Desert God

by Smith, Wilbur

  ‘How do you deduce all that information, my lord?’ Hypatos looked astonished.

  ‘I simply read Akemi’s signal,’ I explained patiently.

  ‘At that distance?’ Toran intervened. ‘That seems like witchcraft to me, Taita.’

  ‘The falcon is my personal hieroglyph,’ I told him lightly. ‘Both that bird and I have sharp eyesight. Please order Hypatos to set all sail and order his rowers to go to attack speed.’

  It took us over an hour to catch up with our vanguard galleys. When we did so we discovered that they were hove to, with oars shipped and sails backed. They were locked in battle with an Arabian dhow. It was a larger ship than either of my galleys; with twin lateen sails and a headsail, which were now all aback and in disarray. It was obvious that the fighting was almost over, for the crew of the dhow were throwing down their weapons, and raising their empty hands.

  As we closed with the locked vessels I saw that the name of the captured dhow was printed on her bows in Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was the Dove. I smiled at the incongruity of it. She was certainly no bird of peace.

  ‘Lay us alongside the enemy!’ I ordered Hypatos. He completed the manoeuvre skilfully; and I clambered down the rope ladder and landed on the deck of the embattled dhow. Zaras followed me closely as a sheepdog. I could sense how disappointed he was to have missed the fighting. Both Dilbar and Akemi came to meet me, sword in hand.

  ‘What have we here?’ I asked them as they saluted me. With the bloodied blade of his weapon Dilbar indicated the lines of prisoners kneeling on the deck. Their hands were locked behind their necks, and their foreheads were pressed to the planking.

  ‘These little rascals took it that we were sailing alone,’ Dilbar explained. ‘They made out that they were floundering and asked for assistance. There were only a few of them on the deck. When we came up alongside those who had been hiding below jumped out, and grappled us with boarding hooks. Then they all came storming over our side.’ He looked smug. ‘Of course we were ready for them. We kept them busy until Akemi arrived and joined in the revels.’

  ‘How many have you captured?’ I demanded.

  ‘I’m afraid we were forced to kill a few of them, before these other motherless bastards had the good sense to surrender,’ Akemi apologized. He knew that I preferred slaves to corpses. ‘However, we have bagged thirty-eight live ones.’

  ‘Good work, both of you. Share them out between your galleys, and find them employment on the rowing benches.’

  As our men began hoisting the captives to their feet and shoving them to their new stations on the slave decks of my galleys, I spotted one of prisoners who was trying to make himself inconspicuous in the rear rank. This was a futile effort. He was obviously the pirate leader, for he was the most richly dressed and, despite his attempt at servility, there was about him a natural air of grace and self-assurance. Nevertheless he was trying to avoid making eye contact with me.

  ‘Nakati!’ I accosted him, and he straightened his back and lifted his chin before he looked into my face. Then he gave me a guard’s salute, clenched fist held to his chest.

  ‘My lord!’ he acknowledged me. ‘I prayed never to meet you again.’

  ‘The gods are not always attentive to our pleas,’ I commiserated with him.

  ‘Do you know this animal, master?’ Dilbar intervened in our conversation.

  ‘He was a captain in the red battalion of Pharaoh’s guards. Five or six years ago he knifed his own colonel to death in a drunken squabble over a tavern harlot in Abydos. He disappeared before he could be apprehended and hanged.’

  ‘Shall I kill him now?’

  I shook my head. ‘Let’s delay that pleasure for a little while longer.’ There had been a time when Nakati had been a first-rate fighting officer, seemingly destined for higher rank and greater things. ‘In the meantime keep him busy at the oars.’

  ‘Should I spare the whip on him?’

  ‘Surely you jest, Dilbar? See to it that he is given his full measure of all the slave rations, including the lash.’

  ‘I recall that you were always beneficent, Lord Taita.’ Nakati kept a straight face. I found his sense of humour laudable in the circumstances and he spoke my name with respect. I nodded to the deck officer to take him away with the other prisoners. Then I crossed to the main cargo hatch of the Dove.

