Vengeance of Orion o-2

by Ben Bova

  The prince’s youthful face clouded. “My father will never be well, Orion. His sickness is too advanced, thanks to Nekoptah. The best that I can do is to make him comfortable and allow the people to continue believing in their king.”

  Aramset seemed in total control of the situation. There was nothing left for me to do here. Within three days I could take up my quest to find Anya, wherever that would take me. Still, I thought, it would be good to see Helen one more time.

  A servant came rushing into the room and fell to his knees, skidding on the polished floor and almost bumping into the prince.

  “Your royal highness! The high priest of Ptah is dead! By his own hand!”

  Aramset leaped to his feet, knocking over the chair behind him. “By his own hand? The coward!”

  “Who shall tell the king?” the servant asked.

  “No one,” snapped Aramset. “I will see this suicide first.” He started for the door.

  I went with him, and motioned the Hittite guards to accompany us. One of them I sent for Lukka, with orders to bring the rest.

  We crossed the starlit courtyard and entered the vast temple of Ptah. Up the stairs and along the corridor to the same office where surly Nekoptah had first received me.

  He lay on his back, a huge mound of flesh with a deep red gash across the rolls of fat of his throat. In the flickering light of the desk lamp we saw his painted face with eyes staring blankly at the dark wooden beams of the ceiling. His golden medallion lay over one shoulder, blood already caking on it. The rings on his stubby fingers glinted in the lamplight.

  I stared at the rings.

  “This is not Nekoptah,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Look.” I pointed. “Three of his fingers have no rings. Nekoptah’s fingers were so swollen that no one could have taken the rings off without cutting off the fingers themselves.”

  “By the gods,” Aramset whispered. “It’s his brother, made up to look like him!”

  “Nekoptah murdered him, and he’s roaming free in the palace right now.”

  “My father!”

  The prince bolted off toward the door. The Hittite guards cast me a confused glance, but I motioned for them to go with Aramset. He was right: His first duty was to protect his father. Nekoptah could go anywhere in the palace, disguised as his twin brother. I doubted that he intended to harm the king, but Aramset was right to go to him.

  I knelt over the dead body of poor Hetepamon for a few moments, and then suddenly realized where Nekoptah would strike next.

  I got to my feet and ran for Helen’s quarters.

  Chapter 45

  I understood the high priest’s murderous plan. His goal was to undo the alliance between the Achaians and the Egyptians, to show the king that Prince Aramset had brought the barbarian menace into the very capital of the land. Who knows, I thought as we raced through the palace toward Helen’s apartment, perhaps he will get Menalaos to kill the prince.

  If he has Helen he has control of Menalaos, I knew. Even if he doesn’t murder the prince, if he can get Menalaos to run amok in the palace, Prince Aramset’s newfound influence with his father is gone. Nekoptah returns to power with a haughty “I told you so.”

  Past startled guards I ran, guided by my memory of the palace’s layout. But there were no guards at Helen’s door. It was slightly ajar. I pushed it open.

  Nefertu lay sprawled on the floor, a jeweled dagger sticking out of his back.

  I rushed to him. He was still alive, but just barely.

  “I thought… chief priest of Amon…”

  His eyes were glazed. Bright red blood flowed from his mouth.

  “Helen.” I asked, “Where did he take Helen?”

  “The underworld… to meet Osiris…” Nefertu’s voice was the faintest whisper. I could feel his pain. He tried to breathe, but his lungs were filled with blood and agony.

  I had no time to be gentle. He was dying in my arms.

  “Where did Nekoptah take Helen?”

  “Osiris… Osiris…”

  I shook the poor old dying man. “Look at me!” I demanded. “I am Osiris.”

  His eyes widened. Feebly, he tried to reach for my face with one limp hand. “My lord Osiris…”

  “Where has the false priest Nekoptah taken the foreign woman?” I demanded.

  “To your temple… at Abtu…”

  That was what I needed to know. I lay Nefertu’s gray head down on the painted tiles of the floor. “You have done well, mortal. Rest in peace now.”

  He smiled and sighed and stopped his breathing forever.

