River God

by Wilbur Smith

  From where I stood, I watched him make the same last journey on which he had sent so many other unfortunate souls. From the causeway until he struck the rocks a thousand feet below, he screamed all the way down, on a high, receding note that was cut off abruptly at the end.

  Tanus stood alone in the middle of the causeway. He still held the shield on high with the sword buried in the metal.

  Slowly the tumult and the fighting died away. The Ethiopians had seen their king vanquished and cast down. The heart went out of them. They threw down their weapons and grovelled for mercy. The Egyptian officers were able to save some of them from the blood-crazed Shilluk, and these were dragged away to where the slave-masters waited to bind them.

  I had no eyes for any of this, for I was watching Tanus out there on the bridge. He began to walk towards the gateway, of the fortress, and the men cheered him and raised their weapons in salute.

  'There is plenty of fight in the old bull yet,' Memnon laughed in admiration, but I did not laugh with him. I felt the chill premonition of some awful tragedy, like the air stirred by the beat of vultures' wings as they settle to their gruesome feast.

  'Tanus,' I whispered. He walked with a slow and hampered gait. He lowered the shield as he came down the bridge of stone, and only then did I see the stain spreading on his breastplate.

  I thrust Masara into Memnon's arms and ran down the outer staircase. The Ethiopian guards at the gate tried to surrender their weapons to me, but I pushed my way past them and ran out on to the causeway.

  Tanus saw me running towards him and he smiled at me, but the smile was lop-sided. He stopped walking and slowly his legs buckled beneath him, and he sat down heavily in the middle of the bridge. I dropped on my knees beside him, and saw the rent in the crocodile-skin of his breastplate. Blood oozed from it, and I knew that the blue sword had bitten deeper than I had believed possible. Arkoun had driven the point through the bronze shield, on through the tough leather breastplate, and into Tanus' chest.

  Carefully I untied the straps that held his armour, and lifted away the breastplate. Tanus and I both looked down at the wound. It was a penetrating slit the exact width of the blade, like a tiny mouth with wet red lips. Every breath that Tanus drew frothed through that horrid opening in a rash of pink bubbles. It was a lung wound, but I could not bring myself to say it. No man can survive a sword-cut through one of his lungs.

  'You are wounded.' It was an asinine remark, and I could not look at his face as I said it.

  'No, old friend, I am not wounded,' he replied softly. 'I am killed.'

  TANUS' SHILLUK MADE A LITTER WITH their spears, and covered it with a rug of sheepskin. They lifted him and carried him, gently and slowly, into the fortress of Adbar Seged.

  We laid him on the bed of King Arkoun, and then I sent them all away. When they were gone, I placed the blue sword upon the bed beside him. He smiled and laid his hand on the gold and jewelled hilt. 'I have paid a high price for this treasure,' he murmured. 'I would have liked to wield it just once upon the battlefield.'

  I could offer him no hope or comfort. He was an old soldier, and he had seen too many lung wounds. I could not hope to deceive him as to the final outcome. I bound up the wound with a pad of wool and a linen bandage. While I worked, I recited the incantation to quell the bleeding, 'Retreat from me, creature of Seth—'

  But he was sinking away from me. Each breath he drew was an effort, and I could hear the blood stirring in his lungs like a hidden creature in the deep swamps.

  I mixed a draught of the sleeping-flower, but he would not drink it. 'I will live every minute of my life,' he told me. 'Even the very last one.'

  'What else is there that I can do for you?'

  'You have done so much already,' he said. 'But there is no end to the demands that we all make upon you.' ' I shook my head, 'There is no end to what I would give.'

  'These last things then I ask of you. Firstly, you will never tell Mernnon that I am his sire. He must always believe that the blood of the pharaohs runs in his veins. He will need every strength to meet the destiny that awaits him.'

  'He would be as proud to share your blood as that of any king.'

  'Swear to me you will not tell him.'

  'I swear it,' I replied, and he lay a while gathering his strength.

  'There is one other boon.'

  'I grant it before you name it,' I said.

  'Take care of my woman who was never my wife. Shield and succour her as you have done all these years past.'

