Warlock: A Novel of Ancient Egypt (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  The urgency of King Apepi’s voyage did not dictate that his fleet should sail on in the darkness of this moonless night, so that evening they anchored at Balasfura, opposite the temple of Hapi, the half hippopotamus hermaphroditic god of the Nile. The King and his family went ashore and made sacrifice of a pure white ox at the altar in the sanctuary. The high priest disembowelled the bellowing beast, and while it still lived he drew and inspected the entrails to read the auspice for the king. He was appalled to find that the animal’s guts were infested with stinking white worms, which spilled onto the temple floor in a seething mass. He tried to hide this hideous phenomenon from the King by spreading his cloak and beginning to make up some mendacious nonsense, but Apepi shouldered him aside and stared at the horrible sight. Even he was visibly shaken, and for once he was subdued as they left the temple and went down to the riverbank where Trok and the officers under his command had arranged a banquet and entertainment for him.

  Even the sacred black cockerels of the temple refused to peck at the contaminated entrails of the sacrifice. The priests threw the grisly mess on the temple fire, but rather than consume the entrails the fire, which had burned since antiquity, was extinguished by them. The signs could not have been more inauspicious, but the high priest ordered the entrails to be buried and the fire to be relit. “I have never seen such an unhappy omen,” he told his acolytes. “Such a sign from the god Hapi can only presage some terrible event, such as war or the death of Pharaoh. We must pray through all this night for the recovery of Pharaoh Nefer Seti from his wounds.”

  On the riverbank Lord Trok had set up pavilions hung with vivid red, yellow and green curtains to receive the royal family. Whole oxen were grilling over the pits of glowing ash, and amphorae of the choicest wines were cooling in the river waters. Slaves staggered up the bank under the weight of them as one after the other they were drained by the company and Apepi bellowed for fresh jars to be brought.

  The King’s somber mood lightened with each bowl he lowered, and soon he encouraged his sons to join him in singing the ribald marching songs of his army. Some were so scurrilous that Mintaka pleaded exhaustion and a sick headache, and she and her slave girls rose to retire to the royal barge anchored offshore. She tried to take her youngest brother, Khyan, with her, but Apepi intervened. The good wine had helped him to throw off the misgivings brought upon him by the divination in the temple. “Leave the boy where he is, you little vixen. He should be taught to appreciate good music.” He hugged the boy to him in an excess of affection, and held the wine bowl to his lips. “Take a sup. It will make you sing all the sweeter, my princeling.”

  Khyan adored his father, and such public comradeship reduced him to a transport of pride and heroworship. At last his father was treating him like a man and a warrior. Even though he gagged upon it, he managed to drain the bowl and the company, led by Lord Trok, cheered him as though he had killed his first enemy in battle.

  Mintaka hesitated. She felt an almost maternal sense of protection for her little brother, but she realized that her father was beyond reason. With all dignity she led her maids down to the riverbank and, to the ironic and inebriated cheers of the company, they went aboard the barge.

  Mintaka lay on her mattress and listened to the sounds of revelry. She tried to compose herself to sleep, but Nefer was in the forefront of her mind. The sense of loss that she had held at bay all day, and her concern for Nefer’s injuries, flooded back, and though she tried to prevent them, tears welled up. She smothered her sobs in her pillows.

  At last she sank into a black, dreamless sleep, from which she woke with difficulty. She had sipped only a little of the wine, but she felt drugged and her head ached. She wondered what had roused her. Then she heard raucous voices through the side of the hull, and the barge rocked under her as a weight of men clambered aboard. There was drunken laughter and voices, and heavy footfalls from the deck over her head. From their comments it seemed that her father and her brothers were being carried on board. It was not unusual for the men in her family to drink themselves into this condition, but she was worried about little Khyan.

  She dragged herself from her bed and began to dress, but she felt strangely listless and confused. She staggered as she climbed up on deck.

  The first person she met was Lord Trok. He was directing the men who were carrying her father. It took six of them to handle his huge inert bulk. Her elder brothers were in no better case. She felt angry and ashamed of them.

