The villages were fewer as they headed towards the headwaters of the river. This was still mostly a region of herders, driving their flocks of goats and sheep across the grasslands and sleeping in their goatskin tents. They lived on the milk and cheese from their flocks, and on wild dates and honey and the animals they hunted, and camped for part of the year to gather wild grain, spreading it out to become parched in the sun, before stuffing it into their goatskin sacks for the long summer and winter in the hills.
The travellers stayed in Ka’naan with the manager of a tin mine, one of the Trader’s old friends. The way was rougher now: across plains of shattered rock, through dry wadies, seeing few people—and those they did see mostly kept clear of strangers. It must be hard living in a land that depended on rain, thought Narmer, instead of the regular floods that fed and watered the lands of Sumer and the River.
Finally they hired a ship again, to cross the sea. And then they made their slow way through the desert, towards Thinis.
Day after day there was nothing but the steady plod of the donkeys, the smell of their droppings, and of heat and rock, the sounds of wind and birds, and the sight of gazelles, which lifted their heads as the party approached and fled before the strange sight of humans who sat on animals.
Narmer learnt more about Nitho in those long days of walking than he ever had before. Somehow it was easy to talk again, with the desert around them, in the privacy of the language of the River towns, which the others didn’t share. At times it was as though they were the only two people in the world.
He learnt of Nitho’s early years travelling from town to town, her first memories of the Trader.
‘He hugged me at night when the pain got too bad. And when people stared at my scars he told me they were signs of bravery and endurance that other people lacked. He was kinder than any father…’
Or a father who abandoned you, thought Narmer—but didn’t say it aloud. He and Nitho were regaining their old closeness now, and he didn’t want to say anything that might threaten their friendship again.
In return he told her of his own childhood: running as a toddler with the women as they collected straw from the fields for the palace fires or stripped the green from the flax for the linen fibres they wove on their looms in their courtyard; watching the flint knappers as they split the stone for knives and tools and arrows, the potters as they piled up their coils of clay, turning them almost magically into pots just as the great god Khnum had breathed life into the soil of the River to create man…all the day-to-day rhythms of life along the River.
And as their donkeys plodded close together he even tried to tell her of the feelings welling up in him, now that he was headed towards his native land…exhilaration, fear, happiness. There were no words really to describe what he felt. But Nitho seemed to understand.
Whenever he saw a flock of herons swoop across the water now, or laughed as Bast chose the softest of their packs to sleep on, there was extra joy knowing he could share the sight with Nitho.
Perhaps it was talking of his memories that did it, but the dreams of Thinis came more often now. Sometimes he dreamed he was with his father as the King pronounced judgment on two farmers who claimed the same part of a field, or told Narmer stories about fighting off the People of the Sand. But always in those dreams the crocodile was leering from the shadows, with a face like his brother’s.
Why did they always end this way? What if they were ‘true dreams’ like the Queen of Punt’s?
He woke from these dreams sweating, staring around him in terror but seeing nothing but the sleeping forms of Nitho and the porters, or the yellow eyes of the cat as she crunched bones by the embers of the fire; and the gentle breathing of the others was enough to send him back to sleep.
CHAPTER 26
The Season of Emergence (Autumn)
The shapes of the hills were familiar. Those two, like the backside of a hippopotamus, or that one like an old man’s nose…
Narmer recognised the smells too. The breeze carried the scent of the River in flood. The light was River light again, subtly coloured by the shifting water. Even the bird calls suddenly spoke to something deep within him.
He felt as though his blood were bubbling like the overflowing River. With excitement. Nervousness. And something more. Almost without realising it he hurried ahead.
The floods would be receding now, leaving the rich black silt. The men would be checking to see if the seed was ready for planting.
Home. His home in a way that Sumer never could be. As though his heart were made of silt from the River, and its water were his blood.
He shook his head. Nonsense. Sumer would be his home. But this…this was the land that had created him.
‘What is it?’ Nitho had caught up to him.
