Desert God

by Smith, Wilbur

  Zaras’ entire body buckled and then stiffened into rigidity. His sword fell from his right hand and lay at his feet. Tehuti wriggled out from the grip of his left arm and landed on her feet.

  ‘Go to Taita.’ I heard him gasp to her through the pain. ‘I am killed. Taita will defend you.’ He doubled over and clutched at his lower belly where he could feel the sword blade deep inside him.

  Tehuti ignored his instruction. She stood transfixed beside him. It seemed to me that at first she was unable to comprehend what had happened, until she looked down and saw the haft of the Jackal’s sword protruding from under Zaras’ skirt, and the blood dribbling down from between his legs.

  Zaras fell forward on to his knees. He bowed his head until his forehead touched the ground.

  Standing over him Tehuti’s face twisted into a mask of anger and she screamed at Al Hawsawi,‘You have killed Zaras! You have killed my man!’ She snatched up Zaras’ sword from where he had dropped it. She turned on the Jackal with strength that was out of all proportion to the delicacy of her body and a fury out of keeping with her femininity. She drove the point of the sword into the Jackal’s throat.

  His breath hissed from his severed windpipe, and he grasped the naked blade with both hands, as though to prevent her stabbing him again. With frenzied strength Tehuti ripped the blade from his throat. As it slid through Al Hawsawi’s clutching fingers the razor-sharp edge sliced them down to the bone.

  Tehuti stood over him and thrust again and again into his chest, between his ribs and into his vitals.

  My men swept past where Tehuti stood, driving the surviving Bedouin ahead of them, leaning out from the saddle to run them through with their long cavalry lances.

  I let them go. I reined in my camel beside Tehuti and swung down from the saddle. I threw my arms around her and held her until she quietened, and then I plucked the sword from her hands.

  ‘You have killed him ten times over,’ I told her sharply. ‘Now Zaras needs our help.’ I knew that his name would calm her fury and focus her mind.

  I did not want to move Zaras, as doing so can often aggravate such an injury as he had received. I had the men build a rude shelter over him where he lay.

  While they were doing this I ordered the sergeant of the guards to collect the cleanest and least bloodstained robes from the Arab corpses and bring them to me. I used these to protect Tehuti from the sun and from the fascinated scrutiny of the men.

  Then I ordered them to drag the dead Arab horses and the corpses of the Jackal and his men a league downwind and dump them in the desert. In this heat they would begin putrefying within the hour. The last I ever saw of the Jackal he was being towed naked behind a camel with a slip knot around his ankles and his head bumping over the stony ground. His arms extended over his head towards me were flapping as if in farewell.

  I had brought with me my medical pack, and a small supply of herbs and drugs. These go with me always and everywhere, almost as though they are part of my own body. But I knew before even I began to examine Zaras’ wound that they were inadequate for the task that lay ahead of me.

  I had no trained assistant to help me. The rough guardsmen with me were all highly proficient at taking human life, but abysmally ignorant when it came to saving and succouring it.

  The only one that I had whom I could trust was Tehuti. She had helped me care for injured horses and other domestic animals. But I still looked upon her as a child. I did not want her to watch Zaras die, as he was bound to do. But I had no choice.

  ‘You will have to help me care for him, Princess,’ I told her as I prepared a draught of the juice of the Red Sheppen flower that was powerful enough to stun an ox.

  ‘Yes,’ she responded quietly, but with such fixed determination that I was reminded forcibly of her mother. ‘Just tell me what you want me to do and I will do it.’

  ‘First of all make certain he drinks all of this.’ I handed her the copper cup brimming with the narcotic. She placed his head in her lap. She held the vessel to his lips and pinched his nostrils closed so that he was forced to gulp it down. In the meantime I laid out my surgical instruments.

  When the pupils of Zaras’ eyes dilated and he fell into a stupor induced by the drug, we removed his armour and his under breeches. Then we laid him mother-naked on his stomach on a bed of saddle blankets. Of course I had seen Zaras naked before, but as always I was impressed by his magnificent physique. I felt a deep pang of regret that so soon we would have to consign this masterpiece of nature to the earth.

