River God: A Novel of Ancient Egypt (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  The condemned man made no reply. The blood oath of the Shrikes was too strong for him to break.

  ‘This is the second question. Who is the baron that commands you?’ Tanus asked, and still the man was silent.

  ‘This is the third and the last question. Will you lead me to the secret places where your clan hides?’ Tanus asked, and the man looked up at him, hawked in his throat and spat. His phlegm spattered yellow upon the stones. Tanus nodded to the guardsman who stood over him with the sword.

  The stroke was clean and the head toppled on to the steps at the foot of the altar. ‘One more head for the pyramid,’ Tanus said quietly, and nodded for the next prisoner to be brought forward.

  He asked the same three questions, and when the Shrike answered him with a defiant obscenity, Tanus nodded. This time the headsman mistimed the blow and the corpse flopped about with the neck only half-severed. It took three more strokes before the head bounced down the steps.

  Tanus lopped twenty-three heads, I was counting them to distract myself from the waves of debilitating compassion that assailed me, until the first of the condemned men broke down. He was young, not much more than a boy. In a shrill voice he gabbled out the replies before Tanus could actually pose the three questions to him.

  ‘My name is Hui. I am a blood-brother of the clan of Basti the Cruel. I know his secret places, and I will lead you to them.’ Tanus smiled with grim satisfaction and gestured for the lad to be led away. ‘Care for him well,’ he warned his gaolers. ‘He is now a trooper of the Blues, and your companion-in-arms.’

  After the defection of one of them, it went more readily, although there were still many who defied Tanus. Some of them cursed him, while others laughed their defiance at him until the blade swept down, and their bravado ended with their very last breath that burst from the severed windpipe in a crimson gust.

  I was filled with admiration for those who, after a base and despicable life, at the end chose to die with some semblance of honour. They laughed at death. I knew that I was not capable of that quality of courage. Offered that choice, I am certain that I would have responded as some of the weaker prisoners did.

  ‘I am a member of the clan of Ur,’ one confessed.

  ‘I am of the clan of Maa-En-Tef, who is baron of the west bank as far as El Kharga,’ said another, until we had informers to lead us to the strongholds of every one of the remaining robber barons, and a shoulder-high pile of recalcitrant heads to add to the pyramid beside the well.

  * * *

  One of the matters to which Tanus and I had given much thought was the disposal of the three robber barons we had already captured, and the score of informers we had gleaned from the ranks of the condemned Shrikes.

  We knew that the influence of the Shrikes was so pervasive that we dared not keep our captives in Egypt. There was not a prison secure enough to prevent Akh-Seth and his barons from reaching them, either to set them free by bribery or force, or to have them silenced by poison or some other unpleasant means. We knew that Akh-Seth was like an octopus whose head was hidden, but whose tentacles reached into every facet of our government and into the very fabric of our existence.

  This was where my friend Tiamat, the merchant of Safaga, came into my reckoning.

  Marching now as a unit of the Blue Crocodile Guards, and not as a slave caravan, we returned to the port on the Red Sea in half the time that it had taken us to reach Gallala. Our captives were hustled aboard one of Tiamat’s trading vessels that was waiting for us in the harbour, and the captain set sail immediately for the Arabian coast, where Tiamat maintained a secure slave-compound on the small off-shore island of Jez Baquan, run by his own warders. The waters around the island were patrolled by packs of ferocious blue sharks. Tiamat assured us that no one who had attempted escape from the island had ever avoided both the vigilance of the warders and the appetites of the sharks.

  Only one of our captives was not sent to the island. He was Hui from the clan of Basti the Cruel, the same youngster who had been the first to capitulate to the threat of execution. During the march to the sea, Tanus had kept the lad close to him and had turned all the irresistible force of his personality upon him. By this time Hui was his willing slave. This special gift of Tanus’ to win loyalty and devotion from the most unlikely quarters never failed to amaze me. I was sure that Hui, who had buckled so swiftly under the threat of execution, would now willingly lay down his worthless life for Tanus.

  Under Tanus’ spell, Hui poured out every detail that he could remember of the clan to which he had once sworn a blood-oath. I listened quietly, with my writing-brush poised, as Tanus questioned him and I recorded all he had to tell us.