  The temple of Osiris at Abtu.

  I went to Prince Aramset and told him what had happened. “I cannot leave the palace, Orion,” he said. “Nekoptah’s spies and assassins may be anywhere. I must remain here with my father.”

  I agreed. “Just tell me where Abtu is and give me the means to get there.”

  Abtu was a two-day chariot drive north of the capital. “I can have fresh horses ready for you every ten miles,” the prince said. Then he offered me Lukka and his men.

  “No, they are your personal guard now. Don’t strip yourself of their loyalty. A charioteer and relays of fresh horses will be all I need.”

  “Nekoptah won’t be alone at Abtu,” warned Aramset.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I will be there.”

  Before the sun rose I was standing in a war chariot, light and tough, beside a nut-brown Egyptian who lashed the four powerful chargers along the royal road northward. I carried nothing but the clothes I had been wearing and an iron sword, Lukka’s own, given to me by the Hittite captain as I took my leave of him. And the dagger had been my companion for so long that it had left its imprint on my right thigh.

  We raced furiously along the road, kicking up a plume of dust behind us, the horses thundering along the packed earth, my charioteer grunting and puffing with the exertion of controlling the four of them.

  We stopped at royal relay posts only long enough to change horses and take a bite to eat and a sip of refreshing wine.

  By dawn of the second day my charioteer was exhausted. He could hardly drag his stiff and sore body from the chariot when we stopped at the halfway point. I left him at the relay post there. He protested. He begged me to let him continue, saying that the prince would have him flogged to death for abandoning me. But there was no sense taking him farther.

  I took the reins in my own hands. I had watched him long enough to know how to handle the horses. Fatigue clawed at my body, too, but I could consciously damp down its warning signals and pour more oxygen into my bloodstream by hyperventilating as I drove four fresh animals pell-mell into the brightening morning.

  The river was on my left, and I passed many boats floating downstream on the Nile’s strong current. Not fast enough for this mission. I cracked my whip over the horses’ ears and they strained harder in their harnesses.

  At a bend in the road I happened to turn and glance back behind me. Another rooster tail of dust rose behind me, far back at the horizon. Someone was following me in just as mad a hurry as I was. Had the prince sent troops to back me up? Or could it be Menalaos rushing to rescue his wife? Either way, it would be help for me. Then another thought struck me: Could it be followers of Nekoptah, rushing to back him ?

  As the sun set, I drove madly through a village of small houses, scattering the few people and children on the main road, and past a mile or so of precise formal gardens bordered by rows of trees and gracefully laid-out ponds. The temple of Osiris stood in their midst, facing a long rampway that led to the river. A single boat was tied up at the pier.

  A half-dozen guards in bronze armor stood before the temple’s main gate as I pulled up my lathered horses and jumped from the chariot.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” demanded their leader.

  I was willing to fight them if I had to, but it would be quicker and easier if I could avoid it.

  “On your knees, mortals!” I b
oomed, in my deepest voice. “I am Osiris, and this is my temple.”

  They gaped at me, then laughed. I realized that I was caked with dust from the road, and hardly the glorious radiant figure of a god.

  “You are one of the foreigners that my lord Nekoptah told us would try to enter the sacred temple,” said the guard leader. He drew his sword and the others moved to surround me. “For your blasphemy alone, you deserve to die.”

  I took a deep breath. There were six of them, wiry little Egyptians with deep-brown skins and even darker eyes, their chests protected by armor, conical bronze helmets on their heads, and swords in their hands.

  “Osiris dies each year,” I said, “and each time the sun goes down. I am no stranger to death. But I will not be killed at the hands of mortals.”

  Before he could react I snatched the sword from his hand and threw it toward the river in a high arc. Its bronze blade caught the last rays of the dying sun. They stared as it arced high overhead. Before they could react I threw their leader to the ground and reached the next man. He went down with a blow to his head. By the time their leader had risen to his hands and knees I had decked all the rest of them.

  I pointed at their leader, recalling the imperious tones that the Golden One had often used on me. “Stay on your knees, mortal, when you face a god! And be glad that I have spared your lives.”