  ‘Dilbar, have your men knock out the wedges and prise open this hatch.’ When the cover of the hatch crashed back on to the deck I peered down into the hold. It was packed with ingots of copper and tin. It was obvious that we were not the first customers to receive the attentions of Nakati and his crew.

  ‘Transfer this hoard into the Outrage,’ I ordered Dilbar. ‘Then put a prize crew into the pirate and bring her along in convoy with us to Crete.’ An imaginative plan was already forming in the back of my mind. However, I wanted Nakati to spend sufficient time on the rowing bench to put him in the proper mood to listen to my proposition with his full attention.

  I waited until we were only four or five days short of our landfall on the island of Crete; then I ordered him to be ferried across to the Sacred Bull and escorted to my cabin.

  All his fine feathers had been plucked. He was dressed only in his chains and a brief and filthy loincloth. His arrogant manner had been ameliorated. His back was scored by the lash. His arms were lean and hardened from heaving on the oar. His belly was as concave as that of a starving greyhound. There was no superfluous meat on his frame.

  However, I judged that although he had been well whipped, he was not yet beaten. The coals still glowed beneath the ashes of his pride. He had not disappointed me.

  ‘Have you still got a wife in Thebes or has she run off with somebody else?’ I asked him and he stared at me. His eyes were hard and bright. His famous sense of humour was restrained.

  ‘Children?’ I persisted. ‘How many? Boys or girls? Do they ever think of you, I wonder? Do you ever think of them?’

  ‘Why don’t you grow yourself another set of genitalia, then go and fuck yourself to death?’ he suggested, and I suppressed a smile. I really admired his panache. I ignored his suggestion and went on as though he had not voiced it.

  ‘I suspect that at heart you are still a son of our very Egypt; a civilized man and not a bloody pirate.’ He showed no reaction, but I kept on at him. ‘You made one mistake, and it cost you everything you ever had of value.’ Despite himself he flinched. Unerringly I had hit another raw nerve, and he flared at me:

  ‘What’s it to you, you smug bastard?’

  ‘Not much to me,’ I agreed. ‘But I suspect it means a great deal to your wife and children.’

  ‘It’s too late now. Not much anyone can do about it.’ His tone changed again, and there was an ocean of regret in his voice.

  ‘I can get you pardoned,’ I told him.

  He snorted with bitter laughter. ‘You are not Pharaoh.’

  ‘No, I am not, but I am the bearer of the hawk seal. My word is as good as that of Pharaoh.’ I saw hope dawn in his eyes, and it was a good thing to watch.

  ‘What do you want of me, my lord?’ He was begging now; no more defiance.

  ‘I want you to help me free our very Egypt from the Hyksos hordes.’

  ‘You make it sound so simple, but I have spent more than half my life in that forlorn cause.’

  ‘It is apparent to me that since you fled Thebes you have become one of the princes of the Sea Peoples. I am certain many of your comrades are also Egyptian outcasts who would fight for the chance to return to their homeland.’

  Nakati inclined his head in assent. ‘They would fight even harder for a little silver and a plot of rich black Egyptian soil to plough,’ he suggested.

  ‘That is the reward I can promise you, and them,’ I assured him. ‘Bring me fifty ships such as your Dove and the men to serve and fight them, and I shall give you back your pride, your honour and your freedom.’

  He thought about what I had said and then at last he shook his head. ‘I
could never find you fifty ships. But let me have my own Dove and her crew and within three months I will return with at least fifteen more ships. My solemn oath on it!’

  I went to the door of my cabin and opened it. Zaras and three of his men were waiting there with drawn swords, ready to rush to my rescue.

  ‘Send to the galley and have the cook bring food and wine.’

  When Zaras returned I was seated at the table with Nakati opposite me. He had washed his face in my basin and combed his wet hair. He was dressed in the clothing I had provided. Although he was tall and broad-shouldered he was lean, as I am, and my clothes fitted him well.

  The cabin boy who followed Zaras set a large bowl of cold salted pork before Nakati and I poured three bumpers of red wine and gestured to Zaras to join us at the table. We started to talk, and we were still talking the next morning when the dawn broke.

