Ancient World 02 - Raiders of the Nile (19 page)

Menkhep wheeled his camel about and set off without another word.

“Hold tight, Djet,” I whispered, and followed.

Menkhep kept to a steady pace, neither fast nor slow. I gnashed my teeth with impatience as our pursuers drew closer. Did Menkhep not realize how quickly they were gaining on us? Then I heard a cry of terror, and looked back. The man leading the pack went flying off his camel as the beast tripped over the palm trunk lying across the path.

Menkhep glanced back. “One down!” he shouted.

So it went. My skills as a camel rider were pressed to their limit as I followed Menkhep, veering this way and that, mimicking his movements as precisely as I could, trusting that he knew the snares and traps along the way and how to avoid them. Behind us, our reckless pursuers were less fortunate as they encountered one hazard after another. Some of these hazards were merely inconvenient. Others were deadly.

That long, jostling, breathless ride took on the quality of a comical nightmare. Again and again one of our pursuers gained on us and drew close, so that I could hear the man shouting behind me and could see his face clearly if I dared to look over my shoulder. Again and again some terrible fate befell these pursuers.

We came to a place where the path split in two around a clump of foliage that grew like an island in the middle. We veered to the left. Our nearest pursuer veered to the right—and went plunging, camel and all, into a shallow pit concealed by palm branches. The camel bellowed in pain. The rider went flying through the air.

The path widened. We kept to the right side. The pursuer breathing down my neck rode straight down the middle, and struck a trigger that caused a barrier on a hinge to spring across the path, knocking camel and rider both to the ground. The next pursuer, following too closely to stop, collided with the fallen rider.

With this obstacle effectively blocking the path, the pursuit ended, at least for a while. Menkhep took the opportunity to slacken our pace, which was a good thing, for the hazards grew ever more frequent and more dangerous, and it required all my strength and attention to keep up and follow his movements exactly.

Eventually, the path behind us must have been cleared, for more pursuers came thundering after us. One by one they dropped by the wayside, felled by a variety of ingenious traps—arrows released by hidden triggers, slingshots set off by tripwires—until only one dogged pursuer remained. As the path twisted and turned, I tried to get a look at the man, and at last I caught a glimpse of his long beard flapping like a pennant in the dappled sunlight. It was Harkhebi.

The oldest of the pursuers he might have been, but perhaps he was also the most experienced on camelback, and the most cautious, which accounted for his survival thus far. But if Harkhebi was that cautious, why did he not give up the pursuit? Having tracked me—and the ruby—all the way from Canopus, and having come so close to catching me, the old man must have found it impossible to abandon the hunt. Even wise men lose all common sense when caught up in the thrill of the chase.

If Harkhebi had had his way, my head would have been cut off and sent back to Canopus as a trophy. My body would have been defiled and my memory blackened, and who knows what might have become of Bethesda, or of Djet, for that matter? I had no reason to shed a tear for Harkhebi. Still, his fate sent a shudder through me.

The trail widened. The leafy tunnel opened, and I saw blue sky above. The road rose before me, heading slightly uphill. Behind me, I heard Harkhebi shout encouragement to his camel. His hoarse voice sounded very close.

Ahead of me, Menkhep veered suddenly to the left, off the trail entirely. His beast knew the way, and made the small leap onto a low shelf of rock without breaking stride. Could my mount do likewise, at such a speed and at such short notice? It seemed madness to follow Menkhep, but I pulled hard on the reins to steer the camel sharply to the left.

I felt the beast resist. I had no time to think. I pulled the reins harder. At the last possible instant, the camel made the leap and went clattering along behind Menkhep.

Harkhebi may have attempted the same maneuver—I heard him shout something—but if so, his camel could not or would not respond in time, and instead went hurtling forward.

Just beyond the crest of the low hill, a deep, narrow trench ran all the way across the road. Had the camel been traveling at a slower pace it might have seen the trench in time, and simply stepped across it. But the ingenious placement rendered the trench invisible to anyone traveling at a gallop until it was too late. The camel’s forelegs landed in the narrow trench, causing it to stumble and pitch violently forward.

