Warlock: A Novel of Ancient Egypt

Soleth was not there to greet him - obviously, he was keeping his nose clean - but he had sent one of his underlings, an old black slave, to usher Taita past the guards and to act as a guide. Although Taita was armed with the papyrus scroll that Soleth had given him, the captain of the guard insisted on searching them before he would allow them to pass. He ordered Hilto to unroll the carpets and prodded every fold with his spear point. At last he was satisfied, and waved them through.

The ancient slave hobbled ahead of them, guiding them through a labyrinth of narrow passages. As they progressed the surroundings became grander, until they stopped before an elaborately carved sandal-wood door guarded by two huge eunuchs. There was a whispered exchange between them and the old slave, then the sentries stood aside and Taita led the others through into a large airy room redolent of flowers, perfume and the tantalizing aroma of young womanhood. Beyond there was a wide terrace, from which floated the sounds of a lute and feminine voices.

The old slave went out on to the terrace. 'Your Majesty,' he quavered, 'there is a merchant with fine silk carpets from Samarkand to wait upon Your Grace.'

'I have seen enough rubbish for one day,' a woman's voice replied, and Nefer thrilled to those familiar well-beloved tones so that his breathing came short. 'Send them away.'

The guide looked back at Taita and pulled a face, spreading his hands helplessly. Nefer dropped the rolled carpet off his shoulder on to the stone floor tiles with a weighty thump, and strode to the entrance on to the terrace where he paused. He was dressed in tatters and a grubby cloth was wrapped around his head, covering the lower half of his face. Only his eyes were visible.

Mintaka was sitting on the parapet wall with two of her slave girls at her feet. She did not look in his direction but started singing again. It was the monkey and donkey song, and Nefer felt every word twist his heart as he studied the sweet curve of the cheek turned half away from him and the tresses of thick dark hair that hung down her back.

Abruptly she broke off and looked at him with annoyance. 'Don't stand there gawking at me, you insolent oaf,' she snapped. Take your wares and go.'

'Forgive me, Majesty.' He spread his arms in supplication, 'I am but a poor fool from Dabba.'

Mintaka screamed and dropped her lute, then covered her mouth with both hands. Patches of bright crimson rouged her cheeks and she stared into his green eyes. The black slave drew his dagger and tottered forward feebly to attack Nefer, but Mintaka recovered herself at once. 'No, leave him.' She raised her right hand to reinforce the command. 'Leave us. I will speak with the stupid fellow.' The slave looked dubious and hesitated, the naked dagger still aimed uncertainly at Nefer's belly.

'Do as I tell you,' Mintaka snarled, like a leopardess. 'Go, fool. Go!'

Confused, the old fellow sheathed his blade and backed away. Mintaka was still staring at Nefer, her eyes huge and dark. Her girls could not fathom what ailed her. They knew only that something strange was afoot. The curtains over the entrance fell back into place as the slave withdrew. Nefer whipped off the cloth that covered his head and his curls fell to his shoulders.

Mintaka screamed again. 'Oh, by the grace of Hathor, it is you. It is really you! I thought you would never come.' She flew to him and he ran to meet her, enfolding her in his embrace. They clung to each other, both talking at the same time, incoherently trying to tell each other of their love and how much they had missed each other. The slave girls recovered from their astonishment and danced around them, clapping their hands and weeping with joy and excitement until Taita silenced them with a few well-directed prods of his staff.

'Stop that mindless squealing. You will have all the sentries here in a minute.' Once he had them under control, he turned back to Hilto and Meren. At his direction they spread the largest carpet out on the tiles.

'Mintaka, listen to me! There will be time for that later.'

She turned her face to him, but kept her hands locked around Nefer's neck. 'It was you who called to me, wasn't it, Taita? I heard your voice so clearly. If you hadn't stopped me I would have-'

'I thought you more sensible than to stand here chattering when so much is at stake,' Taita cut across her. 'We are going to hide you in the carpet to get you out of the palace. Hurry now.'

'Do I have time to fetch my-'

'No,' Taita said. 'You have time for nothing other than to obey me.'

She kissed Nefer once more, a lingering embrace, then ran into the chamber and threw herself full length on the carpet. She looked up at her girls, who stood amazed in the doorway. 'Do whatever Taita tells you.'

'You cannot leave us, mistress,' her favourite, Tinia, wailed. 'Without you we are nothing.'

'It will not be for long,' Mintaka said. 'I promise I will send for you, Tinia, but until then be brave, and do not fail me.'

Nefer helped Hilto and Meren roll Mintaka in the patterned red carpet, and placed one end of a long hollow reed between her lips. The other end, protruding a few inches from the heavy folds, would enable her to breathe.

In the meantime Taita instructed the weeping slave girls: 'Tinia, you are to go into the bedchamber and bar the door. Cover yourself with bed linen, as though you were your mistress. The rest of you will stay here in the vestibule. You must not open the door to any demands. Tell anyone who asks that your mistress is laid low by her moon sickness and can see no one. Do you understand that?' Tinia nodded, broken-hearted, not trusting herself to speak. 'Delay them as long as you are able, but when you are discovered and can no longer dissemble, tell them what they want to know. Do not try to hold out under torture. Your death or crippling will serve little purpose, except to prey upon the conscience of your mistress.'

'Can I not go with the Queen?' Tinia blurted. 'I cannot live without her.'

'You heard your mistress's promise. Once she is safe she will send for you. Now, bar the door behind us when we leave.'

The old slave was waiting in the passage when they carried out the rolled carpet on their shoulders.

'I am sorry. I did my best for you, as Soleth ordered me. Queen Mintaka was once a kind and happy girl,' he told them, 'but no longer. Since her marriage she has become sad and angry.' He beckoned them to follow and led them back through the warren of the zenana until at last they reached the small side gate, where the sergeant of the guards confronted them once more.

'Unroll those carpets!' he ordered brusquely.

Taita stepped closer to him and stared into his eyes. The sergeant's hostile expression faded. He looked mildly confused. 'I can see that you are feeling contented and happy,' Taita said softly, and a slow grin spread over the man's ugly, wrinkled features. 'Very happy," Taita said, and laid his hand gently on the man's shoulder.

'Very happy,' the sergeant repeated.

'You have already searched the carpets. Surely you do not want to waste your valuable time. Do you?'

'I don't want to waste my time,' the sergeant declared, as though it was his own idea.

'You want us to pass.'

'Pass!' said the sergeant. 'I want you to pass.' And he stood aside. One of his men raised the locking bar and let them out into the lane. The last glimpse they had of the sergeant as the door closed showed them that he was grinning benignly after them.

The wagon stood where they had left it with the urchins guarding it. Gently they loaded the carpet into the wagon bed and Nefer called quietly into the mouth of the roll, 'Mintaka, my heart, are you all right?'

'It is hot and stuffy, but that is a small price to pay to know that you are near.' Her voice was muffled and he reached down the tube formed by the roll and touched the top of her head.

'You are as brave as a lioness.' he said, and scrambled up behind Taita on the wagon box as he urged the horses forward.

Taita whipped up the horses. 'The city gates will soon be closed for the night. When Mintaka's escape is discovered the first thing they will do is seal off the city, search every building and vehicle, and question every stranger within the walls.'

They galloped down the wide avenue leading to the eastern gate. As they approached they saw that the way was blocked with other wagons and chariots lined up in front of the gate. There had been a religious festival and procession earlier in the day, and these were worshippers and revellers returning to the outlying villages around Avaris. Their forward progress was tantalizingly slow.

The sun had already sunk behind the walls and the light was fading, but there were still two vehicles ahead of them when the captain of the guard came out of the gate house and yelled at his men, 'That is enough! The sun has set. Close the gates!'

There were yells of protest from all the travellers still trying to pass out.

'I have a sick child. I must take her home."

'I have paid my toll, let me pass. My load of fish will spoil.'

One of the smaller wagons drove forward deliberately and blocked the efforts of the guards to force the gates shut. A small riot broke out, with shouting guards swinging clubs, outraged citizens screaming back at them and frightened horses rearing and whinnying. Suddenly there was a further commotion from without the walls. Louder voices drowned the protests of travellers and guards alike.

'Make way for Pharaoh! Clear the road for Pharaoh Trok Uruk!'

The boom of a war-drum enforced the order. The guards ceased their efforts to shut the gates and instead fell over each other in their haste to throw them wide open again to reveal on the roadway outside a squadron of fighting chariots. Over the leading vehicle waved the red leopard pennant. Standing tall on the footplate, his bronze helmet gleaming and his beribboned beard thrown over one shoulder, stood Pharaoh Trok Uruk, whip and reins in his gauntleted hands.

As soon as the gates were wide open he drove his four-horse team straight into the mass of people and wagons in the roadway, lashing out indiscriminately with his whip at any who stood in his way. His men ran ahead of him, overturning any vehicle that blocked the road, and dragging it aside, spilling loads of wet slippery fish and vegetables into the gutters.

'Make way for Pharaoh!' they roared, above the screams of those caught up in the confusion. The troopers reached Taita's vehicle and began to tip it over to clear the path for Trok. Taita stood up and lashed at them with the whip, but his blows fell on their helmets and their bronze epaulettes. They laughed at him and heaved together. The wagon went over. The rolled carpet slid across the wagon bed and might have been crushed under the capsizing vehicle.

'Help me!' shouted Nefer, and jumped back to hold the carpet roll and cushion its fall. Hilto caught one end and Bay the other. As the wagon crashed on its side with a crackle of breaking timber they dragged Mintaka, still cocooned in the roll, to safety against the wall of the nearest building.

Pharaoh Trok forced his chariot through the wreckage and spilled loads, cracking his whip over the heads of his team, roaring commands at his warhorses.

'Strike! Strike!' The horses were battle-trained, and at his urging they reared and struck out at anyone in their way with their bronze-shod hoofs. Nefer saw one old woman scurry straight under the flying hoofs. One caught her full in the face. Her head split open, and her teeth flew from her mouth like a burst of white hailstones. They rattled on the cobbles and she sprawled in front of Trok's chariot.

The bronze wheel rims bumped over her body as he drove on, passing so close to where Nefer crouched protectively over Mintaka's carpet roll that for an instant they looked into each other's eyes. Trok did not recognize him in his rags with the headcloth wound around his head, but with casual cruelty he snapped the whip over Nefer's shoulder. The metal tips of the lash cut through the cloth and raised a line of bright blood spots. 'Out of my way, peasant!' Trok snarled, and Nefer gathered himself to leap on to the footplate and drag Trok out of the chariot by his beard. This was the beast who had defiled Mintaka, and Nefer's rage was a red veil over his vision.

Taita grabbed his arm to restrain him. 'Let it pass. Get the carpet out of the gates, you fool. We will be trapped here.' Nefer strained to be free of his grip, and Taita shook him. 'Do you want to lose her again so soon?'

Nefer regained control of his temper. He stooped to seize the end of the roll and the others helped him. They ran with it to the gates, but the squadron of chariots was through and once more the guards were swinging the heavy wooden doors to. Taita ran ahead and scattered the guards with his staff. When one of the sentries raised a club over his head, Taita turned on him and stared into his face with those mesmeric eyes. The man recoiled as though confronted by a man-eater.

Carrying the rolled carpet between them they squeezed through the narrow gap between the closing gates, then ran into the encampment below the city walls. Although angry shouts followed them, they disappeared from the guards' view into the gathering darkness among the leather tents and shacks. Behind the walls of a goat pen they lowered their burden to the ground and unrolled it. Dishevelled and hot, Mintaka sat up and smiled to see Nefer kneeling in front of her. They reached for each other and embraced as the others looked on.

Taita brought them back to reality. 'Trok has returned unexpectedly,' he told Mintaka, 'It will not be long before he discovers that you are missing.' He pulled Mintaka to her feet. 'We have lost the wagon. Ahead of us we have a long journey on foot. Unless we set out now it will be after daylight tomorrow before we reach the oasis where we left the chariots.'

Mintaka sobered immediately. 'I am ready,' she said.

Taita glanced down at her flimsy gold sandals decorated with turquoise studs, and strode away among the huts. He returned in a few minutes with a slatternly old woman following close behind him. He was carrying a pair of hard-worn but sturdy peasant's sandals. 'I have exchanged these for yours,' he said.

Mintaka did not demur but slipped off the lovely sandals and handed them to the old woman, who scuttled away before anyone could take them back from her. Then Mintaka stood up. 'I am ready,' she said. 'Which way, Magus?'

Nefer took her hand and they fell in behind Taita as he strode out into the desert.

--

Trok drove through the palace gates and reined in his dusty, lathered horses in the front courtyard before his own magnificent quarters. Two colonels of his cavalry, both members of the leopard clan and his particular cronies, stumped after him into the banquet hall with weapons and bucklers clattering. The house slaves had laid out a feast to welcome Pharaoh home. Trok drained a bowl of sweet red wine, and seized the boiled haunch of a wild boar.

'There is something I need more than food or drink.' He winked at his companions, who guffawed and nudged each other. Trok was aware that his marital reverses were common gossip in the army, and that the manner in which his new wife treated him was weakening his reputation. Despite his victories over the rebels in the south, and the harsh retribution he had imposed upon them, his prestige as a man was suffering. He was-determined to change that this very night.

'There is more food than even you two oxen can eat, and enough wine in which to drown a hippopotamus." Trok waved at the groaning board. 'Do your worst, but don't expect me to join you before morning. I have a field to plough, and an incorrigible filly to break to my will.'

He strode from the hall gnawing at the bone in his hand, and gulping down mouthfuls of the fat pork as he went. Two slaves with burning torches ran ahead of him to light his way down the gloomy passages to the zenana. In front of the doors to Mintaka's quarters the eunuch sentries had heard him coming. They flourished their weapons and crossed them over their fat chests in salute.

'Open up!' Trok ordered. He tossed aside the pork bone and wiped his greasy hands on the skirts of his tunic.

'Your Majesty,' one of the sentries saluted again nervously, 'the doors are barred.'

'By whose orders?' Trok demanded furiously.

'By orders of Her Majesty Queen Mintaka.'

'By Seueth, I'll have none of that! The arrogant hussy knows I am here,' Trok stormed, drew his sword and pounded on the door with the bronze pommel. There was no reply, so he tried again. The sound of the blows echoed down the silent passages, but still there was no sign of life beyond the doors. He backed away then charged the door with his shoulder. It shook but did not yield. He snatched the pike from the hands of the nearest sentry and hacked at the panel.

Splinters of timber flew under the blade and with a few more blows he had chopped a hole wide enough for him to reach through and dislodge the locking bar on the far side. He kicked open the door and marched into the room beyond. The slave girls were against the far wall in a terrified huddle. 'Where is your mistress?'

They gabbled and cackled incoherently, but could not prevent their collective eyes from turning towards the door of the bedchamber. Trok went to it, and there was an immediate outcry from the girls.

'She is sick.'

'She cannot see you.'

'Her moon has come.'

Trok laughed. 'She has used that excuse too often.' He hammered on the door. 'If there is blood, then there had better be a river of it - more than I spilled on the field of Manashi. By Seueth, I will wade through it to reach the happy portals.'

He kicked at the bedchamber door. 'Open up, you little witch! Your husband has come to show you his duty and respect.'

At his next kick the door flew open, torn off its leather hinges, and Trok swaggered through. The couch was carved from African ebony, and inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl. The feminine form upon it was hidden under a pile of linen bedclothes but one small foot protruded. Trok let his sword-belt drop to the floor and called, 'Have you missed me, my little lily? Have you been pining for my loving arms?'

