by Wilbur Smith
“Of course!” she joked back, but behind her back made the sign against evil.
“It’s very dark in there,” Nefer said thoughtfully. “We should return tomorrow with an oil lamp.”
Mintaka looked over his shoulder. A short passageway led at a slight upward angle into the solid rock. Even after the passing of centuries, engravings were still clearly visible on the walls.
“Look.” Mintaka touched one. “This is a picture of a giraffe, and this is a man.”
“Yes,” Nefer grinned, “and a very friendly man, at that. There is no mistaking it.”
She pretended to bridle, but could not hide her smile. The ancient artist had endowed the figure with a huge erect member.
“Here.” She moved deeper into the passage. “These are writings. I wonder what they mean.”
“Nobody will ever know,” Nefer said, and stepped past her. “The key to that ancient script has long been lost. We should go back.”
The floor was covered with a layer of soft windblown sand. After a short distance the recesses of the shaft were obscured by sinister darkness.
“We can explore just a short way further,” Mintaka said stubbornly.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Here.” She pushed past him. “Let me go first.”
“Wait!” He tried to restrain her, but she laughed and pulled away. He placed one hand on the hilt of his dagger and followed her, shamed by her example and his own reluctance.
The gloom thickened with each step forward until even Mintaka stopped and peered uneasily ahead. He stooped to pick up a chip of flint from the sandy floor and threw it over her shoulder into the dark reaches of the shaft. It rattled on the stone walls. “Nothing,” she said in the silence that followed, but before she could take another step forward something moved in the darkness ahead. They heard a rustling sound that was magnified in the narrow space. They froze in their tracks, and stared into the darkness. There was a high-pitched shriek, echoed immediately by a chorus, the rustle became a rushing roar, and out of the darkness straight into their faces hurled a squeaking, fluttering cloud of darting shapes, whose wings lashed their startled faces.
Mintaka screamed, whirled around, ran straight into Nefer and threw both her arms around his neck. He seized her and held her hard, drawing her down onto the sandy floor.
“Bats,” he told her. “Only bats.”
“I know!” she said breathlessly.
“They can’t hurt you.”
“I know.” Her voice was calmer, but she made no effort to unwind her arms from around his neck. He pressed his face into her thick, springy hair. It smelt rich and perfumed as new-mown grass.
She made a soft, murmuring sound of pleasure, buried her face against his throat and moved softly against him.
“Mintaka,” he tried gently to push her away, “I gave you my promise that this would not happen again.”
“I release you from that promise.” Her voice was so soft as to be barely audible. She lifted her face to his. Her breath was warm and sweet-smelling. Her lips were tender and full, and quivered as though she were on the point of tears. “I want to be your wife more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.”
He reached down and took her mouth with his own. It was wet and so hot that it seemed to scald his. He lost himself in it. She felt that she belonged nowhere else but in his embrace. Still kissing her he explored the angles and curves and planes of her back with his fingertips. He traced the outline of her spine, like a string of pearls running down between the firm ridges of muscle.
He placed a hand on her hip, and felt the curve of her waist like the shape of a precious ceramic vase. He reached behind her and enclosed one buttock in each hand, astonished by their symmetry and elastic firmness.
She thrust her hips forward to meet his, and he pulled her even harder to him. He felt his loins swell and stiffen, and tried to arch his back to hide it from her. She made a small sound of remonstrance, forbidding him to avoid her. She moved against him, glorying in this proof of his arousal, of how much he wanted her.
She had a fleeting memory of Trok thrusting his monstrous blue-veined thing at her, but that horrid episode had no relevance to what was happening here. Without effort the memory was expunged from her mind.
She felt Nefer’s fingers running slowly down the cleft between her buttocks, and she concentrated on the sensation, marveling that she could feel it echoed in the swelling tips of her breasts and in her secret depths.
“Touch me.” She spoke into his mouth. “Yes! Touch me. Hold me. Stroke me. Love me.”
The sensations blended so that they seemed to envelop her every fiber, every part of her mind and body. He broke the kiss at last, and she felt his lips nuzzling her bare shoulder. She knew instinctively what he needed, and opened the front of her tunic and took out one of her breasts. It felt heavy in her hand, the tip aching and swollen. She entwined the fingers of her other hand in the thick curling hair at the back of his head, and placed her nipple in his mouth. When he sucked it, like a hungry infant, she felt something spasm and contract deep in her belly, and realized with wonder that it was her own womb.
Gently she changed him from one breast to the other, and the sensation did not fade, but instead grew fiercer.
In a daze of pleasure she became aware of his fingers lifting the front of her skirts and fumbling with her loincloth. She moved her legs apart to allow him to reach her more easily, and then, with her free hand, she helped him untie the knot at her hip. The cloth fell away and the air of the tomb was cool on her naked bottom and belly.
She felt him stroke the crisp pelt of curls that covered her pudenda, then he found the swollen lips that bulged from her cleft and parted them gently with trembling fingers. She cried out as if in pain and, without conscious volition, pulled aside the skirts of his apron and reached in to find him. She was startled by its girth and encircled it with thumb and forefinger. It leaped like a living thing in her grasp, and she wanted to look at it. Without releasing her grip, she pushed him back so that she could see down between them.
