‘We come in search of Siwa’s protector, a man named Sabu.’ Aya indicated me. ‘This is Bayek, son of Sabu. I am Aya. Sabu may not be in Thebes, but we hope to find a Nubian named Khensa who may be here with her tribe. She might know where he is.’
‘Indeed,’ said Nitokris. She led us to a bench along one wall, dismissing her underling first.
‘So, you are the protector’s son,’ she murmured – a statement, not a question.
I nodded in confirmation anyway.
‘And do you hope to be protector yourself one day?’
Her lips quirked even before I answered, from the look on my face alone I would guess.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My father is training me to take up the role.’
‘Is that all he has told you? That you will one day be Siwa’s protector.’
The question was neutral, without judgement or insinuation. I couldn’t help but instantly wonder.
‘Is there anything else to know?’
Her smile returned, though her gaze was still serious. Intent. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘there is much to know.’ Though this could have been anyone’s reply, about life and anything else, I knew she was being specific. There were no airs about her, no self-aggrandizing mysticism. ‘Your friend Khensa. Perhaps she will give you answers that you seek. If she does, return to me, for I should like to talk more.’
Was that the end of our audience? I found myself eager to spend more time in her company, wondering at the wisdom a woman with such presence might have to share. And then, as though she sensed that need in me, she turned her gaze towards me. ‘I am the God’s Wife of Amun,’ she said, answering a question I hadn’t asked with a touch of amusement which quickly faded to gravity, ‘and one day I hope to see Thebes rise again, and once more be the force it was.’
‘You cleave to the old ways – to the ways of the Pharaohs?’ asked Aya. She was clearly intrigued, ever wanting to know more about everything.
‘To the ways of the gods and the good of the people,’ Nitokris answered, simply. ‘To Amun, who rules by listening to the poor, not by using them. Amun, who is of service to the people, rather than insisting on being served by them.’
‘But there are new ways now,’ said Aya. I could tell that she was interested by the priestess, despite being one to favour the logic of philosophers over clerical politicking. ‘The word coming from Alexandria is that Ptolemy Auletes is selling Egypt to the Romans to stay in power.’
Nitokris laughed, low and confident. ‘Ah, but hasn’t Egypt been invaded before? The Persians, the Nubians, the Greeks. And yet, it is our country that changes people. Our people endure. We will change the Romans just as we changed Alexander. It is up to us to see that Egypt always retains that power.’
‘Us?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, protector’s son.’ She sobered once more, one hand lightly coming to rest on my shoulder for the briefest moment. ‘You may one day find yourself with more than just Siwa’s temples to protect.’
She rose from the bench and with that, the meeting was over. As we left, I found myself looking forward to the time when we might return – and she could give me answers to questions not yet formed. Beside me Aya was thoughtful too, both of us lost in our own worlds.
Tuta, meanwhile, continued looking for Khensa. Weeks passed, during which time Aya and I became further acquainted with Thebes, spending our days joining Tuta to forge contacts and ask questions, or going to the outskirts of the city with wooden practice swords that we’d whittled in order to work on our swordsmanship.
At nights we would all convene at Tuta’s house and sit around a fire, or perhaps outside if the night was warm, drinking milk, beer or wine. Tuta’s little sister, Kiya, had developed an affection for Aya. Her mother didn’t mind, being more than happy to let the girl sit with their visitor, her legs drawn up, head resting on Aya’s tunic.
Tuta, Kiya and Imi were a family again, but although Aya and I were outsiders we were greeted and treated like royalty, and I know that Aya loved it there just as much as I did.
I was happy. I wanted to find Khensa and my father, and learn what else the priestess had to say. Even so, I liked the simplicity and the day-to-day joyfulness of this new life I now led. Each day, Tuta would return from his investigations, telling us that he hadn’t found Khensa, ‘Oh but, sir, I will, don’t you worry about that, I will. If she’s in Thebes, or if she’s ever been in Thebes, then I’ll find her.’