He grabbed the bare foot and hauled the girl out from under the bedclothes. 'Come my, sweet ewe lamb. I have another gift for you, so long and hard, that you will not be able to sell it or give it away-' He broke off and gawked at the terrified, snivelling girl. Tinia, you dirty little harlot, what are you doing in your mistress's bed?' He did not wait for her reply, but threw her on to the floor, and rampaged through the room, ripping down the curtains and wall hangings. 'Where are you?' He kicked in the doors to her closet. 'Come out! This childishness will serve you little.'

It took him only a minute to make certain that Mintaka was not hiding. Then he rushed back to Tinia and seized her by the hair. He dragged her across the floor. 'Where is she?' He kicked her in the belly. She screamed and tried to roll away from his metal-shod foot. 'I will beat it out of you, I will flay every inch of skin from your miserable body.'

'She is not here!' Tinia screamed. 'She has gone!'

'Where?' Trok kicked her again. His war sandals were studded with bronze nails. They cut her tender flesh like knives. 'Where?'

'I know not,' she howled. 'Men came and took her away.'

'What men?' He kicked her again, and she rolled into a ball, sobbing and shivering.

'I don't know.' Despite Taita's instruction, she would not betray her beloved mistress. 'Strange men. I had never seen them before. They covered her with a carpet and carried her away.' Trok gave her a last brutal kick, then strode to the door. He shouted at the eunuch sentries, 'Find Soleth. Bring the fat slug here immediately.'

Soleth came cringing and wringing his smooth, plump hands. 'Divine Pharaoh! Greatest of the gods! Might of this very Egypt!' He threw himself at Trok's feet.

Trok kicked him with a full swing of his armoured sandal. 'Who were these men you allowed to enter the zenana?'

'On your orders, gracious Pharaoh, I allowed any vendor of fine merchandise to display it before the Queen.'

'Who was the carpet-seller? The last one to enter these quarters.'

'Carpet-seller?' Soleth seemed to ponder the question.

Trok kicked him again. 'Yes, Soleth, carpets! What was his name?'

'I remember now. The carpet-merchant from Ur. I forget his name.'

'I will help your memory.' Trok called the eunuch sentries to him. 'Hold him over the bed.'

They dragged Soleth to the rumpled couch and pinned him face down. Trok picked up his discarded sword-belt and drew the weapon. 'Lift his robes.' One of them hoisted Soleth's skirts and exposed his chubby buttocks. 'I know that half the palace guard have passed this way,' Trok touched his anus with the point of the sword, 'but none of them were as hard or as sharp as this one will be. Now, tell me, who was the carpet merchant?'

'I swear on bread and Nile water that I never saw him before.'

'For you that is a great pity,' Trok said, and ran the point of the sword the length of a forefinger up Soleth's rectum. Soleth shrieked on a high, quavering note of agony.

'That was only the tip,' Trok warned him. 'If you are enjoying it so much, I can give you another cubit of bronze right up to your gullet.'

'It was Taita,' Soleth screamed, with the blood spraying out of him. 'Taita took her away.'

'Taita!' Trok exclaimed with astonishment and jerked the blade free. Taita the Magus.' There was superstitious dread in his tone. Then he was silent for a long pause. At last he ordered the eunuchs who still held Soleth. 'Release him.'

Soleth sat up moaning. At the movement the gas from his bowels rushed out through the slack opening in a long, bubbling fart.

'Where has he taken her?' Trok ignored the sound and the sickening faecal odour that filled the chamber.

'He did not tell me.' Painfully Soleth bundled the linen bed-sheet and thrust it in between his legs to staunch the bleeding. Trok lifted the point of the sword and touched one of his naked pendulous breasts.

Soleth whimpered and farted again. 'He did not tell me, but we spoke of the land between the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Maybe that is where he intends taking the Queen.'

Trok thought about it only briefly. It was logical. By now Taita would know of the strained relationships between Egypt and the eastern kingdoms. He would know that he might find sanctuary and protection there, if he could run that far.

But what was his reason for abducting Mintaka? Surely it could not be for ransom. Taita was famous for his scorn of gold and riches. It could not be for some salacious desire. As an ancient eunuch, Taita was not capable of physical lust. Was it the friendship that had grown up between the old man and the girl? Had she appealed to him to help her escape from Avaris and the marriage that was so insufferable to her? Certainly, she must have gone with him willingly and probably gladly. The manner in which her slave girls had tried to cover her escape proved that, and clearly she had made no outcry, for if she had the sentries would have heard it.

He put aside those considerations for the moment. The main concern now was to get the pursuit in hand and to recapture her and the Warlock before they reached the shores of the Red Sea and crossed into the territories loyal to Sargon of Babylon. He smiled down at Soleth. 'I hope that your paramours will find the alterations I have made to your joy passage to their liking. I will deal with you further when I return. There are hungry hyenas and vultures to be fed.'

The two colonels were still in the banquet chamber, hogging the food and wine, although they had not been at it long enough to drink themselves stupid.

'How many chariots can we have manned and running eastward before midnight?' Trok demanded. They looked startled, but they were warriors and responded swiftly to his angry mood.

Colonel Tolma spat out the mouthful of wine he was about to swallow and leaped to his feet, only slightly unsteadily. 'I can have fifty on the road within two hours,' he blurted.

'I want that to be a hundred,' Trok demanded.

'I will have a hundred under command before midnight.' Colonel Zander sprang up, eager not to be outdone. 'And another hundred running east before dawn.'

--

Taita led them through the night under a moon only days from full. The tip of his staff clicked on the stony path, and his shadow flitted ahead of him like a monstrous black bat. The others had to stretch their legs to keep him in sight.

After midnight Mintaka began to fail. She was limping heavily and falling back steadily. Nefer shortened his stride to stay with her. He had not expected this from her: usually she was as strong as any boy he knew, and could outrun most of them. He murmured encouragement to her, not loud enough to reach the ears of Taita. He did not want the Magus to realize Mintaka's weakness, and to shame her in the sight of the others.

'It is not far now,' he told her, and took her hand to lead her faster. 'Bay will have the horses ready for us. We will ride the rest of the way to Babylon in royal style.' She laughed but it was a strained, painful sound. It was only then that he realized something was wrong with her.

'What is it that ails you?' he demanded.

'Nothing,' she said, 'I have been locked up in the palace too long. My legs have gone soft.'

He would not accept it. He took her arm and forced her to sit on 'a rock beside the path, lifted one of her small feet and unlaced the strap of the sandal. He pulled it off and gasped, 'Sweet Horus, how did you manage a single step on this?' The rough ill-fitting sandal had galled her grievously. The blood was black and shining in the moonlight. He lifted the other foot and gently eased off its sandal. Slabs of skin and flesh peeled away with it.

'I am sorry,' she whispered, 'but don't worry, I can go on barefoot.'

Furiously he hurled the bloodied footwear out among the rocks. 'You should have warned me of this earlier.' He stood up, lifted her to her feet, turned his back to her and braced himself to receive her weight. 'Put your arms around my neck and jump up'. Then he set off after the others who, by this time, were merely a dark moving shadow on the moonlit desert far ahead.

Her mouth was close to his ear, and she whispered to him as he toiled on, trying to distract him, and to encourage him. She told him how she had missed him, and how when she had heard of his reputed death she had not wanted to live without him. 'I wanted to die, so that I could be with you again.' Then she told him about the priestess of Hathor and how she had brought the serpent to her. Nefer was so appalled that he lowered her to the earth and scolded her angrily.

That was stupid.' In his agitation he shook her roughly. 'Don't ever think like that again, whatever happens in the future.'

'You cannot know how much I love you, my darling. You cannot imagine the devastation I felt when I thought you were gone.'

'We must make a pact. We must live for each other from this day onwards. We must never think of death again until it comes to us uninvited. Swear it to me!'

'I swear it to you. From now onwards I will live only for you,' she said, and kissed him to seal their bargain. He lifted her on to his shoulders again and they went on.

Her weight seemed to increase with every pace he took. Where the road was soft and sandy he lowered her and she leaned upon him, hobbling along beside him on her raw and bleeding feet. When the ground became rough and stony he lifted her again and trudged onwards. She told him of how Taita had overlooked her and saved her from her resolve to die. 'It was the most extraordinary feeling,' she said, 'As though he stood at my side and spoke to me in a strong clear voice. He told me that you were still alive. How far away were you when he overlooked me?'

'We were at Gebel Nagara in the south, fifteen days' travel from Avaris.'

'He could reach so far?' she asked incredulously. 'Is there no end to his powers?'

Once more they stopped to rest in the darkness and she leaned against his shoulder and whispered to him, 'There is something I want to tell you, about my wedding night with Trok ...'

'No!' he said vehemently. 'I don't want to hear. Do you think I have not tortured myself each day with the thought of it?'

'You must listen to me, my heart. I was never wife to him. Though he tried to force me, I was able to resist him. My love for you gave me the strength to deny him.'

'I have heard that he displayed the red-stained sheepskin on the palace walls.' The words were painful to him and he turned away his face.

'Yes, it was my blood,' she said, and he tried to pull away from her embrace but she held him. 'It was not my virgin blood. It was the blood from my nose and mouth where he had beaten me to force me to submit. I swear to you on the love I have for the goddess, and on my hope to bear your sons, that I am virgin still and will be until you accept my maidenhead from me as a proof of my love.'

He took her in his arms and kissed her and wept with relief and joy, and she wept with him.

After a time he stood up again and he lifted her on to his back. It was as though her vow had given him new strength and they went on more strongly.

It was after midnight before the others realized that something had befallen them, and came back to search for them. Taita bound up Mintaka's feet and after that Hilto and Meren took their turns at carrying her. They went on faster, but the stars were fading and the dawn light growing stronger when they finally reached the oasis where Bay waited for them with the horses.

All of them were exhausted by that time, but Taita would not allow them to rest. They watered the horses for the last time and refilled the waterskins until they were tight and shiny, with drops of moisture oozing from them.

While they were doing this Taita half filled a bucket with water from the well, and, using some foaming unguent, washed the dye from his hair until once more it shone silver.

'Why does he wash his hair at a time like this?' Meren wondered.

'Perhaps it restores some of his force that he lost when he dyed it,' Mintaka suggested, and no one questioned this.

When they were ready to leave Taita forced them to drink again from the well, to fill their bellies with all the water they could swallow without vomiting. While they were doing so Taita spoke quietly to Bay. 'Can you feel it?'

Bay scowled and nodded. 'It is in the air and I can feel it reverberating through the soles of my feet. They are coming.'

Despite the urgency of the moment and the menace of an enemy close at hand, Taita took one last opportunity to treat Mintaka's feet. He smeared the raw and bruised places with salve and re-bandaged them. Then at last he ordered them to mount.

Taita took Meren in the leading chariot as his lance-bearer. Nefer followed with Mintaka clinging to the dashboard to take the weight off her feet. Hilto and Bay brought up the rearguard in the last chariot.

The Assyrian merchant who had sold them the carpets was supervising his servants and slaves as they loaded up his wagons and draught animals. He turned to watch them as they passed, and he called a farewell to Taita. But his interest quickened as he saw the girl in the second chariot. Not even her dusty clothing and dishevelled hair could hide her striking looks. He was still staring after them as they topped the last rise and disappeared into the wilderness, heading east along the caravan road that would lead eventually to the shores of the Red Sea.

--

While Trok was waiting impatiently for his squadrons to assemble before the city gates he ordered Colonel Tolma to send his men to search the encampment of beggars and foreigners outside the walls of Avaris. 'Turn out every hovel. Make certain that Queen Mintaka is not hiding in any of them. Search for Taita the Warlock. Bring me any tall, thin old man you find. I will question him myself.'

There were screams and cries among the huts, the sounds of doors being broken down and flimsy walls smashed in as Tolma's men carried out his orders. Within a short time two of the troopers returned, dragging a filthy old Bedouin harridan to where Trok stood beside his chariot. The woman was screaming hysterical abuse at her captors as she kicked and struggled in their grip.

'What is it, soldier?' Trok demanded, as they threw the woman down at his feet. The trooper held up a pair of delicate golden sandals, decorated with turquoise studs that glittered in the torchlight.

'Your Majesty, we found these in her hut.'

Trok's face darkened with fury as he recognized them and he kicked the woman in the belly. 'Where did you steal them, you foul old she-baboon?'

'I never stole nothing, divine Pharaoh,' she whined. 'He gave them to me.'

'Who was he? Answer me straight or I will push your head up your cunt until you drown in your own stinking juices.'

'The old man, he gave them to me.'

'Describe him to me.'

Tall, he was, and skinny.'

'How old?'

'Old as the rocks of the desert. He gave them to me.'

'Was there a girl with him?'

'Three other men and a pretty little harlot dressed in fine stuff with paint on her face and ribbons in her hair.'

Trok jerked her to her feet and shouted into her startled face, 'Where did they go. Which way?'

With a shaking finger the woman pointed along the road that led into the hills and the desert beyond.

'When?' Trok demanded.

'That much of the moon's journey,' she said, indicating an arc of the sky that corresponded to four or five hours of the lunar orbit.

'How many horses did they have?' Trok snarled. 'Chariots? Wagons? How were they travelling?'

'No horses,' she answered. 'They went on foot, but in great haste.'

Trok pushed her away. He grinned at Tolma who stood beside him. 'They will not get far on foot. We will have them just as soon as you can get your idle ruffians out of their sleeping rugs and mounted.'

--

The sun was hot and halfway up the sky when Trok topped the hills above the oasis at the threshold of the wilderness. Two hundred chariots followed him in a column of fours. Five miles further back, their dustcloud clearly visible in the bright sunlight, came Zander with another two hundred. Each vehicle carried two heavily armed troopers, and was loaded with waterskins and sheaths of spare javelins and arrows.

Below them they saw the Assyrian trader coming up the slope from the well at the head of his caravan. Trok rode forward to meet him, and hailed him from a distance. 'Well met, stranger. Whence come you, and what is your business?'

The trader looked up at this warlike host in trepidation, not certain what to expect. Trok's friendly greeting meant little. On the long road from Mesopotamia he had met robbers, bandits and warlords.

Trok reined in his chariot in front of him. 'I am His Divine Majesty Pharaoh Trok Uruk. Welcome to the Lower Kingdom. Fear not. You are under my protection.'

The trader fell to his knees and made his obeisance. For once Trok was impatient of the honours being paid to him, and he cut the man short. 'Stand and speak up, my brave fellow. If you are honest with me and tell me what I need to know, I shall give you a licence to trade throughout my kingdom free of any tax, and send ten chariots to escort you to the gates of Avaris.'

The merchant scrambled to his feet, and began to express his deep gratitude, although he knew from long experience that such royal condescension was usually costly. Trok cut him short. 'I am in pursuit of a band of criminal fugitives. Have you seen them?'

'I have met a number of travellers along the way,' the Assyrian replied cautiously. 'Would Your Divine Majesty deign to describe these villains to me, and I will do my best to place you upon their tracks?'

'Probably five or six in number. They will be heading towards the east. One young woman with them, and the rest of them men. Their leader is an ancient rogue. Tall and thin. He may have dyed his hair black or brown.'

Trok got no further with his description, before the Assyrian broke in excitedly. 'Your Majesty, I know them well. Some days ago the old man with dyed hair purchased carpets and old clothing from me. At that time the woman was not with him. He left horses and three chariots at the oasis down yonder, in the charge of an ugly black ruffian. With the others in an old wagon loaded with the carpets I had sold him, he took this high road we are standing on towards Avaris.'

Trok grinned triumphantly. 'That is the one I want. Have you seen him since? Did he return to pick up the chariots?'

