Andre Norton - Shadow Hawk (26 page)

Huy reversed the whip again and brought the lash whistling across startled faces. Rahotep tripped one with the spear haft thrust between his legs and then fell on top of his quarry, banging his head back against one of the stones in the piles for wall building, so that the man went limp under him. He was able to arm himself with his victim's belt ax, coming up in the face of another guard with that blade swinging in the low and deadly arc he had been taught long ago.

Had the Hyksos been officered by one with his wits about him, perhaps they could have smothered Rahotep's small force, determined and deadly as the latter were. But Huy's first stroke of the lash had sent their commander crouching back against the wall, moaning, his hands over his eyes. And the men were totally disorganized by the attack they had not expected.

The Kush fought as a beast fights, with snapping teeth and rending nails, and Icar and the red-beard used their fists as well as the Nubians. When they were across that lane, they were all armed after a fashion, and those behind, if still living, had no interest in pursuit.

Icar slammed his shoulders back against a wall, and Huy followed his example. Together they formed a living ladder for their fellows, Rahotep being the first to be half-tossed to the top of the barrier. He scrambled across a flat roof of timbers coated with sun-dried mud, the typical covering of a poor district house, and hoped that the stuff would give them secure footing until they could leap the foot of space to the next. Running lightly along from one such roof to a second and a third, he flushed from his path two women and a child who screamed in fright.

The rest of the fugitives trailed him safely, and he dared to pause on the fourth roof to look about. But he had forgotten those towering walls about the town. Someone of the Hyksos officers had recovered from the first surprise and was going into efficient action. Slingers, stationed on the upper ramparts, were aiming into the melee below. And an overzealous marksman tried to reach the captain. Although that stone fell short, it sent them running on again.

But they were being headed away from the walls—to Rahotep's uneasiness. He dared not circle back for fear of capture. Had it been after nightfall he might have attempted a climb to the top and an attack upon some detachment of the guard. But in the full light of day there was no hope of that.

At length he swung by his hands from the edge of a roof and dropped into an alley from whence arose a cloud of buzzing flies and an awesome stench almost as bad as that of the slave warehouse. The others followed and clustered together for a moment, panting, looking about them for a new channel of escape.

Huy drew a heavy forearm across his forehead and grinned.

"Now that was a proper battle, Lord," he spoke to Rahotep, giving the Egyptian the title he would accord to any officer. "And you, outlander"—he surveyed Icar with open admiration—"have a pair of lungs in you! But how did you know they were coming to pick meat for their temple devil?"

Icar shrugged. "For all I know—they were not!"

Huy's grin split into open laughter, which his countryman echoed.

"So that was the way of it, white-skin? But I do not think these long-beards will relish your meddling—"

"Do any of you know Neferusi beyond the wall section and the slave warehouse?" Rahotep cut in crisply.

To his surprise the red-bearded stranger pushed forward the Kush. In a jargon of mixed languages, which was hardly intelligible to the Egyptian, he recommended the jungle savage as guide.

"This one—he live in temple—he tell—"

The Kush nodded violently and then clapped his hands together in pleasure as Rahotep demanded haltingly in the tongue of the border, "This place—you know? Where can we hide—until the big dark?"

The Kush spun around in the noisome alley, his nostrils expanding as if the horrible odor of the place masked another scent he would nose out. He quested so for a long moment and then pointed with an extended arm to the very heart of the city. Rahotep hesitated. Every step he took away from the outer walls added to his feeling of being cut off from escape. At the same time he knew that the city boundaries would be the first points covered by those striving to round up any escaped slaves. The fugitives could better go to ground somewhere in this maze of lanes and alleys where the soldiers would have to hunt them out house by house—until darkness gave them a small hope of cover.

The Kush stamped his foot with impatience and beckoned vigorously. It was apparent that he was entirely sure of himself, though why they should trust one of a race Rahotep had for years associated with every sly trick and wily treachery known he could not see. However, he had placed confidence in Huy and Icar, to his advantage, and the rest of them appeared willing to follow the jungle man, so he agreed.