  All six of them pressed their foreheads to the dust, trembling visibly.

  “Forgive me, O powerful Osiris…”

  “Stand watch faithfully and you will be forgiven,” I said. “Remember that to tempt the wrath of the gods is to court painful death.”

  Into the temple I strode, wondering in the back of my mind if a god ever ran. Not in front of worshipers, I supposed. Not bad for a man sent to this time as a mindless tool, a servant bereft of memory. I had risen to a maker of kings and a pretender of godhood.

  Now I was bent on vengeance once more, this time not for myself but for an innocent fat priest and a faithful old bureaucrat, both murdered because they stood between Nekoptah and the power of the kingdom. I drew my sword and hunted the chief priest of Ptah in the temple of Osiris.

  Through courtyards lit by the newly risen moon and past colonnaded halls lined with statues of the gods I strode, sword in hand. I came upon a row of small chambers, sanctuaries for various gods. Nekoptah was not in the shrine of Ptah, where I looked first. Then I saw that the shrine of Osiris had a small doorway at its rear. I went to it and pushed it open.

  The three of them were there, standing beside the altar of Osiris, lit by the flames of lamps set into the walls: Nekoptah, Helen, and Menalaos.

  The erstwhile King of Sparta was in full bronze armor, his heavy spear gripped tightly in his right hand. Helen, in a shimmering gown of silver-blue, stood slightly behind him.

  “I told you!” shouted Nekoptah. “I told you he would come seeking the woman.”

  The priest’s face was unpainted and his resemblance to Hetepamon was uncanny. Yet where the brother was smiling and amiable, Nekoptah was snarling and vicious. I noticed that his hands were bare, except for the three fingers where rings were imbedded too deeply in flesh ever to come off.

  “Yes,” I said, more to Menalaos than Nekoptah. “I seek the woman — to return her to her husband.”

  Helen’s eyes flared at me, but she said nothing.

  “You took her away from me,” Menalaos growled.

  “He slept with her,” said Nekoptah. “They have made a cuckold of you.”

  I answered, “You drove her away, Menalaos, with your brutal ways. She is willing to be your wife now, but only if you treat her with love and respect.”

  “You make demands of me?” he snapped, hefting his spear.

  I sheathed my sword. Softly, I said, “Menalaos, we have faced each other in combat before…”

  “The gods will not always favor you, Orion.”

  I took a quick glance at the intricate carvings on the temple walls. Sure enough, there was Osiris, and Aset — my Anya, I realized — and all the other gods and goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon.

  “Look at my likeness, Menalaos.” I pointed to the portrait of Osiris. “And you, too, false priest of Ptah. See who truly faces you.”

  The three of them looked up to the carving of Osiris. I watched Menalaos’s eyes widen, his mouth drop open.

  “I am Osiris,” I said, and I felt it to be the absolute truth. “The gods will always favor me, because I am one of them.”

  Helen was gaping, but Menalaos was goggle-eyed. Only Nekoptah saw through my words.

  “It’s not true!” he screamed. “It’s a trick! There are no gods and there never have been. It’s all a lie!”

  I smiled at his twisted, enraged face. So in his heart of hearts Nekoptah had no belief at all. He was the worst kind of cynic.

  “Helen,” I said. “Menalaos is your husband, and no matter what has transpired between us, it is to him that you must now cling.”

  Nodding, she answered, “I understand, Orion… or should I call you Lord Osiris?”

  She asked with a slight smile that made me wonder how much she believed me. No matter; she saw what I was trying to accomplish and she accepted it. We both knew we would never see each other again.

  Ignoring her question, I turned to her husband. “And you, Menalaos. You have torn down the walls of Troy and searched half the world for this woman; she is yours now, won by the valor of your arms. Cherish her and protect her. Forget about the past.”

  Menalaos straightened to his full height and glanced at Helen almost boyishly.

  “Fools!” spat Nekoptah. “I’ll have you all slaughtered.”

  “Your troops will not raise their swords against a god, fat priest,” I told him. “Whether you believe me or not, they do.”

