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  Nakht began to answer him, but the Prince interrupted.

  ‘I am not a fool. I know what families will do for power and glory. My father has sold me; I am merely a commodity, bartered for political gain. And when I am no longer useful, I know I will be disposed of without a second thought.’

  ‘That is not so, Your Majesty. As long as I live I will serve you, and protect your life with my own,’ replied Nakht earnestly.

  Prince Zannanza gazed at him.

  ‘And how long can I hope to survive in your Egyptian royal court, which is so notoriously full of assassins and betrayers?’ he replied. ‘And who are you?’ he said, turning to me unexpectedly.

  ‘Life, prosperity, health, Your Majesty. I am Rahotep.’

  ‘Tell me about yourself,’ commanded the Prince.

  I could hear Simut coughing with amusement behind me.

  ‘What would Your Majesty care to know?’

  ‘You are not a noble, yet you are not a guard. Why are you here?’

  I glanced at Nakht, who was following the unexpected progress of this conversation carefully.

  ‘The Queen of Egypt commanded my presence,’ I said. ‘I am a Seeker of Mysteries and worked for the Thebes Medjay.’

  ‘She must value your loyalty highly,’ he replied.

  I could think of nothing to say to that. He gazed at me.

  ‘I see something else in your eyes. You carry a dark anger in your heart, don’t you, Rahotep, Seeker of Mysteries?’

  I was taken aback.

  ‘I recognize the signs all too well. I, too, was not made for the darkness of men’s cruelty. But the Gods make fools of us all,’ he continued. And then he spurred his horse, and cantered forward a little, to return to his solitude.

  Simut winked, and clapped me on the shoulder, whispering into my ear: ‘I think the Prince has taken a liking to you. “The Gods make fools of us all…”’

  ‘You’re just jealous,’ I replied.

  We both laughed. Nakht was not amused.

  The sun rose quickly as we travelled onwards, and soon the land began to simmer with heat. Later, up ahead, in the dazzle and shimmer of the afternoon, one of the reconnaissance guards suddenly stopped and whistled a warning. Simut and I cantered up to join him on a slight rise in the terrain. He gestured for silence, and pointed from his eyes to a square mud-brick building in the distance. It was hard to make it out in the glare of the light. ‘It’s an outpost. That’s a water cistern in the middle,’ he said.

  ‘So where is everyone?’ I asked.

  There seemed to be no watchmen, nor any soldiers moving about on duty. In fact, the place was eerily silent, as if it had been abandoned. Wiping the sweat from our brows, we scanned the parched, empty terrain.

  Simut and I dismounted and, taking two of his guards with us, made our way slowly and quietly towards the fort. There was nowhere for us to hide if we came under attack. The guards held their bows at the ready. The desert land was utterly silent all around us, and we made no sound either. I examined the dusty ground, step by step; it was heavily marked with the prints of horses’ hooves, and sandals, and bare feet, running crazily in all directions. As we came closer to the fort itself, spots, arcs and trails of dried black blood decorated the dirt. It was the diagram of a battle. But where were the dead?

  Simut scanned the place, then motioned the two guards to cover us, their bows aimed at the walls; then, swift and silent as shadows, Simut and I ran across the dangerous open ground until we had our backs against the wall of the gatehouse. I wiped away the sweat dripping from my forehead; we listened for any sound within the fort. Still there was nothing. All I could hear was the buzzing of flies. Simut instructed the guards to position themselves directly before the gateway, and then, with a nod, he and I burst through into the inner court, our weapons raised.

  Instantly we were overcome by an appalling stench, and we pulled our linens to our noses. We were confronted by the scene of a massacre: a platoon of Egyptian soldiers had been slaughtered, their limbs, hands and feet indiscriminately severed with crude blows from their torsos. The bodies had begun to putrefy in the intense heat. This was a recent event. And then it struck me.

  ‘There are no heads,’ I whispered to Simut.

  ‘So where are they?’ he answered.

  We searched the fort. Everything was destroyed: the crude wooden benches were smashed, the storage jars and bowls were shattered, and the straw sleeping pallets were slashed open. There were smears and pools of blood on the floor and across the walls.

