by Stephan Loy
“Pull that about you and follow me,” one of the boys told her and took off toward the water.
His partner hissed and signaled him back. The goddess didn't move, and didn't hide her fine clothes, either.
The leader returned, cursing. “They said she’d be a mess,” he complained, and closed her cloak himself. "The monster Set tortures even his own." He took her covered arm by the cuff and pulled her along beside him. He and his comrade had fought in the desert for months, eating their vanquished and drinking urine. They had learned to see gods as less honored royalty and more infestation. They weren’t about to anguish over etiquette.
They hauled Isis along the quay, passing boats unloading goods. They approached a mid-sized fishing vessel heaped with nets and poles, and ushered their unresponsive package up its ramp. There another boy took charge of the goddess. He nodded to the others, who disappeared into the town.
“Goddess, I’m happy to see you again,” the young man said as he led Isis onto the boat. “I am Hordedev, son of Qebera. With Nephthys’s help, I’ve come to rescue you.” He led her across the deck toward a massive pile of netting.
“Qebera...” Her tone was confused and doleful.
“My father was captain of the guard. You placed the Wadjit Eye of Ra in his care.” Hordedev halted her beside the netting and coaxed her to her knees. He then hauled back the edge of the pile to reveal a large wooden box open on one side.
Isis retreated against Hordedev’s arm. Even through the rough fabric, her touch was a sensual shock. He struggled to reclaim his thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though his whole body sang at her body against his. “It’s necessary if we’re to get you out. It’s only for a little while, until we reach the border...”
A box. A box had taken her husband.
Isis leaned toward the box. She crawled inside like a cowering animal and curled into a fetal ball, whimpering.
“Don’t worry, it’s only a little while,” Hordedev promised. Feeling cruel, he dropped the netting to hide her, but also to seal her in.
“All right,” he called to his mates, “let’s push off to Fayum!”
Nephthys waited. She sat mid-deck, enthroned on a cedar and ivory high-backed chair padded with woven rushes. She watched the ship beside hers pole away from its mooring post and depart, its cargo of priestesses disguised in rough woolen cloaks. She watched the soldier ordered to watch them, and the frenetic activity when his superiors arrived and learned of his charge’s escape. She watched the ensuing chaos as more troops mustered to terrorize the market, then shut it down, then stand glowering over its deserted stalls. She watched the Setim watch her. She watched and waited a very long time.
Near dark, Set arrived, followed by a clutch of Setim officers. He raged at the guards assigned to Isis. Their alarmed superiors sought to save them with vows of severe punishment but Set would have nothing of it. The god of the deep desert, of chaos and storms, who commanded the sand and the very elements, beat one guard to death with his fists and strangled the other with his bloodied hands. The guards thus removed from his wrath, Set stormed at the city walls for harboring human miscreants, and at his officers for training idiots. He demanded a target for blame, and many fingers pointed to Nephthys. The sky over Abydos darkened with each passing moment, and not entirely from the fall of night.
Set turned to face his wife. He walked with controlled menace to her ramp and stood there staring across to her. “May I come aboard?” His manner was tightly genial. Thunder growled overhead.
Nephthys tried to smother her rising fear, but such pretense could fool only slow-witted guards, not one such as Set. “Could I stop you if I forbade it?” she asked with a show of haughtiness.
“No, I don’t think you could.”
“I forbid it anyway. I’ve no need of your company.”
Lightning blasted across the sky. The wind whipped, driving from the north.
“I’m afraid you’ve no choice,” Set said. “If you deny me, I’ll have to dispose of your crew, as they will attempt to defend you. If you allow me the privilege of coming aboard, we could still keep this private, and civil.”
“What do you know of civility?” Nephthys asked. “You rape a goddess, your own sister, for months and months on end, and that after murdering her husband, your own good brother. But, to spare my servants your odious attentions, I withdraw my restriction and grant you leave to approach, and my servants leave to disembark.”
“Very wise.” Set ascended the ramp. “You’re so generous, Nephthys.”