  I separated his legs so that I could reach the entry point of the Jackal’s blade. Of course the blade was still sealing the wound. I know others who claim to be surgeons who would have ripped it out without a care or a thought, sealing their patient’s fate in the instant.

  While I studied the angle and depth of the blade’s entry, I saw that the sword thrust had missed his masculine parts entirely. This was a state of affairs about which I had mixed feelings.

  I silently rejoiced for the sake of Zaras and Tehuti. However, on my own account I was not so sanguine. Perhaps it would have been preferable if these basic organs of Zaras’ had been rendered harmless by the cutting edge of the sword. If that had happened then many of those problems which I foresaw looming ahead of me might have been eliminated at a single stroke. I thrust such unworthy thoughts aside and gave my full attention to the removal of the blade.

  It had passed through his left buttock. If it had then struck the cradle of heavy pelvic bone it might have gone no further.

  This had not happened. I could tell that it had found a pathway along which to enter the bony basin in which Zaras’ entrails were contained. I have taken the opportunity to dissect and study hundreds of human cadavers. I know how the food we eat is passed down through these fleshy tubes until it is voided from the fundamental orifice set between our buttocks.

  I was by now seriously alarmed. If the Jackal’s blade had punctured one of these tubes in Zaras’ gut the waste would have leaked into his stomach cavity. This waste that we refer to familiarly as dung is composed of evil humours which give it the characteristic unpleasant smell. These humours are also fatally poisonous, and if set free in the body will cause it to mortify. Death is the inevitable consequence.

  The sword had to come out at once. I summoned six of our strongest men to restrain Zaras, for despite the powerful opiate that I had given him the pain that he must suffer would render the drug ineffectual.

  Tehuti sat with his head in her lap. She stroked his hair and crooned to him like a mother to her infant. The holders took their places and pinned his limbs. I knelt between his legs and took a double-handed grip on the hilt of the sword.

  ‘Hold him!’ I gave the order, and then I leaned back and applied all my weight and strength, keeping the blade aligned to its entry channel so as avoid further damage to his flesh and innards.

  Zaras’ entire body stiffened. Every muscle tensed hard as marble, and he bellowed like a wounded bull with agony. The six strong men were hard put to restrain him. For a long moment nothing gave. The bronze blade was trapped in a vice-like grip; jammed against the pelvic bone and held by the suction of clinging tissue. Then the suction broke and the blade slid from the wound. I toppled over backwards.

  Zaras gave one last shuddering moan and his body slumped back into unconsciousness. I had a pad of lamb’s wool ready, and I placed this over the wound and ordered Tehuti, ‘Hold this in place, but put all your weight on it to try and stop the blood.’ Then I looked to the men who were holding him down. ‘Release him!’ I ordered them.

  I switched my attention to the sword in my hand and with my eye measured how deeply in had penetrated.

  ‘One and a half hand’s length; half a cubit,’ I estimated, with dread overshadowing hope. ‘That’s deep, too deep!’

  Briefly I lifted the pad that Tehuti was pressing over the wound. I leaned forward to examine the wound.

  It was a slit as wide as two of my fingers together. As so
on as I released the pressure on it a thin trickle of blood leaked out. It looked clean and healthy. I brought my face close to it, and sniffed at the blood. There was no odour of faeces.

  I felt a flicker of renewed hope; was it possible that the razor-sharp bronze had not sliced open his guts?

  Tehuti was watching me intensely. ‘What are you doing, Taita?’

  ‘I am trying to estimate our chances.’

  I bound the pad of lamb’s wool in place to cover the entry wound and I dribbled distillate of wine over it to subdue the evil humours. Then I moved around behind Zaras and placed one of my hands on each of his buttocks. I steeled myself and then drew them apart. I let out a soft sigh of relief. His fundament was clean and tight.

  There was one more test I needed to make. I placed my hand on the small of his back and pressed down hard. There was a splutter of released gas from his bowels followed by a spurt of watery excrement and bright blood from his anus. The stink made both Tehuti and me wince.