  We learned that the stronghold of Basti the Cruel was in the fastness of that awful desert of Gebel-Umm-Bahari, on the summit of one of the flat-topped mountains that was protected by sheer cliffs on every side. Hidden and impregnable, but less than two days’ march from the east bank of the Nile and the busy caravan routes that ran along its banks, it was the perfect nest for the raptor.

  ‘There is one path to the top, cut like a stairway from the rock. It is wide enough for only one man to climb at a time,’ Hui told us.

  ‘There is no other way to the summit?’ Tanus asked, and Hui grinned and laid his finger along his nose in a conspiratory gesture.

  ‘There is another route. I have used it often, to return to the mountain after I had deserted my post to visit a lady friend. Basti would have had me killed if he had known I was missing. It is a dangerous climb, but a dozen good men could make it and hold the top of the cliff while the main force came up the pathway to them. I will lead you up it, Akh-Horus.’

  It was the first time that I heard the name. Akh-Horus, the brother of the great god Horus. It was a good name for Tanus. Naturally, Hui and our other captives could not know Tanus’ real identity. They knew only in their simple way that Tanus must be some kind of god. He looked like a god and he fought like a god, and he invoked the name of Horus in the midst of battle. So, they had reasoned, he must be the brother of Horus.

  Akh-Horus! It was a name that all Egypt would come to know well in the months ahead. It would be shouted from hilltop to hilltop. It would be carried along the caravan routes. It would travel the length of the river on the lips of the boatmen, from city to city, and from kingdom to kingdom. The legend would grow up around the name, as the accounts of his deeds were repeated and exaggerated at each telling.

  Akh-Horus was the mighty warrior who appeared from nowhere, sent by his brother Horus to continue the eternal struggle against evil, against Akh-Seth, the lord of the Shrikes.

  Akh-Horus! Each time the people of Egypt repeated the name, it would fill their hearts with fresh hope.

  All that was in the future as we sat in the garden of Tiamat the merchant. Only I knew how hot Tanus was for Basti, and how eager to lead his men into the Gebel-Umm-Bahari to hunt him down. It was not only that Basti was the most rapacious and pitiless of all the barons. There was much more to it than that. Tanus had a very personal score to settle with that bandit.

  From me, Tanus had learned that Basti had been the particular instrument that Akh-Seth had used to destroy the fortune of Pianki, Lord Harrab, Tanus’ father.

  ‘I can lead you up the cliffs of Gebel-Umm-Bahari,’ Hui promised. ‘I can deliver Basti into your hands.’

  Tanus was silent awhile in the darkness as he savoured that promise. We sat and listened to the nightingale singing at the bottom of Tiamat’s garden. It was a sound totally alien from the evil and desperate affairs that we were discussing. After a while Tanus sighed and dismissed Hui.

  ‘You have done well, lad,’ he told him. ‘Fulfil your promise, and you will find me grateful.’

  Hui prostrated himself, as though before a god, and Tanus nudged him irritably with his foot. ‘Enough of that nonsense. Away with you now.’

  This recent, unlooked-for elevation to the godhead embarrassed Tanus. No one could ever accuse him of being either modest or
humble, but he was at least a pragmatist, with no false illusions of his own station; he never aspired to become either a pharaoh or a divine, and he was always short with any servility or obsequious behaviour from those around him.

  As soon as the lad was gone, Tanus turned back to me. ‘So often I lie awake in the night and consider all that you have told me about my father. I ache in every fibre of my body and soul for revenge against the one who drove him into penury and disgrace and hounded him to his death. I can barely restrain myself. I am filled by the desire to abandon this devious way that you have devised of trapping Akh-Seth. Instead, I long to seek him out directly, and tear out his foul heart with my bare hands.’

  ‘If you do that, you will lose everything,’ I said. ‘You know that well. Do it my way and you will restore not only your own reputation, but that of your noble father into the bargain. My way, you will retrieve the estate and the fortune that was stolen from you. My way will not only give you your full measure of revenge, but will also lead you back to Lostris and the fulfilment of the vision that I divined for the pair of you in the Mazes of Ammon-Ra. Trust me, Tanus. For your sake and the sake of my mistress, trust me.’

