by Scott Oden
"So quick to find glory and death, Bagoas?" Otanes murmured, not looking at the man. His gaze was riveted on a spot where the jumbled boulders hung precariously to the cliffside. "Tiribazos rushed in, and look what happened to him. An Egyptian arrow in the gullet. Myself, I'd like to die in a different kind of saddle, if you get my meaning."
Bagoas chuckled.
After a moment Otanes nodded to himself. He saw no sign of an ambush, despite the tightly-clenched ball of foreboding in his gut. Perhaps it was farther up the road this time, or perhaps the Egyptians had withdrawn. Either way, he would proceed with caution. He held his hand up and motioned his column forward.
Harness jingled as the Persians entered the defile. Dozens of eyes rolled skyward, staring at the silent cliffs. With every step breathing became more difficult as the noose of apprehension tightened about their throats. Each soldier made a promise to himself to sacrifice to the blessed Ahuramazda should they live to see the far end of the ravine.
Otanes' neck muscles creaked as he glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, Bagoas shifted uneasily and looked up. His breath caught in his throat as he spotted the reflection of sunlight on metal. He opened his mouth to shout a warning …
"Loose!" a voice roared from above, echoing through the narrow defile.
Arrows slashed down through the bright morning sunlight, a bronze-barbed rain that found chinks in armor, punched through hastily raised shields, and clattered on scorched rock. Otanes shouted as he toppled from his saddle; horses bucked and reared as arrows raked their dusty flanks. In an instant, the well-ordered Persian ranks were thrown into disarray.
Young Bagoas, so far unscathed, controlled his mount with his knees, spinning the horse about. For the rest of his life, Bagoas would remember only one thing about that ambush, a single vision sharpened by adrenalin and fear: Otanes slumped against the rocks, his eyes fixed and staring, with an arrow jutting from his cervical spine.
Bagoas signaled a withdrawal …
Barca nocked his final arrow and sighted down the shaft. Clouds of dust rising from the terrified horses obscured his vision. Regardless, he let loose into the heart of the chaos. No thrill arose from the act. No exultation flowed through his veins, roaring up from that dark wellspring of his soul to inflame his limbs with renewed vigor. During the fight at Gaza, his anger had been reticent, difficult to provoke. Now, the source of his anger felt cold and dead.
A horn brayed, and the horsemen below withdrew, their shields held high against the dwindling barrage of arrows. From Barca's vantage the Persians were patient, unperturbed. Not even the lack of potable water disturbed them. Barca had sent men all around with orders to poison every well and water hole they could find, while others burned granaries and slew livestock. Most of the people of this district had fled from the coming destruction, disappearing into the trackless wastes with all they could carry. In spite of his efforts, the Persians would be well-supplied by Phoenician ships.
Barca gave the signal and his Egyptians, barely two score, broke off their attack and faded down the hillsides toward Raphia. Gaza and the strategic withdrawal down the Way of Horns had taken a fearsome toll on his men. Of the three hundred who had followed him from Sais, scarcely one third could move under their own power. All bore tell-tale signs of fighting: blood-smeared bandages, notched swords, dented corselets. Each quiver in their possession had enough arrows for one last ambush. This was fast becoming a hopeless fight.
The Egyptians drifted down a narrow gorge, moving quickly but silently away from the ambush site. These jagged hills were full of switchbacks and box canyons, arid flats and dunes; the eroded sandstone cliffs were dotted with withered grass and sedge.
They crossed a bare valley scarred by a cruelly twisting dry streambed. Beyond the next ridge the hills opened up, and a goat trail led down to Raphia.
From the heights the village was unlovely, a collection of stone huts clinging to an indentation in the coastline, and its beauty grew less with proximity. Rutted streets, flaking plaster walls, and the smell of rotting fish gave it all the allure of an open sewer. The folk of Raphia were rustics, by Egyptian standards; a dull and unimaginative people who divided their time between fishing and herding sheep. The Way of Horus brought caravans through Raphia, and the ancillary profits earned from serving the whims of the drovers and guards should have made the village wealthy. From what Barca saw, they more than likely drank their profits away. Beyond the village, the Way of Horus entered a stretch of harsh sandscoured waste, a desert buffer that ran to the very threshold of Egypt. Barca did not relish the thought of fighting a running battle through that inferno.