I’d often wondered how much Tuta had told his mother and Kiya about the circumstances in which we’d met, until one night, when we sat in the yard with jars of wine, the sounds of the slum in the air around us, talking and drinking, and the conversation had died, and we realized that Tuta’s mother was looking at Aya in a strange fashion – a look I recognized from the day we had arrived.
Kiya had been sitting with Aya in her usual pose, resting her head, thumb in her mouth. But as she became aware of the awkward silence she sat upright, wondering what was wrong.
And then Tuta’s mother came out with it, addressing Aya. ‘So you gave my husband a good hit on the head, did you?’
Aya shifted uncomfortably beneath the intensity of her gaze. ‘I did. It was … I mean, there was a fight …’
‘It’s like I said to you, Mama,’ said Tuta, and then tailed off as she held a finger to her lips.
‘I know, I know you did, little Tuta, I just wanted to hear it in Aya’s own words, that’s all. I just wanted to hear her say it.’
Aya wasn’t sure how to react, throwing me an awkward glance.
‘You might have killed him,’ continued Tuta’s mother.
And now Aya swallowed, not sure what to say in reply. I could tell she had no regrets, but neither did she want to cause grief. ‘I was just trying to save Bayek,’ she explained, ‘and Bayek was just trying to save Tuta.’
Tuta’s mother laughed, loud and clear, hands to her knees while she rocked back and forth. ‘No. I mean you should have killed him.’
‘He would have had a very sore head the next morning,’ grinned Aya, relieved and a touch proud as well.
‘Is that right? Well, he’s no stranger to that. Perhaps it’ll be such a sore head that it will make him mend his ways, though I doubt it.’
Tuta shook his head sadly. ‘He won’t mend his ways, Mama.’
‘No, I don’t suppose he will. Bullies like him never do.’
‘He’s not just a bully, Mama,’ insisted Tuta. ‘He’s worse than that now.’
Tuta’s mother shot him an indulgent look. ‘Well, he’s not here, is he? Nothing he can do to us now.’
We continued our training, until one day Tuta came to us, and this time when he said, ‘I’ve found her,’ he meant Khensa.
26
Khensa was found, and suddenly I was forced to confront the fact that I was about to see my childhood friend again. I had to ask myself, how did I feel about that?
I wasn’t sure. The last time I’d seen her she was ensconced with her people in tents constructed from carved wooden supports and garish canopies. Theirs was an arrangement that was at once both permanent and transient, befitting their nomadic status in the region. When one day I arrived at the camp only to discover that they’d packed up and left I was upset to lose my friend, but it came as no great surprise. They were a wandering people, untethered by locality.
I’d missed her, of course. From Khensa I’d learned virtually all I knew about survival. Our relationship was … well, I wouldn’t have said it was odd, but it wasn’t particularly normal either. A nomad training a small-town boy in survival skills? While we become friends, no less? Thinking about it now, though, I had to admit that Khensa had moulded me in many ways, long before my father finally decided to train me himself.
‘Like I said to you before, I was beginning to think they were a rumour,’ said Tuta as he led us outside Thebes, heading towards the river. ‘Seems like a lot of people had heard gossip of this group of Nubians in Thebes, but not many would admit to having
seen them. I was pretty sure they’d lived here at one time or another. Of that I was almost certain. But did they still live here? Nobody knew. Which is all a long way round of making my excuses for why it’s taken me so long.’
‘You’ve done well, Tuta,’ said Aya fondly.
‘Well, that’s praise indeed, that is,’ beamed Tuta, knowing Aya never praised without merit. He was rewarded with a smile from Aya.
As we travelled, Aya and I kept expecting to come upon the Nubians’ lodgings. Yet Tuta led us past the boundaries of Thebes and through the bulrushes to the very edge of the river, to the landing of a ferryman. The man was well known to Tuta, judging by the way they greeted one another.
Next thing we knew, the boatman was pushing us across with a pole, and on landing we crossed into the necropolis, from which the souls of the dead travelled onward to the Duat.