  'You know I will.'

  'Yes, I know you will, for you have always loved her as much as I have. Take care of Lostris and of our children. I give them all into your hands.'

  He closed his eyes, and I thought that the end was close, but his strength surpassed that of other men. After a while he opened them again.

  'I wish to see the prince,' he said.

  'He waits for you on the terrace,' I answered, and went to the curtained doorway.

  Memnon stood at the far end of the terrace. Masara was with him, and the two of them stood close together but not touching. Their expressions were grave and their voices muted. They both looked up as I called.

  Memnon came immediately, leaving the girl standing alone. He went directly to Tanus' bed and stood looking down at him. Tanus smiled up at him, but the smile was unsteady. I knew what effort it had cost him.

  'Your Highness, I have taught you all I know of war, but I cannot teach you about life. Each man must learn that for himself. There is nothing else I have to tell you before I start out on this new journey, except to thank you for the gift of knowing and serving you.'

  'You were ever more than a tutor to me,' Memnon answered softly. 'You were the father I never knew.'

  Tanus closed his eyes, and his expression twisted.

  Memnon stooped and took his arm in a firm grip. 'Pain is just another enemy to be met and overcome. You taught me that, Lord Tanus.' The prince thought it was the wound that had affected him, but I knew that it was the pain of the word 'father'.

  Tanus opened his eyes. 'Thank you, Your Highness. It is good to have you to help me through this last agony.'

  'Call me friend, rather than highness.' Memnon sank on one knee beside the bed, and he did not release the grip on Tanus' arm.

  'I have a gift for you, friend.' The congealing blood in Tanus' lungs blurred his voice. He groped for the handle of the blue sword that still lay on the mattress beside him, but he did not have the strength to lift it.

  He took Memnon's hand from his arm and placed it upon the jewelled hilt. "This is yours now,' he whispered.

  'I will think of you whenever I draw it from its scabbard. I will call your name whenever I wield it on the battlefield.' Memnon took up the weapon.

  'You do me great honour.'

  Memnon stood up, and with the sword in his right hand took the classic opening stance in the centre of the room. He touched the blade to his lips, saluting the man lying on the bed.

  'This is the way you taught me to do it.'

  Then he began the exercise of arms, in which Tanus had drilled him when he was still a child. He performed the twelve parries, and then the cuts and the lunges with an unhurried perfection. The silver blade circled and swooped like a glittering eagle. It fluted and whined through the air, and lit the gloom of the chamber with darting beams of light.

  Memnon ended it with the straight thrust, aimed at the throat of an imaginary enemy. Then he placed the point between his feet and rested both hands upon the pommel.

  'You have learned well,' Tanus nodded. 'There is nothing more that I can teach you. It is not too soon for me to go.'

  'I will wait with you,' Memnon said.

  'No.' Tanus made a weary gesture. 'Your destiny waits for you beyond the walls of this dreary room. You must go forward to meet it without looking back. Taita will stay with me. Take the girl with you. Go to Queen Lostris and prepare her for the news of my death.'

  'Go in peace, Lord Tanus.' Memnon would
not degrade that solemn moment with futile argument. He crossed to the bed and kissed his father on the lips. Then he turned and, without a backward glance, he strode from the room with the blue sword in his hand.

  'Go on to glory, my son,' Tanus whispered, and turned to face the stone wall. I sat at the foot of his bed and looked at the dirty stone floor. I did not want to watch a man like Tanus weep.

  I WOKE IN THE NIGHT TO THE SOUND OF drums, those crude wooden drums of the Shilluk, beating out there in the darkness. The doleful sound of the Shilluk's voices chanting their savage dirge made me shudder with dread.

  The lamp had burned low, and was guttering beside the bed. It threw grotesque shadows on the ceiling, like the beating and fluttering of the wings of vultures. I crossed slowly and reluctantly to where Tanus lay. I knew that the Shilluk were not mistaken—they have a way of sensing these things.

  Tanus lay as I had last seen him, with his face to the wall, but when I touched his shoulder I felt the chill in his flesh. That indomitable spirit had gone on.

