by Andre Norton
"And there are others here of a like mind?"
Huy's head went back against the ground once more, and the captain was warned. His tender shoulders gritted against the rough stone, and he stared vacantly down at his hands as a detachment of Hyksos wall guards tramped by. But he had counted them and assessed their arms—slinger, spearmen, two bowmen.
"There are others—" That was the merest thread of speech from the seemingly sleeping Nubian.
The southerner had no time to enlarge on that, for a messenger was making the rounds of the work gangs. As he paused by each overseer, the resting slaves were shouted at and beaten to their feet and lined up ready to march away. From the exclamations of surprise about him, Rahotep gathered that such a move was contrary to ordinary routine, and for the first time since he successfully passed the guard the night before, the Egyptian captain felt uneasy concerning his own safety.
His gleanings that morning had been meager. A few hasty estimates of the types of soldiers within Neferusi from the bodies of troops he had seen from the wall, tag ends of rumor picked up from the slaves, most of whom were too brutalized to care or note the affairs of their masters, and a very healthy respect for the fortifications he labored to make even more impregnable were the sum total of his gatherings.
From the vast amounts of provisions being brought in by oxcart, he guessed that Neferusi was being prepared to stand siege. But he had overheard a comment from a gate guard going off duty that those heavily laden carts bore only a portion of supplies for the city, that the majority of their cargoes was the tribute collected from the surrounding districts, now to be sent north under the new general's orders to the Asiatic armies of the Hyksos.
Rahotep had set himself during the past hour to watch the arrival of such cart trains and their reception at the gates. While there was a guard about every three or four carts and the officer in charge had to present a tally to the gatemen, there was no search of the wagons themselves. A memory of the way they had transported their secret prisoners from the Valley of the Lizard to the royal city, together with what he had seen here, suggested a plan to him. But it seemed that he was going to have little chance to advance his investigations on the spot.
The messenger was now talking to the overseer of Rahotep's gang, but as he used the Hyksos tongue, the listening Egyptian was no wiser. It was Icar who warned him. Behind the overseer's back the seaman made a beckoning gesture, which the captain obeyed. He moved up to join the taller barbarian, so that when they were once more noosed neck to neck, he was between Icar and Huy of the Nubians. They then stood aside for the passing of a line of tribute carts and Icar spoke.
"They have heard that there is a spy in Neferusi, concealed among the slaves—"
Rahotep's hands had been at his throat to ease the pull of the noose, now they tightened on that chafing cord. How— who—?
"The word was brought to them from without the city," Icar added swiftly.
From without the city! Were there more traitors within the Egyptian camp? Yet he had thought his a well-guarded secret. Only the Prince, Nereb, and his own command had known what he attempted here. And Kheti would keep an eye on those of the archers who were noted as being loose tongued. Or had that hiding place in the reeds been discovered and were Kheti and the others prisoners now?
Chapter 15 NEBET OF NEFERUSI
The slave gangs that had been on the walls were herded back into the space fronting the inner barrier by the warehouse where they had spent the night. As they filed in, Rahotep saw what a mixture of races and nationalities they represented, for the empire of the Hyksos spread far beyond the boundaries of Egypt. There was more than just a sprinkling of Nubians, Asiatics from the Eastern lands, and some fair-skinned, fair-haired barbarians from the north, perhaps seamen who had fallen into captivity through the same trap as had closed upon Icar. But the majority were Egyptians, and Rahotep thought that with his scarred back he could well mix with these unfortunate countrymen of his without raising suspicion, unless he was personally known to the one who had betrayed his arrival in the city.
But whether he was known or not, this was the time he must be prepared to make his play for freedom. His right hand went to the cord that bound the slave's scanty apron cloth to his hips and then arose once more to the noose at his throat. Lying flat on his palm was the tiny bronze knife that had been Kheti's prized possession twenty-four hours earlier. He sawed at the neck rope under the pretext of easing its constriction, and then held the parted thongs together with his hand.
The knife was no weapon to aid him further. And now he could be generous with it. There were guards before them, but the Hyksos warriors paid them scant attention as long as they stood still. Rahotep's left hand brushed Icar's, pressing the small knife into the seafarer's grasp. The other showed no surprise as his fingers curled about it.