  Then she saw Khyan being carried by a boatman, and she ran to him. Now they have done it to Khyan also, she thought bitterly. They will not rest until they have turned him into a drunkard too.

  She directed the boatman to carry Khyan down to the mattress in her father’s cabin where she undressed him and forced a distillation of herbs between his lips to revive him. The potion was a cure-all that Taita had mixed for her, and it seemed to be efficacious. At last Khyan murmured and opened his eyes, then fell back immediately into a deep but natural sleep. “I hope he learns from this,” she told herself. There was nothing more she could do other than leave him to sleep it off. Besides, she still felt lethargic and her headache was unbearable. She went back to her own cabin and, without bothering to undress, she dropped onto the mattress, and almost immediately succumbed to sleep again.

  The next time she woke she believed that she was in a nightmare, for she could hear screams and she was choking on clouds of thick smoke that scalded the back of her throat. Before she was fully conscious she found herself bundled out of her bed, swaddled in a blanket of furs and carried on deck. She struggled, but she was as helpless as an infant in a powerful grip.

  On deck the moonless night was lit by leaping flames. They were roaring out of the open forward hatch of the royal barge, climbing the masts and rigging in a hellish orange torrent. She had never seen a wooden hull burn before and the speed and ferocity of the flames appalled her.

  She could not stare at it for long, for she found herself carried swiftly across the deck and down the side into a waiting felucca. Her senses returned to her in a rush, and she began again to struggle and scream. “My father! My brothers! Khyan! Where are they?”

  The felucca pushed off into the stream and now she fought with all her strength to free herself, but the arms that pinioned her were remorseless. She managed to twist her head and see the face of the man who held her.

  “Trok!” She was angered by his presumption, at the way he was handling her, and ignoring her cries. “Let me go! I command you!”

  He did not respond. He held her easily, but he was watching the burning galley with a calm, detached expression.

  “Go back!” she shrieked at him. “My family! Go back and fetch them!”

  His only response was to snap an order to the oarsmen. “Hold the stroke!” They shipped their paddles and the felucca rocked on the current. The crew watched the burning hulk with fascination. There were agonizing screams from those trapped below the decks.

  Abruptly part of the after-deck collapsed in a tower of flame and sparks. The mooring cables burned through and the galley swung round slowly on the current and drifted downstream.

  “Please!” Mintaka changed her tone. “Please, Lord Trok, my family! You cannot let them burn.”

  Now the screams from inside the hull died away and were replaced by the low thunder of the flames. Tears poured down Mintaka’s cheeks and dripped from her chin, but still she was helpless in his grasp.

  Suddenly the main hatch on the burning deck was thrown open, and the crew of the felucca gasped with horror as a figure emerged. Lord Trok’s arms tightened around Mintaka until it seemed that he would crush in her ribs. “It cannot be!” he grated.

  Seen through the smoke and flames it seemed like an apparition from the shades of the underworld. Naked and covered with hair, great belly bulging, Apepi staggered toward the side of the barge. He carried the body of his youngest son in his arms, and his mouth was wide open, gasping for air in the holocaust of flame.


  “The monster is hard to kill.” Trok’s anger was tinged with fear. Even in her own distress Mintaka read the meaning of his words.

  “You, Trok!” she whispered. “You have done this to them.” Trok ignored the accusation.

  The hair on Apepi’s body singed and in a puff of heat was gone, for a moment leaving him naked and blackened. Then his skin began to blister and fall away in tatters. His bush of beard and the hair upon his head burst into flame like a pitch-soaked torch. He was no longer moving forward, but he stood with legs astraddle and lifted Khyan high above his head. The boy was as scorched as he was, and the raw flesh showed red and wet where his skin had been burned away. Perhaps Apepi was attempting to throw him over the ship’s side into the river to escape the flames, but his strength failed him at last and he stood like a colossus with his head in flames, unable to summon the last reserves to hurl his son to safety in the cool Nile waters.

