House of Two Pharaohs, page 29
Taking a copper scalpel from his medicine chest, Taita blessed the blade quickly in the flame of his lamp, then he began to cut the tumour away from the wall of Lostris’ womb.
• • •
T
he wetlands looked as though they were on fire, the stagnant pools reflecting the light of the rising sun. Soon, Piay thought with grim anticipation, they would be.
The Blue Crocodiles were gathered up on the final lip of land, in front of the wide lake that lay before the Shuyet’s stronghold. After the surprise attack, the skiffs had voyaged back and forth to the galleys, to ferry the rest of the two companies of Blues to this place.
Piay lamented the men he had lost in the attack, and in the chaos that had followed, but the time had come to make the Shuyet pay. As he scanned the hundreds who remained, he prayed silently to Khonsu that Taita was still alive.
Turning, Piay looked across the lake to the Shuyet’s fortress, the golden bricks gleaming red in the rising sun. He had to admit, it was impressive, towering over the large, flat island it occupied.
Hannu stepped to his side, his face grave as he, too, surveyed the magnitude of the task that awaited them.
‘That is the only way across,’ Piay said, pointing to the pale line of the pontoon causeway that ran across the water, barely wide enough for two men to pass.
‘So it looks,’ Hannu grumbled. ‘But in venturing across it, we will be providing the Shuyet’s archers with target practice. And even when we make it to the other side, the task of breaking into the fortress will be formidable.’
Piay nodded grimly. ‘But we cannot delay. Only a fraction of the force we met south of Avaris can be contained inside that fortress. We must find a way of luring them out before the rest of the Shuyet’s army arrives.’
From the walls came the blare of a ram’s horn. In response, Piay heard the tramp of feet. The Shuyet’s units were gathering.
‘We don’t have much time.’
‘Aye, or options,’ Hannu retorted. ‘That is the only way open to us.’
‘In that case, we might as well get moving.’ Piay raised his sword in the air, muttered a quiet prayer to Khonsu, and stepped out towards the causeway.
‘Move out!’ Hannu roared behind him.
As the regiment began to move, Piay’s skin prickled in the rising heat. Soon the marsh would be like a furnace. The air over the bogs was already wavering like the steam above a pot of stew; great clouds of sandflies swirled in the turbulent air.
As he stepped onto the causeway, Piay began to second-guess himself. The Blue Crocodiles were ready to fight, but was he not leading them into another slaughter – just as he had in the dead city?
‘That Shuyet bastard has planned this well,’ Hannu grunted, sensing Piay’s unease.
Piay looked back at the soldiers trickling onto the long pontoon bridge, listening to the thunder of their sandalled feet. Only a few men now remained on land – it was too late to turn back. He glanced up at the fortress walls. So far, there had been no movement. The gate was still shut, and the force the Shuyet had massed behind it remained there. The river crocodiles on the far bank coughed and hissed at one another as the sun began to warm them, eyeing Piay’s men curiously, but otherwise an oppressive stillness lay over the marshlands, as if the gods sensed the importance of what was to come.
A small bird swooped down, landing on the back of one of the beasts and pecking hungrily at the insects alighting on its leathery skin. As the crocodile opened its jaws irritably, the huge gate of the fortress also began to move. Piay could see lines of archers waiting behind it, ready to advance, their bows already nocked.
Hannu had also seen the archers. ‘Shields!’ he bellowed back at the men marching behind them, and, as one, the Blue Crocodiles raised their shields.
On the island ahead of them, the Shuyet’s archers trotted out and lined up, their feet planted firmly in the yielding black soil that formed the shore of the lake.
‘Shields ready!’ Hannu boomed again as the archers loosed their first barrage.
For a moment, the world seemed to still as Piay watched the arrows – hundreds of them – arcing high over the lake.
And then . . . chaos. Arrowheads pelted against the shields of the Blue Crocodiles, here and there punching through the hide and wood, puncturing forearms and smashing deep into flesh, shattering shoulder blades. A cacophony of cries and cursing erupted behind Piay as his men were hit with the first deadly cascade. Turning, he saw a man topple from the causeway, the shaft of an arrow lodged in his eye socket, the tip protruding from his neck. It would not be long, Piay knew, before the lake’s murky water would be filled with bodies.
