House of Two Pharaohs, page 11
Then Piay took off after his men and their quarry.
• • •
A
t first it was a bloody tint colouring the distant sky, but then a wave of sand rolled across the desert like a bolt of red silk being viciously unfurled. Piay, Taita and the Blue Crocodile Guard had chased the raiders through the heat of the day, and the sun had been their enemy, the desert the anvil upon which they had taken their punishment, but now, as the storm crashed over them, swallowing the sky, ripping the sand from under their feet, it was as if Seth was finally bringing the world to an end. Even with the scarf across his mouth, Piay choked on the gritty dust, and his ears rang with the howling of the wind, as though the sandstorm carried an army of lost souls.
Around him, the Blue Crocodile Guard pushed relentlessly forward. Where Taita had gone in the swirling chaos, Piay had no idea.
Piay staggered on, bent almost double, peering through grit-encrusted eyelashes, trying to catch a glimpse of the raiders ahead of them.
Just when he had resigned himself to the certainty that the Shuyet’s men would escape them, the tail of the sandstorm blasted by and the air cleared. The Blue Crocodiles stumbled out into the late afternoon heat, and Piay ripped off his scarf to suck in a mouthful of clean air.
‘Do not slow your step!’ he bellowed, urging his soldiers to resume their pursuit. Ahead, he could make out the raiders through the shimmering heat. They had pulled away from the Blue Crocodiles in the storm, and Piay felt again the fear that all his planning had been for naught. The raiders were more fleet of foot than his own men, burdened as they were by their heavy shields.
Piay had not anticipated that the attackers would flee. His expectation had been that the guard would defeat the raiders in battle, and that either their mysterious leader would be discovered amongst them, or the survivors would be forced to lead Piay and his men to the Shuyet’s lair.
Piay gritted his teeth – they could not afford to lose their only connection to the Shuyet.
Weighing his choices as he ran, Piay shouted a command to his soldiers to toss their shields aside. It would weaken the Blue Crocodiles in any confrontation, but he could not see another choice.
Despite the many years he had spent under the great mage’s tutelage, Piay was startled when Taita suddenly reappeared amongst his men and then raced ahead on legs that seemed to belong to a much younger man.
Piay grinned. He knew that he should not be surprised. He had been at Taita’s side when he had led the Egyptian army into the battle under the walls of Thebes, and had watched as he had thundered into the fray on his foaming horse, at the head of Pharaoh’s bloodied and half-beaten force. Taita had been a storm of bronze, hacking his way into the Hyksos lines. Only the gods could have gifted him with such superhuman prowess.
Piay pressed on with fresh vigour, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt the weight of Myssa’s death being lifted from his shoulders, the shroud of grief being pulled back from his mind. Not since he had lost his beloved had he felt so invigorated, so purposeful. Piay felt he could run like this forever, with the hot desert air lashing his face, and leaned in to the task of catching the fleet-footed Taita. ‘They will not escape us now,’ he said confidently as he reached his master’s side. ‘They will flag long before we do.’
Taita glanced at Piay as they ran, a twinkle of amusement in his eye. Piay could tell his teacher approved of his effort, and the change in his spirit.
Both men fell silent, sharing a welcome unity of purpose as they tore on after the fleeing raiders, past the deep gullies of long-dried watercourses and columns of jagged rock punching up out of the stony ground, the Blue Crocodile Guard hurling themselves along behind.
Then, through the wavering air ahead, Piay began to glimpse shapes that seemed at odds with the desert landscape. At first he was puzzled, but as they ran on, he realised that they had stumbled across the remains of a ruined city – crumbling walls enclosing the shattered remains of temples and palaces and grain stores.
‘What is this place?’
‘One of the many settlements in the Lower Kingdom that were abandoned after the invasion of the Hyksos,’ Taita replied.
‘What was it called?’
‘I will not utter it,’ Taita exclaimed. ‘A dead city is lifeless for a reason, and it is best not to provoke the gods by naming aloud a place that they have caused to be abandoned.’