  Captain Hypatos backed his sails and our prize crew brought the Dove alongside. Nakati went down to her deck and resumed command of his dhow, then he sailed her across to the galleys in which I had imprisoned his crew. On each of them he went down to the slave deck and picked out his own men who were chained to the benches. Then he brought them up into the sunlight.

  These men were in a sorry state. They wore only loincloths and like Nakati they all bore the marks of the lash. On my orders, Akemi and Dilbar had driven them hard. They had crossed the borderline of despair and resignation. I knew that if anybody could bring them back it would be Nakati. I would not have enjoyed the challenge.

  Nakati saluted me from the poop deck of the Dove. Then he put the helm over and bore away on a northerly heading. The pirate fleet was out there, lurking in their lairs that were scattered among the myriad uninhabited islands of the Aegean archipelago.

  ‘Will you ever see him again, I wonder?’ Zaras asked, and I shrugged. I would not tempt the dark gods by replying affirmatively to the question; however, I had an agreement with Nakati, and I am a good enough judge of men to believe that I could trust him to do his very best to keep to it.

  I had already proven to my own satisfaction, and to the chagrin of the enemy, that I could land a large detachment of chariots at any poorly defended spot on the Hyksos-occupied shore, visit death and mayhem on Gorrab’s forces, and then take to the ships again before the enemy could retaliate. Of course, my tiny army could never hope to engage in a full-scale campaign against the tyrant, but I could certainly force him to divert a very large number of his main troops from his southern border with our very Egypt to defend his extended northern front.

  I had agreed to pay Nakati and his men one thousand silver mem each as a bounty to compensate them for the plunder they would have to forgo when they sailed under me. Then when the campaign against the Hyksos led eventually to the liberation of all of Egypt his men would be pardoned for any offences they may have committed, including piracy and murder. Each of them would be honourably discharged from the navy and granted Egyptian citizenship. In addition they would be rewarded with five hundred kha-ta of fertile and irrigable land on the estate of Lord Taita of Mechir along the River Nile south of the city of Thebes.

  As I watched the Dove sail away I wondered how much of this largesse I had promised Nakati I could retrieve from the treasury of Pharaoh, and how much I would have to meet from my own coffers. No doubt Pharaoh would be grateful, but as for expressing his gratitude in coin I was less sanguine. My Mem and his silver are not readily parted.

  I knew that Captain Hypatos had made this same voyage between Sumeria and Crete on a number of previous occasions. But when I asked him when we might expect to reach Knossos he became evasive.

  ‘Of course, it depends on the winds and the currents that we encounter, but I would wager that within sixteen days we will make our landfall on the sacred island of Crete.’

  I was pleased to have this estimate. Our chariot horses had been confined to their stalls long enough. Their general condition was deteriorating. Their coats were staring and they were losing weight and becoming apathetic. Hui was as worried as I was.

  At dinner on the fourteenth evening of the promised sixteen, I reminded Hypatos of his declaration and he backed his sails a little.

  ‘Lord Taita, you must understand that all mariners are subject to the will and whim of the great god Poseidon, who rules the seas. Sixteen days was my estimate, and a good one at that.’

  One thing that both Hypatos and I were reasonably certain of was that we were no longer in danger of pirate attack. No corsair would risk operating so close to the main harbour of the most powerful fleet in all the seas. So I flew the recall signal for all my galleys. Long before sunset they had taken up a close escort formation around the Sacred Bull.

  Long before dawn the next morning I left my cabin quietly, went on deck and climbed to the masthead. In the first misty grey light of pre-dawn I swept the horizon ahead of our bows and found it empty; devoid of any sign of land.

  I was about to descend the mast and return to my cabin when an albatross appeared out of the mists and hovered above me on wide pinions, turning its head from side to side to peer down at me. I am fascinated by all birdlife and this was the first chance I had ever been given to study one of these most magnificent of all birds from such close range. He seemed equally interested in me, gliding almost close enough for me to touch while he studied me with glittering black eyes. But when I reached out my hand to him, he banked away steeply and disappeared back into the haze from which he had materialized.

