Focus now, or this man in front of you will kill you and you’ll fail Nima. Maintaining concentration in battle wasn’t normally a problem for Kamin, but today crippling fear gripped him. What if she already lay dead or dying?
Clearing his mind of doubt, he shoved the warrior away with a powerful punch just below the chin, using his own shield. Stepping forward, he launched a flurry of hacking blows, driving the officer first to his knees then to the ground, then slashing his neck right above the leather breastplate, the energy of combat and fear for Nima giving Kamin superhuman strength.
When he looked up, jerking his bloody sword free of the corpse, Kamin saw that Tiy had the battering-ram unit hard at work on the doors to the inner areas of the fortress. Arrows and debris rained down from the walls above, but the shield-bearers protected the men working the battering ram. Out of the corner of his eye, Kamin saw Amarkash break away.
“To me!” Kamin yelled at the Egyptian soldiers nearest him, gesturing with his bloody sword as he vaulted over dying men and ran into the fortress through the door Amarkash had used. Yet another courtyard awaited him, a third ring in the defenses, empty of foot soldiers, although arrows flew from the few archers left on the battlements. A huge portal barred the way to the main portion of the fortress. Breathing hard, blood trickling down his arm from a glancing sword wound, Kamin paused, assessing the situation.
“Stand back, sir.” The archer drew him aside as the battering ram rolled forward through the hole its crew had created in the previous wall. The huge log burned in a few spots, and soldiers beat at the flames with their cloaks.
Tiy came to him, uniform bloodstained, his personal guards close beside him. “You took off like a gazelle.”
“Thought I saw the man who held Nima and me prisoner. He ducked through this last gate.” Tying a rag around the wound in his arm while they waited for the men to breach the door, Kamin fastened the knot with his teeth.
***
Nebuchazz was waiting, clad only in a loose blue-striped robe and a loincloth, his face contorted in anger as he stared out the window at the burning stables and smoldering gates. Swinging around as the man entered the room, dragging Nima, the general walked to his desk and sat. “So, you do have power, as the priest claimed,” he said. “And your ankle has healed, apparently.”
“I’m not dancing for you or your misbegotten god,” Nima said, struggling to jerk free of the man who held her arms. She tossed her head to shift her disheveled hair off her face. She could hear distant sounds of battle, which gave her hope.
Nebuchazz rose, came around the desk and smoothed her hair away from her cheeks. He leaned close, eyes staring directly into her eyes, his breath puffing in her face as he spoke. “No, you’re not going to dance for him,” he said in a reasonable tone of voice. “You’re going to die on his altar later today for your crimes. But the god won’t begrudge me a few hours of pleasure first.” He nuzzled her cheek, the stubble on his cheeks rasping on her smooth skin, while she squirmed in the soldier’s grasp. “I’ll have time to enact all my fantasies about you, little dancer.” Cupping her chin for a moment, he planted a wet kiss on her lips before stepping away. “Take her to my bedchamber and tie her to the bed to await my attention after we get the fires out.”
Nima twisted her wrists against the belt restraining her, getting a grip on the last snake. “Poison to his heart,” she screamed.
The snake vanished from her wrist. The general paused in midstep, turned slowly to stare at her, his face going blank, his lips opening in an exclamation of surprise even as they blackened from the poison. He clutched at his chest, crumpling to the floor in a heap, purple foam spewing from his mouth. With an audible cracking of bones, he convulsed once before he lay still.
The soldier holding her practically threw Nima across the room, so anxious was he to be safely away from her. “Witch, you’re a witch,” he yelled, drawing his sword. He started forward as Nima searched frantically for another way out of the room, or anything she could grab for self-defense.
“Hold!” Amarkash rushed into the room, blocking the soldier’s sword with a rapid thrust of his own, disarming the man. “What in the name of the seven hells has gone on here?”
The soldier tried to tell him, his curses and explanations loud and panicky.
