by Gary Corby
“But I must say that out of all of them, this is easily the worst place I’ve ever been.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Have you noticed the second caravan?” Herodotus asked.
“We’ve been talking about it all day!” I said.
“Not that one. The small caravan behind the one that’s trailing us.”
Herodotus pointed.
There, far behind but closing, was a single camel and, as far as I could tell, a single rider. It was very hard to be sure. Something about the desert made everything blurry in the distance.
“He seems to be struggling,” Herodotus commented.
Indeed he was. Camels don’t have the most regular of gaits, but even from a distance it looked to me more like a stagger than a run.
The camel fell.
It didn’t get up.
The man did though. I saw him pick himself up off the ground. He walked for a few steps. And then he ran.
“He’ll die out there,” Herodotus said dispassionately.
The wind chose that moment to pick up. Djanet had warned us that could happen. It meant there was about to be a sandstorm.
“Hey! Nico! Where are you going?” Herodotus shouted at my back.
I’d decided not to wait for Djanet to tell me not to go.
I whacked Pericles on the backside. The camel surged into what passed for a gallop. I could barely hang on. The gait was throwing me backwards and forwards like a child’s doll.
I continued like this for a long time, aiming for where I had last seen that poor man, but mostly keeping my eyes shut, for the grit was swirling everywhere.
I opened them again just in time to see that I was about to run over the man I’d come to rescue. I swerved to the side. He stumbled, exhausted.
I reached down to help him. His hat was blown backwards by the wind and I saw his face.
It was Markos.
“What in Hades are you doing out here?” I shouted over the noise of the wind.
“Why didn’t you tell me there was a treasure out here?” he shouted back, aggrieved.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Half of Egypt knows it! You should hear the marketplace rumors.”
Wonderful. Inaros had specifically said to keep our mission quiet. But then, I thought to myself in consolation, after the General died, and then Tutu, it had been impossible to avoid word spreading.
“Can I climb up?” he said hopefully.
“There’s no room,” I told him. “Grab the camel’s tail.” Then I realized pulling on a camel’s short tail might have negative consequences for both of us. “No, grab the cloth,” I said. I had placed a blanket between myself and the camel. Markos grabbed one corner of it.
I tapped Pericles into motion. The beast pulled Markos along when he needed the help, and gave him support when he stumbled, which he did constantly on the uneven stony ground.
We talked as we moved.
“What did you think you were doing, riding your camel to death?” I said.
“Trying to reach you before it died!” he said. He stumbled and cursed. “Would you believe I started with three of those horrible animals? They died, one by one.”
A camel is like a moving rock. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could dispose of three of them.
“I bought them from a camel dealer outside Memphis,” Markos explained. “The bastard sold me three sick ones. How was I supposed to tell the difference? I don’t know the front end of a camel from the back.”
He stumbled again. This part of the desert was mostly hard ground, littered with loose rocks well designed to break your ankle if you trod on one. Pericles pulled Markos along for a moment before he found his feet.
“Though come to that, I do now,” the Spartan said. “The front end is the part that spits on you, and the back end is the part that farts on you.”
“If you hurt Pericles’s feelings, he might refuse to save you!”
“If I get back there alive, I’ll kill that dealer,” Markos said.
For once I found myself sympathizing with the assassin. Having experienced the desert, I knew that selling a man a sick camel to cross this place was the next best thing to murder.
“Thanks, Nico,” Markos said. “You saved my life.”
“I haven’t yet.”
Nor had I. The wind was now so strong, and the dust in the air so great, that I could barely see past Pericles’s head. He had to turn from time to time to get around an obstruction, and every time he did, I couldn’t be sure that he set himself back on the right path afterwards. I had lost track of which direction to go. In this wall of sand, I could walk right by my own caravan and not know it.
“This way,” Markos urged. He tugged us slightly to the left.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve had Spartan field training. I’m good with directions. Trust me, Nico. Your caravan is this way.”
I had no choice but to trust him. To stand still and wait for the storm to end wasn’t an option. Markos and I stumbled through the blasting dust that was the next best thing to Tartarus.
Somewhere in the distance, someone was blowing a horn. At first I didn’t recognize it, thought it was part of the wind, but as we pushed forward the sound became clearer.
By common consent, Markos and I made for the horn as best we could.
Eventually we sensed something ahead.
“Hawnk!” Pericles grunted.
Pericles had run into something.
There were similar noises in reply. We had run into a herd of camels, tethered to the ground.
The horn was now loud above the sound of the storm. I shouted, “Who’s making that racket!”
The horn stopped.
“Nico!”
It was Diotima’s voice.
“Diotima!”
Hands reached out, dragged Markos and me into a gray thing that turned out to be a tent. The inside of the tent would have been unpleasant at any other time. Now, it was like the Elysian Fields. Inside, hunched together, were Djanet, Herodotus, Diotima . . . and Barzanes and four of his men.
We had come to the other caravan, the one that had been trailing us.
“When the storm rose, and we saw that the other caravan had erected a tent, we made for it,” Djanet said. “We would have died, otherwise.”
