“How did you come to be Horus’s emissary?” I asked, changing the subject.
She looked over her shoulder before answering, as if she was checking the sun’s position relative to the horizon. It was just dipping below an embankment. In another few minutes, it would be dark.
“King Kashta gifted me to Horus as a sign of respect to the newest god of Egypt,” she said, hesitating before the word ‘gift’.
“Do you believe that?” I asked.
“Why should I not?”
“That isn’t an answer.”
She turned towards me again and I could see her eyes through the slits in her mask. They were red. Suddenly all the pieces fell into place. “You’re an albino,” I guessed.
She sighed, and then reached up with one glove-covered hand and removed the ivory facemask. Underneath were the wide, full lips and broad nose of someone who’d been born in Africa’s tropical rain forests, but instead of dark, ebony skin, hers was the colour of chalk sprinkled with grey spots across her cheeks that might have been freckles. Her hair was long and nappy, but silver. Instead of making her look old, it made her look distinguished. “Now you know why I only come on deck at night.”
She held up the sleeve of her black robe and pinched the fabric to demonstrate how thick it was. “White fabric is much cooler, but it lets in too much sun. I wear black to avoid being burnt. Night is the only time I can come out without fear of passing out from heatstroke.”
“So you were a gift to Horus. But how did you become his advisor?” I asked. It was odd, to say the least, for an albino to rise to such a position in a country that worshipped the Sun.
She shook her head bitterly. “Perhaps because King Kashta can have any woman in his kingdom, he has developed exotic tastes. It is widely known that he will pay a great deal for female slaves with unusual traits, and it was because of that that my parents – both poor uneducated farmers – did not kill me at birth. Instead, they raised me in their small hovel and forbade me from going outside.”
She plucked at the fingers of a glove and then pulled it off her hand, revealing skin that looked like it had been horribly burned and then poorly healed. “Not knowing any better, I defied them when I was old enough to run away. My parents’ farm was not much more than a small patch of dirt, and yet I didn’t even make it to the end of the property. The Sun was a far more effective warden than they ever were.
“The day they sold me to the King’s chancellor was the happiest day of my life. As a royal concubine, I lived in opulence and was educated – in case Kashta wished to converse with us. His needs weren’t great and though I did not welcome his attention, I never refused him. It seemed ungrateful after everything he’d done for me.”
I was entranced by her story. It seemed that her condition had been both a blessing and a curse. “Why did the King send you away?”
“The King of Kush told Horus that I knew the Sun better than anyone in the Kingdom. He made a gift of me because it pleased him to no end that the high priestess of his enemy would be a former whore. He thought it was a great joke to play on the upstart. But he was right – because of my condition and the education I received while I was in Kashta’s... employ, I knew more about the sun than anyone in Egypt. I knew down to the minute when it would rise and when it would set. I studied historical records and was able to predict solar eclipses. I learned to read the weather so that I could anticipate those few days when it might rain. All so that I could occasionally go outside during the day. I did indeed study the sun, but it was as a warrior might study an enemy.”
As if to emphasize her point, she drew down her hood and loosened her robes. In the ruddy light of twilight, her pale skin practically glowed. Horus had made a terrible mistake when he’d sent her with me. She was competent and extremely pragmatic, perhaps more so than anyone else in his court. “Why did Horus send you with me?”
She shrugged. “He found out that I was a whore.”
That explained why she had told me all that she did. She didn’t like Horus because He couldn’t see past her former occupation. He saw only what He expected to see, and not the woman underneath.
The barge’s paltry crew had finished their dinner and were claiming pieces of the deck to sleep on. The most senior amongst them were already sleeping comfortably in large coils of rope. The captain’s daughter scampered around the railings, lighting lanterns with a shielded candle. We would not be stopping for the night. River traffic on the Nile often navigated by starlight, and the moon was nearly full. There was plenty of light to see the banks and other barges.
“It’s my turn now,” she said. “Horus isn’t a god at all is He?”
The question caught me off guard. Of course, Zahra’s keen intellect would have seen right through his ruse. “No. He’s a man with a powerful toy that he doesn’t quite know how to use.”
