by Wilbur Smith
Trok strode out into the gathering night with Taita beside him. They climbed the hill in silence, and squatted down facing each other in the starlight. Trok kept his scabbard between his knees and his hand on the hilt of his heavy sickle sword. From habit more than distrust, Taita thought, but nevertheless the war chief was a man to reckon with.
'You bring me news of the south,' Trok said, in a statement, not a question.
'My lord, you have heard of the death of Pharaoh Tamose?'
'We know of the death of the Theban pretender from prisoners captured when we took the city of Abnub.' Trok was careful not to acknowledge by word or inference the authority of the Egyptian Pharaoh. To the Hyksos, the only ruler in either of the two kingdoms was Apepi. 'We heard also that a child now pretends to the throne of Upper Egypt.'
'Pharaoh Nefer Seti is only fourteen years of age,' Taita confirmed, equally careful to insist on the title of Pharaoh when he spoke of him. 'He will not attain his majority for some years. Until then Lord Naja acts as his regent.'
Trok leaned forward with sudden intense interest. Taita smiled inwardly. The Hyksosian intelligence was poor indeed if they did not know at least that much about the affairs of the Upper Kingdom. Then he recalled the campaign that, just before the King's death, he and Pharaoh Tamose had waged against Hyksosian spies and informers in Thebes. They had winkled out and arrested over fifty. After interrogation by torture, they had executed every one. Taita felt a smug satisfaction at this confirmation that they had cut off the flow of information to the enemy.
'So, then, you come to us with the authority of the Regent of the south.' Taita detected a strange air of triumph about Trok, as he demanded, 'What message do you bring from Naja?'
'Lord Naja wants me to carry his proposal directly to Apepi,' Taita hedged. He did not want to give Trok any more information than was strictly necessary.
Trok took immediate umbrage at this. 'Naja is my cousin,' he said coldly. 'He would wish me to hear every word he has sent.' Taita had such control over his emotions that he showed no surprise, although it was a grave indiscretion on Trok's part. His suspicions as to the Regent's antecedents were confirmed, but his voice was measured as he answered, 'Yes, my lord, this much I know. However, what I have for Apepi is of such moment ...'
'You underestimate me, Warlock. I have the complete confidence of your regent.' Trok's voice was rough with exasperation. 'I know full well that you have come to offer Apepi a truce, and to negotiate a lasting peace with him.'
'I can tell you nothing more, my lord.' This Trok might be a warrior, but he is no conspirator, Taita thought, but his voice and manner did not change as he said, 'I can give my message only to the Shepherd Chieftain, Apepi.' This was how the Hyksosian ruler was referred to in Upper Egypt. 'Can you take me to him?'
'As you wish, Warlock. Keep your mouth shut, if you will, though there is no purpose in it.' Trok stood up angrily. 'King Apepi is at Bubasti. We will go there immediately.'
In stilted silence they returned to the subterranean temple, where Taita called Gil and the sergeant of the bodyguard to him. 'You have done your work well,' he told them, 'but now you must return to Thebes as secretly as you have come.'
'You will return with us?' Gil asked anxiously. Clearly he felt responsible for the old man.
'No.' Taita shook his head. 'I will remain here. When you report to the Regent tell him that I am on my way to meet Apepi.'
By the dim light of the oil lamps the horses were harnessed to the chariots, and within a short time they were ready to leave. Gil brought Taita's leather saddlebag from the chariot and handed it to him. Then he saluted respectfully. 'It has been a great honour to ride with you, my lord. When I was a child my father told me many tales of your adventures. He rode with your regiment at Asyut. He was captain of the left wing.'
'What was his name?' Taita asked.
'Lasro, my lord.'
'Yes.' Taita nodded. 'I remember him well. He lost his left eye in the battle.'
Gil gazed at him with awe and wonder. 'That was forty years ago, and still you remember.'
'Thirty-seven,' Taita corrected him. 'Go well, young Gil. I cast your horoscope last night. You will have a long life, and attain much distinction.'
The lance-bearer took up the reins and rode out into the night, speechless with pride and gratification.
