The Quest (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Take us to the bank!’ As the prow touched the shoreline he led the rush.

  Spearmen and axemen raced after the routed Chima. From ahead there rose another wail of terror and despair as they ran into Hilto’s ambush. The swords of Tinat’s men thumped into living flesh, and made a wet sucking sound as they were pulled free. A naked Chima ran back towards Taita with one of his arms lopped off at the elbow. He was squealing shrilly as the blood from the stump sprayed over his own body, painting him a glistening scarlet. Taita cut him down with a stroke that took away the top half of his skull. Then he killed the naked woman who followed him with a single thrust between her dangling dugs. In the rage of battle he felt no pity or remorse. The next man held up his bare hands in a despairing attempt to divert the blade. Taita cut him down with as little compunction as he would have crushed a tsetse fly crawling on his skin.

  Trapped between the two lines of armed men, the Chima darted about like a shoal of fish in a net. Retribution was cold and ruthless, the slaughter furious and sanguinary. A few of the Chima managed to break through the closing ring of bronze and reach the river. But the archers were waiting for those who did, and so were the crocodiles.

  ‘Did any escape?’ Taita demanded of Tinat, when they met in the middle of the field strewn with the dead and dying.

  ‘I saw some run back into the huts. Shall we go after them?’

  ‘No. By now they will have armed themselves, and will be as dangerous as cornered leopards. I will not risk any more of our people. Put fire into the thatch of the huts and smoke them out.’

  By the time the sun had risen above the trees it was all over. Two of Tinat’s men had been lightly wounded, but the Chima were annihilated. They left the corpses lying where they had fallen for the hyenas to deal with, and were back on board, sailing northwards again, before the sun had made its noon.

  ‘Now only the swamps of the Great Sud stand in our way,’ Taita told Fenn, as they sat together on the foredeck, ‘the swamps in which I found you. You were a little wild savage, running with a tribe of them.’

  ‘It all seems so long ago,’ she murmured. ‘The memory is pale and faded. I remember my other life more clearly than that one. I hope we do not encounter any of the bestial Luo. I would like to forget it all completely.’ She tossed her head to throw the dancing golden tresses back over her shoulder. ‘Let us talk of more pleasant things,’ she suggested. ‘Did you know that Imbali has a baby growing inside her?’

  ‘Ah! So that is it. I have seen Nakonto looking at her in a peculiar way. But how do you know that this is so?’

  ‘Imbali told me. She is very proud. She says the babe will be a great warrior, like Nakonto.’

  ‘What if it should be a girl?’

  ‘No doubt it will be a great warrior like Imbali.’ She laughed.

  ‘It is good tidings for them, but sad for us.’

  ‘Why sad?’ she demanded.

  ‘I fear we shall soon lose them. Now that he is to be a father, Nakonto’s days as a roving warrior are numbered. He will want to take Imbali and his child back to his own village. That will be soon, for we are nearing the land of the Shilluk.’

  The terrain along the banks changed its nature as they left behind the forests and the elephant country to enter a wide savannah dotted with flat-topped acacia trees. Towering giraffe, with reticulated white markings on their coffee-coloured bodies, fed on the high branches and below them, grazing on the sweet savannah grasses, herds of antelope, kob, topi, eland, mingled with herds of fat striped zebra. The resuscitated Nile had brought them flocking back to partake of her bounty.

  Two days’ further sailing, and they sighted a herd of several hundred humped cattle, with long swept-back horns, grazing close to the edge of the reed banks. Young boys were herding them. ‘I doubt not that they are Shilluk,’ Taita told Fenn. ‘Nakonto has come home.’

  ‘How can you be sure of it?’

  ‘See how tall and slender they are, and the manner in which they stand, like roosting storks, balanced on one long leg with the other foot resting on the calf. They can be none other than Shilluk.’