‘The perfect hideaway for a man pretending to be the god of dead,’ Piay mused. ‘Close to the trade routes out of the Sinai, and between the Nile and the Great Green. A bolthole from which to launch attacks on unsuspecting caravans as they pass by.’
As the raiders disappeared through a shattered gate in the ragged walls, Piay raised a hand to slow his party.
‘We must assume that we have reached the jackal’s den,’ he announced to the Blue Crocodiles. ‘Be on your guard. Our enemies will have the advantage. We must proceed with caution.’
Taita surveyed the clay-brick walls of the cracked and collapsing buildings. His face was grim. Piay’s master knew the whole land of Egypt intimately from a lifetime of travels and adventures, and had no doubt seen the ruined city when it was filled with the throb of life. Piay thought he knew what Taita was thinking: that the towering monuments of men were, in truth, as flimsy as a solitary bloom in the face of the spring floods. All things died; all things were washed away. Was Taita afraid that this might be the ultimate fate of the land he loved so much?
‘Would you prefer to remain here, while we flush out the raiders?’
‘No.’ Taita’s reply was firm. ‘I will go with you.’
Piay nodded, then indicated for the Blue Crocodile Guard to follow him, swords at the ready. As they approached the gate, the wind suddenly dropped and he became aware of a deep and ominous silence that seemed to emanate from the sun-bleached stones. It was clear that something terrible had happened here.
At the gate, a scribe had carved a message on a fallen slab of masonry, the writing worn away by years of sand and wind. Taita stopped to examine it.
‘What does it say?’ Piay asked.
‘It’s a warning,’ Taita replied. ‘It tells the reader that the gods have cursed this place. That all future generations should pass by . . .’
‘And you think the Shuyet did not order some scribe to carve this warning into the stone?’ Piay said quickly, trying to forestall the uncertainty that he saw creeping across the faces of the Blue Crocodile Guard. ‘The longer we linger here, the more likely we are to lose the raiders, and our best chance of capturing the Shuyet.’
But the Blue Crocodiles hesitated, some glancing at Taita, until Piay took the lead and stepped through the gate himself. ‘This is where we will find the man who claims that Anubis is reborn within him. I feel it,’ he said confidently. ‘Come – we are wasting time.’
Holding his head high, Piay marched into the ruins of the city, and after a nod from Taita, the Blue Crocodiles followed dutifully behind.
The shuffle of sandalled feet filled the empty streets, as the resurgent wind wound through the hollow doorways and around the crumbling walls. Black fat-tailed scorpions scurried out from under fallen masonry, but the party disturbing them was silent – no one spoke.
Piay’s gaze moved from shadow to shadow as they penetrated deeper into the ruined city. He suspected that tracking the raiders successfully would depend on the smallest of details. The Shuyet’s men would know that they would have the upper hand – if Piay and the Blue Crocodile Guard summoned the courage to pass the warning stone and enter the city – but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t be surprised.
The soldiers clustered together as Piay led the way through the narrow streets, their swords levelled as they passed each doorway.
The route they followed brought them to a central square paved with limestone, which to Piay seemed to only magnify the oppressive heat of the day. In the middle, a fallen obelisk lay on its side, its triangular peak long gone. Cracks and crevices spiderwebbed across the square, lifting the paving in uneven waves of stone.
‘An earthquake struck this place,’ Taita said in a low voice.
‘The curse of the gods.’ Piay exhaled with relief. ‘That must be what the scribe meant.’
Taita said nothing.
As they crossed the square, Piay found himself looking at the ruin of a once grand palace, with a barracks beside it and a temple, its portico collapsed around the broken spines of the columns that had held it aloft.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Piay caught the flash of a white breechclout, and his breath quickened as he made out one of the raiders, darting from the cover of the fallen obelisk and scrambling away through the palace doorway.
Piay gripped the hilt of his sword and pointed after the fleeing raider. ‘They’re in the palace.’
‘Or hiding in the vaults below,’ the captain of the Crocodiles replied.
Piay’s eyes hardened with resolve. ‘I want to look into the face of the Shuyet and see what manner of man he is.’