“You are so beautiful,” she breathed, “so smooth, so strong.”
Then she kissed him again, and holding her mouth to his she fell backward dragging him down upon her belly, spreading her thighs to welcome him, sensing his lack of experience. It made her feel maternal and possessive. In her own ignorance, she was guiding him, feeling him sliding and slipping in her overflowing desire, probing at the entrance to her very self. She altered the angle of her hips and he flew deeply into her, his belly flat against hers, filling her until she felt he might cleave her apart, crying out triumphantly in the bittersweet pain of it.
He was riding her like a runaway horse, and she paced him, meeting the thrusting drive of his hips with her own, mounting with him higher and faster, until she knew that she had reached the limit. Then, unbelievably, they went on far past that limit. Breaking free of earth and its bonds, then at the ends of the heavens, feeling it burst out of him, and flood her with liquid heat, swelling up within her so that she matched and met him, their separate beings welding together, so that they became a single entity. Their voices a single jubilant cry.
Long afterward, when they had returned together from those distant heights, they lay in each other’s arms, their sweat and their breath mingling and cooling, still linked by his flesh deep within hers.
“I don’t want this ever to end,” she whispered at last. “I want to stay like this with you forever.”
A long while later he sat up languidly and looked toward the opening of the shaft. “It is becoming dark already,” he said, in a wondering tone. “The day has passed so swiftly.”
She came up on her knees, smoothed down her skirts, and he touched the fresh stains upon the hem. “Your maiden’s blood,” he whispered in awe.
“My gift to you,” she answered. “The proof of my love for you alone.”
He reached up and tore from the hem of her skirt an e
ncarmined shred the size of her little fingernail.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I will keep this forever as a memory of this wonderful day.” He opened the locket he wore at his throat and placed the fragment of cloth with the lock of her dark hair that it already contained.
“Do you really love me, Nefer?” she asked, as she watched him close the locket.
“With every drop of blood that flows through my veins. More than life eternal.”
When they came into the room in the ancient building that they had restored and made habitable, Taita was at the hearth stirring the contents of the pot upon the coals. He looked up at Mintaka as she stood in the open doorway with the last light of the day behind her. Her skirt was still damp where she had washed it in the scanty waters of the well and it clung to her thighs. “I am sorry we are so late back, Taita,” she said shyly. “We followed the gazelle out into the desert.”
She had never apologized for their late return before, and Taita looked up at the two of them. Nefer was hovering over her with a soft, dazed expression. The emanation of their love was so strong that it seemed to form a shimmering aura around them and Taita could almost smell it in the air, like the fragrance of a wild flower.
So what was inevitable has happened at last, he mused. The only wonder is that it took so long. He grunted, noncommittal. “It is evident that you did not catch up with them. Did they run too fast or were you distracted?” They stood awkwardly, covered with confusion and guilt, knowing that to him they were transparent.
Taita turned back to the cooking pot. “At least there is one provider among us. I have been able to snare a brace of wild pigeon. We need not go hungry to bed.”
The days that followed passed for the two of them in a golden haze of delight. They thought they were being subtle and discreet in Taita’s presence, trying to keep their eyes off each other and touching only when they thought he was not looking.
Mintaka had made a boudoir for herself in a bare cell that led off the main living room of their quarters. Each night Nefer waited until Taita was snoring softly before he rose surreptitiously and crept to her sleeping mat in this little room. Each morning she would rouse him long before dawn and send him back to his own mat in the main room, when they thought Taita was still sleeping.
On the third morning Taita announced inscrutably, “It seems that these rooms are inhabited by rats or other strange creatures, for I am kept from sleep by their scurrying and whispering.” They both looked stricken, and he went on, “I have found more tranquil accommodation.”
He moved his own sleeping mat and possessions to a small ruin across the square, and to these he retired each evening after they had eaten dinner together.
During the days the lovers wandered out into the desert, to pass their time in talking, making love and forming a thousand plans for the future, deciding when and how they might marry, how many sons and how many daughters she would bear him, and finding names for each.
They were so lost in each other that they forgot the world that lay beyond the lonely desert spaces, until one morning when they left the ruined city before dawn, carrying a coil of rope and two oil lamps, determined to explore the ancient tombs more thoroughly. By a circuitous route they reached the top of the cliff, where they sat down to catch their breath and watch the magnificent spectacle of the dawn breaking over the blue, secret hills.
“Look!” cried Mintaka suddenly, starting out of his arms and pointing back toward the west along the old trade route that led down into Egypt. Nefer jumped up, and they gazed down the valley at the strange caravan coming toward them. There were five ramshackle vehicles leading, followed by a straggling column of humanity.
“There must be a hundred men, at least,” Mintaka exclaimed. “Who can they be?”
“I don’t know,” Nefer admitted grimly, “but I want you to run back and warn Taita of their approach while I go and spy on them.”
She did not argue, but set off immediately for Gallala, racing down the back slope of the hills, leaping from rock to rock with the agility of a wild ibex. Nefer cached the rope and the lamps, then restrung his bow and checked the arrows in his quiver, before creeping along the crest of the hills, keeping off the skyline and out of sight until he reached a point from where he could look down on the slow-moving caravan.
