Andre Norton - Shadow Hawk

by Andre Norton

  "Menon"—it was master addressing man—"who is this woman? And what is this place? You have been here before?"

  But in turn Menon made his report in another tongue, one he must share with Icar, for the seaman listened closely. Then he translated for Rahotep.

  "This is a place for those who have a greater lilting for the night than the day, comrade—a place for thieves and such to take their ease. It is kept by one who does not welcome the Hyksos, and it would seem they do not come here often—or stay long—"

  As he spoke, the woman had been glancing from face to face. Rahotep believed that her eyes were so accustomed to the gloom of her surroundings that she was able to see as well as Bis in a half light. Now she was watching him intently, too intently—and with a shrewdness the captain did not relish. It was as if under that searching appraisal she was summoning out of the air to clothe him the uniform of a guard officer. And in that moment he would have sworn she had noted the telltale patch of lighter skin on his fingers, the marks left by his armlets between elbow and shoulder.

  But when she lifted her huge hand, crooking a finger with absurd daintiness to beckon him forward, he advanced as if she were the Royal Mother herself.

  "You seek shelter?" Oddly enough the harsh tone with which she had berated Menon was gone from her voice. Her speech was almost without the northern accent, close to the clipped tongue of Thebes, and he thought that she was of the pure Egyptian blood.

  "We do, lady." He used the address he would have used to one of his own caste, unconsciously paying tribute to that voice.

  "For how long?" She was businesslike, a lodging keeper.

  "Perhaps until the middle night—" He hoped that was all. But with the city stirred up like a Kush border village after a raid, he dared not do more than hope.

  "You must take your chances if they track you here," she told him tartly. "I shall say that you forced yourself upon a helpless woman—"

  Menon snickered loudly and rudely, and she paused to glare at him, with a half-raised fist promising a future reckoning.

  "Do they come here often?" Rahotep countered. There was no need to give other name to that "they"—both of them understood too well.

  She laughed comfortably, richly. "Not too often, young sir. Oh, aye, they raid now and again—to recover slaves—or to get food for their god—" She moved uneasily and made an ancient secret sign with her fingers to ward off evil. "But when they come, it is in strength and poor old Nebet has those who warn her. She also claims her just dues—" For the second time she glared at Menon. "And none of you carry any 'gold of valor' to pay for even a single jar of beer—" She surveyed their scanty slave rags disparagingly.

  "True enough!" agreed Icar. "But have you not already said that we are desperate and evil men who have forced their way into the place of a weak and helpless woman?"

  She turned her blackest frown upon the seaman, but she did not hold it. Her paint cracked again as she began to laugh, until her mountainous body shook helplessly.

  "So you did!" she wheezed, "so you did! And also you have stirred them up as if you dropped an angry bees' nest into their midst—or else this one here tells lies bigger than he is—" She stretched forth one pudgy foot to point with its painted nails at the Kush. "Very well, warriors, take me prisoner and work your will here. I cannot withstand your rage and power!" With mock shyness she hid her face behind her hands and giggled—looking up quickly again to snap at Menon who had gone to a shelf and was coolly reaching down a jar of beer. "Go too far with your looting, pig-keeper, and you will feel the weight of my hand until your neck snaps in two! There is an end to Nebet's good nature and almsgiving!"

  But she made no other move to stop him when he slopped the contents of the jar into a bowl and passed it with a land of rough ceremony to Icar who in turn proffered it to Rahotep. The stuff was thin and sour, but it was liquid and it cooled his throat. The captain swallowed several mouthfuls and passed it back to the seaman who finished it off at one gulp, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

  "A man fills his belly with more than just beer," Icar hinted. "We have teeth to exercise in something more solid."

  For a second Rahotep thought that Nebet was about to flare into a rage once more. Then she clapped her hands, and a wrinkled hag of a Kush woman scuttled from an inner room, listened to an order delivered in her own click speech, and disappeared, to return with a tray on which there were rounds of poor cakes, some too-soft dates, and an evil-smelling cheese. They wolfed it down with avid appetites. Poor as the stuff was, it was infinitely better than slave fare. Huy belched and stroked his stomach caressingly when he had finished.

  "It is not the sweet flesh of a young gazelle, nor yet the fat of a buck in good season—and there are no mealie-mealies. But it will do to fill a man between his front and his backbone," he remarked. "Only what does the old witch want from us in return?"

  Nebet must have either possessed the magical powers with which he credited her or more than natural hearing, for she peered at the Nubian from her couch of mats and smiled chillingly.

  "You name Nebet 'old witch' do you, black-skin? Mind your manners lest she show you how much of a witch she is!"

  Huy attempted to stare her down. But he moved uneasily and then added placatingly, "A witch is a woman of power, great lady. Is that not so? And in this city I would say that you are a woman of power. But also I ask, what do you want from us in return?"