  I looked down at the deck before I started to descend and was surprised to see that while I had been absorbed by the great bird a couple had come up from below decks and were standing in the bows of the ship gazing out to the horizon just as intently as I had done a few minutes before. I could not be certain who they were, for they were swaddled in heavy clothing against the dawn chill and their faces were turned away from me.

  When at last they turned to face each other I was able to recognize that they were Zaras and Tehuti. They glanced around the deck but they did not raise their eyes to the masthead. Satisfied that they were unobserved, Zaras took her in his arms and kissed her. She stood on tiptoe and clung to him with a desperation that was palpable. I felt like a voyeur, intruding on this intimate moment. But before I could avert my gaze Tehuti drew back a little to speak and I could read her lips.

  ‘As always, Taita was right. There is no sign of land. The gods have given us at least one more precious day to be together before they tear us apart forever.’ Her expression was tragic.

  ‘You are a princess,’ Zaras reminded her, ‘and I am a warrior. We both have a sacred duty to perform, no matter what the cost. We will endure.’

  ‘I know that what you say is the truth, but when you go you will take my heart and my will to live with you. You will leave me an empty husk.’ She reached up and kissed him again.

  I turned my head away. I could not watch the depths of their despair for a moment longer. I also had a sacred duty to perform. We are all mere insects caught in the web that the gods spin for us. There is no way that we can escape it.

  I waited until they had left the deck and gone below before I climbed down the mast and went to my cabin.

  I had not wept since that long-ago day that Tehuti’s mother died. But I wept again now.

  The next morning I climbed once again to the masthead, and this time I was not disappointed. In the early light the island of Crete lay low and blue on our starboard horizon. This was not where I had expected to find it, for rather than dead ahead it lay fifty leagues or more to the north of us.

  In truth I was not unhappy with this minor setback. I was not in such a desperate hurry to make the acquaintance of the Supreme Minos that in order to do so I was willing to deprive my princesses of these few additional days of their happiness. I determined to make the most of this unexpected opportunity to see more of this kingdom of myths and legends. Already the romance and mystic might of it seemed to be reaching out to me across the waters.

&nb
sp; I wanted to enjoy it to the full without the intrusion of others, but it was not to be. From the Outrage, which sailed ahead of us, there was sudden commotion and wild cries of ‘Land ho!’

  Almost at once the deck below me seemed to be swarming with excited humanity. They crowded the starboard rail and climbed into the rigging for a better view of the land.

  I was not left alone for long before Ambassador Toran climbed up to join me at the masthead. He was even more elated than I was, and like me he was unconcerned by the additional term of our voyage.

  ‘Hypatos’ error in navigation is forgivable, given the long period we had sailed without sight of land; given also the vagaries of wind and current. Navigation at sea is never an exact science. It is more a developed instinct. Indeed Hypatos’ miscalculation may be fortuitous.’

  I looked at him askance. ‘Would you care to elaborate?’

  ‘I am sure you recall that before we sailed from Sidon I explained that by decree of the Supreme Minos, no foreign warships are allowed to enter the harbour of Knossos on the north shore of his kingdom. That is where our own battle galleys are based.’

  ‘Yes indeed, you told me that my ships would have to use the port of Krimad, on the southern coast. In fact, that location will be a great deal more convenient for my galleys. They will not have so far to travel to reach the Hyksos positions in the delta of the Nile.’

  Toran directed my attention to the distant land. ‘Do you see those white buildings at the base of Mount Ida? Those are the boat yards of Krimad harbour. You should detach your squadron immediately and send them to take up their allotted moorings in the harbour. Captain Hypatos will send one of his officers to act as a pilot for your captains.’

  ‘Excellent!’ I approved. ‘Does the Supreme Minos wish me to remain with my flotilla in Krimad?’

  ‘No, no, Taita!’ he hurried to reassure me. ‘The Supreme Minos is fully aware that you are the representative of Pharaoh Tamose, and therefore deserving of the utmost respect. A mansion on the slopes of Mount Ida above the city of Knossos has been set aside for your exclusive use. However …’ He paused and drooped an eyelid at me in a conspiratorial manner. ‘… there are members of your entourage presently aboard this ship who might best be accommodated in Krimad rather than Knossos.’