Egypt

27

Simut sent out his men to reconnoitre the land around the fort. They found nothing in the immediate vicinity, having followed the horse tracks for some distance, heading away to the west. So he posted the lookout guards, and they crouched down in whatever shade they could find and gazed intently at the shimmering land. We needed to rest in these hours, before we began the next day’s journey in the dark. But we were all wide awake, listening for any sound that might betray the return of the attackers. Nakht organized a couch for Prince Zannanza, and tried to improvise an awning for him. He explained why the tents could not be erected, but the Prince just waved him away disconsolately, and turned his back on everything.

The heat of the afternoon was unbearable. Nakht, Simut and I sat together, batting the incessant flies away, and whispering so that he could not overhear us.

‘This barbarity is familiar,’ I said. ‘It fits with what Paser told us about the Army of Chaos.’

‘I agree. So how can we best defend ourselves against the possibility of another attack?’ asked Nakht.

‘I’ll send scouts ahead to reconnoitre the land around us as we proceed. We have twenty men; they’re far better trained and far more deadly than any horde of undisciplined mercenaries,’ Simut replied.

‘This wasn’t a random attack. Whoever they are, they know we’re coming,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to say this, but there were more than twenty soldiers in the garrison here, and look what happened to them.’

We sat in silence contemplating our predicament.

‘There’s no water here. The horses are thirsty. We have no choice, we need to press ahead. Better to travel by night. The bow guard must be fully armed at all times. We will put cloths around the horses’ hooves, and no one will speak. We will travel in silence. Our ultimate duty is to protect the Prince, and that means both of you must guard him at all times,’ Nakht decided.

And so, as soon as the sun set, we rose, prepared ourselves, ate a little bread, and set forth into the cooling desert darkness. The stars were shining brilliantly in the sky, but the moon was new, just a sliver of white, giving us little light to travel by-and fortunately little light to be seen by. The horses’ hooves were muffled, and in the strange silence we listened intently for anything that might alert us to the presence of enemies on horseback in the shadows. Our nerves were wound tight; I blinked and rubbed my eyes as I stared into the darkness. Slowly, we covered the distances; the stars turned in their spheres, and then, after hours of tension, the darkness of night began to change. The rim of the world took on a blue tint, which gradually spread, until the horizon brightened, and light began to reoccupy the world. Ra, the Sun, was reborn into a new day. But what it revealed, up ahead of us, in the blinding white and gold of sunrise, was the image of our nightmare; in the distance, a dark line of shadowy figures on horseback were waiting for us.

Simut raised his hand, and the caravan instantly halted. Prince Zannanza, who had been nodding with sleep, stirred.

‘Why have we stopped?’

Then he blinked, and saw the dark figures.

‘No, no, no…’ he whispered.

‘Shut up,’ I snapped, without thinking of protocol. Simut gave a signal, and his bow guards dropped into formation in front, and raised their bows. Their arrows pointed into the sky, their tips glinting with the new light. Others stood behind them, their long spears poised. And then we heard coming from all around us a barbaric noise like I have never heard before, a drumming of weapons on shields, and a chanting and shouting. We turned in our saddles; in the distance, and from all around us, horsemen appeared up out of the shimmering desert dawn, surrounding us in every direction.

Simut gave a swift order, and the bowmen trained their arrows on the shadowy figures; but we were vastly outnumbered. There must have been more than a hundred of them. Four of our men moved to protect Prince Zannanza and Nakht, their leather shields raised, their swords ready to defend them both to the death. I caught a glimpse of Nakht’s face, his arm protective and reassuring around the Prince’s shoulders.

The shadowy horsemen continued to make their hideous war music as they slowly tightened the circle that surrounded us; they were still too far away for us to see their faces clearly. But then a commanding figure on horseback cantered forward into the open desert within the circle. I shaded my eyes; I could make out long hair, and flowing robes. This figure made its horse dance before us on its hind legs, while waving a long curved sword threateningly in the air, and shouting, calling out incomprehensible threats and ululating wildly. The huge circle of men responded with jubilation, rattling their weapons against their shields, and screaming with rage and fury.

