Year of the Hyenas

by Brad Geagley

  Three men with shaved heads, naked but for loincloths, held a bound man down on a table. A fourth, their leader, waited nearby. The bound man was gagged, but still managed to struggle and scream; it had been his cries Semerket had heard. The fourth man now approached the prone figure and placed his knee on the victim’s chest, while the others held his head steady.

  Their leader reached his long, thin arm over to a table of bronze instruments. He took up a small spoon, and turned it in his spindly fingers to catch the smoky light from the brazier.

  Deftly, the thin man plunged the instrument into the victim’s left eye socket, twisted it delicately, and plucked the wet, translucent orb from the gaping hole. He tossed the gleaming bit of flesh into a small basin. Blood sprayed geyser-like from the man’s head, bathing his tormentors, but they labored on unconcerned for either the warm spray or their victim’s screaming. A swift flash of the spoon, and the other eye was torn from his skull.

  In that room was the Cripple Maker, Semerket realized, with his three assistants. Semerket tasted vomit in his mouth, but was too fascinated to even retch, for in the Kingdom of the Beggars, the Cripple Maker was as legendary as the Beggar King himself. An apostate priest trained as a physician, his special art was not in healing, but in creating appealing deformities with hooks and knives. Any painful alteration to a body, any new appalling deformity, would be tried that a more profitable beggar could be manufactured.

  The Cripple Maker reached over to a brazier to take a glowing ember between his thumb and forefinger. Quickly, he plunged it into a gushing socket, and then repeated the procedure for the other wound. There was a hissing gurgle, the smell of burning flesh, and the man’s bleeding ceased—as did his screams. A final convulsion and the man fainted.

  The Cripple Maker spoke as he bandaged the man’s eyes. In a surprisingly high, sweet voice, he prescribed, “Feed him a little opium paste tonight, and for three days after. No food; only broth. If there’s no fever, he’ll survive.” The Cripple Maker sponged the drying blood from his own body with fastidious care.

  Semerket could not see the person whom the apostate physician addressed. But a quiet voice now spoke from the gloom. “Send him to the Beggar King of the North, then, if he lives. The king must know that worse waits in Thebes for any more spies he sends into my realm.”

  “Yes, lord,” the Cripple Maker said, his voice syrupy with pleasure. He was a man who enjoyed his work.

  The other voice called out, louder, “Yousef!”

  The giant who’d led Semerket through the halls put his head into the room. “Lord?”

  “The other business—we’ll attend to it now.”

  Semerket was so mesmerized by what he’d seen that he was unaware when Yousef returned to the anteroom to stand behind him, dragon’s teeth in his tight smile.

  “Careful,” the giant said. “The poor fellow in there was guilty of seeing too much.” He shook his head in mock sadness, “No more, though.” But he laughed cordially, as if they were friends.

  Semerket followed Yousef into the other room. The ironlike smell of freshly spilled blood clung to the air, and the place seemed overly warm. A sudden movement in the dark drew his attention. It was a ram, stolen from the sacred herd of Amun at Karnak. Its combed, white coat floated to the floor in soft, wavy skeins of wool, and its curved horns were enameled in rich gold. The ram pulled a miniature chariot made of inlaid citron wood from which a deep voice rose, “So it is Semerket who visits me?”

  “It is I, Majesty.”

  “But you were in Babylon or Troy or some godforsaken place, weren’t you?”

  “Forgive me, Majesty, but you always know exactly where I am… as you know everything in Thebes.”

  A deep laugh rumbled through the room, and Semerket peered down into the chariot to find glinting back up at him the fierce eyes of the Beggar King. His neck was hung with heavy chains of gold and silver, and he wore a battered gold crown. Despite his kingly trappings, however, he was nothing more than a legless torso overhung by two muscular arms. His lower limbs had been long before taken by another Cripple Maker, before he had become king; the ram and chariot now served as his legs and feet.

  “Are you investigating another crime, then?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “Does it concern a murdered priestess?”

