The Quest

  The leader grinned and pointed to fresh splashes of blood on his tunic: the scouts had been accounted for. They all settled down to await the arrival of the main body of Chima.

  A short time later, from the forest on the right flank, the querulous alarm call of the grey lory, ‘Kee-wey! Kee-wey!’ rang out. Then a baboon barked a challenge from the top of the hill. Meren lifted a fist as a signal to his men. They nocked their arrows on the bowstrings.

  The leading file of the main Chima raiding party trotted round the curve in the elephant road. As they drew closer Meren studied them carefully. They were short, stocky and bow-legged, and wore only loincloths of tanned animal skins. Even when the entire band came into view it was difficult to make an accurate head count for they were bunched in a tight formation and moving fast.

  ‘A hundred at least, maybe more. We are in for some rich sport, I warrant you,’ Meren said, with anticipation. The Chima were armed with an assortment of clubs and flint-headed spears. The bows slung across their shoulders were small and primitive. Meren judged that they would not have the draw weight to kill a man at more than thirty paces. Then his eyes narrowed: one of the leaders carried an Egyptian sword slung over his shoulder. The man behind him wore a leather helmet, but of an archaic design. It was puzzling, but there was no time to ponder it now.

  The head of the Chima formation came level with the white stone he had placed beside the road as a range marker. Now the entire left flank was exposed to the Egyptian archers.

  Meren glanced left and right. The eyes of his men were fixed on him.

  He dropped his raised right hand sharply, and his archers jumped upright.

  As one man they drew their bows, paused to make good their aim, then loosed a silent cloud of arrows to arc high against the sky. Before the first struck home the second cloud rose into the air. The arrows fluted so softly that the Chima did not even look up. Then, with a sound like raindrops falling on the surface of a pond, they dropped among them.

  The Chima did not seem to realize what was happening to them.

  One stood gazing down, perplexed, at the shaft of the arrow protruding from between his ribs. Then his knees buckled and he crumpled to the ground. Another was staggering in small circles plucking at the arrow that had buried itself in his throat. Most of the others, even those who had received mortal wounds, did not seem to grasp that they had been hit.

  When the third flight of arrows dropped among them those still on their feet panicked and bolted, screaming and howling, in every direction, like a flock of guinea-fowl scattering under the stoop of an eagle. Some ran straight towards the wadi and the archers dropped their aim. At close range none of the arrows missed their mark: they struck deep into living flesh with meaty thumps. Some went right through the torso of the primary target, and flew on to wound the man behind him. Those who tried to escape up the hill ran into the palisade of kittar thorn bushes. It stopped them in their tracks, and forced them back into the hailstorm of arrows.

  ‘Bring up the horses!’ Meren yelled. Fenn and the other girls dragged them forward by the head ropes. Taita swung on to Windsmoke’s back, while Meren and his men slung their bows and mounted.

  ‘Forward! Charge!’ Meren bellowed. ‘Take the blade to them.’ The horsemen bounded up the side of the wadi on to the level ground and, shoulder to shoulder, charged at the disordered rabble of Chima, who saw them coming and tried to turn back up the slope. They were caught between the thorn wall and the glittering bronze circle of swords. Some made no attempt to escape. They fell to their knees and covered their heads with their arms. The horsemen stood in the stirrups to stab them.

  Others struggled in the thorns like fish in the folds of a net. The troopers cut them down as if they were firewood. By the time they had finished their grisly work, the slope and the ground below it were thickly strewn with bodies. Some Chima were writhing and groaning, but most lay still.

  ‘Dismount,’ Meren ordered. ‘Finish the work.’

  The troopers moved quickly over the field, stabbing any Chima who showed a spark of life. Meren spotted the man with the bronze sword still slung across his back. Three arrow shafts stood out of his chest.