  Nakonto had seen them too, and his usually aloof, disdainful manner evaporated. He broke into a stamping, prancing war-dance that shook the deck, and hallooed in a high-pitched tone that carried clearly over the reeds. Imbali laughed at his antics, clapped her hands and ululated to encourage him to greater efforts.

  The herders heard someone calling to them in their own language from the boat, and ran to the bank to stare at the visitors in amazement. Nakonto recognized two and hailed them across the water: ‘Sikunela! Timbai!’

  The lads responded with astonishment: ‘Stranger, who are you?’

  ‘I am no stranger. I am your uncle Nakonto, the famous spearman!’ he shouted back.

  The boys whooped with excitement, and raced away to the village to call their elders. Before long several hundred Shilluk were gathered on the riverbank, gabbling at Nakonto in amazement. Then came Nontu the Short, all four and a half cubits of him, followed by his wives and their multitudinous offspring.

  Nakonto and Nontu embraced rapturously. Then Nontu shouted instructions at the women, who trooped away to the village. They returned presently balancing on their heads enormous pots of bubbling beer.

  The celebration on the riverbank lasted several days, but at last Nakonto came to Taita. ‘I have travelled far with you, great one who is no longer ancient,’ he said. ‘It has been good, especially the fighting, but this is the end of our road together. You are returning to your own people, and I must go back to mine.’

  ‘This I understand. You have found a good woman who can put up with your ways, and you wish to see your sons grow as tall as you. Perchance you can teach them to handle a stabbing spear with the same skill as their father.’

  ‘This is true, old father who is younger than me. But how will you find your way back through the great swamps without me to guide you?’

  ‘You will choose two young men of your tribe who are now as you were when I met you, hungry for fighting and adventure. You will send them with me to show me the way.’ Nakonto chose two of his nephews to guide them through the Great Sud.

  ‘They are very young.’ Taita looked them over. ‘Will they know the channels?’

  ‘Does a baby know how to find its mother’s teat?’ Nakonto laughed. ‘Go now. I shall think of you often as I grow older, and always it will be with pleasure.’

  ‘Take as many beads from the ship’s stores as will buy you five hundred head of fine cattle.’ A Shilluk measured his wealth in terms of the cattle he owned and the sons he had fathered. ‘Take also a hundred bronze spearheads so that your sons will always be well armed.’

  ‘I praise you and Fenn, your woman with hair like sunlight dancing on the waters of the Nile.’

  Imbali and Fenn embraced and both women wept. Nakonto and Imbali followed the flotilla for half of the morning, running along the riverbank, keeping pace with the leading boat, waving, dancing and shouting farewell. At last they halted, and Fenn and Taita stood together in the stern to watch their tall figures grow small with distance.

  As the first dreary vista of the papyrus banks appeared ahead, stretching away to a boundless horizon, Nakonto’s nephews took their place in the bows, and as they entered the watery wilderness they signalled the turns and twists of the narrow channel to Meren on the steering oar.

  With the Nile running high, the great swamp was water and more water, with no dry landings, so they were bound to the boats day after day. But the wind that had driven them northwards remained constant and true, filling the lateen sails and driving down the swarms of stinging insects that rose from the reeds. Fenn thought often about the unnatural compliancy of that wind. At last she decided that Taita was exerting the extraordinary powers he had inherited from Eos to make even the elements sway to his will.

  In these conditions, the journey through the watery wastes was not unendurable. There were few demands on Taita and he was
able to leave the navigation to Meren and Nakonto’s nephews, and all other matters to Tinat. He and Fenn passed most of the days and nights in their own private space on the foredeck. The subjects that dominated most of their conversations were, first, Taita’s confrontation with Eos and, second, his discovery of the Font and its miraculous properties. Fenn never tired of his descriptions of Eos.

  ‘Was she the most beautiful woman you have ever seen?’

  ‘No, Fenn. You are the most beautiful.’

  ‘Do you say so to still my busy tongue or do you truly mean it?’

  ‘You are my little fish, and your beauty is that of the golden dorado, the loveliest creature in all the oceans.’