Callisthenes stumbled toward him through the scrub. In his corselet and helmet, scavenged from the dead at Gaza, Callisthenes looked the part of a soldier: grimy, bloodied, his eyes possessing that unfocused stare of a man who had seen too much of death.
"Tenacious bastards," the Greek grunted, jacking his helmet back and wiping sweat from his eyes. "How many days now have they tried the same tactic? What the hell are they waiting for? I heard the scouts say the Persians are five thousand strong, the cream of the Hyrkanian steppe. Why don't they just wash us aside like a sand wall before a storm?"
"Are you always so full of questions?" Barca snapped.
The Greek shrugged, metal scales clashing. "It is a gift. Some men are blessed with fair features, others with gilded tongues, still more are granted martial superiority. The gods saw fit to grant me boundless curiosity."
"Gods, indeed. You remind me of Tjemu," Barca said. A part of him regretted leaving his Medjay behind at Pelusium; they, too, had scores to settle with Phanes. "In answer to your questions: I do not know. If I could read other men's minds, I'm sure the waging of war would have lost its luster long ago."
"Would you care to speculate?"
Barca said nothing. Exhaustion left him silent and brooding, bereft of the will to explain. Despite his accolades and triumphs, Barca knew it was no great thing to wage war. Any fool with sense and speed could take up the sword and do as much or better than he. True courage came not in facing death, but in facing life. In that, the Phoenician branded himself a coward. For twenty years he had hid from life, burying himself in battle and blood in hopes that life would pass by, or at worst it would see him and know fear. Where other men raised families and grew crops, Barca razed crops and slew families. He had murdered the woman he professed to love. What was left, then, but to follow her down that self-same road to hell?
No, he did not believe that. Not anymore. Just as a patch of burnt earth would become green with time, a soul could mend itself and become whole again. The anger and self recrimination that had sustained him for these long years had burned itself out, as a fire left unattended in the hearth, leaving him open to feel … not happiness, no, that was the fodder of poets and romantics. Peace, then? He could live with peace.
Callisthenes continued, sullen. "I'm not like you, Barca. I'm scared shitless. What if they try another assault later today, or tomorrow? What will we do? What plan. ."
"Like me?" Barca frowned. "Am I so different from you? Am I some kind of monster who lives only for the smell, taste, and feel of strife? Truth be told, Callisthenes, I'm just a man, with every weakness and flaw embodied by that small word. If you're scared, then imagine the terror that must be upon me, for I have not only your life and mine, but the lives of every man among us to concern with."
"But, you seem so … unaffected."
"Would you follow a man who wore his fears on his sleeve? For as long as I can remember, I did not allow it to affect me. I thought it a sign of weakness to fret over the lives of men pledged to war. I had a healthy hatred for death and that, coupled with bravado, would take the field in every battle. I was only partially correct."
"I don't follow," Callisthenes said. Barca stopped and faced the smaller man.
"I did not have a hatred of death, after all, rather a fear of life. Callisthenes, you're not going to die here, not today. I have an idea of what our o
ptions are, but I need time to breathe and think. Give me a few hours, and I'll have the answers you seek."
The Greek nodded as Barca descended into the village. In the back of his mind, he wondered if the Phoenician would have the answer to what was fast becoming his most pressing question: What has happened to you?
Jauharah lifted the iron from the fire, eyeing its white-hot tip. The man on the table writhed against the two soldiers holding him down, muscular men in blood-spattered kilts. Pain and madness glinted in his eyes. She had removed an arrow from his shoulder, a gift from the Persians, and now she moved to cauterize the puncture.
"Hold him steady," she said. Her orderlies nodded, bracing themselves against the wounded man's thrashings. Jauharah exhaled and brought the tip of the iron down into the raw, bleeding puncture.
Blood hissed, and the stench of seared flesh filled the small hut. The man screamed. The soldiers held his upper body immobile while his lower body twisted this way and that, like a serpent in its death throes. Pain unclenched his bowels and bladder; a new stink clogged the already foul air. Jauharah stepped away, allowing her aides room to bathe the wound in a solution of vinegar and water and bandage it in fresh linen.