A party of Hyksos officers came along a side lane. Rahotep watched them narrowly, eager to see if they had a captured archer or an Egyptian in their midst—someone dragged here to point him out.
Icar's hand was at his throat noose. Then the knife was pressed back into the captain's hand again. Rahotep regarded his closed fist for a long moment before he transferred what lay within it to the other hand and so to Huy. Lucidly the Nubian was quick-witted and mastered any sign of the astonishment he must have felt.
Rahotep was sure he could trust Icar. With Huy he might be taking a bigger chance, but his long service with Nubian warriors had given him a high opinion of their loyalty, courage, and resource in action, and he would prefer a Nubian as a fighting comrade to most of those he saw in Neferusi's slave pens.
He looked again to the Hyksos officers. They had come to the first gang of slaves, and the men were lining up before them for inspection. It was plain that they were searching for an Egyptian—those of other races in that gang were waved impatiently aside. But the natives were made to show their hands and their backs—inspected as if they were cattle put up to auction.
Rahotep glanced at his own fists. There were calluses there, old ones. A man could not use spear, bow, help to dig field fortifications, and not show hardened palms. But he wondered if the strip of lighter flesh on one finger, marking the place of his seal ring, could possibly show through the dirt he had rubbed in. And what about the same paler bands on his upper arms where his noble's bracelets had covered three-inch-wide circlets? Could they be detected? Even free of a neck noose, could he put up a fight with both guards and officers around him?
From the corner of his eye he saw Huy's hand touch that of his neighbor—another Nubian—and he guessed the knife was being passed along. But on the other side of that man was the wry-faced Bwedani in whom the captain did not rest any confidence and who might be moved to betray them all. He, Icar, Huy, the other Nubian—four of them against ten times that number of guards and the officers—unarmed, a hopeless fight—
Icar's fingers closed about his wrist in sudden cruel pressure. A warning—? But the Hyksos were not yet near. Then he was startled when the seaman shouted, "Up, eaters of dirt, fight for yourselves. They come to pick men to feed to their temple devils! They want meat for their snake-god!"
For an astounded second the slaves stared from the tall northerner to the officers. Then there came a murmur of protest, which rose in a wailing shriek, and the compound erupted in pure madness. The slaves before the Hyksos officers tried to shrink back, weaving here and there, knotted together by their neck nooses. And those farthest from that danger point faced their guards, screaming in an insane terror.
Rahotep was free, as were Icar and the Nubians. A small wedge of four, they plunged into the writhing mass of terrified slaves, swearing overseers, and guards. Rahotep saw two overseers pulled down by the sheer weight of desperate men, their whips torn from their hands, to be mauled to death. Huy grabbed one of those whips, reversed it, using its butt as a mace and so bowling out of their way a spearman.
The captain caught up the fallen guard's weapon. Icar stood over the moa
ning man long enough to snatch the dagger from his belt. Then they shoved shoulder to shoulder toward one of the lanes.
"Yaaaah! Waaaah!" Huy raised the savage war cry of his people and was answered by similar whoops from the twisting, whirling mass of slaves and guards. The first terror of the captives had risen to a frightening frenzy as those who had once been warriors remembered the past and determined to make one last stand against a common enemy. Twice Icar slashed a neck rope, put out a long arm to draw to them another freed fighter.
Once it was a squat, powerfully built man with a mat of red beard and a sldn as fair as Icar's own, the other time a Kush with the filed teeth of a man-eater of the Rain Forests bared in the grin of a night demon. Why he chose those two, or if he did it deliberately, Rahotep did not know. But both fell in behind the seaman as if they knew him for a leader they could rely upon.
That insane tangle within the narrow space between wall and warehouse had sucked in most of the guards by now. And the officers who had been examining the Egyptian laborers shouted for help before they were overwhelmed, drawing more men away from the outer circle. Rahotep and Huy, using their weapons when necessary, made for a gap, and the others bunched behind them. Icar's bellow roared in their ears, rising at times above the war cries of the Nubians, both tending to drown out the shouted orders and calls of the guards.
"Waaah! Drink blood!" screamed Huy, as he emerged a step or two in advance of Rahotep into a lane to face a squad of six warriors hastening toward the scene. Unfortunately for them, they were bowmen, and they were given neither time nor space to use their weapons to any advantage.
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."
