Desert God

by Smith, Wilbur

  ‘How did you …’ he began, and I completed the sentence for him.

  ‘How did I know? I knew because you are not very adept at concealing anything from me. I mean that as a compliment rather than a rebuke.’

  He shook his head and laughed ruefully. ‘We have been separated far too long, my lord. I had forgotten how you are able to read a man’s thoughts. But you are right, my lord. I was just going to mention one thing more, but I hesitated lest you think me an alarmist.’

  ‘Nothing you can tell me will make me believe that,’ I assured him.

  ‘Then I must tell you that while I was in Al Namjoo’s encampment three refugees were brought in from the desert. They were in a sorry state, almost dead from thirst and from their wounds. Truth to tell one of them died within a very short time of reaching the safety of Al Namjoo’s tents, and the other was unable to speak.’

  ‘Why not, Zaras?’ I demanded. ‘What fate had befallen these unfortunates?’

  ‘My lord, the first one had been flayed with heated sword-blades so that most of the skin was burned away from his body. His death can only have been a happy release from his agonies. As for the other man, his tongue had been hacked from his throat most brutally. He was only able to grunt and bellow like an animal.’

  ‘In the name of Horus the merciful, what had befallen them?’ I demanded of Zaras.

  ‘The third man had escaped such brutal injuries. He was able to tell us that he had been the leader of a caravan of fifty camels and as many men and women carrying salt and copper ingots down from the town of Turok when they were set upon by Jaber al Hawsawi. This is the one that men call the Jackal.’

  ‘I know of him by reputation only,’ I admitted. ‘He is one of the most feared men in Arabia.’

  ‘There is every reason to fear him, my lord. He emasculated and disembowelled all the other men and woman of the caravan merely for the sport of it. Of course the Jackal and his men coupled with their captives, both men and women, before massacring them.’

  ‘Where is the Jackal now? Did this man know where they have gone?’

  ‘No, my lord. He has disappeared back into the desert. But one thing is certain, and that is that he will be lurking along the caravan routes like the animal he is named for.’

  At that moment Tehuti turned in the saddle and called back to us over her shoulder: ‘What are you two discussing so earnestly? Come up here and ride with Bekatha and me. If you and Zaras are telling stories to each other then we want to share them with you.’

  Even I dared not flout her orders twice in quick succession. The two of us pushed our mounts up level with the princesses. Skilfully Tehuti interposed her own mount between Zaras and me to prevent us continuing to discuss matters that did not interest her particularly. At that moment the rugged and rocky track we were following came out on the crest of the hills and Tehuti reined in her horse and let out a cry of astonishment and delight.

  ‘Look! Oh, won’t you look at that! Have you ever seen a river so wide and blue? By the horned head of Hathor it must be a hundred times wider than our Nile. I cannot even see across to the other side.’

  ‘That’s no river, Your Highness,’ Zaras told her. ‘That is the sea; the Red Sea.’

  ‘It is enormous,’ Tehuti enthused, and Zaras did not know her well enough to realize that she was putting on an act for his benefit. ‘It must be the biggest sea in the entire world!’

  ‘No, Your Royal Highness,’ Zaras corrected her respectfully. ‘It’s the smallest of all the seas. The Middle Sea is the largest, but wise men have calculated that the Great Dark Ocean on which this world floats is even larger.’

  Tehuti turned to him, opening her eyes wide with admiration. ‘Captain Zaras, you know such a great deal; perhaps almost as much as Lord Taita. You must ride with me and my sister Bekatha for at least a few hours every day to instruct us in these matters.’

  Tehuti is not easily turned aside from her purpose.

  The crossing to Arabia was infinitely more difficult and demanding than had been our voyage to Tamiat the previous year. On that occasion we had been a company of less than two hundred men, travelling swiftly and lightly; and it had only been necessary for us to cross the Gulf of Suez, that narrow westerly finger of water that pokes up between Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula. It is less than fifty leagues wide.