Amarkash spun around to stare at Nima. “So you are a being of power, just as the priest insisted you had to be.” Rubbing his cheek, where an angry red slash throbbed, he winced. For the first time, Nima noticed a bloody bandage covering his upper arm. “Your Egyptians have broken into the first ring of defenses, assisted by the chaos you’ve created. Your cursed army and the general leading them fight as if possessed by powers greater than mortal men.” He pushed Nebuchazz’s contorted corpse with a cautious toe, then grinned. “Seems I’m in command now. I can snatch glorious victory from defeat by sacrificing you and invoking all the power of Qemtusheb,” Amarkash said, striding to the door. “Bring her.”
Two priests who had entered the room on his heels hustled her out, the soldier trailing behind. Nima twisted and kicked, but they easily kept her under control, forcing her to walk. “Killing me isn’t going to do you any good.”
Amarkash paused for a minute, glancing over his shoulder at her. “Our plans have gone wrong since the first moment Nebuchazz watched you dance and became obsessed with owning you. I wonder if your gods used you to thwart our intentions. I think your death on the altar will go a long way to making up for all the trouble you’ve caused.” He issued crisp orders to the young priests. “Carry her if you must. We’re running out of time. The ceremony can only be foreshortened so much if it’s to work.”
The man on the left snatched her up in his arms, running after Amarkash as he broke into a sprint down the hall. Huffing and puffing, adjusting his elaborately embroidered ceremonial robes as he went, another, much older priest joined them. Nima continued her attempts to make the priest drop her, but he adjusted his hold, slinging her over one shoulder like a sheaf of wheat and kept striding. Leaving the corridors she’d seen before, they briefly crossed the far side of the courtyard, where Egyptian soldiers now did battle with Hyksos warriors at the top of the wall. Instinctively, she screamed for Kamin.
He must be there in the front ranks, trying to get to me.
Chapter Eleven
BOOM!
Louder than thunder, the sound of the battering ram’s impact on the stout wooden panels echoed in the courtyard. Swinging in its chains as the crew rolled it forward again and again, the giant tree trunk assaulted the final defense. Kamin watched, breathing hard, regaining his strength for the next surge of combat once the gate was breached. With a tremendous splintering sound, the portal collapsed, remnants dangling from the bronze hinges. Men scurried to drag the battering ram out of the way. Kamin plunged through the opening first, nimbly picking a path through the debris, followed by the archer, then the nomarch and the rest of the troops.
Kamin hesitated. Amarkash was his intended quarry. His only target. Suddenly, he heard someone scream his name. Wheeling in the direction of the sound, he saw the Hyksos warriors retreating into the main building. Sprinting in that direction, Kamin skidded to a stop as the massive door slammed in his face.
“Bring the battering ram!” he yelled, gesturing with his sword.
Tiy joined him, eyeing the door and the courtyard critically. “Not sure we can get the necessary momentum in this space.”
Kamin banged his fist on the wood in sheer frustration. So close. “Nima’s in there. I heard her scream. “
“No time to waste then.” Tiy gestured to his men, and they began repositioning the massive ram to make a run at this new obstacle, while the other soldiers established a perimeter.
One collision with the ram was enough to crash through the last door, which had clearly not been constructed to keep out hostile troops. Again, Kamin was first through the opening, the archer at his side.
***
The priest carrying her ducke
d through a side door, narrowly avoiding a flight of black Egyptian arrows coming their way.
The older priest had gone ahead. Amarkash and the solder lowered a thick slab of wood to bar the door behind them before sprinting alongside Nima’s captor, through the new corridor. They came out on an open terrace cut into the side of the mountain. It was huge, with room enough for easily one hundred people to stand.
The priest paused, allowing Nima to slide down his body and stand on her own two feet.
Heart pounding, she examined her surroundings, hoping for something she could use as a weapon, some means of defense or escape. A round stone dominated the terrace. Nima had never seen anything like it—easily eight feet long, with elaborate carvings along the base. Glittering in the dawn sunlight as if tiny diamonds lay buried below the surface, there was something hypnotizing about the altar. She screwed her eyes shut for a moment, shaking her head. The guard jerked her forward by the wrists. The old priest took up a position between the stone and the terrace railing, next to a claw-footed table holding candles, statues, and incense. Already chanting to their god Qemtusheb, he faced the rising sun.
