Desert God

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Did you find anything?’

  ‘No, my lord. Nothing.’

  ‘Where is Haroun? Has he returned yet?’

  ‘Not yet, but he will be back shortly,’ he answered. I hesitated at the mouth of the cavern. Everything seemed perfectly normal and commonplace. I could not understand the reason for the sense of anxiety that was nagging at me; but I knew enough not to dismiss it.

  Instead of entering the cavern I turned aside and followed the wall of rock in the opposite direction. I was out of sight of the cavern entrance when I reached a point where a narrow fissure cleft the vertical face of the rock. I had not noticed this fault before, and I studied it for a moment and decided that I might be able to climb up to the top of the cliff and see what lay beyond. I reached out and tentatively placed my hand on the exposed rock.

  The sun had heated the surface so that it burned me like a live coal. I jerked my hand away so sharply that I dropped the bird skull I was still carrying. I sucked my scalded finger until the pain eased, and then I stooped to retrieve the skull. I paused before my fingers touched it.

  Close up against the rock wall where the wind had not yet eroded it was a single human footprint in the packed sand. As I stared at it one side of the footprint collapsed in a soft slither of sand, demonstrating how recently it had been made.

  It had certainly not been made by one of my girls. This was the print of a large masculine foot wearing a sandal with a smooth leather sole. I could still hear faintly the voices and occasional laughter of Zaras and his men behind me. I returned quickly to a point from where I could see the cavern entrance and the group of men standing in front of it. One quick glance was enough for me to make absolutely certain of what I knew already. All the men were wearing regulation military sandals with brass-studded soles.

  There was a stranger amongst us.

  My next thought was for the safety of my girls. I cocked my head to listen to the voices that were still issuing from deep in the cavern. I recognized two of them immediately, but I was unable to distinguish the third. Trying to conceal my perturbation from the men I strode back past them and entered the cavern. I went quickly down the sloping stone floor to the edge of the pool. I paused for a moment to allow my eyes to adapt to the gloom, and I stared at the pale and nubile bodies that were tumbling and swirling in the dark waters like frolicking otters. But there were only two of them.

  ‘Bekatha!’ I yelled at her, my voice rising with the onset of panic. ‘Where is Tehuti?’ Her head bobbed up with the red-gold hair smeared wetly over her face.

  ‘She went outside to make an offering to Seth, Tata!’ This was their girlish euphemism for the culmination of the human digestive process.

  ‘Which way did she go?’

  ‘I didn’t watch her. She just said she was going out to do it.’

  Tehuti was a fastidious child. I knew she would have hidden herself away before she performed any intimate bodily functions. She would not have stayed in the cavern. She would have gone out into the desert. I ran back to the entrance of the cave. Zaras and his men were still where I had last seen them grouped at the left-hand side of the entrance. Once more I shouted at Zaras.

  ‘Did you see Princess Tehuti leave the cave?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘What about the rest of you men? Did any of you see her?’ They shook their heads dumbly.

  Tehuti would have avoided them. Perhaps she had found another exit from the cavern, I told myself. I turned and ran back past the cleft in the rock face where I had seen the alien print.

  ‘Horus, hear me!’ I entreated my god, praying with the full force of my psyche, unleashing the strange power within me that I have learned to call upon in times of deep and desperate need. ‘Open my eyes, O Horus. Let me see. O my sweet God, let me see!’

  I closed my eyes tightly for ten beats of my heart, and when I opened them again my vision had taken on a lucent lustre. The great god Horus had heard me. I was seeing with my inner eye. Around me colours were more vivid, shapes were starker and with sharper edges to them.

  I looked along the bottom of the rock wall, and I saw her. It was not Tehuti but it was the memory of where she had recently been, like an echo or a shadow of herself. It was a smudge against the brightness, a tiny intangible cloud. It was not even human in shape or outline but I knew it was her. She was dancing away from me, keeping parallel to the striated wall of rock.

  I knew instinctively that she was being pursued, and that she was trying to escape from danger. I could feel her fear resonating in my own heart and tasted the terror of it on the back of my tongue.

