River God

  Not trusting any of his own men with such a valuable commodity, Arkoun had gone himself to take possession of Princess Masara. Our caravan was carrying her back to Arkoun's stronghold. I gathered this and other information from the gossipy women slaves who brought me my meals, or in casual conversation over the dom board. By the time we reached Amba Kamara, the mountain fortress of King Arkoun Gannouchi Maryam, I was an expert on the complicated and shifting politics of the various Ethiopic states of Aksum, and the numerous claimants to the throne of the empire.

  I was aware of an increasing excitement running through our caravan as we approached our journey's end, and at last we climbed the narrow winding pathway, no more than just another goat-track, to the summit of yet another amba. These ambas were the massifs that made up the mountain ranges of central Ethiopia. Each of them was a flat-topped mountain with sheer sides that plunged like a wall into the valley that divided it from the next mountain.

  It was easy to see, when I stood at the top of the precipice, how the land was fragmented into so many tiny kingdoms and principalities. Each amba was a natural and impregnable fortress. The man on top of it was invincible, and might call himself a king without fear of being challenged.

  Arkoun rode up beside me and pointed to the mountains on the southern sky-line. 'That is the hiding-place of that horse-thief and scoundrel, Prester Beni-Jon. He is a man of unsurpassed treachery.' He hawked in his throat and spat over the edge of the cliff in the direction of his rival.

  I had come to know Arkoun as a man of not inconsiderable cruelty and treachery himself. If he conceded Prester Beni-Jon as his master in these fields, Masara's father must be a formidable man indeed.

  We crossed the tableland of the Amba Kamara, passing through a few villages of stone-walled hovels, and fields of sorghum and dhurra corn. The peasants in the fields were all tall, bushy-haired ruffians, armed with swords and round copper shields. They appeared as fierce and warlike as any of the men in our caravan.

  At the far end of the amba, the path led us to the most extraordinary natural stronghold that I had ever seen. From the main table of the mountain a buttress had eroded until it stood alone, a sheer pinnacle of rock with precipitous sides, separated from the table by an awe-inspiring abyss.

  This gulf was bridged by a narrow causeway, a natural arch of stone, that joined it to the tableland. It was so narrow that two horses could not pass each other on the pathway, so narrow that once a horse started out across the bridge, it could not turn round and return, until it had reached the other side.

  The drop under the causeway was a thousand feet, straight into the river gorge below. It was so unnerving to the horses that the riders were forced to dismount, blindfold them, and lead them over. When I was halfway across, I found myself trembling with vertigo, and I dared not peer over the edge of the pathway into the void. It required all my self-control to keep walking, and not to throw myself flat and cling to the rocks beneath my feet.

  Perched on top of this pinnacle of rock was an ungainly, lopsided castle of stone blocks and reed thatch. The open windows were covered with curtains of rawhide, and the raw sewage and odious refuse running from the fortress stained and littered the cliff beneath it.

  Festooning the walls and battlements like pennants and decorations celebrating some macabre festival, were the corpses of men and women. Some had hung there so long that their bones had been picked white by the flocks of crows that circled above the abyss or roosted squawking upon the roofs. Other victims were still alive, and I watched their feeble last movements with horror as they hung by their heels. However, most of them were already dead and in various stages of decomposition. The smell of rotting human carcasses was so thick that even the wind that whined eternally around the cliffs could not disperse it.

  King Arkoun called the crows his chickens. Sometimes he fed them on the walls, and at other times he threw their food from the causeway into the gorge. The dwindling wail of another unfortunate victim falling away into the depths was a feature of our life on the pinnacle of Adbar Seged, the House of the Wind Song.

  These executions and the daily floggings and chopping-off of hands or feet, or the pulling-out of tongues with red-hot tongs were King Arkoun's principal diversions when he was not playing dom, or planning a raid on one of the other neighbouring king of kings. Very often Arkoun wielded the axe or the tongs in person, and his roars of laughter were as loud as the screams of his victims.