  Meren stooped over him to retrieve the sword, but at that instant Taita shouted, ‘Meren! Behind you!’ He used the voice of power, and Meren was galvanized. He leapt up and twisted aside. The Chima lying behind him had feigned death: he had waited until Meren was off-guard, then he jumped to his feet and swung at him with a heavy flint-headed club. The blow narrowly missed Meren’s head but glanced off his left shoulder. Meren pivoted in close, blocking the weapon’s next swing, and drove the point of his sword clean through the Chima, transfixing him from sternum to backbone. With a wrench of his wrist, he twisted the blade to open the wound, and when he jerked it clear, a great gush of heart blood followed it.

  Clutching his damaged left shoulder Meren bellowed, ‘Kill them all again! Make sure of them this time.’

  Remembering their comrades hanging like sheep on slaughter racks, the troopers went to work with gusto, hacking and stabbing. They found a few Chima hiding in the kittar thickets and dragged them out, squealing like pigs, to the slaughter.

  Only once he was certain of them would Meren allow his men to pick over the corpses and gather up their own spent arrows for reuse. He himself was the only casualty. Bare to the waist, he sat with his back to a tree-trunk while Taita examined his shoulder. There was no bleeding, but a dark bruise was spreading over it. Taita grunted with satisfaction.

  ‘No bones broken. In six or seven days an old dog like you will be as good as new.’ He anointed the shoulder with a salve, and twisted a linen bandage into a sling to hold the arm comfortably. Then he sat beside Meren as the captains brought the spoils they had gathered from the Chima dead, and laid everything out for them to examine. There were carved wooden lice combs, crude ivory trinkets, water gourds and packets of smoked meat, some still on the bone, wrapped in green leaves and tied with bark string. Taita examined it. ‘Human. Almost certainly the remains of our comrades. Bury it with respect.’

  Then they turned their attention to the Chima weapons, mostly clubs and spears with heads of flint or obsidian. The knife blades were of chipped flint, the handles wrapped with strips of uncured leather. ‘Rubbish! Not worth carrying away,’ Meren said.

  Taita nodded agreement. ‘Throw it all on the fire.’

  At last they examined the weapons and ornaments that were clearly not of Chima manufacture. Some had evidently been taken from the corpses of the four ambushed hunters - bronze weapons and recurve bows, leather helmets and padded jerkins, linen tunics and amulets of turquoise and lapis-lazuli. However, there were others of greater interest, well-worn old helmets and leather breastplates of a type that had not been used by Egyptian troops for decades. Then there was the sword that had almost cost Meren his life. Its blade was worn, the edges chipped and almost destroyed by rough sharpening against granite or some other rock. However, the hilt was finely worked and inlaid with silver. There were empty seatings from which precious stones had been prised or had dropped out. The engraved hieroglyphics were almost obliterated. Taita held it to the light and turned it from side to side, but he could not make out the characters. He called for Fenn: ‘Use your sharp young eyes.’

  She knelt beside him and pored over the engravings, then read out haltingly, ‘I am Lotti, son of Lotti, Best of Ten Thousand, Companion of the Red Road, General and Commander in the guards of the divine Pharaoh Mamose. May he live for ever!’

  ‘Lotti!’ Taita exclaimed. ‘I knew him well. He was second in command under Lord Aquer of the expedition that Queen Lostris sent from Ethiopia to discover the source of Mother Nile. He was a fine soldier So, it seems that he and his men reached at least as far as this place.’

  ‘Did Lord Aquer and all the rest die here, and were they eaten by the Chima?’ Meren wondered.

  ‘No. According to Tiptip, the little priest of Hathor with six fingers, Aquer saw the volcano and
the great lake. Besides, Queen Lostris placed a thousand men under his command. I doubt the Chima could have slaughtered them all,’ Taita said. ‘I believe that they caught off-guard a small detachment under Lotti as they did our men. But did the Chima destroy a whole Egyptian army? I think not.’ While the discussion continued, Taita was surreptitiously watching Fenn’s expression. Whenever the name of Queen Lostris was mentioned she frowned, as though seeking an elusive memory that was tucked away somewhere in the depths of her mind. One day it will all return to her, every memory of her other life, he thought, but he said aloud to Meren, ‘We shall probably never know the truth of Lotti’s fate, but his sword is proof to me that we are indeed following the trail to the south that Lord Aquer blazed so long ago. We have spent too much time here already.’ He stood up.

