Текст книги "River god"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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  In frantic haste I hacked a length of bamboo from the framework of the nearest chariot, and I cut a hollow tube from the end of it and pushed this into the wound. The bamboo tube held the wound open and the colt relaxed his struggles as the air sucked and blew unimpeded through it.

  'Hui!' I yelled for him. 'I will show you how to save them.'

  Before night fell, I had trained a hundred or more of the charioteers and grooms to perform this crude but effective surgery, and we worked on through the night by the wavering, uncertain light of the oil lamps.

  There were over thirteen thousand horses in the royal herds by this time. We could not save them all, although we tried. We worked on, with the blood from the severed throats caking black up to our elbows. When exhaustion overcame us, we fell on a bale of hay and slept for an hour and then staggered up and went back to work.

  Some of the horses were not as badly affected by this pestilence, which I had named the Yellow Strangler. They seemed to have an in-born resistance to its ravages. The discharge from their nostrils was no more copious than I had seen in the gnu herds, and many of these remained on their feet and threw off the disease within days.

  Many others died before we were able to open the windpipe, and even some of those, on which we had successfully operated, died later from mortification and complication of the wound which we had inflicted. Of course, many of our horses were out on expeditions into the plains and beyond my help. Prince Memnon lost two out of every three of his steeds and had to abandon his chariots and return to the Qebui rivers on foot.

  In the end we lost over half our horses, seven thousand dead, and those that survived were so weakened and cast down that it was many months before they were strong and fit enough to pull a chariot. Patience's colt survived and replaced his old dam in my affections. He took the right-hand trace in my chariot, and was so strong and reliable that I -called him Rock.

  'How has this pestilence affected our hopes of a swift return to Egypt?' my mistress asked me.

  'It has set us back many years,' I told her, and saw the pain in her eyes. 'We lost most of our best-trained old horses, those like Patience. We will have to breed up the royal herds all over again, and train young horses to take their places in the traces of the chariots.'

  I waited for the annual migration of the gnu the following year with dread, but when it came and their multitudes once more darkened the plains, Habani was proved correct. Only a few of our horses developed the symptoms of the Yellow Strangler, and these in a mild form that set them back for only a few weeks before they were strong enough to work again.

  What struck me as strange was that the foals born in the period after the first infection of the Yellow Strangler, those who had never been exposed to the actual disease, were as immune as their dams who had contracted a full dose. It was as though the immunity had been transferred to them in the milk that they sucked from their mother's udder. I was certain that we would never again have to experience the full force of the plague.

  MY MAJOR DUTY NOW, LAID UPON ME BY my mistress, was the construction of Pharaoh's tomb in the mountains. I was obliged to spend much of my time in that wild and forbidding place, and I became fascinated by those mountains and all their moods.

  Like a beautiful woman, the mountains were unpredictable, sometimes remote and hidden in dense moving veils of clouds that were shot through with lightning and riven with thunder. At other times they were lovely and seductive, beckoning to me, challenging me to discover all their secrets and experience all their dangerous delights.

  Although I had eight thousand slaves to prosecute the task, and the unstinted assistance of all our finest craftsmen and artists, the work on the tomb went slowly. I knew it would take many years to complete the elaborate mausoleum which my mistress insisted we must build, and to decorate it in a fashion fit for the Lord of the Two Kingdoms. In truth there was no point in hurrying the work, for it would take as long to rebuild the royal horse herds and train the Shilluk infantry regiments until they were a match for the Hyksos squadrons against which they would one day be matched.

  When I was not up in the mountains working at the tomb, I spent my time at Qebui, where there were myriad different tasks and pleasures awaiting me. These ranged from the education of my two little princesses to devising new military tactics with Lord Tanus and the prince.

  By this time it was clear that, whereas Memnon would one day command all the chariot divisions, Tanus had never outgrown his first distrust of the horse. He was a sailor and an infantryman to the bone, and as he grew older, he was ever more conservative and traditional in his use of his new Shilluk regiments.

  The prince was growing into a dashing and innovative charioteer. Each day he came to me with a dozen new ideas, some of them farfetched, but others quite brilliant. We tried them all, even the ones that I knew were impossible. He was sixteen years old when Queen Lostris promoted him to the rank of Best of Ten Thousand.

