by Stephan Loy
Nephthys made no response, not even a nod of her head. She sat at the bow, no more alive than a figurehead. Standing in the stern, Amnet disguised a sigh by grunting against his rudder pole. He had been grunting a lot lately; the river ran shallow and the pole often dragged in the thick mud beneath its surface.
Then Amnet drew back from distraction and realized that the men at the water's edge were the same men tasked to guard Hordedev. If both stood at the water, who guarded the boy?
“What is it?” Amnet asked before he even steered to the bank.
One man reached for the boat. “They came in the night, at least a dozen. We fought, but could not prevail. Some of the men were killed.”
Amnet muttered a curse. From nearby islands, other Osirans manhandled boats so as to join their leader. Where was Hordedev?
Amnet glanced at the goddess at his bow. She waited for someone to help her to land, or to do introductions at the very least. To hell with her. She could see to herself for a change. “Who came? Setim?”
“Worse. Priestesses of Hathor.”
Hathor! Amnet felt his skin crawl.
“They brought hired men. And a cat, a big one. Maybe it was Hathor, or one of her pets.”
“It killed two of us. The men did the rest, breaking out the boy.”
“Hathor,” Amnet ground through his teeth. “When did this happen?”
The men grunted as they hauled up the boat. Their eyes went from Amnet, to Nephthys, to Amnet again. “Last night, just after dark. We’re sorry, but we couldn’t hold against them.”
Amnet spat into the mud. Before he could curse the names of gods, Nephthys cut him off.
“Did they take the boy?”
The brothers froze, watching her. Their feet squelched on the sloppy bank.
“Goddess?” Amnet asked when the silence grew intolerable.
Nephthys deliberately, delicately, stood. She pivoted toward the bank, but turned her eyes to Amnet. “If they took him, we have time. If they let him go, we must rush to Isis.”
Amnet looked at her, confused.
“He'll go to Isis,” Nephthys explained. “Hathor will track him. Hathor’s in league with Set.”
The truth struck Amnet like a slap.
“Someone should help me ashore,” Nephthys said. “I don’t want to muddy my dress.”
Getting Nephthys off the boat dominated the next several minutes. Other priorities shrank against such a delicate task. These were former priests, after all, so neither dead nor kidnapped humans mattered against the needs of a god. Even so, faith forbade the followers of Osiris to touch Nephthys while helping her from the boat. They rummaged through four huts until they found enough wood to bind into a ramp. Then they slogged into the putrid mud to support the ramp with their own backs, as the boat was too unstable to prop the boards against the rails. Nephthys waited, her face a mask, then demurely walked across the human bridge.
By then, her debarkation had drawn a sizable audience from the former priests. They gawked at the display, at the muddied men discarding their makeshift ramp and struggling out of the water, and at the pristine whiteness of Nephthys’s linens, outrageous in what their cleanliness had cost. The muddy men were hauled from the water and looked to Nephthys for some sign of thanks. All they got was a quivering smile, quickly collapsed.
“Where might I refresh myself?” she asked and, looking around, started for the house atop the rise. Amnet followed her, flustered.
“Goddess,” he called, trying to maintain a respectful tone. Didn’t she realize the insult she spread? “Goddess, forgive me, but what do you plan to do?”
“Not I,” Nephthys said as she continued for the hut. “You. You and your people must track this man. Find him before he and Hathor find Isis.”
“That may take a while. We don’t know where to look, and he’s been missing for hours.”
“Be diligent, and quick. Hathor must not use your man to locate Isis. Rally your people to search this swamp, and beyond. You and I will continue on as soon as possible, just in case.”
This was a Nephthys Amnet hadn’t suspected. Though her voice hung low, though she seemed almost apologetic, she took command, and held it.
Nephthys stopped at the hut’s entry and looked about its cramped, narrow interior. It was a workman’s dwelling. To Nephthys, it was a cave. A goat bleated at her from the doorway. “This is unacceptable. I require cleaner quarters.”