“And there was Barzanes,” Diotima added. “He let us in.”
“Thank you,” I said to Barzanes.
He inclined his head. “To fill my pocket with good deeds is an obligation to Ahura Mazda.”
Barzanes’s strange religion had come through for us again. The Persian agent could be ruthless one moment, and a perfect gentleman the next.
Markos looked like some weird creature arisen from the sand.
“You look like one of the Spartoi,” I said, and laughed at my own joke.
Markos stared at me oddly, then he got it. “Very funny,” he said. For in the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, the Spartoi were the men who sprang fully formed from the ground, wherever were sown the teeth of a dragon.
I wasn’t any cleaner than him. We wiped ourselves down. Until that moment, the others hadn’t recognized the Spartan assassin.
Barzanes pointed at Markos. “He goes back into the storm,” he said.
Well, I couldn’t blame Barzanes for that call. But I hadn’t risked my life for a man only to see him killed moments later. I had to intervene.
“We need him, Barzanes,” I said. “I know exactly how you feel, believe me, but we need Markos.”
“Why?” Barzanes asked.
“He’s an experienced scout. All Spartans trained for independent action are. I became lost in the storm, and Markos pointed the way. Could you do that? If the storm doesn’t let up, we’re going to have to march through tha
t muck. How long do these storms last, by the way?”
“Sometimes for days,” said Djanet glumly.
“We must unite against the common enemy,” Markos broke in.
“What enemy?” Herodotus asked.
“This accursed desert,” Markos said.
I couldn’t imagine all three parties managing to make it to Siwa without a knife ending up in someone’s back. I said as much.
“Then tie me up at night,” Markos said. “I’ll be at your mercy.”
“There is something I must warn you of,” said Barzanes. He spoke reluctantly, I could tell from his voice.
“Yes? What is it?” I said.
“I must speak of past times. Sixty years ago, Cambyses, the Great King of the Persians, the grandfather of our current king—”
“The same Cambyses who defeated Psamtik?” I interrupted.
“The same,” Barzanes said. “King Cambyses ordered a small army to travel to Siwa, there to destroy the temple, raze the oracle to the ground, and enslave the priests.”
“That seems a little extreme.”
“I do not know what caused the King to issue this command. I speculate that Cambyses sought to punish the priests for interfering in his affairs, now that I have learned they stole the body of Psamtik.”
I asked, “When you say small army, just how small are we talking here?”
“Fifty thousand men,” Barzanes said.
We all gasped.
“Fifty thousand,” I spluttered. “To slaughter a handful of priests? What was he thinking?”
“The Great King was perhaps vexed with the priests.”
“Yet the temple still stands,” Herodotus pointed out. “If anything, its fame has grown with every year. From which I deduce the Persians did not ransack the temple. What happened?”
“That army never got to Siwa,” Barzanes said. “They died to the last man.” He paused, then added, “In this desert.” He paused again, then said, “In a dust storm.”
There was a long and unhappy silence, while we listened to the sound of the storm outside.
Eventually someone spoke.
“We work together,” Djanet said firmly.
The Sand March
For three long, tortuous days we marched in that storm. We ate dust and we drank dust. It was like Hades. I had been through some terrible experiences in my time, but those three days were possibly the worst of my life.
Markos led every step of the way, and I mean step. He said he found it easier to keep his direction if he walked. So Markos walked and we rode behind, with a rope running the length of the train, so we would not separate in even the worst visibility.
Despite the elaborate precautions we did lose a man. At the end of the march on the second day, one of Barzanes’s men was no longer with us. No one had seen him disappear. We didn’t even know at what part of the day he had gone; the dust had been too thick. Nor could we go back to search for him. There was nothing we could do but wish his shade peace in Hades.
At night, we bound Markos hand and foot, at his insistence. “I don’t want any of you thinking you’d be safer without me,” he said. “I want to get there alive as much as you do.”
The storm eased on the third day. As it did, we could see the oasis not far in the distance, and I was overcome with the knowledge that we would live. I kicked Pericles forward to stop alongside Diotima, and we hugged on camel back.
Markos wearily hauled himself up onto the camel he’d been leading. He slumped over and instantly fell asleep.
I had wondered what an oasis looked like. Now I knew. It looked like a place where the Gods would choose to live. In the midst of this terrible desert were two beautiful, large blue water lakes, surrounded by many trees. People lived here. Among the trees were the typical white, squared-off buildings of the Egyptians. Between the lakes was a very large hill. It was a natural formation, yet from a distance it was shaped and looked very much like a pyramid. At the top was a surprisingly large complex.
“The temple of Amun,” Djanet said.
We rode into town. We did not stop until we reached the water’s edge. The camels immediately bent to drink the water. We slid off our mounts, walked into the water, and sat down. The town folk watched this with no apparent surprise. We weren’t the first party to arrive from Egypt.