  Now that Tanus rode with me so seldom, I slowly took over the role of Memnon's principal driver. We developed a rapport which became almost instinctive, and which extended to our favourite team of horses, Rock and Chain. When we were on the march, Memnon still liked to drive, and I stood on the footplate behind him. However, as soon as we engaged in action, he would toss me the reins and seize his bow or his javelins from the rack. I would take the chariot into the fray and steer it through the evolutions we had dreamed up together.

  As Memnon matured and his strength increased, we began to win some of the prizes at the games and the military tattoos that were a feature of our lives at Qebui. First, we triumphed in the flat races where our team of Rock and Chain could display its paces to the full; then we began to win the shooting and javelin contests. Soon we were known as the chariot that had to be beaten before anyone could claim the champion's ribbon from Queen Lostris.

  I remember the cheers as our chariot flew through the final gate of the course, myself at the traces and Memnon on the footplate hurling a javelin right and left into the two straw-filled dummies as we passed, then the mad dash down the straight, with the prince howling like a demon and the long wind-blown plait of his hair standing out behind his head, like the tail of a charging lion.

  Soon there were other encounters in which the prince began to distinguish himself, and those without any assistance from me. 'Whenever he strode past the young girls, with the Gold of Valour gleaming on his chest and the champion's ribbon knotted into his plait, they giggled and blushed and slanted their eyes in his direction. Once I entered his tent in haste with some important news for him, only to come up short as I found my prince well mounted and oblivious to all but the tender young body and the pretty face beneath him. I withdrew silently, a little saddened that the age of his innocence was past.

  Of all these pleasures, none for me could compare with those precious hours that I was still able to spend with my mistress. In this her thirty-third year she was in the very high summer of her beauty. Her allure was enhanced by her sophistication and her poise. She had become a queen indeed, and a woman without peer.

  All her people loved her, but none of them as much as I did. Not even Tanus was able to surpass me in my devotion to her. It was my pride that she still needed me so much, and relied upon me and my judgement and my advice so trustingly. Notwithstanding the other blessings that I had to adorn my existence, she would ever be the one great love of my life.

  I SHOULD HAVE BEEN CONTENTED AND replete, but there is a restlessness in my nature that was exacerbated by this new wanderlust that had come to plague me. Whenever I paused from my labours at Pharaoh's tomb, and looked up at them, the mountains beckoned me. I began to make short excursions into their lonely gorges, often alone but sometimes with Hui or some other companion.

  Hui was with me when I first saw the herds of wild ibex high above us in the lofty crags of the mountain. They were of a species we had never seen before. They stood twice as tall as the wild goats that we knew from the Nile valley, and some of the old billy-goats carried such a mass of curling horn that they seemed as monstrous as some fabulous beast.

  It was Hui who carried reports of these huge ibex back to the twin rivers where the fleet lay at Qebui, and within the month, Lord Tanus arrived at the valley of the king's tomb, with his bow over his shoulder and Prince Memnon at his side. The prince was fast becoming as ardent a huntsman as his father, and was every bit as eager for the chase. As for myself, I welcomed the chance to explore those fascinating highlands in such company.

  We had meant to venture only as far as the first line of peaks, but when we climbed to their crest, we were presented with a vista that was breathtaking. We saw other mountains against the sky that were shaped like flat-topped anvils, and were the tawny colour of lions. They dwarfed the peaks on which we stood and lured us onwards.

  The Nile climbed in concert with us up through precipitous valleys and dark gorges that churned its waters to gleaming white. We could not always follow its course, but in places were forced to climb above it and follow giddy goat-tracks across the face of a frowning mountain.

  Then, when we had been lured deep into its maw, the mountain loosed its full fury upon us.

  We were one hundred men in our company, with ten pack-horses to carry our provisions. We were camped in the depths of one of these fathomless gorges, with the fresh trophies of Tanus' and Memnon's latest hunt laid out upon the rocky floor for our appraisal and admiration. These were two goat's heads, the largest we had seen in all our travels, so heavy in horn that it took two slaves to lift one of them. Suddenly it began to rain.