‘Shields ready!’ Hannu shouted again.
Piay glanced up to see a second barrage already dropping from the sky. Some of his men were on their knees now, still holding their shields, but exposing those behind them to the deadly rain from the Shuyet’s archers.
The water around the causeway began to bubble as the fallen were assailed by the river crocodiles.
As a third barrage was loosed, Hannu grabbed Piay’s arm urgently. ‘We have to get across now, or we will all die here.’
Piay desperately scanned the island shore. Not far from the lines of archers, a row of skiffs were moored, their ropes pinned under chunks of rock. No doubt that was how the Shuyet brought supplies to his fortress. Closer to the end of the causeway that connected the fortress to the marshland that surrounded it, he saw the grey bulks of five hippos cooling themselves in the stagnant lake water. Piay smiled. ‘I have a plan.’
Beside him, Hannu grunted sceptically. He’d heard Piay utter the same words many times over the years, and only rarely had things worked out the way that his friend had intended.
‘Look,’ Piay said, pointing to the hippos.
‘What of them?’
‘We get them to move.’ Piay whirled. ‘A bow!’
As Piay grabbed a bow for himself and nocked an arrow, Hannu’s eyes widened. ‘Ah . . . I have it. The beasts will clear our path for us.’
Time seemed to slow once more as Piay loosed his arrow in the direction of the hippos.
He watched in anticipation, his breath held tight in his chest, as the arrow fell from the sky and thumped into the flank of one of the basking beasts. Enraged, it let out a deafening roar and convulsed into sudden and violent movement. Lurching forward in a wave of cascading water, the mighty hippopotamus crashed up onto the island, distracting the Shuyet’s archers.
In the respite that followed, Piay issued his orders: ‘Aim at those hippos. And quickly, if you hope to set foot on dry land again.’
Within moments his men had nocked their own weapons and loosed a cluster of arrows towards the island.
‘Now,’ Piay said as he watched the hippos eagerly. ‘Let chaos reign.’
As the arrows pounded into the beasts, the water became a torrent of foaming spray as the animals were whipped into a frenzy.
‘Again!’ Piay cried.
The Blue Crocodiles sent another flight of arrows at the hippos. Furious, they roared and swung their mighty heads, and, spotting the Shuyet’s archers in front of them, they broke into a devastating, thundering rampage.
As the huge beasts stampeded towards them, their orderly lines collapsed – the Shuyet’s archers dropped their bows in panic and began to run.
The hippos mowed the men down, the air filling with fresh screams – this time from the island, rather than the causeway. Piay didn’t wait to watch the carnage unfold. Thrusting his sword high into the air, he bellowed: ‘Now! Blues! Together!’
With their weapons drawn, the Blue Crocodiles threw themselves along the causeway behind Piay and Hannu.
• • •
I
mages bubbled up. Taita saw Heru’s face as he forced his teeth apart with the peseshkef blade, as he plied him with the potion that had twisted his mind and turned his stomach. He saw Gyasi standing over him. He heard the voice that had come and gone in the depths of his derangement – Zahra, as he knew her now, slyly questioning him about Imhotep’s tomb and the spell she needed to open it.
Had he revealed the medu neter to her? Taita did not believe so, but the interrogation had taken its toll before his dream of Lostris had claimed him. Reaching up, he let his fingers run over the tear where the peseshkef had caught his lip, ragged and deep.
‘Are you ready to witness the show that has been prepared for you, my lord?’ Gyasi smiled as she stepped over the threshold and into the dank cell.
Where once her angular features, her high cheekbones, had made her attractive, now they struck him as vile, repulsive.
‘Prepared for me?’
‘Why, of course. You are the Shuyet’s esteemed guest.’
Hauling Taita to his feet, Gyasi took his arm and escorted him out into the torchlit passage that lay beyond his cell. They moved down the hallway until they reached a stairwell. When Taita hesitated, Gyasi shoved him forward.
