Warlock, page 45
part #3 of Ancient Egypt Series
Nefer and Taita left the rest of their party lying in a patch of dense thornbush up in the valley and crept to the camp. They were able to get within a few hundred paces of the sentries and lie there unobserved for an hour, whispering together, trying to find some manner of reaching the war chests without being discovered by the sentries.
'Is there no way we can distract them?' Nefer asked.
'For that we will need help from inside the camp,' Taita said.
'Merykara?' Nefer looked at him sharply.
'Merykara,' Taita agreed.
'How can we get a message to her?' Nefer looked puzzled, but Taita smiled, touched the Periapt of Lostris that hung on his necklace and closed his eyes. After a while Nefer thought he had fallen asleep. The old man knew exactly how to infuriate him.
His age is catching up with him at last, he thought irritably, and was about to shake him awake, when he heard voices from the camp, and looked up.
Merykara had come out of her tent. She had obviously been sleeping for her face was flushed and marked by the pillow. She stretched and yawned. She wore only a blue linen skirt, whose pleats hung below her knees. Her upper body was bare. Despite himself Nefer was astonished at the way her breasts had bloomed: they were pear-shaped and the nipples stood proud and rosy. Merykara was arguing with the guard at the entrance to her tent and her voice rose imperiously so that Nefer could hear every word. 'I cannot sleep, and I am going out to walk awhile.' The sentry was trying to restrain her, but she shook her head until her hair danced on her shoulders. 'No, I will not let you escort me. I want to be alone.' The sentry insisted and she flared at him, 'Stand aside, you insolent creature, or I will report your behaviour to my husband.' Reluctantly the sentry acceded to her orders and grounded his spear. He called after her anxiously, 'Please, Your Majesty, be not too long nor venture too far. It will be more than my miserable life is worth should Pharaoh find out about this.'
Merykara ignored him, ducked through the horses' lines, and came out through the gate of the thornbush fence that surrounded the camp. She looked back only once to make certain that she was not observed by any of the sentries. Then as though to an assignation, she came directly to where Nefer and Taita lay among the desert scrub.
Nefer saw that her green eyes were rapt and that there was an intent expression on her lovely face, as though she were listening to music that she alone could hear.
When she was close enough to touch, Nefer said softly, 'Merykara, don't be afraid. It's Nefer.'
She started like an awakening sleep-walker and stared down at him. Then her face lit with an expression of untrammelled joy and she sprang forward to embrace him.
'Wait!' Nefer ordered. 'Don't betray us to the guards.'
He was proud of her, for she obeyed him and stopped instantly. She had always been an intelligent child. She glanced around quickly and her voice trembled when she said softly, 'I was sound asleep, but suddenly I woke and knew that I had to come out into the desert. It was almost as though a voice in my head was calling to me.' She looked at Taita. 'Was it your voice, Magus?' Then her eyes went back to Nefer. 'Darling brother, you will never know how I have missed you. First I thought you were dead, and I mourned in your funeral procession with ashes on my head. Look here are the scars where I cut my arms to bleed for you.'
'I am alive, Merykara. Believe me, this is no shade you are looking at.'
'I know, Nefer. All the world knows now how you took Mintaka away from Avaris into the desert, and I knew in my heart that you would come for me also, one day.' She smiled through happy tears. 'I knew you would come.'
'Yes,' Nefer said, 'we will take you away with us. But first there is something you must do to help us.'
'Anything for you and Taita,' she agreed readily.
Speaking swiftly and urgently, Taita told her what she had to do and then he made her repeat it. She did so faultlessly. 'You are a clever girl, my little one.' Taita said. 'That is exactly what we want you to do.' He handed her a small packet. 'Here is the powder. Remember, just enough to cover your fingernail in each jar.'
'First you call me clever, and then you treat me as though I were stupid,' she snapped.
'Forgive me, Your Majesty.' Taita made a gesture of penitence.
'Don't call me that either. I hate being married to that slimy serpent, and now I know what he is going to do to me, I hate it even more.'
'You are not easy to please, Merykara. Now, go back to the camp before the guards come looking for you.'
She stooped quickly and kissed Nefer on the lips. 'Until tomorrow then, my beloved brother.'
--
The following noon the mighty army of Egypt camped below the high plateau where the sandy desert and the dry lands ended. They had almost completed the crossing and tomorrow they would go up through the pass into the cooler lands where the oases were only a day's journey apart, where forests and fields and vineyards grew and mountain streams flowed all year round.
When the escort of the royal wives began to set up camp for the day, they found that the young Queen Merykara was fractious and overbearing, not at all her usual sweet and gracious self. She wanted her own tent set further apart from that of her sister, Queen Heseret, and when this was done she insisted that they move the carts that carried the army war chests down into a narrow wadi two hundred paces from the main encampment. In vain the commander of the guard pointed out that the bed of the wadi was soft and sandy and the wheels of the heavy vehicles would sink in deeply.
'I don't care if they disappear into the sand completely,' she told him. 'I am sick of looking at those ugly carts and listening to the mooing of the bullocks. Get them out of my sight.'