“You’ll not rape me, so get it out of your head. If you lay so much as breath upon me, you’ll feel the pain you inflict on others.” Nephthys reached beside her in the chair. She held up an ivory staff half the length of her arm, something from her priestesses’ regalia. She held it out for Set to see, then placed it in her lap.
"A club?" The storm god laughed. “Ah, Nephthys, I’m reminded of why I married you...”
“You married me for power, because Ma’at didn’t trust you without a balancing force. Without me, Abu Simbel would never have been yours.”
He seemed unconcerned by her anger or her weapon, though he did stay out of arm’s reach. Nephthys signaled her people to depart, but no one left the barge. Her two attending priestesses and three crewmen gathered at the foredeck and stood in silent, if fearful, support.
“Ma’at,” Set said as if oblivious to all around him. “What does she know? The ultimate voice of justice in the world, greater even than Ra in that respect, at least. She balanced me? With you?” He leered. “Nephthys, you’re more conniving, more treacherous, more ... traitorous ... than Ma’at could ever imagine.” He stepped toward her, but froze when she grasped the staff. “Where is she, Nephthys? Tell me where she is, and I’ll forget this ever happened.”
“Did you lose something, Set? Did you go to sate your urge, and find your toy missing? Imagine that!”
“Nephthys, I don’t want to hurt you...”
Surprising even herself, Nephthys laughed. “You’ve wanted to hurt me for ages. You know, this little predicament is your fault. If you played with your toys more gently, they wouldn’t go missing the first chance they get.”
She should have expected his lunge, but he hadn’t touched her in millennia and she expected he wouldn’t even then. But he grabbed her by one arm, snatching her from the throne. Startled, she swung the staff. She caught him on the jaw.
Set released her and reared backward. The heavens split in ragged cracks of flash and fury. Lightning raised the hairs all over Nephthys’s body.
“Cow!”
“Dog!” Nephthys stood away from the chair, her bludgeon held two-handed before her. A crewman leaped to her defense, armed with a pole. Lightning blasted out of the sky, cooking him instantly. Another moved to take his place before the body struck the deck.
“No!” Nephthys yelled. “Make no--”
Set attacked from within her distraction. He led with one arm to deflect her defense. Nephthys battered that fending arm. She backed toward the riverside rail. With each blow she grunted hate, trying her best to hurt him.
“Oh, Nephthys! That almost tickled!” Set laughed, closing his fist on her weapon. He snatched it from her grasp and tossed it along the deck. As she stood confused, not knowing what to do, he slapped her backhanded across the face.
Nephthys staggered backward, and tumbled over the rail.
Set cursed. He stepped to the rail and called out lightning to illuminate the river.
Nephthys swam downstream for the bank.
“Sorry!” Set called. “I was upset!” He then turned and left the barge. He paid no heed to the glaring crew, nor to his men, who waited on land. He stomped along the bank until he caught up with his wife. She slogged toward land, hip deep in water.
“You aren’t as smart as you think,” Set jeered. “You think of yourself as queen, with privileges not even your husband would violate. Has your bath taught you humility, godde
ss?”
“You cur!” Nephthys paralleled the bank, pushing aside weeds as she squelched away from Set. He moved with her, blocking her return to land. Well, let him have his fun. At least when she was wet, he couldn’t see her tears. “You cur,” she repeated. “I regret every minute we’ve spent together!”
“No!” Set yelled. He staggered, and grasped his heart. “And I thought there was some other reason you hadn’t shared my bed in twelve thousand years!”
What could she say? He cared nothing for life, or honor, or simple decency. He wouldn’t go away. What devilry did he plan for her?
“Tell me where she is, Nephthys. Tell me, before this gets ugly.”
Drenched, muddied, her fine clothes plastered to her skin or hanging in heavy bubbles, Nephthys couldn’t imagine it getting any uglier.
“Look behind you,” Set called.
She looked.
A ship cruised up the Nile under sail. Three female figures kneeled mid-deck, naked except for their skimpy underskirts. Merferet and two of her priestesses. Their hands were bound behind their backs. Setim crowded the deck, and a Setim war boat followed behind.