  ‘How soon can we move on?’

  ‘The men are ready,’ Meren said. They were cheerful as boys just released from study, sitting in the shade and joking with the Shilluk girls, who were serving them food and passing round jars of dhurra beer.

  ‘Look at how eager they are. A good fight is better for their morale than a night with the prettiest whore in the Upper Kingdom.’ He started to laugh, then broke off to rub his injured shoulder. ‘The men are ready, but the day is almost done. The horses would profit from a short rest.’

  ‘So will that shoulder of yours,’ Taita agreed.

  The sharp little fight seemed to have eliminated the threat of more Chima raids. Although they saw sign of their presence over the days that followed, none was of recent origin. Even these indications gradually became infrequent and eventually ceased. They passed out of the land of the Chima and rode on into uninhabited territory.

  Although the Nile was still shrunken to a trickle, there had evidently been heavy rain in the surrounding countryside. The forest and savannah teemed with game, and grazing was abundant and rich. Taita had worried that, by this time, the troopers would be homesick and depressed but they remained buoyant, their spirits high.

  Fenn and the Shilluks delighted the men with their girlish pranks and high jinks. Two of the girls were pregnant, and Fenn wanted to know how they had come to this happy state; when questioned, the girls dissolved into paroxysms of laughter. Fenn was intrigued and came to Taita for explanation. He made his explanation short and vague. She pondered it for a while. ‘It sounds rich sport.’ She had picked up the expression from Meren.

  Taita tried to look grave but he could not prevent a smile. ‘So I have heard,’ he conceded.

  ‘When I am grown, I should like a baby to play with,’ she told him.

  ‘No doubt you will.’

  ‘We could have one together. Wouldn’t that be rich sport, Taita?’

  ‘To be sure,’ he agreed, with a pang, knowing it could never be. ‘But in the meantime we have many other important things to do.’

  Taita could not remember having been so filled with well-being since those long-ago days when he had been young and Lostris was alive. He felt quicker and more lively. He did not tire nearly as easily as he had done before. He attributed this mostly to Fenn’s company.

  Her studies advanced so swiftly that he was forced to find other ways to keep her mind working at or near its potential. If he allowed her to slacken for even a short while, her attention wandered. By now she spoke both Shilluk and Egyptian fluently.

  If she were ever to become an adept, she must learn the arcane language of the magi, the Tenmass. No other medium encompassed the entire body of esoteric learning. However, the Tenmass was so complex and multi-faceted, and had so little association with any other human language, that only those possessed of the highest intelligence and dedication could hope to master it.

  It was a challenge that brought out the best in Fenn. At first she found it was like trying to scale a wall of polished glass that gave no purchase to hand or foot. Laboriously she climbed a little way, then, to her fury, lost her grip and slithered down. She picked herself up and tried again, each time more fiercely. She never despaired, even when it seemed she was making no progress. Taita was making her face the magnitude of the task: only then would she be ready to move on.

  The moment came, but still he waited until they were alone on their sleeping mats at night. Then he placed his hand on her forehead and spoke to her quietly until she sank into a hypnotic trance. When she was fully receptive, he could begin to plant the seeds of the Tenmass in her mind. He did not use the Egyptian language as the medium of instruction, but spoke directly to her in the Tenmass. It required many such nocturnal sessions before the seeds took tenuous hold. Like an infant standing for the first time, she took a few uncertain steps, then collapsed. The next time she stood more firmly and confidently. He was careful not to tax her too hard, but at the same time to keep her moving. Aware that the strain might stale her, and bend her spirit, he saw to it that they still spent enchanted hours at the boo board, or in easy but sparkling conversation, or wandering together in the forest in search of rare plants or other small treasures.

  Whenever they passed a likely stretch of gravel in the riverbed, he unstrapped his prospecting pan from the back of his mule and they worked the gravel. While he swirled the slurry he had picked up, Fenn used her eyes and nimble fingers to pick out lovely semi-precious stones.