They climbed the stone stairs, just as they had a few hours earlier, but this time they kept climbing, until at last the steps let out onto the roof of the citadel.
There, at the parapet, looking out over the walls of the fortress and the marsh below, stood the Shuyet, a powerful and imposing figure in black, with the Anubis mask covering her head.
At the sound of their footsteps, the Shuyet turned. ‘I am glad you could join me, Taita. Welcome. I come here when I wish to look out across this great land, and the delta that has nurtured and protected my people.’ She paused, and Taita sensed her smile behind the mask.
Squinting against the sun, Taita turned his attention to the vast, swampy landscape that stretched before them. Below, the long causeway that ran across the lake from the island upon which the Shuyet’s fortress stood was studded with arrows, strewn with the bodies of the Blue Crocodiles. Others floated, lifeless, in the lake.
But Taita could also see more of the Blue Crocodiles, their backs to the lapping water, engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with the Shuyet’s men.
Taita scanned the shore far below for Piay. Finally, he found him.
Piay’s leather armour gleamed in the bright morning sunlight, his sword blade flashing as he hacked and stabbed at the wall of bodies in front of him. In his younger days, Piay had been fond of boasting that there was no finer swordsmen in all Egypt, and to watch him now, it was hard to gainsay him.
Taita exhaled at the welcome sight. Even from his distant vantage, he was filled with hope as he watched the Nomarch of Memphis cutting down his adversaries.
‘He fights valiantly,’ the Shuyet admitted. ‘It is a shame that his men do not have the same stamina.’
Indeed, all around Piay, one by one, the Blue Crocodiles were being cut down as they were overwhelmed by the larger force arrayed against them. Hannu fought like a demon at Piay’s side, but as he watched, Taita saw another unit being drawn up inside the walls. How long could the two men stand against the Shuyet’s army?
‘I offer you a truth for a truth,’ Taita said.
‘That game did not go so well for you the last time,’ the Shuyet hissed through the mask.
‘And yet you still do not know the spell to open Imhotep’s tomb.’
‘It makes no difference. In an hour, Piay will be squatting next to you in your cell. And even if he is not, even if he escapes, even if he hides in the depths of the earth, in the tombs of the old people, there will I search for him and there I will find him.’
‘Take off the mask, Zahra.’
At the sound of her true name, the Shuyet gasped. ‘How do you know that name?’
‘Take it off and I will tell you.’
‘I do not answer to that name anymore. I have not answered to it for a long time.’
‘But nevertheless, it is the name your father gave you. In abandoning it, you wound his memory. Take it off, Zahra.’
Slowly, as if compelled by a power she could not resist, Zahra lifted the Anubis mask from her head, and her long, dark hair tumbled over her shoulders. As she pushed it back, the wound that she had suffered the night that her brother had thrown her against the flagstones caught the light – a shallow crater of scarred skin.
Taita smiled. ‘That’s better,’ he said.
• • •
Z
ahra looked at the man who stood in front of her. The dark patches where Djenn’s blood had soaked into his white robe; his lacerated lip; the stubble covering his skull: this was defeat if ever she had seen it.
‘Are you not tired, Taita? Of serving the sons of Mamose? Of remaking the world for them?’
‘There are many things you do not know about the sons of Mamose, as you call them,’ Taita replied. ‘And you forget that I am the Chosen One of Imhotep. Why would he choose me, when he could have chosen one of his own, a descendant of the old people? Why, Zahra?’
Zahra felt her anger flare at Taita’s words. ‘How do you know my name? I took off the mask, so tell me now. Who told you?’
‘It was my own beloved,’ Taita said simply.
Zahra looked at him in bewilderment, her rage building. ‘Your riddles make no sense.’
Taita smiled. ‘I have no desire to deceive you, Zahra. On the contrary, I hope to draw back the curtain that has shrouded your mind in darkness.’ He paused and stared at her intently. ‘You are not like the man who made you what you are now. You are not like your brother.’
‘You know nothing of my brother!’ She knew that she could not hold back her anger now – nothing would calm her, nothing would assuage the storm that was building inside of her.