  As soon as our caravan had crossed the causeway and pulled into the central courtyard of Adbar Seged, Masara was whisked away by her female gaolers into the labyrinth of stone passageways, and I was led to my new quarters which abutted those of Arkoun.

  I was allotted a single stone cell. It was dark and draughty. The open fireplace blackened the walls with soot and gave out little heat. Though I wore the woollen robes of the land, I was never warm in Adbar Seged. How I longed for the sunlight on the Nile and the bright oasis of my very Egypt! I sat on those wind-swept battlements and pined for my family, for Memnon and Tanus, for my little princesses, but most of all for my mistress. Sometimes I woke in the night with the tears chilling my face, and I had to cover my head with my sheepskin blanket, so that Arkoun would not hear my sobs through the thick stone wall.

  Often I pleaded with him to release me.

  'But why do you want to leave me, Taita?'

  'I want to go back to my family.'

  'I am your family now,' he laughed. 'I am your father.'

  I made a wager with him. If I won a hundred successive boards of dom from him, he agreed that he would let me go and give me an escort back down the Nile to the great plains. When I won the hundredth game, he chuckled and shook his head at my naivety.

  'Did I say a hundred? I think not. Surely it was a thousand?' He turned to his henchmen. 'Was the bargain a thousand?'

  'A thousand!' they chanted. 'It was a thousand!'

  They all thought it a grand joke. When in a pique I refused to play another board with Arkoun, he hung me naked from the walls of the citadel by my heels until I squealed for him to set up the board.

  When Arkoun saw me naked, he laughed and prodded me. 'You may have a way with the dom board, but it seems you have lost your own stones, Egyptian.' This was the first time since my capture that my physical mutilation had been revealed. Once again, men called me 'eunuch', much to my shame and mortification.

  However, in the end the consequences were beneficial. If I had been a man entire, they would never have let me go to Masara.

  THEY CAME FOR ME IN THE NIGHT AND led me shivering through the passages to Masara's cell. The room was lit by a dim oil lamp and smelled of vomit. The girl was curled on a straw mattress in the centre of the floor, with her vomit puddled on the stone floor beside her. She was in terrible pain, groaning and weeping and holding her stomach.

  I set to work immediately, and examined her carefully. I was afraid that I would find her stomach as hard as a stone, the symptom of the swelling and bursting of the gut that would drench her insides with the contents of her intestines. There was no remedy for this condition. Not even I, with all my skills, could save her, if this was her affliction.

  To my great relief I found her stomach warm and soft. There was no fever in her blood. I continued my examination, and though she groaned and screamed with agony when I touched her, I could not find any cause for her condition. I was puzzled and I sat back to think about it. Then I realized that although her face was contorted with agony, she was watching me with a candid gaze.

  'This is worse than I feared.' I turned to her two female attendants and spoke in Geez. 'If I am to save her, I must have my chest. Fetch it immediately.'

  They scrambled for the door, and I lowered my head to hers and whispered, 'You are a clever girl and a good actress. Did you tickle your throat with a feather?'

  She smiled up at me and whispered back, 'I could think of no other way to meet you. When the women told me that you had learned to speak Geez, I knew that we could
help each other.'

  'I hope that is possible.'

  'I have been so lonely. Even to speak to a friend will be a joy to me.' Her trust was so spontaneous that I was touched. 'Perhaps between us we will find a way to escape from this dreadful place.'

  At that moment we heard the women returning, their voices echoing along the outside passage. Masara seized my hand.

  'You are my friend, aren't you? You will come to me again?'

  'I am and I will.'

  'Quickly, tell me before you must go. What was his name?'

  'Who?'

  "The one who was with you on that first day beside the river. The one who looks like a young god.'

  'His name is Memnon.'

  'Memnon!' She repeated it with a peculiar reverence. 'It is a beautiful name. It suits him.'

