The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate, page 22
The tomb robbers were expertly going through the chambers. Two held a cloak by its corners while the others tossed into it the objects combining the most value with the least bulk.
"Hold the mummy crosswise on the mummy case," said Kothar, "whilst I unwrap the head."
Round and round went Kothar's hands, unwinding the crumbling yellowed cerements. The little oil lamp, flickering from the floor, cast weird shadows against the walls. These shadows reminded Myron unpleasantly of the beast-headed gods of ancient Khem. He had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. When he should have been observing every detail of the surroundings for future reference, he found that his mind could focus on nothing save an intense desire to be gone.
"Behold King Siptah!" said Kothar, unwrapping the last layer of linen strips. Beneath them transpired the sunken brown face of Siptah, the lips drawn slightly back to expose the teeth in a faint, sardonic grin. On the king's shaven head rested a close-fitting golden headdress, with a cobra rearing its head in front and a vulture's wings coming down over the ears at the sides.
Kothar gingerly pulled off the headgear, whose thin gold gave out faint creaking and rattling sounds. He took out his knife, looked about uneasily, uttered a cantrip, and began to cut.
"This stuff cuts like wood," he muttered.
The robbers completed their work in the burial chamber and left. From the pillared chamber came faintly the clank of metallic objects tossed into the grave robbers' cloak. The three in the burial chamber were alone, save for the mummy.
"There you are," said Kothar at last. He handed the hard, shriveled, dark-brown ear to Bessas, who turned it over and dropped it into his scrip.
"What do you now?" rumbled the giant.
"I am cutting off his other ear," said Kothar. "If one ear will make a mighty magic for Ostanas, I see not why the other should not do the like for me."
"Well, hurry!" said Bessas. "I am fain to leave this accursed place."
The robbers had moved away from the treasure chambers and towards the entrance to the tomb. The sounds of their movements came more faintly to the travelers' ears.
A shout echoed down the corridor. Then came a chorus of outcries, a trampling of feet, and a clash of steel. Torchlight flickered far up the passageway.
Kothar leaped up from his task. He dashed out the door and up the corridor. Bessas and Myron, drawing their swords, started after but met him coming back, his visage working and his eyes large and luminous in the gloom.
"It is Imisib's gang!" he hissed. "They have trapped us! Mertseger has had her revenge!"
"How many?" said Bessas.
"I know not; perhaps a score.'"
"We'll pile furniture across the corridor—"
"Nay! That were but to defer our doom. Come back to the burial chamber with me. Do as I say!"
The Syrian's voice rang with an authority that Myron had never heard in it before. Wondering what scheme Kothar had in mind, Myron followed the others back to the burial chamber, on whose floor the little lamp still burnt.
"Help me to drop the mummy case back into the sarcophagus," said Kothar. "That is right. Now place King Siptah on the floor behind it, so."
Kothar took the golden headdress and put it on his own head. Sounds of combat rolled closer; a man uttered a long, high scream.
Kothar picked up a bunch of mummy wrappings from the floor and wrapped them about his own head, beginning just below the eyes. When his face was unrecognizable, he secured the strip in place. He wrapped his cloak about his body below the armpits and lowered himself into the mummy case.
"Get down behind the sarcophagus!" he whispered. "If I say 'run,' that means that the others will have fled; run after them and mingle with the fugitives outside. If I say 'fight,' sell your lives as dearly as you can. Now crouch down out of sight and hold your tongues."
Sounds of combat from the corridor died away. Soon there were no more noises of scuffling, no more yells of stricken men. Footsteps approached; heavy breathing sounded from the entrance to the burial chamber. Myron, not daring to look up, could imagine a group of ragged tomb robbers, panting and sweating and holding bloody knives, clustered in the entrance, while those behind peered over the shoulders of those in front.
From the sarcophagus came a sound of motion. Kothar sat slowly up and pointed a skinny hand towards the entrance to the chamber. His voice, unnaturally deep and hollow, boomed out in the syllables of the Egyptian tongue:
"Who dares to disturb the rest of King Siptah?"
For the length of three heartbeats there was utter silence. Then piercing shrieks broke from the thieves. With a wild scramble, they bolted back up the corridor.
"Run!" said Kothar, leaping out of the sarcophagus.
Myron ran. On the floor of the corridor lay a couple of knives dropped by the thieves in their flight. Beyond them lay the bodies of two of Tjay's men.
One of the cloaks in which they had been gathering loot lay near them, its precious load scattered across the floor and gleaming faintly in the light reflected from the burial chamber. Myron felt precious relics of antiquity crunch beneath his boots. He raced through the pillared hall, on whose floor an abandoned torch still glowed. He ran up the long passage and bounded up the steps.
The three tumbled out of the entrance into the moonlight that bathed the ravine, and into the milling, gibbering crowd of tomb robbers. One of these addressed a question in Egyptian to Myron, then looked past the Milesian with wide-eyed astonishment. The man pointed and cried out-Myron, turning, saw what was amiss. Kothar still wore the golden headdress of King Siptah. In an instant he, Kothar, and Bessas formed a knot at the entrance to the tomb, swords out, while the thieves ringed them with drawn knives.
