Soldier of Sidon (13 page)

THE GREAT GOD
of the South wishes to speak with me. The healer told me this, and it may be that it is true. We were fencing in the manner of Kemet with sticks the captain found for us. There are only four, so no more than two could fence at once.

Aahmes told me of this exercise. It is the way soldiers are trained in the army of Kemet. A stick is bound to the left forearm. It is the "shield." The stick in the right hand is the "sword." The point is forbidden--there is great danger if it is used. I fought each in turn, beginning with the soldiers of Kemet. They had done it before, and it seemed best to me if Qanju's three from Parsa saw it five times before they fought. Aahmes wanted to fight last. I took him last among those of Kemet, but not last of all as he wished.

Myt-ser'eu has a headache. She makes light of it, saying that she always has a headache in the morning. I set Uraeus to mixing wine and water for her, and Neht-nefret to coaxing her to drink it. I let each soldier drink too after he had fought.

When you fight a man with a shield, you try to get
him to raise it so as to blind himself. This is much harder in the stick game, which may be good. I am not sure about that.

The men of Kemet fought well, all of them, as soon as they saw I would not strike soft. Uro fought first and nearly beat me. I had thought he would know less than he did, and was striving not to discourage him. He may have been trying not to embarrass me in the same way, and so we played at it for a time. Then he came at me in earnest and nearly won. I hit his head and stretched him on the deck.

And Myt-ser'eu cheered.

I am not sure why it has made me feel so much love for her, perhaps it is because I know how sick she felt. I forget. She and Muslak have told me, and Uraeus confirms it. So does this scroll. I can no longer remember Charthi's walled house and his gardens, which I read about before I began to write; but I have asked the healer, and he says it is only the head that forgets. The head is the seat of reason, the heart the seat of our feelings, pounding when we are moved. My heart will never forget Myt-ser'eu's cheering.

After that I fought the rest one by one. Aahmes was the best, the only one better than Uro. He is taller than I, a great advantage in this game. At last I tripped him, threw him down, and feigned to lop off his head.

The men of Parsa knew far less. They watched my face, not my stick, and my stick punished them for it. We will fence again when their bruises have healed.

The healer watched us just as the captain did. Neither offered to take part. When our fencing was done and we had washed away our sweat, the healer spoke to me privately, saying, "Is there anyone on board you would fear to fight with those sticks?"

I said of course that there was not, that I might be beaten but that no one who fears trivial defeats can ever learn.

"Suppose the swords were real?"

His question gave me pause. At last I said, "My slave Uraeus."

He laughed. "Not many men fear their slaves."

"Not enough, perhaps." I shrugged. "Have I offered to free him?"

"I don't know."

"Then I will tell him he is free today," I said.

"In that case you have," the healer told me. "You are so willing to free him that you will surely have offered him his freedom before."

I said I would ask him, and added that I had learned something new about myself that day.

"Not because I taught you." He shook his head. "All those who teach are hated."

"You mean my soldiers will hate me for teaching them the sword."

"No, that they hated you before it." (I do not credit this.) "I myself teach no one, knowing I would make my students stronger to destroy me. I advise you to follow the same course."

"So you don't teach me."

He smiled and shook his head.

"My men will follow me in battle," I told him. "You'll see."

"Of course they will. They know you're a fine fighter. But where there is no danger, your danger will be from them."

I thanked him for the warning, and said I would tell Uraeus to remind me of it.

"Who will warn you of him?"

I considered that and said, "You will--or Myt-ser'eu."

The healer chuckled, recalling unpleasantly the chattering of his pet. "Next you will say that we will warn you of each other."

"If necessary, I'm sure you will." I turned to go.

He stopped me. "These things were not what I wished to tell you. The Red One would speak with you. When we met I promised you I would take you to his temple. You will have long forgotten our talk, unless you read it in the scroll you carry."

I confessed that I remembered nothing of it, and asked who the Red One was.

"He has many names."

The healer's monkey dropped from the rigging to his shoulder, but he paid no heed to it or its noise.

"You and I may call him Seth. I am one of his priests."

"He is a god?"

The healer nodded. "The Desert God and the Dark God, the god of night and storm, the son of Heaven's Vault. Tonight, when everyone is asleep, you are to come here, to the bow, to await his coming. If he does not appear before sunrise, he will not come."