  Semerket concealed his surprise, asking in a quiet voice, “What can you tell me about it?”

  The Beggar King slapped the reins across the ram’s flanks and he began to drive the chariot about the room. “We had nothing to do with it, if that’s what you mean. I have problems enough without slaughtering old women. Ah, Semerket—it’s been many years since we’ve talked, and much has changed. Times are hard in the south. Our empire has withered away over the years; only the north is rich today.”

  “Thebes seems prosperous enough.”

  “Not through the eyes of a beggar. When the great southern families are feeling the pinch, alms are scarcer, bribes leaner.” He went on to complain bitterly of his fellow Beggar King in the northern capital, an even richer and more powerful monarch who had somehow wrested control of the abundant inflow of foreign currency and goods that came from across the Great Sea.

  “He knows where we are weakest,” the Beggar King said, “for he sends his spies and agents here. One was apprehended in Thebes only yesterday, this man on the table here.” The Beggar King’s stare was almost kindly as he regarded the barely breathing heap before him. “But he has been punished so that he can never spy on us again. And because we are merciful, he’ll be sent back to the north as a warning—if he survives.”

  The Beggar King halted his miniature chariot at Semerket’s feet. “But these are our problems. Why have you come today, after so long? What do you need from us?”

  Semerket told him of the beggars who had come to the village of the tomb-makers and how they had not known the secret sign he made. Hearing the Beggar King’s own story made him think they were beggars from the north, somehow in league with the tomb-makers. Semerket said he feared it had something to do with tomb robbery.

  “Robbery in the Great Place?” Even the Beggar King was shocked— or envious—Semerket did not know which.

  Just then the eyeless man made small noises as if he were waking. The Beggar King moved his chariot to look at him. “Come, Semerket.”

  Semerket approached and bent to view the beggar. To his shock, he recognized him. “He’s one of those who attacked me at the village temple!”

  The Beggar King’s eyes glittered redly. “Ask him your questions then, Semerket; find out why he pollutes my kingdom.”

  Semerket whispered into the beggar’s ear, “I am the vizier’s man from the tomb-makers’ village, the one you tried to kill. Do you remember me?”

  The man moved his head in the direction of Semerket’s voice. Blood and tears oozed from beneath his bandages. With great effort he nodded his head.

  “I hold your life in my hand,” Semerket told him. “You can still live it out if you tell me the truth. Do you belong to the Beggar King of the North?”

  The man again nodded.

  “What is his connection with the tomb-makers in the Great Place? Why have you come here?”

  The man’s cracked lips moved as he tried to speak. Looking about the room, Semerket saw the basin of water. The Cripple Maker’s instruments were still soaking there. Though the water was pink with blood and matter, he withdrew a sponge and squeezed a few drops over the beggar’s lips. As the man attempted to speak, Semerket brought his ear to the beggar’s mouth.

  The beggar barely breathed the words. “The ship… is overturned.”

  Semerket and the Beggar King regarded one another in puzzlement. The man was delirious, Semerket decided.

  “What ship is overturned? What do you mean?”

  The man shivered. His breath came in shallow gasps, and he gasped for air like a hooked fish. Again Semerket squeezed a few drops of water over the beggar’s lips. But they fell from
the man’s mouth to pool on the table. With a tiny groan, a faint exhalation of air, the man shuddered and died.

  “Damn!” roared the Beggar King.

  Semerket sighed and stood erect in the gloom. “There are more of his companions here in Thebes. I saw the noseless one tonight at the Elephant’s Tusk—”

  Instantly the Beggar King drove his chariot to the door, shouting to Yousef to take a party of men to the tavern and capture the beggar. After the giant had gone, Semerket approached the Beggar King.

  “Do you consider me a friend?” he asked.

  The king’s eyes were suspicious. “I count allies, not friends.”

  “As one ally to another, then—don’t be tempted to traffic in any treasure that should come your way. Already the Medjays suspect its loss. When they find the thieves and the missing jewels, all who have touched them will be punished with their lives. This I can promise you—even kings could fall.”