“You think yourself devious, Nephthys. You should pay more attention to administrative matters. You see, since opening the markets, I’ve blockaded the river against insurgents.” Set laughed. “Sometimes, we pick up other prey, as well.”
Merferet and her priestesses huddled on their knees in the city street, the night rumbling around them in arrogant triumph. They trembled from fear as their captor paced before them, obscenely pleased with himself. Nephthys had struggled from the river and now stood alongside the women, muddied, miserable, but not yet defeated. Set would attempt to alter that attitude.
“Tell me where she is, Nephthys, or subject these ... things to my inquiry. I understand one was killed in the boarding. No matter. The others will bear her pain. Tell me, Nephthys. This is your last chance.”
Nephthys said nothing; there was nothing worth saying. She hoped the humans were stronger than they looked.
Set grabbed Merferet by her hair and flung her onto the street before her women. She screamed from the pain, landing on her naked side and rolling onto her back. Her hands were bound behind her. She was scraped raw along one flank.
“Not yet?” Set asked Nephthys. “You were never as fond of these creatures as our dear brother Osiris. Nobody was.” He leaned over Merferet, hands on knees. “Where is the goddess Isis? Tell me now, and I may let you live.”
Merferet whimpered. She tried to wriggle clear of him.
Set laughed. He gestured across the priestess, and the sky convulsed. Lightning blasted the street inches from Merferet’s hip, then again next to her head. Her body bounced from the force of those misses. “Tell me,” Set commanded.
“No! I’ll never--”
Sand raked across her body. Merferet writhed as it scoured her skin.
“Say nothing!” Nephthys commanded. “He cannot reach you after death!”
“Quite true,” Set told Merferet, “but death can be days in coming.”
He leaned close to the high priestess. She must have realized just how close. Nephthys watched her jaws working, watched as she snatched a mouthful of spit and hurled it into Set's eyes.
Set gasped.
The guards around the women blanched.
Set reached to wipe the goo from his face. He looked incredulously at his wetted fingers. Understanding dawned, and his features blackened.
“You murdering monster,” Merferet screamed. “If I had more spit, I’d curse you again!”
A column of sand whipped from the ground. It formed a fist at its wavering crown, then hammered into the priestess’s face. It froze there, the fist stretching her bloody lips, filling her mouth. Merferet thrashed. Her nostrils flared. She gagged against the gritty plug.
Set almost restrained himself; Nephthys saw him try to pull back. He almost remembered how he needed his prisoner, needed her secrets. Then rage overwhelmed his weak attempt at reason. He tightened the fist and rammed it down Merferet's throat. He flooded her with that endless serpent of dense, scouring sand until she burst.
The other women shrieked. They shrieked for their desecrated sister and for their own hideous futures.
Set roared at the ruptured corpse. Soon he’d turn on the others, Nephthys knew, and they’d babble in the face of such horror. It fell to her to do something, to cut short events that could only betray her sister.
She grabbed an ax from a stupefied guard. She swung it in a wide arc and shattered the skull of the nearest screaming woman. The priestess crumpled. The other woman stopped screaming, snatched away from self-absorbed delirium. She looked at the corpse, snapped her eyes to Nephthys, to Set turning toward her, back to Nephthys again.
And understood.
Set opened his mouth to protest. The priestess staggered erect and, bawling for her miserable self, impaled her heart on the nearest guard’s spear.
She sank to the ground amid absolute, astonished silence.
A moment of realization. Thunder rose to a guttural snarl. The air stank of ozone. Then the guards threw down their weapons and ran helter-skelter for cover.
Nephthys threw down her ax and stood alone with Set. “Finally,” she said. “Victory eludes you.”
At that, the maelstrom erupted.
For two days, the rebels poled down the river. They fished, and caught nothing, but it didn’t matter much. They had sworn themselves to hunger upon accepting their mission. They would not touch land to hunt carrion eaters or Setim troops, the only meals anywhere in Abydos. Their cargo was too precious for such self-centered diversions. Still, they kept up the ruse of fishermen plying their trade, and their stark ribs and hollow cheeks only bolstered the deception.