  I sat beside him for the remainder of that night and I lamented and mourned for him, as his Shilluk were doing.

  In the dawn I sent for the embalmers.

  I would not let those crude butchers eviscerate my friend. I made the incision in His left flank. It was not a long, ugly slash, such as the undertakers are wont to perform, but the work of a surgeon.

  Through it I drew his viscera. When I held Tanus' great heart in my hands, I trembled. It was as though I could still feel all his strength and power beat in this casket of flesh. I replaced it with reverence and love in the cage of his ribs, and I closed the gash in his side and the wound in his chest, that the blue sword had made, with all the skill at my command.

  I took up the bronze spoon, and pressed it up his nostril until I felt it touch the thin wall of bone at the end of the passage. This flimsy partition I pierced with one hard thrust, and scooped out the soft matter from the cavity of his skull. Only then was I content to deliver him over to the embalmers.

  Even though there was no more for me to do, I waited with Tanus through the forty long days of the mummification in the cold and gloomy castle of Adbar Seged. Looking back upon it now, I realize that this was weakness. I could not bear the burden of my mistress's grief when first she heard the news of Tanus' death. I had allowed Memnon to assume the duty that was rightfully mine. I hid with the dead, when I should have been with the living who needed me more. I have ever been a coward.

  There was no coffin to hold Tanus' mummified body. I would make him one when at last we reached the fleet at Qebui. I had the Ethiopian women weave a long basket for him. The mesh of the weave was so fine that it resembled linen. It would hold water like a pot of fired clay.

  WE CARRIED HIM DOWN FROM THE mountains. His Shilluk easily bore the weight of his desiccated body. They fought each other for the honour. Sometimes they sang their wild songs of mourning as we wound our way through the gorges and over the windswept passes. At other times they sang the fighting songs that Tanus had taught them.

  I walked beside his bier all that weary way. The rains broke on the peaks and drenched us. They flooded the fords so that we had to swim ropes across. In my tent at night, Tanus' reed coffin stood beside my own cot. I spoke aloud to him in the darkness, as if he could hear and answer me, just as we had done in the old days.

  At last we descended through the last pass, and the great plains lay before us. As we approached Qebui, my mistress came to meet our sad caravan. She rode on the footplate of the chariot behind Prince Memnon.

  As they came towards us through the grassland, I ordered the Shilluk bearers to lay Tanus' reed coffin under the spreading branches of a giant giraffe acacia. My mistress dismounted from the chariot and went to the coffin. She placed one hand upon it, and bowed her head in silence.

  I was shocked to see what ravages sorrow had wrought upon her. There were streaks of grey in her hair, and her eyes were dulled. The sparkle and the zest had gone out of them. I realized that the days of her youth and her great beauty were gone for ever. She was a lonely and tragic figure. Her bereavement was so evident, that no person who looked upon her now could doubt that she was a widow.

  I went to her side to warn her. 'Mistress, you must not make your grief clear for all to see. They must never know that he was more than just your friend and the general of your armies. For the sake of his memory and the honour that he held so dear, hold back your tears.'

  'I have no tears left,' she answered me quietly. 'My grief is all cried out. Only you and I will ever know the truth.'

  We placed Tanus' humble reed coffin in the hold of the Breath of Horus, beside the magnificent gold coffin of Pharoah. I stayed at the side of my mistress, as I had promised Tanus I would, until the worst agonies of her mourning had subsided into' the dull eternal pain that would never leave her again. Then, at her orders, I returned to the valley of the tomb to supervise the completion of Pharaoh's sepulchre.

  Obedient to my mistress, I also selected a site further down the valley for the tomb of Tanus. Though I did my very best with the material and craftsmen available to me, Tanus' resting-place would be the hut of a peasant compared to the funerary palace of Pharaoh Mamose.

  An army of craftsmen had laboured all these years to complete the magnificent murals that decorated the passages and the subterranean chambers of the king's tomb. The store-rooms of the tomb were crammed with all the treasure that we had carried with us from Thebes.