  He knew that I intended to kill him. His tiny pig’s eyes darted wildly back and forth as I stepped toward him.

  Suddenly Nekoptah threw a fat arm around Helen’s neck. A slim dagger appeared in his other hand, and he raised it to her face.

  “She dies unless you do as I say!” he screeched.

  He was too far away for me to reach him before he could slice her throat open the way he had killed his twin. Menalaos stood frozen beside them, his spear gripped in his right hand.

  “Kill him!” Nekoptah commanded Menalaos. “Drive your spear through the dog’s heart.”

  “I cannot kill a god.”

  “He’s no more a god than you or I. Kill him, or she dies.”

  Menalaos turned toward me and lifted his spear. I stood unmoving. In Menalaos’s eyes I saw confusion, fear, not hate or even anger. Nekoptah’s face was a seething map of hatred, his eyes burning. Helen stared at her husband, then looked at me.

  “Do what you must, Menalaos,” I said. “Save your wife. I have died many times. A final death does not frighten me.”

  The Achaian king raised his long spear high above his head, then whirled and sank it into the fat neck of the priest. Nekoptah gave a strangled grunt; his body spasmed, the knife fell from his numbed fingers, and he released Helen as he clawed at the spear haft with his other hand.

  His face contorted in a fierce frown, Menalaos yanked the spear from Nekoptah’s neck and the fat priest collapsed in a heap on the stone floor of the temple, blood gushing over his huge body.

  Throwing the spear to the floor, Menalaos reached for Helen. She fled to his arms gladly and rested her head against his chest.

  “You saved me,” she said. “You saved me from that horrible monster.”

  Menalaos smiled. In the flickering light from the wall lamps, it seemed to me that his swarthy face reddened slightly.

  “You have done well,” I said to him. “That took courage.”

  He ran a finger across his dark beard, a gesture that made him seem almost shy. “I am no stranger to battle, my lord. Many times I have seen what happens when a spear strikes a man’s flesh. The body freezes with shock.”

  “You have rid this kingdom of its g
reatest danger. Take your wife and return to the capital. Serve Prince Aramset well. The burdens of the kingdom will be on his shoulders now. And one day he will be king in fact, as well as in duty.”

  His arm around Helen’s shoulders, Menalaos started for the door. She turned to say a last good-bye to me.

  “Orion, behind you!”

  I wheeled and saw the bleeding Nekoptah on his feet, staggering, clutching Menalaos’s long spear in both his hands. He lurched and drove its bloody point into my chest with all his weight behind it.

  “Not… a god…” he gasped. Then he fell face down on the stone flooring, finally dead.

  The shock of sudden pain flooded my brain with unwanted memories of other deaths, other agonies. I stood transfixed, the spear hanging from my chest. Every nerve in my body screamed excruciatingly. I felt my heart trying to pump blood, but it was torn apart by sharp bronze.

  I sank to my knees and saw my own blood spilling to the floor. Helen and Menalaos stood frozen, staring in horror.

  “Go,” I told them. I meant it as a command. It came out as a whisper.

  Helen took a step toward me.

  “Go!” I made it stronger, but the effort sent waves of giddiness through me. “Leave me! Do as I say!”

  Menalaos pulled her to him once more and they fled through the open doorway, into the night, toward the capital and a life together that I hoped would be bearable, perhaps even happy.

  I sat heavily, all the strength gone from my body, leaning forward until the spear propped me from falling any farther, its butt wedged against Nekoptah’s obese corpse.

  The final death, I thought.

  “If I can’t be with you in life, Anya, then I will join you in death,” I said aloud.

  I toppled over onto my back as the black shadows of death swirled and gathered about me.

  Chapter 46

  I lay on my back, waiting for the final death, knowing that neither the Golden One nor any of the other Creators would revive me again. Nor would they revive Anya. They were glad to be rid of us both, I knew.

  A wave of anger crested over the pain that throbbed through my body. I was accepting their victory over me, over her, their victory over us. They were tenderly nursing the Golden One back to sanity so that they could continue their mastery over the human race and its ultimate destiny.