now. It is Ishtar the Mede.” Angrily Taita scattered the stones. “This is an invocation to his foul Marduk the Devourer.” He hurled one of the smaller stones down the road that Trok and Ishtar had taken. “If Ishtar had an infant with him, he would likely have sacrificed it. Marduk thirsts for human blood.”
Here, at the marker cairn, Nefer had a difficult decision to make. “If we are to make the long journey to the east, we will need supplies and gold. We should not arrive at the court of the Assyrian as indigent outcasts.”
Taita nodded. “There are many powerful men in Egypt who would lend us full support if only they could be certain that their pharaoh was still alive.”
“Hilto and Meren must go back to Thebes,” Nefer said. “I would go myself, but all the world will be searching for Mintaka and me.” He removed one of his royal finger rings and handed it to Hilto. “This will be your token of recognition. Show it to our friends. You must return bringing us men and gold, chariots and horses. When we go to King Sargon we must arrive in some state to show him the support we still command in Egypt.”
“I will do as you command, Majesty.”
“Almost as vital to us will be intelligence. You must gather news. We must be informed of every action of the false pharaohs.”
“I will leave at nightfall, Pharaoh,” Hilto agreed.
They spent that long hot day lying under the shade of an awning they had salvaged from one of the buried chariots, discussing their plans. When the sun sank toward the horizon and began to lose its heat they parted company, Hilto and Meren to head back west toward Thebes, and Taita, Nefer and Mintaka to go eastward.
“We will wait for you at the ruins of Gallala,” were Nefer’s last words to Hilto. Then they watched him and Meren take the high road and disappear into the gathering dusk.
Taita, Mintaka and Nefer took the caravan road toward Gallala. Twelve days later, with only a few drops remaining in the waterskins, they reached the deserted ruins.
The weeks became months, and still they waited at Gallala.
Taita spent days at a time in the hills that surrounded the city. Nefer and Mintaka caught occasional glimpses of him from a distance as he prowled the valleys and harsh gullies. Often they saw him tapping and prodding the rocks with his staff. At other times he sat by the almost dried-up wells outside the city walls, staring down the deep shafts.
When Nefer questioned him obliquely, he was distant and evasive. “An army needs water,” was all he would volunteer.
“There is hardly enough water for us,” Nefer pointed out, “let alone an army.” Taita nodded, stood up and walked away into the hills with his staff tapping against the rocks.
Mintaka set up quarters for them among the ruins, and Nefer roofed them over with the tattered tent. As a royal Hyksosian princess, Mintaka had never been called upon to cook a meal or sweep out a chamber, so her first efforts were disastrous. As he chewed a charred mouthful Taita remarked, “If we want to destroy Trok’s army the most effective way would be to send you to them as a cook.”
“If you are so skilled, then perhaps you might honor us with your great culinary skills.”
“It is either that or starve,” Taita agreed, and took her place at the hearth.
Nefer resumed his old role of hunter, and after his first day out in the desert returned with a plump young gazelle and four marvelously patterned giant bustard eggs that were only slightly addled. Mintaka sniffed her share of the omelette Taita made and pushed it away. “Is this the same man who complained of my cooking?” She looked across the fire at Nefer. “You are as guilty as he is. Next time I will go with you to make sure that what you bring back is edible.”
They lay side by side in one of the shallow wadis that cut through the hills and watched a herd of gazelle feeding toward them.
“They are dainty as fairies,” Mintaka whispered. “So beautiful.”
“I will shoot if you have qualms,” Nefer told her.
“No.” She shook her head. “I did not say I would not do it.” Her tone was determined, and by now he knew her well enough not to query her decision.
The buck moved ahead of his herd. His back was a delicate cinnamon shade and his underbelly was the silvery white of one of the thunderheads that rose above the horizon. His horns were lyre-shaped and polished between his pricked, trumpet-shaped ears. He turned his head on the long curved neck and gazed back at his small herd. One of the fawns began to stot, bouncing on stiff legs with its nose almost touching its bunched hoofs. This was the alarm behavior.
“The little creature is just practicing and showing off.” Nefer smiled.
The buck lost interest in this juvenile display, and came on toward where they lay in ambush. He picked his way over the stony ground with studied grace, stopping every few paces to look about warily for danger.