  ‘And Eos? What of her? Was she not beautiful, also?’

  ‘She was very beautiful, but in the same way that a great killer shark is beautiful. She possessed a sinister and terrifying beauty.’

  ‘When she joined her body to yours, was it the same with her as it is with me?’

  ‘It was as different as death is from life. With her it was cold and brutal. With you it is warm, filled with love and compassion. With her I was locked into savage warfare. With you it is a meeting and blending of our separate spirits into some mystic whole that is infinitely greater than its parts.’

  ‘Oh, Taita, I want so much to believe you. I know and understand why you had to go to Eos and join with her, but still I am consumed with jealousy. Imbali told me that men can take pleasure with many women. Did she not pleasure you?’

  ‘There are no words to express how I loathed her infernal embrace. I was frightened and repelled by every word she uttered, every touch of her hands and body. She soiled and corrupted me so that I believed I would never be clean again.’

  ‘When I listen to you speak so, I am no longer jealous. I am left only with a feeling of great compassion for what you suffered. Will you ever find surcease?’

  ‘I was washed clean in the Blueness of the Font. The burdens of age, guilt and sin were lifted from me.’

  ‘Tell me about the Font again. What did you feel as you were enveloped in the Blue?’ Once again he described the miracle of his transmutation. When he had finished she was silent for a space, and then she said, ‘The Font has been destroyed in the eruptions of the volcanoes, in the same way that Eos herself was.’

  ‘It is the pulsing artery of the earth. It is the divine power of nature, which quickens and controls all life. It can never be destroyed, for if that ever happened, all creation would perish too.’

  ‘If it still exists, then what has become of it? Where has it gone?’

  ‘It was sucked back into the core of the earth, just as the seas are sucked away by the tides and the moon.’

  ‘Has it been placed for ever beyond the reach of mankind?’

  ‘I believe not. I believe that in time it must surface again. Perhaps it has already done so in some remote part of the earth.’

  ‘Where, Taita? Where will it reappear?’

  ‘I know only what Eos knew. It will be closely associated with a large volcano and within proximity of a vast body of water. Fire, earth, air and water, the four elements.’

  ‘Will any man rediscover the Font?’

  ‘It was driven deep into the earth when the volcano of Etna in the far north erupted. At that time, it was where Eos had her lair. She was driven out by the fires. She wandered for over a hundred years in search of the place where the Blue River had come to the surface again. She found it in the Mountains of the Moon. Now it has been driven under again.’

  ‘How long will you remain young, Taita?’

  ‘This I cannot tell with any certainty. Eos remained young for over a thousand years. I know it from her boasts, and from the certain knowledge I took from her.’

  ‘And now that you have bathed in the Font, you will do the same,’ she said. ‘You will live for a thousand years.’

  That night she woke him, whimpering and crying with nightmares. Then she called his name: ‘Taita, wait for me! Come back! Don’t leave me.’ Taita stroked her cheeks and kissed her eyelids to wake her gently. When she realized it had been a dream she clung to him. ‘Is it you, Taita? Is it truly you? You have not left me?’

  ‘I will never leave you,’ he reassured her.

  ‘You will.’ Her voice was still blurred with tears.

  ‘Never,’ he repeated. ‘It took me so long to find you again. Tell me about your silly dream, Fenn. Were you being chased by trogs or Chima?’

  She did not reply at once, still struggling to regain control of herself. At last she whispered, ‘It was not a silly dream.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘In the dream I had grown old. My hair was thin and white – I could see it hanging in front of my eyes. My skin was wrinkled and my hands were bony claws. My back was bowed and my feet were swollen and painful. I hobbled behind you, but you were walking so fast that I could not keep up. I was falling back and you were going to some place where I could not follow.’ She was becoming agitated again. ‘I called your name, but you did not hear me.’ She began to sob.

  ‘It was only a dream.’ He held her tightly in the circle of his arms, but she shook her head vehemently.