  The women burst into the room, and Masara clutched her healthy little belly and groaned as though she were at the point of death. While I clucked and shook my head with worry for the benefit of her women, I mixed a tonic of herbs that would do her some good, and told them that I would return in the morning.

  In the morning Masara's condition had improved, and I was able to spend a little longer with her. Only one of the women was present, and she soon became bored and wandered away to the far side of the room. Masara and I exchanged a few quiet words.

  'Memnon said something to me. I could not understand. What was it he said?'

  'He said, "I will come back for you. Be brave. I will come back for you." '

  'He could not mean that. He does not know me. He had met me only fleetingly.' She shook her head, and tears filled her eyes. 'Do you think he meant it, Taita?' There was a haunting plea in her tone that moved me, and I could not allow her to suffer more than she had already.

  'He is crown prince of Egypt, and a man of honour. Memnon would not have said it unless he meant every word.'

  That was all we could say then, but I came back the next day. The very first thing she asked of me was, 'Tell me again what Memnon said to me,' and I had to repeat his promise.

  I told Arkoun that Masara was improving in health, but that she must be allowed out each day to walk on the battlements. 'Otherwise I cannot answer for her health.'

  He thought about that for a day. However, Masara was a valuable asset for which he had paid a horse-load of silver bars, and at last he gave his permission.

  Our daily exercise periods slowly extended, as the guards became accustomed to seeing us together. In the end Masara and I were able to spend most mornings in each other's company, strolling around the walls of Adbar Seged and talking endlessly.

  Masara wanted to know everything that I had to tell about Memnon, and I racked my memory for anecdotes about him to entertain her. She had favourite stories which I was obliged to repeat until she knew them by heart, and she corrected me when I erred in the retelling. She particularly enjoyed the account of how he had rescued Tanus and me from the wounded bull elephant, and how he had received the Gold of Valour for his deed.

  'Tell me about his mother the queen,' she demanded, and then, 'Tell me about Egypt. Tell me about your gods. Tell me about when Memnon was a baby.' Always her questions returned to him, and I was glad to appease her demands, for I longed for my family. Speaking about them made them seem closer to me.

  One morning she came to me distraught. 'Last night I had a dreadful dream. I dreamed that Memnon came back to me, but I could not understand what he said to me. You must teach me to speak Egyptian, Taita. We will start today, this very minute!'

  She was desperate to learn and she was a clever little thing. It went very quickly. Soon we were talking only Egyptian between ourselves, and it was useful to be able to speak privately in front of her guards.

  When we were not talking about Memnon, we were discussing our plans to escape. Of course, I had been thinking of this ever since our arrival at Adbar Seged, but it helped to have her thoughts on the same subject to compare with my own.

  'Even if you escape from this fortress, you will never pass through the mountains without help,' she warned me. "The paths are like a skein of twisted wool. You will never unravel them. Every clan is at war with the next. They trust no strangers, and they will cut your throat as a spy.'

  'What must we do, then?' I asked.

  'If you are able to get away, you must go to my father. He will protect you and guide you back to your own people. You will tell Memnon where I am, and he will come to save me.' She said this with such shining confidence that I could not meet her eyes.

  I realized then that Masara had built up an image of Memnon in her mind that was not based on reality. She was in love with a god, not a stripling as young and untried as she was herself. I was responsible for this, with my clever stories about the prince. I could not wound her now and shatter her hope by telling her how forlorn all these imaginings truly were.

  'If I go to Prester Beni-Jon, your father, he will think I am one of Arkoun's spies. He will have my head.' I tried to extricate myself from the responsibilities she had laid upon me.

  'I will tell you what to say to him. Things that only he and I know. That will prove to him that you come from me.'

  She had blocked me there, so I tried a different escape. 'How would I find my way to your father's fortress? You have told me that the path is a tangled skein.'

  'I will explain the way to you. Because you are so clever you will remember everything I tell you.'

  By this time, naturally, I loved her almost as much as I loved my own little princesses. I would take any risk to shield her from hurt. She reminded me so strongly of my mistress at the same age that I could deny her nothing.

