by Wilbur Smith
Mintaka heard her scream once more, 'Wait for me, Naja, my one true love. I am coming. Wait for me!' and then her ravings faded with distance.
--
Mintaka struggled against her bonds, twisting and tugging, bracing her bare feet against the struts of the cage to give herself better purchase. She felt the skin smearing from her wrists, and warm blood dripping down her hands and her fingers, but the leather thongs were tight and strong and she could neither stretch nor snap them. She felt her hands becoming numb from lack of blood. Whenever she rested from her struggle her eyes went to Merykara's limp body on the wheel. She called to her, 'I love you, my darling. Meren loves you. Don't die. For our sakes, please don't die.' But Merykara's eyes were wide open and her stare was fixed. Soon her eyeballs began to dry out and glaze over with a thin film of dust, and the flies swarmed busily over them and drank from the puddle of blood between her legs.
Once Mintaka heard a stealthy scuffle at the entrance to the tent and when she twisted her head she saw Heseret's two maids creeping out of the tent. They were each carrying a large bag crammed with valuables they had looted. Mintaka called to them, 'Please set me free. You shall have your freedom and a great reward.' But they glanced at her with startled, guilty expressions, scurried from the stockade and out into the road to join the retreating rabble of the defeated army passing eastwards.
Later there were voices at the gate and Mintaka was on the point of crying out. In time she recognized the coarse accents, and managed to check herself. Four men crept cautiously into the stockade. By their features, dress and talk, she knew they were ruffians of the lowest sort, probably members of those gangs of jackals and scavengers that followed every army for loot and pickings. She let her head sag, and feigned death.
The men stopped to examine Merykara's body. One laughed and made such an obscene remark that Mintaka squeezed her eyelids closed, and forced herself to hold her tongue with the greatest difficulty.
Then they came to her cage and peered in at her. She lay completely still and held her breath. She knew what a dreadful appearance she must have, and she tried to play dead.
'This one stinks like a sow,' one remarked. 'I would rather have it with Mistress Palm and her five daughters.' They all guffawed at the jest, then scattered to ransack the camp for loot. After they had crept away, carrying what they could, Mintaka watched the shadows lengthen across the beaten earth of the stockade floor, while outside the sounds of passing wagons and carts and people on foot slowly diminished. Just before sunset the last of them passed, and the silence of the desert and the dead settled over the camp.
During the night Mintaka dozed at times, overtaken by exhaustion and pervading despair. Whenever she started awake she saw Merykara's pale body stretched out in the silver moonlight and the terrible cycle of her grief began again.
The dawn came and the sun rose, but the only sound was the soughing of the desert wind through the branches of the scrawny thorn tree at the gate, and at times her own sobs. But these grew softer and weaker as another day passed without water.
Then she heard something else, a distant murmur that grew into a soft rumble, and she knew it was the sound of wheels coming on at speed - chariots, for she could hear the hoofbeats now and the sound of men's voices growing stronger, and stronger still, until she could recognize one. 'Nefer!' She tried to scream his name, but her voice was a draughty whisper. 'Nefer!'
Then she heard shouts of horror and dismay, and she twisted her head slowly and saw Nefer storm through the gateway, Meren and Taita close behind him.
Nefer saw her at once, and ran to the cage. He tore the gate off its hinges with his bare hand then pulled his dagger from its sheath to slash loose the leather thongs from her wrists. Gently he drew her out of the stinking cage and held her to his chest. He was weeping as he carried her into the tent.
'Merykara!' she whispered, through cracked and swollen lips.
Taita will see to her, but I fear it is too late.' Mintaka looked back over his shoulder and saw that Taita and Meren between them had cut Merykara free from the wheel and drawn the blood-clotted weapon from her body. Now they were spreading a clean white linen sheet over her body, covering the terrible mutilations.
Mintaka shut her eyes. 'I am exhausted by sorrow and grief but, my darling, your face is the most beautiful and welcome sight I have ever beheld. Now I will rest awhile.' And she slumped into unconsciousness.
--
Mintaka came awake slowly as though she were rising up from the depths of that dark and terrible pit where demons live. When she opened her eyes the demons that had haunted her dreams fled away, and she saw with immense relief the two most beloved faces in her world. Taita sat at one side of her couch and Nefer at the other.
'How long?' she asked. 'How long was I gone?'
'A day and a night,' Taita answered her. 'I gave you of the Red Shepenn flower.' She raised her hand to her face and found a thick coating of salve upon it. She rolled her head towards Nefer, and whispered, 'I am ugly.'