  THE NOTE READ :

  Vital to see you. I’m at the stable near the public well. Come alone. I am not drunk. Please.

  Semerket

  It was the next morning when Semerket, summoning all his will, went through the second door that had opened the night before. Standing in the small square onto which the gates of the nearby estate emptied, he waited until a serving girl emerged from the house, laundry basket on her hip. The girl would have been pretty but for her cleft palette, and she winced as he approached her, unused to strangers treating her with anything but revulsion. She hid her mouth with a free hand, and her eyes were frightened. Semerket made a gesture indicating that she should not fear him, and held out the piece of folded papyrus.

  “Will you take this to your mistress?” he asked. “And make sure no one else sees…?” He took a copper piece from his sash and held it out for her.

  Seeing the shining metal, the girl’s eyes became a great deal friendlier. She nodded her head and took the note from him, disappearing into the house. Casually, as if to prove he had no cares, Semerket strolled to the nearby stables where the families who lived on the square boarded their livestock: cows for milking and donkeys for transport and hauling, the occasional horse. He nodded to the liverymen who labored there but said nothing, and leaned against a hitching post.

  Semerket forced his heart to calm itself. You will not fall to pieces, he told himself firmly. Today you will remain calm, unmoved. You will not—

  “Semerket…?”

  Her low voice made him start, and he spun quickly in its direction. No matter the command to his heart, it now leapt rebelliously into his throat.

  “Naia.” His voice was barely more than a whisper.

  She stood in the stable’s doorway, slim and more beautiful than he remembered, and her familiar citrus scent was already in his nostrils. She seemed absolutely unchanged, though she was dressed more richly than when she had been his wife. Gold discs hung at her ears and her head scarf was of rich wool that fell in long black sweeps to the ground.

  It was then he noticed she carried something in her arms. He could not at first think what it was, but then heard the small whimpering sounds issuing from it.

  Semerket’s eyes became fixed and hard.

  “I know your note said to come alone,” Naia spoke quickly, seeing his expression, “but I couldn’t leave him behind. He’s only a week old, and I dare not trust the servants…”

  When he sent her the note Semerket had never imagined such a scene. Indeed, he had been so careful not to imagine anything at all that his mind had been closed to all possible scenarios. He stood there, barely breathing.

  “Semerket?” She took a step forward. “Semerket, say something!”

  He swallowed. “I didn’t know… I mean, no one told me…” Fiercely he tried to feel anything in his limbs, which had gone quite numb, tried to force his stupid tongue to work. Semerket took a long breath and spoke. “I mean—congratulations, Naia.” To his astonishment his voice was calm and even.

  Naia smiled in relief and walked to where he stood. Eagerly she held the child up to him, undoing the child’s swaddling a bit so that he could see its face. “Isn’t he beautiful?”

  The child was indeed that, his skin the same pale, smoky hue as his mother’s. He blinked up at Semerket blindly, and his dark eyes were large, like a calf’s. Fine black hair covered his head, and his brow was high with promised intelligence. Before he could stop himself Semerket lifted a finger to touch the child’s hand, a thing of perfect softness.

  The child looked at him gravely, and clung to the finger with a strength that surprised Semerket. Though Semerket’s face remained expressionless, he was thinking silently to himself, I will crawl into the earth and die here, now, right on this spot.

  But in that same surprisingly clear voice he had used a moment before, he instead asked, “What is his name?”

  “There’s a tradition in Nakht’s family that they are descended from Pharaoh Huni—so that’s what we call him, at least for now.”

  “Huni.” Semerket pulled his finger away, and the child closed its eyes and turned its head, making sucking noises. Semerket looked then upon his ex-wife. “I don’t need to ask you how you are, Naia. You’re beautiful.”

  She smiled, pleased. Then her brows drew together in concern. “Oh, but Ketty—! You don’t look well at all. Something ails you!”