“Bring her to the altar,” Amarkash said in a low voice, gesturing impatiently.
I’ve got to delay them, stall as long as I can. Twisting and struggling, Nima tried to dig in, to pull away, but the young priest was more than a match for her.
Knife in hand, Amarkash waited. “What a pity we won’t be able to continue our sessions with my ropes, dancer. Watching you die will be pleasurable in its own way, however.”
“You’re sick. All of you are as evil as the filthy god you worship.” Nima spat in his face.
He wiped his cheek with his sleeve, unperturbed, and stepped forward. As the priests held her between them, Amarkash slit her dress from neck to hem and tore it from her body. Nima stood nearly naked before him, clad only in her undergarments, shivering in the morning breezes.
“There’s no time to perform the ritual purification or garb you in sacrificial robes,” Amarkash said.
“Killing me buys you nothing. You and your god will lose this war.” Nima stood tall, heedless of her near nudity.
Amarkash stepped aside, pointing to the altar. “Lay her in place on the stone and help me fasten the restraints.”
Fighting them every inch of the way, she was placed on the smooth surface of the sacrificial stone. Trying to scramble off the altar, Nima was mesmerized by ripples of molten red light streaking through the stone. The surface was oddly warm, sticky, with something pulsing below her as if a living heart beat inside the block. Her skin crawled and itched wherever her body touched the stone, which felt like the pelt of a living creature. What demon is locked inside this altar? The priests and Amarkash forced her onto her back, spread eagle, snapping heavy shackles over her wrists and ankles, pinning her tightly to the rock.
The old priest slowly turned and continued his chanting, stepping close to the altar at Nima’s head.
Tugging futilely at the restraints, Nima realized there was no escape now. She closed her eyes. Kamin. The burning pain of a hard slap across the face had her jerking against the chains, her eyes opening against her will. Amarkash was nose to nose with her, his flushed face radiating hatred. “I want you to see the embrace of Qemtusheb as the god takes you, uses you to defeat your own people. He’ll destroy your lover if he’s out there.”
Summoning all her courage, praying to whichever Great One might listen, Nima remembered Kamin’s eyes, so defiant, so undefeated, at the beginning of this journey, the first time she'd met him. “Do your worst, then. I know you and your god will fail.” She felt calm, weightless, as if nothing happening in the chamber of death could touch her, as if she stood to the side watching. Relaxing in the restraints, she took a deep breath as the high priest raised his knife over her, chanting the words of his petition to Qemtusheb in hypnotic repetition.
The scream of an enraged falcon echoed through the room. Startled, Nima craned her neck as much as she could, to see a massive bird of prey diving toward the terrace, lethal talons extended to rend and tear. Rainbow sparks glinted from the diamond pupils of its uncanny eyes. Cringing, the high priest broke off his song and ducked away from the altar, placing his back to the nearest solid wall and covering his face with one arm.
Amarkash stood fast, gesturing to the slack-jawed soldier. “Shoot the damn thing. What are you waiting for?”
The falcon broke off its attack as if it had encountered some obstacle. Shrieking defiance, the bird soared aloft and came diving through the air again. The Hyksos archer shot a volley of arrows, all of which fell short as if deflected by a shield. Nima held her breath as the bird tried to cross the edge of the terrace and savage the enemy, but once more, it back winged and shot away, prevented from reaching her.
“The power of Qemtusheb holds firm,” the oldest priest said with relief, wiping his brow. “The bird is unable to penetrate this consecrated space.” Stepping to the altar, he noisily cleared his throat, sacrificial knife clenched in his palsied hand. “Where was I? Do we have any of the sacred herb wine to calm my nerves?”
“There’s no time for you to get drunk,” Amarkash said, glancing from the altar where Nima was pinned, to the door across the room, which vibrated and groaned under the Egyptian assault from the other side. “Kill the girl now and summon the god to help us.”
A massive crash and shouting at the other end of the room drew everyone’s attention. Faltering, the elderly priest lowered the knife for a moment. Cursing, Amarkash strode out of Nima’s range of vision. She heard shouting in both languages, but she kept her eyes on the priest.
“Please,” she said. “You’ve lost. Don’t do this.”
