Khu: A Tale of Ancient Egypt (7 page)

But now the square in front of the temple was deserted under a sullen moon, as two guards dragged away the injured man toward the pavilion where
he would be tied to a pillar to await the serving of justice.

“There are more of them,” Khu told Mentuhotep in a soft voice, his golden eyes fixed on
the trail of blood left by the injured thief.

Mentuhotep looked at Khu,
the lines between his brows deepening, as he narrowed his gaze dubiously, wondering how the boy could know this. He ran a hand slowly over his smooth scalp before finally giving the boy a hesitating nod. Khu’s large eyes were completely without guile, and betrayed nothing but sincerity. The king then turned to his other guards. “Hurry,” he ordered them, “do not let the others escape!”

The boat
waiting on the riverbank slipped quietly away in the darkness, whose tranquility had been disturbed by the commotion inland. Its four occupants dug their oars into the muddy shore and pushed with all their might. They bent low over the sides of the boat as they turned the vessel around and steered it north, away from Thebes. Only three of the five men who had disembarked earlier had returned.

The man
who had stayed behind and waited with the boat was frustrated with the night’s outcome. He vented his anger with every heave and push of the oar grasped tightly in his hands. He tried to tamp down his disappointment by forcing his thoughts back to the successes he had met recently. But that did not help.

It had not been his idea to come to Thebes.
One of the men in his band had convinced the others that it was a good plan. He had told them how Thebes had enjoyed a greater prosperity than its northern neighbors. It had not fallen into the state of disorder which had left chaos and famine in its wake. And although its good fortune had made it a worthy target, it had also made it more challenging to infiltrate than the scattered territories spread throughout Egypt.

“They have not been touched by famine
,” one of the men had said. “Their fields have yielded immeasurable
heqats
of grain.”

“How do you know this?”
the boatman asked doubtfully, his eyes narrowed and distrustful. “You are not among them, but here with us.” It was
his
boat they wished to use. It was always his boat. The others did not have two pieces of silver to call their own.

“Because I know someone there,” the man
replied sourly, setting his jaw.

“Really,
” was the flat response.

“Yes, and he happens to work for the king himself.”

The boatman’s eyes had widened at that, but he tried to hide his interest. He was the only one with something to lose in this bargain, after all. None of the others had any property of their own. Whatever loot they acquired had always been spent far quicker than the time it took to obtain it in the first place. It had disappeared like water evaporating from the hot desert sand. And after arranging further details, the man convinced all of them—including the boatman—of the plan. His promise of abundant grain spilling over the huge stone vats barely containing it within the storage houses, had been too much to resist.

And so they
came.

They had planned to steal the grain
, which was highly valued in the northern settlements that were afflicted by drought, and trade it for a profit. It had all sounded so easy. Too easy, in fact. And then everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong.

“Cursed,” the boatman spat under his breath
, his mood sulky and resentful.

But no one dared reply.
They kept their eyes fixed on the river as they rowed.

“The night was cursed,” he gr
umbled louder as they moved farther away from Thebes. “We were cursed!”

The
men continued to row, putting more and more distance between them and the scene of the foiled crime. What had gone wrong? What had caused them to fail? Their plans had been meticulously calculated. They had gone over the details countless times before this night. They had even studied a crudely drawn map, sketched by one of the men on a scroll. They had not made any noise, nor had anyone seen them when they arrived. And their spy who worked for the king—the same man who had been waiting for them by the riverbank—had assured them of their safety, and of the soundness of their plan.

“We were betrayed,” another man said. But by whom?
None of them suspected anyone; certainly not each other.

“
It was bad luck,” a third said as he touched his amulet.

“Cursed,” the boatman repeated again
, nodding to himself with a frown. “We were cursed.”

A breeze picked
up, stirring through the reeds, over the water, and drying the perspiration from the men’s bodies. The boatman dug harder with his oar, making the vessel lurch suddenly in the darkness. The other men adjusted their oars in time to the boatman’s lead, so that they kept moving in unison. A chorus of frogs sounded from the shore, and a nighthawk called out as it flew across the water.

The boatman exhaled his disappo
intment in a long and noisy breath, shaking his head in frustration as he rowed ahead. Nothing was guaranteed. He had known this—had known all the risks involved—but he had grown confident and brash after their previous successes. None of them had ever been caught before. No one had ever been hurt, and no one had been the wiser. But now their band had lost two men. Their streak of luck had broken, shattered under a Theban sky.

The gods watched
, even in darkness. The gods always watched.

The moon had drifted west
, glossing the lush valley and the desert hills rising in the distance. Its wan light left a pale glimmer on the water’s surface. The boatman touched a hand to the amulet encircling his wiry neck, and felt nothing but bitterness in the pit of his stomach. He stopped rowing to glance behind them once more, but saw that they were alone. No one was following.

Even the moon had lost interest
and abandoned them in the dark.

Khu stared at the gatekeeper who hurried over with one of the guards.
The man was perspiring heavily. His eyes darted around in the darkness, and he shifted from one foot to the other with a nervous energy. Even his shaved head glistened with sweat. But it was not that hot. The guards who had been running about were not perspiring as much as he.

“
Odji,” Mentuhotep spoke to the gatekeeper as the man bowed before him, “did you find any others?”

“No, Lord
King,” Odji uttered as he tried to compose himself.

“But you followed them
?” the king frowned. “Is that not why you were away from your post?”