  What was he to say? He could not tell her that the food he ate might be poisoned or drugged, or that he was afraid to sleep at night because death lurked in his dreams. So he said, “I’m fine. Really.”

  “What are you doing here, Ketty? Your note said it was vital.”

  He looked about the stable, trying to phrase what he had to say. “It’s a long story. I’m investigating a crime, a murder—”

  She put her hand to her mouth in happiness. “Are you back with the courts, then? Ketty, that is good news.”

  “Naia—”

  “It’s just what you need to get your life going forward again.”

  “Naia—”

  “You don’t know how I’ve worried about you—”

  His voice was more severe than he meant it to be. “Naia, stop!”

  She was instantly silent, her eyes growing large.

  “I’m here because I suspect your husband is involved in it.”

  She continued to stare at him, silent, with the same terrible expression on her face, cradling the child closer to her breast.

  He spoke rapidly. “Naia, I saw him. Last night. Nakht met them— the men I was following. Naia, they’re bad men. There’s one, a beggar—without a nose—who even tried to kill me once. He’s dangerous, Naia. Another is a foreman from Pharaoh’s tomb, and the scribe— there’s been a murder of a priestess, and we think there’s tomb robbery going on in the Great Place, and now Mayor Paser…”

  He stopped. It was all coming out wrong, a great incoherent jumble. Naia was still looking at him with the same wide-eyed expression. She thinks I’m mad, Semerket told himself.

  “Naia…” he said helplessly.

  “What do you want from us, Semerket?” It was the coldest tone she had ever used to him.

  He blinked. “I need to know what’s going on.”

  She shook her head slowly. “And so you come here today, out of nowhere, and expect me to inform on my own husband.” She sat on a bale of straw as if her strength had failed her. “I thought…” She sighed and did not continue.

  He sat next to her, trying to explain. “Naia, if Nakht is involved in this, the consequences will be terrible for everyone. You know the law in Egypt. Your entire family will be punished. Everyone will be at risk— you, your servants. Even that child in your arms.”

  Her mouth opened in astonishment, and her dark eyes sparked with fear and indignation. “And you think to make me do what you ask— by threatening my baby? Oh, Semerket! No! No!”

  She fled the stable. Semerket caught up with her by the well and reached out to catch her arm. It was the first time he had touched her in months, and the sho
ck of it was electric for them both. She stopped, breathing hard, but did not turn to look at him.

  Semerket spoke in a low voice. “I did not come to threaten your child, sweetheart—I would kill anyone who did that. I came here to help you, help your husband, if he will have it.”

  She was silent for a moment, still refusing to look at him. Then she spoke in a tiny voice. “What do you want me to do, Semerket?”

  “Go to him. Tell him that however he is involved, whatever he has done, it can still be undone. The best way would be for him to tell me what he knows.”

  The child at her breast began to wail, and the sound seemed to galvanize her into movement. “The child must be fed, Semerket.” She hurried to her gate and pulled it open.

  “Will you tell your husband… ?” he called after her.

  But she was already through the door of her house.

  THE MOON WAS a sliver that evening. Only the black silhouette of the Gate of Heaven against its blanket of stars served to guide him from the temple landing to the tomb-makers’ village. Strange that he should be relieved to see the torches atop the village ramparts. Had his life become so lonely that he looked forward to the company of people who hated him?

  He went through the smaller southern gates into the darkened enclosure of the village. Though the hour was early by tomb-makers’ standards, the village was deserted. Doors and gateways were firmly bolted against the night and whatever lurked in it.

  Semerket stepped slowly through the dark corridor of the main street, advancing toward the priestess’s house, his fingertips brushing against the walls on either side of him. He felt about with his foot, careful to avoid the jars and brooms that waited outside the doorways.

  As he inched forward, he gradually became aware of another noise. Every time he took a step forward, he heard a distant echoing step behind, as if someone tried to match exactly the pace of his footfalls. He turned to peer into the dark, but all he saw were the distant torches at the southern gate.