Soldier of Sidon, page 10
“I understand,” he said, and sighed deeply. “You forget, Latro. Because you do, I am going to tell you something. You must tell no one today, and tomorrow it will be gone and others will have to tell you who I am.”
“I understand,” I said. “I wouldn't have known you for a healer and my friend Sahuset if she had not told me.”
“Just as you have Myt-ser'eu, so I have a certain woman. She comes to me when I wake her. We are lovers then, and talk, kiss, and embrace.”
I nodded.
“It does not surprise you? It would surprise everyone else on the ship, I think.”
“I have Myt-ser'eu,” I explained, “and the chief Crimson Man has Neht-nefret. Both are beautiful. Why should you not have a woman also if you wish one?”
“When I do not wake her, my lover sleeps,” the healer said, and it seemed to me that he spoke to himself alone, and would say nothing more unless I spoke. Thus I asked whether she slept by day as I had that morning.
“By day and by night.” He clasped my shoulder. He is thin, but as tall as I and taller. “And yet, Latro, there was a night not long ago when she woke without my waking her and came to me.”
He sighed again. “We were camped on the shore in tents, for there was no inn at the village where we had stopped, only a beer shop. I was in my tent and was thinking that I might return to the ship, carry her to my bed there, and awaken her.”
He clapped his hands, loud as a shout. “My door-curtain was thrown back. It was she, and she kissed and embraced me. I was happier that night than I had ever been, and that happiness has been repeated. There is an enchantment, Latro, on this ship, a spell I never wove. Perhaps it is Qanju's. I do not know. What was it you wished to ask me about?”
“My dream,” I said. “Myt-ser'eu says I never sleep by day, but I died once by day while I was sitting with her beneath a tree.”
The healer nodded to that, so it must be true.
“She thought I had died again and was terribly frightened. She woke me, but I remember my dream, or part of it.”
“A frightening dream, from what you say.”
“It was. Isn't there a wolf-headed god in this land? You're of it, and the most learned among us, Myt-ser'eu says.”
“That god has many names,” the healer told me. He recounted some of them.
I said my soldiers called him Ap-uat.
“Then we may call him that, so long as we keep in mind that he is the opener of the ways. When our army marches, Latro, it sends a few men ahead so that it cannot be ambushed.”
“An advance guard,” I said. “That is always wise.”
“These are called the openers of the way. Often they see a wolf-headed man who walks in advance of them. Then they know the way is safe and the army will triumph. For that reason this god was on our pharaoh's standard.”
“My men wished to stop at the city of this god,” I explained, “so they might sacrifice to him before we reach the wild southern lands. We went to Qanju and explained this, but he would not stop there.”
The healer nodded. “I see. Do you believe that this god sent your dream?”
“It seems to me he must. We spoke to Muslak as well. He said that we'd be far south of Ap-uat's city by the time we stopped for the night, perhaps as far as Akhmim.”
“Thus you come to me.”
I shook my head. “Thus I sat with Myt-ser'eu, and slept. I was in a dark land in which there lay many dead. Slowly, a wolf that was also a man crawled toward me, dragging itself with its hands, which were its forepaws as well.”
The healer listened in silence.
“Seeing it crawl, I knew its back was broken. No man and no beast lives long with a broken back. With a man's voice it begged me to slay it, to take its life and end its agony. I—”
The healer raised his hand. “Wait. I have many questions. Did you recognize this man who was a wolf?”
“Yes, I knew who he was in my dream, but I cannot tell you now.”
“Yet you knew him then. Was he friend or foe?”
“He had been my enemy,” I said. “I knew that, too.”
“He came to you begging mercy, nonetheless?”
I raised my shoulders and let them fall as men do. “There was no one else.”
“Only you, and the dead.”
“I think so.”
“Very well. Go on.”
“I did as he asked.” I showed the healer my sword. “I killed him with this, and quickly, holding his ear while I slashed his throat. When he was dead I saw his man's face.” I paused to think and to remember the dark plain of my dream. “After that, Myt-ser'eu woke me, fearing I had died.”
The healer took four sticks of crooked gold from his robe, made a square of their corners on the deck before us, and did and said certain things I will not write. These things done, he picked up the gold sticks, speaking a word for each, shook them together, and cast them at my face.
I asked whether they spoke to him when they clattered to the deck. Angry, he motioned me to silence. After a time, he swept them up, shook them as he had before, and cast them again. “You are not telling me everything,” he said when he had studied them a second time. “What is it you have not told?”
“I said girl as I cut his throat. Only that. I cannot explain it and it seems to me it cannot be of any importance.”
“Girl.”
I nodded. “Just that. The one word.”
“You speak the tongue of Kemet better than most foreigners. Was it in this way that you spoke in your dream?”
“I spoke only one word in my dream. That one.”
“Satet?”
“No, another word that meant the same.”
“Bent?”
“I don't think it was in this tongue. It meant a tall girl, very young but tall and crowned with blossoms—meant that in my dream, I mean.”
The healer looked out over the water. “We must stop at Asyut,” he said.
