Time had breached the walls of the ancient fort; its inner courts were half filled with rubble. But those same walls were more protection against a rush attack than the open desert hillocks beyond.
One of the archers who had been on flank duty came in with a gazelle slung over his shoulder, and a fire was made. The loose animals were turned into the roofless enclosure of the old granary. They would be watered sparingly, but tonight they must go hungry.
Rahotep began his rounds of the encampment, inspecting the picket lines of the burden asses, stationing or checking upon sentries. Then at last he came to stand at the foot of the statue once again, looking south. There was no movement, not even of a dust devil raised by a wind puff, between the fort and the river. But he doubted that they lacked trailers. Haptke’s men lurked there, ready to avenge their defeat on any straggler they could cut off, eager to spear-point an attack if the chances of success seemed good.
The captain turned to the west, where the sun was a scarlet fire on the horizon, still almost too brilliant to face. He stripped himself of his emblems of command, the sistrum from his wrist and the baton-flail, and laid them on the sand. Then he lacked off his sandals and stood humbly before the greatest of Overlords, the sun. Rahotep looked straight into that blazing glory of red and gold before he made the salute of a warrior to his commander, his palms earthward at knee level. Having done so, the Egyptian straightened once more, proud in his heritage as a believer in Re, and chanted:
“I give praise when I see Thy beauty,
I hymn Re when He sets.”
From the camp came the answering boom of the archers’ rich voices:
“Who hearest him that prays,
Who hearest the entreaties of him who calls upon Thee,”
“Who comest at the voice of him who utters Thy name--” the captain intoned, and thought that the words were reechoed, as if by the stone figure beside him. “Thy name--Thy name!”
Rahotep drew his upper arm wearily across his grimed face, longing for a few comforts--water to wash in, fresh clothing. To such simple luxuries had his world shrunk during the past five years. But tomorrow, if Re favored them, he would have those again when they reached the fort.
He gathered up sistrum and flail and went down into camp, seating himself cross-legged on the mat Kheti had spread for him. There was another cup of milk to be fed to the cub. But when the captain took up his own portion of roast meat, the small furry head turned in his direction, the little mouth opened in shrill complaint, and tiny teeth tore eagerly at the shred he proffered.
“That is good,” Kheti commented. “This one was almost weaned. He shall be the easier to raise for that. We have had a profitable foray this time, Lord. It will be long before Haptke can make trouble again--if he ever can. And a Great One has been moved to honor you with a gift--that very Great One who is the totem of your own clan--”
The young officer smiled with a bitterness that made an odd shadow on his youthful face. “Did you yourself not say, Kheti, that gifts from Great Ones are to be suspect, that they sometimes bring with them mixed fortune?”
“True enough, Lord. But it is also true that when a man’s fortune has long been dark, then any change may be for the better--”
A jackal barked in the desert. Rahotep tensed, and the leopard cub hissed at the sudden tightening of the captain’s grip upon its body.
“You believe that my fortune has been dark?” “Lord, are we not foster brothers between whom there is little ever to be hidden? Do I not well know why you, the son of the Viceroy, run the desert with the Scouts and do not instead take your ease and hold a measure of power in Semna with your equals? And when your brother, the Lord Unis, comes to be Viceroy in his turn, it shall fare even worse with you. On that day, my brother, it would be well to depart from this land, lest you be made to eat dust, and the eating of dust is not for the Hawk--”
“I am not the Hawk!” Rahotep countered, but his control was better as he put down the cub and ran his fingers soothingly along the curve of the small feline head. “There is no such nome, there is no longer an Egypt as there was. Have not the Hyksos, those sons of Set--those eaters of offal, followers of the Eternal Darkness--overrun the land? They have broken asunder the dwellings of the Great Ones, defiled the sacred places, slain those who would stand against them for the honor of the Two Lands--”
Kheti shrugged. “To every king his day. These defilers of the north have sat overlong in the high seat, and they do not sit there by the graces of your Amon-Re. Suppose someone arose strong enough to tumble them from that seat; would not those who marched at his back rise with him? And if the Hyksos are driven forth from the lands they have stolen, would not such lands come again into the hands of those with a rightful claim upon them? Do not throw aside your heritage, my brother--but neither can you claim it by standing afar from its boundaries.”