Diotima and I sat side by side in the lake and poured handfuls of water over each other. It was bliss. Djanet ducked herself completely under, then swam. Barzanes uttered a prayer. Even Herodotus put away his writing tools long enough to enjoy the pleasure of being alive.
We continued like this until we’d had our fill of life-giving water—never again would I turn my nose up at a cup of water—before we led away the camels.
It was easy to choose an inn. There was only one in the entire town. We paid for the best rooms the place had to offer—the prices amounted to extortion, but we weren’t complaining—then paid even more for a small army of boys to wash down and care for the camels. The beasts had saved our lives; they deserved the very best.
We slept for a day. Maybe more. I honestly don’t know how long we lay resting. When Diotima and I woke, we were confused. Was it morning? Afternoon? All we knew was that it was bright sunlight out the window.
We went downstairs to find everyone else enjoying a leisurely breakfast of food that wasn’t dried meat mixed with sand.
There we learned that everyone had slept not overnight, but for a day and a half. The others had awoken about the same time we had.
I had lost weight during the journey. Quite a lot, in fact—my exomis hung off me and flopped as if I were a pole beneath a rag. Despite which, I still had little appetite. I supposed it would come back in time. The inn served no wine, which wasn’t a surprise. They did have date beer. I drank it without complaint and picked at the flat bread and fruits on the table.
No one wanted to talk about what came next. The euphoria of arrival was gone, replaced by the knowledge that for three days we had worked together to save our lives, but now must return to opposition in our missions. It was a strange feeling. No one wanted to be first to open hostilities. Diotima, Herodotus and I had to be careful for another reason. We knew that Djanet was the true heir of Egypt, but Barzanes and Markos didn’t. We didn’t dare let it slip.
We finished breakfast by washing our sticky hands in bowls of water. Then by wordless agreement we all began the journey up the hill to the temple. We walked in silence.
At the foot of the steep hill was a stairway made of stone—there was plenty of raw material about—and beside the stairway, a shrine. A large sign was written in the strange language of the Egyptians. Djanet translated.
“It says these buildings were the work of the Pharaoh Amasis,” she said.
That was Djanet’s great-grandfather.
We continued up the path. My leg muscles ached with every step. I’m sure they did for the others too. At the top was an ornate gate in the Egyptian style, and beside the gate, a priest.
He said, “Welcome to the Temple of Amun. I hope you had a pleasant journey.”
The High Priest of Amun received us. He had a private office at the top of the complex, with a view through the window that seemed to go all the way back to Egypt. Acolytes brought dates and beer and, to my joy, a decent wine.
Herodotus thanked the High Priest for his personal attention to mere travelers.
“Every visitor to our temple is someone of importance,” the High Priest said.
Herodotus raised an eyebrow. “Is that a religious position? Do you hold that all men are important in the eyes of the God?” he asked.
“No, it’s because only important people can get here.”
The High Priest was a man of a practical views.
Herodotus looked around at our party, but no one else seemed inclined to speak. Herodotus had somehow bec
ome our spokesman.
“The fact is, sir, that for differing reasons, each of us before you is on a quest to find the sarcophagus of the last native Pharaoh, Psamtik, the son of Amasis.”
The High Priest of Amun looked from one to another of our expectant faces. Besides Herodotus, who always had a certain air of innocent enthusiasm, the priest saw an Egyptian, two Athenians, a Spartan and a Persian. It was almost like the start of some bad joke.
“I see.” The reaction of the High Priest was carefully neutral.
Herodotus was undeterred. “Er . . . I don’t suppose you know where it is?” he said hopefully.
“What do you plan to do with the sarcophagus if you find it?” the High Priest asked in return.
Ransack the treasure, tear out the body, and retrieve sacred insignia from a secret compartment within, in order to prosecute a war. Somehow that didn’t seem quite like the right answer to say to a priest. Of all the problems I had anticipated when we arrived, it had not occurred to me that someone might find what we were doing a trifle unethical.
Our combined silence told the High Priest everything he needed to know.
“If I may contribute a point,” Barzanes said. “I speak for the Great King of the Persians.”
“Yes?” The High Priest said.
“If the contents of that sarcophagus are recovered in the name of Persia, then the Great King will be friend to this temple. There can be no better friend in all the world, nor more powerful. The Great King’s friendship is beyond price.”
The High Priest arched an eyebrow at these words. “Would that be the same Great King who sent an army of fifty thousand against us?” he asked.
“Er . . . his grandson, actually.” Barzanes turned red in embarrassment. Or perhaps it was anger at the mistakes of his predecessors. If so, he would never admit it.
The High Priest said drily, “Forgive me if I find fraternal feelings for Persia difficult to come by.”
“Then I shall speak for Sparta,” Markos said.
“Do go on,” said the High Priest.
“I will not pretend that there is any advantage if you aid me. Sparta is too far away to be of assistance to the temple. But I will say that there is no more fearsome people in the world,” Markos said. “It is always good to be a friend of Sparta, because to be the opposite just isn’t fun. Ask any Athenian. It is in your interests, my dear High Priest, to be a friend of Sparta.”