'No!' he replied, 'You are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes upon, and I love you past the counting of it.'
'You are not angry with me for disobeying you.'
'You have given me a crown and a land.' He shook his head and one of his tears fell upon her face. 'Above that you have given me your love, which is more precious to me than all of that. How could I ever be angry with you?'
Taita rose softly and left the tent, and they stayed together all the rest of that day, speaking softly to each other.
In the evening Nefer sent for the others. When they had gathered around Mintaka's couch, Nefer looked at their faces gravely and saw that all of them were there: Taita and Meren, Prenn, Socco and Shabako moving stiffly from the pain of his wounds garnered on the battlefield of Ismailiya.
'You have come to see justice done,' he told them, then turned to the guards at the door.
'Bring in the woman named Heseret,' he ordered.
Mintaka started and tried to sit up, but he pushed her gently back upon the bolster.
'Where? How did you find her?'
'Our pickets found her wandering in the desert on the road back to Ismailiya,' Nefer explained. 'At first they did not recognize her or believe her claims to be a queen. They thought her a mad woman.'
Heseret came into the tent. Nefer had allowed her to bathe and provided her with fresh raiment, and Taita had treated the cuts and grazes on her face and body. Now she shrugged off the hands of her guards and looked around her with a regal lift of her chin. 'Prostrate yourselves before me,' she ordered the men who faced her. 'I am a queen.'
No one moved, and Nefer said, 'Bring her a stool.' When she was seated upon it, he stared at her so coldly that Heseret covered her face and started to weep. 'You hate me,' she blubbered.
'Why do you hate me?'
'Mintaka shall tell you why,' he answered, and turned to the girl on the couch. 'Please describe to us the manner of the death of Princess Merykara.'
Mintaka spoke for almost an hour, and during all that time one in the tent moved or uttered a sound, except to gasp and exclaim in horror at the most dreadful parts of what they were hearing. At the end Nefer looked at Heseret. 'Do you deny any part of this testimony?'
Heseret returned his cold stare. 'She was a whore, and she brought shame on my husband, the Pharaoh of Egypt. She deserved death. I am pleased and proud that I was able to be the instrument of justice.'
'Even now I might have forgiven you,' Nefer said softly, 'if you had shown a grain of remorse,'
'I am a queen. I am above your petty laws.'
'You are a queen no longer,' Nefer replied, and she looked confused.
'I am your own sister. You would not harm me.'
'Merykara was your sister also. Did you spare her?'
'I know you well, Nefer Seti. You will not harm me.'
'You are right, Heseret. I will not harm you. But there is one who will not scruple.' He turned to his assembled captains.
'It is the ancient law of the rights of the one most injured. Stand forth, Meren Cambyses.'
Meren rose and stepped forward, 'Pharaoh, I am your man.'
'You were betrothed to the Princess Merykara. Yours is the greatest injury. I give into your keeping the body and the life of Heseret Tamose, who was a princess of the royal house of Egypt.'
Heseret began to scream as Meren placed a golden chain around her neck: 'I am a queen and a goddess, you dare not harm me.'
No one took notice of her cries, and Meren looked at Nefer. 'Your Majesty, do you place any restriction upon me? Do you urge or order me to show mercy and compassion?'
'I give her to you without reservation. Her life is yours.' Meren loosened the sword in its sheath on his hip, and pulled Heseret to her feet with the chain. He dragged her blubbering and wailing from the tent. Nobody followed them.
They sat in silence, and through the linen walls listened to Heseret's wailing, entreaties and blandishments. Then there was a sudden silence and they steeled themselves. They heard a high, piercing shriek that ended as abruptly as it had started.
Mintaka covered her face with both hands and Nefer made the sign against evil with his right hand. The others coughed, and moved restlessly.
Then the curtains at the entrance parted and Meren stepped back into the tent. In his right hand he carried the naked sword and in the other a dreadful object. 'Your Majesty,' he said, 'justice has been done.' By its dense hair-tresses he held high the severed head of Heseret, the wife of Naja Kiafan, the false pharaoh.
--
It was five more days before Mintaka had recovered sufficiently to begin the long journey back to Avaris. Even then Taita and Nefer insisted that she be carried in a litter to ease the jolting and lurching over the rough road that lay ahead. They travelled slowly, and it was fifteen days later that they reached the escarpment and looked down from the arid wastes upon the wide green valley of the Nile.
Nefer helped Mintaka from the litter, and together they walked a short way from the road, so that they could be alone and savour to the full this joyous moment of homecoming. They had not been there long when Nefer stood up and shaded his eyes.