By this time Lord Trok's troop was also mounted and ready to leave. They had given Taita the horse on which Gil had returned to the temple. Taita threw the saddlebags over its withers then swung up behind them. The Hyksos did not have the same scruples about riding astride as the Egyptians, and they clattered out of the cave entrance and turned west, in the opposite direction to that taken by the column of chariots.
Taita rode in the centre of the party of heavily armed Hyksos. Trok led them and he did not invite Taita to ride alongside him. He had been distant and aloof since Taita had refused to give Naja's message to him directly. Taita was content to be ignored, for he had much to think about. In particular the revelation of Naja's confused blood-lines opened a host of fascinating possibilities.
They rode on through the night, heading west towards the river and the main enemy base at Bubasti. Even though it was still night-time, they encountered more and more traffic on the road. There were long lines of wagons and carts, all heavily laden with military supplies, moving in the same direction as they were. Returning towards Avaris and Memphis were equal numbers of empty vehicles that had discharged their cargo.
As they came closer to the river, Taita saw the fires of the Hyksosian troops encamped around Bubasti. It was a field of flickering light that stretched many miles in both directions along the riverbank, a huge agglomeration of men and animals unseen in the darkness.
There was nothing on earth like the smell of an army encamped. It grew stronger as they approached until it was almost overpowering. It was a mixture of many odours, the smell of the cavalry lines, manure and the smoke of dung fires, of leather and mouldy grain. On top of this was the smell of unwashed men and their festering wounds, cooking food and fermenting beer, unburied rubbish, and filth, the ammoniacal reek of the latrine pits and the dung heaps, and the even more biting stench of unburied corpses.
Underlying this stifling blend of odours Taita picked out another sickly taint. He thought he recognized it, but it was only when one of the sufferers staggered drunkenly in front of his horse, forcing him to rein in sharply, that he saw the rose-coloured blotches on the pale face and he was certain. He knew now why Apepi had failed so far to follow up his victory at Abnub, why he had not yet sent his chariots tearing southwards towards Thebes where the Egyptian army was in disarray, and at his mercy. Taita pushed his horse up alongside Trok's mount, and asked him quietly, 'My lord, when did the plague first strike your troops?'
Trok reined in so roughly that his mount danced and circled under him, 'Who told you that, Warlock?' he demanded. 'Is this cursed disease one of your spells? Is it you who have laid this pestilence upon us?' He spurred away angrily without waiting for a denial. Taita followed at a discreet distance, but his eyes were busy taking in every detail of what was happening around him.
By this time the light was strengthening, and a weak, hazy sun barely showed through the heavy bank of mist and woodsmoke that blanketed the land and blotted out the dawn sky. It gave the scene a weird, unearthly aspect, like a vision of the underworld. Men and animals were transformed by it into dark and demoniacal figures, and under the hoofs of their horses the mud of the recent inundation was black and glutinous.
They passed the first of the burial carts, and the men around Taita used their cloaks to cover their mouths and noses against the stink and the evil humours that hung over the heap of naked, bloated corpses piled high in the back of the cart. Trok spurred his horse to overtake it quickly, but ahead there were many more similarly laden vehicles almost blocking the roadway.
Further on they passed one of the cremation fields, on which more carts were unloading their
grisly burden. Firewood was a scarce commodity in this land, and the flames were not fierce enough to consume the heaps of corpses. They spluttered and flickered as the fats oozed out of the decaying flesh, and sent up clouds of oily black smoke that coated the mouths and throats of the living men who breathed it.
How many of the dead are victims of the plague? Taita wondered. And how many from the fighting with our army?
The plague was like some grim spectre that marched in step with any army. Apepi had been here at Bubasti for many years in camps that swarmed with rats, vultures and the carrion-eating marabou storks. His men were crowded together in their own filth, their bodies crawling with fleas and lice, eating rotten food and drinking the water from the irrigation canals into which the effluent from the graves and dung heaps drained. These were the conditions in which the plague flourished.
