‘Lord Judge,’ the man replied softly, ‘the Divine One has showed her face and smiled at me.’ He grinned up at General Omendap. ‘I do not think the Amemets will reach me.’
Amerotke spent the rest of that day in a small chamber at the back of the shabby, dilapidated mansion. Shufoy, to keep up pretences, arrived with a parcel of food wrapped tenderly in linen by Norfret. The dwarf squatted before the judge, who sat on a cushion with his back to the crumbling wall, biting into the soft bread and olives.
‘A ghost house!’ Shufoy murmured. ‘Outside, master, you’d think this place was deserted, but once you are through the gates and into the trees…’
Amerotke laughed. ‘Omendap is afraid an Amemet spy may scale the wall,’ he declared, ‘to search for a possible ambush. He has ordered all his troops deeper into the trees with strict instructions to remain hidden.’ He shook his head. ‘I feel sorry for them. They have to relieve themselves where they are, eat what provisions are available and bear the heat of the day.’
‘Harsh but sound advice.’ Shufoy helped himself to a slice of fruit. ‘As I came in I noticed two beggars…’
‘Amemets?’
‘Undoubtedly. One looks like an ape; the other is constantly scratching his crotch! Beggars have a certain look and posture; those two are undoubtedly Amemet scouts.’
‘Good,’ Amerotke declared. ‘Let them stay there and see what they are supposed to see, like a mirage in the desert: a poorly defended house which can be easily attacked once darkness falls.’
‘You will be safe, master?’
‘Shufoy, Shufoy,’ Amerotke leaned forward, ‘you and I both know that every time we investigate a sudden mysterious death, or walk through the streets of the Necropolis, Death, like a shadow, lurks not far behind. This is no different. However, as you said, the gardens of this house are thronged with soldiers. The Amemets, not I, will be ambushed tonight. Shufoy, we have done business with those assassins before. Lord Senenmut is correct. Tonight we might inflict such a blow, it will take them a long, long time to recover.’
‘And the poisonings, the mysterious deaths?’
‘I have gone down one path and then another only to find them all blocked. There must be another way.’ He leaned over and clasped Shufoy’s hand. ‘Keep your counsel. Do not make Norfret anxious. Give my love to my lady wife and my sons. Oh, and by the way…’ Amerotke felt in the folds of his robe and brought out a small scroll. ‘Before you return home, go to the Temple of Ptah, seek out the priest Hinqui again and give him this. Ask him to study it most carefully, and when he is ready to send a reply, he must do so directly to me.’
Once again Shufoy grasped his master’s hand. When he had left, Amerotke slept for a while, then returned to reflecting on the mysteries that confronted him, but he was restless, unable to make any headway, and was relieved when the sun began to set. He had been under instruction from Omendap not to leave his chamber, but once darkness had fallen, he joined the mercenary on the roof terrace to eat and talk in the glow of lamplight which he knew could be seen from beyond the walls. A military cook served food: hard bread, dried meat, fruit and bitter-tasting wine. Nevertheless, the mercenary proved to be a most congenial companion. He claimed the food was better than that served in the barracks, and under Amerotke’s gentle questioning he described how he originally came from a family that owned a small farm in the delta. He regaled Amerotke with stories of the Sea People, their customs, and their hunger for gold, silver and precious stones.
‘Our farm couldn’t support more than one,’ he joked, ‘so I joined the army and saw service out along the Horus Road. Afterwards I took my pay and left. I married but my wife died in childbirth. I decided to sell my plot…’ He then went on to describe how he’d even seen military service in warships on the Great Green, and his involvement in the furious pursuit of a raiding galley to an island far across the waters.
‘The Sea People beached their ship and retreated inland,’ he related. ‘Our captain ordered us marines to follow. It was a living nightmare! I thought I’d entered the Underworld. The dense vegetation was truly dangerous due to the traps the Sea People had left for us: rockfalls which would be started off with a pebble, pits dug deep, their bottoms lined with sharpened stakes. The worst was the beach itself. They’d hidden a myriad of small thorns under a coating of loose sand.’
‘So you scarred your feet?’ Amerotke asked.