Somewhere in the distance, a fish leapt out of the water in search of its dinner then splashed back into the river. Zahra’s eyes never left mine. “Are you a god?”
“That depends on what you believe the gods to be. Am I a vengeful spirit who rides down from the sky to exact vengeance upon the infidels? Obviously not. On the other hand, I have been alive since the time when fiery rocks fell from the sky and glaciers covered the Earth.”
“Can you rain fire down on Baryoom?” She asked, echoing the question Penarddun had once put to me. I could tell by her wry expression that she was only half serious.
“Once maybe. Not without the mask. The magic that remains to me concerns the laws of chance. I can influence events to favour the outcomes that I desire.”
“You can make your own luck,” she said perceptively.
“It’s more than that, but if you prefer to think of it that way, yes, I’m exceptionally lucky. Divinely so.”
That was not entirely true. It was possible that I could, even then, rain fire down upon my enemies. It might sound outlandish, but there are giant rocks floating in the sky many tens of thousands of miles above the surface of our planet, and I believe I could have asked one to throw itself upon the Earth, but brute force was never my way. I prefer to use my wits against my enemies and nothing is quite as crude as a ten mile wide crater.
“So how do you believe that you’ll defeat a man like Baryoom, who commands ten thousand men wielding weapons forged from the hardest metal known to Man?”
I shrugged. “With a trick.”
The truth was that I had no idea. I didn’t have six hundred head of cattle at my disposal, nor did I believe that Wetiko or his Emissaries would fall for that trick again. Wetiko was many things, but not stupid. All I really hoped for was to secure an audience with Baryoom. I was sure something would occur to me in time.
I was to get my wish much sooner than I suspected. As Zahra predicted, activity on the river banks became more frantic as we travelled downriver until we began to see smoke on the horizon. Late one evening we heard shouts coming from another barge – men from a local village had risked the crocodiles and swum out to the vessel by moonlight. A brief battle was fought and the ship began to list to one side. Wind caught the sails and, with the steersman fighting for his life instead of guiding his vessel, the wheel spun freely. A few moments later, the sound of timbers cracking echoed over the water as the barge drove itself into the beach. A small fire erupted on deck and quickly spread until a thick column of black smoke rose into the sky. Though we felt ourselves protected by the flag of Horus that flew overhead, we did not breathe easily until the ailing barge disappeared behind a bend in the river.
The next day the captain manoeuvred his craft as close to shore as he could and dropped anchor. Two horses were brought from below decks and loaded with enough food and supplies to last several weeks.
“I can take you no further,” he said to me apologetically. “You saw what happened last night. Soon, the villagers will be desperate enough that no flag will protect us.”
Archers lined the railing with bows drawn, ready to shoot any crocod
iles that might lunge for us while we were in the water. We mounted our horses and the captain whipped their flanks hard enough that they leapt forward into the river. I went under with a cold splash and then gasped as we surfaced. My horse clearly had more experience at this kind of thing than I did and swam steadily towards the shore. We emerged soaking wet and though my horse was able to shake himself dry, I had to wait for the sun to do the same.
For the next few days, Zahra and I rode through the dry hills of Egypt, avoiding the river as much as we could. We knew it was only a matter of time before we were captured by the Assyrians, and in fact we were counting on it. Our goal for now was simply to bypass the vanguard, which would be more likely to kill us than take us prisoner.
The sun was close to the horizon when Zahra yanked on her reins and pulled her stallion to a stop. “Look,” she said from behind her ivory mask. I followed her outstretched arm and saw what she was pointing at.
A man had been crucified on two planks of wood that might once have been roofing beams. Vultures scattered as we drew close and I could see blue-black spiderwebs of rotting blood on his arms where the Assyrians had driven iron spikes through flesh and bone to the wood below. His eyes were dark caves ringed by discoloured flesh. He’d been disembowelled by some scavenger and viscera lay splattered on the sandy ground. His feet had been savaged and one was completely missing.
“He’s been here several days, but not long enough for the hyenas to be able to pull him down. Not that they didn’t try,” said Zahra, pointing out the damage to his feet.