“Umm, of course, but--”
The look she shot at him froze the words in his throat. Nephthys apparently had her godly limits. Then, just as suddenly, her hard eyes wavered, then sought the dirt at her feet. “I'm sorry," she muttered. "I’ll wait out here. Bring me a chair and clean this place up.”
“Yes, goddess,” Amnet said, his voice cold.
With all the activity up at the house, no one noticed a scare at the water. There the human supports for Nephthys’s impromptu dock cleaned themselves in the reeking swamp. One looked up from his crouch at the bank and gasped.
“What?” his friend asked, halting the act of sloshing one arm.
“Nothing. I thought I saw something.”
“Something? What’s that mean? After last night, I don’t like ‘something’.”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
They leaned back to the water, but only for a moment.
“Would you stop that? You’re scaring me half to--”
“Quiet. There’s an animal out there.”
No animal was a pleasant prospect. Beasts that came near houses were almost always predators, and these men had survived a lion in league with Hathor. Now they peered into the swamp, across its brown, sluggish waters, between the thin, green trunks of its trees, and over its scattered bumps of land. The high sun should have helped, but their eyes found nothing but grass, trees, and huts.
“What was it?”
“I don’t know-- There! See, two rises over, next to Assad’s place.”
The other man squinted, then relaxed. “It’s just a jackal.”
“Just a jackal? One that could rob your pantry and leave you dependent on charity for days?”
“Hathor’s cat could remove me altogether from the reach of charity, to put things in perspective.”
The two argued, somewhat relieved as they scrubbed mud from their bodies. It was just a jackal, after all.
Across the way, that same jackal listened not to the men but to Nephthys farther off. After a while, it retreated beyond the houses and trotted about with its nose to the ground. It avoided the water prissily, swimming only when necessary, using fallen trees and sand bars to bridge the space between islands. It patrolled the town perimeter in ever widening circles, searching, sniffing, finally stopping at a nondescript spot of semi-dry land just east of the village. It wheeled there, wagging its tail and snuffling at dirt. Its ears perked up. The animal stared off into the woods, intent, snapping its jaws. It danced back and forth, sniffed the dirt once more, then bolted into the swamp.
Hordedev had escaped his Osiran prison among a dozen rough mercenaries. He hadn’t cared who they were, and he hadn’t asked questions when they deserted him less than a league from the village. He was free; nothing else mattered. He was free to find his goddess, to fulfill his desires in the perfection of her flesh. He now plunged east through the swamp, lucky to avoid the myriad dangers about him. No crocodile crept up to devour him, no roots entwined his legs, and no undercurrents dragged him gasping to a drowning death. Of course, no soul of nature dared to molest Hathor’s current toy. Though it never occurred to Hordedev, he was, for a short time, invincible.
Well, invincible to the attacks of gods. When it came to human antagonists, he didn’t fare as well in his fanatical struggle through the delta’s swamps. Hordedev passed through a number of villages. In each he made a nuisance of himself, proclaiming the imagined and obscene delights of Isis and raving enough to frighten children. Stinking, muddied and bruised in his headlong eastward charge, he looked even crazier than h
e sounded, so the men of the towns bristled at his presence. They beat him up as he entered their villages and removed him bodily when done with their work. Hordedev didn’t mind, as long as he moved toward his goddess. He didn't even notice the stealthy ones tracking his every step.
Outside one of several mildewed hamlets, Hordedev’s trek through thigh-high water angered some local hunters. He scattered the cranes the men were stalking, a serious mistake, for one didn’t eat in a swamp unless one killed the abundant meat. Deprived of one kill, the men decided Hordedev should take its place. They were holding his head beneath the muddy water when they heard a growl far to one side. They turned to discover a jackal, all bared teeth and bristling coat. They thought little of it, for jackals are all bark, cowards at heart. The men threw stones and insults at the beast and continued murdering their human prey.