The commander thought of appealing to Pharaoh Naja Kiafan to ratify this unreasonable order from his youngest wife. Then he contemplated the fact that the column was spread out over almost four leagues of desert. It would take an hour of hard riding to reach Pharaoh at it's head, and the return ride would be just as arduous. The day was even hotter than those that had preceded it and, besides, he had a tryst with one of Merykara's slave girls, an enchanting little black Nubian who knew more tricks than a performing monkey. He moved the carts into the wadi bottom and, as a sop to his conscience, doubled the guard upon them.
Having got her own way, Merykara became once again the endearing girl they all loved so well.
'I am so sorry I was hard on you, Moram. It must be this awful heat that affects us all,' she told the commander of the guard sweetly in front of his men. 'I am going to have Misha bring you five jars of the finest beer from my private stores to make it up to you. But be certain that you share it equally with all your men for I have given them extra work and trouble too.'
Misha, the statuesque Nubian maid with an imperious carriage and a legendary pair of buttocks, brought the beer jars to Moram's tent, and the men lined up to receive their share, calling down the gods' blessings on Queen Merykara and toasting her health as they swigged down the first draught of the frothing liquor.
Despite his promise to Merykara, the beer was of such surpassing excellence that Moram drank more than his share. As soon as they were alone in his tent he pounced on Misha who, squealing and resisting playfully, finally allowed him to lift her clothing and unveil her prodigious buttocks. They sprang out from under her short linen skirts, shining black as new mined anthracite, great quivering rounds, dark full moons that overflowed his clutching hands.
In a transport of lust he mounted her, but after less than a dozen mighty thrusts, he keeled over slowly, fast asleep before he reached the floor. Misha stared at him in astonishment. Nothing like this had ever happened to her in all her short but busy lifetime. Moram let out a snore that reverberated like distant thunder, and she sprang to her feet, pulled on her skirt, delivered one furious kick to his sleeping form and stormed out of the tent back to her mistress. The guard at the entrance to the royal tent was also sleeping like a dead man.
'All men are pigs,' Misha said, in her savage native tongue, and kicked him with all the strength of her long and shapely right leg.
--
Nefer led a small party of his men down the dry riverbed. They kept close under the bank, and the soft sand muffled their footsteps.
The four treasure carts were drawn up side by side, and their wheels were chained together so that they could not be driven off in haste by bandits or robbers.
Eight armed men were posted around them as sentries, and every one was laid out on the soft sand like a corpse awaiting the embalmers. Taita went to each in turn, felt for the pulse in the throat then drew back a lid to examine the eye of the unconscious man. Finally he nodded to Nefer, and went to the rear door of the first cart.
He took a long bronze probe from his pouch and worked intently on the massive bronze lock. It fell open and the hasp snapped back. Taita swung open the heavy metal door to reveal the four small cases that were tied down to ringbolts in the wagon bed. The lids of the treasure chests were sealed with a clay tablet that carried the cartouche of Pharaoh Naja Kiafan.
Taita used his dagger blade to lift the seals, and dropped them into his pouch so that they would not be evidence of tampering when next the cart doors were opened. He used the point of the dagger to unscrew the fastenings that held down the lid, then lifted it. The chest was filled with small leather pouches. Taita weighed one in his hand, and smiled. He opened the mouth of the pouch to see the unmistakable glint of the precious metal within.
While he had been busy, Nefer and Meren had dug a shallow hole in the soft sand under the wagon truck. Taita passed down the leather pouch to Nefer, who laid it in the bottom of the hole. In all Taita selected fifty of the heaviest leather bags from the first chest. Then he screwed back the lid. Using a lump of fresh damp clay that he had brought with him he resealed the lid. With the engraved ruby ring that Naja had given him as a gift when he had left Thebes, he imprinted the clay seal with the royal cartouche. Then he went on to the next chest in the row of four.
'We are not taking enough,' Meren grumbled. 'We are leaving more than half of it for Naja and Trok.'
'Greed would be our undoing," Taita grunted, as he prised up the lid of the last case. 'This way they will not know that any of the bullion is missing until the paymaster opens the cases again and counts it, which may not be for several more months.'
From each case in the four carts they lifted fifty leather bags and buried them in the loose sand of the wadi bed. Though they worked as swiftly as care would allow, the sun was low in the western sky when they resealed the final chest and locked the rear doors of the last cart. One of the sleeping guards stirred and mumbled, and tried to sit up. Taita went to him and laid a gentle hand on his brow. The man sighed and lay back. Taita pulled open his mouth and sprinkled a pinch of white powder under his tongue, and he lay quiet.
'We must hurry now. They are beginning to revive.'
They spread sand over the rows of bags in the bottom of the hole beneath the last wagon, and then roughed and dotted the surface with footprints so that the smooth sand would not be conspicuous.
'How much do you estimate we took?' Nefer asked.
'Impossible to tell until we weigh it,' Taita said, 'but I would guess we have at least three lakhs.'
'Enough to recruit and equip an army,' Nefer muttered, as he worked.
They made one last quick but thorough inspection of the carts and the area around them, to make sure that they had overlooked nothing. Then leaving the guards still in heavy drugged sleep, they slipped away down the wadi.