  I held up my hand for silence. Something was bothering me; a remote buzzing sound. I approached the small circular water cistern. With the tip of my dagger I lifted the lid. Instantly, a black cloud of flies swarmed out. I stepped back quickly, waving them away. When they had settled again, with my linens wound around my face and head, I pushed open the cistern lid and glanced inside. Crammed into the dark, dank well of the water hole was a platoon’s-worth of severed heads, staring sightlessly up at me, still dripping with blood, poisoning the once-fresh water below.

  27

  Simut sent out his men to reconnoitre the land around the fort. They found nothing in the immediate vicinity, having followed the horse tracks for some distance, heading away to the west. So he posted the lookout guards, and they crouched down in whatever shade they could find and gazed intently at the shimmering land. We needed to rest in these hours, before we began the next day’s journey in the dark. But we were all wide awake, listening for any sound that might betray the return of the attackers. Nakht organized a couch for Prince Zannanza, and tried to improvise an awning for him. He explained why the tents could not be erected, but the Prince just waved him away disconsolately, and turned his back on everything.

  The heat of the afternoon was unbearable. Nakht, Simut and I sat together, batting the incessant flies away, and whispering so that he could not overhear us.

  ‘This barbarity is familiar,’ I said. ‘It fits with what Paser told us about the Army of Chaos.’

  ‘I agree. So how can we best defend ourselves against the possibility of another attack?’ asked Nakht.

  ‘I’ll send scouts ahead to reconnoitre the land around us as we proceed. We have twenty men; they’re far better trained and far more deadly than any horde of undisciplined mercenaries,’ Simut replied.

  ‘This wasn’t a random attack. Whoever they are, they know we’re coming,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to say this, but there were more than twenty soldiers in the garrison here, and look what happened to them.’

  We sat in silence contemplating our predicament.

  ‘There’s no water here. The horses are thirsty. We have no choice, we need to press ahead. Better to travel by night. The bow guard must be fully armed at all times. We will put cloths around the horses’ hooves, and no one will speak. We will travel in silence. Our ultimate duty is to protect the Prince, and that means both of you must guard him at all times,’ Nakht decided.

  And so, as soon as the sun set, we rose, prepared ourselves, ate a little bread, and set forth into the cooling desert darkness. The stars were shining brilliantly in the sky, but the moon was new, just a sliver of white, giving us little light to travel by–and fortunately little light to be seen by. The horses’ hooves were muffled, and in the strange silence we listened intently for anything that might alert us to the presence of enemies on horseback in the shadows. Our nerves were wound tight; I blinked and rubbed my eyes as I stared into the darkness. Slowly, we covered the distances; the stars turned in their spheres, and then, after hours of tension, the darkness of night began to change. The rim of the world took on a blue tint, which gradually spread, until the horizon brightened, and light began to reoccupy the world. Ra, the Sun, was reborn into a new day. But what it revealed, up ahead of us, in the blinding white and gold of sunrise, was the image of our nightmare; in the distance, a dark line of shadowy figures on horseback were waiting for us.

  Simut raised his hand, and the caravan instantly
halted. Prince Zannanza, who had been nodding with sleep, stirred.

  ‘Why have we stopped?’

  Then he blinked, and saw the dark figures.

  ‘No, no, no…’ he whispered.

  ‘Shut up,’ I snapped, without thinking of protocol. Simut gave a signal, and his bow guards dropped into formation in front, and raised their bows. Their arrows pointed into the sky, their tips glinting with the new light. Others stood behind them, their long spears poised. And then we heard coming from all around us a barbaric noise like I have never heard before, a drumming of weapons on shields, and a chanting and shouting. We turned in our saddles; in the distance, and from all around us, horsemen appeared up out of the shimmering desert dawn, surrounding us in every direction.

  Simut gave a swift order, and the bowmen trained their arrows on the shadowy figures; but we were vastly outnumbered. There must have been more than a hundred of them. Four of our men moved to protect Prince Zannanza and Nakht, their leather shields raised, their swords ready to defend them both to the death. I caught a glimpse of Nakht’s face, his arm protective and reassuring around the Prince’s shoulders.