‘And yet I know that he shed your blood in the temple of the Lord of the Red Land.’
Zahra felt her blood run cold. ‘You cannot know that,’ she hissed.
‘It is Seth who rules your mind now.’
‘No!’
‘What happened to your brother, Zahra?’
‘He was a fool. He twisted our father’s teaching, betrayed his memory. He died cowering in fear, as all fools do.’
‘And this is what your father would have wanted?’ Taita said.
‘You do not get to speak of my father!’ Zahra shouted, finally losing control of her temper, her hands beginning to shake as though palsied. ‘You are my captive and you will obey my commands.’
‘You are a creature of Seth, Zahra. And I have been sent to heal you.’
Zahra ground her teeth together, her jaw muscles bulging. She could feel the hands of the god upon her now, twisting her one way and then the other, shaking her, tossing her to the ground and pinning her to the flagstones. She shrieked, every muscle in her body knotting like cured teak. Spasm after spasm racked her until she felt her eyes rolling back in her head . . . and then, as always, the god took her.
• • •
C
losing his eyes, Taita allowed the words of the medu neter to take shape in his mind, the sound of each of them as clear as if the gods were whispering to him. Quietly, he began to utter them, allowing their power to escape his lips as he reached out towards where Zahra lay jerking on the flagstones.
‘What are you doing?’ Gyasi’s voice was high, panicked. The scar tissue had begun to pull back from the old wound on Zahra’s forehead as Taita’s spell took hold, the skin melting away like beeswax under a flame.
In two strides, Gyasi had her knife at Taita’s throat. ‘I will kill you now. Stop what you are doing.’
Beneath the skin, the gourd of Zahra’s skull had knitted together in a thick fold, the weight of it pressing down on the matter beneath. As the bone began to fall away, Taita opened his eyes and gazed on thoughtfully. The sac that held soft, amorphous curds of the brain was undamaged, but Taita could see by the thickening of the membrane that his suspicion had been correct.
‘Undo what you have done!’ Gyasi shouted. ‘Make her whole again! She cannot live like this!’
‘You must know, Gyasi, that I have never met a man who understands the human body better than I,’ Taita began. ‘And yet, and yet . . . The head is still a puzzle to me. Naturally, I understand that the eyes see, the nose smells, the mouth tastes and the ears hear – but what is the purpose of the pale porridge that fills the skull? I have never been able to fathom it myself, and no man has ever been able to offer me a satisfactory explanation. There is, however, a paradox here, in that if this glutinous mass is interfered with, even by the pressure of trapped fluid upon it, the patient is certainly doomed. And yet, and yet . . . your mistress lives.’
‘Reverse the incantation,’ Gyasi growled, the tip of her knife drawing a bead of blood from Taita’s throat.
‘You realise that she may well be changed, Gyasi,’ Taita said. ‘That she may no longer be what she was.’
Gyasi nodded as Taita began to mutter the medu neter again, softer this time, reversing the spell.
‘Yes,’ Gyasi said, wide-eyed, as the bone knitted, as the skin regrew, reforming without the depression that had disfigured her mistress’s face. ‘Yes.’
• • •
P
iay knew that his men were tired – too tired to prevail against the force arrayed against them. They had given everything, and now, after a furious charge led by Hannu, the Shuyet’s men had withdrawn, to regroup, but they would come again and the Blue Crocodiles would be overrun.
Even as he turned to find Hannu, a tall man dressed in black led another fresh company of the Shuyet’s soldiers out through the fortress gate. ‘Who is that?’ Piay asked. ‘Is that the Shuyet?’
‘No,’ Hannu replied, shaking his head. ‘That’s the scribe who speaks for him. The one who was at the tavern in Avaris.’
The Blue Crocodiles had fallen back, forming a crescent around the mouth of the causeway.
‘Drive them back, into the lake!’ Piay heard the scribe command.
‘Ready yourselves!’ Hannu barked.
The Blue Crocodiles braced themselves as a wave of warriors crashed into them, the press of those behind crushing those at the front.
‘Fools,’ Hannu said. ‘They throw their lives away. They cannot even raise their sword arms.’