  In our Egyptian valley it may rain once in twenty years. None of us had ever imagined anything even remotely like the rain that fell upon us now.

  First, dense black clouds roofed over the narrow strip of sky that showed between the cliffs that walled us in, so that we were plunged from sunny noon into deep twilight. A cold wind raced down the valley and chilled our bodies and our spirits. We huddled together in dismay.

  Then lightning lanced from the sombre belly of the clouds and shattered the rocks around us, filling the air with the smell of sulphur and sparks struck from flint. Thunder burst upon us, magnified as it rolled from cliff to cliff, and the earth jumped and trembled beneath our feet.

  Then the rain fell. It did not come down upon us in the form of drops. It was as though we stood under one of the cataracts of the Nile when the river was in full flood. There was no longer ah– to breathe, water filled our mouths and our nostrils so that we felt that we were drowning. The rain was so thick that we could see only the blurred outline of the man who stood an arm's-length away. It battered us so that we were thrown down and cringed beneath the nearest rock for shelter. Still it assaulted all the senses and stung our exposed skin like a swarm of angry hornets.

  It was cold. I had never known such cold, and we were covered only with our thin linen shawls. The cold sucked the force out of my limbs, and we shivered until our teeth clattered together in our mouths, and we could not still them even though we bit down with all the strength of our jaws.

  Then, above the sound of the falling rain, I heard a new sound. It was the sound of water which had become a ravening monster. Down the narrow valley where we lay swept a wall of grey water. It stretched from cliff to cliff, and carried everything before it.

  I was caught up in it and tumbled end over end. I felt life being beaten out of me as I was thrown against the rocks, and icy water filled my throat. Darkness overwhelmed me, and I thought that I was dead.

  I have a vague recollection of hands dragging me from the flood, and then I was wafted away to some dark and distant shore. The voice of my prince called me back. Before I could open my eyes I smelled wood-smoke, and felt the warmth of the flames on one side of my body.

  'Tata, wake up! Speak to me.' The voice was insistent, and I opened my eyes. Memnon's face floated before me, and he smiled at me. Then he called over his shoulder, 'He is awake, Lord Tanus.'

  I found that we were in a rock cave and that outside, the night had fallen. Tanus came across from the smoky fire of damp wood and squatted beside the prince.

  'How are you, old friend? I don't think you have broken any bones.'

  I struggled into a sitting position, and gingerly tested every part of my body before I replied, 'My head is cracked through, and every limb aches. Apart from that, I am cold and hungry.'

  'You will live then,' Tanus chuckled, 'though a while ago I doubted any of us would. We have to get out of these cursed mountains before something worse happens. It was madness ever to venture into a place where the rivers come out of the sky.'

  'What about the others?' I asked.

  Tanus shook his head. "They are all drowned. You were the only one that we were able to drag from the flood.'

  'What about the horses?'

  'Gone,' he grunted. 'All gone.'

  'Food?'

  'Nothing,' Tanus replied. 'Even my bow is lost in the river. I have only the sword at my side and the clothes on my body.'

  AT DAWN WE LEFT OUR ROCK SHELTER and started back down that treacherous valley. At the foot of the gorge we found the bodies of some of our men and the horses strewn upon the rocks where they had been stranded when the flood receded.

  We scavenged amongst the rocks and scree, and we managed to recover some of our stores and equipment. To my great joy I found my medicine chest still intact, though flooded with water. I laid out the contents on a rock, and while they dried, I fashioned a sling from a leather harness to carry the chest upon my back.

  In the meantime, Memnon had cut strips of meat from the carcass of one of the horses and grilled them over another fire of driftwood. When we had eaten our fill, we saved the rest of the meat, and set out on the return.

  The journey slowly descended into nightmare as we scaled steep rocky slopes and dropped into the gorges beyond. There seemed to be no end to this terrible wilderness, and our bruised feet in open sandals protested each step. At night we shivered miserably around a smoky little fire of driftwood.

  By the second day we all knew that we had lost the way, and that we were wandering aimlessly. I was certain that we were doomed to die in these terrible mountains. Then we heard the river and, as we topped the next saddle between peaks, we found the infant Nile winding through the depths of the gorge below us. That was not all. On the banks of the river we saw a collection of coloured tents, and amongst them moved the shapes of men.