  Now I knew with fatal certainty that the sword had indeed pierced his entrails. I felt devastated with sorrow and despair. Zaras was a dead man. No surgeon in this world, however skilled, could save him; not even I. He belonged to Seth now.

  I did not look up at Tehuti although I could feel that she was staring at me. I was helpless, and I hated that sensation. It is not something that I could ever become accustomed to.

  ‘Taita.’ She whispered my name. Still I could not raise my eyes to her and admit my inadequacy.

  ‘Please, Taita!’ Her voice rose slightly. ‘You can save his life, can’t you? You can save Zaras for me?’ I had to answer her; I could not allow her to suffer any longer.

  I lifted my head and looked at her. I had never seen such suffering and sorrow as hers; and I have seen freshly created widows by the scores.

  I formed the negative in my mind and on my tongue, and I even shook my head. But I could not utter the word ‘No’. I could not abandon these two young people.

  ‘Yes! I can save him for you, Tehuti.’ I knew it was a heartless thing to say. Finality is surely better than false hope, but I could not bear her anguish and despair.

  So silently I begged the good gods to pardon my lie, and I set out to do battle with Seth for Zaras’ soul.

  All I knew for certain was that I had to work swiftly. No human body can survive such long-drawn-out anguish.

  I had no other guidelines to follow. There was no other surgeon in this world who had ever dared to go where I was preparing to venture.

  I had one remaining flask of the Red Sheppen that might be sufficient to keep Zaras unconscious for an hour at the longest. I would need all of it.

  I would have to open the stomach cavity and find where Zaras’ entrails had been punctured. I would have to repair the sword-cuts by sewing them together. Then I would have to flush out the evil humours that had escaped from his bowels into his stomach cavity.

  Fortunately, like all of us, Zaras had eaten little since leaving the Miyah Keiv. We were short of food, and I had rationed our stores strictly. His gut would not be full of waste. I had infusions of willow bark and cedar sap but insufficient quantities for the task of flushing out the poisons. The most efficacious of all was distillate of wine. I had only one small water-skin full of this. Both Tehuti and I washed our hands in a single small bowl of this precious liquid.

  I had long ago discovered that heat will reduce if not destroy the humours. On my instructions two of my men set a large pot of water on the fire. When the water was boiling furiously I dangled my bronze surgical razors, needles and catgut sutures into it.

  I forced another large dose of the Red Sheppen down Zaras’ gullet while Tehuti sponged his belly with the distillate of wine.

  Then my hefty guardsmen pinned Zaras down once more. I placed a doubled leather pad between his teeth so that they would not crack and shatter when his jaws clamped down in a seizure of agony. All was in readiness. I could find no further excuse to delay longer.

  I made the first long cut through the wall of his belly, from just below his belly button to the crest of his pubic bone. Zaras howled through his leather gag and he whipped his head from side to side.

  I showed Tehuti how to hold the wound open by hooking her fingers into each side of my long incision and pulling the lips apart. I was now able to get both my hands into the cavity of his belly as deep as my wrists. I had a picture in my mind of the course that the sword blade had taken as it was driven into his belly, and I worked along this route.

  Almost at once I found a perforation as long as my little finger in the slippery rope of his guts. The stinking debris of digested food was oozing from the aperture.

  I sewed it closed with catgut and neat regular stitches of my curved bronze needle. Then I took the rubbery snake of the gut and squeezed it in my two hands, to make certain that there were no leaks. My suture was watertight, but the pressure forced the brown and turbid filth to squirt from three other cuts deeper in his bowels.

  I sewed these smaller cuts closed, working with a delicate balance of speed to efficacy. I could see that Zaras was beginning to weaken under this extreme treatment that I was forced to inflict upon him.

  By the time I was satisfied that I had not overlooked any other damage that the blade had caused, both Tehuti and I were inured to the faecal stench. Nonetheless, it was a constant reminder to me how vital it was to wash out all the humours from his body before I closed his gaping stomach cavity. Anything that stank so atrociously must be evil.

