by Jerry Dubs
By the fourth day Brian had given up hope.
He was weak from hunger, and the nightly fear from being exposed to the crocodile had drained his spirit. He no longer struggled when they dragged him to the stone chair, where he expected to bleed to death as the crocodile ate him alive.
His worst enemy was his imagination.
He pictured the crocodile chewing on his legs. He saw himself kicking at it, his legs reduced to a shinbone with bloody scraps of skin hanging from the torn flesh. He imagined the pain and the screams and he prayed that he would lose consciousness quickly.
But each night, although the crocodile had grown braver, Brian had not been killed. And each morning, before dawn, Siamun and his guards untied Brian and led him stumbling on stiff legs back to Siamun’s hut where he was bound and tethered to a post. Each afternoon the gag was removed and he was given warm, dirty water, which he lapped at hungrily.
He dozed through the day, dreaming of his college friends, of playing baseball, of Tama. The awkward angle of his tied arms, the pain in his shoulder, which had changed from a sharp pang to a throbbing ache, kept him from ever forgetting where he was, even in those brief dreams.
At times he daydreamed of somehow wrestling free of the ropes and attacking Siamun, but as the days wore on, he knew he wouldn’t have the strength to fight him even if he did break free.
On the second night, exhausted from straining against the ropes, he had fallen asleep in the stone chair. The crocodile had eaten the fish, following the trail that led to him. It had brushed its snout against his shin, almost as if it were taunting him. Then it had walked away, exploring the confines of the courtyard, which was bordered by a short wall.
When Brian woke, he was disoriented but the ropes on his arms and the hard stone against his bare skin brought his fear rushing back, bringing with it an adrenaline surge.
Looking around, he couldn’t see the crocodile, and he wondered if it had returned down the wide steps to its well.
He pushed his toes hard against the stone paving and felt the chair move. His legs were tied to the stone legs of the chair, but when he slid as far forward on the chair as the ropes around his arms would let him, he was able to wiggle his legs a little lower.
He pushed again and felt the front legs of the chair rise. He let the chair fall forward. Then he pushed again, rocking his chest and head backward at the same time. The chair rocked back farther and then fell forward with a dull thud.
The chair was stone, but so was the pavement. If he could rock the chair over, the arms of the chair could shatter and his hands would be free.
He almost smiled.
Calming his breathing he closed his eyes and focused his energy. He relaxed his shoulders and hands, leaned forward, pressed his toes against the stone and pushed hard, flinging himself backward. The chair tilted, farther this time. It fell forward heavily and Brian pushed back again, trying to create a rhythm to his movement.
On the fifth try, the chair tilted farther and he slammed his shoulders backward desperately, ignoring the pain. The chair balanced on its back legs and then began to fall backwards. Brian cocked his head forward trying to brace himself so his head wouldn’t slam against the back of the stone chair.
It seemed to fall in slow motion. He saw the stars slide by, he felt the air brush against him as he fell and then suddenly he was on the ground. There was a loud thud, but no shattering sound. The arms of the stone chair were intact; he was still tied and unable to move.
He lay on the courtyard, staring at the uncaring stars. He felt moisture on his cheek and realized that he was crying. He gave in to his fear when he saw the dark shape of the lumbering crocodile emerge from the well and pause as it saw him on the ground.
Diane learned about Brian a week after he had been captured when Siamun appeared at the doorway of the room she and Yunet shared.
“Come,” he ordered.
Yunet took Diane’s hand and they followed Siamun across the temple grounds, behind the main temple building to a small collection of huts.
Siamun motioned for them to enter one of the huts that stood apart from the others.
“Oh, my god,” Diane cried when she saw Brian. He was propped sitting against the wall, one eye red and swollen, his arms tied behind his back. He looked as if he had lost twenty pounds and aged fifteen years.
He looked up at her, barely conscious. “Hey, babe,” he whispered.
She started to rush to him, but Siamun moved between them.
“Get out of my way, you animal,” she said and pushed against him. Siamun grunted and pushed back, shoving her against Yunet, who stood unmoving in the doorway.
“What is he saying?” Siamun demanded.
“Let him go, right now!” Diane ordered.
Siamun spit on the ground near her feet. “He says the same thing over and over. What does it mean?” he asked.
Diane turned to Yunet. “Please,” she said. “Make him let Brian go. This isn’t right.”
Yunet looked at her sadly. “Djefi has said you are to remain safe. But he has ordered Brian killed. There is nothing I can do. I am sorry.”
“Killed? What do you mean? He can’t just order someone killed. How long have you known about this? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Yunet started to speak, but Siamun grabbed Diane’s arm and spun her around to face him.
“Answer me!” he shouted. “He says the same words, over and over. What do they mean?”
Diane shrugged away from his touch. Siamun scowled and stepped quickly to Yunet. He grabbed her throat and put his knife at Yunet’s eye. “Tell me what he says,” he demanded, looking at Diane.
“What does he say? I’ll tell you what it means.”
Siamun glared at Brian. “Say the words!” he commanded.
“Fuck you,” Brian said hoarsely.