  'Civilized men,' I said immediately, 'for those tents must be of woven cloth.'

  'And those are horses,' Memnon agreed eagerly, pointing out the animals tethered on the lines beyond the encampment.

  'There!' Tanus pointed. 'That was the flash of sunlight off a sword-blade or a spear-head. They are metal-workers.' 'We must find out who these people are.' I was fascinated by what tribe could live in such an inhospitable land.

  'We will get our throats cut,' Tanus growled. 'What makes you believe these mountaineers are not as savage as the land in which they live?' Only later would we come to know these people as Ethiopians.

  'Those are magnificent horses,' Memnon whispered. 'Our own are not so tall, or so sturdy. We must go down and study them.' The prince was a horseman above all else.

  'Lord Tanus is right.' His warning had aroused my usual prudent nature, and I was ready to counsel caution. These might be dangerous savages, with but the trappings of civilized men.'

  We sat upon the shoulder of the mountain and debated, for a while longer, but in the end curiosity got the better of all three of us and we crept down through one of the ravines to spy upon these strangers.

  As we drew closer, we saw that they were tall, well-built people, probably more robust in stature than we Egyptians are. Their hair was thick and dark and curled profusely. The men were bearded, and we are clean-shaven. They wore full-length robes, probably woven of wool, and brightly coloured. We go bare-chested and our kilts are usually pure white in colour. They wore soft leather boots, as opposed to our sandals, and a bright cloth wound around their heads. The women we saw working amongst the tents were unveiled and cheerful. They sang and called to each other in a language I had never heard before, but their voices were melodious as they drew water, or squatted over the cooking-fires, or ground corn on the millstones.

  One group of men was playing a board-game that, from where I hid, looked very much like bao. They were wagering and arguing over the play of the stones. At one stage, two of them leapt to their feet and drew curved daggers from their belts. They confronted each other snarling and hissing, like a pair of angry tom-cats.

  At that stage a third man, who had been sitting alone, rose to his feet and stretched, like a lazy leopard. He sauntered across and, with his sword, knocked up the daggers. Immediately the two protagonists subsided and slunk away.

  The peace-maker was clearly the chief of the party. He was a tall man, with the wiry frame of a mountain goat. He was goat-like in other ways. His beard was as long and thick as that of an ibex ram, and his features were coarse and goaty; he had a heavy, hooked nose and a wide mouth with a cruel slant to it. I thought that he probably stank like one of the old rams that Tanus had shot from the cliff-face.

  Suddenly I felt Tanus grip my arm, and he whispered in my ear, 'Look at that!'

  This chieftain wore the richest apparel of any of them. His robe was striped in scarlet and blue and his earrings were stones that glowed like the full moon. But I could not see what had excited Tanus.

  'His sword,' Tanus hissed. 'Look at his sword.'

  I studied it for the first time. It was longer than one of our weapons and the pommel was obviously of pure gold filigree-work, of a delicacy that I had never seen before. The hand-guard was studded with precious stones. It was a masterpiece that clearly had occupied some master craftsman his lifetime.

  This was not what had captured Tanus' attention, however. It was the blade. As long as the chief's own arm, it was made of a metal that was neither yellow bronze nor red copper. In colour it was a strange silvery glittering blue, like the living scales of a Nile perch taken fresh from the river. It was inlaid with gold, as if to highlight its unique value.

  'What is it?' Tanus breathed. 'What metal is that?'

  'I do not know.'

  The chief resumed his seat in front of his tent, but now he laid the sword across his lap, and, with a phallus-shaped piece of volcanic rock, began lovingly to stroke the edge of the blade. The metal emitted a ringing thrill of sound to each touch of the stone. No bronze ever resounded like that. It was the purr of a resting lion.

  'I want it,' Tanus whispered. 'I will never rest until I have that sword.'

  I gave him a startled glance, for I had never heard such a tone in his voice. I saw that he meant what he said. He was a man struck with a sudden overpowering passion.

  'We cannot remain here longer,' I told him softly. 'We will be discovered.' I took his arm, but he resisted. He was staring at the weapon.