It was already evening when the healer said this. We soon put in at this town. I ate with our captain, whose name is Muslak, and his wife, Neht-nefret. Myt-ser'eu drank more beer than Muslak, beer I bought her freely. I lay beside her on the roof of our inn until she slept, then crept away to this ship.

The sailor Muslak had left to watch it soon slept. I waited, sleepy and too full of beer and barley cakes, until a tap on my shoulder made me turn about quickly.

It was a woman, tall and beautiful. She smiled at me, and held up her hands to show that she held no weapon. "I am Sabra, and your friend. Did you leave Myt-ser'eu alone, Latro?"

I nodded.

"Let us hope no evil befalls her. May I ask why you are here?"

I said that the healer had told me to wait here for the Red One.

She laid her hand upon mine, and her hand was cold and hard. "Should he appear, Latro, you must make certain that he is indeed the Red One."

I slept and woke, and slept and woke. Walked the ship from end to end many times, sat, and slept again.

At last I was joined by a man I did not know. He looked tired, and I supposed he wished to sleep. I talked with him for a while even so, for I wished to remain awake and was finding it difficult. I said that he seemed to have had a bad night of it at the inn.

"Oh, I did!" He laughed, laughing at his own misfortune, which made me like him. "I paid to sleep on the roof. A woman woke me--it must have been very late--and offered to lie with me. One of these Riverland women." He extended his hand, palm up. "You know."

I said I did, since he clearly expected it.

"I asked how much, and she said she'd do it for whatever I was willing to give. Like any fool I said all right. Her head was shaved, so she wasn't a low-class woman. She had no wig, which made me wonder." Laughing at his own folly, he shook his head. "I like to think I'm a knowing man. This ought to be a lesson to me.

"I told her to lie down, and lay down beside her, and explained a few things I wanted her to do as well as I could in the barbarous speech of this land. She didn't speak our tongue as well as you do, but she had a few words, the kinds of things they talk about in Tower Hill. So we understood each other well enough.

"Things were starting to get interesting when I looked up and saw another woman with a knife. I couldn't see
her face, but the moonlight gleamed on the blade and that was all I needed to know. I yelled, the woman on top of me rolled off, and the other woman slashed at us. She missed me, but she cut the woman who'd been lying with me--caught both hips."

He sighed and fell silent, and I asked what had happened next.

"You won't believe this, but I suppose you'll forget it anyway, so it doesn't matter. This woman wiped her knife on her face." He illustrated the motion, left cheek and right. "Have you ever heard of anybody doing that?"

I said I did not know.

"Well, I haven't, and it wasn't over yet. Some man grabbed this woman and began threatening her. He had a voice like a snake. I was trying to get on my feet, and it scared the life out of me, just hearing him. There was more, too. A lot more that you wouldn't believe."

"I believe everything I've heard so far," I told him, "and I might even know who the man was."

"All right. A lion snarled. That was what it sounded like. I looked around, and there was a man there in a mask, a dog's head or something like that. The cat was with him. It was big, very big, but I don't think it was really a lion. The woman I'd been lying with started having hysterics; and the man who'd been holding the other one, the one with the knife, let her go and prostrated himself." He sighed again.

"What happened after that?" I asked.

He began to speak, fell silent, and at last said, "Have you got any wine, Latros?"

We looked for the jars from which Uraeus had mixed wine for Myt-ser'eu, but those we found were empty.

"I sell wine," he said, "and now that I want some myself there isn't any. I suppose it would take me a week to walk back to my shop."

When I asked where it was, he said it was right off the market. It was late when we landed, so I have not been to the market here.

He asked whether I wanted to lie down and sleep. I said that I did not, that I was hoping someone who had said he would meet me here would come. He said he did not want to sleep either, that he was still afraid to be alone. The woman with the knife had jumped off the roof, he said. The man in the mask had gestured, and she had jumped from the roof, although it was four floors up. Thus we sat talking, though I felt sure the healer's god would not come unless I was alone. This man's name is Agathocles, and he is from Hellas. He is older than Muslak, sought for ways to compliment me, and has a soft voice. I think it will be well not to trust him.