“Yes Sire. I heard a noise. But... but I did not see anyone,” he stuttered.

Two of the would-be thieves had been caught and were now tied to a pillar, awaiting justice. They would be flogged in the morning for trespassing and attempting to steal that which did not belong to them. They had denied it, of course, but their guilt was obvious. They would not have run if they had been innocent. Tomorrow they would pay the price for their transgression and admit the guilt of their deeds. They were fortunate they had not been caught with any stolen property. The punishment would have been more severe.

“I do not think there are any more
robbers, Lord King,” one of the guards said. “We have checked all the streets.” He seemed confident in his opinion, and the king believed him.

Mentuhotep glanced down at Khu. He saw the boy star
ing intently at the gatekeeper. “Khu,” the king touched the boy’s shoulder and Khu startled, but the boy kept his eyes fixed on Odji. Perhaps Khu was still afraid, thought the king. Maybe the events of the night triggered frightful memories of his past. The king gave the boy’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, but Khu kept staring.

Odji
felt the boy’s eyes on him. He tried to collect himself and steady the pace of his beating heart. How could things have gone so wrong this night? He frowned at Khu, wondering why the boy kept staring at him, and wondering what the boy was doing out here in the dead of night. He should be asleep with the rest of the children inside the palace.

What a strange night, Odji thought
disappointedly. It had all been so carefully premeditated. It was supposed to have been an easy theft. There was no way anyone could have heard and discovered them. It was not possible. Especially someone from the palace, for they had not made any noise, nor been seen by anyone. Even if they had made noise, they had been far enough away from the palace for anyone there to hear them. And the villagers had been fast asleep.

The
gatekeeper returned to his post where he guarded the entrance in the great wall surrounding the palace compound, along with two other subordinates who were away for the night. Odji had planned their shifts accordingly, purposely waiting until his assistants were away in order to avoid the possibility of having any witnesses. He shook his head in confusion as Mentuhotep, Khu and the rest of the group walked away and headed back to the palace grounds. Then he rubbed the back of his smooth-shaven scalp. It hurt from having knocked it against something hard. He had hit his head when he tripped and fell after trying to get away from one of the guards by scrambling up through a window into the bakery storage room. That had been a perilously close call, he thought with relief, as he remembered how the guard had nearly caught him. He felt something slick and brought his hand around to inspect it. Blood. He closed his eyes against the adrenaline giving him palpitations. It had been a narrow escape—a very narrow escape—at least for him.

Odji
hoped that the two thieves who were caught would remember their bargain and keep their mouths shut. But that did not really matter now. They had only just met that night when he waited for them on the bank of the Nile. The only man who really knew him had gotten away on the boat, and was probably heading back north at that moment. And the apprehended men did not even know his name, he thought optimistically. His identity had been partly cloaked in the night’s darkness, and in the ignorance of the other men. He would make sure to stay far away from the prisoners tomorrow, in case they should recognize him and point their fingers in accusation.

Odji exhaled loudly ag
ainst the anxiety churning in his stomach and making him drip with perspiration. So much for all their meticulous planning, he thought bitterly with a heavy sigh. It was all wasted. A chance like this would not come again, especially now that the king was alert to the danger. Odji braced himself against the disappointment carving a deep line between his brows, and he rubbed the back of his bleeding head once again. And closing his eyes in an effort to calm himself after the night’s precarious events, he brought his hand around and licked the blood clean off his fingers.

King
Mentuhotep II watched with pride as his sons Khu and Nakhti fought in the mock-battle exercises in a clearing which backed into the high palisade lying beyond the palace and deeper within the desert. The sun blazed over the reddish rock that climbed in a steep and jagged line toward the sky. A hawk was soaring through the air, climbing a thermal updraft with its broad wings and wide fanned tail, then gliding effortlessly as it rode the current against the vast blue sky. The bird screeched a high-pitched and haunting call as it eyed the parched landscape below, which lay east of the lush floodplains by the river. It was late in
Shemu
—the Season of Harvest—long after the crops had been picked, and the fields were cleared and left bare. The ensuing drought was warm and dry.

This year mark
ed Khu’s fourteenth Season of Inundation, just as it did for Nakhti. The boys were the same age. Seven flood cycles of the Nile had passed since the time Khu was first discovered along the river’s bank. He was fourteen years old.

Khu had just parried a thrust of
Nakhti’s spear. He ducked, leaping back in an easy motion before stepping forward with a succession of quick cuts with his dagger. Nakhti deflected the blows with the shaft of his spear, then withdrew his own dagger. He feigned a left while moving to the right, swinging the blade toward Khu’s belly. Without breaking his rhythm, Khu sidestepped out of Nakhti’s reach before driving his dagger in a smooth and unexpected lunge of his own. He stopped just short of Nakhti’s neck, resting the tip of the blade along his sun-darkened skin glistening with perspiration. Some of the other boys watching from the sidelines were calling out and cheering. Their trainer—a man by the name of Qeb—frowned. The battle exercise was over, the outcome clearly favoring Khu.

Mentuhotep smiled. He had watched his sons grow strong and upright
over time. Although Nakhti was his firstborn, he was not heir to the throne. Nakhti was born of one of Mentuhotep’s lessor consorts, as were some of the younger children participating in the training exercises here. But there was no rivalry in Nakhti’s heart for his siblings. He had earned a place of respect within the hierarchy of his family, and he also knew he was one of his father’s favorites.