Simut waited, intently focused for the first sign of movement. His men were poised, disciplined, their weapons ready. And suddenly it came-the leader screamed a ferocious howl of delight, and then they were charging at us from every direction. Simut bellowed orders, and arrows sprayed up into the blue sky, glittered at the peak of their arcs, and then showered down accurately into the charging horde. A number of the horsemen were hit, and fell sideways off their galloping horses, to be trampled under the hooves of the others. At Simut’s command another round of arrows was fired, not this time into the air, but directly at the attackers; and many hit their targets, bringing down men and horses in a mortal tangle. But still they came forward, and now I could just make out their wild beards and hair, their screaming mouths, and their faces crazed with the ecstasy of battle.

My heart was pounding. Nakht appeared beside me suddenly, and shouted: ‘What should we do?’

‘Where is the Prince?’ I shouted back.

‘He’s with the guards!’

‘That’s where you should be!’

‘We need every man to fight,’ he replied, his eyes shining.

‘Hold up your sword. Stay behind me, stay close!’

Nakht drew out his sword. I suddenly remembered that in the past he’d flinched from the use of the knife and abhorred violence of any kind, but he must have taken training since, for he held his blade now with a new confidence. The bow archers fired more arrows into the approaching attackers, and more of the barbarians fell; but suddenly spears and axes were hurtling through the air, embedding themselves with grim thuds and cracks into the heads and chests of some of our own guards in the outer protective circle, who fell with grunts or in silence. In a moment, the assailants would be upon us.

I glanced up and saw one of the horsemen, his arm pulled right back, cast his spear with all his might-it came quivering through the air right on target for Nakht. He had not seen it. Just in time I threw up my shield, and it hit directly with an enormous thud that reverberated up my arm, throwing me backwards on to the ground, and winding me. I grabbed Nakht and pulled him down, protecting him with my body, as the storm of horsemen broke through the ring of bow archers, hacking wildly, gleefully, at them, separating arms and heads from torsos. Blood gushed and arced richly red into the fresh morning air. I glimpsed Simut attacking back, encouraging his men to do the same; they were superb marksmen and soldiers, and their weapons sliced and sang accurately through air and flesh and bone; and more of the horde fell dead from their horses. But we were impossibly outnumbered. Nakht was struggling underneath me.

‘Let me fight!’ he shouted.

‘Stay still,’ I said. For a moment, our eyes met, and it seemed to me he almost smiled.

‘Death holds no fear for me,’ he said. ‘Not if we die together.’

The savage and relentless noise of the battle suddenly seemed very far away, the barbarity of the attackers, as they slashed and hacked their way through us, seemed to slow down. I thought of the pity of life, and of my children, and my wife. In my mind I began to say goodbye to them.

But then, even as a feeling of terrible waste flowed through me, a shadow fell across my body. I looked up, dazzled by the rising sun that framed the dark figure on a magnificent stallion, gazing down at me. From the horse’s bridle hung several battered heads of dead men, the flesh torn away, the eyes missing from the sockets, the jaws hanging broken, loose. Chains of human hands had been fastened in a collar around the stallion’s neck, the yellowed, gnarled fingers imploring for help, too late. The rider’s scimitar was raised, glinting in the sun, ready to strike me dead.

But instead the figure laughed, and moved out of the sun. I looked into the face of the enemy, and I saw that it was not a man at all; but a woman, laughing with delight at the bloodshed and the victory. Her hair was black and thick, braided and tangled wildly around her head; her eyes were a compelling, shocking blue; and the mad fury of her expression was contradicted by the magnificence of her face. Then she looked at me directly, curiously; and a moment later, to my bewilderment, she smiled. And then everything went dark.