  Many had been polished by the waters into fantastic shapes. When she had filled a bag, she showed them to Meren, who made her a bracelet with a matching anklet. One day, below a dried-up waterfall, she plucked a gold nugget the size of the first joint of her thumb from the pan. It sparkled in the sun and dazzled her. ‘Fashion for me a jewel, Taita,’ she demanded.

  Although he had been able to hide it, Taita had felt twinges of jealousy when she wore the ornaments Meren had made for her. At my age?

  He smiled at his folly. Like a lovelorn swain. Nevertheless, he devoted all his art and creative genius to the task she had set him. He used the silver from the hilt of Lotti’s sword to make a thin chain and a setting from which he suspended the nugget. When it was done, he worked a spell into it to give it protective qualities over its wearer, then hung it round her neck. When she looked down at her image in a river pool her eyes filled with tears. ‘It is so beautiful,’ she whispered, ‘and it feels warm on my skin, as though it were alive.’ The warmth she had detected was the emanation of the power with which he had endowed it. It became her most prized possession, and she named it the Talisman of Taita.

  The further south they travelled, the lighter and more buoyant the mood of the company became. All at once it struck Taita that there was something unnatural about it. It was true that the way was not as hazardous as it had been when they were lost in the great swamps or in the lands of the Chima, but they were far from home, the road was endless and the conditions arduous. There was no reason for their optimism and light-heartedness.

  In the fading light of day he was sitting beside a river pool with Fenn.

  She was studying the trio of the elemental symbols of the Tenmass that he had drawn on her clay tablet. Each denoted a word of power. When they were conjugated they became so portentous and charged that they could be safely absorbed only into a mind that had been prepared carefully to receive them. Taita sat close to her, ready to protect her if the shock of the conjugation produced a backlash. Across the pool a giant black and white kingfisher, with a russet chest, was hovering over the water. It dived, but Fenn’s concentration on the symbols was so intense that she did not glance up at the splash as the bird struck the surface, then rose with a flutter of wings and a small silver fish clamped in its long black bill.

  Taita tried to analyse his own feelings more closely. There was only one good reason he could think of for his own euphoric state of mind: his love for and delight in the child at his side. On the other hand there were compelling reasons why he should be afraid for both their sakes. He was charged with a sacred duty to protect his pharaoh and his homeland.

  He was travelling to a confrontation with a powerful evil force without any clea
r plan, a lone hare setting out to scotch a marauding leopard. All the chances were against him. Almost certainly the consequences would be dire. Why, then, was he doing so seemingly without any reckoning of the consequences?

  Then he became aware that he was having difficulty in following even this simple line of reasoning. It was as though impediments were being placed deliberately in his way. He kept feeling a strong impulse to let it go and to lapse back into a complacent sense of well-being and trust in his own ability to overcome obstacles as he encountered them, without having any coherent plan. It is a dangerous and reckless state of mind, he thought, then laughed aloud as though it were a joke.

  He had disrupted Fenn’s concentration: she looked up and frowned.

  ‘What is it, Taita?’ she demanded. ‘You warned me that it was dangerous to become distracted when I was attempting to conjugate the rational coefficients of the symbols.’

  Her words brought him up sharply, and Taita realized how grievously he had erred. ‘You are right. Forgive me.’ She looked down again at the clay tablet in her lap. Taita tried to focus on the problem, but it remained hazy and unimportant. He bit hard into his lip, and tasted blood. The sharp pain sobered him. With an effort, he was able to concentrate.

  There was something he must remember. He tried to grasp it, but it remained a shadow. He reached for it again, but it dissolved before he could catch it. Beside him Fenn stirred again and sighed. Then she looked up and set aside the clay tablet. ‘I cannot concentrate. I can feel your distress. Something is blocking you.’ She stared at him with those candid green eyes, then whispered, ‘I can see it now. It is the witch in the pool.’

  Quickly she removed the nugget from round her neck and placed it in her palm. She held out both of her hands. Taita placed the Periapt of Lostris in his own palm. Then they linked hands and formed the circle of protection. Almost imperceptibly he felt the alien influence recede.