  'Let us go to look at their horses,' I insisted, and at last he allowed me to draw him away. I led Memnon by the other hand. At a safe distance we circled the camp, and crept back towards the horse-lines.

  When I saw the horses close up, I was struck with a passion as fierce as Tanus had conceived for the blue sword. These were a different breed from our Hyksos horses. They were taller and more elegantly proportioned. Their heads were noble and their nostrils wider. I knew those nostrils were the mark of stamina and good wind. Their eyes were situated further forward in the skull and were more prominent than those of our animals. They were great soft eyes, shining with intelligence.

  'They are beautiful,' whispered Memnon at my side. 'Look at the way they hold their heads and arch their necks.'

  Tanus longed for the sword, we coveted the horses with a passion that equalled his.

  'Just one stallion like that to put to our mares,' I pleaded to any god who was listening. 'I would exchange my hope of eternal life for a single one.'

  One of the foreign grooms glanced in our direction, then said something to the fellow beside him and began to walk in our direction. This time I had no need to insist, and all three of us ducked down behind the boulder that sheltered us and crawled away. We found a secure hiding-place further down-river, amongst a tumbled heap of boulders, and immediately launched into one of those discussions in which all spoke together and none listened.

  'I will go in and offer him a thousand deben of gold,' Tanus swore, 'I must have that sword.'

  'He would kill you first. Did you not see him stroke it as though it was his first-born son?'

  'Those horses!' marvelled Memnon. 'I never dreamed of such beauty. Horus must have beasts like that to draw his chariot.'

  'Did you see those two fly at each other?' I cautioned. "They are savage men, and bloodthirsty. They would rip out your guts before you opened your mouth to utter a word. Besides, what do you have to offer in return? They will see we are destitute beggars.'

  'We could steal three of their stallions tonight and ride them down on to the plain,' Memnon suggested, and though the idea had appeal, I told him sternly, 'You are the crown prince of Egypt, not a common thief.'

  He grinned at me. 'For one of those horses, I would cut throats like the worst footpad in Thebes.'

  As we debated thus, we were suddenly aware of the sound of voices approaching along the river-bank from the direction of the foreign camp. We looked about for better concealment and hid away.

  The voices drew closer. A party of women came into view and they stopped below us at the water's edge. There were three older women, and a girl. The women wore robes of a drab hue, and cloths of black around their hair. I thought that they were servants or nursemaids. It did not occur to me then that they were gaolers, for they treated the girl with unusual deference.

  The girl was tall and slim, so that when she walked, she moved like a papyrus stem in the Nile breeze. She wore a short robe of rich wool, striped in yellow and sky blue, which left her knees bared. Though she wore short boots of soft stitched leather, I could see that her legs were lithe and smooth.

  The women stopped below our hiding-place, and one of the older women began to disrobe the girl. The other two filled the clay jars that they had carried down on their heads with water from the Nile. The river was still swollen with flood-water. No one could safely enter that icy torrent. It was clear that they intended bathing the girl from the jars.

  One of the women lifted the girl's robe over her head and she stood naked at the water's edge. I heard Memnon gasp. I looked at him and saw that he had forgotten entirely about stealing horses.

  While two of the women poured the water from the jars over the girl, the third woman wiped her down with a folded cloth. The girl held her hands above her head and circled slowly to allow them to wet every part of her body. She laughed and squealed at the cold, and I saw tiny goose-bumps rise around her nipples, which were the rich ruby of polished garnets, mounted like jewels on the peak of each smooth, round breast.

  Her hair was a dark bush of tight curls, her skin was the colour of the heart-wood of the acacia, when it has been buffed and oiled to a high patina. It was a rich, ruddy brown, that glowed in the high sunlight of the mountains.

  Her features were delicate, her nose narrow and chiselled. Her lips were soft and full, but without any thickness. Her eyes were large and dark, slanted above high cheek-bones. Her lashes were so thick that they tangled together. She was beautiful. I have only known one other woman who was more so.

  Suddenly she said something to the women with her. They stood aside, and she left them and climbed on those long naked legs towards us. But before she reached our hiding-place, she stepped behind a boulder that shielded her from her companions, but left her full in our view. She glanced around quickly, but did not see us. The cold water must have affected her, for she squatted quickly and her own water tinkled on the rock beneath her.