  The shadowy horsemen continued to make their hideous war music as they slowly tightened the circle that surrounded us; they were still too far away for us to see their faces clearly. But then a commanding figure on horseback cantered forward into the open desert within the circle. I shaded my eyes; I could make out long hair, and flowing robes. This figure made its horse dance before us on its hind legs, while waving a long curved sword threateningly in the air, and shouting, calling out incomprehensible threats and ululating wildly. The huge circle of men responded with jubilation, rattling their weapons against their shields, and screaming with rage and fury.

  Simut waited, intently focused for the first sign of movement. His men were poised, disciplined, their weapons ready. And suddenly it came–the leader screamed a ferocious howl of delight, and then they were charging at us from every direction. Simut bellowed orders, and arrows sprayed up into the blue sky, glittered at the peak of their arcs, and then showered down accurately into the charging horde. A number of the horsemen were hit, and fell sideways off their galloping horses, to be trampled under the hooves of the others. At Simut’s command another round of arrows was fired, not this time into the air, but directly at the attackers; and many hit their targets, bringing down men and horses in a mortal tangle. But still they came forward, and now I could just make out their wild beards and hair, their screaming mouths, and their faces crazed with the ecstasy of battle.

  My heart was pounding. Nakht appeared beside me suddenly, and shouted: ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Where is the Prince?’ I shouted back.

  ‘He’s with the guards!’

  ‘That’s where you should be!’

  ‘We need every man to fight,’ he replied, his eyes shining.

  ‘Hold up your sword. Stay behind me, stay close!’

  Nakht drew out his sword. I suddenly remembered that in the past he’d flinched from the use of the knife and abhorred violence of any kind, but he must have taken training since, for he held his blade now with a new confidence. The bow archers fired more arrows into the approaching attackers, and more of the barbarians fell; but suddenly spears and axes were hurtling through the air, embedding themselves with grim thuds and cracks into the heads and chests of some of our own guards in the outer protective circle, who fell with grunts or in silence. In a moment, the assailants would be upon us.

  I glanced up and saw one of the horsemen, his arm pulled right back, cast his spear with all his might–it came quivering through the air right on target for Nakht. He had not seen it. Just in time I threw up my shield, and it hit directly with an enormous thud that reverberated up my arm, throwing me backwards on to the ground, and winding me. I grabbed Nakht and pulled him down, protecting him with my body, as the storm of horsemen broke through the ring of bow archers, hacking wildly, gleefully, at them, separating arms and heads from torsos. Blood gushed and arced richly red into the fresh morning air. I glimpsed Simut attacking back, encouraging his men to do the same; they were superb marksmen and soldiers, and their weapons sliced and sang accurately through air and flesh and bone; and more of the horde fell dead from their horses. But we were impossibly outnumbered. Nakht was struggling underneath me.

  ‘Let me fight!’ he shouted.

  ‘Stay still,’ I said. For a moment, our eyes met, and it seemed to me he almost smiled.

  ‘Death holds no fear for me,’ he said. ‘Not if we die together.’

  The savage and relentless noise of the battle suddenly seemed very far away, the barbarity of the attackers, as they slashed and hacked their way through us, seemed to slow down. I thought of the pity of life, and of my children, and my wife. In my mind I began to say goodbye to them.

  But then, even as a feeling of terrible waste flowed through me, a shadow fell across my body. I looked up, dazzled by the rising sun that framed the dark figure on a magnificent stallion, gazing down at me. From the horse’s bridle hung several battered heads of dead men, the flesh torn away, the eyes missing from the sockets, the jaws hanging broken, loose. Chains of human hands had been fastened in a collar around the stallion’s neck, the yellowed, gnarled fingers imploring for help, too late. The rider’s scimitar was raised, glinting in the sun, ready to strike me dead.