“I think this means that we’re exactly where we need to be,” I said, looking around at the surrounding hills. “The vanguard wouldn’t have had time to do this. It looks like regular army.”
“There’ll be a village over that hill, unless I miss my guess,” Zahra responded. She kicked her horse’s flanks. “Care to get captured with me?”
The village to which Zahra referred did indeed exist. Though it had been burnt to the ground several days before, the army was still encamped in its ruins. We approached cautiously under a flag of truce and were brought through the ranks to the command tent. The Assyrian commander instantly recognized Zahra from her mask and outfit, and we were formally put under arrest and sent onwards, under guard, to Cairo where Baryoom waited with the bulk of the army. That the destruction we had so far witnessed had been accomplished only by forward units was astonishing. With their technologically superior iron weapons, the Assyrians could defeat much larger Egyptian units wielding stone-tipped spears, and cut right through the bronze swords and breastplates worn by officers.
We travelled for several days, passing small groups of refugees on the road who scattered once they saw the standards of our guards. The villages remained burnt, but were slowly being rebuilt by the army. The fields remained unsalted, which told me that Baryoom intended to use them to feed his army as they marched south. Our captain’s decision to drop us on the shore and retreat had been a good one. The Assyrians would be confiscating any vessel they could lay their hands on to transport their baggage train up-river.
Cairo itself was mostly intact. Squat beige buildings of hardened mud huddled close to a central palace with four tall towers whose roofs were covered in cobalt and gold leaf. The city was much larger than Thebes and covered both sides of the Nile, embracing the river with arms made from wooden docks. If Cairo had been a fighter, it would have been a huge, drunken spearman. Thebes would be a lean, but trim swordsman. My own Brodgar might be a naked child wielding a sling armed with stones plucked from his mother’s garden.
The Great Eastern Wall had been breached in several places and rubble still lay in the streets. Fortunately for the people of Cairo, only a few buildings had been burnt, mostly around great rents in the walls. Baryoom’s men had shown remarkable restraint in not sacking the city, especially for followers of Wetiko, who was essentially a giant eating machine. When I asked Zahra about that, she pointed out that Cairo had always been a secondary objective for Baryoom. His true prize was Thebes, and if he sacked Cairo he would have no staging point for his armies. He’d shown no hesitation in attacking Egyptian troops outside the city and taken huge casualties doing it, but won decisively enough to scare the rulers of the city. They had surrendered shortly after the first breach.
We were guided through the southern gates of the city and taken directly to the palace. Inside, Egypt’s history was piled on the floor. Finely woven tapestries had been removed from the walls, recently enough that one could still guess where they’d hung by looking for dark patches on the wall. Priceless vases, paintings, ceremonial weapons from the armoury – everything had been placed in the corridors for careful inventory. What the Assyrians planned to do with them was anyone’s guess. Ship them back home? Use them to buy more weapons? Only Baryoom knew.
The Assyrian commander met with us in a great audience chamber in the centre of the palace. As soon as we entered the dimly lit room, giant doors slammed shut behind us hard enough that their brass door handles rattled on the wood.
Baryoom slouched lazily on a huge pile of pillows in the centre of the room. He was even larger than I’d imagined. He wore only a set of purple-and-black pleated pants, but even these were only half visible – their top half disappeared under the huge fold of skin that represented his belly. Coarse, curly black hair covered him from hands to feet, and he glistened with sweat. If one were to lift several of his chins one might find a neck, but none was visible. His bald head was triangular in shape, which made him resemble one of the pyramids that would later be built on the plateau nearby.
A golden dish sat on every pillow except those on which he rested, and on each of these a new delicacy lay. Some still steamed from the ovens, while others were served cold. Glazed lamb, honeyed pork, a dozen curries, a hundred appetizers. I’d smelled them from the hallway outside. Here, however, their flavours mixed with the smell of Baryoom himself. He seasoned the air with stale body odour and offal. It was not pleasant. He ate the entire time we were there, picking dishes at random and stuffing them into his mouth. Some delicacies had not yet been killed.