He cast his sticks as before, nodding and humming over them, then cast them again. When he looked up he said, “You must not fear your dream, Latro. Ap-uat favors you. I want you to buy a lamb and take it to his temple. A black lamb, if you can find one.”
I objected that the Crimson Man had told me we would not stop for the night where Ap-uat's temple was.
“If we do,” the healer asked, “will you do as I have instructed you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I will surely do it if I have enough money.”
He nodded, as if to himself. “Myt-ser'eu will not have left you much, I imagine. Qanju has a great deal and may give you something if you ask. Wait.”
He cast the sticks as before, whistled softly, and cast again. When he swept them up, he put them into his robe. “Anubis favors you also, as he has long favored me. Now he speaks to you through me. You are to go to the city of the dead. There he will give you more than enough to buy the lamb. You are not afraid of ghosts?”
“Of course I'm afraid of ghosts,” I said, “what sane man isn't? But to what city of the dead am I to go? Doesn't every city have a place to inter its dead?”
“He did not say, nor did he say on which night you are to go there. When I spoke of ghosts, I meant only that many men are afraid to enter any city of the dead by night. Will you, knowing that the god commands you?”
“Certainly.”
“Is your sword sharp?”
“You handled it,” I said.
“I did not examine the edge. Is it?”
“Yes.”
“That is well. Anubis wishes you to bring a sharp sword.”
I write this while I remember. I have told Uraeus, who says he will go with me. Myt-ser'eu overheard us. She says she will come with me as well.
She says also that this god Anubis who favors me is a very great one, the messenger sent from the Lands of the Dead to the gods, and the messenger whom the gods send to the Lands of the Dead. He oversees the preparation of the body for burial, guards the tomb, and is invoked by everyone. I asked why he should favor me. She could not say, saying only that no one can tell why a god favors one person over another. Perhaps it is because his brother favors me.
Uraeus says we met, this Anubis and I—that he held the scales in which my heart was weighed. I protested that the heart cannot be weighed without killing the man whose heart it is. He conceded it was true, and vanished when I looked away. I wish to ask him more about the weighing of my heart, a thing I have forgotten.
A WARSHIP OF many oars has stopped us. Qanju and Muslak have gone to speak with its commander. I feel sure that we will tie up at Asyut after all. I have told the men.
14
THE JACKAL-HEADED GOD CALLED
ANUBIS LED THE grand procession in honor of his brother. Urged by Myt-ser'eu, I had read much in this scroll before we ate this morning. Thus I knew him at once.
We slept on the ship last night, having tried (Myt-ser'eu says) to find an inn without success. The city is thronged with those who have come for the festival. I know now that I ought to have gone to the city of the dead, but by the time Muslak and I faced up to a night on shipboard even I was tired and both women were ready to drop.
“We will have to stay here at Asyut tonight and tomorrow at least,” Muslak told me. “My crew is off sightseeing, drinking, dancing, and looking for women now, and it will be that long—if not longer—before we'll be ready to sail again.”
Neither Myt-ser'eu nor I had any objection, though I wished we had been able to find an inn so I might enjoy her with decency. As it was, we slept on board, went into the city this morning to watch the bullfighting, and returned to this ship (where we sit now) for a splendid view of the grand procession.
I cannot say whether I have seen bullfighting before; but I think not, for it seemed novel to me. It is a rowdy sport, and for that reason I did not think at first that Myt-ser'eu and Neht-nefret would enjoy it. Soon I learned that they liked it as least as well as I.
It would have been better, I thought, to have had a special place set aside for it, in which the spectators might watch in safety. (I mentioned this to Uraeus, but he would not agree.) As it is, spectators have no protection save the ropes about the horns of the bulls by which their handlers slowed their charges when they tried to toss us.
They were led to the field with ropes through their noses; these were cast aside once the bulls had seen each other and were prepared to fight. Both were large and strong, very fine. Loosed, they charged and charged again, circled, feinted, and indeed made me think of swordsmen who held two swords, something I feel sure I must have seen.
At last the black bull threw down the red and white, and gored him terribly before he could rise. Like bees, the black bull's handlers swarmed over him, and put their rope through his nose once more. Then he was washed and decked with garlands. I am told that he will be kept at the temple until his death, then buried as befits the herald of Ptah.
Besides this, there were races and games of all the kinds befitting soldiers. Muslak and others wished me to wrestle; but Neht-nefret warned me that the crowd would be displeased if a foreigner won, and might well mob me. This was wise, I think. I declined to take part.
This procession is well worth seeing. Richly robed, the images of every god in the city pass us on boats, rowed by their worshippers and attended by their priests. There is great pageantry. Jeweled fans of bright feathers cool these images. Dancers whirl about them. The riverbank is lined with spectators as far as the eye can see, and there are thousands more on boats and ships like ours.
Perhaps I should not write this, but I can expunge it later if I think that best. The image of Anubis was only an image, I would judge of carved and painted wood. So it was with the images of the other gods, until Ap-uat came. He seemed to me no image at all, but a wolf-headed man larger than any man. He looked at me as he passed, and cocked his head as if to ask, “Are you coming?” Had he shown his teeth, I think I might have run like any coward and hidden in the hold.