Closer to Bubasti the encampments became more numerous, tents, huts and hovels crowded right up to the walls and ditches that surrounded the garrison town. The more fortunate among the plague victims lay under tattered roofs of palm fronds, scant protection from the hot morning sunlight. Others lay out in the trampled mud of the fields, abandoned to thirst and the elements. The dead were mixed with the dying, those wounded in the fighting lying side by side with those ravaged by streaming dysentery.
Although his instincts were those of a healer, Taita would do nothing to succour them. They were condemned by their own multitudes, for what could one man do to help so many? What was more, they were the enemies of this very Egypt, and it was clear to him that the pestilence was a visitation from the gods. Should he heal a single Hyksos, it would mean that there was one more to march on Thebes and put his beloved city to flame and rapine.
They entered the fortress and found that conditions were not much better within its walls. Plague victims lay where they had been struck down by the disease, and the rats and pariah dogs gnawed at their corpses, and even at those still alive but too far gone to defend themselves.
Apepi's headquarters was the principal building in Bubasti, a. massive sprawling mud-brick and thatch palace in the centre of the town. Grooms took their horses at the gates, but one carried Taita's saddlebags. Lord Trok led Taita through courtyards and the dark shuttered halls where incense and sandalwood burned in bronze braziers to cloak the plague stench that wafted up from the town and the surrounding encampments, but whose guttering flames made the heated air scarcely bearable. Even here in the main headquarters the groans of plague victims rang eerily through the rooms, and huddled figures lay in dark corners.
Sentries stopped them outside a barred bronze door in the deepest recesses of the building, but as soon as they recognized Trok's hulking figure they stood aside and allowed them to pass through. This area was Apepi's private quarters. The walls were hung with magnificent carpets and the furniture was of precious wood, ivory and mother-of-pearl, much of it plundered from the palaces and temples of Egypt.
Trok ushered Taita into a small but luxuriously furnished antechamber, and left him there. Female slaves brought him a jug of sherbet and a platter of ripe dates and pomegranates. Taita sipped the drink but ate only a little of the fruit. He was always abstemious.
It was a long wait. A sunbeam through the single high window moved sedately along the opposite wall measuring the passage of time. Lying on one of the carpets, he used his saddlebags as a pillow, dozing, never sinking into deep sleep, and coming instantly awake at every noise. At intervals he heard the distant sound of women weeping, and the keening wail of mourning somewhere behind the massive walls.
At last there came the tramp of heavy footsteps down the passage outside, and the curtains over the doorway were thrown open. A burly figure stood in the doorway. He wore only a crimson linen kilt belted below his great belly with a gold chain. His chest was covered with grizzled wiry curls, coarse as the pelt of a bear. There were heavy sandals on his feet and greaves of hard polished leather covered his shins. But he carried no sword or other weapon. His arms and legs seemed massive as the pillars of a temple, and were covered with battle scars, some white and silky, long-ago healed; others, more recent, were purple and angry-looking. His beard and dense bush of hair were grizzled also, but lacking the usual ribbons or plaits. They had not been oiled or combed and were in careless disarray. His dark eyes were wild and distracted, and his thick lips under the great beaked nose were twisted as if with pain.
'You are Taita, the physician,' he said. His voice was powerful, but without accent for he had been born in Avaris and had adopted much of the Egyptian culture and way of life.
Taita knew him well: to him Apepi was the invader, the bloody barbarian, mortal enemy of his country and his Pharaoh. It took the exercise of all his self-control to keep his expression neutral and his voice calm as he replied, 'I am Taita.'
'I have heard of your skills,' said Apepi. 'I have need of them now. Come with me.'
Taita slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and followed him out into the cloister. Lord Trok was waiting there with an escort of armed men. They fell in around Taita as he followed the Hyksosian king deeper into the palace. Ahead the sound of weeping became louder, until Apepi threw aside the heavy curtains that covered another doorway, and took Taita's arm to push him through.