  ‘To arms, Zaras!’ I roared. I did not realize that my voice was capable of such power. ‘Leave five men to guard Bekatha and Loxias. The rest of you mount up and follow me!’

  Knowing that Zaras had heard me, I ran on without looking back, concentrating my everything on the evanescent cloud that was not Tehuti, but that was her very essence.

  Suddenly I had wings under my feet. I ran faster and still faster, but the little cloud matched my speed sucking me along as though I was caught in its wake. Then abruptly it dissolved into nothingness at the point ahead of me where the striated rock wall turned back upon itself.

  The lucent glow faded from my eyes, and my vision returned to normal. My feet slowed and became heavier, bereft of their god-given grace. I forced myself onwards until I reached the spot where she had faded away. I stopped with my breath sawing hoarsely in my lungs.

  I looked around me wildly, but there was nothing. She had gone.

  Then I looked down at the earth beneath me and I saw that although my vision of her had faded away, she had left the veritable prints of her bare feet in the sand where they were protected from the wind. I raised my eyes to follow them and I saw that only a short distance ahead they had been obliterated once again, but this time not by the wind. Rather, the sand had been churned by the feet of men wearing smooth-soled sandals. I could not tell how many there were of them but I guessed that there were a dozen or more. It was clear to me that Tehuti had been pursued by these men. When they had overtaken and seized her, she had put up a fight. I saw where and how she had struggled. Tehuti possessed the strength of a wildcat when she was aroused, but in the end they had overwhelmed her.

  Between them they had dragged her to the foot of the rock wall. Here I saw there was another of the fissures in the face of the cliff. But this one was wider than and not as steep as the first one.

  It was more like a staircase than a chimney. I knew that I could climb it easily but the camels would have to find another way to reach the top of the cliff. I looked back and saw Zaras leading the first camel along the base of the cliff towards me. As he reached me he shouted urgently, ‘What is happening, Taita? What do you want us to do?’

  ‘Tehuti has been taken. They must have been lying in wait for her here. She wandered off on her own and they took her.’ I pointed up the cleft in the cliff. ‘They have dragged her up there, where our camels can’t follow.’

  ‘Who are these men? Where did they come from?’

  ‘I know not, Zaras. Ask no more pointless questions. Ride on along the base of the cliff until you can find a way to climb it. I am going straight up after them.’

  ‘I’ll send half my men to follow you up, and support you. Then I’ll take the others around with me, and meet you at the top of the cliff.’

  I did not answer him, but saved my breath for the climb that confronted me. I climbed steadily, husbanding my strength. I could hear Zaras’ men coming up behind me. Although all of them were much younger than me I drew ahead of them steadily.

  Halfway to the top of the wall I heard voices from above. I paused for a few seconds to listen. I do not speak the Arabian language perfectly, but I understood enough to follow the gist of it.

  The men above me were Bedouin and they were urging each other to greater speed. Then faintly I heard Tehuti scream: I would know that voice anywhere and in any circumstances.

 
‘Take courage, Tehuti,’ I threw my head back and shouted up at her. ‘I am coming. Zaras also is coming with all our men.’

  The sound of her voice was a goad to me; I flew at the climb again with renewed strength and determination. Then above me I heard the whinny of a horse, the stamp of hooves and the jingle of harness. The men who had her were mounting up.

  Tehuti cried out again but the sense of her words was lost in the shouting of the Arabs as they mounted, and then the cracking of the whiplashes as they urged their mounts into a gallop. Horses snorted, and then their hooves thudded on the soft sands.

  I realized then why these bandits had left their horses at the top of the cliff. They knew that they would be able to return to them swiftly, whereas we would lose time in finding another way to bring our camels around the impassable cliff.

  I hurled myself up the last few yards of the climb and tumbled over the lip of the cliff. I paused there to take in the situation.

  In front of me was a rabble of some thirty or forty Arab riders, dressed in dusty burnous and keffiyeh head-dress. By this time they had all managed to mount their horses and most of them were already racing away from where I stood, urging their mounts on with wild yells, shouting at each other triumphantly.