They climbed into the foothills below the plateau, back to where they had left Hilto with the chariots. From this vantage-point they kept watch on where they had buried the plundered gold. They observed no evidence of any outcry or unusual activity in the wadi. Perhaps the guards felt too guilty when they woke to make any report on their dereliction of duty.
Just before dark they saw the straining teams of bullocks heave the four carts out of the sandy riverbed, and trudge away behind the royal litters as the host of the false pharaohs resumed the night march.
For five more days and nights the great army of Egypt streamed past this spot. There were successive squadrons of chariots, regiments of slingers, archers and spearmen. These were followed by marching columns of slaves who would be used for the heavy labour of building fortifications and sapping the walls of besieged cities. Then came the craftsmen, the chariot builders and carpenters, the armourers and arrow makers, and after them the camp-followers, the wives, sweethearts and whores with their slaves, servants and infants. They were followed by the merchants with wagonloads of goods and luxuries of every possible description to sell to the troops when they were rich with loot and plunder.
Yet out of all this multitude the watchers on the hills saw nobody enter the dried wadi where the gold was buried, and though each day companies and regiments camped nearby no one approached the wadi to use it as a latrine or a camping site.
When the last vehicle in that mighty host had trundled past and climbed up through the rocky Khatmia Pass, and the last straggler had limped by, Nefer and Taita were certain that the short-weight of bullion in the treasure carts had not been discovered by the army paymasters, and they were almost certain that the cache in the riverbed had not been stumbled upon by chance.
When at last the eastern highway was deserted they came down from the hills during the night and left the chariots on the high bank of the wadi with the horses still in the traces, ready for instant flight. Nefer and Meren went down into the sandy bed, and in the moonlight the tracks left by the treasure carts and the oxen were still plain to see. After only a few thrusts with the wooden spade Meren whistled with glee and turned up the first pouch of gold. As they lifted each bag from the hole they counted them, making certain that they overlooked not a single one. Then they carried them up the wadi bank, staggering under their weight, and stacked them beside the waiting chariots. Eight hundred leather bags filled with fine gold made an impressive pile.
Too much! We will not be able to carry away all of it,' Nefer said doubtfully.
'It is one of the natural laws of this wicked world.' Taita shook his head. 'Of gold there can never be too much.'
The light fighting chariots had not been designed as transport carts, but they loaded them until the axles sagged and the coachwork groaned. Still they had not taken half of it on board. Nursing the horses, leading them by the reins, they took the overloaded chariots up into the hills then came back for the next load. It required two more trips to carry it all away.
They divided the treasure into five equal parts and buried four in separate caches, well dispersed, taking great care to conceal them and leave no sign. Thus, if one hoard was discovered they would not lose all. The fifth part they loaded on to thirteen of the chariots and Nefer sent them back to Gallala under the command of Hilto. Once he reached the city Hilto would return with a convoy of heavy wagons to fetch in the remainder.
Nefer kept back the remaining three chariots. They would be driven by himself, Taita and Meren. The two squadrons parted company, Hilto taking his laden vehicles south again, and Nefer leading his smaller group eastwards, shadowing the army of the two pharaohs.
--
Nefer travelled by day, knowing that the army they were following would be resting in camp, and with a daylight view ahead they were unlikely to run into any surprises.
They went up through the pass on to the plateau where they found ample water, although much of it had been fouled by the thousands of animals and men who had been there ahead of them. The horses were well rested, and they travelled fast in the lightly laden chariots. They passed hundreds of abandoned campsites, marked by dead fires and sagging lean-to shelters, litter and scattered filth. There were also hastily dug graves, for an army on the march suffers constant attrition. Some had already been dug open by the hyena and the jackal, the corpses dragged out and partially consumed.
'We will need her,' Nefer said, as he dismounted and stood over the body of a young woman, probably one of the army whores. There was no way of telling how she had died for the vultures had almost completed what the hyena had begun. Her eyes and lips were missing and her skull grinned at them through blood blackened teeth.
'In all love of the gods,' Meren cried, 'have you lost your senses? That thing stinks to the skies.'
'Help me wrap her.' Nefer ignored his protest. He had found a length of discarded linen, so torn and dirty that even the Bedouin who scavenged behind the army had found no use for it. Between them they lifted the remains of the dead woman on to it and wrapped her neatly. Then, to his loudly expressed disgust, they tied the bundle to the back of Meren's chariot.
Though they had been travelling under the dust pall since dawn, it was mid-morning before they caught up with the rearguard of the army. The entire expeditionary force had already gone into laager for the day, and the smoke from the cooking fires marked the position of hundreds of separate encampments along the road ahead.
Nefer led them off the road, and they circled out to avoid the baggage train, keeping out of sight of the road. Scouting the terrain ahead, they went forward cautiously. Eventually they caught up with the convoy of treasure carts and the tall litters of the royal wives halted in a grove of olive trees. It was well past noon when Nefer crept up close to them, and climbed a tamarind tree from which he could spy over the thornbush zareba that surrounded the camp.
