Khu: A Tale of Ancient Egypt (19 page)

“Blood and sacrifice!
” the king shouted as he thrust a clenched fist into the air with wrath in his eyes.

The
crowd’s energy spiked his adrenaline, and his radiating power sent a ripple back over the throng in return.

“YES,” the people shouted back,
lost in his allure. Many of them were rocking back and forth, entranced by his irresistible magnetism, their heads flung back toward the sky, and their eyes closed in ecstasy.

Sudi felt his heart beating faster as he watched the mesmerized crowd
, whose hunger for change was stimulated by the words of Khety. And he could see why. The king’s deep voice and aristocratic bearing were simply bewitching. He looked every inch the god-king he proclaimed himself to be. His perfect features, erect bearing and booming voice left people spellbound.

Sudi also
felt himself almost swept away by Khety’s stunning presence, and he had not had a single drop of the ceremonial heqet. He saw the people go down on their knees and bow low to worship the king, who seemed to grow larger than life in the elongating shadows cast by a fiery setting sun. Several cats wandered near the king, one of which went right up to him and rubbed itself along the king’s muscled legs. And the crowd gasped, wide-eyed, as they took it as a sign that the goddess Bastet—protector of Lower Egypt—had shown favor over the king whom she would defend.

“
Save us, Lord King!” some of them shouted as the crowd pressed closer to the temple.

“Deliver us!” others yelled.

“We shall restore the great nation of Egypt to her former glory!” Khety boomed.

“
GLORY TO EGYPT,” the crowd thundered.

“To the land of plenty that our ancestors knew!”

“LAND OF PLENTY,” they echoed, as many of them held up the pottery jugs of heqet being passed around liberally. They stretched out their arms in elation with the jugs lifted up high in an offering, as though the gods themselves would partake of the copious libations that inflamed their euphoria.

“The great divide that has weakened the north
, while fattening the south, will be eradicated so all may flourish!” the king continued.

“
FLOURISH, LORD KING.”

“Your children will thrive in a new and prosperous
land!”

“YES
, LORD KING.

“And we will vanquish our enemies—enemies
who seek to oppress Egypt!”

“VANQUISH THEM.”

“Enemies who prey on the weak while paying homage to the strong!”

“VANQUISH THEM.”

“Enemies who wish to trod upon your bowed heads!”

“VANQUISH THEM.”

“We will gather them round like cattle for the slaughter.” Khety’s piercing eyes shone like a man possessed, as he whipped the mob into a frenzy. And they hung on every word that came from his mouth.

“
GATHER THEM, LORD KING.”

“And we will slaughter them!”

“SLAUGHTER THEM
. SLAUGHTER THEM. SLAUGHTER THEM,” they chanted.

It was then that the king motioned to Ankhtifi with a stabbing glance. Ankhtifi had been waiting patiently to one side, watching the events with his dark fathomless eyes that absorbed every detail of the crowd. He had his hand clasped around the upper arm of a man whose hands were bound behind him, and whose head was completely covered by a linen hood.

“Blood and sacrifice!” Khety
yelled as Ankhtifi pushed the hooded man toward the king, forcing him to his knees.

Two other bound and hooded men waited
under the watchful eyes of a guard. They stood next to one of the sphinxes that stared out through the torch-lit shadows engulfing the temple in the growing darkness.

“BLOOD
AND SACRIFICE,” echoed the crowd as their hunger grew more savage.

Ankhtifi withdrew the hood
which had been covering the kneeling man’s head and upper chest, and the crowd gasped once again. It was one of the temple priests who had carried the gilded barque of Osiris.

Th
ree of the priests had been secretly ambushed inside the tomb after refusing to swear their allegiance to Khety. Repeated efforts to coax and convince the priests to support Khety had been fruitless. Even the bribery attempts were unsuccessful in enticing them. The pressure had only made them hostile, so that they threatened to speak out against Khety publically. And when a more diplomatic approach had failed to sway them, they were bound and beaten for their resistance. Ankhtifi then brought them before the king so he could make an example of one of them—the ultimate sacrifice that would seal the pact between Khety and the people.

A blood sacrifice.

The bound priest managed to still look dignified in his long kilt, shaven head, and somber expression that belied the fear and outrage churning within him. But one of his eyes had been blackened, and blood ran down his scalp, as well as from a corner of his mouth. The ceremonial leopardskin cloak which was draped over a single shoulder across his body had been torn away, as had been the heavy collar necklace and carved staff that symbolized his authority. But his thick, gold arm bands set with carnelian and lapis lazuli, gleamed in the golden torch light.

Sudi tensed when he realized what Ankhtifi and Khety planned to do to the helpless
priest. All at once he understood it had been the priest’s blood which was streaked across Ankhtifi’s face, when Ankhtifi had mysteriously emerged from the tomb of Osiris earlier. The ruthless chieftain must have been the one to beat and bloody him and the others who had stood against King Khety’s plan.

Sudi
watched with disgust as Ankhtifi placed his hand on the hilt of a dagger hanging openly at his side. The chieftain’s favorite mace was no longer hidden, and also hung in plain sight from his hip.

Someone in the crowd began to chant
, and other voices joined in the chorus.

“
Blood.”

“
Blood.”

“
BLOOD.”

“
BLOOD.”

They
condensed all their hate, despair and desire for change into one murderous thought which they irrationally believed would deliver them from their plight.

The individuals in the crowd no longer acted
alone, but melded together, transforming into an angry mob pulsating with a life of its own.