“You have been talking with Methen,” Rahotep half accused.
“Brother, you have friends as well as enemies in this land. The Commander Methen served your grandfather, the Hawk.
He was loyal to your mother, the Lady Tuya, when she came into exile. Is it not reasonable that he wishes to see her son in his rightful place? And there is no future for you in Nubia. Should your father depart to his horizon--may Dedun of the Many Goats forbid that disaster”--Kheti made a warding-off-evil sign with crossed fingers--”then shall the Lord Unis rule this land and you shall be nothing. For his mother, the Lady Meri-Mut, has mighty kinsmen to favor her son. Also they are allied with Prince Teti--”
“Teti is close to a traitor! He sees Nubia as a separate kingdom with the crown on his head!”
“That is as it may be, brother. But neither he nor the Lady Meri-Mut forgets that one of their ancestors sat on the throne of Egypt itself for a space and held the Crook and the Flail of Pharaoh over north and south together. In troubled times such as these, that might happen again. To be king in Nubia is to be more than halfway to Pharaoh in Egypt, if a man is strong and daring enough! We do not want to see Unis viceroy here--would Egypt profit if Teti sat in her high seat?”
“But my father has set his face against my going north--”
“Aye, the Viceroy has no wish to lose an officer upon whom he can depend.”
Rahotep shivered, though as yet the chill wind of nightfall had not found them out. It was true. In the eyes of his father, Ptahhotep, Viceroy of Nubia, he was merely a responsible officer of Scouts. Since his mother’s death, he had been cut off from the life of his father’s court, a fact that weighed heavily on his spirit. He had been sent from one border fort to another and had grimly centered his existence upon his profession, learning from the archers with whom he coursed the desert all they had to teach.
There was no love between him and his half brother, Unis. Unis was his father’s heir, for he was the son of the Great Wife, the Lady Meri-Mut, heiress of an important family of mixed Nubian-Egyptian blood. Rahotep’s mother, the Lady Tuya, had been only a secondary wife, though she was indeed heiress of the Striking Hawk Nome in the Egypt her son had never seen. She had been sent south to safety after the invading Hyksos had overrun her father’s holding and had killed him in a last battle.
While Rahotep’s mother lived, he had been given all she had to grant him, the ancient learning, the training of a nobleman, everything that could be taught by Hentre, her father’s administrator-scribe, and Methen, who had once commanded the Hawk force in the field.
After her death, Rahotep had been dispatched to the frontier posts, ostensibly to further his military training. It had been done under the seal of the Viceroy--that remote man who he found it difficult to believe was, in truth, his father.
Ptahhotep had long been under pressure to throw aside the title, Viceroy of the Pharaoh, and rule in his own name in Nubia. But he had never done so. He must know, however, that when he died, Unis would not be content to remain “Royal Son of the South,” but would strive to a greater title and fuller power. Yet of late there had b
een tales drifting south from Thebes that a new Pharaoh had mounted the high seat, one ready to don the blue crown of war against the invaders. Methen had talked restlessly of that. If Theban rulers did rise again--! Rahotep stirred. He had always been moved by Methen’s stories of past glories, by the older man’s urging for action against the Hyksos. Yet his orders, under the Viceroy’s seal, held him to the frontier of the far south.
Now, again, came the bark of a jackal, repeated thrice. Rahotep was on his feet, gazing into the dark. He heard the challenge of a sentry, and then the rattle of someone hurrying through the rubble-choked ways of the old fort.
A runner, his almost naked body coated with dust, pattered into the circle of firelight and stood with heaving chest.
He saluted the captain and then stooped to pinch up dust to throw upon his twisted headcloth.