He shrugged. ‘Remembering. That’s all.’ He tried to grin at her. ‘Do you know where we are now?’
Nitho looked around, then flushed. ‘Yes.’
‘The wadi of the Oracle.’ It felt like a lifetime ago. ‘What would the Oracle advise me now, then?’
Nitho looked startled. Then she smiled. ‘O great trader,’ she intoned, ‘who has conquered the vast spaces of the desert, the Oracle advises you to change into a clean tunic, and comb your beard.’
Narmer flushed, then laughed. His beard had begun growing the past year, but it still looked more like a goat’s than a man’s.
‘You’re right,’ he said. He looked back at the others, and waved a hand for them to stop.
He wanted his father to see him as a wealthy man, heir to more riches than all of Thinis. He imagined his father’s face as he gazed at the treasures Narmer had brought spread out before him—the metal implements, the spear heads—and as Narmer explained how Thinis too could build canals, and great walls to keep their enemies away.
Hawk might have stolen the kingdom. But Narmer would make him feel like a lizard that knew no more than its rocks.
He dressed carefully: a fine linen tunic in the Sumerian fashion that he had kept clean in his luggage, the Queen’s amulet, gold rings and bracelets, sandals of plaited deer hide with red and gold tassels. He brushed as much of the dust of the desert as he could from his hair.
‘Are you ready?’
It was Nitho. Narmer looked at her in astonishment. She wore women’s clothes again—the pleated tunic with its purple hem that he knew was her best. She too wore her amulet from Punt, below a twist of lapis lazuli beads. There was a golden buckle on her belt and jewels in her ears and on her toes and fingers. Even her sandals looked priceless and delicate.
The clothes were familiar—he had seen her wear them when they received honoured guests, back in Sumer. He had seen them at the Temple of Inanna too. But for some reason it was as though he had never really looked at Nitho before.
He had only seen the scar at first, the crippled foot.
And when he was used to those he had also grown used to the idea of Nitho as a boyish companion, then as his sister.
Now for the first time he realised just how beautiful she was. Even the scar was beautiful, as much a part of her as the calluses from travelling or the dimples from her laughter.
‘Why are you staring?’ asked Nitho self-consciously. ‘I thought it would be easier if I stayed in the women’s quarters this time. Otherwise I’d have to share the guest quarters with you and the others. And they’re too small for privacy.’
‘I…’ Narmer stopped. How could he say what he felt? Did he even know what he felt?
Only that he was glad Nitho would be coming home with him as herself, not in disguise.
The donkeys were restless, stopping where there was neither shade nor water. Narmer nodded for the porters to get them moving again. He cast a last look at Nitho on her donkey, her skirts folded carefully on either side of her legs so they didn’t wrinkle, and smiled.
There was all the time in the world to talk to Nitho. But now Thinis was just across the hill.
The donkeys’ feet clattered against th
e rocky soil. Lizards stared at them from crevices, then darted to shelter.
Narmer felt his heart thump as they climbed the last hill. Up, up, till suddenly they were there, on top of the ridge.
The desert stretched behind them. In front of them the water shone like a polished bronze mirror.
But the town of Thinis had gone.
CHAPTER 27
It was just like Narmer’s dream. Nothing but lumps of mud among the silt showed where the town’s walls had been. A few dilapidated houses remained, but the reed thatch on top had vanished, leaving only scorch marks in their place.
No fresh green crops in the newly mud-rich fields. A few fruit trees still showed leaves, but most were skeletons, their branches bare and brown, their roots rotting. The floodwaters had taken over the defenceless town then retreated, as though they had lost interest in a land of mud and ruins.
No women pounding their washing on the banks, or gathering reeds or lotus roots. No men fishing, or naked boys aiming the shot from their slings at the water birds.
No one…
‘What happened?’ asked Nitho quietly, staring at the devastation below. She had come up behind him without his noticing. The rest of the caravan with the donkeys was still toiling up the slope.