  Mintaka could not move and she was silenced by the horror of the spectacle. To her it seemed to last an eternity, until suddenly the deck under Apepi’s feet burst open. He and his son dropped through, and in a tall fountain of flame, sparks and smoke were gone into the guts of the hull.

  “It’s over.” Trok’s voice was dispassionate and detached. He released Mintaka so suddenly that she fell into the bilges of the felucca. He looked at his horrified crew. “Row to my galley,” he ordered.

  “You did this to my family,” Mintaka repeated, as she lay at his feet. “You will pay for it. I swear it to you. I will make you pay.”

  But she felt numbed and bruised as though she had been beaten with the knotted leather lashes of a flail. Her father was gone, that monumental figure in her life whom she had hated a little and loved a great deal. Her family was gone, all of her brothers, even little Khyan, who had been more a son than a sibling to her. She had watched him burn and she knew that the horror of it would stay with her all her days.

  The felucca drew alongside Lord Trok’s galley and she made no protest as he picked her up as though she were a doll and carried her on board, then down to the main cabin. He laid her on the mattress with uncharacteristic gentleness. “Your slave girls are safe. I will send them to you,” he said, and went out. She heard the locking bar placed across the door, then the sound of him climbing the companion ladder, and crossing the deck above her head.

  “Am I a prisoner, then?” she whispered, but that seemed of little importance in the light of what she had just witnessed. She hid her face in pillows that smelt of Trok’s stale sweat, and wept until her tears were exhausted. Then she slept.

  The burning hull of Apepi’s royal barge drifted up on to the riverbank opposite the temple of Hapi. In the dawn the smoke rose high into the still air. It was tainted by the stench of burned flesh. When Mintaka awoke, the smell had penetrated into the cabin and sickened her. The smoke seemed to act like a beacon, for the sun had hardly risen above the eastern hills before the fleet of Lord Naja came sweeping around the bend of the river.

  The slave girls brought the news to Mintaka. “Lord Naja has come in full array,” they told her excitedly. “Yesterday he left us to return to Thebes. Is it not strange that he could reach here so soon when he should be twenty leagues upriver?”

  “Surpassing strange,” Mintaka agreed grimly. “I must dress and be ready for whatever new atrocity awaits me now.”

  Her baggage had all gone up in flames in the royal barge, but her maids borrowed clothing from the other noble ladies in the fleet. They washed and curled her hair, then dressed her in a simple linen shift, gold girdle and sandals.

  Before noon an armed escort came aboard the galley, and she followed them on deck. Her eyes went first to the blackened timbers of the royal barge that lay on the far bank, burned down to the waterline. No effort was being made to recover any bodies from the wreck. It was her family’s funeral pyre. The Hyksosian tradition called for cremation, not embalmment and elaborate funeral procedures and ceremonials.

  Mintaka knew that her father would have approved of the manner of his own going, and this gave her some small comfort. Then she thought of Khyan and averted her eyes. It was with an effort that she held back further tears as she went down into the waiting felucca and was taken to the bank below the temple of Hapi.

  Lord Naja was waiting with all his company assembled to meet her. She remained aloof and pale when he embraced her. “This is a bitter time for all of us, Princess,” he said. “Your father, King Apepi, was a mighty warrior and statesman. In view of the recent treaty between the two kingdoms, and the combining of this very Egypt into one sacred and historical whole, he leaves a dangerous gap. For the good of all, this must be filled immediately.”

  He took her hand and led her to the pavilion, which had last evening been the scene of feasting and festivity, but where now were assembled in solemn conclave most of the nobility and officialdom of both the kingdoms.

  She saw Trok in the forefront of this throng. He was a striking figure in full regimentals. He wore his sword on a gold-studded belt and carried his war bow over his shoulder. Behind him in packed ranks were all his officers, grim, cold-eyed and menacing despite the gay ribbons plaited in their beards. They stared at her, unsmilingly, and she was bitterly aware that she was the last of the Apepi line, abandoned and unprotected.