  Now we had to keep much further south, to avoid at all costs entering the Sinai Peninsula where the Hyksosian chariots that Gorrab might send to intercept us could be lurking.

  We were forced to cross the main body of the Red Sea at its widest point. This entailed a voyage of more than two hundred leagues; transporting over a thousand men and animals in fifty open-decked dhows. One of these small boats was only capable of carrying ten of the camels at a time. Each of them would have to make multiple crossings.

  Taking into account all these factors I had to allow at the very least two full months for us to bring our caravan across to Arabia.

  I kept the royal party encamped on the Egyptian shore while the main elements were being ferried over the narrow sea. I knew from hard experience that it was not wise to let the princesses become bored, or allow them to have too much spare time on their hands.

  The royal enclosure was carefully segregated from the rest of the encampment. Although it was the size of a small village, it surpassed even a large city in the sumptuousness of its appointments and the plethora of comfort and luxury which surrounded the inhabitants.

  Every few days the princesses rode out with a hunting party which I led. Either we pursued the fleet-footed desert gazelle that flitted as lightly as moths across the salt flats, or we climbed into the hills where the curling-horned ibex haunted the crags and cliff faces. When this hunting palled the girls flew their trained falcons at the wild duck and geese that swarmed along the seashore.

  At other times I arranged picnics on the offshore islands where the girls could swim in the translucent waters, or spear the swordfish and giant sea bass which swarmed on the underwater coral forests.

  One thing I did insist on was that most of their mornings were filled with their studies. I had brought with us two erudite scribes to coach them in their writing, mathematics and geometry. I also enjoyed acting as their tutor. Our classes were made up of solemn hard work, interspersed with bouts of merriment and girlish giggles. These were my favourite times of the day. They chatted away to Loxias in Minoan, excluding me from the conversation as though I could not understand a word of the language. They discussed the most intimate subjects in salacious detail. Loxias was the eldest of the trio, so she had set herself up as the leading authority on all matters carnal and erotic. However, listening to her it was clear that she was totally devoid of practical experience. She relied entirely on a vivid and fertile imagination for the details.

  During these sessions I could truly get to know them better and find out what was really going on in those beautiful and busy little heads.

  Each of them professed to having discovered the love of their lives. Loxias had decided on Lord Remrem. However, she was transmuted to stone in his presence: deprived of the power of speech and unable to do more than blush and cast down her eyes. I think she was most awed by the fact that he was a Lord of the Royal Council while she was a commoner and a foreigner. She seemed not at all deterred by the fact that Remrem was almost twice her age, already had three wives and was blithely unaware of her existence.

  Bekatha had become enchanted with Hui, the famous horseman and charioteer. Little did she know that he had been a blood brother of the infamous criminal Basti the Cruel when I captured him. I had done my best to tame and civilize him, but he still had a wide streak of the barbarian in him, particularly when it came to his sense of humour. Bekatha enjoyed nothing better than being pounded over the roughest ground that Hui could find in his chariot, clinging to him with both arms around his waist and shrieking like a lost soul in Hades. The two of them exchanged jokes and insults which were totally obscure to any other listener
, but which doubled them both up with laughter. As a mark of her special approbation Bekatha took to pelting him with pieces of bread and fruit across the table when he accepted her invitation to dine with us.

  Tehuti kept aloof from these discussions and displays of affection. None of us pressed her on the subject.

  Our evenings were passed in setting each other riddles; in storytelling and rhyming; in singing and playing musical instruments; or in playacting and reciting poetry.

  By these means and with careful planning I was able to keep my three charges out of dangerous mischief, and the days fled by as swiftly as migrating birds. Finally the main part of our convoy was across to the eastern shore of the sea, and it was time for us to follow them.

  Before sunrise on the morning of the fifteenth day of the month of Athyr we all assembled on the beach while the three priestesses of Hathor, ably assisted by both Tehuti and Bekatha, sacrificed a fine white ram to the goddess.

