Telamon barked a laugh. ‘Told you, Pirra, we’re saved!’
Luckily, the Egyptian crew hadn’t taken their landing-plank with them, and now two oarsmen extended it towards the ship, where men reached down and grabbed its free end. The boat was pitching and rolling, the landing-plank wouldn’t stay in place for long. The oarsmen in front realized this and scrambled up it to safety.
‘Cowards!’ snarled Telamon. But he was already pushing past Alekto, grabbing Pirra and staggering up the plank. Pirra glimpsed swirling water, then the two remaining oarsmen scrambling after her. She heard a splash as the plank fell in the River and was swept away.
Then Telamon pulled her onto the ship.
At that moment, a scream rang out: a scream of such inhuman terror as Telamon had never heard in his life. He turned – everyone turned – and there in midstream was the fast-sinking prow of the Hati-aa’s boat, and clinging to it, her yellow robes floating, was Alekto, screaming at the crocodiles converging on her like the rays of some evil green star.
‘To the oars!’ bellowed Ilarkos. ‘We can reach her in time!’
Telamon’s mind raced. You must be strong, he told himself. This is the will of the gods. ‘No!’ he shouted to Ilarkos. ‘We stay where we are!’
Ilarkos was aghast. ‘But, my lord …’
Telamon glanced over his shoulder, and for an instant his eyes met Alekto’s. You must be strong, he told himself again.
Clenching his teeth, he made himself turn his back on his kinswoman. He heard crashing water and terrible bubbling screams: muffled, then shockingly loud – then abruptly cut off.
He looked back. She was gone. Nothing left but crimson water. He breathed out. The gods meant this to happen. It was Alekto’s destiny to die, so that he might triumph.
And now it was his destiny to kill the Outsider.
Telamon dragged Pirra across to the other side of the boat, the side facing the West Bank, and shoved her in front of him, in full view of the date-palms where Hylas was hiding. She was sick with horror, Alekto’s gurgling cries still ringing in her ears. She could hardly summon the will to struggle.
‘Look what I’ve got, Hylas!’ Telamon roared over her head, twisting her arms higher behind her back. It was agonizing, but she bit back a scream, knowing that would draw Hylas into the open, into arrowshot.
Telamon was horribly strong, holding her with one muscled forearm across her chest. She tried to bite, but couldn’t reach. He clamped tighter, his fingers digging into her upper arm. He was enjoying this.
A shadow slid across the ship. Telamon shouted a command to an archer beside him, who raised his bow and aimed at the sky. In horror, Pirra saw Echo wheeling overhead. ‘No!’ she screamed.
The arrow flew wide, and Echo slid unharmed across the Sun.
‘Hear that, Hylas?’ Telamon was grinning, Pirra could hear it in his voice.
‘Don’t hurt her!’ yelled Hylas from the trees. ‘Take the dagger! I’ll throw it over to you – but first let her go free!’
Telamon’s laugh was loud in her ears. ‘No, I’ll have the dagger first – then you get the girl!’
Silence from the date-palms.
‘Hylas, I mean it!’ called Telamon. With his free hand, he jabbed the point of his knife under Pirra’s chin. ‘Throw me the dagger! Only when I’ve got it will I give you the girl!’
The dagger of Koronos flew through the air and thudded on to the deck at Telamon’s feet.
Flinging Pirra to Ilarkos, he snatched it up. Its smooth hilt fitted his fist like part of his own flesh, and as he held it high, its blade flashed in the Sun and turned to flame. He felt its power coursing through his veins, and his heart swelled with painful pride. ‘I am Telamon of the House of Koronos,’ he roared, ‘and I have regained the dagger of my Ancestors!’ His voice rang clear across the River, telling them all – the doubters, the sneerers, anyone who’d ever questioned his right to lead – that the gods had chosen him to be leader of his clan.
‘We had a bargain – let Pirra go!’ shouted Hylas, his voice cutting through Telamon’s dreams.
Telamon ignored him, turning the dagger this way and that, admiring its strong straight spine and the lethal sweep of its blade.
‘You have a raft on board,’ called Hylas. ‘Send two of your men with the girl! Bring her to the bank!’
Telamon glanced from the date-palms to Pirra. ‘No,’ he cried.