Narmer didn’t reply. He wasn’t sure he could speak.
‘The People of the Sand?’ persisted Nitho. Then she answered her own question. ‘No, they don’t destroy like this, burning everything in sight then leaving the River to finish the job. They don’t take a whole town as slaves, or kill them. They leave the people there to sow and gather crops that they can steal some other year.’
‘I’m going down,’ said Narmer abruptly.
‘I’ll come with you…’
‘No.’ For a moment he was Prince Narmer again, giving commands. ‘Stay here with the others. If I’m not back by midday send Jod and Portho after me.’
‘But…’ For a moment he thought she was going to argue. But then she simply nodded.
Narmer limped down the hill, alone.
His nostrils filled with the smell of fire, of flood debris that hadn’t been cleaned up. This is what defeat smells like, thought Narmer. Emptiness.
Corpses would have been easier, even skeletons. At least then he’d have known what had happened to his people.
He inched quietly up the main street, his spears in his hand. Empty windows stared at him, the crumbled homes of Sithentoe the potter, Nabat the carpenter, Fenotup the baker…all gone.
Narmer had reached the palace now. He gazed around, the tears blurring his vision.
The flood damage was less here and the signs of fire greater. These walls had been demolished by people, not water.
He dodged around a half-collapsed wall and into the First Courtyard. The long pool was mud and sand. Sand covered the tiles too. How many times had he sat with his father here? It was almost as though the King had left behind his shadow, to mingle with the ruins.
He stepped over more layers of rubble and looked around.
The guesthouse had vanished; the recent flood had taken the last vestige of the walls. The kitchen courtyard where he’d played as a child, and Seknut had fed him titbits from the pots and roasts, his own quarters, the servants’ wing…all crumbling, devastated by fire and flood. Already drifts of sand had gathered at the edges.
A child’s woven reed ball sagged in a corner. It too was half filled with sand. Was it his? A keepsake, kept by Seknut in her chest?
Ghosts whispered through the shattered palace. Seknut, grumbling when he’d broken his new sandal. His father, giving judgment over which son would inherit a farmer’s field. Were they real, or just the wind? It didn’t matter. Their voices lingered just the same.
He wiped his eyes and looked around again, desperate to find something—anything—untouched by flames and flood. And then he saw it: a recently repaired roof, with new reeds among the old thatch, over his father’s rooms.
Hope set his heart beating. Perhaps his father still lived!
He began to make his way through the ruins again, moving faster now. A snake slithered across his path then froze for a moment, surprised at a human in what was now its territory. And then it wriggled on and was lost in the rubble.
Suddenly Narmer could smell something else too. Smoke. Not old smoke from the charred wreckage, but a small fresh fire of burning dung.
Someone was cooking.
Narmer crept up to the entrance of the Royal Courtyard and peered in.
The pool here contained water, but it was scummed and green. The carob and sycamore trees still had their leaves. The bougainvillea vines were gone, the painted tiles cracked and broken.
There was a fire, small as he had suspected. And a man, crouching down and holding a stick with small birds spitted on it, their fat dripping into the flames.
His brother. All the old feelings flooded back: the pain of the crocodile attack, the sense of useless fury at what Hawk had done to him.
He stepped out of the shadows. ‘Good day.’
Hawk jumped as though Narmer had cast a spear, not words. He gasped. ‘You!’
‘Me,’ said Narmer.
‘You can walk!’ Hawk stared stupidly, his eyes darting from his brother’s face to his rich clothes and his jewellery. Narmer wanted to bask in his brother’s envy. But the ruins of Thinis had drained him of any joy. Hawk’s own face was thin and shadowed. His kilt was tattered. His feet were bare and dusty.
‘I can walk,’ said Narmer hotly. ‘I can talk too. And my hands can still throttle you.’ He was inches from his brother now. ‘And they will, unless you tell me…’
‘What?’
‘What have you done with my people?!’
‘It wasn’t my fault.’