  She wondered to whom she could appeal, and whose loyalty she still commanded. She searched for friendly familiar faces in the multitude. They were all there, her father’s councillors and advisers, his generals and comrades of the battlefield. Then she saw their eyes slide away from her face. None smiled at her or returned her scrutiny. She had never felt so alone in her life.

  Naja led her to a cushioned stool at one side of the pavilion. When she sat down, Naja and his staff formed a screen around her, hiding her from view. She was certain that this had been deliberately arranged.

  Lord Naja opened the conclave with a lamentation for the tragic deaths of King Apepi and his sons. Then he launched into a eulogy of the dead pharaoh. He recounted his numerous military triumphs and his feats of statesmanship, culminating with his participation in the treaty of Hathor, which had brought peace to the two kingdoms torn by decades of internecine warfare and strife.

  “Without King Apepi, or a strong pharaoh to guide the affairs of the Lower Kingdom and to rule in conjunction with Pharaoh Nefer Seti and his regent in Thebes, the treaty of Hathor is in jeopardy. A return to the horrors and warfare of the last sixty years prior to the treaty is unthinkable.”

  Lord Trok beat his sword scabbard against his bronze buckler, and shouted, “Bak-her! Bak-her!” Immediately the applause was taken up by all the military commanders behind him, and spread slowly through the entire assembly until it was a deafening thunder.

  Naja let it continue for a while, then held up both arms. When silence fell he continued, “In the tragic circumstances of his death, King Apepi leaves no male heir to the Crown.” Smoothly he passed over any mention of Mintaka. “As a matter of urgency I have consulted the senior councillors and nome governors of both kingdoms. Their choice for the new Pharaoh has been unanimous. With one voice they have asked Lord Trok of Memphis to pick up the reins of power, to take the double crown upon himself and steer the nation forward in the noble tradition set by King Apepi.”

  The silence that followed this announcement was profound and drawn-out. Men looked at each other in blank astonishment, and only then became aware that while they had been absorbed in Lord Naja’s address two regiments of the northern army, commanded by and loyal to Trok, had come silently out of the palm groves and surrounded the assembly. Their swords were sheathed, but every gloved hand was on the hilt. It would take a moment only to draw the bronze blades. An air of dismay and consternation fell upon them all. Mintaka seized the moment. She sprang off the stool where she had been hidden and cried, “My lords and loyal citizens of this very Egypt…”

  She got no further. Four of the tallest Hyksosian warriors crowded around her, hiding her. They ra
ttled their drawn swords against their shields and shouted in unison, “Long live Pharaoh Trok Uruk.” The shout was taken up by the rest of the army. In the joyous uproar that followed, strong hands took Mintaka and spirited her away through the cheering press. She struggled ineffectually, her movements smothered and her voice unheard in the storm of cheering. On the riverbank she twisted in the arms of her captors and glanced back. Over the heads of the crowd she glimpsed Lord Naja raising the double crown over the head of the new Pharaoh.

  Then she was hustled down the bank to the waiting felucca, and back to her locked and guarded cabin on board Lord Trok’s galley.

  Mintaka sat with her slave girls in the crowded little cabin and waited to learn what was to be her fate when the new Pharaoh returned on board. Her girls were terrified and as confused as she was. However, she tried to comfort them. When they had calmed a little she started them playing their favorite games. These soon palled, so she called for a lute. Her own had been lost on her father’s barge, but they borrowed one from a guard.

  Mintaka held a competition, making each girl dance in turn in the confined space of the little cabin. They were laughing and clapping when they heard the new Pharaoh returning on board. The girls fell silent, but she urged them to continue, and soon they were as rowdy as before.

  Mintaka did not join in the merriment. Previously she had carefully explored her surroundings. Attached to her main cabin was a much smaller one, little more than a cupboard, which served as a latrine. It contained a large pottery toilet bowl with a lid and, beside it, a pitcher of water for washing. The bulkhead dividing it from the next cabin was thin and flimsy. The boat-builders had been concerned to save weight. Mintaka had been on board this galley in happier times, when she and her father had been guests of Lord Trok. She knew that the main cabin lay on the other side of this bulkhead.