  ‘It was a vision of the future. You strode ahead without looking back. You were tall and straight, your legs strong. Your hair was thick and lustrous.’ She reached up, took a handful and twisted it between her fingers. ‘Just as it is now.’

  ‘My sweet, you must not distress yourself. You, too, are young and beautiful.’

  ‘Perhaps now. But you will stay so, and I will grow old and die. I will lose you again. I don’t want to turn into some cold star. I want to stay with you.’

  With all the wisdom of the ages at his command, he could find no words with which to comfort her. At last he made love to her again. She gave herself into his embrace with a kind of desperate fervour, as though she were trying to become one with him, to unite their physical bodies as well as their spirits so that they could never be torn apart, not even by death. At last, just before dawn, exhausted by love and despair, she slept.

  From time to time they sailed past long-deserted Luo villages. The huts sagged miserably on their pole foundations, on the point of toppling into the rising waters. ‘When the waters rise they are driven to seek drier land at the peripheries of the Great Sud,’ Fenn explained. ‘They will only return to their fishing when the waters fall again.’

  ‘It is as well,’ Taita said. ‘If we were to meet them we would surely be forced to fight them, and we have been delayed long enough on this voyage. Our people are eager to see their homes.’

  ‘As I am,’ Fenn agreed, ‘although for me it will be the first time in this life.’

  That night Fenn was haunted again by her nightmares. He woke her, rescuing her from the dark terrors of her mind, stroking and kissing her until she lay quietly in his arms. But still she trembled as though in fever and her heart drummed against his chest like the hoofbeats of a running horse.

  ‘Was it the same dream?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Yes, but worse,’ she whispered back. ‘This time my eyesight was misty with age and you were so far ahead that I could only just make out your dark shape disappearing into the haze.’ They were both quiet, until Fenn spoke again. ‘I don’t want to lose you, but I know I must not squander the loving years that the gods have granted us in futile longing and regret. I must be strong and happy. I must savour every minute of our time together. I must share my happiness with you. We must never talk about this terrible parting again, not until it happens.’ She was quiet for a minute longer. Then she said, so low that he could barely make out the words: ‘Not until it happens, as it surely must.’

  ‘No, my beloved Fenn,’ he answered. ‘It is not inevitable. We will not be parted again, ever.’ She became still in his arms, barely breathing as she listened. ‘I know what we must do to avert it.’

  ‘Tell me!’ she demanded. He explained. She listened quietly, but as soon as he had finished she a
sked a hundred questions. When he had answered them, she said, ‘It might take a lifetime.’ She was daunted by the scope of the vision he had laid out before her.

  ‘Or it might take just a few short years,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Taita, I can hardly contain myself. When can we begin?’

  ‘There remains much to do before we can repair the terrible damage that Eos inflicted on our very Egypt. As soon as we have done that, we can begin.’

  ‘I shall count the days until that time.’

  Day after day, the wind held fair and the rowers pulled with a will, singing over the oars, their high spirits abounding, their arms and backs indefatigable as Nakonto’s nephews guided them unerringly through the channels. Each day at noon Taita climbed to the top of the mast to scan the country ahead. Long before he expected it, he picked out, far ahead, the shapes of the first trees above the interminable papyrus. Under the keels of the galleys the Nile grew deeper, and the reed beds on either side opened out. At last they burst out of the Great Sud, and ahead lay the prodigious plains through which the Nile ran like a long green python until it disappeared into the dusty haze of distance.

  They moored the galleys under the steep-cut bank. While Tinat and his men were setting up the first camp on dry land for many a long day, they unloaded the horses. A league away across the dusty plain a herd of eight giraffes was browsing in a clump of flat-topped acacia trees.

  ‘We have had no fresh meat since we left the Shilluk,’ Taita told Tinat. ‘Everyone will be pleased to eat something other than catfish. I purpose to take out a hunting party. Once they have finished building the zareeba, let the people rest and disport themselves.’