‘Really?’ They sat opposite each other about the fire. Hawk had offered him a share of the birds. But Narmer had refused. He wanted nothing of his brother’s. Except, perhaps, the kingdom that they had now both lost.
‘It was Father’s fault!’
‘Really?’
‘Yes! The flood after you left was too high. Part of the walls collapsed. And Yebu attacked before we could fix them.’ ‘How did they know the walls were down?’
‘Berenib.’
‘Your wife!’
Hawk glanced up at him resentfully. ‘Father should never have arranged the marriage. She was loyal to Yebu. Not to me.’
Or perhaps she had no reason to be loyal to you, thought Narmer.
A moment ago he had wanted to strangle his brother. Hurt him. Humiliate him. But now he saw there was no point. Hawk was a king of mud and shadows. If it was vengeance he wanted, he’d got it already.
‘And Father…?’
Narmer knew the answer before his brother spoke. He had known it as soon as he saw the broken town. His father would have been striding through the ruins, working to rebuild. Not skulking in a sandy courtyard.
‘He was killed during the attack.’
‘Seknut?’
Hawk shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Those who weren’t killed were marched off as slaves. Perhaps she was among them.’
‘But you escaped.’
Hawk said nothing.
‘Where is Father’s grave?’ For the first time Narmer let fury tinge his voice. ‘Surely you gave him that much! A grave of his own!’
‘The last flood took it. The flood has taken everything.’
Why do I feel grief? thought Narmer. They were lost to me anyway. Father, Thinis…But it wasn’t grief, he realised. Grief would come later. Right now there was only certainty, a strength he hadn’t felt since he faced the crocodile.
He was Narmer of Thinis again. The cloak of responsibility had settled on his shoulders once more.
‘Did any others escape?’
Hawk shrugged again. ‘A few.’ Hawk had never learnt to count more than his fingers, Narmer remembered. ‘They’re camped up in the hills, living wild…Rintup and his family, Batenoe…They bring me food sometimes.’ He nodded at
the skewered birds. ‘For their king…’ For the first time there was real emotion in his voice: part despair, part defiance.
Narmer glanced at the green scummed pool, the crumbled walls. A king of dust and snakes, that was all his brother was now.
‘Why haven’t you rebuilt, then?’
‘And have Yebu attack again? Or the People of the Sand? We’re safer hiding.’
For the first time he met Narmer’s eyes. ‘Well, little brother? Are you going to tell me now that you could have saved the town? That this would never have happened if you had been king? Because it would have! It was the River that destroyed us! Not me!’
Narmer said nothing. What would have happened if he had been there? Would it have made a difference? Would he and his father together have seen that the dykes needed to be stronger? Could he have convinced Berenib to value her new home more than her old one?
He would never know.
And now he had come home to nothing. Death.
But he had once seen someone fight against death, he remembered. The Queen of Punt, gasping for breath on her throne.
Suddenly he knew what he should do.
Hawk glanced at Narmer’s tunic, with its border of purple, the Queen’s amulet on his chest. ‘So, you are still a trader?’
‘Yes. And now the son of the richest house of the biggest nation in the world. And that is something you can never steal from me.’ He stared at his brother for a moment, and Hawk gazed back at him, eyes wide. Then he added, ‘Call the others.’
‘What?’ Hawk still seemed lost in this new vision of his brother.
‘I said call the others! Bring them here!’
‘How can I call them? I don’t know where they are. Up in the hills somewhere…? And why do you want them?’
‘Because, o King,’ said Narmer calmly, ‘I mean to bring our people home.’
CHAPTER 28
Narmer, Nitho and the porters set up camp by the palace’s old silo, which at least still had a roof, leaving the palace ruins to Hawk. Portho and Jod built a fire from driftwood and dried roof reeds, a massive one to signal to the survivors. Nid had speared a gazelle, and set it up to roast on a makeshift spit. Bast prowled through the ruins, leaving her droppings in every sand drift, as though to tell other wildcats that this place was hers.
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