Taita nodded his agreement, but as a warm gust of wind blew across the square, he frowned. Piay had seen that troubled look many times before. ‘What is it?’
‘Something is amiss,’ Taita replied, his eyes scanning the shattered windows and doorways.
Piay didn’t know what his master had sensed or seen, but before he could open his mouth to issue a command, an arrow plunged out of the sky and punched through the bronze cuirass of one of the Blue Crocodile Guards. The soldier staggered back, his eyes wide with shock as he clutched at the shaft buried deep in his chest. As he collapsed and the light drained from his eyes, shouts of alarm rang out on every side.
‘Take cover!’ Piay yelled, pulling Taita down behind the fallen obelisk.
As the arrows ripped through armour and into eye sockets and throats and chests, Piay counted six fallen Blue Crocodiles, sprawled in dark pools of their own blood. If only they’d had their shields with them, his men would have been able to protect themselves, he thought. He swallowed back the bile rising in his throat – his recklessness had cost his men their lives.
As the first volley passed, Piay turned his gaze upward. He could make out the archers who assailed them now, perched around the square, nocking new shafts for a fresh volley.
Turning to his remaining soldiers, Piay bellowed: ‘Run! Take cover while you can!’
The Blue Crocodile Guards scattered as they dashed for shelter, but as Piay ushered Taita into an old stable block, he saw two more of his men cut down as they ran.
Piay ground his teeth. Eight of his fifty men had fallen under the barrage, and he was compelled to admit that he had never seen the Blue Crocodiles so exposed. He had led his men to a slaughter.
‘The best thing you can do for those men who have fallen is to escape with your own life,’ Taita said. ‘To fight another day, so their sacrifice may have meaning.’
Inside the ruined stables it was as hot as a smithy, and the floor was coated with thick dust. Piay pressed his back against the wall beside the door and sucked in a deep lungful of air. ‘I will not make the mistake of underestimating the Shuyet again,’ he swore in a low voice. ‘He took the trap I set for him and used it to create a better one for me.’
‘Whether god or man, our adversary is a worthy one.’ Taita gazed out into the corpse-strewn square. His face was as graven as the obelisk, his eyes narrowed, his jaw set. ‘He knew the treasure caravan was a ploy. Now he has drawn us here, to end our pursuit of him.’
‘I should have seen the signs when the raiders fled. The Shuyet knew that the Blue Crocodiles would have to throw aside their shields if they hoped to keep pace with his men.’
Taita’s brow furrowed. ‘Do not judge yourself too harshly. As nomarch, once your plan was put in motion, you had little choice but to see it through. Your soldiers would have questioned you otherwise.’
‘The Shuyet had his archers in place, ready to cut us down. I should have foreseen it.’
‘At least now we know what the Shuyet is after.’
Piay looked across at Taita in bafflement. ‘And what is that?’
‘It is quite apparent, Piay. He is after us.’
‘Us?’ Piay shook his head incredulously.
‘Why else would he go to the trouble of luring us here, then order his man to target only the Blue Crocodiles? They failed to loose even a single arrow in our direction. Why? It is us that he wants, and he wants us alive.’
‘If we are his target, then we must keep moving,’ Piay said, grimly. ‘His archers have managed to separate us from the Blues. If you are right, then the foot soldiers the Shuyet has no doubt hidden in every nook and cranny of this dead city are on their way here to find us.’
Piay peered out through the door, watching as the archers climbed down from their eyries to take up new positions on the ground around the square. The raiders had emerged, too, brandishing their swords as they stepped over the bodies of the fallen Blue Crocodiles.
If there were any surviving members of the elite soldier corps, there was no sign of them. Piay offered a silent prayer to Khonsu that the courageous souls who remained alive had escaped to safety.
Taita crossed the breadth of the stable to a doorway at the rear, which led to a small annexe lined with stone troughs choked with debris. Another doorway opened out onto the narrow street beyond.
‘Time to make our escape,’ Taita murmured.
Piay nodded his agreement.
As they edged along the rutted lane, a call and response which they couldn’t quite make out echoed from the square.