  One of the bandits was still wrestling with Tehuti. He had thrown her over the front of his saddle, and as I watched he mounted up behind her. He was a big powerful-looking brute with a curling dark beard. He answered closely to the description that I had received from Al Namjoo of the bandit Al Hawsawi, the Jackal. But I could not be certain this was him.

  Tehuti was kicking out at him and screaming, but he held her down easily on the saddle with one arm pinning both of hers. I saw that her tunic and her hair were still wet from the pool. Her damp curls dangled and danced about her head.

  She glanced back and saw me on the lip of the cliff, and her face lit with a pathetic gleam of hope. I could read her lips as she mouthed my name.

  ‘Tata! Please help me!’

  With his free hand on the reins her captor sawed the stallion’s head around and then booted the animal into full flight out across the rock-strewn plain, speeding away from me. Once he looked back under his arm and he grinned at me jubilantly. Now I was certain that he was the Jackal. Fleetingly I wondered how he had known that we were coming to this Miyah Keiv in the striated cliff.

  His gang closed up around him in a tight mass. I could not count their numbers. Watching them go I was almost overwhelmed with the wave of savage but helpless rage that swept over me and threatened to smother me.

  Swiftly I gathered my numbed wits and slipped the recurved war bow from my shoulder. In three swift movements I had rebraced the bowstring, and I was reaching back to take an arrow from my quiver.

  The range was opening swiftly. I knew that within seconds both Tehuti and her captor would be beyond bowshot. I took my stance, left shoulder leading the target, and I raised my eyes above the distant horizon, judging the angle of loft that I must give my arrow to reach out to the Jackal.

  Battle joy engorged my heart as I realized that the body of the Jackal was interposed between Tehuti and me, and that unwittingly he was shielding her from my arrow. I could loose cleanly without fear of hitting her. I drew and the fletching of the arrow touched my lips. Every muscle in my arms and upper torso was racked by the immense weight of the tensed bow. There are very few other men who are able to draw my bow to full stretch. It is not merely a matter of brute strength. It also requires poise and balance, and achieving a sense of oneness with the bow.

  When I opened my three fingers that held the bowstring it slashed back, scorching the skin of my inner forearm. I felt the blood spring brightly from the wound it inflicted. There had been no chance for me to secure the leather arm guard to protect myself from it.

  I felt no pain. Instead my heart soared upwards as swiftly as the arrow I had let fly, for I saw that I had made a perfect shot. I knew that the swine who held Tehuti was dead without him yet being aware of it.

  Then suddenly I shouted aloud with rage and frustration as I watched the horseman who rode hard behind my target swing his horse off the line. Horus alone knows why he did so; probably it was to avoid a hole. Whatever the reason, he blotted out my view of the target. I saw my arrow drop on him like a stooping falcon and take him high in the back, an inch to one side of his spine. He threw his head back, and writhed with agony as he tried to reach over his own shoulder to grasp the shaft of the arrow. But he was still blocking my aim.

  I nocked a second arrow and let it fly again in the despairing hope that the wounded man might slip from the saddle and fall to earth while the arrow was still in flight, thus opening up Al Hawsawi’s body. But the wounded Arab clung stubbornly to his saddle; only when my second arrow struck him in the back of his neck did his limp carcass flop from the saddle and roll in the loose dust kicked up by the horses in front of him.

  By that time Al Hawsawi was out of range. I let another arrow fly after him even though I knew that I had no chance of touching him. But I still cursed myself and all the dark gods who had protected Al Hawsawi when my last arrow dropped twenty paces behind the heels of his horse.

  I started to run to where the body of the man was lying with two of my arrows in him. I wanted to reach him before he died so that I could beat and kick some information out of him. Perhaps if I were fortunate I might even learn for certain the name of the villain who had taken Tehuti, and where I might find him again.