This jackal, though, differed from its kin. It threw itself into the knot of men, snapping its small but dangerous jaws. The men fell over backwards to escape those teeth. They retreated to land a safe distance away. Then they watched as the jackal half-leapt, half-paddled to the almost drowned madman sitting up in the water. It nudged him, barked at him, and nipped him to get his attention.
That nip startled Hordedev to his feet. The jackal then herded him with barks and toothy threats out of the water and away from the hunters. Hordedev collapsed on a low, semi-dry sandbar, and the jackal, like a faithful cur, licked the mud from his face.
The hunters ran back to their village, and spent the day praying to their household gods.
Hathor’s hired thugs watched unseen from the trees. They also felt an urge to flee, but feared their goddess more than the strange, unnatural beasts of the earth.
Exhaustion tortured Isis on the muddy flats near Tanis. It teased her with her husband’s warm embrace after so long alone. His touch tormented every nerve of her being, for she knew he came to her only in dreams, thin escapes from the anguish of her life. Always, he evaporated as if frightened away, and Isis awoke against prickly grass, mocked by the cold night wind.
Of course, her beauty thrived, undiminished by mud and stench, or by the trials of recent life. But the soul beneath her flesh suffered. It was tired and demoralized, but also hardened by adversity. Now, it shrugged off fitful sleep to once more gather its mistress’s strength. Her adversaries returned; once more the goddess of life braced to battle the agents of death.
They came as they had over the last several weeks, wafting along the dark, humid floor of the swamp, a green iridescence mixing with the thinner vapors that always rose at night. Lately, the mists came in darts and oozes with a touch of reticence, unable to comprehend offense at their intent.
“Go away,” Isis moaned as she rose onto one elbow. “You cannot have him. He belongs to me.”
The mists circled her little island of semi-dry land, the best she could find so deep in the delta swamps. Her husband’s body lay behind her on an elevated slab of wood. Amnet’s men had erected it before leaving the goddess to work her magic. Osiris was freed of his box and exposed to her power. He was also exposed to the mists. They wanted him; they saw him as theirs by right.
Isis struggled to her feet and moved to defend her husband’s platform. She didn’t notice his desiccated flesh or the sweet smell of rot from his body. She saw only hope for life, for she felt a soul within that corpse, feeble and beleaguered, but alive. She laid her hands upon that emaciated chest and projected into it the force of her life. The mists backed off a bit.
“This is my husband,” the goddess cried. “I stand between him and the darkness of death. As long as my body holds life, as long as my heart offers love, he shall remain with me. You cannot have him. Go away, your time has not yet come.”
The mists considered this latest affront. They were just doing their job, after all, and long overdue at that. They would have claimed Osiris years ago if he hadn’t been hidden from them in a tree. Now, they came for their due, came to join with their physical cousin in the ghostly world of the west. They came to be whole in death.
“No!” Isis shouted, and slapped her husband’s corpse with both hands. Instantly, the swamp warmed. Osiris seemed a little less rotted. The plank on which he rested flared rich and green. The ground at Isis’s feet erupted with mosses and tiny flowers. They radiated outwards until they met the water, and even then the moss tumbled far over the muck before realizing its unlikelihood.
The mists swirled, but did not retire as Isis demanded. They belonged there; they were Ka, Ba and Akh, the triad of balance for all those extant in this world, even gods. They came as their brethren had come for eternity, to lead their physical twin to his earned place in the afterlife. They came to bond with Osiris. To deny that bonding was an insult to Ma’at.
“Ma’at be damned!” Isis exclaimed. The flowers expanded, bees swarmed from nowhere to drink their potent nectar, and seedlings of trees sprang from the earth. “Why should I care what Ma’at has to say? Did Ma’at aid me when Set rutted me like an animal? Did Ra? Did any of them? A curse onto Ma’at! This is my husband, and I will bring him life. You are death, you otherworldly spirits, and I am life. This is my world, the seat of my power. And you are in it!” She clamped shut her mouth, afraid she might be raving. Then she took a careful breath and continued more quietly. “You are in it, as a bird sits in a cat’s mouth.”