  We promised the goddess that we would sacrifice a camel to her if she treated us kindly when we were on the water and guided us safely to the far shore. Then we embarked and pushed off from the beach.

  The goddess must have been listening for she sent a brisk warm breeze out of Egypt to fill our sails and send our flotilla scurrying through the choppy waters. Before the setting of the sun Africa sank beneath the waves behind us.

  As darkness fell every ship hoisted an oil lamp to the top of her mast, to enable us to keep each other in sight. Steering by the stars we maintained our easterly course. As the dawn broke we raised the distant shoreline of Arabia like a row of rotten shark’s teeth, brooding black against the fresh blue sky of the morning sky. We steered for them all day, and the sun was still a hand’s breadth above the horizon when fifty men of the Crocodile Guards waded out to seize the hulls of our dhows and drag them high and dry up the beach. The girls were able to step out on to Asian soil without wetting their dainty little feet. The royal encampment with all its delights was already laid out above the high watermark, ready to receive them. I had ordered it so.

  However, we dared not dally here; for every day we used up huge quantities of the precious sweet water.

  The main convoy and the baggage train had left many days ahead of us. By this time they must have covered more than a hundred leagues. On the second day after our arrival in Arabia we mounted the horses and riding camels and set out after them.

  As soon as we moved away from the moderating influence of the sea, the high sun soon became too fierce to allow us to travel during the middle of the day. From then onwards we began each march in the late afternoon when the sun had lost a little of its stinging malice. We travelled on through the night, stopping only for an hour around midnight to water the horses and the camels from the cache that the main caravan had left for us to find. Then we journeyed on after the sunrise. When the heat became unbearable we erected the tents and lay sweating in their shade, until the sun sank low enough to allow us to repeat the cycle.

  After fifteen days and nights we finally caught up with the main column of the caravan. By this time the leather water bags were more than half empty, with merely a few gallons of slimy green and foul-tasting water sloshing about in the bottom of them. I was forced to cut the daily ration down to four mugs a day a man.

  We had now entered the desert proper. The dunes rolled away before us in endless profusion. Our horses were showing signs of distress. When they were carrying even a lightweight rider the soft sand made the going extremely onerous for them. I turned them loose to join the herd of remounts at the head of the caravan, and I selected the finest racing camels as replacements for the girls and the rest of our party.

  Al Namjoo assured me that the next water lay only a few days’ march ahead of us. So I took the girls, together with Zaras and his escort of picked men, and we rode ahead of the main column to find the promised waterhole.

  Al Namjoo gave me Haroun, his eldest son, to guide us. We were able to travel much faster than the main body. We rode hard through the night, and in the first flush of dawn Haroun reined in on the top of another monstrous dune of brick-red-coloured sand and he pointed ahead.

  Before us stretched a high cliff of striated rock. The horizontal layers were of contrasting but vivid colours, varying from honey gold and chalky white to shades of red and blue and black. Some of the softer layers had been wind eroded more deeply than those above and below them. These formed overhanging galleries and deep elongated caverns almost as though they had been designed by a demented architect.

  ‘This place is called the Miyah Keiv,’ Haroun told us. I was able to translate this from the Arabic as meaning ‘the Water Cave’.

  Haroun led us up under the vertical rock wall, at the base of which opened a low-roofed lateral fissure. It was just high enough for a tall man to enter without bending, but it was more than a hundred paces wide and so deep and shaded that I could not see how far it undercut the cliff.

  ‘The water lies in the depths of this cave,’ Haroun told us. The princesses and Loxias urged their camels to kneel, and then they jumped down from the carved wooden saddles. I led the three of them into the opening, while Zaras held his men back to give us space to ourselves.

  The stone floor dropped away gradually under our feet, and as we descended the daylight faded and the air grew cooler, until the contrast in temperature to that of the direct heat of the sun outside made us shiver.