  "Let us say that I toss sticks with the future—or that I am a teller of tales—" She spoke over Huy to Rahotep. "In this city the walls are hung with ears, and, as this toad from the south has acknowledged, Nebet has power of a sort—enough to summon to her what those ears have heard. Today there has been a queer story of a stranger who entered Neferusi to spy —coming as a slave when indeed he is that which hovers in the air and watches with the Great Eye—"

  Rahotep froze. The archaic words of the Horus ritual struck at him with a breath of that dank cold he had known in the temple dungeons. Horus—the Hawk—the Great Eye!

  "And this one comes as an arrow shot before a host, for it is whispered that the Flail is up and that Pharaoh marches again against ancient foes—" She was sing-songing the words with the rhythm of one of the story-telling harpers, and on her massive knees her fingers moved as if plucking at the strings of an invisible instrument. "Only the Son of Re should look within his own host for enemies, since there they lie as worms within fruit! The Lord of the Two Lands has his warriors, his nobles to fight for him. But also there are others who shall remember on the proper day that they are of the old blood and that too long have the sons of Set sat here untroubled."

  "And if arms were to be given to those of whom you speak?" questioned Rahotep softly. "Even within this city of Neferusi were such a thing to be done, what then?" "We here have little to lose except life—" "Yet," Icar cut in, "life is sweet enough for many men. Few face death laughing—"

  "Death?" She brooded for a space. "Tell me, young lord, does not the warriors' oath say this?" Surprisingly she repeated the same words he had said long weeks ago to Methen in a Nubian fort.

  " 'Fight for his name, purify yourselves by his oath, and you shall be free from trouble. The beloved of the Pharaoh shall be blessed; but there is no tomb for one hostile to his majesty; and his body shall be thrown to the waters.' "

  "You speak as a Leader of a Hundred, lady," he observed wonderingly.

  "Within this part of Neferusi am I the Commander of a Thousand." She spoke with the complete certainty of undisputed authority. "A serpent spews its poison into Hyksos ears; beware lest it set its fangs within the flesh of Pharaoh! But if any lord who hates the Hyksos desires to put weapons in the hands of certain men within this city—let him haste to do so and then watch a red reaping! Remember that, Lord!"

  "Be assured, lady, that I shall. But first it will be necessary to get out of Neferusi, for this time—"

  To his disappointment she was shaking her head. "I am not so lacking in wit that
I shall expose those who serve me without hope of their gaining something in return. You got into this city; you must have had some plan for getting out again. Follow it, Lord, by yourself. Remember, you are desperate men who forced yourselves upon the helpless Nebet—" She lengthened her vowels into a whine, but it was apparent that she meant what she had said. Outside this room Nebet would do nothing more to aid them.

  Chapter 16

  OVER THE WALLS

  There was no moon, and as a consequence the Kush, for fear of those night demons well known to infest such a darkness, protested against issuing forth from Nebet's den—or rather from the very cramped storage room in which the fugitives had been hidden for the long hours of the afternoon and the first part of the night. Rahotep would have been content enough to leave him behind, but since he was admittedly the only one of the escaped slaves who knew the inner maze of the Neferusi slums well enough to act as a guide, he was pressed into service. Menon had a very limited knowledge of the city, confined to the immediate surroundings of the house of a Hyksos lord where he had been a burden slave until rebellion sent him to the heavier labor on the walls.

  "Menon's an able lad in a tangle," Icar confided to the captain privately. "And well I can testify to that, for he was my steersman until these ape-noses of Hyksos sent us all to the market to be sold. He can be trusted to crack an arm or a neck in a good cause. I was sorry to have him sent south and be parted from him months ago. Aye, he can stand up in a fight, but he must have his orders. When he thinks for himself —then he gets into trouble. And that Kush is also a wild one —he was in my labor gang before, and even the overseer watched him from eye corners. They are not to be completely trusted—those black devils!"

  Rahotep could agree to that. As a precaution, he assigned Huy to aid him in keeping a hand on the Kush so that he could not elude them in the puzzle of ill-smelling lanes and ways and leave them to blunder into trouble while he escaped. The Nubian, with an age-old distrust for his southern neighbor, put a noose about the Kush's thin neck and recited in a calm voice what would happen to the savage should he try to play them tricks.

  The Kush led, still muttering protests under his breath intermingled with charms against night demons and petitions to gods older and darker than Set. Next, holding the rope, which leashed him as if he were a hunting hound to be loosed on some field, came Huy and Rahotep abreast. And so narrow were some of the ways that their outer shoulders brushed house walls as they skidded and tramped through noisome muck. Menon kept in touch with one hand linked into Rahotep's waist cord, and in turn, Icar had a similar hold upon him, while the other Nubian, Nesamun, brought up the rear.

  For arms they had four daggers, three taken in the riot and a fourth wheedled out of Nebet, who had parted with it very reluctantly indeed, having flatly refused to provide them with a guide in the place of the Kush, or with any other aid. In addition, Nesamun dangled a length of cord in one hand. He swore that he was adept in an old trick used along the border for the disposing of awkwardly placed sentries, and this night Rahotep was desperate enough to put aside his squeamish dislike of it.