Harkhebi was thrown from the beast and went flying through the air. He did not land on the road, for this was where the road ended. Where the road should have been there was a long, wide pit as deep as a man is tall, filled with wooden stakes set close together and sharpened to a fine point.

I didn’t see him land in the pit, but I heard his cry as he hurtled through the air, and then his scream as he landed on the spikes, accompanied by sounds of his body being punctured in many places—ripping, gasping, liquid sounds quite unlike anything I had ever heard before, and would never want to hear again.

Menkhep drew his camel to a halt, then circled back to take a look. I followed. At the edge of the pit, the camels turned their heads away and nervously stamped their forelegs. It was a curious thing, I thought, that two dumb animals should be more squeamish than the creatures who rode them.

Djet cried out at the terrible sight. Too late, I covered his eyes with my hand.

Since Harkhebi had landed front-down, we were at least spared the sight of his face. The stakes impaling him glistened with blood and gore. He continued to live for a short while—unless, as sometimes happens, the rattling of breath and the convulsing of limbs were the spasms of a man already dead. Then his arms and legs contracted, his chest deflated, his hands curled into claws, and Harkhebi moved no more.

I saw that many of the stakes were darkened by older bloodstains. Harkhebi was not the first victim of the pit.

I felt compelled to call his name. “Harkhebi?”

He made no answer. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and spoke more loudly. “Harkhebi?”

The silence was broken by a plaintive sound from his camel, which lay on its side before the pit, thrashing its limbs and unable to stand. The poor beast had broken both forelegs.

Menkhep snorted. “A city father from Sais, he called himself. A wise old man, supposedly. He should have known better than to follow us all this way, the crazy fool! What a mess will have to be cleaned up—not just here, but all up and down the trail.”

“Cleaned up?” I said.

“Corpses must be stripped of their valuables and disposed of. Traps must be reloaded and reset. Camels must be rescued, or put out of their misery. I shall take care of this beast now.” He pulled the dagger from the scabbard at his waist. “What a lot of work for the Cuckoo’s Gang! I hope you’re worth the bother, Roman.”

Menkhep stared at me with a stiff jaw and eyes like flint. Where was the easygoing shopkeeper with whom I had dined the previous night? What sort of man had I followed into this place of merciless death, from which there could be no turning back?

XVIII

We had come to the end of the road. When I turned my back on the pit with its deadly stakes, and rose as high as I could on my camel, I saw before us what appeared to be an impenetrable thicket.

Menkhep tied his own mount to a tree some distance away, and indicated that I should dismount and do likewise. “Gather your things and carry them with you,” he said. “And don’t forget that ruby!” He flashed a crooked smile. “From here we proceed on foot.”

“How much farther?” I peered into the thicket and listened to the silence. It seemed impossible that any sort of camp or settlement could be nearby.

Menkhep ignored my question. “Have you got everything?”

I nodded.

“Then follow me.”

He seemed to disappear into the thickest part of the foliage, but when I arrived at the same spot, I saw an opening amid the leaves. The winding path, such as it was, grew so narrow in places that I had to step sideways. Djet had an easier time, though at one point he tripped and fell over a tangle of roots.

We headed gradually downhill, until the pathway ended on the banks of a small, heavily shaded lagoon. Our arrival startled a pair of long-beaked ibises. The birds flapped their broad white wings and took flight.

Pulled up on the muddy bank and tied to posts were several boats. Menkhep pulled one of these long, slender vessels into the shallow water and held it in place while Djet and I climbed aboard. The boat was so narrow that we had to sit in single file. I was in the middle, with Djet in front and Menkhep behind.

“Know how to row?” he asked.

“Well enough,” I said.

Menkhep laughed. “A shopkeeper learns to tell when people are lying. You’ve never held an oar in your life, have you?”

