by Wilbur Smith
He watched the human creature with yellow eyes, and his upper lip lifted in a silent snarl. As a cub his dam had taught him to feed on the dead flesh that they scavenged from the battlefields. He did not have the natural repugnance that most other carnivorous animals feel for the taste of human flesh. Over the years he had killed and feasted upon this meat whenever the opportunity presented itself. He saw this creature come towards him through the low scrub as natural prey.
Mintaka stopped fifty paces short of where he lay, and looked around her. The instinct of the lion during the stalk was to avoid the direct gaze of its prey. He kept his head low to the ground and hooded his eyes to slits. This was not the moment for the attack, and his tail was held stiff and low.
Mintaka stepped behind the trunk of one of the trees, crouched down and voided her bladder. The lion's snout creased into deep wrinkles as he picked up the sharp scent of her urine. It quickened his interest. Mintaka stood again and let her torn skirt drop back around her thighs. She turned away from the lion, and started back towards where Nefer waited.
The lion slashed its tail back and forth, the prelude to the charge. He lifted his head, and the black tufted tail whipped against his flanks.
Mintaka heard the rhythmic swish and thud of the tail, stopped and looked back, puzzled. She looked straight into the yellow gaze of the beast. She screamed, a high-pitched sound that struck Nefer to the heart. He whirled round and in an instant took in the situation: the girl and the crouching beast facing her.
'Don't run!' he shouted. He knew that if she ran it would trigger the feline reflex of the lion to chase. 'I am coming!'
He snatched his bow and quiver from the rack on the dashboard, and raced towards her, nocking an arrow as he ran.
'Don't run!' he repeated desperately, but at that moment the lion growled. It was a terrible sound that seemed to vibrate in Mintaka's bones and make the ground tremble under her feet. She could not control the terror that overwhelmed her. She whirled and ran back blindly towards Nefer, sobbing with each stride.
Instantly the lion's mane rose like a dark aura around his head and he launched himself into his charge, coming straight after her, a dark, tawny streak through the trees. He overtook her as though she were still rooted to the earth.
Nefer stopped dead and dropped the quiver to free both hands, and he threw up the bow. He drew the fletching to his lips and set his aim on the massive heaving chest. Even though the range was short, it was a difficult shot. The beast was coming at an angle, so the deflection was critical, and Mintaka was in the direct line of his fire. On top of that, he knew that a wounding would not save Mintaka. He must drive an arrowhead through the beast's vital organs to pin it down, and give her the chance to get clear. Yet there was no time for precise calculation, the lion was almost on top of her.
It came grunting at each bound, clods and pebbles spurting up under the drive of its great paws. The yellow eyes were terrible. Nefer swung just a touch ahead, allowing a hand's breadth for the drop of the arrow in flight and he yelled, with all the urgency he could muster, 'Down, Mintaka! Clear my shot!'
They had developed a close accord over the weeks in which they had hunted together, and she had learned to trust him implicitly. Even in her transport of terror he could still reach her. She did not hesitate but from full run she threw herself flat upon the stony earth almost under the jaws of the onrushing lion.
In the same instant that she went down, Nefer let fly. The arrow sprang from his bowstring. To Nefer's fear-crazed eyes it seemed to move across the gap that separated them with the leisurely flight of some overburdened bird of prey. It passed over where Mintaka lay, already beginning to drop, seeming tiny, slow and ineffectual against such a massive animal.
Then it struck soundlessly and Nefer half expected the flimsy shaft to snap, be thrown aside contemptuously by the grunting, bounding animal.
Just as the lion's mouth gaped wide, showing the full array of ragged stained fangs, the flint arrowhead disappeared into the thick coating of dark hair that covered its chest. There was no sound of the impact but the slim straight shaft of the arrow slid in after it, until only a hand's span of shaft and the bright feathers of the fletching protruded.
Nefer thought that he had struck the heart. The lion leaped high in a monumental convulsion and its grunting changed to a barrage of continuous roars that shook a cloud of dried leaves from the thorn branches over its head. Then the beast spun in a circle snapping at its own chest, chewing the projecting end of the shaft of the arrow to splinters. Mintaka lay almost under his flying, slashing paws. 'Get away from him!' Nefer screamed. 'Run!'