Those festering, stinldng lanes were populated well enough, but men and women dodged back into their filthy huts when they saw the fugitives coming. To the captain's surprise there was no outcry raised, no one strove to detain them or betray their passing. It was the red beard who provided a measure of explanation.

"Slaves!" He spat and swatted at the stinging carrion flies busy about them. "Masters no come here—without swords and whips open in hand and their back guarded—"

The Kush was boring deeper into the heart of this unsavory slum, which appeared to cover a large part of Neferusi's inner rottenness. He brought them at last to a door over which hung a tattered curtain, once splashed with dabs of raw, but now faded, color, in crude patterns that Rahotep recognized as being from the far south. With a second imperative wave of his hand, the file-toothed savage swung around the edge of this, and they pattered after him.

There was gloom within, almost as great as the gloom that had darkened the warehouse the night before. The fearful odors of unwashed skins, spoiled beer, and ill-cooked food made Rahtep's stomach churn uneasily. A woman, her face grotesquely overpainted in imitation of the elongated eyes and reddened lips of a court lady, sat on a pile of mats in the slit of light admitted by the single window close to the roof. She was very stout, the dull red sheath of her dress cutting under rolls of flesh at her armpits. A wig of frizzled false hair widened her already vast face to a monstrous expanse.

The Kush squatted down on his heels before her, chattering away in his own tongue, and Rahotep caught only a word or two that he could understand. But to his surprise the red beard swaggered forward and grinned familiarly at the mountain of woman.

"Nebet—" With his accent her name came out in an odd half-lisp. "So you still be alive, eh?"

She frowned, and on that wide face a frown approached the nature of a storm cloud and crackled several layers of paint. "Menon—thief—slave-dog—pig—" She recited the epithets as if they were all a part of his given name. "Two rings of copper!" Her cushion of a hand swept out, palm up in a demand for payment. "Nebet does not eat air, drink air—where is that you owe her?"

Red beard dared to chuck her lightly under her third chin and then dodged expertly the blow she aimed at him with a fist as large and heavy as Kheti's, laughing loudly at his near escape.

"Enough!" Icar took a hand, and red beard looked at the taller seaman as a simple warrior might look to his Commander of Fifty. Icar stirred the Kush with his foot, sending him silent. He spoke over his shoulder to Rahotep.

"What was this one telling her, comrade?"

The Egyptian captain was forced to shake his head. Bewildered, he had the feeling that the leadership in this venture was sliding out of his control to Icar—or perhaps to the woman. "He spoke too swiftly. I know a little of their speech, but not that well."

"Menon"—it was master addressing man—"who is this woman? And what is this place? You have been here before?"

But in turn Menon made his report in another tongue, one he must share with Icar, for the seaman listened closely. Then he translated for Rahotep.

"This is a place for those who have a greater lilting for the night than the day, comrade—a place for thieves and such to take their ease. It is kept by one who does not welcome the Hyksos, and it would seem they do not come here often—or stay long—"

As he spoke, the woman had been glancing from face to face. Rahotep believed that her eyes were so accustomed to the gloom of her surroundings that she was able to see as well as Bis in a half light. Now she was watching him intently, too intently—and with a shrewdness the captain did not relish. It was as if under that searching appraisal she was summoning out of the air to clothe him the uniform of a guard officer. And in that moment he would have sworn she had noted the telltale patch of lighter skin on his fingers, the marks left by his armlets between elbow and shoulder.

But when she lifted her huge hand, crooking a finger with absurd daintiness to beckon him forward, he advanced as if she were the Royal Mother herself.

"You seek shelter?" Oddly enough the harsh tone with which she had berated Menon was gone from her voice. Her speech was almost without the northern accent, close to the clipped tongue of Thebes, and he thought that she was of the pure Egyptian blood.