“You can always tell a powerful man by the condition of his feet,” he said to himself, but loud enough to be heard. He wiggled each sausage toe in turn. “A poor man’s feet will be covered in blisters from a day’s hard toil. An unsuccessful merchant will have calluses from travelling many miles to sell his wares, while a richer merchant might ride camels.”
He made to shift his bulk and grunted, but in the end the effort was too great and he collapsed back into his pillows. Several dishes wobbled and one overturned, spilling purple fluid into the pile on which he sat. “My feet have never touched the ground.”
He looked up at us and there was sharp recognition in his eyes, not for me, as I expected, but for Zahra. He smiled and indicated his feet with a nod. “Look at them. Are they not the finest feet you’ve ever seen? I’ve seen babies in poorer shape.”
Zahra folded her hands into her sleeves. “I imagine that the poor man thinks his scars are nobly worn, your Majesty, since he earned them providing for his family.”
His eyes narrowed in his fat face until they were mere slits. “Assyria is my family, and yet I bear no scars. Look around you. I have provided for them.”
“Perhaps you bear no scars because your people require more nourishment than simple wealth.”
His chuckle was mirthless, low and dangerous. “Really? What do they need then?”
Shadows moved around the fringes of what I now realized had been a throne room. Soldiers dressed in black silk and masks like Zahra’s, except they wore iron breastplates and their masks were moulded into demonic faces. For all his bluster, Baryoom was not stupid.
“Ideas. Trade. Culture. The things that any advanced nation strives for. Egypt has all that and more. We can share them with you.”
He laughed again, and this time it was genuine. He waved off his bodyguards and they melted back into the shadows. He plucked a date from
a nearby dish, sucked on it, and then returned it to its place. “You’re a clever one, Zahra. Horus was an idiot if he thought I’d ever let you go back to him.”
Zahra remained motionless and her ivory mask betrayed no emotion. The effect was eerie and even Baryoom couldn’t stand it for long. “So! Who’s your friend?” he asked, turning his attention to me.
“Do you... not recognize me?” I asked, surprised. I sensed Wetiko’s presence in Baryoom – he was definitely Wetiko’s agent. If he had power, certainly he could sense mine. The fact that he couldn’t was a stark reminder of everything I’d lost when the mask was taken from me. I was no longer divine, and therefore beneath the notice of the Hungry God.
“You’re pale, but not like an albino, and you have brown hair. I’ve had dealings with northerners before, but I find your people to be a savage, uncultured bunch. And you tend to smell,” he finished, wrinkling his nose. He ripped a hunk off a ham hock, swallowed noisily and then let it roll to the floor.
“It is true that I am a northerner. Just as Zahra is a southerner. You may believe that she represents Horus, but that is only partially true. She is an emissary of King Kashta of Kush, and he demands that you cease aggression against Egypt. Likewise, I represent King... Brennan of Brodgar’s Ness,” I said, though Brennan was centuries dead and Brodgar itself was smaller than even the smallest European monarchy. “We are a people who live by the sea’s bounty and so we have a powerful navy, which even now sails to Cairo. If you attack Egypt, my people will fall on you from behind while Zahra’s will aid Horus in attacking you from the front.”
Baryoom wheezed and shifted his weight again, overturning a nearby dish. He quickly caught a dumpling before it could escape. He popped it in his mouth and swallowed without chewing. “You’re bluffing.”
“Why else would we travel all this way?” I asked.
He considered this. “It doesn’t matter,” he said with a mountainous shrug. “If your people come we’ll destroy them too.” He dipped his fingers in gravy and then licked them clean. “You spoke earlier of culture, ideas, and trade. We need none of these. In Assyria, when a man makes a claim that another disputes, they settle their differences through combat. Thereafter, the winner’s claim is taken as Truth. A man could argue that the sky is purple and if he were to win against all challengers history would be rewritten to support his claim. We believe that the winner has prevailed in combat because our god wishes it, and by extension, He wishes us to believe that the sky is purple.
The Book of the Emissaries: An Animism Short Fiction Anthology Page 6