He stooped and grabbed a second arrow from the quiver at his feet, and ran forward, nocking the arrow as he closed in. Mintaka sprang up. She had recovered enough of her wits not to impede his aim by racing to him for protection, and dodged behind the trunk of the nearest thorn tree.
The movement was enough to draw the wounded lion's attention back to her. Now in pain and fury, rather than in hunger, it lashed out at her. The hooked yellow claws tore a slab of wet bark from the tree trunk behind which Mintaka crouched.
'Come! Here I am! Come to me!' Nefer yelled wildly, trying to pull the lion off her. It swung its huge, mane-shaggy head towards him, and Nefer drew and shot the next shaft with one desperate movement. His arms were shaking and his aim was hurried and wild. The arrowhead took the beast too far back, lancing deep into its belly, and it coughed at its sting. It left Mintaka and hurled itself towards Nefer.
Though it was mortally wounded and already slowing, there was no chance for Nefer to evade this fresh charge. He had shot his last arrow and the quiver lay on the hard ground well out of his reach. He reached down and drew his dagger from the sheath on his belt.
It was a flimsy weapon against this furious beast. The thin bronze blade was not long enough to stab through to the heart, but he had heard the royal huntsman tell tales of miraculous escapes from just such a deadly predicament. As the lion launched itself into the death spring, Nefer fell backwards, not even attempting to resist the beast's weight and impetus. He lay between its forepaws, and the lion opened its jaws to full stretch and thrust its head down to crush Nefer's skull with those terrible fangs. Its breath was so foul, with the stench of rotten meat and open graves, that Nefer felt hot vomit rise in his throat. He steeled himself for the moment and thrust his right hand, with the dagger, deep into the open jaws. The lion bit down instinctively.
Nefer had the dagger held firmly in his fist, with the blade aligned upright, and as the lion's jaws closed the bronze point was driven up through the roof of its mouth. Nefer snatched away his hand before the fangs could crush the bones of his wrist, but the lion's jaws were fixed open by the dagger held between them, and it could not bite down.
It was ripping at him with both its forepaws, the claws fully extended. He wriggled and writhed beneath the heavy body, evading some of the claw strokes, but his apron was ripped from him, and he felt the bony hooks tearing into his flesh. He knew he could not hold out much longer. Involuntarily he screamed at the lion above him, 'Leave me, you filthy creature! Get off me!'
The lion was still roaring and the blood from its skewered palate blew out in a crimson cloud, mingled with its stinking breath and hot saliva, into Nefer's face.
His shouts galvanized Mintaka, and when she peered out from behind the bole of the thorn tree Nefer was a blood-soaked spectacle beneath the lion's bulk. He was being mauled to death, and her own fear was forgotten.
Nefer's bow was trapped under his body, and without it the quiver full of arrows was useless to her. She sprang out from behind the tree and raced towards the chariot. The screams and roars behind her goaded her on and she ran until her heart seemed on the point of bursting.
Ahead of her the horses were terrified by the scent of the beast and its roaring. They reared and threw their heads, kicking out at the traces. They would have bolted long ago had not Nefer secured the locking brake on one wheel so they coul
d only turn in a tight, right-handed circle. Mintaka ran in under their flying hoofs, and jumped up on to the footplate. She seized the loose reins and called to the team, 'Ho there, Stargazer! Hold hard, Hammer!"
On many of their previous outings, Nefer had let her drive, so the horses knew her voice and recognized her touch on the traces. Swiftly she brought them under control, but it seemed to her an eternity for she could hear Nefer's screams and the lion's deafening bellows. The moment she had the pair in hand she leaned over the side and knocked off the brake. She brought the horses round in a hard left-hand turn then drove them forward straight at the lion and its victim.
Hammer balked, but Stargazer held true. She snatched up the whip that Nefer had never used on them, and laid a stroke across Hammer's glossy haunches that raised a welt as thick as her thumb.