Siamun turned back to Diane. “Those sounds. What do they mean?”
Yunet held her head tensely, her eyes wide with anger, her fists clenched. She watched Diane and waited. Siamun dug the point of his knife into her cheek, just below her right eye.
He turned to Diane. “Another scar, my wife?” he said.
“It’s a curse,” Diane said quickly. “He is cursing you.”
“I know that. But what does the curse mean?”
He pressed the knife harder and a drop of blood rolled down the blade from the cut he made under Yunet’s eye.
Diane tried to think of a curse that would belittle Siamun, show him that she wasn’t afraid. She knew men and she knew the kind of pride a bully like Siamun would have.
“I don’t know your words for the curse,” Diane said, “but it means that you aren’t man enough to make a child. That you can’t get hard.”
Yunet gasped and jerked away from Siamun, but she was too slow. He pulled the knife viciously across Yunet’s face.
“Bitch,” he seethed. “What have you said? There will be a day when Djefi doesn’t care about you and then, Yunet, then I will finish it.”
He put his open hand against her face and pushed her out of the hut.
Whirling at Diane he grabbed her arm and pushed her outside. Then he turned to Brian.
Outside Diane heard Siamun shout at Brian, she heard a wet thud as he kicked Brian and she heard Brian’s weak response, “Fuck you.”
The scream that startled Diane from her sleep ended in a gargled moan. She sat up in her bed and swung her legs over the side to get up.
“Don’t go,” Yunet said, grabbing her arm.
Diane pulled away from her.
“I thought he had escaped at Khmunu. Please believe me,” Yunet said.
Diane stood, refusing to answer her.
“There is nothing we can do. You don’t understand Djefi or Siamun. Believe me,” Yunet said.
“I’m not going to sit here while he’s being killed.”
“I thought you hated him.”
“Are you coming with me?” Not waiting for the answer, Diane turned and headed
for the door. She looked around the room for a weapon, but didn’t see anything she could use to fight Siamun. Then I’ll use my hands, she thought, stepping into the night.
She saw three men standing near the center of the courtyard by the stone chair.
She hurried across, recognizing Siamun among the group. A clay pot was at his feet, red coals glowing within it. One of the men was holding a thin, rod, whose tip was glowing red-hot.
“What are you doing? Stop it,” she shouted, breaking into a run.
Siamun turned to her, his face twisted into a grin, his eyes bright with excitement. As he turned, she saw Brian, tied to the stone chair, blood dripping from his mouth. Siamun laughed and held out his hand. His fingers, dark with blood, held something thick, floppy and bloody pinched between them.
She stopped as she looked in horror from the bloody flesh to Siamun’s happy face and then to Brian, his head slumped, his chest heaving and his mouth held strangely open. The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air.
She heard Yunet’s soft footsteps behind her, but couldn’t tear her eyes away from the gruesome scene in front of her. Suddenly a shadow moved, close to the courtyard floor. Siamun and the others stepped back from it. Brian, his head lolling against his chest, didn’t register the movement.
The shadow emerged toward the torchlight and Diane saw that it was a huge crocodile.
The other two men backed away more as Siamun extended his arm.
“Here, Sobek,” he called. “Have a taste of what awaits you.”
The crocodile tilted its head back and opened its long jaws to catch the flesh Siamun tossed to it.
Diane was petrified, unable to move. She felt Yunet come up and put an arm around her shoulders, turning her away from the men.
“What is happening? This is a nightmare,” Diane said numbly.
“There is nothing we can do. I am sorry.”
Diane started to cry as Yunet led her back to their room.
“I don’t understand,” she cried. “What did they do? Why?”
“Siamun has done this before. It is what he is known for. It is because he is cruel.”
“What?”
“He has cut out Brian’s tongue.”
Pahket, watching from the doorway of her small hut on the far side of the courtyard, saw Diane collapse and fall to the ground.
Pahket had learned about Brian’s capture the morning after it happened. Every night she watched from her hut as he was led across the empty courtyard to the stone chair. Every night she watched the men tie him in place and leave him there. She had seen him tip over the chair, she had seen the crocodile sniff at him and then walk back to its dark well.
And she had seen the guard Siamun left behind, standing by a pillar, keeping watch.
Although she was petrified of Siamun and his guards, she swore to herself that if Brian survived this night, she would somehow find a way to save him.
After Siamun had cut out his tongue, the other men had held a red-hot iron to the stump to cauterize it. The pain from the knife had been nearly overwhelming. The pain of the iron, the taste of his own burning flesh and the sure knowledge that he was going to die had released Brian.
As his body slumped, exhausted and brutally abused, his consciousness seemed to rise. The smell of burning flesh was with him, but he was somewhere else, high above them, looking down, seeing everything through a haze.
So this is death, he thought.
He felt the throbbing pain in his mouth, but his mind was on Tama. He heard her voice, felt her skin and saw her quick, sure smile. He saw her face, her eyes, and her mouth and then he saw only darkness.
“Take him to the hut,” Siamun said. “Let Sobek get hungrier. Tomorrow night we will rub his cock with fish oil and leave no other food out for the crocodile.”