The healer's god did not come, but the healer himself did, his face the mask of sorrow. He went into the hold as if going there to sleep, but soon came up again carrying a box as large as himself. Seeing he meant to take it off the ship, I told him he could not. He said it was his own property and so marked. He showed us the writing, but neither of us could read it. Agathocles wisely said that if it was his, he must know what it contained. He said it was empty, and opened it to show us. He explained that some property of his had been taken ashore, and that he intended to put it in the box so that he could carry everything back to the ship together. We allowed him to take it.

He soon returned carrying a lamp, with which he lighted the way of two other men of Kemet, peasants (as Agathocles told me) since their heads were not shaved. I went into the hold and received the box when they passed it down the hatch, though they would, perhaps, have stolen nothing. Its weight made me wonder about its contents, and although others say I forget quickly I had not
forgotten that the healer had removed its lid easily. I did the same, and saw a battered image of wax. Both hands had been broken off, and the face smashed. Then I wanted to ask the healer who had done such a thing, and why; but I did not do so, only replacing the lid and asking him where he wished me to put it. He said that I might leave it where it was and put down his lamp on the lid. I warned him of the danger of fire, and went up on deck again.

Now I shall set down a strange thing. This is the truth, whatever I may think when I read this scroll in the future. The lid of the healer's box has two handles, not on the outside where anyone would expect them to be, but inside. The wax hands grasped these handles.

The sun has risen, and I have written all I know, writing nothing but the truth. I will try to sleep. I have been awake all night.

THE WOMAN OF WAX
Sahuset has been shaping in the hold is complete. Thotmaktef and I marveled at his skill. Such figures, he explained, are useful in healing; a woman who hesitates to show a healer the site of her pain may indicate it on the wax figure without shame.

"No doubt you have had such figures before," Thotmaktef remarked, "since you speak confidently of their use."

"I have a fine one at home," Sahuset told him, "and I am sorry now that I left it behind. When I agreed to come, I did not envision treating women on the trip. Now I find that Myt-ser'eu and Neht-nefret occupy me more than all these men."

"Magicians are said to animate figures of wax and wood. I have never seen it done, I confess."

The healer smiled. "Nor will you ever see me do it."

"But could you? If you wished?"

"Am I a magician, Holy Thotmaktef?"

"You are, or so I've been informed."

The healer shrugged. "So are you. That's what the sailors say. You're forever poring over old scrolls--or so I've
been informed. I don't doubt that you and Qanju know more magic than anyone else on this ship. Would you like to try to animate her? When I've finished her?"

While they spoke, I was looking at the wax woman whose arm the healer had been shaping. She blinked and looked at me, and smiled, I believe, ever so slightly. I do not know what this may mean.

I HAVE SLEPT
through most of the day, the woman who attends me says. Her name is Myt-ser'eu--I just asked her. She is young, hardly more than a girl. I thought her a friend at first, then my slave. She says she is no slave but my wife. I do not believe that I would take as wife a woman of a nation not my own. I cannot recall the name of my own. (Myt-ser'eu says I forget, and that this is to be expected.) Yet I know that I have a nation. It speaks the tongue in which I write, and not the tongue in which she and I speak.

The captain's wife came. She sat and asked whether Myt-ser'eu could sit down. Myt-ser'eu said she preferred to stand, as she was doing at the time. The captain's wife introduced herself with the manner of one who jests, saying her name was Tall Sycamore. When she had gone, I asked Myt-ser'eu what her own name meant. She laughed and teased me until I recalled that it is
kitten.
I find that it is not at all unpleasant to be laughed at by Myt-ser'eu. Or to be teased by her.

Two men of her nation came. The older, a tall, stooped man with a tame monkey, is Sahuset. The younger, as young as any of the soldiers Myt-ser'eu says are mine, Thotmaktef. He told me I had slept long and asked whether I had been awake last night. I said I had been, because I could remember the boat that brought the sun. Sahuset said he had slept a lot too, and that it was normal
for those on board to do so. Our captain and crew sailed the ship, which is easy as long as the north wind holds and there is no work to do. He sat and suggested a game that is played with the fingers. I did not know how to play, so he and Myt-ser'eu taught me. Myt-ser'eu did not sit, but reclined on the deck, propped on her elbows. Soon Thotmaktef grew tired of watching and left.

When he had gone, Sahuset said, "You sat up waiting for the Red God, Latro. The Red One has said he wishes to speak with you, and you waited for him. You must wait again tonight."