Tuta pulled a face. This was new territory for him too. We made our way through the necropolis until we came to a tomb driven into the ground.
This was the place, indicated Tuta, chewing his bottom lip and standing aside as though he expected Aya and me to jump down and go bounding inside.
We looked at him in disbelief. ‘In there?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘But it’s … they can’t be.’
‘They are,’ insisted Tuta.
‘How do you know?’ asked Aya.
I looked around. After all, this particular tomb looked like any other tomb in the necropolis, as though it had been hewn into the very landscape itself, the squared-off entrance the only real indication of human activity.
No – in fact there was something else – something Tuta drew to our attention. Further back along the ground there was some kind of vent that, when he pulled us over to it, we saw was emitting smoke.
‘I’ve listened at it,’ whispered Tuta. ‘They’re definitely in there. More than one of them.’
I was still reeling. ‘How could they?’ I blurted. ‘How could they make this their home? It’s … It’s not right.’
‘It’s a terrible thing, is what it is,’ agreed Tuta sadly.
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ said Aya. ‘Tuta, whose tomb is this?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea,’ said Tuta. Aya had asked, though, and he gamely tried to answer anyway. ‘It could be that it’s …’
‘Nobody’s tomb, isn’t that right? They wouldn’t set up camp in somebody’s tomb, now, would they?’
I stared around, frantically trying to divine whether there were markings on the walls surrounding us, so far making nothing out at all. It did not make me feel better.
‘Even so,’ I spluttered, ‘to make their home here is …’
Aya cut me off, smiling slightly as she surveyed our surroundings. She was taking all of this with far more equanimity than I was. Of course.
‘What? Sacrilegious? No, if you ask me it makes perfect sense. This, after all, is the one place nobody would come looking for you. Nobody but Tuta, it seems.’
Aya had the last word on the subject. Whatever my feelings on the matter I’d need to make sense of them alone.
Tuta, meanwhile, was happy with any outcome that involved praise from Aya, still grinning and blushing as we returned to the entrance.
‘What do we do now?’ I asked. Could they be in there? Was there even a possibility that my father was inside?
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Tuta.
‘They might not let us in,’ I said.
‘Even if they do, how do you know they’re not going to cut us down the minute we step inside?’ said Aya.
Tuta looked worried. This he had clearly not expected. ‘Wait a minute. Wasn’t I told that the Nubians and Bayek were great friends, from not so long ago?’
We pointed out that ‘not long ago’ was ten summers and that people change, factors which made turning up unannounced and letting ourselves into their underground hideout – evidently a place they wanted to remain undiscovered – a very bad idea.
On the other hand, as Tuta was all too ready to point out, what else did we expect? What other choice did we have?
And then, as we stood close to the entrance trying to decide what to do, the decision was made for us, because a figure appeared at the threshold: a woman who carried a spear and squinted up at us from the hollow of the dark interior.
‘Hello, Bayek,’ she said. I recognized the mischievous gleam in her eyes only too well.
I blushed, slowly raising my hand in a sheepish greeting. How many times had Khensa told me about whispers, and how sound carried in walled-up places?
27
She clambered up to greet us, and at first I thought she was just the way I remembered her: the coloured braids in her hair, feathers, the tribal scars. She had the same bearing, the same dark and smoky eyes, a gaze that would brook no argument.
But she was older. Not just in years but in other ways as well. When I knew her as a young girl she had worn a necklace decorated with bones, and other trophies were woven into her hair, but now?
‘Hello, Khensa,’ I said, indicating her necklace of lion’s teeth, as well as what must have been a hippo tusk woven into her braids. ‘You’ve grown in stature and prowess.’
She acknowledged the statement with a nod, and it was then that I sensed something different about her, a distant, preoccupied air that I didn’t remember from years ago in Siwa, as though she had the cares of the world on her shoulders.
Nevertheless, and although the smile never quite reached her eyes, she greeted me effusively, exclaiming, ‘My friend, my brother,’ and giving me compliments of her own. I had grown, she said. I had developed muscles, and she prodded them, doing the same to my belts, pulling an impressed face. When she last saw me I was a boy. Now I was grown. A warrior.