'He and the other three came back early this morning, on foot from the direction of Avaris. With them was the young woman you asked after. She seemed to be injured in some way, for they carried her.'

'Where have they gone, fellow? Which way?' Trok demanded eagerly, but the Assyrian would not be hurried.

'The woman was young. Though she was injured and could only walk with difficulty, she wore fine cloth. She was clearly of high rank and beautiful, with long dark hair.'

'Enough of that. I know the woman well enough without your description. After they left the oasis, which way did they go?'

'They harnessed the horses to the three chariots and left immediately.'

'Which way, man? Which direction did they take?'

'East along the caravan road.' He pointed out the winding track that climbed the low hills into the dune country. 'But the old man's hair was no longer dyed. When last I saw him, it shone like a cloud in the summer sky.'

'When did they leave?'

'An hour after sunrise, Majesty.'

'What was the condition of their horses?'

'Well watered and rested. They had been lying up at the oasis for three days and they had brought a load of fodder with them when they arrived. When they left this morning their waterskins were filled at the well and they seemed to be provisioned for the long journey to the sea.'

'Then they are only hours ahead of us.' Trok exulted. 'Well done, fellow. You have earned my gratitude. My scribes will issue you with the licence to trade, and Colonel Tolma will assign you an escort to Avaris. You will be further rewarded when I return to the city with the fugitives in bonds. You shall have a fine seat in the front row of spectators at their execution. Until then I wish you a good journey and much profit in my kingdom.'

He turned from him and began issuing orders to Colonel Tolma who followed him closely in the second chariot of the column. 'Give this fellow a trade licence and an escort to Avaris. Top up the waterskins at the well, and let the horses drink their fill. But swiftly, Tolma. Be ready to leave again before noon. In the meantime send your wizards and the regimental priests to me.'

The troopers took the horses down to the well in batches of twenty at a time to drink. The men who were not busy with this work stretched out in the shade thrown by their own vehicles to rest and eat a frugal meal of millet bread and dried meat, the staple diet of the cavalry.

Trok found a patch of shade under a gnarled tamarind near the well. The wizards and holy men came in response to his summons and squatted in a circle around him. There were four of them, two shaven priests of Seueth in their black robes, a Nubian shaman hung with necklaces and bracelets of charms and bones, and a sorcerer from the east known as Ishtar the Mede. Ishtar had one wall eye and his face was tattooed with purple and red whorls and circles.

'The man we are pursuing is an adept of the occult arts,' Trok warned them. 'He will exert all his powers to frustrate us. It is said that he can weave a spell of concealment, and that he can conjure up images that might dismay our legions. You will have to work your own spells to turn aside his powers.'

'Who is this charlatan?' asked Ishtar the Mede. 'You can be certain that he will not prevail against our combined force.'

'His name is Taita,' Trok replied, and only Ishtar showed no dismay at the identity of their adversary.

'I know Taita only by reputation,' he said, 'but I have long looked for an opportunity to match him.'

'Weave your magic,' Trok ordered them.

The priests of Seueth went aside a short distance and laid out their accoutrements and mystical trappings on the sand. They began to chant softly and shake their rattles over them.

The Nubian searched among the rocks around the well, until he found a venomous horned adder under one of them. He lopped off its head and dribbled the blood over his own head. With it running down his cheeks and dripping off the tip of his nose, he hopped in circles like a great black toad. As he completed each turn he spat copiously towards the east where Taita lay.

Ishtar built a small fire near the well and squatted over it, rocking on his heels and muttering incantations to Marduk, the most powerful of all the two thousand and ten gods of Mesopotamia.

Once he had given his orders to Tolma, Trok went across to watch him at work. 'What magic are you making here?' he asked at last, as Ishtar opened a vein in his wrist and let a few drops of his own blood drip and sizzle in the flames of the fire.

'This is the hex of fire and blood. I am placing obstacles and hardships in Taita's path.' Ishtar did not look up. 'I am confusing and confounding the minds of his followers.'

Trok grunted sceptically, but secretly he was impressed. He had seen Ishtar work before. He walked a short way along the road and glared at the line of eastern hills. He was hot for the pursuit and grudged this stay. On the other hand he was enough of a general to realize the absolute necessity of resting and watering the horse after the long night ride.

He knew well the nature of the ground ahead. As a young captain of chariots he had patrolled there on many occasions. He had crossed the shale beds that cut hoofs and hocks like flint knives, and had endured the terrible heat and thirst of the dunes.

He walked back to where he had left his chariot, but he had to pause and turn his back as a sudden dust devil came swirling across the yellow plain, spinning upon itself and rising several hundred cubits into the sultry air. The vortex encompassed him. The air was as hot as the breath from a bronze furnace, and he had to cover his nose and eyes with his headcloth and breathe through the material to strain out the flying sand. It swept past and spun away across the hot earth with the grace of a harem dancer, leaving him coughing and wiping his eyes.

It was a little before noon and they had just finished the watering when the second column under Colonel Zander caught up with them and came down the slope to the well. They were as much in need of water as the first column and now there was danger of congestion at the oasis. Already the water was depleted and muddied. They would be forced to fall back on the precious waterskins to eke out the supply.

Trok held a brief conference with Zander and Tolma, explaining his plan of action, and the formation he wanted to employ to prevent Taita from twisting and turning out of the net they were spreading for him. 'Warn the regimental commanders to be on the alert for any magical snares that Taita puts out to confuse us,' he ended. 'Ishtar the Mede has worked a potent spell. I have much faith in him. He has never failed me before. If we are fully aware of the wiles of the Warlock we will succeed. After all, how can he prevail against such an array?' With a sweep of his arm he indicated the huge gathering of chariots and horses and elite troops, 'No! By the breath of Seueth, this time tomorrow I will be dragging Taita and Mintaka behind my chariot on the way back to Avaris.'

He ordered the leading column to mount. Four chariots abreast and in a column half a league long they headed out into the wilderness. On the soft sandy earth ahead the wheel tracks of their quarry were clearly etched.

--

Taita signalled the two vehicles that followed him to halt. They stopped in the purple shade thrown across the sands by a tall slip-faced dune shaped like the elegant curve of a gigantic seashell.

The horses were already showing signs of distress. They hung their heads and their chests heaved as they breathed. The sweat had dried in salt white rime on their dust-dulled hides.

Carefully they measured out a water ration from the waterskins into the leather buckets and the horses drank eagerly. Taita treated Mintaka 's feet and was relieved to find no evidence that the injuries were mortifying. When he had retied the bandages he led Bay out of earshot of the others.

'We are being overlooked,' he said flatly. There is a baleful influence slowly enveloping us.'

'I have felt it also,' Bay agreed, 'and I have begun to resist it. But it is powerful.'

'We can best frustrate it if we combine our powers against it.'

'We must be careful of the others. They are more vulnerable.'

'I will warn them to be on their guard.'

Taita walked back to where the others were just finishing the watering. 'Be ready to go on,' he told Nefer. 'Bay and I are going to scout the ground ahead. We will return in a short while.'

The two adepts went forward on foot and disappeared around the curved sand wall of the slip-face. Out of sight of the chariots they halted. 'Do you know who Trok has with him who can work such a potent spell?'

'He has priests and sorcerers with all his regiments, but the most powerful of them is Ishtar the Mede.'

'I know of him.' Taita nodded. 'He works in fire and blood. We must try to turn his influence back on him.'

Bay started a small fire of dried horse dung, and when it was burning steadily they pricked the end of their thumbs and squeezed out a few red drops into the flames. With the whiff of burnt blood in the air they faced the enemy, for they could feel that the influence was in the western segment, from the direction that they had come. They exerted their combined powers and after a while they felt it begin to diminish, and disperse like the smoke of the dying fire.

When they had completed the ritual, and were smothering the fire with sand, Bay said softly, 'It is still there.'

'Yes,' Taita said. 'We have weakened it, but it is still dangerous, especially to those who have not learned how to resist it.'

'The youngest will be more susceptible,' Bay suggested. 'The two boys, Pharaoh and Meren, and the girl.'

They went back to where the chariots waited. Before they mounted again Taita spoke to the others. He knew that they would be frightened if he mentioned the true reason for his concern, so he said, 'We are entering the most inhospitable and dangerous area of the dune-lands. I know you are all tired and thirsty, drained by the rigours of the journey, but it could be fatal for any of you to become careless. Watch the horses and the ground ahead. Do not allow yourselves to be distracted by any strange sound or by an unusual sight, a bird or an animal.' He paused and looked directly at Nefer. 'That applies to you particularly, Your Majesty. Be on your guard at all times.'

Nefer nodded and for once did not argue. The rest of them also looked grave, realizing that Taita had some reason of his own to give them this warning.

As they went forward again, following the valleys between the high dunes the heat seemed to increase with every turn of the chariot wheels. The loose sand walls that rose on either hand took on a motley of vivid colours, lemon yellow and gold, plum, purple and heron blue, fox-red and tawny lion-brown. In places the dunes were streaked with frosty talc, or etched with patterns of black sand like the soot of an oil lamp.

Overhead the sky turned brazen and ferocious. The quality of light changed: it became yellow and ethereal. Distances were rendered confusing and distorted. Nefer slitted his eyes against the shimmering glare of the brassy sky. It seemed close enough to touch with the end of his whip. At the same time the shape of Taita's vehicle only fifty cubits ahead seemed to recede to a blurred and distant horizon.

The heat scorched any exposed skin on face or body. Nefer felt a formless dread take hold of him. There was no reason for it, but he could not shake it off.

When Mintaka shuddered against him and gripped his whip arm he knew that she had sensed it too. Great evil hung in the air. He wanted to call out to Taita, to ask him for guidance and reassurance, but his throat was closed by dust and heat. No sound issued from it.

Suddenly at his side he felt Mintaka stiffen and her fingers dug painfully into the biceps of his whip arm. He looked down at her face and saw that she was terrified. With her free hand she pointed frantically to the crest of the dune that seemed to hang suspended above them.

Something colossal and dark detached itself from the heights and began to tumble down towards them. He had never seen anything like it. It had the same weighty amorphous shape as a monstrous waterskin, but was so large that it covered the entire side of the dune, large enough to engulf and squash not only the three chariots below it but an entire regiment. As it rolled down the almost sheer slope it gathered speed, undulating, wobbling and bouncing silently, coming down on them so swiftly that it blotted out the yellow desert sky. In the heat it exuded a sudden cold that squeezed their breath from their lungs as if they had plunged into an icy pool in a high mountain stream.

The horses had seen it also: they plunged wildly and swung off the sandy track and bolted across the valley bottom, trying to outrun the terrifying apparition. There was a field of ragged black lava rocks directly ahead of them and they were racing straight into it. Nefer realized the danger and tried to turn their heads but they were out of control. As he wrestled with the reins Mintaka was screaming beside him.

Certain that they were about to be overwhelmed by the dark monstrosity, Nefer glanced over his shoulder. He expected it to be looming over them, for he could feel the cold emanation on the back of his neck, but there was nothing. The side of the dune was bare, smooth and silent. The yellow sky above was empty and bright. The other two chariots were halted under the slope, the horses calm and under control. Taita and the others were staring at them, astonished.

'Whoa!' Nefer yelled at the runaway team, and threw his full weight on the reins, but the horses never checked. At full gallop they flew into the field of lava rock with the chariot bounding and swerving behind them. 'Whoa!' he screamed again. 'Stop, curse you, stop!'

The horses were mad with terror, far beyond restraint. They arched their necks to fight the reins, striding out at full stretch, grunting with every stride.

'Hold hard, Mintaka!' Nefer shouted, and threw one arm around her shoulders to protect her. 'We are going to strike!'

The black rocks were worn and carved by windblown sand into strange shapes. Some were the size of a man's head and others as big as the chariot under them. Nefer managed to steer the crazed horses clear of the first, but they ran on into a gap between two of the largest rocks. It was too narrow for them to pass through: the off-wheel struck with a rending crash, and disintegrated. Shattered spokes and sections of the rim were hurled into the air. The carriage dropped on to its axle, dragging down the off horse, which was thrown into the next rock. Nefer heard its front legs snap like kindling, even as he and Mintaka were hurled clear of it.

They hit the soft sand, narrowly avoiding being thrown into the rock that had maimed the horse. When they came to a standstill, Nefer was still holding Mintaka in his arms. He had cushioned her fall, and now he demanded breathlessly, 'Are you all right? Are you hurt?'

'No,' she answered at once, 'Are you?'

Nefer came to his knees, and stared in horror at the wreckage of the chariot and the crippled horses.

'Sweet Horus!' he cried. 'We are finished.' The chariot was smashed beyond any hope of repair. One horse was down for ever, both front legs shattered. The other was standing, still in its traces and harnessed to the single shaft of the chariot, but one leg was swinging loosely from its dislocated shoulder.

Unsteadily he came to his feet, and pulled Mintaka up after him. They clung to each other as Taita drove his chariot to the edge of the lava field, tossed the reins to Meren and jumped down from the footplate. He came to them with long strides. 'What happened? What caused the horses to bolt?'

'Did you not see it?' Nefer asked, still shaken and bewildered.

'What was it?' Taita insisted.

'A thing. Dark and huge as a mountain. It rolled down the dune on top of us.' Nefer groped for words to describe what they had seen.

'It was big as the temple of Hathor.' Mintaka supported him. 'It was terrifying. You must have seen it also.'

'No,' Taita replied. 'It was an aberration of your mind and vision. Something placed there by our enemies.'

'Witchcraft?' Nefer was bemused. 'But the horses saw it also.'

Taita turned away from them and called to Hilto as he drove up, 'Destroy those poor beasts.' He pointed to the maimed horses. 'Help him, Nefer.' Taita wanted to distract him from the disaster and its consequences.

With a heavy heart Nefer held the head of the downed horse. He stroked its forehead and covered its eyes with his headcloth so that it would not see death coming.

Hilto was an old trooper and had done this sad work on many far-flung battlefields. He placed the point of the dagger behind the animal's ear and with a single thrust drove it into the brain. The horse stiffened, shivered and then relaxed. They went to the second animal. It dropped instantly to Hilto's thrust and lay without moving again.

Taita and Bay stood together, watching this harrowing act of mercy, and Bay said softly, The Mede is stronger than I thought him to be. He has singled out the most vulnerable among us and directed his powers at them.'

'He has Trok's other sorcerers to reinforce his influence. From now onwards we will have to watch over Hilto and Meren also,' Taita agreed. 'Until I can gather my own force to oppose Ishtar we are in great danger.'

He left Bay's side. It would trouble the others if they saw the two of them conferring secretly together. It was of the utmost importance to keep up their spirits.

'Bring the waterskins,' Taita ordered. One had burst in the crash and the other two were only half full, but they strapped them on to the remaining chariots.

'From here onwards, Meren will ride with Hilto and Bay. I will take Their Majesties with me.'

With the waterskins and the weight of the extra passengers the chariots were now overloaded. The horses were straining as they went forward into the glaring heat, with the lurid sun almost obscured by the strange yellow overcast.

Taita held the golden Periapt of Lostris in his right hand, and chanted softly to himself, warding off the evil that was thickening everywhere around them. In the following chariot Bay was singing also, a monotonous repetitive refrain.

They came to a section of the road where the wind had wiped away the tracks of other caravans and travellers. There were no signs to follow except for the small cairns of stones that had been placed at intervals. Eventually even these petered out, and they went on into the trackless sands. They relied now on Taita's experience, his knowledge of the desert, and his deep instincts.

At last they came out into flat ground between two ranges of high dunes. The sand here was smooth and level, but Taita stopped at the edge of it and considered it carefully. He climbed down from the footplate and beckoned to Bay. The black man came to his side and together they examined the innocuous surface.