Pirra spat in his face. ‘So much for the honour of the House of Koronos,’ she sneered.
Slowly, Telamon wiped her spit from his cheek. Coldly, he ordered Ilarkos to hold her close to the edge: ‘I want the Outsider to see her. Good. Now put your knife to her throat.’ Then, with the steady hands of a leader, he took his bow from a slave and readied an arrow.
‘Outsider!’ he called, and his voice was as strong and sure as bronze: as strong and sure as Koronos himself. ‘Stop skulking behind those trees and show yourself!’
‘No, Hylas, no!’ screamed Pirra. ‘He has a bow, he’ll kill you!’
Telamon laughed. ‘For once she’s right, Hylas, I will! But if you don’t step out into the open, you’ll have to watch her die first!’
‘Out in the open, Hylas!’ shouted Telamon. ‘Or I will kill her!’
The ship lay just off the island and well within arrowshot of where Hylas hid behind the palms. He saw Telamon standing on board with an arrow nocked to his bow, and beside him, the warrior named Ilarkos, holding Pirra: one burly forearm clamped across her, the other with a knife to her throat. Ilarkos had a weatherbeaten face and the steady eyes of a man trained to obey. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.
‘Hylas, don’t!’ screamed Pirra, struggling in his grip.
‘One word,’ yelled Telamon. ‘All I have to do is give the word, and he’ll slit her throat!’
Telamon meant it, Hylas could see that. His eyes were wild: nothing left of the boy who’d been his friend, all that scorched away by his hunger for power, and by the final step he’d just taken, leaving his own kin to die. The churning red horror in midstream was stamped on Hylas’ mind: a white arm flung up, reaching for the sky, then dragged under for ever.
‘I will do it, Hylas! Do you want to watch Pirra die?’
It came to Hylas that even if he slunk off now and made his way back to Akea – even if he found Issi and they created a home together far from the Crows – it would never be any good, because he wouldn’t be with Pirra.
All this flashed through his mind in a heartbeat.
Then he stepped out into the open and Telamon shot him in the chest.
Hylas lay on his back, squinting up at palm fronds slashing the Sun to ribbons. He heard Pirra screaming his name. He wasn’t dead.
His head ached. He was going to have a vision. It hurt to breathe, he felt as if someone had kicked him in the chest. With his free hand he felt his breastbone, where Telamon had shot him. No blood. His fingers found the heavy bronze wedjat.
The wedjat … He saw the dent where Telamon’s arrow had struck it and bounced off.
Pirra was still screaming his name: ‘Hylas, get under cover!’
Telamon’s arrow lay beside him, the tip of its obsidian head snapped off. He grabbed it, struggled to his feet and swayed. Time stretched. Then the veils shrouding the spirit world blew apart – and he saw.
Out in the River, the swirling water became a vast green crocodile lashing its tail. Behind him, the desert wind blew a great twisting column of sand that coalesced into a towering woman with the head of a lion and red hair of streaming dust. Above him, vast wings spread across the sky, then drew together and became a dark bolt hurtling out of the Sun …
‘Hylas, get under cover!’ screamed Pirra again.
Her voice cut through the vision, and time snapped back.
On the ship, Telamon was taking aim at him again.
Hylas leapt sideways. The dark bolt struck. Telamon staggered, bellowing with rage, his bow falling over the side, blood pouring from a wound in his forehead. Echo swept off
with a scornful cry.
Ilarkos must have loosened his grip on Pirra to help him, because she seized her chance and leapt overboard.
‘Pirra!’ yelled Hylas.
But the water closed over her head and she was gone.
Murky water filling eyes and mouth, a booming in her ears. The water was so muddy she couldn’t tell up from down, and with her arms tied behind her, all she could do was kick.
Don’t splash, she thought, you’ll draw the crocodiles. Her mind shied away from the horror in midstream. How long before they finished Alekto and came for her?
Her chest was bursting, she had to have air. Her foot struck mud. She floundered, mud sucking her feet. She kicked as hard as she could – and exploded from the water.
Gasping and spluttering, she caught a choppy vision of reeds, but couldn’t see Hylas. Behind her on the ship, the Crows were no longer shooting at the shore, they were manning the oars and rowing away.