Dominating the crowded chamber was a large contingent of priests from the temple of Isis in Avaris. Taita's lip curled as he recognized them by their headdress of egret feathers. They were chanting and shaking sistrums over the brazier in one corner in which cauterizing tongs glowed red hot. Taita's professional feud with these quacks went back two generations.
Apart from the healers, twenty others were gathered around the sickbed in the centre of the floor, courtiers and army officers, scribes and other officials, all looking solemn and funereal. Most of the women were kneeling on the floor, wailing and keening. Only one was making any attempt to nurse the young boy who lay on the couch. She seemed not much older than her patient, probably thirteen or fourteen years of age, and she was sponging him down with heated, perfumed water from a copper bowl.
With a single glance Taita saw that she was a striking-looking girl, with a determined, intelligent face. Her concern for her patient was evident, her expression loving and her hands quick and competent.
Taita switched his attention to the boy. His naked body was also well formed, but wasted by disease. His skin was blotched with the characteristic stigmata of the plague, and dewed with perspiration. On his chest were the raw and inflamed wounds where he had been bled and cauterized by the priests of Isis. Taita saw that he was in the final stages of the disease. His thick dark hair was sodden with sweat, it hung over his eyes, which were sunk into plum-coloured cavities, open and bright with fever but unseeing.
'This is Khyan, my youngest son,' Apepi said, as he went to the bedside, and looked down at the child helplessly. The plague will take him, unless you can save him, Magus.'
Khyan groaned and rolled on to his side with his knees drawn up in agony to his lacerated chest. With an explosive spluttering sound a mixture of liquid faeces and bright blood spurted from between his shrunken buttocks on to the soiled bed linen. The girl who was nursing him at once cleaned his backside with the cloth, then wiped up the mess on the sheets without any sign of distaste. In the corner the healers renewed their chants, and the high priest took up a pair of hot tongs from the charcoal brazier and came towards the bed.
Taita stepped forward, barring the man's way with his long staff. 'Get out!' he said softly. 'You and your butchers have done enough damage here.'
'I must burn the fever out of his body,' the man protested. 'Out!' Taita repeated grimly, then to the others who crowded the chamber, 'Out, all of you.'
'I know you well, Taita. You are a blasphemer, and a familiar of demons and evil spirits.' The priest stood his ground, and brandished the glowing bronze instrument menacingly. 'I do not fear your magic. You have no authority here. The prince is in my charge.'
Taita stepped back and dropped his s
taff at the feet of the priest, who shrieked and sprang back as the rod of tambootie wood began to writhe, hiss and snake towards him over the tiles. Suddenly it reared up head-high, its forked tongue darting between thin grinning lips and its beady black eyes glittering.
Instantly there was a yelling stampede for the door. Courtiers and priests, soldiers and servants panicked, clawing and elbowing their way through the press to be the first out. In his haste to escape, the high priest knocked over the brazier, then screamed as he danced barefoot on the scattered coals.
Within seconds the chamber was deserted except for Apepi, who had not moved, and the girl at the sickbed. Taita stooped and picked up the writhing serpent by the tail. Instantly it was straight, rigid and wooden in his grasp. He pointed the restored staff at the girl at the bedside. 'Who are you?' he demanded.
'I am Mintaka. This is my brother.' She laid her hand protectively on the boy's sweat-damp curls, and lifted her chin with a defiant air. 'Do your worst, Magus, but I will not leave him.' Her lips trembled and her dark eyes were huge with terror. She was clearly overawed by his reputation and by the serpent staff that Taita was pointing at her. 'I am not afraid of you,' she told him, then moved around the bed until it was between them.
'Good,' said Taita briskly, 'Then you will be of more use to me. When did the boy last drink?'
It took a moment for her to gather herself. 'Not since this morning.'
'Can't those quacks see that he is dying of thirst as much as of the disease? He has sweated and voided most of the water from his body,' Taita grunted, and picked up the copper jug from beside the bed to sniff the contents.
'This is foul with priest poison and plague humours.' He hurled it against the wall. 'Go to the kitchens and find another jug. Make sure it is clean. Fill it from the well, not with river water. Hurry, girl.' She fled and Taita opened his bag.