Hordedev did his part as crew, sometimes poling, sometimes sounding the bottom and watching for sandbars or hippos. Sometimes he acted at fishing, and sometimes he watched for Setim approaches. Often he sat by the great bundle of unused net and talked. It didn’t matter what he said or that he spoke in monologue; it only mattered that he did some part, at least in faith, to hold the hand of that goddess in the box. The others found his devotion odd. They had all been warned against her, had been warned not to look at her, touch her, or talk to her too intimately lest they fall under her spell. But Hordedev had known the gods; he had grown up in their shadows. He had been to the palace, had bounced on Osiris’s knee, had admired Isis when she visited to bless his family’s crops or protect his mother’s birthings. Hordedev was used to the gods; he knew them almost as people.
So, he knew she suffered. She hadn’t been too good from the start, but trapped in that box for two days, over three Setim searches, after her husband's fate... Hordedev had always respected the strength of gods. He now felt awe that Isis kept her sanity.
On the dawn of the third day, they approached the Nile/Bahr Yussef fork, the border between Abydos and Fayum. They worked into the swiftest current to run the Setim blockade there, and Hordedev’s two compatriots donned the soldiers’ uniforms carefully hidden aboard. Their disguises weren’t much: a shoulders-to-knees shrift along with red linen caps and a few leather insignia. Stone axes completed their costumes. They were a Setim supply detail with one conscripted fisherman. Hordedev hoped it seemed so. He hoped not to bull his way through the two or more warships known to hold those waters. And he didn’t want their Setim crews searching the boat more thoroughly than before.
Luckily, no Setim ships blocked the river in that thinning darkness. All three stood at the bank, their crews enjoying a breakfast of something fresh and meaty, from the aroma wafting across the water. A few waved from the water’s edge, and Hordedev’s friends waved back. They smiled though their stomachs raged for that sweet-smelling food.
“Where to?” an officer called from the deck of one boat.
“Fishing expedition for Abydos, the palace,” one of Hordedev’s companions shouted. “They’re running dangerously low.”
&nbs
p; “I thought the markets were opened, not a week ago.”
The imposter shrugged. “Terrorists. Plus, nothing stays good for more than a day. We didn’t get enough dried in time.”
“Well, heave over. You must be starving, and we haven't had news from the city in two, three days.”
“Sorry, sir,” the false Setim called, and Hordedev braced for the pivotal exchange to come. “The captain was adamant. Quickly to Fayum, quickly back. We don’t wish the wrath of our lord upon us.”
The officer only nodded and watched them recede downstream.
Hordedev kept his eyes on the river, sure they’d be stopped before many seconds passed. He tensed to fight, though he knew he would lose if it came to that. Still, more than a goddess hid beneath that netting. He could claim a weapon in seconds.
But no further calls bothered them from behind. A moment later, when they crossed into Fayum, the three men whooped in triumph almost within sight of the Setim checkpoint. They discarded their Setim accessories and capered in giddy excitement at a mission cleanly accomplished. They were free, at least for a while, of the red hand of Set.
Then Hordedev hurried to the nets and heaved them up and away from Isis. “Come, goddess! We’ve passed the last checkpoint! You’re free!”
Somehow he had expected elation comparable to his own, but the goddess looked anything but free. She struggled like an old woman from the confines of her prison and stayed there on hands and knees for a long, weighty moment. The euphoric mood of the mortals faltered at the sight of her. They gathered around, but feared to touch her, even to help. They were mortal, after all; such liberties held danger they preferred not to goad.
But, Hordedev had already touched the goddess the day she came aboard, and his history with her was long. After too much time, enough that he felt shame, he kneeled beside the stricken Isis and gently grasped her shoulders.
“Forgive me, goddess. Let me help you up.”
She leaned against him, a dead weight of sorrow. Her fingers dug into his ribs. Her touch, even that frenzied grip, caused him exhilaration. He tried as instructed to beat that joy aside, concentrating instead on the pain of her grasp as he led her toward the bow.