Then she saw why. Dark figures were racing down from the saddle, shooting at the Crows: bowmen with black skin as dark as Kem’s. It was Kem, there he was among the others, raining down arrows on the Crows.
They’re going to hit me, she thought. A bubble of shocked laughter rose in her throat. What if she survived Telamon and the crocodiles, only to be cut down by a friend?
Arrows hissed over her head as she struggled towards the shore, while Telamon yelled at his men to row, row.
Her ears were still booming. She saw the Hati-aa’s men streaming down from the Houses of Eternity, and Kem and his bowmen vanishing over the saddle. She saw Telamon raise the dagger of Koronos in triumph as his black ship glided off downriver, its prow slicing through the waters stained red with his kinswoman’s blood.
And suddenly there was Hylas, alive, wading towards her, and pulling her into his arms. They were both soaking wet, laughing and crying, and he was clutching her so tightly she could hardly breathe.
‘But he shot you,’ she panted, ‘I saw him do it!’
‘The wedjat saved me.’
‘The wedjat …’ Over her shoulder, she saw the red water and the flick of a scaly green tail. ‘That was why Userref wanted you to have it,’ she faltered. ‘He saved you. And now I have avenged his death.’
Hylas wasn’t listening, he was clumsily cutting her bonds with Telamon’s arrowhead, muttering something she couldn’t hear and passing his hands over her arms and face, as if making sure that she was truly alive.
Neither of them saw the crocodile. It’s always the one you don’t see that gets you.
But in that frozen moment as they stood together in the shallows and the giant lizard burst out at them, something sprang at it from the bank. Pirra saw a great golden blur leaping right over her head as Havoc launched her attack. Then lion and crocodile were locked in combat, rolling, thrashing, the crocodile twisting round to snap, Havoc hanging on with her claws and clamping her fangs into its throat.
The crocodile was huge, yet Havoc was stronger: a cub no longer, but a full-grown lioness – and finally, she knew it. Still with her jaws clamped on the monster’s throat, she reared out of the water, gave one tremendous shake from side to side that snapped its spine, and flung its lifeless body in the mud. Then she swung round to face Hylas and Pirra, her muzzle red with blood and her golden eyes ablaze – and roared her triumph to the sky.
A little later, the Hati-aa’s men found them, and stood in awe before these two barbarians whom the great gods of Egypt, Heru and Sekhmet, had protected with their sacred creatures: the dark-eyed girl with a falcon on her shoulder, and the boy with hair the colour of the Sun and a huge lioness standing guard at his side.
The black bowmen had vanished into the desert, the Hati-aa’s men had returned to Pa-Sobek, and the West Bank was at peace.
Rensi took Hylas and Pirra to Nebetku’s workshop, where Hylas told the dying man how he’d put the Spells for Coming Forth by Day in Userref’s coffin. To prove it, he described what the Wrapped One had looked like, which finally reassured Nebetku that the barbarian had kept his word.
After that, Berenib made Hylas and Pirra wash, then fed them a huge meal of bean porridge, date cakes and pomegranate wine, and they curled up and slept for the rest of the day.
Hylas woke around midnight. Pirra was still whiffling quietly, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep any more, so he set off for the desert to find Havoc.
The elation of survival had worn off, and as he picked his way through the gorge, he felt shaken and low. He kept seeing Telamon brandishing the dagger of Koronos, and that churning horror in midstream. The Crows had the dagger. And here he was, far from Akea, with everything to do again.
But what really haunted him was the vision. It had been stronger and clearer than any he’d ever had before – and it had kept him transfixed and out in the open, for Telamon to shoot at. What if next time he had a vision, it wasn’t himself he put in danger, but Havoc? Or Pirra?
In the end, he didn’t find Havoc, she found him, emerging silently from the dark, as lions do. She leapt at him and put her huge forepaws on his shoulders, rubbing her furry cheek against his and telling him in groany lion-talk about her successful hunt. This made him feel a bit better. And he was pleased that she’d finally realized that she was no longer a cub, but a powerful lioness.
Suddenly, Havoc gave an eager whuff and bounded off into the gloom. Someone yelped, and Hylas made out a shadowy figure trying to stand in the face of the lioness’s determined welcome.
Kem pushed her off, grinning from ear to ear.
‘The bowmen on the ridge,’ said Hylas. ‘Pirra said she saw you among them.’