'I like it not at all,' Taita said. 'We must look for a detour around this plain. There is something here.'

Bay walked a short way out on to the firm level sand and sniffed the hot air. He spat twice and studied the pattern of his own spittle. Then he came back to Taita. 'I can find nothing troublesome here. If we look for a way round it may cost us hours, even days. The pursuit is not far behind. We must decide which is the greatest risk.'

'There is something,' Taita repeated. 'Like you, I also feel an impulse to cross here. That feeling is too strong and illogical. The idea has been placed in our minds by the Mede.'

'Mighty Magus,' Bay shook his head, 'In this case I do not agree with you. We must take the risk and cross this valley. Otherwise Trok will catch up with us before nightfall.'

Taita took him by the shoulders and stared into his black eyes. He saw that they were slightly unfocused, as though he had been smoking the bhang weed. 'The Mede has penetrated your armour,' he said, and placed the Periapt on Bay's forehead. Bay blinked and opened his eyes wide. Taita could see him struggling to throw off the influence. He exerted his own will to help him.

At last Bay shivered and his gaze cleared. 'You are right,' he whispered. 'Ishtar had overlooked me. There is great danger in this place.'

They looked down the length of the narrow valley. It was a river of yellow sand with no beginning and no end in sight. The far bank was close, no more than three hundred cubits across at the narrowest places, but it might have been two hundred leagues, and Trok's regiments were close behind them.

'South or north?' Bay asked. 'I cannot see the way round.'

Taita closed his eyes and exerted all his powers. Suddenly there was a sound in the terrible silence. A faint high cry. They all looked up and saw the tiny shape of a royal falcon turning high in the furious yellow sky. It circled twice then sped south along the valley, and disappeared into the haze.

'South,' Taita said. 'We will follow the falcon.'

They had been so intent on these deliberations, that neither of them had noticed that Hilto had eased his own chariot up closer to where they stood. He and Meren were leaning over the dashboard and listening to this exchange. Hilto was frowning with impatience. Suddenly he exclaimed, 'Enough of this! The way is clear ahead. We cannot afford any delay. Will you dare to follow if Hilto leads the way?'

He whipped up his team, and the startled horses jumped forward. Meren was taken so completely by surprise that he was almost thrown backwards over the footplate but he grabbed a handhold and managed to stay on the racing vehicle.

Taita shouted at Hilto, 'Come back! You are bewitched. You do not know what you are doing.'

Bay jumped up to catch the harness of the off-side horse, but he was too late: the chariot sped past him and out on to the flat ground. It gathered speed and Hilto's laughter floated back to them. 'The way is open. 'Tis smooth and fast.'

Nefer snatched up the reins of the stationary vehicle, and shouted, 'I will stop him or turn him.'

'No!' Taita turned back to him, desperately raising his hand in a command to stop, 'Don't go out there. There is danger. Stop, Nefer!'

But Nefer ignored his cries. With Mintaka beside him he lashed up the team and the wheels sang over the smooth hard sand. He was catching up with Hilto rapidly.

'Oh, sweet Horus!' Taita groaned. 'Watch the wheels.'

A fine feather of silver sand began to rise from behind the spinning wheels of Hilto's chariot. Then, as they watched in horror, the feather became a thick plume of yellow slush, then slabs of loose mud. The horses slowed as they sank to their hocks in the soft footing and lumps of mud were thrown up so high from their driving hoofs that they flew over Hilto's head. He made no attempt to stop or turn back but drove them on deeper into the quagmire.

'The sinking sands!' Taita cried bitterly. 'This is the work of the Mede. He has hidden the true road from us and led us into this trap.'

Abruptly Hike's team broke through the crust into the treacherous swamp beneath. As its wheels dropped in over the rims, the chariot came to such a sudden halt that both Hilto and Meren were catapulted over the dashboard. They rolled across the innocent-seeming surface, but when they came to a stop and tried to stand up their bodies were coated with sticky yellow mud, and immediately they sank in to their knees.

The horses were completed mired. Only their heads and front quarters were free, but as they whinnied and plunged they sank deeper and deeper still.

Nefer was bemused and reacted too slowly to the disaster taking place before his eyes. By the time he attempted to turn back it was too late. Within ten cubits his wheels were in over the hubs and both horses were bogged down to the shoulders. He jumped down to help them, to try to unharness them and lead them back, but immediately he was trapped in the slimy mud, sinking in to the knees and then to the waist. 'Don't try to stand,' Mintaka warned him frantically. 'It will swallow you under. Throw yourself flat and swim.'

She threw herself headlong from the sinking vehicle, and lay flat on the quaking mud. 'Like this, Nefer. Do as I do.'

He recovered his wits and stretched out flat on the surface. In an awkward swimming motion, like a child learning to doggy-paddle, he reached the chariot before it disappeared completely. With his dagger he cut the leather straps that held the floorboards in place and, in desperate haste, ripped them up and threw them clear. They floated on the surface of the deadly quicksands, but the heavy-laden chariot slid inexorably below the surface and drew the horses down with it. Within minutes there was only a lighter patch on the dun-coloured plain to mark their grave.

Hilto's chariot had also been drawn under and his horses with it. He and Meren were floundering about, yelling with terror, managing only to keep their mud-daubed heads and shoulders clear.

Nefer shoved one of the floorboards to Mintaka. 'Use this!' he ordered her, and she crawled on to it.

He did the same with another board, which supported his weight. Towing two more boards with him by their leather straps he propelled himself across the swamp until he was close enough to throw them to Hilto and Meren. They dragged themselves out of the glutinous clutches of the mud. All four started to swim laboriously back towards where Taita and Bay watched in horror from firm ground.

Taita waved his arms and shouted urgently, 'You are already halfway across. Don't return here. Go on. Cross to the other side.'

Nefer saw the sense in this immediately. They turned for the far bank. It was slow, hard work, for the mud clung tenaciously to their arms and legs and to the bottom of the boards. Mintaka's lighter weight soon told and she drew ahead of the others. She was first to reach firm ground and to drag herself from the clutches of the sinking sands. At last Nefer, Hilto and Meren followed her. They were almost exhausted. They threw themselves down at the foot of the eastern dunes.

While they crossed, there had been time for Taita to consider their predicament. It seemed hopeless. They were split into two groups, with a gulf between them two hundred cubits wide. They had lost all of their horses and vehicles, their weapons and equipment, but the worst loss of all was the precious waterskins.

Now Bay touched his arm and whispered, 'Listen!'

It was a susurration in the air, far off, sometimes fading away, then growing louder again, a distant echo reverberating from the enclosing dunes. Though faint, it was unmistakable: the sound of a column of chariot cavalry on the march.

The three mud-soaked figures on the far side of the valley heard it also, and came to their feet. All of them stared back into the dunes and listened to Trok and his men coming on apace.

Suddenly Mintaka ran back to the edge of quagmire where they had abandoned the boards that had carried them across. Nefer stared after her, trying to fathom out what she intended. She gathered up the boards and waded out knee-deep, dragging the boards after her by their leather straps.

Nefer realized suddenly what she was doing, but he was too late to stop her. She threw herself flat on one of the boards and began to skim out over the yellow mud. She was out of his reach when at last he was forced to stop waist-deep.

'Come back,' he shouted after her. 'I will go.'

'I am lighter and faster than you,' she called back, and though he went on pleading with her she ignored him and used all her breath and strength on skimming forward.

The sound of chariots grew louder, and spurred Mintaka on to greater effort. Watching her Nefer was torn with fear for her safety and anger for her intransigence, but even stronger was his pride in her courage. 'She has the heart of a warrior and a queen,' he whispered, as she drew closer to the far bank.

Now they could hear the voices of the pursuers and the rattle of wheels and the clank of weapons, magnified by the sounding board of the dunes.

Taita tucked his staff under his belt to leave his hands free, then he and Bay waded out to meet Mintaka. Each took a spare board from her and launched themselves out on the treacherous surface. All three started to swim back to the east bank.

From out of the dunes behind them debouched the head of the column of pursuing chariots. The unmistakable figure of Trok was in the leading vehicle, and his bull voice roared out triumphantly and echoed from the dune walls. 'Forward! Charge!'

The leading phalanx of chariots broke into full gallop and came tearing towards the edge of the sinking sands. The three fugitives sculled themselves frantically on to the yellow morass. Behind them the yells of the charioteers grew louder.

Trok's bulk forced his wheels to sink deeper into the loose sand than those of the other vehicles, and though his horses strained under the whip, he fell back behind the first rank of the charge.

The other three chariots of the leading file ran headlong into the sinking sands, and were sucked in as swiftly as the other vehicles had been engulfed. Thus, Trok was alerted to the danger. He managed to bring his own team under control and swerve away from the morass.

He seized his short recurved bow from the rack and leaped down. Behind him the other chariots broke the charge and drew up in a mass. 'Bows!' shouted Trok. 'Massed volleys. Don't let them get away. Shoot them down.'

The archers ran forward and formed into ranks four deep at the edge of the swamp, full quivers on their backs and bows strung taut.

Mintaka had once more pulled ahead of her companions. She had passed the halfway mark, and though they were sculling frantically Taita and Bay were lagging ever further behind her.

Trok strode down the ranks, giving his orders. 'Archers, nock your arrows!' A hundred and fifty men fitted arrow to bow string.

'Archers, draw and aim!' They lifted their weapons and drew to the lip, aiming into the lowering yellow sky.

'Loose!' Trok yelled, and they fired a massed volley. The arrows rose in a dark cloud. They reached the zenith of their trajectory and fell towards the three small figures out in the swamp.

Taita heard them coming and looked back into the sky. The deadly cloud dropped towards them, whistling softly as the wings of a flight of wild geese.

'Into the mud!' Taita called urgently, and all three slipped off the boards and were immersed in the thick mud until only their heads protruded. The arrows fell thick as hail around them. One pegged deeply into the board on which Mintaka had lain only seconds before.

'Onward!' Taita ordered, and they hauled themselves back on to the boards and sculled forward again, gaining only a few yards before the air was once more filled with the hum of falling arrows, and they threw themselves back into the protection of the yellow mud.

Three times more they were forced to dive off the boards, but each time the range was longer for the archers and the volleys less accurate. Mintaka pulled away even faster than before and was soon out of range.

Trok's bellows of rage and frustration followed them as he urged his men to shoot. The arrows plopped into the mud around them, but the fall of the volleys was less concentrated.

Taita turned his head to look across at Bay. His huge scarified head was shining with mud and sweat. His bloodshot eyes bulged from their sockets, and his mouth was wide open, his filed teeth sharp as those of a shark.

'Courage, Bay!' Taita called to him. 'We are almost across.' As he said it, he realized that the words were a direct challenge to the gods.

On the bank behind them Trok saw them slipping slowly from his grasp. His troopers were using the shorter and less powerful bows designed to be shot from a running chariot. Two hundred cubits was the limit of their effective range. Trok turned and glared back at his lance-bearer, who was managing the horses of his team.

'Bring my war bow,' he shouted. Trok was the only man in the regiment who carried the long bow in his chariot: he had decided that for the rest of his troops the war bow's awkward length did not compensate for the added strength and range.

However, Trok's massive strength and the reach of his long arms set him above the strictures placed on lesser men. He used the short recurved bow in most situations. However, he had designed a special rack on the side of his chariot to accommodate the extra length of the more powerful but unwieldy weapon.

His lance-bearer ran to him and placed the great bow in his hands. He brought also the quiver holding the special arrows, emblazoned with the head of the leopard, that fitted the long weapon.

Trok shouldered his way into the front row of archers, and they made way for him. He nocked a long arrow and measured the range with half-closed eyes.

The heads of the two swimmers were tiny blobs on the yellow expanse. The men around him were still shooting rapidly, but their arrows fell short, dropping ineffectually into the mud. Mentally he calculated the angle of release and took his stance with his left foot leading. He sucked in a deep breath and drew with straight left arm, until the string touched the tip of his hooked nose. The bow challenged even his strength. The muscles in his bare arms stood proud, and his features contorted with the effort. He held it for a heartbeat, adjusting his aim fractionally. Then he released, and the great bow-stock flexed and pulsed in his hands like a living creature.

The long arrow blurred as it climbed, high above the clouds of lesser missiles, outstripping them effortlessly. It reached its noon and dropped like a stooping falcon.

In the mud Taita heard the sharper shriller sound of its flight and looked up. He saw it coming straight at him, and there was no time for him to fall off his primitive craft or even to duck to avoid it.

Involuntarily he closed his eyes. The arrow passed so close over his head that he felt his hair stirred by the wind of its passage. Then he heard the solid thump of the strike.

He opened his eyes and rolled his head towards the sound. The long arrow had taken Bay in the middle of his naked back. It had transfixed his body, and the flint head had buried itself in the board on which he lay, pinning him to the wood like a shiny black beetle.

Bay's face was only an arm's length from his own. Taita looked into the deep black eyes, and saw the agony of death flare in them. Bay opened his mouth to cry out or to speak, but the copious rush of bright blood through his lips drowned any sound. Painfully he reached up to the necklace around his neck, and pulled it loose. He reached out to Taita offering him, as his last gift, the priceless relic that was twisted around his clawed fingers.

Taita gently untangled it from the rigid fingers and dropped the string around his own neck. He felt the essence of the dying shaman flowing from it into his own body, reinforcing his powers.

Bay's head dropped forward, but the arrow prevented him rolling off the board. Taita recognized the leopard inlay on the shaft of the arrow, and knew who had fired it. He reached across, placed two fingers on Bay's throat and felt the moment of his passing. Bay was gone, and no effort on his part could save him. He left him and swam onwards to where Nefer and Mintaka stood on the far bank calling encouragement to him. Four more of the long arrows dropped close to him, but none touched him and he drew slowly out of their reach.

Nefer met him and helped him to his feet in the thick mud. Taita used his staff to help himself out on to firm ground. He sagged down, gasping for breath. After only a minute he sat up again, and stared across the sinking sands to where Trok stood on the far bank, arms akimbo, every line of his body and head betraying his rage and frustration. Then Trok cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, 'Think not that you have escaped me, Warlock. I want you and I want my bitch back. I will have you both. I will run you down. I will never lose the scent.'

Mintaka walked forward as far as she could go. She knew exactly where he was most vulnerable, and how to humiliate him most painfully in front of his men. 'Dear husband, your threats are as flaccid and empty as your loins.' Her high sweet voice carried clearly and two hundred Hyksos warriors heard every word. There was a shocked silence, and then a great roar of mocking laughter went up from their ranks. Even his own men hated Trok enough to take pleasure in his humiliation.

Trok brandished his bow above his head and stamped with helpless rage. At last he turned, snarling, on his men and they fell silent, abashed by their own temerity.

In the silence Trok shouted, 'Ishtar! Ishtar the Mede, come forward!'

--

Ishtar stood at the edge of the sinking sands and faced the little party on the far bank. His face was covered by the patterns of tattoos. His eyes were surrounded by purple whorls; his one wall eye shone like a silver disc. A double row of red dots ran down his long nose. There were fern-like tracings across his chin and cheeks. His hair was set into long hard spikes with red shellac. Deliberately he loosened his robe and let it fall to the sand.

He stood stark naked, and his back and shoulders were covered with leopard rosettes. A huge star of red was tattooed on his belly and his pubic hair was shaven, which emphasized his enormous dangling penis. Tiny bells of gold and silver were hooked through his pierced foreskin. He stared at Taita, and the Magus stepped forward to confront him. The gap between them seemed to shrink as they stared at each other.