  Scout training had taught the captain the art of quiet passage, and the Nubians and the Kush were silent shapes who glided rather than walked. But Menon was not their match, and twice he blundered into bad footing, which led him to swear in a strange tongue until a warning buffet from Icar cut him short. The seaman himself came up against the advance party with full force as they paused where the lane they had followed gave upon that wider way that paralleled the city walls.

  Though the district in which Nebet had her hole was largely dark and they would have been totally lost in it lacking the Kush's leadership, it was different in this quarter. Torches blazed at intervals along the walls, and Rahotep could see the movement of men both above and below. He knew the point he must reach. But now he was afraid that it would be of little use to follow his plan. The riot must have alerted the Hyksos.

  He had tracked behind the Kush blindly. Now he saw they were too near the gate. The point he and Kheti had chosen earlier lay to the north, a quarter of the way around the wall. At that section the repairs and rebuilding that were engrossing the city's governor had made necessary the erection of a short ramp, so that capping stones of some weight could be brought up from the outside. The ramp was a rough thing and was in the process of being dismantled. A man could not have climbed it, even at night, without an immediate challenge. A man could not, but—

  Rahotep drew level with the Kush and held his lips close to the man's ear. In the click speech of the border, he gave an order he hoped would bring them to the right place. The Kush chattered a protest, little of which the captain could understand, which ended in a choked gasp as Huy jerked his leading noose. Then the Nubian's head was at the savage's other ear, and he snapped an addition to the Egyptian's order that set the Kush shivering.

  With a little whimper the man turned to the left, and their small party strung out in the half light, progressing by quick rushes and long pauses from one safe area of darkness to the next. Rahotep, expecting any moment to be hailed from the top of the wall, watched those heights with such concentration that he was hardly aware of what passed on his own level, though Huy warned him twice in urgent whispers.

  At length they stood beneath the point he judged the right one. It was between two of the torchlit spaces, and there could not be more than one or two sentries above, for the surface of the wall narrowed there, the sides sloping toward the top. Rahotep leaped across the open and pressed against the surface of the barrier, making his body as flat as possible. He listened, alert to the slightest sound in the night.

  A call from one sentry to the next was passed along, and the captain spread himself even tighter against the stone when it was echoed from overhead. Then came the faint scrape of a sandal on stone, the thud, thud of a marching man, tapping a spear butt as a device to keep himself awake—as Rahotep had seen and heard countless other midnight sentinels do in the boredom of the long, quiet hours.

  Twice the captain heard the man pass over his station, timing him by the beating of his own heart, which seemed to him now to be throbbing almost in his throat. This was not a fixed post; the man had a beat that took him for some yards back and forth across the crucial spot. And Rahotep hoped that Icar and the rest were watching the sentry from the other side of the street.

  The guard had reached midpoint; now he was heading away, as far as the Egyptian could judge. The captain shaped his lips, and from his throat came the cry he had practiced so carefully time after time in the wastes beyond Neferusi. Twice he voiced that yowl, one not out of place in any Egyptian city and one that the sentries must have heard so many times in a night that it would not awaken interest, for the house cats of Egypt were apt to voice such songs. Only—would the right cat answer him now?

  Tense, his fingers rigid against the wall in concentration of body and brain, Rahotep waited. Then came what he had hoped for, had hardly dared to believe he would hear, an eerie feline wail with a quaver that was doubly realistic and of which Kheti was extremely proud.

  He visualized every move that must be made outside the wall. Kheti would free Bis of his leash. Already he would have wound upon the cub's body the rope, leaving its end in his own hands. Bis would be given the proper order, and the leopard's soundless pads would mount the rubble of the ramp, passing noiselessly where a man's weight would bring the guard's attention. Bis would climb with the fluid feline grace of his kind, he would crouch on the wall, he would—

  Against the torchlight something moved, shot through the air. There was the thud of a landing body, not close to the wall, but across the open space. Rahotep hissed urgently, hoping that the leopard cub with his uncertain tolerance for strangers would not set upon the men hidden there.

  A blot of black flitted across the street; behind it something trailed in the dust. Then a furry body hurled itself upon the captain with a throaty purr of pleased recognition. Rahotep caressed the round head,
whispered lovingly into a pricked ear as he went down on his knees, so that the familiar head butted against his chest. He found the rope end made fast to the cub's collar and twisted about the body for safer keeping. The knots gave under his fingers, and his single quick tug was answered from outside. Their risky ladder out of Neferusi was in his hands!

  Bis growled as a figure made the crossing of the street in two leaps and joined them. Icar spoke, his voice reduced to a half squeak in his effort to whisper.

  "Do we move now, Egyptian? There is a smell of trouble here. We had better be on our way."

  "There remains the sentry—" Rahotep looked up to the top of the wall.

  But Icar had turned and beckoned. The others joined them, the Kush coming only at the jerk of the rope Huy still held upon him. Rahotep brought them to the climbing cord, keeping Bis under control when the leopard cub would have actively protested the strangers. Nesamun chuckled.

  "The next task is mine, Lord!" He popped the coil of cord he had carried into his mouth and reached for the rope. Then he was climbing as the others crouched below.