“Grieve, Lord. The beloved of Re has gone to his horizon. The Viceroy Ptahhotep lives now only in the sunset!”
Rahotep froze. Then mechanically he bent in turn to gather up a handful of the gritty clay and smear it across his face in mourning.
“Blessed be Re, Who gathers His children into life everlasting.” He made the conventional answer. But somehow he could not believe what he had just heard. Ptahhotep had always been remote, as remote almost as Pharaoh. But in Rahotep’s world he had been a secure fixture. The captain could not imagine a Nubia in which his father did not rule.
Chapter 2: PHARAOH SUMMONS
“When did the Lord Ptahhotep depart this life?” Rahotep did not know what inner suspicion prompted Kheti to ask that question. But the answer was as startling as a Kush arrow between one’s shoulder blades.
“He has been beyond the horizon these thirty days and he will be laid in the place prepared”--the runner’s lips moved silently as if he were engaged in some calculation--”three days from this sunset.”
Rahotep stared, astounded. “But it takes seventy days to properly prepare the body--” he began almost stupidly, and then licked his lips to taste the flatness of the mourning dust. To hurry the burial of a great lord in this manner was unheard of, and he was alerted to danger as he might have been by a sentry’s warning.
“It is said that the haste is necessary because the Lord Ptahhotep died of poison from a sand thing he trod upon in the garden,” explained the runner delicately.
“Thirty days,” repeated Kheti. There was a metallic note in his voice. “And only now are the tidings brought to the Lord Rahotep. Where have you dallied on the road, runner?” His hand shot out, fixing upon the other’s bare shoulder. On his face there was a look many a delinquent archer would have recognized and feared.
“I am not out of Semna,” the man sputtered. “The Commander Methen is at Kah-hi and I am of his sending. And this also he told me, Lord.” He looked beyond Kheti to Rahotep. “That you might know the truth was in my words--to say to you, ‘Remember that which you wear on your right thigh and be warned!’ “
Rahotep’s hand fell to brush across that now faint scar, covered save for a finger’s breadth by his short warrior’s kilt. And the hidden meaning in that warning was clear in his mind. It was Unis’s spear that had made that scar years ago during a lion hunt. Unis had been noisily remorseful for his clumsiness, a clumsiness that had never been explained to the satisfaction of either Methen or Rahotep. If Unis now ruled in Semna--and so in Nubia--that fact alone would explain both the captain’s ignorance of his father’s death and the hasty burial. Something was badly amiss. Rahotep turned to Kheti with crisp orders.
“This command is now yours. Send me Kakaw with filled waterskins. Runner, take your ease here and come on in the morning with the Scouts.”
He thought he might have to argue against Kheti’s protests, but the underofficer only nodded and called for the archer Kakaw, a noted tracker who had served as a messenger and knew the desert paths by day or night.
“Be sure, Lord,” Kheti said as Rahotep, a waterskin thong cutting into his shoulder, prepared to leave, “we shall make a quick march to Kah-hi. There are those here--and there--who are your men in all ways.”
It was midmorning when Rahotep sighted the palm trees marking the fields about the post of Kah-hi. He sketched an answer to the sentries’ salute. Within the shadow of the gate another man stood waiting. He stepped forward, catching Rahotep by the shoulders and drawing him into the half embrace of close friends.
“It is well with you, boy?” He studied the drawn young face under its mask of trail dust, noting with approval the other’s assured bearing and his unconscious aura of authority--as worn by a man not only used to giving orders, but also understanding well the reason for giving them.
“It is well with me, Methen. But it is not well--” He stopped in mid-breath, warned by the narrowing of the older officer’s eyes. “I have come at your summoning,” he ended more formally.
“There should have been an earlier summoning and not from my lips.” Methen revealed a flash of anger.
But it was not until they were in Rahotep’s private quarters that Methen, leaning against the wall by the bathing slab while the captain ladled the welcome water over his parched skin, spoke crisply and to the point.