  Memnon groaned softly. It was instinctive, not intentional, a sound of longing so intense as to have become agony. The girl sprang to her feet and stared directly at him. Memnon was standing a little to one side of Tanus and me. While we were concealed, he was full in her view.

  The two of them stared at each other. The girl was trembling, her dark eyes enormous. I expected her to run or scream. Instead, she looked back over her shoulder in a conspiratorial gesture, as if to make certain that the women had not followed her. Then she turned back to Memnon and, in a soft sweet voice, asked a question, at the same time holding out her hand to him in a gesture of appeal.

  'I do not understand,' Memnon whispered, and spread his own hands in a gesture of incomprehension.

  The girl stepped up to him and repeated the question impatiently, and when Memnon shook his head, she seized his hand and' shook it. In her agitation, her voice rose as she demanded something of him.

  'Masara!' One of her attendants had heard her. 'Masara!' It was obviously the girl's name, for she made a gesture of silence and caution to Memnon and turned to go back.

  However, the three women had all started up the slope after Masara. They were chattering with alarm and agitation, and they came round the side of the boulder in a pack and stopped when they saw Memnon.

  For a moment nobody moved, and then all three women screamed in unison. The naked girl seemed poised to run to Memnon's side, but as she started forward, two of the women seized her; all four of them were screaming now, as the girl struggled to be free.

  'Time to go home,' Tanus jerked my arm, and I was after him in a bound.

  From the direction of the camp came the shouts of many men aroused by the screams of the women. When I paused to look back, I saw them coming over the ridge in a body. I saw also that Memnon had not followed us, but had leaped forward to the girl's assistance.

  They were all big women and held the girl hard, redoubling their screams. Although Masara was trying desperately to pull free, Memnon could not get her away from them.

  'Tanus!' I yelled. 'Memnon is in trouble.'

  We turned back and between us grabbed him and hauled him away. He came reluctantly. 'I will come back for you,' he shouted to the girl, looking back over his shoulder as we ran with him between us. 'Be brave. I will come back for you.'

  When somebody tells me nowadays that there is no such thing as love at first sight, I smile quietly to myself and think of the day that Memnon first saw Masara.

  We had lost time in the struggle to get Memnon away, and our pursuers were already pressing us hard as we took to one of the goat-tracks and ran for the crest of the slope.

  An arrow flitted past Memnon's shoulder and clattered against the rocks beside the path. It spurred us to greater speed.

  We were in single file along the narrow path. Memnon led us and Tanus followed him. I was last in the file, and, burdened by the heavy medicine chest on my back, I began to fall further behind. Another arrow passed over our heads, and then the third struck the pack on my back with a force that made me stagger. But the chest stopped the arrow that would otherwise have transfixed my body.

  'Come on, Taita,' Tanus shouted back at me. 'Throw off that cursed box of yours, or they will have you.'

  He and Memnon were fifty paces ahead of me and drawing away, but I could not discard my precious chest. At that moment the next arrow struck, and this time I was not so fortunate. It hit me in the leg, in the fleshy part of the thigh, and I went tumbling across the path and fell hard.

  I rolled into a sitting position and looked with horror at the reed shaft of the arrow that protruded from my leg. Then I looked back at our pursuers. The bearded chieftain in the striped robe led them, and he had outdistanced his own men by a hundred paces. He was coming up the track in a series of great elastic bounds, covering the ground as swiftly as one of the ibex rams that he resembled in so many other ways.

  'Taita!' Tanus called back at me. 'Are you all right?' He had paused on the brow of the slope, and was looking back anxiously. Memnon had crossed over and was out of sight.

  'I am arrowed!' I yelled back. 'Go on and leave me. I cannot follow.'

  Without a moment's hesitation, Tanus turned back, and came leaping down towards where I lay. The Ethiopian chieftain saw him coming and bellowed a challenge. He . drew the glittering blue sword and brandished it as he came on up the hillside.

  Tanus reached the spot where I sat, and tried to lift me to my feet. 'It's no use. I am hard hit. Save yourself,' I told him, but the Ethiopian was almost upon us. Tanus dropped my arm, and drew his own sword.