"We shall attack," growled Bessas. "I can cut our way through these curs, if you two will guard my back. Follow me I Verethraghna aid us!"
Bessas leaped with the speed of a charging leopard, his sword a silvery blur in the moonlight. One thief went down, slashed to death. The others tried to close around the Bactrian but were driven back by the thrusts and slashes of Myron and Kothar. Myron caught one stab in the folds of the cloak wrapped around his left arm. As his leathern corselet stopped another, he felt his sword cut meat.
Cursing his age, Myron found he was panting and falling behind the other two. His heart pounding painfully, he whirled and slashed in a frenzy of effort.
Then came a distraction. A band of white-clad men came running up the ravine, pointing and shouting. In a twinkling the fight at the head of the ravine broke up. The steep stony landscape was dotted with fleeing figures, pursued by shaven-headed, linen-clad men with swords.
"This way!" cried Bessas, leading his companions with long bounds up the mountain trail by which they had come.
The Bactrian set a fearful pace. Myron stumbled gasping after his leader, never quite losing sight of him but never catching up. Behind, the sounds of flight and pursuit died away. When silence and solitude once more reigned in the Valley of Kings, Bessas halted, dragging his forearm across his forehead. Myron gasped:
"Who—who were those men—who arrived—at the end?"
"A patrol of priests, trying to put down grave robbery," said Kothar.
Myron said: "O Bessas, however did you remember the way? I was hopelessly lost before I had followed this trail for a bowshot."
Bessas' white teeth gleamed in the moonlight. "My mind may not be up to such flights of the spirit as Kothar's nor yet such feats of intellect as yours, but I have enough wit to pay heed to where I put my feet! Kothar, in the name of the Sleepless One, take off that crown ere we meet another body!"
Kothar doffed the object and hid it under his cloak. "You are right. If I walked into the temple of Amon wearing this, it might give rise to questions. It might even be deemed in bad taste!"
-
XI – The Isle of the Elephant
Southward, league upon league, stretched the dusty road to Kush. It followed the broad blue rippling ribbon of the Nile, with its verdant margins of palm and papyrus, its strips and plots of farmland, and beyond these the tawny bluffs that marked the metes of the desert.
South of Opet, the valley opened out for a space. The air became hotter. At night, unknown constellations wheeled across the southern sky, and from the river came the grunting of the hippopotamus and the bellowing of the bull crocodile. The people became darker of hue and blunter of feature.
The road worsened. Myron and his companions showed a nervous awareness of the fact that the hardest part of their journey would soon be upon them. Back in Asia, time, money, and possibilities had seemed unlimited.
Now the journey had taken substantial bites out of time and resources.
The thought came into conversation again and again: Suppose the dragon proved uncatchable? Or suppose it lived somewhere other than at the headwaters of the Nile? Or suppose it did not exist?
"In that case," said Bessas firmly, "we have come on a sleeveless errand. We shall find out in due time, and meanwhile the next man who brings up the subject shall be ducked in the Nile!"
"B-b-but Chief!" sputtered Shimri. "If there be no—if there be no sirrush, what shall we do? Trick out a crocodile with false ears? Or——"
"Throw him in!" said Bessas. And it was done.
While the beasts of burden renewed their strength by eating, Bessas spent hours in practicing sword strokes and archery and in bullying the others into doing likewise.
Myron worked on his journal. He had bought a roll of papyrus, but he found that he soon had covered all of one side of the roll with writing and had to start on the back.
When not eating, Shimri asked foolish questions, told pointless jokes, and uttered loud meaningless laughs. On the other hand, being dexterous, he mended not only harness but also personal gear and garments.
Skhâ cheerfully fetched and carried. The rigors of the journey had banished some of the fat from his tubby form. He told more tales of the amatory exploits of his great-uncle Mizai, who, if the Karian was to be believed, must have left descendants in half a hundred countries.
Kothar, during this time, withdrew into lengthy silences. Sometimes his companions overheard him at night, praying to unknown gods or conversing with unseen presences. He questioned his fellow travelers about their dreams, which were many and vivid.
Bessas, for instance, dreamt that he was impaled on a stake, while a dragon tore at him, all the while uttering endearments in his mother's voice. But whatever the dream, Kothar's interpretation was the same.
"The gods are trying to warn us," he would say. "Supernatural beings from the world of spirits menace us. You must put your trust in me."
Dust devils appeared over sandy stretches beside the endless river, as if pursuing the travelers. After Kothar wrought a mighty incantation against them, they went away for a while.
The local Egyptian dialects began to give Kothar trouble. When Bessas asked him if he had ever been this far south before, he gave evasive replies until Bessas caught him by the front of his robe and roared:
"May the Corpse Fiend crunch you up! I want the truth, by Mithra!"
"I have in sooth been here," murmured the Syrian, "but in previous lives, not in this one."
This led to an argument on reincarnation. Bessas had heard much of it in India; and Myron said: "I am told that a philosopher of Samos, one Pythagoras, held such a doctrine."