Slowly Ishtar's member swelled and the bells tinkled as it stiffened into a massive erection. He thrust his hips forward, pointing the angry red head at Taita's. It was a direct challenge, emphasizing Taita's eunuch status, and exerting Ishtar's masculinity over him.

Taita lifted his staff and pointed at the Mede's groin. Neither moved for a long while, projecting all their strength against each other like thrown javelins.

Suddenly Ishtar groaned and ejaculated, spurting all his seed into the sand. His penis shrivelled, becoming small, wrinkled and insignificant. Ishtar sank to his knees and hurriedly pulled on his robe to cover his humiliation. He had lost the first direct confrontation with the Warlock. He turned his back on Taita and shuffled back to where the two priests of Seueth and the Nubian shaman squatted. He joined their circle, and they linked hands and began to chant.

'What are they doing?' Nefer asked nervously.

'I think that they are trying to divine the way around the sinking sands,' Mintaka whispered.

'Taita will stop them,' Nefer said, with a confidence he did not feel. Suddenly Ishtar sprang to his feet, with renewed vitality. He let out a cry like a raven's hoarse croak, and pointed south down the sand valley. 'He has chosen the route the falcon revealed to us,' Taita said quietly. 'We are not yet safe.'

Trok's regiments mounted. With Ishtar riding beside Trok in the leading chariot they trotted away southwards following the winding river of fatal mud. As they passed, the troopers shouted threats and defiance at the forlorn group on the opposite bank.

After the dust settled they saw that Trok had left a small force, five chariots, ten men, camped under the dunes on the far bank to keep them under observation. Soon the last chariot in the pursuit column was gone into the yellow heat haze, and was hidden by the bend in the valley walls.

'Before nightfall Trok will have found the way across to our side,' Taita predicted.

'What can we do?' Nefer asked.

Taita turned to him. 'You are Pharaoh. You are the Lord of Ten Thousand Chariots. Give us your orders, Majesty.'

Nefer stared at him, speechless at this taunt. Surely Taita was jeering at him. Then he stared into those ancient pale eyes and saw that there was no mockery in them. His anger rose in his throat with the bitter taste of bile.

He was about to protest, to point out that they had lost everything, all their vehicles and water, and that there was a burning desert ahead of them and a relentlessly pursuing army behind them but Mintaka touched his arm, which steadied him. He stared into Taita's eyes and the inspiration came to him.

He told them his plan, and before he was finished Hilto was grinning and nodding, and Meren laughed and rubbed his hands together. Mintaka stood closer to him, proud and straight.

When he had given his orders, Taita nodded. 'That is the battle plan of a true pharaoh,' he said. His voice was flat and without emotion, but in his eyes was a spark of approval. He knew at last that the task Lostris had set for him would soon be finished. Nefer was almost ready to take charge of his own destiny.

--

They had covered no more than a few leagues when Ishtar pointed forward. Trok halted the column and strained his eyes in the strange yellow light and the shimmering heat-haze. Ahead the valley of the sinking sands narrowed sharply.

'What is that?' Trok demanded. It seemed that some sinuous sea monster was swimming across the gap. The crest of its dorsal fin stuck up from the yellow mud, black and sharp-edged.

'It is our bridge,' Ishtar told him, 'a ridge of shale running from one bank to the other. This is our crossing.'

Trok sent two of his best men ahead on foot to scout the shale bridge. They ran lightly across and reached the far side with dry sandals. They shouted and waved to Trok and he whipped up his horses and followed them across. In single file the rest of the column crossed behind him.

As soon as they were all safely on the far bank, Trok turned towards the north following the valley back to where they had last seen Taita's fugitive party.

But they had covered less than half the distance before the overcast cloud turned to a yellow fog, a brooding miasma that brought on the night prematurely. Within minutes the last of the light had been snuffed out, and the utter darkness forced the column to halt.

'The horses are tired.' Trok tried to put a brave face on the decision to halt for the night when his commanders gathered around him in the darkness for their orders. 'Water them and let them and the men rest. We will go on at first light. Even the Warlock will not have gone far on foot and without water. We shall have them before noon tomorrow.'

--

Taita unwrapped Mintaka's feet and nodded with satisfaction. Then he dampened them in the strong alkali moisture of the sinking sands, and rebandaged them. Over her protests Nefer made her don his own sandals. They were too large for her by far, but the bandages made them fit closer.

They had nothing to carry, no water or food, no weapons or baggage, nothing except the floorboards from the sunken chariots. With the Hyksos troopers on the far bank watching them curiously, Nefer led them up the face of the high dune, heading east. Panting, they reached the crest. Already their thirst was a raging torment.

Nefer took one last look across the sinking sands. Trok's troopers on the far bank had removed their horses' harness, laagered their chariots and were lighting their watchfires. Nefer gave them an ironic salute, and followed the rest of the party down the far side of the dune. As soon as they were hidden from the watchers they rested awhile. 'Every effort will cost us dear,' Nefer warned them. 'We will have no water for many hours more.'

As they lay panting in the heat they listened anxiously for the sound of the men and chariots. Mintaka gave voice to their fears: 'Pray to all the gods that Trok does not find his crossing and come back to us before dark.'

When they had recovered Nefer led them, under cover of the intervening sand dune, parallel to the valley of the sinking sands. They went only a short distance, but in the heat the effort taxed them severely. Once again they settled down to rest in the enervating yellow fog. They did not have long to wait before the darkness descended on them.

Night brought little relief from the heat. They climbed back to the top of the dune and below them saw the watchfires of the men on the opposite side of the valley. The flames gave just sufficient light for them to make out the layout of the Hyksos camp.

The enemy chariots were drawn up in a hollow square with the horses' heads hitched to the wheels. Two sentries sat beside the fires, and the rest of the men were lying on their sleeping mats within the shelter of the laager.

'They have seen us set out towards the east. We must hope that they believe we are still heading in that direction, and that they are off their guard,' Nefer said, and led them slipping and sliding down the face of the dune. They reached the bottom a few hundred cubits down the valley from the camp. This was just far enough to hide their movements and muffle any sounds they might make.

Using the glow of the campfires for orientation, linking arms so that no one would lose the way in the dark, they groped their way to the edge of the sinking sands.

They launched the wooden boards and sculled across the quagmire. They had become practised at this form of travel and within a short time they reached the far side.

Keeping close together they crept towards the camp, and crouched down just beyond the circle of firelight. Except for the two sentries the enemy camp seemed asleep. The horses were quiet and the only sound was the soft crackle of the flames. Suddenly one of the sentries stood up and walked across to where his comrade sat. The two talked softly. Nefer fretted at the delay, and was about to ask Taita for help when the old man anticipated him. He pointed his staff at the two dark figures. Within minutes their voices sounded drowsy, and at last the one sentry stood up, stretched and yawned. He sauntered back to his own fire, and settled down with his sword across his lap.

Taita kept the staff pointed at him, and slowly the man's head sank forward, his chin resting on his chest. From the other fire came a soft snore. Both men were fast asleep.

Nefer touched Hilto and Meren. Each knew his job. They crept forward again leaving Taita and Mintaka at the edge of the firelight.

Nefer came up behind the nearest sentry. The sword had slipped from his lap and lay beside him in the sand. Nefer picked it up and in the same movement slammed the bronze pommel into the man's temple. Without a sound the sentry toppled over and lay stretched full-length beside his fire.

With the sword in his fist Nefer glanced across at the other fire. Hilto and Meren had dealt with the sentry, who lay curled up like a sleeping dog. Hilto had his sword. The three ran forward and reached the nearest chariot. The javelins were still in the side-bins.

Nefer grabbed one. It felt heavy and comforting in his grip. Meren, too, had armed himself. Suddenly one of the horses whinnied softly and stamped its hoof. Nefer froze. For a moment he thought that they had remained undetected. Then a sleepy voice called from within the square of chariots.

'Noosa, is that you? Are you awake?'

A trooper staggered into the firelight, still more than half asleep, naked except for his loincloth. He held a sword in his right hand.

He stopped and gawked at Nefer. 'Who are you?' His voice rose in alarm.

Meren hurled the javelin. It struck in the centre of the man's chest. He threw up his hand and slumped to the sand. Meren jumped forward and picked up his fallen sword. Howling like maddened djinns the three of them leaped over the shafts and rushed into the square of vehicles. Their shrieks had thrown the awakening men into wild confusion. Some had not even drawn their weapons and the captured swords rose and fell to a murderous rhythm. The blades dulled with blood.

Only one of the enemy rallied and turned upon them. He was a big brute of a man, and he beat them back, roaring like a wounded lion. He aimed a full cut at Nefer's head, and although Nefer caught it with a high parry, the blow numbed his arm to the shoulder. The bronze blade snapped off at the guard.

Nefer was disarmed and his adversary swung up his sword and aimed at his head to finish it. Taita stepped out of the darkness behind him, and rapped him over the skull with his staff. The man collapsed, and Nefer snatched the sword from his nerveless ringers before it struck the ground.

The fight was over. Five of the survivors knelt with their hands on their heads, while Hilto and Meren stood over them. Mintaka and Taita built up the fires, and by the light of the flames they made out that three of the troopers were dead, and two others gravely wounded.

While Taita treated their injuries, the others used spare tackle from the chariots to pinion the hand and feet of the prisoners. Only then could they drink their fill from the waterskins, help themselves from the bread bag and cut slices of dried meat from the provisions they found.

By the time they had eaten and drunk the light of the new day was strengthening. It was another threatening scarlet dawn, and the heat was already suffocating. Nefer selected three chariots, and the best of the horses to draw them. They stripped the chosen vehicles of any unnecessary equipment, such as the troopers' personal baggage and spare weapons beyond their own requirements. Nefer turned the unwanted horses loose and sent them galloping into the wilderness by waving a blanket in their faces.

Every minute the ruddy light of that eerie dawn grew stronger, and they mounted in haste. When they were ready to leave Nefer went to the group of bound prisoners.

'You are Egyptians, as we are. It pains me deeply that we have killed and wounded some of your companions. This was neither our choice nor our pleasure. The usurper Trok forced this upon us.'

He squatted down next to the big man who had nearly killed him. 'You are a brave fellow. I wish that some day we could fight side by side against the common enemy.'

The skirt of Nefer's apron had drawn up as he sat, and the prisoner's eyes went down to the smooth muscles of his right thigh. His mouth fell open. 'Pharaoh Nefer Seti is dead. Why do you bear the royal cartouche?' he asked.

Nefer touched the tattoo that Taita had inscribed there so long ago. 'I bear it by right,' he said. 'I am Pharaoh Nefer Seti.'

'No! No!' The prisoner was agitated and afraid, as he had probably never been on a battlefield.

Mintaka jumped down from the chariot and came to them. She spoke to the man in a friendly tone. 'Do you know who I am?'

'You are Her Majesty Queen Mintaka. Your father was my god and commander. I loved him well. Therefore I love and respect you.'

Mintaka slipped her dagger from its sheath and cut away his bonds, 'Yes,' she said. 'I am Mintaka, and this is Pharaoh Nefer Seti who is my betrothed. One day we shall return to Egypt to claim our birthright, and to rule in peace and justice.'

Nefer and Mintaka stood up and she went on, 'Give this message to your comrades-in-arms. Tell the people that we are alive and that we shall return to this very Egypt.'

The man crept forward on his knees and kissed her feet, then he crawled to Nefer and picked up one of his feet. He placed it upon his own head.

'I am your man,' he said. 'I shall carry your message to the people. Return to us soon, divine Pharaoh.'

The other prisoners joined him with protestations of loyal love. 'Hail, Pharaoh! May you live and rule a thousand years!'

Nefer and Mintaka mounted their captured chariot, and the freed prisoners shouted, 'Bak-her! Bak-her!'

The three vehicles pulled out of the wrecked camp. Taita rode alone in the van, because he was best able to resist the wiles of Ishtar the Mede, and to discover the true road that had been hidden from them. Nefer and Mintaka followed closely, and Hilto and Meren brought up the rearguard. They headed back the way they had come.

They had gone only a short way, the valley of the sinking sands and the camp still in sight, when Taita stopped and looked back. The other two vehicles halted behind him. 'What is it?' Nefer asked, and Taita held up his hand. In the silence they heard the distant sound of Trok's division coming on along the far bank. Then suddenly, through the lowering red dawn, they saw the head of his column appear from out of the far dunes.

In the leading chariot Trok reined in sharply and shouted at Ishtar, 'By the blood and seed of Seueth, the Warlock has outwitted you again. Did you not foresee that they would cross back and seize the chariots of our picket?'

'Did you also not foresee it?' Ishtar snarled at him. 'You are the great general.'

Trok threw back his whip arm to lash him across his tattooed face for such insolence, but when he looked into the Mede's dark eyes he thought better of it and lowered the whip. 'What now, Ishtar? Will you let them get clear away?'

There is only one road back for them and Zander is coming down it with two hundred chariots. You still have them between the grindstones.' Ishtar pointed out darkly. Trok's face lit in a savage smile. In his fury he had almost forgotten Zander.

'The sun has hardly risen. You have all this long day to recross the shale bridge and" follow them up,' Ishtar went on. 'I have their scent in my nostrils. I will cast my web to ensnare them and, like a faithful hound, I will lead you to the kill."

Trok lashed his horses forward and rode out on to the firm sand at the edge of the swamp, directly opposite the three chariots on the other bank. He managed to summon up a laugh and a wide smile that were almost convincing.

'I am enjoying this more than you are, my friends. Revenge is a meal best eaten cold! By Seueth, I will enjoy the taste of it.'

'You must catch your rabbit before you can cook it,' Mintaka called back.

'I will. Be sure that I still have some surprises to amuse you.' His smile faded as the three chariots started forward into the dunes, Mintaka waving back at him gaily. Although he knew that it was her intention to anger him, it galled him so much that his guts felt hot and sour with rage.

'Back!' he shouted at his men. 'Back across the bridge."

--

As they went on Taita looked to the sky more frequently, and his expression was sober and thoughtful as the brimstone clouds sank closer to the earth.

'I have never see a sky like this,' Hilto said, when they stopped to water the horses in the middle of the forenoon. 'The gods are angry.'

It was strange how readily they found the true road. The fork where they had made the wrong turning was plain to see from far off. It seemed that they could not possibly have missed the tall cairn of stones that marked it, and the main road to the Red Sea, travelled by so many trading caravans, was more deeply trodden and apparent than the rudimentary track they had followed into the valley of the Sinking Sands.

'Ishtar blinded us,' Nefer murmured, as they rode towards the crossroads, 'but this time we will not be so easily duped.' Then he looked up uneasily at the sky and made the sign against evil. 'If the gods are kind.'

It was Hilto, with his warrior's eyes, who picked out the dustcloud ahead of them. The low, clouded sky had obscured it until now when it was close. Hilto galloped alongside Taita's chariot and shouted to him, 'Magus! Those are chariots ahead of us, and many of them.'

They reined in and stared ahead. The dustcloud was moving even as they studied it.

'How far ahead?' Taita asked.

'Half a league or less.'

'Do you think that Trok has a second division coming up behind him?'

'You know better than I do, Magus, that that is the common tactic of the Hyksos. Do you not recall the Battle of Dammen? How Apepi caught us there between his two divisions?'

'Can we reach the crossroads before they cut us off?' Taita asked, and Hilto narrowed his eyes.

'Maybe so. But it will be a close race for it.'

Taita turned and looked back. 'Trok will be on the road behind us already. We dare not turn back into his arms.'

'It would be certain disaster to leave the road and enter the sands. We would leave a clear sign for them to follow. The horses would fail before the end of the day.'