Dropping the iron in the fire, she shuffled to the door. Her eyes were red, her hair plastered to her back with sweat. The man on the table would live, unlike so many she had treated since that night at Gaza. How many lives had fled to the netherworld under her hands? A score? Two? She had lost count. Not even their faces could be dredged from the abyss of her memory.
Jauharah stepped into the bright sunlight, feeling its heat on her shoulders and back. Though only two hours since dawn, already the day had a merciless edge. The only respite came from the breeze, heavy with the tang of salt, which blew constantly off the sea. It stirred her lank, sweat-heavy hair and tugged at the hem of her shift. She plucked at the fabric. It was stiff with dried blood and crusted with fluids whose origins she did not care to ponder, and it stank. The smell of Death clung to her.
A bath was in order. She went to the hut she shared with Barca and gathered up a few things: a clean linen shift, a towel, her bronze razor, what cosmetics that remained to her, and a flask of aromatic oil. There were pools down the beach from the village, screened by rocks and scrub trees, where she could bathe in relative peace. She placed the items in a reed basket and bent her steps toward the sea.
What few villagers remained eyed her as she passed with a mixture of curiosity and mistrust. They sat in doorways, on benches, their hands busy with such make-work as they could find, mending nets and sharpening copper hooks. Most were aged and infirm; their reluctant kin had left them behind, taking everything else of value and vanishing into the waste. To Jauharah, these elders were the true riches of Raphia: men and women with a lifetime of experience to draw upon; a lifetime of tales and stories. Barca called them dull, but their simple wisdom comforted her.
She crossed the bare patch of packed and rutted earth that served as Raphia's bazaar, pausing by the tent where the soldiers took their meals. They sat together in twos and threes, hollow-eyed, shattered from heat and exhaustion, eating bread and dried figs and drinking water.
"Are there any wounded among you?" she asked.
They shook their heads. "We were posted off to the north," one of them offered, scratching at a scab forming on his grimy forearm. "Near the boulders called the Tits … begging your pardon. The attack came on the main road. Arrow storm. I thank Horus I am not a Persian." A dozen heads bobbed in assent.
Jauharah set her basket down and checked a bandaged forehead. The soldier winced as her fingers lifted the edge of the linen. "Have the orderlies clean that," she told him softly. "And the rest of you keep water handy. This heat is as deadly as a spear or a sword." They nodded, smiling, as she caught up her basket and continued down to the sea.
At the verge of the beach Jauharah shaded her eyes. The Atum lay down the strand beside a palisade of upright oars, canted to expose her hull. Under Senmut's guidance, half the sailors scraped and cleaned the planking, the surf washing at their ankles. The rest worked at patching sail and mending rope. Jauharah could hear snatches of song that faded into coarse laughter. A few noticed her, glancing up from their work. That sense of menace she had felt so strongly after boarding the ship was gone, replaced with an almost sisterly affection. She had saved the lives of several of their comrades along the road from Gaza; that gave her worth in their eyes.
She moved up the beach, away from the sailors, sand crunching underfoot. She passed several inviting spots before choosing one screened by a spur of worn rock. The pool, a depression high up on the beach, away from the crash and hiss of the breakers, was fed by a brackish spring; it had a natural sandstone curb, and its bottom was easily visible through the crystalline water.
She stripped off her filthy shift and tossed it aside, enjoying the feel of the sun and wind on her naked flesh. Carefully, she slipped into the pool. The water, waist-deep and warm, had a wholesome feel that drove away the darkness of the past few days. She washed her hair, scrubbed her body, and shaved herself as best she could with her small razor. Afterward, wrapped in a feeling of cleanliness, she floated in the pool, her eyes closed.
"You're almost purring," a voice said, soft from exhaustion.
Far from being surprised, Jauharah opened an eye, smiling. Barca sat near the pool's edge. "Every time I turn around," she said, "I catch you watching me. Why?"
"Better I keep an eye on you than someone else."
"That's not an answer," she said, playfully splashing water over his foot. "At least, not an answer that would set a woman's heart to fluttering."