  By now I could smell the water, and hear it dripping somewhere ahead of us. My throat clenched with thirst. I tried to swallow but there was little saliva in my mouth. The girls tugged at my hands and dragged me down to the bottom of the incline.

  A large pool lay before us, the surface gleaming with reflected light from the cave entrance. That same light created the illusion that the water itself was black as cuttlefish ink. None of us hesitated but with gleeful cries we plunged in to it, still wearing our tunics and sandals. I knelt until the water reached to my chin. I looked down at my own body and saw that the water, far from being black, was clear as the diamond I had given to Tehuti. I filled my mouth and sighed with pleasure.

  I have drunk the finest wine from the cellars of Pharaoh’s palace in Thebes, but none of it could match this divine and arcane spring.

  The girls were in the centre of the pool; splashing me and one another; gasping and squealing at the cold. Encouraged by the uproar Zaras and his men came charging down the sloping floor. They were shouting and laughing, as they too flung themselves into the dark water.

  When we had drunk all that our bellies could hold, the men filled the water-skins we had brought with us and carried them out to the camels. Zaras could not allow them to take the draught animals down to the pool. The rock roof was too low for them to pass beneath it; and the risk of them fouling that sublime water with their droppings was too great.

  Haroun confirmed my own estimate that the main caravan was at least three days behind us at this stage. This did not worry me unduly, for the girls were tired out by the journey and this would give them a chance to rest and fully regain their strength.

  What really concerned me was our vulnerability in this place. The location of the waterhole would be well known to all the Bedouin tribes for hundreds of leagues around. We were a small party, but our animals, weapons and armour were highly valued by the tribes and would be attractive to the lawless elements amongst them. If they learned of our presence at the waterhole and knew how few there were in our party we would be in grave danger. We must keep alert and make certain that we were not taken off guard.

  As soon as Zaras and his men had refreshed themselves, I brought them out of the cavern and I posted our sentries and organized our defences to secure the area.

  Then I took Zaras and Haroun with me to explore our immediate surroundings and search for any signs that other human beings might have been here recently.

  All three of us were fully armed. I carried my longbow slung over one shoulder and a quiver of thirty arrows over the other. In addi
tion my bronze sword hung in its scabbard on my right hip.

  When we reached the top of the nearest dune we separated. But before we parted we agreed to meet back at the Miyah Keiv before the sun reached its zenith, which would happen in about an hour. I sent Zaras to make a circle out in a northerly direction, and Haroun to investigate what appeared to be a caravan trail in the valley below us. I followed the high dune towards the south.

  It was difficult to remain unobserved for there was almost no cover in this terrain, but I took pains to keep off the skyline where an enemy could spot me from a great distance.

  I soon found myself enchanted by this landscape that was barren and bleak, but at the same time was hauntingly beautiful. It was an infinity of dunes that were as mutable as the swells of a tranquil sea; smooth and pliant as the body of a beautiful woman, devoid of hard edges, malleable and sculptured. The peaks of these waves of sand were being gnawed at by the wind, changing shape before my eyes. Footprints and hoof prints would become indistinguishable from each very quickly, and would disappear completely soon after that.

  As I moved through it I found nothing in this other world to indicate to me that man or beast had ever existed here; until suddenly I noticed a small piece of sun-bleached bone protruding from the sand at my feet. I knelt to dig it loose, and was surprised to find that it was the skull and short gaping beak of a nightjar. The bird must have been blown so far from its usual haunts by unseasonable winds.

  I turned back and slid down the face of the dune. When I reached the bottom I headed towards the entrance of the subterranean pool. As I approached it I heard the shrieks of feminine laughter and the splashing of water from within.

  Zaras had returned before me. He and his men had unsaddled the camels and moved them in under the overhang of the entrance to the cavern, to kneel where they were shaded from the direct sunlight. The men were grooming them and feeding them their rations of corn in leather nosebags. I called to Zaras.