“He has not seen us, but he soon will,” Nefer whispered. “We do not have Taita to gull him.”
“He is out of range,” she whispered back.
“Fifty paces, no more. Shoot or he will be gone in an instant.”
Mintaka waited until the buck once more turned away his head. Then she rose slowly to her knees and drew the bow. It was one of the short recurved weapons they had salvaged from a buried chariot. She released the arrow and it rose in a gentle arc against the pale desert sky.
With those huge dark eyes, the gazelle had instantly picked out her small movement of rising. His head switched round and he stared at her, on the point of flight. At the twanging release of the bowstring he leaped forward while the arrow was still in the air. He skimmed away, tiny puffs of dust rising where his hoofs touched the earth. The arrow rattled against the stones where, moments before, he had been standing. Mintaka jumped to her feet and laughed to watch him go, showing no sign of chagrin at having missed the shot.
“Watch him run, like a swallow in flight.”
Taita had taught Nefer that the true hunter loves and honors his quarry. He admired Mintaka the more for her compassion toward the creatures she hunted. She turned to him, still laughing. “I am sorry, my heart. You will go hungry to bed this night.”
“Not with Taita at the cooking fire. He will pluck a feast from the very air.”
They raced each other to retrieve her spent arrow. She had a head-start, and reached it ahead of him. She stooped to pick it up, and the back of her short tattered skirt flew up. Her thighs were smooth and brown and her buttocks perfect rounds, the skin pale and unblemished where the sun had never touched it, lustrous as precious Oriental silk.
She straightened and turned in a flash to catch the expression in his eyes. Though she was virgin and unversed in sensuality, her feminine instincts were full blown. She could see what passion her innocent gesture had roused in him, and the knowledge stirred her too. Seeing how he desired her made her want him with an intensity that was painful. She felt her loins melt with love for him, overflowing sweet and viscous like a honeycomb left in the heat of the midday sun.
Timidly she swayed toward him, but Nefer felt hot shame at the carnal desire that had almost overwhelmed him again. He remembered his promise to her. “I would rather die than break my oath, and bring dishonor upon you,” he had told her, and at the memory he forced himself to turn away. He found that his hands were shaking and his voice was gruff as he said, with his eyes averted, “I know where there is another herd, but we must hurry if we are to find them before dark.” He set off without looking back at her, and she felt bereft. She had wanted more than anything on this earth to feel his arms around her and his hard young body pressed to hers.
She gathered herself quickly and followed him, trying to push away the strange feelings that had so nearly engulfed her, but they would not so easily be set aside. She caught up with him, and trotted a few paces behind him.
She studied his back. She watched how his thick dark curls bounced on his shoulders. She wondered at how wide his shoulders had grown since she had first met him. Then she looked farther down, and felt her cheeks burn as she watched his buttocks moving under the thin stuff of his short apron. She enjoyed a delicious sense of shame at her own lascivious feelings.
Too soon they reached the rim of the long wadi that cleaved the mountains. He turned his head to look back at her and almost caught her studying his body. She raised her eyes to his just in time.
“There are hundreds of old tombs in the bottom of the cliff here. I first saw them when my father brought me this way, just before he was—” He broke off, saddened by the memory of the last day he had spent with Tamose.
“Whose tombs are they?” she asked, to distract him from something so painful.
“Taita says they are a thousand years old, from the time of Cheops and Chephren who built the great Pyramids at Giza.”
“Then they must be almost as old as the Magus himself.” She smiled and he laughed.
“Have you ever explored them?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Since we first arrived here, I have thought of doing so often, but there has never been an opportunity.”
“Let us do it now,” she said.
He hesitated. “We should have ropes and lamps.” But she was already scrambling down the cliff, and he was forced to follow her.
At its base, they soon found that most of the tombs were out of their reach, set high in the sheer cliff face with a deadly drop below them.
After a while Nefer picked out an opening he thought they might be able to reach. They climbed a section where the cliff face had collapsed, and reached a narrow ledge. They worked their way along it cautiously, Nefer leading. He reached the dark opening and stooped to peer into it. “Of course, it will be guarded by the spirits of the dead.” He tried to make it sound like a joke, but she sensed his unease and was affected by it.