  With Tehuti still holding his stomach open I took mouthfuls of the distillate of wine and squirted it through my pursed lips into the recesses and convolutions of his bowels. Then we rolled him on his side and drained the fluid out of his belly.

  Then we washed out his guts again with boiled water which had cooled to body temperature, and drained that out of him.

  Finally we washed him out with our own urine. This is one of the most effective recipes against the humours, but the urine must be fresh and uncontaminated by any other fluid or bodily substance. Ideally it should come directly from a healthy bladder without contacting the external sexual parts of the donor: the penis and foreskin of the male or the female labia.

  With me this presented no difficulty. The removal of the emblems of my sex is such ancient history that their memory no longer causes me even a tremor. While I emptied my water into Zaras, Tehuti swabbed her own privates with a woollen pad soaked in the distilled wine; when I stood aside she squatted over Zaras and spread the lips of her vulva. Then she aimed a hissing stream into his belly cavity. When she had finished we rolled Zaras’ inert form on to his side to drain for the third and last time.

  Then I closed up his belly, and with each stitch I recited a verse from the prayer for the closing of a wound.

  ‘I close your cruel red mouth, O evil thing of Seth! Leave this place. I command you: go!

  ‘Retreat from me, jackal-headed Anubis, god of the cemeteries. Let this one live.

  ‘Weep for him, gentle-hearted Hathor. Show him your mercy and ease his pain. Let him live!’

  It was dark by the time that I had trussed up his belly with linen strips torn from the skirts of my robe and laid him on the litter in his shelter. Tehuti and I sat on each side of him ready to give whatever comfort and succour we could.

  When Zaras in delirium began to rant at and struggle with the imaginary and real demons that crowded around his litter, Tehuti lay down beside him and took him in her arms. She held him tightly and sang to him.

  I recognized the lullaby. It was one of those that Queen Lostris had sung to Tehuti when she was an infant. Gradually Zaras quietened.

  His men built their watch fires in a circle around the shelter in which we waited with Zaras. I think they prayed for him as we did. I heard the murmur of their voices throughout the long hot night.

  Towards the dawn I fell asleep. There was nothing further that I could do other than husband my reserves for the ministrations which I knew I would soo
n be called upon to render.

  I felt a small hot hand tugging at my shoulder and I came awake instantly. I saw through the chinks in the roof of our shelter that morning was not far off. I had slept only briefly, but I felt as guilty as if I had committed murder.

  ‘Taita, wake up. You must help me.’ I could hear the effort she was making to prevent herself from weeping.

  ‘What is it, Princess?’

  ‘His skin is on fire. Zaras is burning up inside. He is so hot it is almost painful to touch him.’

  I had a cedar-wood taper to hand. I thrust the tip of it into the dying coals of the fire and blew upon it. When it burst into flames I lit the oil lamp at the head of the litter and I bent over Zaras.

  His face was flushed and shining with sweat. His eyes were open but unseeing with delirium. When we tried to hold him still and quieten him he lashed out at us. He rolled his head from side to side and screamed curses at us.

  I had been expecting this. I knew well the burning fever which heralds the onslaught of the evil humours. I had seen many cases that exhibited almost exactly the same symptoms. They had all ended in the death of the patient. But I had prepared my first line of defence.

  I summoned my six stalwarts and between us we were able to truss Zaras in a cocoon of saddle blankets, so that he was unable to do more than move his head. Then we soaked the blankets with buckets of water and fanned them to speed up the evaporation. This reduced the temperature of Zaras’ body until he was shivering with the relative chill.

  We kept this up through most of the morning, but by noon Zaras’ strength was fading. He was following the same course that all my previous patients with the humours had taken. He no longer had the strength to resist the treatment I was forcing upon him.

  He uttered no sound but the chattering of his teeth. His skin had taken on a pale blue tinge.

  We unwrapped him and Tehuti took him in her arms again and looked at me across his wet and quivering body.

  ‘You said that you could save him, Taita. But now I understand that you cannot do so.’