“Unis had taken into his hands the gold seal of office. He controls Semna and Nubia for the time being. Now he plays a waiting game--”
“A waiting game?”
“One of Prince Teti’s captains came at once. It is rumored that his lord follows him closely. The Lady Meri-Mut has received this captain in the inner courtyard twice. Unis has sent messages to all commandants of border forts. They are to detach ten men here, twenty there, ready for some unknown service when the Viceroy orders--”
“Messengers to the forts! But here at Kah-hi--surely Hamset could not have kept secret such news!” Rahotep drew the towel back and forth about his thin middle, frowning. True, he had been out on two patrols during the past thirty days, once spending ten days away from the fort. But in Kah-hi quarters were atop one another. It was impossible to keep any secrets from eyes or ears. And he knew of old how not only truth, but also the most extravagant rumor, spread from man to man as fire licks across a plain of withered grass.
“It seems that Kah-hi was overlooked in this general diffusion of important news,” commented Methen dryly. “Your supply train came in yesterday--that would have brought Hamset some knowledge. But--officially he had heard nothing before my own arrival. It was only when I did not hear from you that I discovered what had been arranged.”
Rahotep smiled wryly. “Unis takes the precautions of an elephant hunter to steal upon a flea. Does he believe that I shall gather a host and march upon Semna to wrest Ptahhotep’s seal from his finger--?” But his smile faded as he watched Methen’s sober face. “He can’t!” he protested. “To think that is sheer stupidity, and Unis cannot be accused of that!”
“Unis is not stupid; he is only human. He does, as all of us, judge others’ motives by his own. It is what he would do if he stood in Kah-hi and you sat in Semna. Why do you think you have been so long assigned to Kah-hi?”
“I am a captain of Scouts, we patrol the border, and Kah-hi is the first fort to front the Kush--”
But Methen was shaking his head, and his expression suggested that he had expected brighter wits in his protégé.
“Kah-hi is the least of all the border forts, the one most exposed to danger. Should the Kush arise in force and overrun this territory--as they have done in the past and will doubtless do many times in the future until we have a Pharaoh strong enough to teach them wisdom--Kah-hi would speedily cease to be. And among all the Nubian forces the losses are the greatest among the Scouts.”
Rahotep put one hand against the water-splashed wall. He felt a little sick and dizzy, as if a mace had crashed against the side of his skull.
“My father sent me here.” His voice was hardly above a whisper.
“You have lived five years on the border,” Methen replied. “There are venomous creatures hidden in the sands of Semna??
?s gardens--as the Viceroy himself discovered at last. A man can defend himself against the Kush. Against such secret sand creepers and those who may plant them in his path, he has a lesser chance. Ptahhotep may have saved your life by seeming to agree to throw it away--”
The sickness that had been a bitter taste in the captain’s mouth ebbed. Methen’s tone was measured, his words well chosen. Now Rahotep clung to the hope that he spoke the truth. His father had been aloof, but there had been no dealings between them in the past that had suggested that the Viceroy had a twisted or evil nature. One could better believe that he had deliberately sent his younger son into an open danger to protect him from a more subtle peril at home.
Perhaps that stab of suspicion and the relief that had followed with Methen’s words sharpened the captain’s wits, for another thought came so quickly that he shared it with the older officer.
“A son who did not come to mourn his father upon the tidings of his death could be rumored a traitor--could be accused of lingering to make mischief--” Rahotep dropped the towel and kicked it away, reaching for a fresh kilt to buckle on. As he slid his dagger home in the belt sheath, he heard Methen laugh softly.
“You have not filled your head with sand after all, boy. But I also do not doubt that Hamset may have received certain orders with his supplies--”
Rahotep had taken up his baton-flail; now he swung around to face the other. His usually well-curved lips were set in a thin line, giving his face some of the remote sternness of the forgotten statue in the ruined fort by the river.
“Hamset’s orders are for the officers under his command. But if I turn over to him my baton-flail, he no longer commands me and dares not stand between me and the outer gates of Kah-hi.”