I promised I would, feeling that it would be a long time before I needed to sleep.

Myt-ser'eu very sensibly asked how I was to know the Red God when I saw him. Sahuset said he took many forms. He might appear as a boar, as a water-horse, or as a crocodile. He named other animals I have forgotten. He described the great statue of the Red God in the temple to which he was once attached, in his city of Miam--a red man with the head of a wild dog.

He stood, yawned, and stretched. "Just smell this air! Isn't it wonderful?"

Myt-ser'eu made a face, but to be polite I said it was.

"The land is rising," Sahuset said. "We near my home. It can't be far to Abu."

The captain overheard him and joined us. He said, "It isn't. I'm hoping to make Abu tonight. It's a wild, foreign sort of place, from what I hear of it." He turned to me, smiling. "I know you don't remember me, Lewqys, but I'm Muslak, the oldest friend you've got."

He is older than I and far from handsome; but when I looked him in the eye, I knew what he had said was the truth. He and Myt-ser'eu are truly my friends. So too is the tall soldier from Kemet, I think. I do not think the young scribe is a friend to any of us, and although I would
like to make a friend of the tall, lean healer, Sahuset, I do not feel I have done so. His cold eyes rest upon me without gladness, and dart away.

"Abu is on the southern frontier of Kemet now," he told our captain, "but Kemet extended a hundred days' travel to the south only a few centuries ago. Many families there are descended from settlers from Wast, just as I am."

Myt-ser'eu asked, "Have you cousins in Wast, Healer?"

He shook his head. "I have no family even in Miam, and certainly none in Wast."

"It's the same with me. My husband Latro's all the family I have these days, and that's only for the trip south and back. What about you, Captain?"

"A wife and three concubines, and seventeen children." He grinned. "Seventeen when I left home. There should be more now."

Myt-ser'eu laughed; she has a pretty laugh, and seems to laugh often. "You could surely spare us a few relatives. Then we'd all have families."

"I might give you a concubine," he told her, "if I had her here."

I said, "But you've a wife here. She was speaking with us not long ago."

"Right. Two wives, seventeen children, and three concubines."

A thickset man as old as the captain joined us. He must have been listening, though I had not been aware of it. He speaks the tongue of Kemet worse even than I. "In that case, one concubine must go to this kind young lady, isn't that right? I'm sure she can make use of her."

"Indeed!" Myt-ser'eu laughed again. "I'll hire her out and live on her wages."

"Women enjoy themselves frequently with other women in my country," the stranger told her, "and Lesbos is
famous for it. But, Captain, I wanted to tell you that this learned gentleman is right about the land south of the second cataract. It belonged to the pharaoh. So did the mines, though the king of Nubia claims everything now."

"What kind of mines?" I asked.

"Better not to talk about that," the stranger said.

Sahuset told me, "Gold."

The stranger was chagrined. "I didn't know you knew about it."

"I didn't," Sahuset told him, "but I grew up in Wawat. I know what sort of mines were there."

Myt-ser'eu's eyes were wide. "Is gold cheap there?"

"No," Sahuset said. "The mines are exhausted, and there is no place on all the broad earth where gold is cheap."

WE SPENT THE
night on this ship. Myt-ser'eu and I went ashore with the captain and his wife, ate a good dinner with them, and returned here. Myt-ser'eu soon slept, but I stayed awake, looking at the harbor with its many lights and at the city behind it. There is a tower, squat but strong, on an island in the harbor, and a wall separates the harbor district from the city proper. We have not been past it--the gates were closing for the night when we arrived. The captain's helper was on the ship with me. His name is Azibaal. So were Uro of Kemet and Vayu of Parsa, who calls this city Yeb. He says that in the morning I will have to see the sagan, with the captain and another man he named. I did not know who this other man was, but did not wish to display my ignorance.

With us on the ship was my slave. His name is Uraeus. He is of Kemet, a bent, long-necked man of middle years. He had been in the hold, but came up to greet us as soon as we returned. Myt-ser'eu fears him, as I saw, though
she would not confess it. Humbly, he asked permission to return to the hold, promising to come at once if I called. I agreed. I suppose he has a bed there.

Later Sahuset the Healer came on board. He wanted to speak to me away from the others, so I sent Uro and Vayu to the stern, where they chatted with Azibaal and the steersman.