'No wonder Trok laughed at us,' said Mintaka bitterly.

'We are once again between the hammer and the anvil,' Meren agreed.

'We must run for it,' Nefer decided. 'We must try to reach the crossroads and get on to the main road ahead of them. It is our only escape.'

'At our best speed, then, even if we use up the horses in the effort,' Hilto agreed.

They surged forward three abreast. The chariots bumped and swerved as their wheels caught the ruts in the track, but the horses were going well. The dustcloud ahead became more menacing as they ran towards it. The cairns of stones seemed never to grow closer. They were still more than five hundred cubits from the turning when the first chariots of the approaching division hove into sight, half obscured by dust and the awful yellow light.

They stopped as though uncertain of the identity of the three racing vehicles they saw coming towards them, then suddenly started forward again, coming straight at the fugitives.

Taita tried to force a last turn of speed out of the horses, but felt the weariness overtaking them. They held on until the last possible moment, but the enemy was charging head-on at them, and it gradually became certain that they could not reach the crossroads before them. At last Taita held up his clenched fist in the command to halt. 'Enough!' he cried. 'We can never win this race.'

They halted across the track, the horses lathered and heaving for breath. The charioteers were pale under the dust that coated their features and despair bloomed in their eyes.

'Which way, Pharaoh?' Hilto shouted. They were already beginning to turn to Nefer for leadership.

'There is only one way open. Back the way we have come.' And then, so low that only Mintaka could hear him, 'Into Trok's arms. But at least it gives me a last chance to settle the score with him.'

Taita nodded agreement, and was the first to swing his chariot into a tight full turn. He led them back towards the sinking sands. The others wheeled around and followed in his dust. At first the dust covered their view of the pursuit, but then a puff of hot wind blew it aside momentarily and they saw that they had already lost ground.

They tore onwards, but Nefer felt his horses start to fail. Their gait was heavy and laboured, their legs flopping and their hoofs starting to throw out sideways. Nefer knew that it was nearly over. He placed one arm around Mintaka's waist. 'I loved you from the first moment I saw you. I shall love you through eternity.'

'If you truly love me, then you will never let me fall into Trok's hands again. At the end, it will be the way for you to prove your love.'

Nefer turned to look down at her, puzzled. 'I do not understand,' he said, and she touched the captured sword that hung at his side.

'No!' He almost screamed the word, and hugged her to him with all his strength.

'You must do it for me, my heart. You cannot give me back to Trok. I do not have the courage to do it myself so you must be strong for me.'

'I cannot,' he cried.

'It will be quick and painless. The other way ...'

He was in such distress that he almost ran full tilt into the back of Taita's chariot as it came to an abrupt swerving halt across the track ahead of them. Taita pointed ahead.

Trok was there. Even at distance they could make out his bear-like form at the head of his moving column, coming straight towards them. They looked back and the other enemy was closing in as fast.

'One last fight!' Hilto loosened his blade in its scabbard. 'The first the worst. The second the same. The last the best of all the game.' It was one of the adages of the Red Road, and he quoted it with genuine anticipation.

Taita looked up at the bile-coloured sky as another sultry gust rippled his hair, like wind through a field of silver grass.

Mintaka tugged Nefer's arm. 'Promise me!' she whispered, and his eyes filled with tears.

'I promise you,' he said, and the words scalded his mouth and throat. 'And afterwards I shall kill Trok with my own hands. When I have done that I will follow close behind you on the dark journey.'

Taita did not raise his voice but it carried to all of them: 'This way. Mark well my wheel tracks and follow them faithfully.'

To their astonishment Taita turned his horses off into the sand heading at a right-angle from the track, north into the unmarked shifting dunes. Nefer expected him to sink to the hubs immediately, but somehow he must have found a hard crust under the soft surface. He went on at a steady trot and they followed him closely, although they knew that this was a last, doomed attempt.

Looking back Nefer could still make out both clouds of dust from the two enemy divisions converging on them from the east and the west. There was not the least chance that, when they reached it, they would not find the place where the three chariots had left the track. Unless, of course, Taita could weave a spell of concealment to outwit Ishtar, but that was a despairing chance. Ishtar had proved that he was not susceptible to such trivial witchcraft and Trok with his own eyes must have seen them turn aside from the track.

Yet when he looked ahead he saw that Taita had the golden Periapt of Lostris in his right hand and around his wrist he had wrapped the necklace that had been the gift of Bay. He was not looking back at the pursuit, but his face was raised to the menacing sky and his expression was rapt.

Their plight seemed hopeless, but Nefer felt an illogical and perverse glow of hope. He realized that, in some mysterious fashion, the gift of Bay had enhanced the old man's already formidable powers. 'Look at Taita,' he whispered to Mintaka. 'Perhaps it is not yet the end. Perhaps there will be one more move of the bao stones left to us before the game is decided.'

--

Trok galloped down the track until he reached the spot where he had seen the three chariots turn aside and head into the dunes. Their tracks were so deeply etched into the sand that they might have been made by a single pair of wheels. At that moment Zander rode up from the opposite direction at the head of the second column.

'Well done! You have turned the quarry. We have them now,' Trok shouted at him.

'It has been a good chase,' Zander roared back. 'What formation do you want me to keep?'

Take the rearguard once again. In column of fours. Follow me.' As he turned off to follow the fugitives, his two divisions of chariots fell in behind him. He looked ahead. Taita and his tiny party had already disappeared into a funnel of high sandhills, whose tops were purple and blue. The depths between them were sombre and shaded under the lowering sky. He had not gone two hundred cubits when the outside chariots of the column were bogged down in the soft sand. He knew then why Taita had maintained such a tight formation. Only in the centre line was the earth hard enough to support a chariot.

'In single line ahead!' He altered his formation. 'Stay in my tracks.' The two combined divisions stretched out over half a league as they followed Trok into the uncharted wilderness, and the troopers looked up with mounting trepidation at the towering sand walls and the ugly sky above. Trok could not press his horses at the same killing pace and they came down to a walk, but he could judge by the tracks Taita had left that he, too, was moving more slowly.

They kept on for almost another league until abruptly the land ahead changed character. From the soft sand waves rose a dark island of rock. It was like some small craft lost in the ocean of the dunes. Its sides were honeycombed and eaten away by the abrasive sand-laden winds of millennia, but the peak was as sharp as the fang of some fabulous monster.

On the peak, tiny with distance, stood an unmistakable figure, sparse and tall with a wild bush of silver hair that glinted like a helmet in the strange and awful light.

''Tis the Warlock,' Trok gloated to Ishtar. They have taken refuge in the rocks. I hope they try to fight us there.' Then to his trumpeter, 'Sound the battle call.'

--

When Nefer and Mintaka saw the rockpile looming ahead they were both astonished. 'Did Taita know it was here?' Mintaka asked.

'How could he have known?' Nefer replied.

'You told me once that he knows everything.' And Nefer was silenced. He looked back to cover his uncertainty, and saw the dust of the pursuit close behind, rising to mingle with the yellow glare of the sunless sky.

'It matters not at all. How can it avail us?' he asked. 'We might be able to defend those rocks for a very little while, but there are hundreds of Trok's men. This is almost the end.' He touched the waterskin that hung from the rail beside him. It was almost empty, not even enough left to keep the horses alive for another day.

'We must trust Taita.' Mintaka said, and he laughed bitterly.

'It seems the gods have deserted us. Who else is there to trust but Taita?'

They went forward, with the horses down to a hampered walk. Behind them they heard the faint sounds of the pursuit: the cries of the captains urging their troopers to keep the line, the jingle of loose equipment and the groan and whine of dry wheel hubs.

At last they came up under the hill of black and ochre-coloured rock. It was a hundred feet high and the accumulated heat radiated from it like a bonfire. Not a single plant had found a foothold on it, but the wind had carved fissures and cracks in its cliffs.

'Drive the chariots close in against the cliff,' Taita ordered, and they obeyed. 'Now free the horses and bring them this way.' Taita set the example by leading his own team around the angle of the rockface. Here there was a deep fissure with sheer sides cutting into the rock pile.

'This way.' He led them as far as they could go along the sandy floor of the deep, vertical crack. 'Now make the horses lie down.'

All cavalry horses were trained to perform this trick. At the urging of their handlers they lowered themselves to their knees and then, grunting and blowing, they went flat on their sides on the floor of the fissure.

'Like this!' Taita told them. He had brought a bedding roll from the chariot. With strips torn from it he blindfolded the horses to keep them quiet and submissive. Then he drove a javelin deep into the loose earth and used it as an anchor to tie down the horses' swathed heads and prevent them from rising again. The others followed his example.

'Now bring what remains of the water. 'Tis a pity there is not enough to give the horses a last drink, but we will need every drop for ourselves.'

Almost as if he knew of its existence, Taita led them to a shallow overhang in the cliff. The head room under the overhang was so low that anyone trying to enter would have to go down on hands and knees.

'Use the loose scree from the cliff to wall this in.'

'A zareba wall?' Nefer looked puzzled. 'We cannot defend this place. Once we are in the cave we could not even stand, let alone swing a sword.'

'There is no time to argue.' Taita glared at him. 'Do as I tell you.'

Nefer's nerves were raw with fear for Mintaka, and he was wearied by the hardships they had lived through these last days. He glared back at Taita. The others watched with interest: the young bull challenging the older one. The seconds drew out until abruptly Nefer realized his own foolishness. Only one person could save them now and he capitulated. He stooped and picked up a large rock from the scree pile and staggered with it to the shallow cave. He placed it in position and ran back for another. The others joined in the work. Even Mintaka carried her share of the rough lumps of schist. The skin of her hands was raw and torn before they had closed in a narrow space behind the wall.

'What do we do now?' Nefer asked stiffly, still smarting from his encounter with the Magus.

'Drink,' said Taita,

Nefer poured from the skin into a leather bucket and handed it to Mintaka. She took a few sips then offered it to Taita.

He shook his head. 'Drink, and drink deep.'

When they had all drunk as much as their stomachs would hold, Nefer turned on Taita again. 'What now?'

'Wait here.' Taita ordered and picked up his long staff, he began to climb the jagged side of the hillock.

'What about this zareba?' Nefer shouted after him, 'What purpose is it to serve?'

Taita paused on a narrow ledge thirty feet above them and looked down. 'Your Majesty will know when the time comes.' Taita began to climb again.

'A hiding-place? A tomb, perhaps?' Nefer called sarcastically after him, but Taita did not answer or look back.

He climbed without rest or pause until he reached the peak of the hillock. He stood there gazing back in the direction from which Trok would come.

The little party in the gully at the foot of the hillock watched him, some puzzled, some with hope and one angrily.

Nefer roused himself. 'Fetch the javelins and the rest of the weapons from the chariots. We must be ready to defend ourselves.' He ran to where they had left the chariots. He came back with an armful of javelins, and Meren and Hilto following behind him similarly laden.

'What is Taita doing?' he asked Mintaka. She pointed up at the crest.

'He has not moved.'

They stacked the weapons then settled down at the entrance to the rough shelter. All their eyes went up to Taita again.

He was outlined against that dreadful sulphur sky. Nobody spoke, nobody moved, until they heard that dreaded sound again. They turned their heads to listen to the faint rattle and squeal of chariot wheels, hundreds of them, the voices of men, sometimes muffled by the dunes, at others clear and menacing.

Slowly Taita raised both arms and pointed them to the sky. All their eyes followed the movement. In his right hand he held his staff, in the left the Periapt of Lostris, and at his throat he wore the gift of Bay.

'What is he doing now?' Hilto asked, in an awed tone. Nobody answered him.

Taita stood as still as if he had been chiselled out of the living rock. His head was thrown back, his hair fluffed out silver on his shoulders. His robes were belted up, so that his thin shanks were exposed. He looked like an old bird at roost.

The heavens swirled with low, heavy cloud. The light was transient, fading as the hidden sun was covered more heavily, flaring as the clouds thinned and fumed.

Still Taita did not move, his staff aimed at the pregnant belly of the heavens. The sound of the approaching column became clearer still, and suddenly there was a distant blare of a ram's horn trumpet.

'That is the battle call. Trok has seen Taita,' Mintaka said quietly.

--

Trok shouted at his trumpeter, 'Sound the advance!' but the warlike sound seemed to be swallowed up by the empty desert and the low, angry heavens.

'Wait!' said Ishtar the Mede. He was watching Taita's tiny figure on the peak of the rock hill. 'Wait!'

'What is it?' Trok demanded.

'As yet I cannot fathom it,' Ishtar said, without taking his gaze off the Warlock, 'but it is pervasive and powerful.'

The column remained halted, every man in it staring at the figure on the peak with awe. A terrible silence fell on the desert. There was no sound at all. Even the horses were still - there was no rattle or jingle of equipment.

Only the sky moved. It formed a whirlpool over the head of the Magus, a great turning wheel of smouldering cloud. Then slowly the centre of the whirlpool opened like the single eye of an awakening monster. From the heavenly eye a shaft of dazzling sunlight burst forth.

'The eye of Horus!' Ishtar breathed. 'He has called up the god.' He made a sign of protection, and at his side Trok was silent and rigid with superstitious dread.

The brilliant shaft of light struck the peak, and lit the figure of the Warlock like a bolt of blinding lightning. Around his head it spun a nimbus of silver radiance.

He made a slow circular pass with his long staff, and the Hyksosian charioteers cringed like curs under the whip. The clouds opened wider, and the sky was clear. The sunlight danced on the dunes and was reflected like a sheet of polished bronze into their eyes, dazzling and blinding them. They lifted their shields or their hands to protect their eyes from the strange radiance, but they made no sound.

On the peak Taita described another deliberate circle with his staff, and there was a sound at last: soft as a lover's sigh, it seemed to issue from the very heavens. Men's heads turned questioningly as they sought the source.

Once again Taita gestured and the sigh became a soughing, a gentle whistling. It came from the east, and slowly all their heads turned towards it.

Out of that strange, cloudless brilliance, they saw it coming. It was a solid dun wall that reached from the earth to the highest heavens.

'Khamsin!' Trok whispered the dread word.

The wall of airborne sand marched towards them with a terrible deliberation. It undulated and pulsed like a living creature, and its voice changed. No longer a whisper, it became a rising howl, the voice of a demon.

'Khamsin!' The word was yelled from chariot to chariot. They were no longer warriors hot for war, but small terrified creatures in the face of this destroyer of men, cities and civilizations, this eater of worlds.

The column of chariots lost its formation and broke up into fragments as the drivers wheeled their teams and tried to run from it.

As soon as they left the narrow path of harder ground the sand sucked down their wheels. Men leaped from the cockpits and abandoned their vehicles, leaving the horses in the traces. Instinctively the horses sensed the menace and reared and screamed, trying to escape by kicking themselves free of the traces.

The khamsin bore down upon them inexorably. Its voice changed from a howl to a bellow. Men ran before it in mindless panic. They slipped and fell in the loose sand, dragged themselves up and ran on. They looked back and saw the great storm come on apace roaring like a crazed monster, rolling and roiling upon itself, twisting curtains of sand, brazen where the sunlight struck them, dun and sombre where their own mountainous heights shaded them.

Taita stood with his arms and staff outstretched and watched the army below him engulfed. He saw Trok and Ishtar still frozen like a pair of statues in the sunlight, and then, as the front of the storm reached them, they were gone with magical swiftness, they and all their men, chariots and horses, gone in the rolling billows of the khamsin.

Taita lowered his arms, turned his back on the monster and, without haste, started down the hillock. His long legs spanned the difficult places and he leaned upon his staff as he stepped from ledge to ledge.