***
Following the angry cries of a falcon, troops at his heels, Kamin burst into a room the likes of which he’d never seen before. Screams of rage from the bird drew Kamin’s attention to the far side, where a waist-high, circular black altar loomed and Amarkash stood with priests and soldiers. Nima lay chained to the altar as a priest raised his gleaming sacrificial knife. Without conscious thought, Kamin dropped his sword, yanked the bow from the man standing next to him, and shot the priest through the heart.
“Amarkash, you son of a bitch, face me now,” he yelled. Grabbing his sword, Kamin ran forward, barely conscious of the others at his heels. The Hyksos captain drew his weapon, and Kamin saw the flicker of recognition when Amarkash recognized his recent captive.
“Ah, the lover,” he sneered. “You abandoned your woman in the middle of the desert and now you come to reclaim her? I’ll slaughter you first, and then her blood will stain the altar, bringing Qemtusheb to give us victory.”
”You got one thing right. You have to kill me first,” Kamin taunted, anxious to keep the enemy’s attention on him. “If you’re skillful enough.”
Amarkash adjusted his leather shield and bounded forward, his sword meeting Kamin's in a violent clash of metal. Kamin whirled and got in a blow before his off-balance opponent could recover. The Hyksos’s leather tunic protected him to some extent, but blood spurted where Kamin's sword had landed. Without mercy, Kamin pressed his advantage.
Tiring, Amarkash retreated toward the altar, stumbling over another corpse.
Afraid of what the man might do to Nima, Kamin outflanked his opponent, forcing him away from the stone. Apparently calling on some inner reserve, Amarkash tried to go on the offensive, but his strength waned. Kamin sidestepped the assault, bringing his sword around with enough force to sever Amarkash’s head.
Breathing hard, Kamin staggered to the altar and hurled the gruesome corpse of the priest he’d shot away from Nima, letting the man’s body slide to the floor. Unfastening his scarlet cloak, he prepared to swathe his beloved in its folds to shield her bruised, battered body from anyone else’s eyes. Horus, please, let us have been in time.
***
The world spun around Nima, confused glimpses of battle, sounds of anger and fear. In his dying throes the prie
st had plunged his knife into her shoulder and then fallen across her upper body, where he lay for long moments, his grotesque face turned toward her, sightless eyes wide, his blood mingling with hers on her bare shoulder. She knew men fought viciously beside the altar. Kamin, dueling with Amarkash, moved in and out of her limited range of vision, sword slashing in a battle to the death. She thought other Egyptian soldiers thronged the chamber, skirmishing with the priests and Hyksos, judging by the noise and the cursing in both languages.
Am I hallucinating from the incense and loss of blood? Dizzy, she shut her eyes against the view of the dead priest, until suddenly his body was yanked off her, Egyptian curses filling the air.
“Hang on, beloved, stay with me.” Bending over the altar, Kamin draped his cloak across her nearly naked, bloodied body. “You’ve been so brave, so strong. You can’t die.”
The restraints were struck from her wrists and ankles. In the next moment, Kamin lifted her in his strong arms, wrapped in the cloak, and held her close against his pounding heart. "Bring a doctor!"
She tried to raise her hand to caress his face but had no strength left. “Kamin,” she whispered.
Eyes narrowed, jaw set, he brushed a kiss on her lips. “Don’t talk. Save your energy.” Raising his head, he spoke to whoever surrounded them, frustration and anger in his voice. “Where in the seven hells is that damn doctor? I ordered him to stay close.” Kamin cradled her tenderly. “We have to stop the bleeding.”
“I—I tried to be brave, for you.” She touched his chin with the tips of her trembling fingers. She believed he kissed her hand, but the world went black, vision and hearing fading away.
“Nima, wake up. Don’t leave me.” Kamin swallowed against the lump in his throat, studying her pale, bruised face. He could see the pulse beating in the hollow of her neck, which was somewhat reassuring. Keeping pressure on her wound to stem the bleeding, he raised his voice again. “The doctor is a dead man if he doesn’t arrive in the next breath. Where is the fool?”
Dancer of the Nile (Gods of Egypt) Page 17