"Myt-ser'eu is unfaithful to you," Sahuset told me. "Did you know it?"

I shook my head.

"She lay with Agathocles the other night."

I asked who he was.

"The man of Hellas, the wine merchant."

"The one who speaks of mines?"

"Yes, he. You had gone and she was drunk. She offered herself, and he took her."

I said, "Will he fight me for her?"

Sahuset laughed softly. His laugh is not a good one to hear by night on board a dark ship. "He has not the stomach for it, I'm sure."

I shrugged. "Then she is mine. If he touches her and I see it, there will be trouble."

"I was going to make you an amulet that would guarantee her loyalty."

"She has an amulet already," I said. "It's a bull's head. She says she got it from you."

"How do you know that? You forget everything."

I told him I had seen it around her neck while we ate, and asked what it was for.

"She has not worn it for some days. Last night it would have protected her, but it would not keep her from Agathocles. That was not its purpose."

"Protected her from what?" I asked.

"From me," announced a woman's voice behind me.

I turned to look at her. I had not known she was on
the ship with us, and remarked that she had come very quietly.

"We always do."

Sahuset cleared his throat. "Latro, this is Sabra, my wife."

I told them that Myt-ser'eu said she was my wife, and asked if it were true.

"Only as long as you say it." Sabra sounded amused. Her voice makes it hard not to touch her.

"I am here," Sahuset told me, "in the hope that the Red God will visit you as he said. He did not come last night, though you waited for him. I hope that it was because I was not here. If so, he may come tonight."

Sabra said, "I am here for the same reason, though mine is less wordy. I am here because you are, Latro."

"Did I give you leave?" Sahuset sounded angry.

Sabra shook her head. "Not even leave to set foot outside my--compartment? Bedchamber? It gets terribly hot in there, bedchamber or no. I find it much more pleasant up here. With Latro."

"Someone listens," Sahuset told us.

My slave, stooped and smaller than most men, stepped from the darker darkness of a shadow. I saw the moonlight gleam on his bald head. "I was not spying upon you," he told Sahuset. "Only listening for my master's call."

I said, "This is Uraeus. Perhaps you both know him."

"They do, master. What is it you wish?"

I smiled at that. "To remember other men, as other men do."

"I cannot heal you, master. Nor can he who gave me. If we could, we would do it at once. I never forget, however, and I will be your memory whenever you permit it."

I promised I would try to remember that, and declared that he was welcome to remind me of lost memories whenever he thought it wise.

"Then I remind you that this woman is the one you watched Sahuset mold of wax."

I did not believe it, but Sabra laughed softly and said, "Found out so soon! Did you really think me flesh and blood, Latro?"

I said I had, and forbore adding that I still did.

"We lay figures can be animated by magic, as I have often been. Does that amaze you?"

"It surprises me at least," I said, and added that I should have realized she was too beautiful to be a mortal woman.

"Oh, I'm mortal enough. I would burn like a candle."

"As you soon will," Sahuset said, "if you go far on the path you have chosen tonight."

"Would I object, dear?"

Sahuset did not answer.

Sabra took my hand; hers felt soft and sticky. "Most often," she whispered, "the magicians make crocodiles. I myself was such a crocodile once. Magicians have many enemies."

I nodded and said I understood.

"Or they shape serpents to work their will. There is a serpent here, though it is not of that kind."

I said that I would kill it if she would show it to me.

"I would rather you did not. It rids the hold of rats, so it is dear--"

Sahuset interrupted her. "I did not give you life tonight. Who did? Tell me!"

"Why, this handsome soldier, of course. Did you think he had no talents?"

"He has many." Sahuset's words were shaped to hide his anger. "He's a fine swordsman."

"As if you could judge. I wake whenever he is near. He has noticed it, though he's forgotten my lingering glances." She touched me again. "Latro darling, you say Myt-ser'eu
is your wife. She's a drunken wanton, as you must know. Suppose--only suppose, Latro darling--that she said she wanted no more to do with you and wished to leave. What would you do?"

"Bid her farewell," I said, "and see that she took nothing that did not belong to her when she left."

"Well spoken! You are a man indeed. May I have another supposition, darling?"

I nodded. "If you wish it."

"Then suppose that she had a certain box, a box given her by you, but a box that both you and she had called hers the whole time she was with you. Would you permit her to take it when she left?"