“Well…”

“Dip your paddle in one side, then the other, like this.” He demonstrated while I craned my neck to observe. “I’ll steer. The stronger and faster you stroke, the sooner we’ll get there and have something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

With Menkhep observing my strokes and giving me pointers, we traveled from one lagoon to another, threading our way through floating lotus gardens and tall stands of reeds that swayed in the breeze, shaded now and again by miniature forests of papyrus along the marshy banks. Dragonflies flitted around us. Gnats and midges and multitudes of other winged insects danced in swarms above the water. Everywhere I looked, the world seemed to buzz and sigh and throb with life. I fell into the rhythm of rowing and beheld the teeming spectacle with detached bemusement—until the gnats began to buzz in my ears and the midges landed on my lips and eyelashes and flew up my nose. I blinked and snorted and batted at them helplessly, almost losing my paddle.

Laughing at my torment, Menkhep instructed Djet to turn around and dispatch the insects by blowing at them and waving them away.

I resumed rowing, and eventually fell into a steady rhythm, feeling the pull of the sparkling green water against my oar, matching my strength against the river. The routine at length gave way to monotony, and the monotony to boredom, and then to fatigue, and at some point it seemed to me that we must be going in circles, passing through the same lagoon over and over, traversing a watery vista with no discernible landmarks. Perhaps Menkhep actually did trick me into crossing the same stretch of waterway more than once, so as to confuse me and make it harder for me to find my way in or out.

At last we turned up a narrow inlet with grassy marshes on either side. Menkhep told me to stop rowing. The boat came to a stop, and for a few moments we floated in place, watching sparkles of sunlight on the water and listening to the buzzing of insects. Then, from the tall grass to our right, I heard a series of whistles that did not sound like any bird I had heard in the Delta. Putting his fingers in his mouth, Menkhep replied with a similar series of whistles. After a pause, we heard yet more whistling.

“That’s the go-ahead signal,” said Menkhep. “Start rowing again, while I steer us around that little bend. Then you’ll see it.”

“See what?” I started to say, but a moment later my question was answered. At the far end of the narrow lagoon I saw a little village of huts. The huts were made of dried mud and wattle, with thatched roofs. They looked like the Hut of Romulus on the Palatine Hill, which my father had shown me when I was little. Rome itself had begun as a settlement of huts such as this.

Projecting into the lagoon was a long, low pier, to which were tied a great many boats. These vessels were twice as wide as the one in which I sat and much longer, large enough to accommodate perhaps twenty men or more. From the direction we had come, a young man went running along the bank of the lagoon ahead of us, holding a whistle to his mouth and blowing a series of notes. This was the lookout who had given us the go-ahead, who was now alerting his comrades to our arrival.

Men began to emerge from the huts and the surrounding greenery. What had I expected the members of the Cuckoo’s Gang to look like? Wild-eyed savages, I suppose. In fact, they were a motley group. Most were in their late twenties or thirties, but some were my age or even younger. There were no old men among them, and the few who had gray in their beards looked exceptionally fit.

Some were unshaven and shaggy-headed, but others were well groomed. Some wore ragged tunics or loincloths, but others were well dressed, and all were adorned with jewelry—flaunting the finery they had robbed from their victims, no doubt. A few, except for their jewelry, were completely naked. This startled me, for where I came from, outside the baths, only slaves and children were ever seen naked in public. Of course, this was not a public place, but quite the opposite; we had arrived in one of the most secluded and secret spots on earth. The members of the gang were all male—with one curious and surprising exception, as I was soon to discover—and whether a man went dressed or undressed mattered not at all to them. Those who preferred to walk about naked did so.

A few scowled at the sight of us, but others regarded us with blank expressions or even smiled. Several of the men gave a friendly wave to Menkhep.

More and more men gathered. From where I sat it was hard to estimate their numbers, but there must have been well over a hundred, perhaps as many as two hundred.

As we approached the pier, Menkhep called for me to stop rowing. He steered us into place, turning the boat so that we came to a stop perpendicular to the end of the pier. My legs were stiff from sitting, and my arms ached from rowing. I was eager to step out of the boat. So, apparently, was Djet, who sprang up at once.

“Sit down!” snapped Menkhep.

Djet gave him a puzzled look.

“Do as he says,” I whispered. “Wait until we’re invited.”

Red-faced, Djet settled back into the prow of the boat.