  ‘If I don’t trust you, then who can I trust?’ he asked, and touched my arm. ‘I know you are right, but I have always lacked patience. For me the swift and direct road has always been easiest.’

  ‘For the time being, put Akh-Seth out of your mind. Think only of the next step along the devious way that we must travel together. Think of Basti the Cruel. It was Basti who destroyed your father’s trade caravans as they returned from the East. For five seasons, not one of the caravans of Lord Harrab ever returned to Karnak. They were all attacked and looted along the road. It was Basti who destroyed your father’s copper-mines at Sestra and murdered the engineers, and their slave workers. Since then those rich veins of ore have lain untapped. It was Basti who systematically pillaged your father’s estates along the Nile, who slaughtered his slaves in the fields and burned the crops, until in the end, only weeds grew in Lord Harrab’s fields, and he was forced to sell them at a fraction of their real worth.’

  ‘All that may be true, but it was Akh-Seth who gave Basti his orders.’

  ‘No one will believe that. Pharaoh will not believe that, unless he hears Basti confess it,’ I told him impatiently. ‘Why are you always so stubborn? We have gone over this a hundred times. The barons first, and then at last the head of the snake, Akh-Seth.’

  ‘Yours is the voice of wisdom, I know it. But it is hard to bear the waiting. I long for my revenge. I long to cleanse the stain of sedition and treason from my honour, and I long—oh, how I long—for Lostris!’

  He leaned across and clasped my shoulder with a grip that made me wince. ‘You have done enough here, old friend. I could never have accomplished so much without you. If you had not come to find me, I might still be sodden with drink and lying in the embrace of some stinking whore. I owe you more than I can ever repay, but I must send you away now. You are needed elsewhere. Basti is my meat, and I don’t need you to share the feast with me. You will not be coming with me to Gebel-Umm-Bahari. I am sending you back where you belong—where I also belong, but where I cannot be—at the side of the Lady Lostris. I envy you, old friend, I would give up my hope of immortality to be going to her in your place.’

  I protested most prettily, of course. I swore that all I wanted was another chance at those villains, and that I was his companion and that I would be seriously aggrieved if he would not give me a place at his side in the next campaign. All the time I was secure in the knowledge that when Tanus set his mind on a course of action he was adamant and could not easily be dissuaded, except very occasionally by his friend and adviser, Taita the slave.

  The truth was that I had enjoyed my fill of wild heroics and people trying to kill me. I was not by nature a soldier, not some insensitive clod of a trooper. I hated the rigours of campaigning in the desert. I could not bear another week of heat and sweat and flies without even a glimpse of the sweet green waters of Mother Nile. I longed for the feel of clean linen against my freshly bathed and anointed skin. I missed my mistress more than I could express in mere words. Our quiet, civilized life in the painted rooms on the Island of Elephantine, our music and long, leisurely conversations together, my pets and my scrolls, all these exerted an irresistible draw upon me.

  Tanus was right, he no longer needed me, and my place was with my mistress. However, to acquiesce too readily to his orders might lower his opinion of me, and I did not want that either.

  At last I allowed him to convince me, and, concealing my eagerness, I began my preparations for my return to Elephantine.

  * * *

  Tanus had ordered Kratas back to Karnak, to assemble and bring up reinforcements for the expedition into the desert of Gebel-Umm-Bahari. I was to travel under his protection as far as Karnak, but taking leave of Tanus was not a simple matter. Twice when I had already left the house of Tiamat to join Kratas where he waited for me on the outskirts of the town, Tanus called me back to give me another message to take to my mistress.

  ‘Tell her that I think of her every hour of every day!’

  ‘You have already given me that message,’ I protested.

  ‘Tell her that my dreams are filled with images of her lovely face.’

  ‘And that one also. I can recite them by heart. Give me something new,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Tell her that I believe the vision of the Mazes, that in a few short years we will be together—’

  ‘Kratas is waiting for me. If you keep me here, how can I deliver your message?’

  ‘Tell her that everything I do is for her. Every breath I draw is for her—’ he broke off, and embraced me. ‘The truth is, Taita, I doubt I can live another day without her.’