‘Yes, but the real danger was that the tips of these thorns were thickly coated in human dung. A physician later described how deadly these things were. Those of our men who were scratched simply thought it was a nuisance, nothing much compared to a blow from a club or a thrust from a dagger. Only later did deep infection set in, and by then it was too late.’
Amerotke nodded understandingly. He’d heard of similar traps being used, simple, primitive but very lethal. An army physician had once informed him that human dung was probably one of the greatest poisons you could infect a man with.
‘You see,’ the mercenary continued, ‘the tip went deep, the cut was made, the blood flowed. The injured man would go to a physician, who’d probably rinse it and then bandage it, but the infection was already working. Only later, perhaps two or three days on, would the victim realise that something was wrong. Sometimes the cut could be opened and cleaned, but on many occasion I saw men die raging, feverish, from a simple cut to their foot…’
He was about to launch into another tale when the night sky above them was scored by a fire arrow streaking up through the darkness.
‘It’s begun,’ Amerotke murmured. ‘Let’s go down.’
* * *
Bluetooth the Amemet watched the fire arrow streak through the night. He was leading his unit of ten men, veterans, former members of the imperial army. Twenty such groups now circled the House of Horus the Red-Eye. They were the Restu, the Night Watchers. The Amemet chiefs had summoned up two hundred of their men to ring and scale the wall, brush aside any resistance, capture the prisoner and even take Judge Amerotke hostage. Such a prospect appealed to the leaders of these assassins. It would be a public boast of their power, a clear sign to all the other creatures who lurked in the Am-duat of Thebes that the Amemets were its true rulers, able to mock even the power of Pharaoh. Bluetooth secretly comforted himself that this would be an easy task. Amemet scouts had reported little or no activity in or around the house. The only visitor had been that little man Shufoy, Amerotke’s assistant, who had now left. Bluetooth had been disappointed at that. If they captured Amerotke, they could have taken Shufoy as well and possibly sold him to merchants along the Nile; these were always on the lookout for some grotesque whom they could sell in the delta or beyond the Fourth Cataract.
Ah well! Bluetooth turned, peering through the darkness. His men were prepared, faces and bodies gleaming with cheap oil ready for close hand-to-hand combat, shields slung on their backs, curved swords and thrusting daggers in their hands. As Bluetooth rose to a half-crouch, a second fire arrow seared the night.
‘Now!’ he hissed. They ran through the trees to where makeshift ladders, poles with pegs on either side, were leaning against the wall. Bluetooth was aware of other dark shadows to his right and left. The wall was scaled, the men dropping down into the shadows beyond. They would not need ladders to leave. Soon this house would be theirs and they’d take full possession of its gates. Bluetooth gathered his men and ran to join the rest streaming along the path leading up to the main door and its colonnaded portico. They were spreading out, eager to surround the house, when a conch horn’s wailing blast shattered the stillness. Above them windows were flung open, arrows whipped through the darkness. Bluetooth heard a second horn blast from behind him. He whirled round and stared in horror. A phalanx of soldiers was moving towards them in a curving line. All about him his men were dropping, hit by arrows that slammed into neck and chest. Torches were being thrown from the windows to provide better light. An ambush! Their only chance was to fight their way out. Any plan to seiz
e the prisoner was quickly forgotten. Bluetooth realised that these imperial troops would show no mercy. The Amemet captain led a charge but it was futile: his men were broken up and surrounded. Bluetooth was lashing out with his sword when a crack to the side of his head hurled him unconscious to the ground.
* * *
Amerotke heard the horrible clatter of weapons, and screams and yells piercing the darkness. He and the mercenary were sheltering in a room at the back of the house, its windows firmly barred and shuttered, protected by hand-picked troops who guarded the door outside. Amerotke sat back against the wall, eyes closed. The horrid din of battle echoed through the house. A scream higher than the rest made him start; it was abruptly silenced as the clatter of combat faded. He heard footsteps, men’s voices. The door was unbarred and thrust open and the glare of torchlight dazzled him. Omendap strode towards him, in his right hand a curved khopesh bloodied to the hilt. He threw this at Amerotke’s feet.