'What is it, my heart?' Mintaka asked.
'We have visitors,' he said, but when she exclaimed with annoyance at the intrusion he went on, 'These visitors are always welcome.'
She smiled then as she recognized the two mismatched figures approaching them. Taita. And Meren! But what strange attire is this?'
They were both dressed in simple robes and sandals, and slung on their backs they carried the leather satchels of holy men on a pilgrimage.
'We have come to say our farewells, and to take our leave of you,' Taita explained.
'You will not leave me now.' Nefer was dismayed. 'Will you not attend my coronation?'
'You were crowned upon the field of Ismatliya,' Taita told him gently.
'Our wedding!' Mintaka cried. 'You must stay for our wedding.'
'You were married long since,' Taita smiled, 'perhaps on the day of your birth, for the gods intended you for each other.'
'But you, my brother of the Red Road and my dearest friend,' Nefer turned to Meren, 'what about you?'
'There is nothing more for me here, now that Merykara is gone. I must go with Taita.'
Nefer knew that there was nothing further to say, that more words would degrade this moment. He did not even ask where they were going. Perhaps they did not know themselves.
He embraced them and kissed them, and he and Mintaka stood and watched them walk away, and their distant shapes slowly dwindle in size in the shimmering wastes of the desert wilderness, and they shared the same deep ache of regret and bereavement.
'They have not really gone,' Mintaka whispered, when at last they had disappeared from view.
'No,' Nefer agreed. 'They will always be with us.'
--
With the high priestess and fifty acolytes from the temple of Hathor preceding her, the Princess Mintaka Apepi came for her marriage to Pharaoh Nefer Seti.
They stood together on the terrace of the palace of Thebes that overlooked the broad brown flow of the Nile in flood, in the season most propitious to all living things in the land of this very Egypt.
Mintaka had long since recovered from her injuries and her ordeal. Her beauty was fully restored, and in this joyous moment seemed to be enhanced ten-fold.
It seemed that all of Egypt had come to bear witness to the nuptials. The crowds stretched back along both banks of the river as far as the eye could see. When the couple embraced and broke the jars of Nile water, the shout that went up to heaven must have startled the gods themselves. Then Nefer Seti led his new queen out by the hand and showed her beauty to the populace, who fell to their knees, and wept and cried aloud their loyalty and their love.
Suddenly a silence fell over this vast congregation and slowly every eye turned upwards to the tiny speck in the vaulted sky above the palace.
In the silence there was the wild lonely cry of a royal falcon and the bird began its stoop out of the high blue. In the end, just as it seemed it must come into violent collision, the falcon flared its wings wide and hovered over the tall figure of Pharaoh. Nefer lifted his right arm and held it out, and softly as a feather the magnificent bird alighted upon his fist.
A sound like the sea on a stormy day rose from ten thousand throats as they greeted the miracle. But Nefer's eyes fell on the thin loop of pure gold that was fastened about the bird's right foot above the great hooked talons. Engraved into the precious metal was a symbol that made Nefer's heart race as he recognized it.
The royal cartouche!' he whispered. 'This was never a wild bird. This is Nefertem, my father's falcon. That is why it came to me so often in times of greatest danger, to warn and guide me. It was always my father's spirit.
'And now Nefertem has come to affirm before all the world that you are king indeed.' Mintaka stood closer to him and gazed into his face with eyes that glowed with pride and love.
--
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I ask my readers to remember that Warlock is a work of fiction. Many of the places that I have written about do exist, but the others never did - or at least those like Avaris have long ago been lost and forgotten. Gallala is another case in point. Taita's spring dried up a thousand years ago and another earthquake destroyed the city and buried the ruins.
Likewise, most of my characters are fictitious - even Taita lives on only in my imagination.
Wilbur Smith
--
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Also by Wilbur Smith
THE COURTNEYS
When the Lion Feeds
The Sound of Thunder
A Sparrow Falls
THE COURTNEYS OF AFRICA
The Burning Shore
Power of the Sword
Rage
A Time to Die
Golden Fox
THE BALLANTYNE NOVELS
A Falcon Flies
Men of Men
The Angels Weep
The Leopard Hunts in Darkness
Also
The Dark of the Sun
Shout at the Devil
Gold Mine
The Diamond Hunters
The Sunbird
Eagle in the Sky
The Eye of the Tiger
Cry Wolf
Hungry as the Sea
Wild Justice
Elephant Song
River God
The Seventh Scroll
Birds of Prey
Monsoon
--
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