It was a sorry spectacle. As it came closer, Nefer saw that the first two vehicles were knocked-about fighting chariots drawn by thin, overworked horses. They were designed to carry two men, but each contained four or five. Behind them came an assortment of wagons and carts in no better case than the leading chariots. Nefer saw that they were laden with sick or wounded men, huddled miserably together or lying on makeshift litters. Behind the wagons straggled a long file of walking men, some hobbling along on crutches or leaning on staffs. Others carried litters on which lay other sick or wounded figures.
“In the name of Horus, they look like fugitives from a battlefield,” Nefer muttered, as he strained his eyes to make out the features of the men in the leading chariot.
Suddenly he stood up from behind the rock that had hidden him, and shouted with excitement. “Meren!” He had at last recognized the tall figure who held the reins of the first chariot. Meren pulled up the horses and shaded his eyes to stare into the eye of the rising sun. Then he, too, shouted and waved as he saw Nefer on the skyline. Nefer ran down the slope, slipping and sliding in the loose scree, and he and Meren embraced, laughing and both speaking at once.
“Where have you been?”
“Where are Mintaka and Taita?”
Then Hilto was hurrying to Nefer, and making loyal salutations. Behind him crowded the host of exhausted and wounded men. Their faces were drawn and gaunt, and blood and pus had soaked through their dirty bandages and dried to a crust. Even the men in the wagons and on the litters, who were too far gone to stand, lifted themselves to stare in awe at Nefer.
With a quick appraisal Nefer could see that these were warriors, but warriors beaten in battle, their bodies and spirits broken.
After Hilto had greeted Nefer he turned back to them, and shouted, “It is even as I promised you! Here before you stands your true Pharaoh, Nefer Seti. Pharaoh is not dead! Pharaoh lives!”
They were silent and apathetic, sick and demoralized. They stared at Nefer uncertainly.
“Your Majesty,” Hilto whispered to him, “please stand on this rock so that they may have a clear view of you.”
Nefer sprang up onto it and surveyed them with interest. They stared back at him in silence. Most had never laid eyes on their king before. Even the few who had seen him in formal palace processions had done so from a distance. Then he had been a doll-like figure, covered from throat to foot in splendid robes and jewels, his face a white mask of makeup, sitting stiffly on the royal carriage drawn by the white bullocks. They could not reconcile that remote, unnatural figure with this strapping young man, virile and hard-looking, his face tanned by the sun and his expression alive and alert. He was not the child Pharaoh they had known by reputation alone.
While they still stared without comprehension, or exchanged dubious glances, another figure seemed to materialize out of the air. Like a djinn he appeared beside Nefer on the rock. This one they knew well, both by repute and by sight.
“ ’Tis Taita the Warlock,” they breathed with awe.
“I know what you have suffered,” Taita told them, in a voice that carried clearly to every ear, even to the sick and wounded on the wagons. “I know what price you have paid to resist the tyranny of the assassins and usurpers. I know that you have come here to find if your true King still lives.”
They murmured in agreement, and suddenly Nefer knew now who they were. These were some of the survivors from the rebellion against Naja and Trok. Where Hilto had found them was a mystery, but these shattered remnants had once been fighting troopers, elite charioteers and warriors.
“This is where it begins,” Taita said softly at his side. “Hilto
has brought you the seeds of your future legions. Speak to them.”
Nefer surveyed them for a moment longer, standing proud and tall before them. He picked out a man in the ranks, who was older than the others, with the first snows in his hair. His eyes were sharp and his expression intelligent. Despite his rags and half-starved body he had the air of authority and command. “Who are you, soldier? What is your rank and your regiment?”
The man lifted his head and squared his gaunt shoulders. “I am Shabako. Best of Ten Thousand. Adept of the Red Road. Commander of the center of the Mut regiment.”
A lion of a man! Nefer thought, but said only, “I greet you, Shabako.” He lifted the skirt of his chiton and exposed the tattooed cartouche upon his thigh. “I am Nefer Seti, the true Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt.”
A sigh and a hum went through the scarecrow ranks when they recognized the royal cartouche. As one man they threw themselves to earth in obeisance.
“Bak-her, Divine One, beloved of the gods!”
“We are your loyal subjects, Pharaoh. Intercede for us with the gods.”
Mintaka had come with Taita and now stood below him. Nefer reached down and took her hand. He lifted her onto the rock beside him. “I give you the Princess Royal, Mintaka of the House of Apepi. Mintaka, who will be my queen and your sovereign lady.”
They greeted her with another shout of acclamation.
“Hilto and Shabako will command you,” Nefer decreed. “For the time being Gallala will be our base, until we return victoriously to Thebes and Avaris.”
They rose to their feet, even the gravely wounded attempting to climb from their litters, and they cheered him. Their voices were thin and almost lost in the great silences of the desert, but the sound filled Nefer with pride and renewed his determination and resolve. He climbed up into the leading chariot, took the reins from Meren and led his little raggle-taggle army down into his ruined capital city.