‘It’s finished. You’d best come.’ He turned to the mercenary, who was about to scramble to his feet. ‘No, not you. I do not want them to realise they’ve been tricked, just in case. Perhaps one of them has escaped and still lurks amongst the trees.’
The front of the house was now a blaze of torchlight; some of the brands still burnt where they’d been flung on the ground. Other torches, freshly flamed, had been lashed to poles thrust into the earth or held by perspiring mercenaries who stood watching the surviving Amemets being marshalled into a line in front of the colonnaded portico. Now and again a scream echoed from the trees as the Maryannou and Nakhtu-aa searched for survivors and killed them. The Egyptian dead and wounded were being lifted on stretchers to a makeshift mortuary and hospital set up at the rear of the house. Amemets too badly wounded to be questioned were dragged to their feet and led to a line of stakes hastily fashioned out of the ladders they had set against the wall. Amerotke felt his gorge rise as the impalements began. The Amemets, stripped naked, were lifted up by Nubian archers and thrust down on to the razor-edged points. Black shapes jerked frantically against the dark, their screams of agony piercing the night.
‘Is that necessary?’ Amerotke turned and retched. For a while he leaned against one of the pillars, trying to control his stomach. Then he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Another hideous scream rang out, drowning the more subdued groans of those impaled first and now lapsing into death.
‘General Omendap!’ Amerotke snapped.
The general, face sweat streaked, eyes still fierce with the blood-lust of battle, walked over, his staff officers crowding around.
‘It is necessary.’ Omendap gestured to the line of prisoners, hands and feet now being manacled. ‘They have violated Pharaoh’s peace. They would have inflicted much worse on us. Those prisoners able to stand are to be questioned.’ He poked Amerotke in the chest. ‘By you.’
The judge knocked his hand away angrily.
‘By you!’ Omendap repeated. Amerotke held his gaze even as another heart-wrenching scream echoed from the line of impalements.
‘Enough!’ Amerotke hissed. ‘I am Pharaoh’s friend.’
Omendap blinked and wiped away sweat.
‘Moreover,’ Amerotke continued, ‘they should be properly tried, even if it’s before a military tribunal.’
‘They are too badly wounded to be of use,’ Omendap retorted.
‘Then by the Lords of Light,’ Amerotke whispered, ‘kill them quickly!’
Omendap looked as if he was about to refuse, but then nodded in agreement and shouted across, pushing a staff officer forward to enforce his command.
Amerotke walked down the ramp. The impaled men were now silent; only the occasional low groan carried and then the hideous gargling noise as Omendap’s men began to cut the throats of the rest of the enemy wounded. He moved down the line of manacled Amemets. Despite cuts and bruises, the heavy chains around wrists and ankles, they still looked fierce. As he walked, he studied hardened, scarred faces, bodies reeking of sweat, blood and cheap oil. They were dressed in the most grotesque collection of animal skins: leopard mantles, wolf-skin jerkins, jackal capes, hyaena cloaks. Dead eyes in cruel faces stared back at him.
They were mercenaries, Amerotke reflected, soldiers, lavishly paid but they only carried out orders, not gave them. He paused. ‘Which one of you,’ he shouted in the patois of the slums, the lingua franca of the quayside, ‘is the leader?’
He stopped before one Amemet nursing an open wound to the side of his head: an ugly face, the nose broken, the mouth chapped and scarred, but his eyes were bright; indeed, Amerotke considered, slightly humorous. A veteran he suspected, a man who bravely accepted the harshness of his ill luck.
‘Your name?’ Amerotke asked.
‘Bluetooth,’ the Amemet whispered.
The judge saw a flicker of hope in those shrewd eyes. He spoke quickly. ‘A pardon?’
‘A pardon for what?’
‘To name your leader.’
‘Master, I’m not that.’
‘But you know who he is and you don’t want to die.’
‘No one does, master.’
‘A full pardon,’ Amerotke repeated, ‘your weapons, some silver. You must leave Thebes and never return.’ He gestured at the stakes. ‘Or it will be immediate impalement.’
‘Silence!’ a voice shouted from further down the line. ‘Do not break your oath.’ The Amemets stirred restlessly in a clink of chains. Omendap and his officers came hurrying down. Amerotke, still holding Bluetooth’s gaze, lifted his hand.