ANUBIS WISHED ME to meet him in the city of the dead. I had not forgotten that when we tied up here this morning, and indeed have not forgotten it now, though I never saw him. When we were at the quay, I left off whetting my sword and gave Uraeus the long dagger I had borrowed for him from Tybi, telling him where I had gotten it and that it must be returned. It was a fine dagger, double-edged and very sharp. He refused it, saying he did not need it, and gave it to Myt-ser'eu. She thanked him but returned it to Tybi, saying that she would surely lose it.
So it was, with an omen that could scarcely be worse, that we set out. We went to the market to ask the way to the city of the dead. The market was practically empty, though Myt-ser'eu says it was crowded yesterday after the procession.
She looked at jewelry and daggers among the many booths that sold such things; I bought her a small one in what seems to be the style of Kemet—a dagger like a needle, with an eye in its grip.*
She asked whether we were to go to the city of the dead by day. I had not considered this, but I reclaimed this scroll from Uraeus and read aloud to her all the healer had said and done, and she said we were surely to go by night, since he had asked whether I would be afraid to. Little children, she says, visit the dead by day; but by night all the cities of the dead can be evil places.
“Is it then,” I asked, “that the Eater of Blood comes forth from the tomb?” For it seemed to me that I had heard of such a one.
She laughed and said only infants believe such things, but she was frightened, I know. “If I must face the Eater of Blood for you, I want to do it on a full stomach,” she told me. “Have you enough left to buy us a good meal?”
I got out my coins, and we decided there was enough to buy simple meals for the three of us; but by the time we had found an uncrowded cookshop that suited Myt-ser'eu, Uraeus was gone. This saved some money, so we got better meals than we had planned, and beer with them. The fried fish and fresh, hot barley cakes were excellent. It was only when we had almost finished that I realized I would not be able to pay for a room that night. I told Myt-ser'eu we would have to return to the ship and sleep there again.
“No, we won't,” she told me. “Muslak has a lot of money, and he'll be happy to give you enough for a fine room and more. If you intend to sacrifice today, you'll have to ask him for money anyway, won't you? Enough for a nice black lamb, and they won't be cheap here.”
I confessed I had not thought of that.
“Well, you'd better. The way to ask for money is to ask for a lot, take as much as you can get, and come back soon. That's worth knowing, darling, so you'd better write it in your scroll.”
“I will,” I said. “I'll need to know about it as long as you're with me.”
That made her angry. She shouted at me and wept. I tried to comfort her, and when she would not be comforted told her to go back to the ship, saying that I knew now where the city of the dead lay and would go there alone tonight.
“I won't! You're a beast, and you'd think I got mad so I wouldn't have to come with you.”
I left the cookshop then, telling her I would punish her if she did not remain there. I had walked far from the market before I realized she was following me. I chased and caught her, and we kissed.
“Aren't I fast runner, Latro?”
“Very fast,” I said. “It's those long legs. But you run too fast at first, and so lose a long race.”
“Did you think I didn't want to be caught?” She kissed me again and told me I was too big to run as fast as she did. There may be some truth in that, but I know I could outdistance her in a cross-country race; she was breathing hard by the time I caught her.
The city of the dead is on desert land, not as level as it might be, with barren hills beyond it. The sun stood low before us by the time we reached the gates, a sullen crimson. There are streets in the city of the dead, just as in a city of the living. The houses lining these streets are tombs, much smaller than real houses. Most are square; some are of mud brick, some stone. The doors of a few stone tombs are broken.
We walked the streets of the silent city until we had left the last of the newest tombs behind, and there was only red land, and the hills, before us. I told Myt-ser'eu I wished to continue, climb a high hill, and view all Asyut from there. Her feet hurt, but she promised to wait for me.
I did as I had planned. Twilight came before I reached the first sizable hill; even so, the climb was not difficult. I climbed it, and viewed the city from the summit, watching its lights kindle and its shutters close, and seeing the broad and shining serpent of river beyond it, the Great River that everyone says is the biggest in the world. I saw Myt-ser'eu, too, looking small and lonely where she sat on the ground with her back against the wall of the last new tomb.
When I started down, I lost sight of her. I do not believe I saw her again after that; and when at last I reached the city of the dead once more, she was gone. I called her name more than once, and when there was no reply went into it trotting, though I too was tired by then. In the third street (I think it was) I saw a black jackal standing fearlessly in the middle of the street. When it saw that I had seen it, it put down its nose, sniffed something in the street, and fled, vanishing between two tombs. I knelt to examine the place where it had sniffed, thinking that Myt-ser'eu might have dropped some trinket and that it was her scent on whatever she had let fall that had attracted the jackal.
Dark as it was, I could see nothing; but my fingers found a sticky dust and knew it for fresh blood before I ever raised it to my nostrils. I kept quiet then, and listened. For the time of a hundred breaths, I heard only the soft sigh of the night wind. At last there were sounds to my right. Hinges creaked, the voices of men muttered, and something broke and fell.
Soon I found torn cloth.
They had not tied or gagged her, but a big man with a bandage around his chest stood over her with a soldier's bent club. Two other men had broken into a tomb with an iron-shod crow—lantern light shone through its empty doorway.