  'Very well. Tell it to me.' And so we began to plan our escape. It was a game for me, which I played mostly to keep her hopes alive and her spirits buoyant. I had no serious expectation of finding a way off this pinnacle of rock.

  We discussed ways of making a rope to lower ourselves down the cliff, although every time I looked over the causeway from the terrace outside her cell, I shuddered at that gaping void of space. She began to collect scraps of wool and cloth which she hid under her mattress. From these she planned to plait a rope. I could not tell her that a rope long enough and strong enough to support our weight and take us down to the floor of the valley would fill her cell to the ceiling.

  For two long years we languished on the height of Adbar Seged, and we never were able to devise a plan of escape, but Masara never lost faith. Every day she asked me, 'What did Memnon say to me? Tell me again what he promised.'

  'He said, "I will come back for you. Be brave." '

  'Yes. I am brave, am I not, Taita?'

  'You are the bravest girl I know.'

  'Tell me what you will say to my father when you meet him.'

  I repeated her instructions, and then she would reveal to me her latest plan of escape.

  'I will catch the little sparrows that I feed on the terrace. You will write a letter to my father to tell him where I am. We will tie it to the sparrow's leg, and it will fly to him.'

  'It is more likely to fly to Arkoun, who will have us both thrashed, and we will not be allowed to see each other again.'

  In the end I escaped from Adbar Seged by riding out on a fine horse. Arkoun was going out on another raid against King Prester BeniJon. I was commanded to accompany him, in the capacity of personal physician and dom player.

  As I walked my blindfolded horse across the causeway, I looked back and saw Masara standing on her terrace looking down at me. She was a lovely, lonely figure. She called to me in Egyptian. I could just make out her words above the sough of the wind.

  'Tell him I am waiting for him. Tell him I have been brave.' And then softly, so I was not certain that I had heard the words right, 'Tell him I love him.'

  The wind turned the tears upon my cheeks as cold as ice, as I rode away across Amba Kamara.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE, ARKOUN kept me sitting late in his tent. While he gave his last orders to his commanders, he strop
ped the edge of the blue sword. Once in a while he would shave a few hairs off his wrist with the steely, glittering blade to test the edge, and nod with satisfaction. At last he rubbed down the blade with clarified mutton fat. This strange, silver-blue metal had to be kept well greased, otherwise a red powder would form upon it, almost as though it was bleeding.

  The blue sword had come to exert the same fascination on me as it had on Tanus. Occasionally, when he was in a specially benevolent mood, Arkoun would allow me to handle it. The weight of the metal was surprising, and the sharpness of the edge was incredible. I imagined what havoc it could wreak in the hands of a swordsman like Tanus. I knew that if we ever met again, Tanus would want every detail of it, and so I questioned Arkoun, who never tired of boasting about it.

  He told me that the sword had been forged in the heart of a volcano by one of the pagan gods of Ethiopia. Arkoun's great-grandfather had won it from the god in a game of dom that had lasted for twenty days and twenty nights. I found all this quite plausible, except the part of the legend about winning the weapon in a dom game. If Arkoun's greatgrandfather had played dom at the same standard as Arkoun, then it must have been a very stupid god who lost the sword to him.

  Arkoun asked my opinion of his battle plan for the next day. He had learned that I was a student of military tactics. I told him his plan was brilliant. These Ethiopians had as much grasp of military tactics as they had of the play of the dom stones. Of course, the terrain would not allow full use of the horses, and they had no chariots. Nevertheless, their battles were fought in a haphazard and desultory manner.

  Arkoun's grand strategy for the morrow would be to split his forces into four raiding parties. They would hide among the rocks and rush out, seize a few hostages, slit a few throats, and then run for it.

  'You are one of the great generals of history,' I told Arkoun, 'I would like to write a scroll to extol your genius.' He liked the idea, and promised to provide me with whatever materials I required for the project, as soon as we returned to Adbar Seged.