'Ha!' she yelled. 'Pull, curse you, Hammer!'
Startled, Hammer leaped forward, and they pounded down on the lion. All its attention was on the shrieking, writhing victim between its front paws, and it did not look up at the chariot bearing down on it.
Mintaka dropped the whip, and instead snatched the long lance from its rack. She had carried it for Nefer during hours of hunting, and now it felt light and familiar in her right hand. Guiding the racing team with the reins in her left hand, she leaned far out over the side panel and raised the lance high. As they ran past the crouching lion, its head was lowered and the back of its neck was fully exposed. The exact juncture of spine and skull in the back of its neck was covered by the dense black bush of its mane, but she guessed at the spot and thrust down with all the strength of her fear and her love for Nefer.
Her lance hand had the impetus of the flying chariot behind it. To her amazement the blade slid in readily, full length through the taut hide, and deep into the back of the animal's neck. She felt the slight tick in her hand as the point found the joint between the vertebrae of the spine and went on to severe the spinal column.
As the chariot raced past, the haft of the lance was plucked from her grip. But the lion collapsed in a loose, inert heap on top of Nefer. It did not twitch again, killed on the instant.
It took her fifty cubits to bring the crazed horses to a halt, wheel them round and force them back to where Nefer lay beneath the huge carcass. She had the presence of mind to throw on the wheel brake before she jumped down from the footplate.
It was obvious how badly Nefer was hurt. From the sheets of blood that covered him she thought he might even be dead. She fell to her knees beside him. 'Nefer, speak to me. Can you hear me?'
To her immense relief he rolled his head towards her and his eyes were open and focused. 'You came back,' he breathed. 'Bak-her, Mintaka, bak-her!'
'I will get this off you.'
She could see that the enormous weight of the dead beast was crushing the wind from his lungs. She jumped up and tugged at its head. The tail,' Nefer whispered painfully through a running mask of blood. 'Roll him over by the tail.'
She was quick to obey him, and seized the long tufted tail then heaved with all her strength. Slowly the hindquarters began to swing, the whole carcass flopped over and he was free.
Mintaka knelt beside him and helped him into a sitting position, but he swayed drunkenly and reached out to her for support.
'Hathor help me,' she pleaded. 'You are desperately wounded. There is so much blood.'
'Not all of it is mine,' he blurted, but from his right thigh rose a feathery crimson fountain where the claws had ripped open a blood vessel. Taita had instructed him long and earnestly in the treatment of war wounds, and he thrust his thumb down into the torn flesh and pressed until the jet of blood shrivelled.
'Get the waterskin,' he said, and Mintaka ran to the chariot and brought it back to him. She held it for him while he drank thirstily, and then, tenderly, she washed the blood and filth from his face, relieved to find it unmarked. However, when she inspected his other injuries she had difficulty in hiding her shock at how grievous they were.
'My bedroll is in the chariot.' His voice was weaker. When she brought it to him he asked her to undo the bundle, where she found his housewife roll. She selected a needle and silk thread. He showed her how to tie off the spurting blood vessel. It was work that came easily to her, and she did not hesitate or flinch from it. Her hands were bloody to the wrists as, with nimble fingers, she pulled a thread around the open artery then closed the deeper rents in his flesh. Still under his instruction she used strips torn from his tattered chiton to bind up the wounds. It was rough, rudimentary surgery, but sufficient to stem the worst of the bleeding.
'That is all we can do now. I must help you into the chariot and get you to where a surgeon can do the rest. Oh, if only Taita were here.'
She ran to Stargazer's head and led the pair back to where he lay. Nefer was up on one elbow staring longingly at the carcass of the lion that lay beside him.
'My first lion,' he whispered ruefully. 'Unless we skin it, the trophy will spoil. The hair will slip and slough off.'
In the heat of emotion and her terrible concern for him, she lost her temper. 'That is the most stupid piece of man's nonsense I have ever heard uttered. Would you risk your very life for a stinking bit of fur?' Angrily she came to help him to his feet. It took the extreme efforts of both off them to raise him up. He leaned on her with all his weight as he hobbled to the chariot and collapsed weakly on to the footplate.