  Tanus' tomb had been built in haste. He had accumulated no treasure in his lifetime of service to the state and the crown. I painted scenes upon the walls that depicted the events of his earthly existence, his hunting of mighty beasts and his battles with the red pretender and the Hyk-sos, and the last assault on the fortress of Adbar Seged. However, I dared not show his nobler accomplishments, his love for my mistress and his steadfast friendship to me. The love of a queen is treason, the friendship of a slave is degrading.

  When at last it was completed, I stood alone in Tanus' modest tomb, where he would spend all eternity, and I was suddenly consumed by anger that this was all I could do for him. In my eyes he was more a man than any pharaoh who had ever worn the double crown. That crown could have been his, it should have been his, but he had spurned it. To me he was more a king than ever Pharaoh had been.

  It was then that the thought first dawned upon me. It was so outrageous that I thrust it from me. Even to contemplate it seriously was a terrible treason, and offence in the eyes of men and the gods.

  However, over the weeks that followed, the thought kept creeping back into my mind. I owed Tanus so much, and Pharaoh so little. Even if I was damned to perdition, it would be a fair price to pay. Tanus had given me more than that over my lifetime.

  I could not accomplish it alone. I needed help, but who was there to turn to? I could not enlist either Queen Lostris or the prince. My mistress was bound by the oath she had sworn to Pharaoh, and Memnon did not know which of the two men was his natural father. I could not tell him without breaking my oath to Tanus.

  In the end there was one person only who had loved Tanus almost as much as I had, who feared neither god nor man, and who had the brute physical strength I lacked.

  'By Seth's unwiped backside!' Lord Kratas roared with laughter when I revealed my plan to him. 'No one else but you could have dreamed up such a scheme. You are the biggest rogue alive, Taita, but I love you for giving me this last chance to honour Tanus.'

  The two of us planned it carefully. I even went to the lengths of sending the guards at the entrance to the hold of the Breath of Horus a jug of wine heavily laced with the powder of the sleeping-flower.

  When Kratas and I at last entered the hold of the ship where the two coffins lay, my resolve wavered. I sensed that the Ka of Pharaoh Mamose watched me from the shadows and that his baleful spirit would follow me all the days of my life, seeking vengeance for this sacrilege.

  Big, bluff Kratas had no such qualms, and he set to work
with such a will that several times during the course of the night, I had to caution him against the noise he was making as we opened the golden lids to the royal coffin and lifted out the mummy of the king.

  Tanus was a bigger man than Pharaoh, but fortunately the coffin-makers had left us some space, and Tanus' body had shrunk during the embalming. Even so, we were obliged to unwind several layers of his wrappings before he fitted snugly into the great golden cask.

  I mumbled an apology to Pharaoh Mamose as we lifted him into the humble wooden coffin, painted on the outside with a likeness of the Great Lion of Egypt. There was room to spare, and before we sealed the lid we packed this with the linen bandages that we had unwrapped from Tanus.

  AFTER THE RAINS HAD PASSED AND THE cool season of the year returned, my mistress ordered the funeral procession to leave Qebui and set out for the valley of the tomb.

  The first division of chariots, headed by Prince Memnon, led us. Behind followed fifty carts loaded with the funerary treasure of Pharaoh Mamose. The royal widow, Queen Lostris, rode on the wagon that carried the golden coffin. I rejoiced to see her take this last journey in the company of the one man she had loved, even though she thought it was another. I saw her glance back more than once towards the end of the long caravan that crept dolefully across the plains, five miles from its head to its tail.

  The wagon at the rear of the column that carried the lighter wooden coffin was followed by a regiment of Shilluk. Their magnificent voices carried clearly to us at the head of the column as they sang the last farewell. I knew that Tanus would hear them and know for whom the song was sung.

  WHEN WE AT LAST REACHED THE VALLEY of the tomb, the golden coffin was placed beneath a tabernacle outside the entrance to the royal mausoleum. The linen roof of the tent was illuminated with texts and illustrations from the Book of the Dead.

  There were to be two separate funerals. The first was the lesser, that of the Great Lion of Egypt. The second would be the grander and more elaborate royal funeral.