  ‘Five years will pass like that single day. When next you meet her, your honour will be restored and you will once more stand high in the land. She can only love you the more for that.’

  He released me. ‘Take good care of her until I am able to assume that joyous duty from you. Now, away with you. Speed to her side.’

  ‘That has been my intention this hour past,’ I told him wryly, and made good my escape.

  With Kratas at the head of our small detachment, we made the journey to Karnak in under a week. Fearful of discovery by Rasfer or Lord Intef, I spent as little time in my beloved city as it took me to find passage on one of the barges heading southwards. I left Kratas busily recruiting from amongst the elite regiments of Pharaoh’s guards the thousand good men that Tanus had demanded, and I went aboard the barge.

  We had the north wind in our sails all the way, and we tied up at the wharf of East Elephantine twelve days after leaving Thebes. I was still dressed in the wig and garb of the priesthood, and nobody recognized me as I came ashore.

  For the price of a small copper ring I hired a felucca to take me across the river to the royal island, and it put me down at the steps that led up to the water-gate to our garden in the harem. My heart pounded against my ribs as I bounded up the stairs. I had been away from my mistress far too long. It was at times such as these that I realized the full strength of my feelings for her. I was certain that Tanus’ love was but a light river breeze in comparison to the khamsin of my own emotions.

  One of Lostris’ Cushite maidens met me at the gate, and tried to prevent me from entering. ‘My mistress is unwell, priest. There is another doctor with her at this moment. She will not see you.’

  ‘She will see me,’ I told her, and stripped off my wig.

  ‘Taita!’ she squealed, and fell to her knees, frantically making the sign to ward off evil. ‘You are dead. This is not you, but some evil apparition from beyond the grave.’

  I brushed her aside and hurried to my mistress’s private quarters, to be met at the doors by one of those priests of Osiris who consider themselves physicians.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded of him, appalled that one of these quacks had been anywhere ne
ar my mistress. Before he could answer, I bellowed at him, ‘Out! Get out of here! Take your spells and charms and filthy potions, and don’t come back.’

  He looked as though he were prepared to argue, but I placed my hand between his shoulder-blades and gave him a running start towards the gate. Then I rushed to my mistress’s bedside.

  The odour of sickness filled the chamber, sour and strong, and a wild grief seized me as I looked down at the Lady Lostris. She seemed to have shrunk in size, and her skin was pale as the ashes of an old camp-fire. She was asleep or in a coma, I could not be certain which, but there were dark, bruised shadows beneath her closed eyelids. Her lips had that dry and crusty look that filled me with dread.

  I drew back the linen sheet that covered her and beneath it she was naked. I stared in horror at her body. The flesh had melted off her. Her limbs were thin as sticks and her ribs and the bones of her pelvis stuck out through the unhealthy skin, like those of drought-stricken kine. Tenderly, I placed my hand in her armpit to feel for the heat of fever, but her skin was cool. What kind of disease was this, I fretted. I had not encountered any like it before.

  Without leaving her side, I yelled for her slave girls, but none of them had the courage to face the ghost of Taita. In the end I had to storm into their quarters and drag one of them whimpering from under her bed.

  ‘What have you done to your mistress to bring her to this pass?’ I kicked her fat backside to focus her attention on my question, and she whined and covered her face, so as not to have to look upon me.

  ‘She will not eat. Barely a mouthful in all these weeks. Not since the mummy of Tanus, Lord Harrab was laid in his tomb in the Valley of the Nobles. She has even lost the child of Pharaoh that she was carrying in her womb. Spare me, kind ghost, I have done you no harm.’

  I stared down at her in bewilderment for a moment, until I realized what had happened. My message of comfort to the Lady Lostris had never been delivered. Intuitively I guessed that the messenger whom Kratas had dispatched from Luxor to carry my letter to my mistress, had never reached Elephantine. He had probably become one more victim of the Shrikes, just another corpse floating down the river with an empty purse and a gaping wound in his throat. I hoped that my letter had fallen into the hands of some illiterate thief, and not been taken to Akh-Seth. There was no time to worry about that now.