  But instead the figure laughed, and moved out of the sun. I looked into the face of the enemy, and I saw that it was not a man at all; but a woman, laughing with delight at the bloodshed and the victory. Her hair was black and thick, braided and tangled wildly around her head; her eyes were a compelling, shocking blue; and the mad fury of her expression was contradicted by the magnificence of her face. Then she looked at me directly, curiously; and a moment later, to my bewilderment, she smiled. And then everything went dark.

  28

  I tried to stir, but pain danced through my body. My hands and feet were bound, my mouth was gagged with a filthy rag, and I seemed unable to open my eyes; a raging thirst parched my throat, and the brutal sun burned my face. I tried to make sense of things: the rumble of cartwheels, the irregular sound of horses’ hooves on the rough ground, and the casual banter, cheerful shouts and aggressive laughter of men all around, in a language I did not understand.

  I managed to open one eye. The other was swollen shut. It throbbed uncomfortably. The first thing I made out in the squinting light was Nakht’s face, very close to mine. His mouth was open, his face bruised, and his lips parched. His eyes were closed. Beyond him lay Prince Zannanza, awake and terrified, his mouth also gagged, his desperate, beautiful eyes pleading with mine. On the far side of the cart lay Simut, unconscious. Dried blood caked his face and beard, and flies feasted around a large, open gash on his head. His face was badly bruised. I saw his lips twitch against the flies. We four were all still alive. Why? And what of the guards?

  The cart rattled jarringly over stones. I could make out little of the men on horseback who surrounded us–they were shadows silhouetted against the dazzle of the sun. But one of them saw I was conscious, and called out. The cart suddenly halted. He leaned down, unknotted the gag, and threw it aside. I gasped in the hot, dry desert air. I tried to speak. ‘Water…’ My voice was cracked and broken. One of them said something to the others, which made them laugh. Then several stood up in their stirrups, pulled aside their robes, and began to piss on me. I closed my eyes and mouth against the hot, revolting spatter, but they only laughed harder as I tried to squirm away. Then they pissed on Nakht and Prince Zannanza, too. This woke Nakht from his torpor; he coughed and cried out in revulsion. I was suddenly possessed by the strength of outrage, and, despite my hands being bound behind my back, I yanked myself to my feet, off the cart, and ran at the men, screaming with rage, trying to butt them with my head; but my legs gave way, and I fell to the ground, humiliated. This only delighted them more, and they roared with laughter. Several got down from their horses, I supposed to beat me up. I p
icked myself up to run at them again. But then a woman’s voice, commanding and deep, berated the men, and they stepped back, obedient as a pack of snarling dogs.

  She stood gazing at me, her hands on her hips, and her wild hair like a glorious mane about her face, smeared with dust and blood. She dashed water from her leather water-skin over my face, then gripped my head between her fingers and turned it this way and that, as if valuing a horse. She raised her sword, drew the point of the blade under each eye, down my nose, and across my lips, like a crude version of the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, as if she were a high priest, and I the corpse waiting to be resurrected in the Otherworld: ‘You are young again, you live again, you are young again, you live again, forever.’ I jerked my head back, out of her grip. She smacked me hard, but then, as if pleased about something, she shouted, in a voice that could have knocked down a stone temple, something that sounded like ‘Inanna!’–and her wild Army of Chaos screamed in respect.

  She gripped my face again, prised my teeth apart, held the leather water-skin from her belt to my mouth, and poured a stream of clear, cool, blissful water for me to drink. Then she nodded to one of her men, who gave Nakht and Prince Zannanza brief draughts of water from his water-skin, too. Simut was still unconscious. The man splashed the water over his face, but it made no difference. I was afraid he might be dead. But the man cuffed Simut about the face, pulled him into a sitting position, and forced water down his throat. Suddenly Simut coughed and retched. He was alive.

  The others were ordered to get out of the cart, and we were made to stand in a line. Now I could see more clearly the motley militia under Inanna’s command. They wore black, together with exotic assemblies of gold collars, bangles and jewels. Their hair and beards were worn braided or plaited in wild, different styles. They were extensively armed, and must have collected their weapons from a wide range of victims, for some of them I recognized as Egyptian, some as Hittite, and others were unfamiliar to me. But to the last man, they looked like brutal criminals.