Sudi felt the dynamic change as a thrumming energy resonated through the
people who freely forfeited their individuality to the collective force. He was transfixed as he watched this distinct entity charged with hate and need, demand a justice they felt they were owed, from a man who played upon their weaknesses like an accomplished musician plucking the strings of a harp.

“
BLOOD.”

“
BLOOD.”

“BLOOD.
”

T
he mob chanted louder this time, as it slithered and coiled more tightly around the temple, like a great serpent whose head was the king. Even the children who had been running around excitedly, had long abandoned their play and gone to stand by their parents’ sides, clutching their hands nervously.

Khety
climbed upon a platform that had been used earlier by the priests, so the pilgrims could more easily observe the performed rites before the gilded barque had visited the cemeteries. But Ankhtifi and his men kept the entranced mob from touching the king.

The mob pressed against itself
, and all the constraints that had subverted it for so long, becoming a creature of violence which fed on hate. The downtrodden who had come to Abdju in search of a new life, had infected others who had simply come to pay homage to the ancient god Osiris who now lay impotent in his dusty tomb.

Just as Ankhtif
i raised the dagger in his hand and poised it over the helpless priest, who now lay prostrate before the unyielding king, a scream pierced the night, momentarily distracting the mob and Ankhtifi. It was a shrill cry that caused King Khety’s own confidence to waver. And as he turned his gray eyes upwards, he spotted a ball of fire flying through the air toward him.

“Osiris!” one of the hooded
priests cried out in a desperate plea for divine help. He had not seen the fiery arrow barely miss the king. But he had heard the commotion which ensued as the lupine-faced Ankhtifi ran for cover with King Khety, whose fiercely regal expression had crumbled.

And just as quickly as it had formed, the mob disintegrated
into chaos.

That single shriek and fiery arrow had broken the spell of
the mob’s madness. Its coiled body split apart, morphing into a kind of frantic herd of frightened wildebeest that ran, pushing and shoving in a frenzied stampede, whose only thought was escape. The stupefying effects of the heqet, the fast encroaching darkness which swallowed the sky whole, and the torch smoke wafting over the crowd by a parched easterly desert breeze, convinced the people that the gods had suddenly turned against them in anger. And in their madness, they perceived the fire as a sign of the gods’ fury.

Several more arrows illuminated a fiery path as they whizzed above the dispersing crowd
toward the temple, whose sphinxes overlooked the now-vacant avenue which had been hastily abandoned. People were screaming and shouting as they left the temple grounds and ran blindly through the narrow streets of the town—streets which were made more frightening by the erratic shadows cast by torches in the marketplace. Pottery crashed to the ground, sacks of grain and spices spilled, fruit and vegetables rolled in the streets as tables were upturned and people tripped and fell on one another, some of them getting crushed in the process.

“Stay here, Lord King,” Ankhtifi told King Khety.

They had withdrawn into the colonnaded courtyard of the Temple of Osiris with an entourage of guards and officials, and their three captive priests. A silent rage was beginning to replace the shock of the sudden turning of events, and the king grit his teeth against it.

“Someone did this,”
Khety snarled through his clenched jaw. “This was not an act of the gods.”

Khety
was envisioning all his meticulous arrangements being swept away like the Nile waters over the floodplains. Over a year of scrupulous planning had gone into the details which had unfolded this night. Over a year of meetings, and training, and strategizing, and waiting. But it had been a lifetime of ambition.

“An enemy,” Ankhtifi said.

“Find them,” Khety growled at some of his guards, with fury in his eyes, as several of his men left the temple to see who was behind the disaster, “and burn the town. Burn and destroy everything, including the royal necropolis. Leave nothing untouched! Destroy it all!” The power he had wielded over the crowd had dissolved as soon as they had panicked and dispersed.

But the battle had not yet been lost—it was just beginning. He would just have to go about it differently than he had originally
planned.

The king thought about his small kingdom that was barely held together by the blood of his enemies. He thought of the throne which had been left to him by his father, and his grandfather before him. That throne rested on a dream of reunifying the lands—a dream which had been stoked and nurtured over time.

The seat of Lower Egypt
’s throne in Nen-nesu had never been very large or stable to begin with. It had risen from the ashes of the Old Kingdom’s disintegration in Inebou-Hedjou. But other thrones had risen as well, as the central authority over the land disintegrated, and the provincial powers grew stronger. And although they had ruled their own city-settlements effectively, their power did not extend beyond the short reach of their arms. One by one, Khety had crushed them and usurped their power, growing more gluttonous and greedy as a result. King Mentuhotep was the last obstacle to his dream of ultimate power over Egypt; but a formidable obstacle indeed.

“Leave me!” Khety shouted abruptly
, as one of his attendants tried to calm him.

The startled man slunk away like a dog with his tail tucked beneath him
, and stepped outside the courtyard.

Khety
was pacing back and forth among the gigantic columns that safeguarded and adorned the temple’s private covered courtyard. He felt like a caged beast. He wanted to destroy the temple whose pillars felt like the constricting bars of a colossal pen. He flung his scepter onto the stone floor instead. He took a jagged breath and rubbed the back of his neck, as his thoughts roamed south, to Thebes, where Mentuhotep ruled. He closed his eyes against the envy burning in his blood. He closed his eyes tightly and drew his brows together, so that a deep, vertical line appeared to cleave his high forehead in two.

He
coveted the Theban throne. He coveted it with every fiber of his lonely being. And he coveted everything belonging to the Theban ruler—his wives, his children, his lands, his very life.

Khety
wanted power over all of Egypt, and he wanted the respect and adoration the people showed the ruler of Upper Egypt.