As he listened, Piay’s eyes widened. ‘You are right, Taita. They are looking for us. For you.’
• • •
S
maller mud-brick structures, some reduced to little more than crumbling foundations, lined the streets. Piay guessed that they must once have been houses. They were interrupted occasionally by heaps of broken masonry – the remains of the city’s grander buildings.
Taita led them into one of the houses still solid enough to afford them cover. With Piay as his rearguard, he eased from room to room, and then out past the ancient baked remnants of a midden.
As they moved into the next building, Piay realised that Taita was guiding them back towards the city’s walls, but on a route that was deliberately circuitous. He grinned – their trail would be almost impossible for anyone to follow.
Taita ducked across an alleyway and into another dwelling. When Piay stepped over the threshold after him, he saw that it was just a single room, but large enough to hold a raised brick platform containing three large, stone-lined vats.
Suddenly Taita turned back towards him and grabbed his tunic. ‘Shhhh . . .’ he whispered, cupping his ear.
Piay held his breath and listened.
Sure enough, footsteps soon echoed from the street on the other side of their hiding place. Crossing the space cautiously, Piay raised his head and peered out through an aperture in the wall. Four raiders were going from house to house.
When Piay looked back he saw that Taita was moving back the way they had come, towards the alley behind the house.
But as the mage moved to duck through the opening, Piay grabbed his shoulder to stop him. He had heard more footsteps coming their way, but this time from the alleyway. In seconds, the house would be surrounded by the Shuyet’s raiders.
‘Pray to the gods that they pass us by,’ Piay hissed.
‘Or prepare to be captured.’ Taita’s face was firm.
‘I will never let them take you. Not while I still have breath.’
‘We may have no alternative.’
His master was not afraid of battle, Piay knew. Across the many years of his long life, he had fought enemies far more fearsome than the men who hunted them now. But he had to concede that Taita was right. There was little chance of fighting their way out. And as soon as they were discovered, the raiders would alert the rest of the Shuyet’s men. Piay’s stomach knotted at the thought of his master being led away in chains.
‘They’re unlikely to take me alive,’ Piay reasoned as he unsheathed his blade. ‘Let me at least take a few of them with me to the afterlife.’
‘What makes you think the Nomarch of Memphis has no value for them?’ Taita asked.
Piay pressed himself to the wall beside the doorway they had used to enter; Taita crossed to the far side of the room and settled into a crouch in a shadowy corner.
His muscles tensed, Piay waited, listening to the footsteps slowly close in from both sides of what he saw now had once been a dye house. His heart pounded fiercely in his chest, and he felt his senses sharpen with the anticipation of hand-to-hand combat. It had been too long since Piay had held a sword in his hand, too long since he had used the skill that had won him renown across Egypt as a young man, before he had known Myssa.
The thought of his beloved left his mind as quickly as it had entered as a raider’s frame darkened the doorway. The man stepped inside, idling unawares beside Piay as he scanned the room.
As he spotted Taita, the raider’s eyes grew wide and his lips opened, but no sound came out. Instead, Piay’s sword blade filled the cavern of his mouth as it sliced up through his jaw and jammed into his skull. Piay had thrust his weapon with all his strength into the man’s throat, killing him instantly.
Piay caught the raider’s body as it slumped to the ground, and Taita hurried over to help him drag the corpse onto the brick platform and bundle it into one of the vats. Then they waited in silence as the other three raiders continued to move down the alleyway, focused on their search and not yet concerned by the absence of their companion.
‘We have to get out of here before they discover that he is not coming to join them,’ Piay said, tilting his head towards the dead raider’s resting place.
Taita followed Piay as he climbed through the hole in the wall and crossed the street behind the search party.
It was with great relief that, a few minutes later, they turned a corner and found the city wall towering before them. It had been badly damaged by earthquake and the years that had passed since its foundations had been shaken had only served to break it down further – Piay and Taita could see the arid wilderness of the desert wastes beyond, through the fissures that had been rent in the once imposing ramparts. Piay stood guard while Taita clambered through a gap just wide enough for a man’s body, then slipped through himself. Together, they hurried out into the desert.