‘Lord General, this man is going to save his life.’
‘I don’t—’ Omendap protested.
‘I do!’ Amerotke turned and stared full at the general. ‘The Divine One wants information. Bluetooth will give us that, won’t you?’
‘You’ll keep your word?’
‘By the scales of Ma’at, the Goddess of Truth whom I serve.’
Bluetooth held up his chained hands. Amerotke ordered the manacles to be removed. Once freed the Amemet, shadowed by Omendap and Amerotke, walked down the line of men massaging his wrists. He stopped before another prisoner with balding hair and the ugly features of a bird of prey and pointed to him, then stepped back as the man lunged forward only to be grabbed by the guards standing behind him.
Bluetooth pointed again. ‘The Vulture! He is our leader.’
‘Liar!’ the man shouted.
‘Take him!’ Amerotke ordered. ‘And him!’ The judge smiled as alarm flared in Bluetooth’s eyes and face. ‘Don’t worry, soldier, I keep my promises. I just want to make sure you have told us the truth.’
The Vulture was released, and both men, heavily guarded, were taken into the house and forced to kneel before the dais where Amerotke and Omendap squatted on cushions. Amerotke allowed each prisoner a cup of wine. They drank greedily, now and again peering up at Amerotke or over their shoulders at the line of Nakhtu-aa who guarded them.
‘You are the leader?’ Amerotke pointed at the Vulture. ‘You’re an Amemet chieftain, aren’t you?’
The Vulture stared back, licking his lips. He had lost that hostile look, and Amerotke could see he was a man already assessing his future and which path to follow.
‘I am not a chieftain,’ the Vulture replied, ‘but I am a captain,’ he added hastily, ‘of a hundred. I sit on the council of the Amemets.’
‘Very good,’ Amerotke said. ‘You will not be impaled.’
The Vulture loosened the clasp of his worsted cape, dabbing the sweat forming there, his deep-set eyes slightly frightened.
‘You’ll still die,’ Amerotke added casually. ‘Won’t he, General?’
‘Buried alive out in the Redlands!’ Omendap declared with relish. ‘Yes, a fitting fate for a captain of a hundred.’
‘Do you want to live?’ Amerotke asked softly. ‘They call you the Vulture; would you like to spread your wings and fly north to Memphis, or perhaps out to join your Libyan friends in the western desert?’ He saw a quick shift in the man
’s eyes. ‘What I want is information.’
‘My life?’ The Vulture gestured towards Bluetooth. ‘Life, some silver, my weapons. I’ll fly from Thebes, Master Judge, to wherever you want. I will tell you whatever you want on two conditions.’
‘There’ll be no conditions!’ Omendap snapped. ‘Just mercy.’
‘Two things,’ the Vulture replied. ‘First, I will tell you all I know and I will receive my life as an act of mercy. Second, those men out there—’
‘They are prisoners,’ Omendap retorted.
‘The quarries,’ the Vulture said, ‘not impalement, or buried alive, or public execution.’
Amerotke glanced quickly at Omendap, who nodded.
‘Agreed,’ the Judge declared. ‘But it depends very much on the song you sing! Now,’ he leaned forward, ‘did you deal with Naratousha, the Libyan war chief?’
The Vulture shook his head. ‘Not him, but Themeu, the young one. He has tattoos here on the left side of his face and along his right arm. A water plant on his arm, a snake on his face, done in light blue and red.’
Amerotke nodded. He recalled seeing Themeu both at the temple ceremony and later on when he and Minnakht had visited the Libyans.
‘First,’ Omendap placed a restraining hand on Amerotke’s arm, ‘how do I know some of your men didn’t escape tonight over the walls?’
‘I don’t think any did,’ the Vulture replied.
‘No, neither do I,’ Omendap retorted. ‘And if they did, they would have to get through a second line. Oh yes, more troops are waiting. We knew all about your plans.’
The Vulture clicked his tongue in annoyance.
‘You led us here.’ Bluetooth poked the Vulture, who would have reacted angrily if one of the Nakhtu-aa hadn’t intervened.
‘Tell us what happened,’ Omendap snapped.
The Poisoner of Ptah Page 19