He laughed and walked away. The two guards untied Brian and carried him, his legs dragging behind him as they crossed the courtyard.
Pahket ducked back into her hut as they went by. She saw that their faces were drawn; they didn’t share Siamun’s enthusiasm for torture.
Diane drank her courage from a clay pot the next day, alternating between tears of sorrow and tears of rage. She started drinking beer at breakfast and continued until she passed out.
“You can’t just decide to have someone killed. You don’t just cut out someone’s tongue. You can’t just tie them up and leave them for a crocodile to eat. That just doesn’t happen.”
Diane said the words, she shouted the words, but she knew it was happening. And she knew that there was nothing she could do.
She had allowed herself to use her anger at Brian as an excuse: an excuse to ignore him, an excuse to experiment with Yunet, an excuse to pretend that this was all some sort of exotic adventure, that it wasn’t real.
All her life, she realized, she had allowed others to make her decisions. She had learned to manipulate men, and women, too. But in the end, she had let others decide, so that she was never to blame. If a restaurant was bad, it wasn’t her fault, her date had picked it. If a concert sucked, it wasn’t her fault.
There was always someone else to blame.
And now Brian, poor, sweet Brian, is paying the price, she thought. She could have stayed with him at To-She. Hell, she could have insisted they go to the Caribbean for a trip instead of this god-forsaken, barbaric land.
Could have, should have.
Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn, she cursed as she finished another pot of beer and passed out as night crept into the temple grounds.
Brian didn’t know why he was still alive.
He thought he had died last night. All day as he sat hunched in pain, quivering with the sharp pangs that came in wave after wave over his face, his mouth, his shoulder, he wished he were dead.
And then he remembered Siamun.
If there were any way he could be free, even for a moment, he would find a way to kill Siamun. He thought of Tim, traveling with the king, of Tama and Hetephernebti. If I can get free and find them, then something will be done, he thought. Fuck it. If I get free, I’ll kill him myself.
But when he tried to picture himself with his hands around Siamun’s throat, he realized that he barely had the strength to raise his arms. He needed to escape, to recover and then…
He closed his eyes and tried to picture Tama.
Then it was night and they came to take him again to the stone chair.
Pahket watched his struggle to walk across the courtyard.
They tied him in the chair, cut the head from a dead fish and smeared in on his lap and then left. Siamun returned to his hut, one of the guards following after him. The other guard walked to a pillar and leaned against it, his eyes on Brian.
She didn’t know how long it would take for the crocodile to come out of the well, so as soon as Siamun had entered his hut, she walked out into the courtyard.
The guard straightened up as he saw her.
“Go back to your bed, Pahket, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Why?” she asked, looking over at Brian.
“It’s dangerous.”
“I saw what happened last night,” she said. “He doesn’t look too dangerous.” She nodded toward Brian.
The guard shook his head. “No, he’s not dangerous. It’s Sobek. He’s loose. You’re not safe out here.”
She drew closer to him.
“I’m safe if I’m with you,” she said, stopping and then turning her back to him, looking back at Brian. She knew that the guard would be looking at her, wondering if he should take her, if she would cry out or if she came here because she wanted him.
Pahket knew that some women were attracted to danger and power. She hoped the guard would think she was one of them.
She felt his hand on her bare shoulder, felt it slide down her back and squeeze her hard.
“Maybe I’m not safe with you,” she said without looking at him.
“Maybe you don’t want to be safe,” he said, turning her around.
She allowed him to take her, urging him to last longer, to be stronger and rougher.
He was gasping from the exertion when he finished and then he fell heavily on her, exhausted and satisfied.
She slipped out from under him and sat leaning against the pillar, waiting for him to stir, prepared to coax him into more sex if necessary. When he began to snore, she hurried to Brian. He was awake, watching her. His eyes were clearer than she expected.
“Ahket,” he said, her name sounding strange from his injured mouth.
She untied him, glancing over her shoulder toward the guard and at the dark well.
Once he was freed, she helped him to his feet.
“Iamun,” he said, looking across the courtyard at the hut.
“No, Brian. You haven’t the strength. He’ll kill you.”
Brian knew she was right; he could barely stand.
She led him to the outer edge of the courtyard, to the path that led to the river. Pahket had planned to just set him free, but she saw he was too weak to escape on his own.
She helped him down the path and then sat him on the riverbank as she pushed one of the small reed boats into the river.
She helped him wade out to the boat and using the buoyancy of the water, pushed him up on the boat. She crawled on beside him, and with her legs straddling the narrow boat she began to paddle across the river.
Thoth Unbalanced
Djefi imagined himself sitting on the throne of the Two Lands.
The walls of the palace would be covered with paintings of himself among the gods. Sobek, standing upright, his fierce crocodile snout held open to display his ferocious teeth, would be foremost among them.
Fear and strength would be the foundation of Kemet once Djefi was on the throne. The armies would no longer just patrol its borders. They would storm into the land of cedar and gold and precious spices; they would seize gems and silver. They would return to the Two Lands with wealth and with slaves, the just rewards for a land as strong as Kemet!