Nefer and Mintaka were standing hand in hand at the base of the cliff. They welcomed him with a bemused expression, and Mintaka's tone was subdued and incredulous as she asked, 'You called up the storm?'

'It has been brewing all these last days.' Taita said, his face neutral and his tone equivocal. 'You have all remarked the heat and the dolorous yellow mists.'

'No,' said Nefer. 'It was not in nature. It was you. You knew and understood all along. You called it up. And I doubted you.'

'Go into the shelter now,' said Taita. 'It is almost upon us.' His voice was lost in the shrieking cacophony of the khamsin. Mintaka led the way, crawling into the low narrow cave through the opening in the rude wall. The others followed her, crowding into the tiny space. Before he entered Hilto handed in the almost empty waterskins.

In the end, only Taita stood outside the shelter. Almost as though the storm was his creature, his face was intent as it loomed over him. It struck with a force that made the living rock around them seem to quiver and vibrate and Taita was gone, his tall figure obliterated. The first gust lasted only a few seconds, but when it passed Taita was still there, unmoved and serene. The storm gathered itself bellowing, like a berserk monster, and as it hurled down on them in all its terrible majesty Taita stooped through the opening and sat with his back to the inner wall.

'Close it up,' he said, and Meren and Hilto blocked the entrance with the rocks they had placed at hand.

'Cover your heads,' said Taita, and wound his headcloth over his face. 'Keep your eyes closed, or you will lose your sight. Breathe carefully through your mouth or you will drown in sand.'

--

The storm was so overwhelming that its first front picked up Trok's chariot and rolled it over with the horses screaming as the lashing shaft broke their backs.

Trok was thrown free. He fought his way to his feet, but the storm struck him down again. He managed to pull himself up, using all his brute strength, but he had lost all sense of direction. When he tried to open his eyes he was blinded by sand. He did not know in which direction he was facing, or where he should try to escape. The storm was swirling upon itself so that it seemed to be coming from every direction at once. He dared not open his eyes again. The khamsin ripped at his face, and its harsh rush abraded the skin from his cheeks and lips until he covered them with his headcloth.

In the turmoil of sand and wind Trok screamed, 'Save me! Save me, Ishtar, and I will reward you beyond your greediest dreams.'

It seemed impossible that anyone could have heard his cry in the deafening uproar. Then he felt Ishtar seize his hand and squeeze it hard to caution Trok to hold fast.

They stumbled on, at times sinking to the knees in the sand, which ran like water. Trok tripped over an obstacle and lost contact with Ishtar. When he groped for him in panic he touched the object that had tripped him, and realized that it was one of the abandoned chariots lying on its side.

He screamed for Ishtar, staggering in a circle and Ishtar's hand grabbed his beard and led him on. He was scorched by sand, blinded by sand, drowning in sand.

He fell to his knees and Ishtar hauled him up again, ripping out a handful of his beard. He tried to speak but when he opened his mouth the sand rushed in and he choked. He knew he was dying, that no man could survive this terrible thing that had them in its grip.

It seemed endless, their tormented journey to nowhere. Then, abruptly, he felt the force of the wind diminish. For a minute he thought that the storm had already passed them by, but the roar had not abated - to the contrary, it seemed still to be rising. They staggered onwards, reeling and bumping into each other like two drunkards trying to lead each other home from the tavern. Still the wind force dropped. In a vague and confused way Trok thought that somehow Ishtar had worked a spell to shield them, but then a sudden gust almost lifted him off his feet and broke the grip that Ishtar had on his beard. He crashed into a wall of rock with such force that he felt his collar-bone break,

He dropped to his knees and clung to the rock, like a child to its mother's breast. How Ishtar had brought them to it he neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was that the cliff above them was breaking the full force of the storm. He felt Ishtar kneel at his side and pull up his tunic until it covered his head. Then Ishtar pushed him down flat in the shelter of the cliff and lay down beside him.

--

In the tiny cave Nefer crawled close to Mintaka and took her in his arms. He tried to speak to her, to comfort and encourage her but both their heads were swathed with cloth, and the wind drowned out all sound. She laid her head on his shoulder and they clung to each other. They were entombed in the roaring darkness, dumb and blinded and half suffocated. Each hot breath they drew had to be strained through cloth and taken only a sip at a time to prevent a rush of talcum fine sand passing between their lips.

After a while the roar of the wind deafened them and dulled all their other senses. It went on and on, without ceasing or relenting. They had no way to judge the passage of time, except the tiniest awareness of light and darkness through their closed eyelids. To mark the arrival of the day there was a faint rosy aura; when night fell it faded into utter darkness. Nefer had never known such complete and endless dark. If it had not been for Mintaka's body pressed close to his, he thought that he would have gone mad.

Every once in a long while she stirred against him and answered the pressure of his arms with her own. He might have slept, but there were no dreams, just the roaring of the khamsin and the darkness.

After another long while he tried to move his legs, but he could not. In a blind panic he thought he had lost control of his body. That he was weak and dying. He tried again with all his strength, and managed to move his foot and toes. Then he knew that he was entrapped by the sand that was filtering into their shelter through the chinks in the zareba wall. It had already piled up as high as his waist. They were slowly being buried alive. The thought of that insidious death filled him with terror. With his bare hands he scraped away enough sand to be able to move his legs then did the same for Mintaka.

He felt the others working at the same task in the crowded cave, trying to fight back the sand, but it trickled in like water. It was deposited on them from the dense clouds of swirling dust.

And the storm raged on.

For two days and three nights the wind never relented. During this time Nefer managed to keep back the sand just enough to move his head and his arms, but his lower body was encased solidly. He could not begin to dig himself out, for there was no where to which he could move the sand.

He reached up one hand and touched the stone roof inches above his head. He ran his fingers across it, and realized it was slightly domed. Their heads were in this small space, but the sand had sealed off the cave entrance so that no more sand could penetrate. But he could still hear the storm bellow endlessly.

He waited. At times he felt Mintaka sobbing quietly beside him and tried to comfort her with a gentle pressure of his arms. The air trapped with them in the tiny head space became fetid and stale. He thought that soon it would no longer keep them alive, but some fresh air must have been filtering through the sand, for although each breath was a struggle they were still alive.

They drank most of the water that remained in the waterskins, leaving only a tiny amount in the bottom. Then the thirst came. Even though they were unable to move their bodies to use up moisture, the hot dry sand and air sucked it out of them. Nefer felt his tongue slowly cleave to the roof of his mouth. Then it began to swell so his breathing, already difficult, became almost impossible because of the huge spongy thing that filled his mouth.

With the fear and the thirst he lost track of time, and it seemed that years had passed. Nefer aroused himself from the stupor that was slowly overtaking him. He realized that something had changed. He tried to fathom what it was, but his mind was numb and unresponsive. Mintaka was very still beside him. He squeezed her fearfully. In reply he felt a tiny shudder of movement. She was still alive. Both of them were alive, but entombed, able only to move some small part of their bodies.

He felt himself drifting back into that dark stupor, into haunted dreams of water, of cool green expanses of the great river, of cascades and bright rivulets of water. He forced himself up from the darkness, and listened. He heard nothing. That was what had roused him. There was no sound. The roaring clamour of the khamsin had given way to a profound silence. The silence of a sealed tomb, he thought, and the horror returned full force.

He began to struggle again, to try to work his way out of the sand. He managed at last to free his right arm, reached out and found Mintaka's covered head. He stroked it and in the silence heard her whimper. He tried to speak, to reassure her, but his swollen tongue would let no word pass. Instead he reached out beyond her to see if he could touch Hilto, who had been sitting on the far side of her. Either Hilto was gone or was beyond the reach of his arm, for he touched nothing.

He rested a while then roused himself once more, and made an effort to clear the sand from around the entrance to the cave. But there was little space to store what he scraped away. A handful at a time he scooped it away and pushed it into a nook in their tiny cell. Soon he was working at the furthest reach of his right arm, scraping away a few grains at a time. It was a despairing attempt but he knew that he had to keep trying or give up hope.

Abruptly he felt the sand cascade out from under his fingers, and even through the folds of his headcloth fresh air that had not been breathed seeped into the cave. And he was aware of the faintest glimmer of light beyond his closed eyelids. Painfully he began to pull away the cloth from his face. The light grew stronger and the air was sweet in his dry mouth and aching lungs. When his face was free of the cloth he half opened one eye, and was almost dazzled by the light. When his vision had adjusted he saw that he had opened a hole to the outside that was no larger than the circle of his thumb and forefinger, but from beyond there was quiet. The storm had passed.

Excited and with new hope he tugged at the cloth that covered Mintaka's head and heard her breathe the fresh air. Again he tried to speak, but again his voice failed him. He tried to move, to escape from the deadly grip of the heavy sand, but his body was still encased to the armpits.

With all his remaining strength, he struggled silently to free himself, but the effort soon exhausted him and his throat burned and ached with thirst. He thought how cruel it would be to die here with the promise of air and light mocking him through that tiny cleft.

He closed his eyes again wearily, giving up. Then he was aware of another change in the light, and he opened his eye again. With a sense of disbelief he saw a hand reaching through the opening towards him. An ancient hand, with desiccated skin covered with the dark blotches of age.

'Nefer!' He heard a voice so strange, so hoarse and altered, that for a moment he doubted it was the Magus. 'Nefer, can you hear me?'

Nefer tried to reply but still could not speak. He reached out and touched Taita's fingers. Immediately the old man's fingers closed over his with surprising strength.

'Hold hard. We will dig you out.'

He heard other voices then, rough and faint with thirst and effort, and hands scraped away the sand that entrapped him until at last they could lay hold of him and pull him free of the soft, deadly grasp of the sand.

Nefer slithered out through the narrow cleft as though the rocky hillock was giving birth to him. Then Hilto and Meren reached in again and dragged Mintaka out of the soft dark womb into the brilliant sunlight.

They lifted the pair to their feet and held them from falling again, for their legs had no strength. Nefer shrugged off Meren's hands, lurched across to Mintaka and embraced her silently. She was shivering as though in the crisis of malaria. After a while he held her at arm's length and studied her face with horror and pity. Her hair was white with sand, which clung thickly in her eyebrows. Her eyes had receded into deep purple cavities, and her lips were swollen black, so that when she tried to speak they cracked open and a drop of blood, bright as a ruby, trickled down her chin.

'Water,' Nefer managed to articulate at last. 'She must have water.'

He dropped to his knees and began frantically to dig into the sand that still blocked the cave. Meren and Hilto were working beside him and they uncovered the waterskin. They pulled it out, and found that most of the water that had remained had evaporated or been squeezed from it. There remained only sufficient for a few mouthfuls each, but even that amount was enough to keep them alive a little longer. Nefer felt strength return to his dehydrated body, and for the first time looked about him.

It was the middle of the morning. He did not know what morning or for how many days they had been buried. There was still a haze of fine sand like gold-dust in the still air.

He shaded his eyes, looked out over the desert and did not recognize it. The landscape had changed completely: the high dunes had marched away to be replaced by others, of different shape and alignment. There were valleys where there had been mountains, and vales where hills had stood. Even the colours had changed: the sullen purples and bruised blues had been replaced by reds and golden yellows.

He shook his head in wonder, and looked at Taita. The Magus was leaning on his staff, watching Nefer with those pale, ancient but ageless eyes.

'Trok?' Nefer managed to say. 'Where?'

'Buried,' Taita replied, and now Nefer could see that he also was dried out like a stick of firewood, and suffering the same agonies as they were.

'Water?' Nefer whispered, touching his swollen and bleeding mouth.

'Come,' said Taita.

Nefer took Mintaka's hand and slowly they followed the Magus out into the brazen sands. Now at last thirst and exposure had taken their toll on Taita and he moved slowly and stiffly. The others staggered along behind him.

Taita seemed to be wandering aimlessly through the new valleys of fine sand that ran beneath their feet. He held out his staff in front of him, making a sweeping motion with it. Once or twice he lowered himself to his knees and touched the earth with his forehead.

'What is he doing?' Mintaka whispered. The water they had drank had not been enough to sustain her and she was weakening again. 'Is he praying?'

Nefer only shook his head: he would not squander his own meagre reserves by speaking unnecessarily. Taita moved on slowly, and by the way he was sweeping with his staff Nefer was reminded of a water-diviner at work.

Once again Taita knelt and placed his face close to the earth. This time Nefer watched him with more attention, and saw that he was not praying but sniffing the air close to the surface of the sand. Then he knew what Taita was doing. 'He is searching for the buried chariots of Trok's division,' he whispered to Mintaka. 'His staff is his divining rod, and he is sniffing for the scent of putrescence below the sand.'

Taita stood up painfully and nodded at Hilto. 'Dig here,' he ordered.

They all crowded forward and began to scrape away the loose sand with cupped hands. They had not far to go. An arm's span deep they struck something hard, and redoubled their efforts. Quickly they exposed the wheel rim of a chariot that was lying on its side. Another few minutes of frantic digging and they pulled out a waterskin. They stared at it in despair for it had burst open, perhaps when the chariot had capsized. It was dry, and though they squeezed it frantically it yielded not a single drop of the precious fluid.

'There must be another.' Nefer spoke through dry swollen lips. 'Dig deeper.'

They clawed at the sand in a last despairing burst of strength, and as the excavation deepened the stench of the dead horses in the traces grew stronger and more nauseating. They had been lying in the heat all these days.

Suddenly Nefer reached deeper into the hole and felt something soft and yielding. He pressed it and they all heard the gurgle and slosh of water. He swept away more of the loose sand and between them they lifted out a bulging waterskin. They were mumbling and whimpering with thirst, as Taita opened the stopper and poured it into the leather bucket that had lain beside the waterskin in the bottom of the excavation.

The water was the temperature of blood, but when Taita held the bucket to Mintaka's lips she closed her eyes and drank in a quiet ecstasy.

'Not too much at first,' Taita warned her, took the bucket from her and passed it to Nefer. They drank in turn, then Mintaka drank again, and the bucket made another circuit.

In the meantime Taita left them to continue his search. In a short time he called them to dig again. This time they were lucky: not only was the chariot under less sand, but there were three waterskins, and none was damaged.

'The horses now,' Taita told them, and they looked at each other guiltily. In their desperate preoccupation they had forgotten them. Carrying the waterskins they trudged back through the sand to the base of the cliff.

The narrow gully in which they had pegged down the horses must have been well aligned to avoid the full force of the khamsin. When they began to dig, using the wooden spade they had found among the equipment of the buried chariot, they found the first horse almost at once. However, the stink warned them what to expect. The beast was dead and its stomach ballooned with gas. They left it and dug for the next animal.

This time they were more fortunate. It was a mare, the most willing and robust of the horses they had captured at the sinking sands. She was alive, but barely so. They cut the retaining halter that had held her down, but she was too weak to come to her feet unaided. The men lifted her between them. She stood weak and shivering, reeling and threatening to fall again, but she drank greedily from the bucket Mintaka held for her and seemed at once to improve.

In the meantime the men were digging for the other horses. They found two more dead of thirst or suffocation, but another two still alive. They also responded immediately they were given water.

They left Mintaka to care for the three pathetic beasts and went back to the chariots they had uncovered to find fodder. They brought back bags of grain and another waterskin.

'You are doing good work with them,' Nefer told Mintaka, as he stroked the mare's neck, 'but I fear they are too far gone ever to pull another chariot.'

She rounded on him fiercely: 'I will bring all of them through, I swear to the goddess. There must be hundreds more fodder bags and waterskins out there under the sand. We may have to stay here many more days, but when we leave, these gallant creatures will take us out.'