Mintaka used the sheepskin from the bedroll to make him as comfortable as she could, then climbed up and stood over him with the reins in her hands.
'Which way?' she asked.
'The rest of the squadron will be far up the valley by now, and they will be driving too fast for us to catch them. Also they are heading in the wrong direction,' he told her. 'The other hunters are scattered across the desert, We could search for them all day without finding them.'
'We must return to where the fleet is lying at Dabba. There is a surgeon with the ships.' She had reached the only feasible conclusion, and he nodded. She urged the horses into a walk, and they left the grove and climbed to the high ground heading south once again.
'It's three hours or more to reach Dabba,' she said.
'Not if we cut across the loop of the river,' he answered. 'We can shorten the return by at least four leagues.'
Mintaka hesitated and looked eastwards into the bleak desert, which he wanted her to attempt. 'I might lose the way,' she murmured fearfully.
'I will guide you,' he answered, confident in the instruction that Taita had given him in desert travel. 'It's our best chance.'
She swung the team to the left, marking a blue shale hillock in the direction Nefer had pointed out to her.
When they were strong and well they both delighted in the motion of a chariot running hard over broken ground, and they rode the pitch and roll with young legs. But now, even though she kept the horses down to a walk or a trot, the collision with every stone or hump, the drop into every hole, was transmitted through the rigid chassis into Nefer's torn body. He winced and sweated, but tried to hide his pain and discomfort from her. Yet as the hours wore on, his wounds stiffened, and the pain became unbearable. He groaned aloud at a particularly nasty impact, and slumped into unconsciousness.
Immediately Mintaka reined the pair to a halt, and tried to revive him. She soaked a pad of linen with water and squeezed a few drops between his lips. Then she sponged his pale, sweating face. But when she tried to rebandage his wounds she found that the gash in his thigh was bleeding again. She worked to staunch it, but succeeded only in reducing it to a slow leak. 'You are going to be all right, my darling,' she told him, with a confidence she did not feel. She embraced him gently, kissed the top of his dusty blood-caked head, and took up the reins again.
An hour later she gave the last of the water to Nefer and the horses, not drinking herself. Then she stood as high as she could on the dashboard of the chariot and looked about her at the gravel and shale hills that danced and wavered in the heat mirage. She kn
ew she was lost. Have I drifted too far eastwards? she wondered, glancing up at the sun and trying to calculate its angle. At her feet Nefer stirred and moaned, and she looked down with a brave face and smiled. 'Not much further now, my heart. We should see the river over the next crest.'
She rearranged the sheepskin from the bedroll under his head, then stood up, gathered the reins and braced herself. Suddenly she realized how exhausted she was: every muscle in her body ached and her eyes were sore and red from the sun's glare and the dust. She forced herself and the team onwards.
Soon the horses were showing signs of distress. They had stopped sweating and the salt rime dried white across their backs. She tried to urge them into a trot but they could not respond, so she climbed down, took the stallion's head and led them on. Now she was staggering herself, but at last she found the tracks of a chariot in a sandy valley bottom, and her spirits lifted.
'They are heading west,' she whispered, through lips that were beginning to swell and crack. 'They will lead us back to the river.' She kept moving along the wheel ruts for some time, until she stopped in confusion as she found her own footprints in front of her. It took her some time to realize that she must have walked in a circle and was following her own tracks.
At last despair overtook her. She sank down to her knees, helpless and lost, and whispered to Nefer as he lay, still unconscious, 'I am sorry, my darling. I have failed you.' She stroked the matted hair from his face. Then she looked up at the low hilltop to the east, and blinked. She shook her head to clear her vision, glanced away to rest her burning eyes, then looked back. She felt her spirits surge upwards once again, but still she could not be sure that what she was seeing was illusion or reality.
On the crest of the hills above them, a gaunt figure stood on the skyline, leaning on his long staff. His silver hair shone like a cloud, and the hot light breeze off the desert flapped his skirts against his heron-thin legs. He was staring down at them.