Barca rested his elbows on his knees, cradled his head in his hands. He tried to knuckle away an ache behind his eyes. "How soon can you move the wounded to the ship?" he asked, his voice little more than a whisper.
Jauharah pursed her lips. "Some of them should not be moved, but if needs must, it can be done in two hours at most. Why?„
Barca exhaled. "We can do no more here. It's time we see to getting ourselves to safety before our escape can be blocked. I fear I've cut it too close. The Persians' probes are becoming too uniform, as if they have found a way around the hills and are trying to divert our attention. If we stay longer, Raphia will become our tomb."
"What of the Phoenicians?"
"I'm too exhausted to worry about them." He closed his eyes. Jauharah could see lines of concern etching his face. He had not slept more than two hours at a stretch since leaving Gaza; he led every ambush, sometimes two or three a day. From what she could tell he ate sparingly. He was eroding before her eyes, wearing away like a boulder in a raging river.
"Come, let me bathe you," she said. Her tone left no room for argument.
Barca stood, stripped off his armor and kilt, and drove his sheathed sword point-first into the sand. With a groan, he sank into the pool. Jauharah floated up behind him and laved water onto his shoulders and back. He closed his eyes, going limp in her care. Once his body was clean, Jauharah wet his hair and washed it with aromatic oil, massaging his scalp with gentle fingers. After she rinsed his hair, Jauharah urged him to lay back, his head resting on her breasts, as she deftly trimmed the wild edges of his beard. She finished, intertwining her body with his in the sun-warmed water.
"It's been years since a woman …" Barca trailed off. Jauharah said nothing, her fingers brushing a loose strand of hair off his forehead. His brow furrowed. "This morning, as we ambushed the Persians, I had no rage, no fury. I felt," Barca chose his words carefully, "sorrow. For their loss, for what I had to do to them to insure your safety, and mine. What you do to me … what I feel is dangerous for a man in my position."
"What do you feel?"
Barca remained silent for a long while. Jauharah could tell he was engaged in something he rarely did. He was searching deep inside himself. Finally, he spoke. "There is a small voice inside my head that curses me for a fool, that chides me for trading my edge in battle for a
few hours of pleasure. Before that night in Gaza, I lived on hatred, on rage, on a dark deed I thought unforgivable. Now …" Barca lapsed into silence, his brows knotted, his eyes turned inward.
"Do you regret that night in Gaza?" Jauharah said, the bitterness in her voice surprising even her. "I do not wish to be a burden to you, physically or mentally."
Barca silenced her with a kiss. "It is not you or our time together that I regret. It is my life before Gaza. Understand, I lived as a dead man. I breathed, and my heart beat and blood pumped. But I was only passing time until violence separated my body from my ka. I've wasted the last twenty years on regret. I don't plan to waste what time I have left."
Barca kissed her again with a tender passion; a long kiss accompanied by stroking fingers and caresses. Jauharah moaned and held him tight. It was not a furious ardor that drove their lovemaking, but a gentle, insistent ache inflamed by touch and the nearness of their bodies. For a time, both succeeded in forgetting the world around them.
After a while the Phoenician stirred. "We'd better be getting back," he said, glancing at the sun. It had passed its zenith, morning giving way to afternoon.
"If only all of this could pass us by," she sighed. "Just one day and night together without the pall of violence hanging over us is all I ask."
"Perhaps that day will come," Barca said. "But not today. Not now." He rose from the water and helped her out. Drop lets of moisture shimmered against her brown skin as she toweled off and slipped into her shift. She ran a comb through her hair. The sun would do the rest.
Meanwhile, Barca went about rearming. Jauharah watched in fascination as a metamorphosis occurred; a transformation. Kilt, sandals, greaves, corselet, each element of armor donned in its turn, as a mason sets individual stones in a wall. Finally, the carapace of bronze, so like the shell of a crab, that protected more than the flesh within — it camouflaged the vulnerability of the man who wore it. Barca glanced up, and Jauharah saw his transformation as more than physical. His eyes reflected the cold, unyielding strength of the bronze. In its embrace he would have no doubts, no concerns. His actions would be beneficial to his allies; swift and deadly to his foes. In that, Jauharah found a measure of comfort.