Kem’s grin widened. His short hair was caked in red ochre, and the scars on his cheeks had been picked out in yellow. Over his shoulder was a longbow, with a spare bowstring wound around his temples. In his fist he held an Egyptian warrior’s crescent-moon axe.
‘No one will ever call you a coward now, my friend,’ said Hylas, eyeing the axe.
Kem laughed. ‘I took it from the stables. The guards, they all up on the hill watching the tombs.’ He paused. ‘After we seen off the Crows, we had to run away quick time. Didn’t want the Hati-aa’s men to spot us.’
‘You were there when we needed you. Thanks.’
Kem brushed that aside.
‘But why come so far into Egypt?’ said Hylas. ‘You could’ve found a patrol right on the border, much nearer your own country. It would’ve been less risky.’
Kem shrugged. ‘Thought you might need help. And I had a debt to pay.’
‘And you’ve repaid it. That reminds me. Pirra sends her thanks. She said she’s sorry she ever doubted you.’
Kem looked pleased. ‘You got a brave girl there,’ he said, digging at the sand with his heel. ‘Not many like her. In my country she’d be worth many cows.’
‘Shall I tell her that?’
Another laugh. ‘Better not!’
On impulse, Hylas took off his lion-claw amulet and held it out. ‘Here. For you.’
Kem was delighted. ‘This the best thing! You know what is my real name?’ He made a clicking sound. ‘That means “lion”!’
‘Ah, that’s good,’ smiled Hylas.
Kem glanced over his shoulder to where several tall young black men were squatting in the gloom, staring at Hylas and Havoc with awe. ‘We got canoes hidden. Long way back. Nobody knows we’re here, not even my father.’
‘So you found him all right.’
Kem nodded proudly, and Hylas felt a flash of envy, and the familiar shame that came over him whenever he thought of his own father, whom he’d never known, and who had died a coward.
‘Hylas,’ said Kem. ‘The years I was gone, my father never gave up hope. Your sister – don’t you give up hope.’
Hylas didn’t reply. Havoc leant against him, and he raked his fingers through her deep coarse fur. The Crows had the dagger, and he was far from Akea, at the very edge of the world. He was sick of living on hope.
The Moon had set by the t
ime he found his way back to the West Bank. He expected the settlements to be asleep, but instead he found mourners rocking and wailing outside Nebetku’s workshop, and Rensi and Herihor standing together, crying.
‘He died a little while ago,’ said Pirra, ‘but I won’t grieve. He told me that for him, dying would be like getting better.’
Dawn on the day after the battle on the River. A smell of baking bread from the villages. Cattle lowing, a woman calling her children. Fruitbats flickering over the reeds.
The River was rising fast, already lapping the date-palms where Hylas had hidden the day before. Echo perched in a tamarisk tree well back from the water’s edge. Pirra sat beneath, watching little black fish darting in the shallows, where yesterday there had been dusty earth.
‘Userref,’ she said out loud. Then she said it again, and again, because he’d told her once that to speak the name of the dead is to help them live for ever.
Yesterday, she’d been shaken by the battle with the Crows and the horror of Alekto’s death. Since then she’d slept, and dreamt of Userref at peace in the Place of Reeds. That had made her feel much better.
It was a relief, too, to have washed off the face-paint and changed into a simple knee-length tunic. Berenib hadn’t minded about the state of her borrowed finery, and had been far more concerned about getting her clean.
Herihor and Rensi had just come to see her. The omens for the Flood were excellent, and Herihor was so relieved that he’d given Pirra a beautiful leather cuff for her forearm. Rensi said she should be flattered, as it was one of the few times that Herihor had ever given a gift to someone who was still alive.
Shortly afterwards, Meritamen had arrived. She and Kerasher had watched from the East Bank as the barbarians battled it out, and Alekto met her death, and Telamon brandished the dagger with a triumphant roar, before setting off for the coast. Then Meritamen had known that Pa-Sobek was rid of the Crows at last; and Kerasher had known that the decree of the Perao had been fulfilled.
‘Although I’m sure that when Kerasher tells the Perao how it came about,’ Meritamen had said drily, ‘he will say that it was Kerasher who found the barbarians’ dagger, not Hy-las.’
The Crocodile Tomb Page 17