  It was not to be. The nameless bandit was dead when I stooped over him. His one eye was rolled up into his skull so only the white was showing, while the other eye glared up at me in dumb outrage. I kicked him anyway; more than once. Then I sat down beside him and sent up a desperate prayer to Hathor, Osiris and Horus, pleading with each of them to keep Tehuti safe until I could come to her.

  The thing I hate most about the gods is the fact that they are seldom at hand when most you need them.

  So while I waited for Zaras to find me I turned my hand to cutting my arrows out of the corpse of the bandit I had brought down. There is no fletcher in all of Egypt who can turn out an arrow to match one of mine.

  It took Zaras almost another hour to arrive. The band of Bedouin bandits had long disappeared into the glare and dust of the horizon by that time. I am a man who usually has complete control of my emotions. I can stay calm and composed in the face of disaster and tragedy. By this I mean the sack of cities, the massacre of armies and suchlike lesser mishaps. But with the loss of Tehuti I found myself in a towering, shaking and impotent rage. The longer I had to wait the more my emotions seethed and boiled.

  The men that Zaras had sent to climb the cliff after me became the target for my fury. I raved at them, excoriating them for being so tardy and ineffectual. I accused them of cowardice and deliberate procrastination when I needed their assistance.

  When I finally picked out the dust of Zaras’ camels approaching along the upper rim of the striated rock wall I could not contain myself an instant longer. I started to run back to meet him. I was shouting at him to hurry whilst he was still beyond earshot.

  However, when he came close enough for me to read the expression on his face the realization dawned on me that his distress equalled and possibly outstripped my own. As loudly and as bitterly as I was screaming at him to hurry, even louder he was imploring me to tell him where Tehuti was and if she were still alive.

  It was then I realized that it was not some casual and transient infatuation that gripped these two young people. This was the same grand and immaculate passion that I had cherished for Tehuti’s mother, Queen Lostris. I could see that Zaras’ anguish for the loss of Tehuti was as devastating as mine had once been for her mother.

  In the moment I recognized this fact I knew also that the world had changed for all three of us.

  I watched Zaras bringing his men towards me as fast as the camels could gallop. These were all magnificent beasts.

  Over a short distance the Bedouin horse
s would be able to outrun my camels, but they could not maintain that pace for more than two or three hours. On the other hand my camels could run all day long, over sandy and treacherous ground. My camels had recently drunk their fill of water. They would not have to drink again for ten or more days. In these conditions of thirst, heat and heavy going in the sand the horses would be down by sunrise tomorrow, while my camels could still be running a week from today.

  I had my orders for Zaras ready when he came up to where I stood. He had an armed man on the back of every camel. Very swiftly I had half of them dismounted and on their way back to the cavern on foot to stand guard over the other two girls. Of course Bekatha’s safety outweighed that of Loxias a hundredfold, but none the less I had grown fond of the little Cretan lass.

  Zaras had shown the good sense to have each of the camels loaded with full water-skins. This accounted for his delayed arrival. Now half the saddles were empty and I would be able to rotate the riders at regular intervals. I was also pleased to see that Zaras had brought our head guide Al Namjoo with him. Nobody knew the ground better than he did.

  As we mounted up with each rider leading a spare camel on a guide rope behind him, and the water-skins bulging and gurgling reassuringly, I was prepared to wager a bag of silver mem that I would catch up with Al Hawsawi before noon on the morrow.

  The wind had dropped to a soft breeze, but it was still too hot to give us much relief. At the very least it no longer had the strength to obliterate the Jackal’s spoor until I had the chance to read it. I kept the camels moving at a pace that I judged carefully.

  I calculated the passage of time by the angle of the sun, and three hours later I could already see that we had gained substantially on our quarry. We stopped briefly to rotate our mounts and I allowed the men to each drink two mugs of water before we started off again. We were not pushing hard yet; but keeping to a swinging trot that the camels made look so relaxed and easy.

  Another two hours and I received proof positive that we were wearing down the fugitives. We came upon one of the Jackal’s horses broken down and limping slowly along the tracks left by its herd mates. I was grimly satisfied with our progress, and I told Zaras that I hoped we might even catch them before nightfall.