I introduced Tuta and Aya. She and Khensa eyed each other. Their characters were not opposed – in so many ways they were much the same – but their outlook could not have been more different.
‘Have you heard from him?’ I asked once the introductions had been made, eager to know.
She looked at me. ‘From …?’
‘From my father.’
At this, she looked surprised. ‘No. Why would I …? Wait, is that why you’re here?’
I tried to control a wave of disappointment. ‘Are you sure?’ I said to Khensa, as stupid as I sounded. ‘You haven’t heard from him? He’s not here?’
Khensa shook her head, confused. ‘I would know, Bayek, if he was here. I’d remember something like that. He would only have come here if I’d asked him, and I haven’t. Nor have I approved any message sent. Perhaps you’d better tell me what’s going on.’ She stood to one side indicating the opening that led into the tomb, ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Let’s drink.’
‘You really do live in there?’ I asked.
She nodded. The corner of her lip curled, but I couldn’t help but press on, even though I knew she was already amused at my reaction.
‘But it’s a tomb. It’s sacred.’
She shook her head and started to walk, one hand trailing along the wall.
‘A looted tomb,’ explained Khensa, ‘no longer sacred. Nobody respects the tombs any more. Come on.’
I’m not sure what I expected as we put the sun to our backs and trod down into the tomb below. Something dark and dank and cramped, I supposed, but nothing could have been further from the truth. The ceiling was low, but not so low you were forced to stoop, and it was draped with awnings that took me back to Siwa with a rush of recognition and a sudden yearning for home. It was warm without being unpleasant. A fire at the far end gave it a – and it seems strange to even think the word – ‘homely’ feel, and was far from the only source of light in the room, as there were lanterns hanging from the walls on either side. How easy it was to forget that we were in a tomb.
I could see at once that the Nubians’ numbers were much reduced. An older man covered in a shawl, weathered face heavily scarred, sat coughing, raising his head to look at
us without much interest. A younger man, slightly older than Khensa, sat next to a woman his own age, who was pregnant. There was also an older woman busying herself at the other end of the cavern.
Other than that?
‘This is it,’ said Khensa, seeing my face fall. The man coughing, she explained, was her grandfather, the tribal elder. The other woman was her mother. The young man was Seti, a warrior, the pregnant woman his wife. There was a scout, too – Neka his name – but other than that this was the remains of her tribe.
I was trying and probably failing to keep my shock to myself. I had never known any of the tribe in the old days. When going to see Khensa, my usual method had been to hang around on the boundaries of the camp waiting for her to appear. Even so, I could tell that there had been up to a dozen of them back then; the encampment had been a place of light and life and colour. Some of that still remained – the canopies overhead – but a strange sense of diminishment seemed to have settled over those assembled here.
‘Where is everybody?’ I asked, looking around, unable to keep the dismay out of my voice.
‘Dead or gone,’ explained Khensa, matter-of-factly.
‘How?’
A weary look came across her. ‘The simple answer is a war – one that shows no sign of ending. Let us sit, drink, catch up first. I want to know what you’re doing here – and why you’re asking after Sabu.’
Beer and a place around the fire was the accompaniment to our storytelling session. I went first, a tale that began by assuring Khensa that little had changed since she and her tribe left Siwa.
‘Had your father begun your training?’ asked Khensa.
‘He had,’ I told her, adding, ‘but it progressed slowly. He never seemed to want it to happen. He’d always say I wasn’t ready. According to Rabiah he had doubts about training me, since the night of the Menna attack. He worried about leading me down the same path he followed.’
I went on to tell Khensa about my father’s departure, and how it had left the town in disarray. Rabiah mystified as to his reasons for going, my decision to leave in pursuit, my desire to keep pursuing a path toward protectorship of Siwa.
Desert Oath: The Official Prequel to Assassin’s Creed Origins Page 10