The mists didn’t like that, not at all. They were only spirits; they had no godly power. But, what could they do? Like the gods, they were doomed to their natures. They had to take Osiris. He was theirs now. Why did she fight it? Hadn’t they given her something, something she desired, as recompense for loss and as payment for finding the one they sought? Hadn’t they been more than fair?
They thought they had, and moved in. They came in an arc high above the freakish flow of plant life, dropping toward Osiris like a blade of light.
Isis vanished. A kite screeched in her place, flaring its wings to meet the spear of light. Heat blasted about the island, a cocoon engulfing the laid out corpse. It thrust against the bizarre attack, forcing the mists to retreat. But they withdrew only so far, spiraling low and off to one side, then reversing in a shot once more toward the corpse. This feint didn’t fool the swooping bird. It met the mists again, talons flexed and wings flashing.
Again the invaders recoiled, casting hot, green sparks between trees. The green light separated into three distinct tendrils, looking to invade from three sides at once. This failed, as well. The bird blocked one attack after the other. Vines burst from the ground and twisted into impassable knots like a weave of living rushes, creaking as they swayed to impose themselves between spirit and body. Natural law battled raw determination, each seeking to exhaust the other. The spirits were flustered at the defense they sought to breach, while that same defense grew more brittle, the defender divided and tired. As with the other clashes, this one fizzled in minutes.
Also as before, the spirits surrendered first. They recoiled to the misty waters to sulk there among the trees. Then they retreated far into the swamp, out of sight and out of contention. The kite threw them one last threat, then Isis stood in its place. She slumped against her husband’s platform.
“Where are you, Nephthys?” she whispered. “I can’t do this forever.”
The night lent her no sympathy. She shivered in the cold, damp air.
Amnet and Nephthys pushed deeper into the delta swamps, where the trees grew taller and closer together, and dry land became a memory. Crocodiles eyed them through gray, wandering mists while waterfowl scattered in a cacophony of shrieks whenever the boat approached. Monkeys cried in the branches overhead, and hippos yawned like thunder at the intruders to their domain. The swamp was loud, humid, and sweltering, and stank with the rot of recycled life. It kept Nephthys in unending nausea though Amnet and his pilot both seemed at home. Did humans like places such as this? Nephthys wondered. Like that mean cave of a house in which she had spent the night? She had raised the question to Amnet a few days ear
lier, but his response, bordering hostility, had kept her quiet since.
“This is not our choice of homes,” he had said. “Your brother took our home.” He had been so curt, as if he blamed more than Set for the fall of that kingdom. Amnet had been so gracious in Fayum. Why was he so irritable now?
Nephthys thought again of gods and humans, of how their roles had blurred. She recalled Merferet, that long-lost priestess of Isis, who had died spitting in the face of Set. She recalled the rebels, who now lived in the deep desert and murdered the priests of Set for a living. Set had accomplished far more than stealing the throne of Abydos. He had brought the gods to earth, had shown they could be murdered, and had given the humans cause to do so.
Now Amnet spoke to gods with reproach. Was that Set’s legacy, or should Nephthys somehow blame herself?
Nephthys sat centered in the boat, Amnet before her, the pilot behind. She breathed through her mouth, trying to look less wilted than she felt. It annoyed her to hide her discomfort from the humans. Once she would have demanded a change to her environment. Humans would have scurried to construct her shade, to find fresh water, and to cut palm branches to fan her skin. She wished she could teach them such lessons now. If only she had thunderbolts to hurl, or could command the swamp to engulf them. She could call to Hapi, or her father Geb, or any number of gods to make her point, but what would that accomplish but greater humiliation? How pathetic, she thought. She was the only god in the pantheon of Ra without any means to assert her will. A poor relation, an embarrassment to all.
She wished she were back in Fayum. At least there the servants were mute in their snobbery. At least there she didn’t confront her uselessness; it hid beneath layers of form. At least there, she didn’t run with sweat like slime, or pant through putrescence and wish her lungs would fail.
No, all she did there was fade.