"We do, lady." He used the address he would have used to one of his own caste, unconsciously paying tribute to that voice.

"For how long?" She was businesslike, a lodging keeper.

"Perhaps until the middle night—" He hoped that was all. But with the city stirred up like a Kush border village after a raid, he dared not do more than hope.

"You must take your chances if they track you here," she told him tartly. "I shall say that you forced yourself upon a helpless woman—"

Menon snickered loudly and rudely, and she paused to glare at him, with a half-raised fist promising a future reckoning.

"Do they come here often?" Rahotep countered. There was no need to give other name to that "they"—both of them understood too well.

She laughed comfortably, richly. "Not too often, young sir. Oh, aye, they raid now and again—to recover slaves—or to get food for their god—" She moved uneasily and made an ancient secret sign with her fingers to ward off evil. "But when they come, it is in strength and poor old Nebet has those who warn her. She also claims her just dues—" For the second time she glared at Menon. "And none of you carry any 'gold of valor' to pay for even a single jar of beer—" She surveyed their scanty slave rags disparagingly.

"True enough!" agreed Icar. "But have you not already said that we are desperate and evil men who have forced their way into the place of a weak and helpless woman?"

She turned her blackest frown upon the seaman, but she did not hold it. Her paint cracked again as she began to laugh, until her mountainous body shook helplessly.

"So you did!" she wheezed, "so you did! And also you have stirred them up as if you dropped an angry bees' nest into their midst—or else this one here tells lies bigger than he is—" She stretched forth one pudgy foot to point with its painted nails at the Kush. "Very well, warriors, take me prisoner and work your will here. I cannot withstand your rage and power!" With mock shyness she hid her face behind her hands and giggled—looking up quickly again to snap at Menon who had gone to a shelf and was coolly reaching down a jar of beer. "Go too far with your looting, pig-keeper, and you will feel the weight of my hand until your neck snaps in two! There is an end to Nebet's good nature and almsgiving!"

But she made no other move to stop him when he slopped the contents of the jar into a bowl and passed it with a land of rough ceremony to Icar who in turn proffered it to Rahotep. The stuff was thin and sour, but it was liquid and it cooled his throat. The captain swallowed several mouthfuls and passed it back to the seaman who finished it off at one gulp, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

"A man fills his belly with more than just beer," Icar hinted. "We have teeth to exercise in something more solid."

For a second Rahotep thought that Nebet was about to flare into a rage once more. Then she clapped her hands, and a wrinkled hag of a Kush woman scuttled from an inner room, listened to an order delivered in her own click speech, and disappeared, to return with a tray on which there were rounds of poor cakes, some too-soft dates, and an evil-smelling cheese. They wolfed it down with avid appetites. Poor as the stuff was, it was infinitely better than slave fare. Huy belched and stroked his stomach caressingly when he had finished.

"It is not the sweet flesh of a young gazelle, nor yet the fat of a buck in good season—and there are no mealie-mealies. But it will do to fill a man between his front and his backbone," he remarked. "Only what does the old witch want from us in return?"

Nebet must have either possessed the magical powers with which he credited her or more than natural hearing, for she peered at the Nubian from her couch of mats and smiled chillingly.

"You name Nebet 'old witch' do you, black-skin? Mind your manners lest she show you how much of a witch she is!"

Huy attempted to stare her down. But he moved uneasily and then added placatingly, "A witch is a woman of power, great lady. Is that not so? And in this city I would say that you are a woman of power. But also I ask, what do you want from us in return?"

"Let us say that I toss sticks with the future—or that I am a teller of tales—" She spoke over Huy to Rahotep. "In this city the walls are hung with ears, and, as this toad from the south has acknowledged, Nebet has power of a sort—enough to summon to her what those ears have heard. Today there has been a queer story of a stranger who entered Neferusi to spy —coming as a slave when indeed he is that which hovers in the air and watches with the Great Eye—"