"It's an idea," said Bessas, "but I see not what good it does you to have lived before if you cannot remember your previous lives. You would only make all the same stupid mistakes over again."
"Perchance you mortals cannot remember your previous lives," said Kothar.
"Meaning that you can, eh?"
The guide smiled enigmatically.
-
On the sixteenth of Simanu, the bluffs closed in until there were only narrow strips of verdure along the river. The Nile widened. Islands, large and small, rose from its placid surface and split it into many channels.
The town of Swenet appeared, hemmed in between the river and the bare buff-colored cliffs. In the market place they saw burly, shaven, linen-clad Egyptians; black-brown, leather-capped Nubians; mop-haired, surly black Bugaitae and Ophirites from the Red Sea; slender and voluble Dankalas from the Cataracts; and Kushites who had brought hides, tusks, and plumes up from the South to trade.
The Kushites were slight, black-skinned men in kilts of cloth or leather. Some had a strip of the skin of a yellow wildcat or other beast wound turbanwise around a mass of curly black hair. Every one had a set of tribal scars cut in his cheeks.
Kothar learnt in the market place that the satrap held court in his palace on the island of Yeb, a bowshot from the waterfront. Thither they took their way. At the ferry landing, Myron grasped Bessas' arm, saying:
"Well, grind me to sausage and feed me to Kerberos; look at those! We haven't seen them since we left Memphis."
He referred to a number of dromedaries, which lay in the sun and rhythmically moved their jaws. Among them squatted or lay a dozen skirted Arabs. These were easily distinguished from the Egyptians and Nubians by their slender build, sharp birdlike features, hawk noses, and pointed beards. They stank of rancid fat, which glistened on their long black hair. Some conversed in low tones; some stared blankly; some of them knitted caps or socks; some slept in patches of shade.
As Kothar approached the group, the Arabs raised their heads with a motion that made Myron think of snakes. Their expressions were sullen and wary; their dark eyes glittered. Hands strayed towards the hilts of daggers. But when the Syrian spoke to them in their own tongue, teeth flashed in sudden smiles.
"They say," said Kothar, "that they think the satrap has lured their shaykh to Yeb and treacherously seized him there. Short of causing the waters to part, as a Judean magician is once said to have done, they cannot think how to rescue him. They beg that the great rich lord"—he nodded at Bessas—"put in a word for their chief when he gets to the island."
"Who is this chief?" asked Bessas.
"Zayd ibn-Harith, shaykh of the Banu Khalaf."
"Tell them we'll do what we can. This boat looks fairly sound; make me a bargain with the boatman, Kothar. Skhâ. and Shimri, stay here,"
While they waited for Kothar to complete his haggle with the boatman, they were startled by unearthly shrieks from a nearby house. When they asked about this, they were told the noise was made by black boys captured by slave raiders, who were being castrated before being sent north to serve as eunuchs in the harems of Persian lords.
Myron winced as this explanation unfolded. "I always thought a eunuch a figure of fun, but I suppose that to the victim it is quite as dreadful a tragedy as the tale of Xerxes' brother Masistes."
"My dear old friend," said Bessas, "you are really too kindhearted for this rough, rude world, one of whose laws is that the strong shall rule and exploit the weak. Since we cannot change the world, let us make sure that we be counted amongst the strong."
-
The satrap's palace and other houses and temples lay on the isle, half hidden by a jungly growth of palm trees. Before the palace stood a pair of soldiers from Yeb's Judaean garrison: burly, black-bearded men in corselets of lizard mail.
Inside the palace was noise and turmoil. A pair of Judaean guards held by the arms a tall, thin old man with a long gray beard, wearing an Arabian robe and head shawl and silver hoops in his ears. Two more held a slender veiled woman. Both captives struggled and shouted. Several others in the room, including a trio of Nubians and the heavily rouged little man on the satrapal throne, were also shouting.
The small man at last leaped up, shaking his fists above his head, and screamed, "Quiet!" in Persian. Another man, an Egyptian from his appearance, yelled, "Silence!" in Egyptian and Aramaic.
The noise continued, however, until an accident interrupted it. The small painted man, in his agitation, stood on the seat of his throne. While hopping and shouting from this point of vantage, he caught his foot in his cloth-of-gold embroidered robe and fell to the dais on which the throne stood.
An awful silence descended upon the chamber. Soldiers and litigants looked uneasily at one another, as if momentarily fearing a massacre of all so unfortunate as to have witnessed the downfall of the satrap's dignity. The Egyptian leaped to help the small man up and dust him off. The latter, cherry-red of face, glared for half an ush about the room. At last, in a strangled voice, he said:
"Can anybody here speak both Arabic and Persian?" The Egyptian repeated the question in Aramaic.
"I can," said Kothar.
"Then," said the Egyptian, "in the name of the First Ennead, do! Be our interpreter. Our regular interpreter has been devoured by the crocodiles; His Lordship speaks nought but Persian; and our prisoners know neither Aramaic nor Egyptian to speak of."