Nefer laughed at her through his cracked, scabbed lips. 'I am in deep awe of your passionate nature.'

'Then provoke me no further,' she warned him, 'or you will see more proof of it.' It was the first time she had smiled since the passing of the khamsin. 'Now go back to help the others. We cannot have too great a supply of water.'

He left her, and went down into the sands where Taita was divining further afield. Not all the Hyksos chariots were so lightly covered with sand as the ones they had first found. Many were hidden for ever beneath the high new dunes.

They moved further and further away from the rocky hillock as the search went on. Beneath the sands they found many corpses, swollen bellies stinking.

Soon they were out of earshot of where Mintaka was tending the horses like a syce.

--

The cessation of all sound roused Trok, and he groaned as he tried to move. The sand was a stifling weight upon him. It seemed to crush in his ribs and force the breath from his lungs. Nevertheless, he knew that the spot Ishtar had chosen for them to ride out the storm was, either by chance or design, a good one. In any other place they might have been buried for ever. Here he had been able to keep close to the surface of the earth. In the past days as the layers of blown sand had built up over him and the weight had become unbearable he had managed to wriggle free, leaving only enough covering him to protect him from the full abrasive force of the khamsin.

Now he struggled up towards the light and air like a diver coming up from the depths of a deep pool. As he swam up laboriously through the sand his damaged shoulder was a burning agony. He struggled on until his head, still swathed in folds of cloth, broke free. He unwrapped it and blinked about him in the dazzling light. The wind had passed but the air was luminous with fine particles of suspended dust. He rested like that for a while until the pain in his shoulder abated a little. Then he pushed aside the layer of sand that still covered his lower body and tried to call out, 'Ishtar! Where are you?' but his voice was a formless croak. He turned his head slowly and saw the Mede, sitting near him, his back to the rocky cliff face. He looked like an exhumed corpse that had been dead for days. Then Ishtar opened his one good eye.

'Water?' Trok's voice was only just intelligible, but the Mede shook his head.

'So we have survived the storm just to die in the same grave,' Trok tried to say, but no sound came out from his ravaged throat and mouth.

He lay for a while longer, and felt any instinct to survive being extinguished under the slow seep of exhaustion and resignation. It would be so much easier just to close his eyes and drift off to sleep, never to wake again. That thought spurred him and he forced open his crusted eyelids, felt the grit under the lids scraping at his eyeballs.

'Water,' he said. 'Find water.'

Using the cliff side as a support he lurched to his feet and stood there swaying, hugging his useless arm to his chest.

Ishtar watched him, his one blind eye like that of a reptile or a corpse. Trok started forward drunkenly, bumping into the cliff at every few paces he took, making his way along the base of the rock until he could look out over the desert. The dunes were pristine and unblemished, as voluptuously curved as the body of a lovely young girl.

There was no trace of men or vehicles. His fighting divisions, the finest in all Egypt, had vanished without trace. He tried to lick his lips, but there was no spittle in his chalky mouth. He felt his legs give way under him and knew that if went down he would never rise again. Using the wall of stone as a support he tottered on, not knowing where he was going and with no thought in his head but to go on.

Then he heard human voices, and knew he was hallucinating. There was silence again. He went a few steps further, stopped and listened. The voices came again. This time they were closer and clearer. He felt unexpected strength flow back into his body, but when he tried to call out no sound came from his parched throat. There was silence once more. The voices had ceased.

He started forward again, then stopped suddenly. A woman's voice, no mistaking it. A sweet, clear voice.

Mintaka. The name formed silently on his swollen lips. Then another voice. This time a man's. He could not make out the words or recognize the speaker, but if he was with Mintaka he must be one of the fugitives Trok had been pursuing. The enemy.

Trok looked down at himself. His sword-belt was gone, and his weapons with it. He was unarmed, dressed only in his tunic, which had so much sand in the weave that it chafed his skin like a hair-shirt. He looked around him for a weapon, a stick or a stone, but there was nothing. The scree had been covered by sand.

He stood undecided, and the voices came again. Mintaka and the man were in a gully among the rocks. While he still hesitated he heard the sand crunching like salt crystals under someone's feet. That person was coming down the gully towards where Trok stood.

Trok shrank back against the stone wall and a man emerged from the mouth of the gully, twenty paces from where Trok hid. The stranger set off with a determined stride into the dunes. He was strongly familiar, but recognition eluded Trok until the man turned and called back towards the gully, 'Do not tax yourself unduly, Mintaka. You have come through a trying ordeal.' Then he walked on.

Trok gaped after him. He is dead, he thought. It cannot be him. The message from Naja was clear ... He considered the possibility that a djinn or some evil spirit was impersonating the young Pharaoh Nefer Seti as he watched the young man go out into the desert. Then, through eyes bleary with sand, he saw him join three others, among them the unmistakable figure of the Warlock, who, Trok realized, must be responsible, in some strange and miraculous way, for the resurrection of Nefer Seti. But now he had neither the time nor the inclination to ponder this further. There was only one thought in his mind and that was water.

As stealthily as he could he crept forward into the gully where he had heard Mintaka's voice and peered round the corner of the cliff. He did not recognize her at first: she was as bedraggled as a peasant. Her hair and her tattered tunic were stiff with sand, and her eyes were sunken and bloodshot. She was kneeling at the head of one of a small herd of horses, holding a water bucket for it to drink.

Water was the only thing Trok could think about. He could smell it and his whole body craved it. He staggered towards Mintaka. Her back was turned to him and the soft sand covered the sound of his approach. She was not aware of him until he seized her arm. She turned, saw him, and screamed. He snatched the bucket from her hands and knocked her down. As his arm was useless he knelt on the small of her back to pin her down, while he drank from the bucket.

He swallowed huge gulps, gurgled and belched, then drank some more. Mintaka was wriggling under him and screaming, 'Nefer! Taita! Help me.'

He belched again, pushed her face into the sand to silence her, and swallowed the last drops from the bucket. He looked around him, still crouching over her like a lion on its kill. He saw the waterskin against the wall of the gully and the javelins and swords stacked beside it.

He stood up quickly and started towards them. Instantly Mintaka tried to jump to her feet, but he kicked her down again. 'None of that, you bitch,' he croaked, and seized a handful of her thick sand-drenched hair. He dragged her after him through the sand until he could reach the waterskin. Then he had to drop her. He placed one huge sandalled foot on her back again, reached for the waterskin and held it between his knees while he unfastened the wooden stopper. He lifted the nozzle to his lips and let the warm, brackish liquid flow down his throat.

Although she was face down in the sand Mintaka realized that Trok was engrossed in his craving for water. She must act before he had satisfied it and turned his full attention on her. She knew that he had suffered more humiliation than he could bear and that he would kill her now rather than let her escape him again.

Desperately she reached out to the bundle of weapons stacked against the rock. Her fingers closed around the shaft of a javelin. Trok was still drinking with his head thrown back, but he felt her movement and lowered the waterskin just as Mintaka twisted to stab up at his belly and groin with the short but deadly weapon. However, the blow was aimed from her prone position under him and lacked force.

Trok saw the bright bronze point flash and, with a startled exclamation, jumped back to avoid it. 'You treacherous little slut!' He dropped the waterskin and lunged for her, but the moment his weight was off her Mintaka jumped up. She tried to slip past him and run out of the gully into the open desert, but he cut her off and reached for her with his long arm. He caught the hem of her tunic, but she leaped aside. The linen tore in his fingers and she twisted away from him, but he still had her trapped in the gully.

He lumbered after her but she ran to the cliff wall and started to scale it, lithe and quick as a cat. Before he could catch her she was out of his reach. She went up swiftly and he could not hope to follow her. He picked up the javelin she had dropped and hurled it up at her, but he was using his left hand and there was little power in the throw.

Mintaka ducked as the javelin flew over her head and struck the rock in front of her face. She climbed faster, driven by fear. Trok staggered to where the other weapons were stacked, and grabbed another javelin. He threw again. It missed her by a hand's width.

Trok grunted with fury and frustration and snatched a third javelin, but at that moment Mintaka reached a ledge in the cliff and crawled over it out of his sight. She lay there pressing herself to the rock. She heard him raving and swearing at her. Even in her distress she was sickened by the filthy words he sent after her.

Then another javelin flashed over where she lay and clattered against the rock face above her. It dropped back on to the ledge and she grabbed it before it could fall back to the gully floor. She peered over the edge of the ledge, ready to duck back.

Trok was staring up at her uncertainly, his injured arm dangling at his side. When her head appeared his face contorted with rage and the pain of his injury, and he started forward as if to climb up to her.

She showed him the point of the javelin. 'Yes, come up,' she hissed at him, 'and let me stick this in your great hog belly!'

He stopped. He would have to climb and defend himself with only one arm. He saw that her threat was real. While he hesitated, Mintaka began to scream again. 'Nefer! Taita! Hilto! Help me!'

Her voice echoed off the cliff and rang down the gully. He looked about him nervously, as if expecting to see a rush of armed enemies coming at him. Suddenly he reached a decision. He picked up the waterskin and slung it over his shoulder. 'Do not think you can evade me for ever. One day I will sample all the delights of your body and afterwards I will give you as a plaything to my troopers,' he shouted up at her. Then he tried to mount the mare, but she was still too weak to support his bulk and collapsed under him.

Trok hauled himself to his feet and lumbered away down the gully.

Mintaka feared that his withdrawal might be a trick. She dared not descend from her perch on the cliff. She screamed wildly, 'Nefer! Help me.'

She was still screaming when Nefer came racing back to her down the rocky gully, a sword in his hand, Hilto and Meren close behind him.

'What is it?' Nefer demanded, as she slid down the cliff into his arms.

'Trok!' She sobbed with relief to feel him hold her safely. 'Trok is alive. He was here.'

She blurted out an account of what had happened, but before she had ended Nefer was giving orders to the others to arm themselves and prepare to go after Trok.

--

Taita had come back to join them. He stayed with Mintaka while the three men followed Trok's footprints in the sand as cautiously as if they were tracking a wounded lion. They moved along the base of the cliff until they reached the fissure where Trok had weathered the fury of the khamsin. Nefer examined the disturbed sand and interpreted the signs. Two of them,' he said. 'They were buried by the storm, as we were. They dug themselves out. One waited here.' He picked up a thread of wool that had adhered to the rock, and held it to the light. 'Black.' It was a colour seldom worn by Egyptians. 'Almost certainly the Mede.'

Hilto nodded agreement. 'Ishtar would have the witchcraft to survive the storm. ''Tis certain he saved Trok, just as Taita saved us.'

'Here.' Nefer stood up and pointed out the sign. 'Carrying the waterskin, Trok returned to find the Mede, and they went this way.'

They followed the footprints a short way out into the desert. 'They have gone west. Back towards Avaris and the Nile. Will they ever reach it?'

'Not if I catch up with him.' Nefer said grimly, and hefted the javelin he was carrying.

'Majesty.' Hilto was respectful but firm. 'They have the waterskin and a long start. They will be well away from here by now. You dare not follow without water.'

Nefer hesitated. Though he saw the sense in what Hilto said it galled him sorely to let Trok escape. From what Mintaka had told him, Trok was injured and would not be too dangerous an opponent, even though Nefer himself was still weak.

In the end he turned aside and ran to the top of the nearest dune. Shading his eyes he looked westward, along the string of footsteps on the pristine, windswept sands until in the distance, half a league or more away, he made out two tiny figures moving steadily towards the west. He watched them fiercely until they disappeared in the wavering heat mirage.

'There will be another time,' Nefer whispered. 'I will come for you.

I swear it on the hundred sacred names of Horus.'

--

They found and uncovered another sixteen of the buried chariots. With such an abundant supply of water and food, horses and men recovered swiftly. In addition, they had uncovered many more corpses of Trok's troopers. From these they were able to dress themselves. Nefer altered a pair of sandals to fit Mintaka, whose injured feet were almost completely healed.

By the tenth day they were ready to move. The four remaining horses were not strong enough to drag the chariots back through the loose sand, so Nefer decided to use them as pack horses, and load them with as much water as they could carry.

At nightfall, leading the horses, they started out across the dunes. Although the mare could not carry Mintaka's weight as well as its load, Nefer rigged a leather strap around its shoulders and insisted that Mintaka hang on this to help herself through the soft footing.

The khamsin had altered the landscape so greatly that Taita had to navigate by the stars. They kept going steadily through the whole of that night, and the one that followed. Before dawn on the second day they reached the old caravan road. It had been obliterated in places by the khamsin, but before they had gone much further the light strengthened and they saw the cairn of stones that marked the crossroads ahead. They discovered that, since the storm had ended, someone had been on the road before them. Two pairs of footprints led westwards along the road, heading back towards the Nile valley and Avaris. One pair was large, the other smaller. Taita and Nefer examined them carefully.

'This one is Trok. Nobody else has feet like that, the size of a Nile barge. Mintaka was correct. He is injured, on his right side. He favours it as he walks.' Taita read the sign. 'As yet I cannot be certain about the other. Let us see if he leaves some clue as to his identity.' They followed the tracks as far as the marked cairn.

'Ah! There!' Close by the cairn someone had recently arranged an intricate pattern of stones in the sand. 'No doubt now. It is Ishtar the Mede.' Angrily Taita scattered the stones. 'This is an invocation to his foul Marduk the Devourer.' He hurled one of the smaller stones down the road that Trok and Ishtar had taken. 'If Ishtar had an infant with him, he would likely have sacrificed it. Marduk thirsts for human blood.'

Here, at the marker cairn, Nefer had a difficult decision to make. 'If we are to make the long journey to the east, we will need supplies and gold. We should not arrive at the court of the Assyrian as indigent outcasts.'

Taita nodded. 'There are many powerful men in Egypt who would lend us full support if only they could be certain that their pharaoh was still alive.'

'Hilto and Meren must go back to Thebes,' Nefer said. 'I would go myself but all the world will be searching for Mintaka and me.' He removed one of his royal finger rings and handed it to Hilto. 'This will be your token of recognition. Show it to our friends. You must return bringing us men and gold, chariots and horses. When we go to King Sargon we must arrive in some state to show him the support we still command in Egypt.'

'I will do as you command, Majesty.'

'Almost as vital to us will be intelligence. You must gather news. We must be informed of every action of the false pharaohs.'

'I will leave at nightfall, Pharaoh.' Hilto agreed.

They spent that long hot day lying under the shade of an awning they had salvaged from one of the buried chariots, discussing their plans. When the sun sank towards the horizon and began to lose its heat they parted company, Hilto and Meren to head back west towards Thebes, and Taita, Nefer and Mintaka to go eastwards.

'We will wait for you at the ruins of Gallala,' were Nefer's last words to Hilto. Then they watched him and Meren take the high road and disappear into the gathering dusk.

Taita, Mintaka and Nefer took the caravan road towards Gallala. Twelve days later, with only a few drops remaining in the waterskins, they reached the deserted ruins.

--

The weeks became months, and still they waited at Gallala. Taita spent days at a time in the hills that surrounded the city. Nefer and Mintaka caught occasional glimpses of him from a distance as he prowled the valleys and harsh gullies. Often they saw him tapping and prodding the rocks with his staff. At other times he sat by the almost dried-up wells outside the city walls, staring down the deep shafts.

When Nefer questioned him obliquely, he was distant and evasive. 'An army needs water,' was all he would volunteer.

There is hardly enough water for us,' Nefer pointed out, 'let alone an army.' Taita nodded, stood up and walked away into the hills with his staff tapping against the rocks.

Mintaka set up quarters for them among the ruins, and Nefer roofed them over with the tattered tent. As a royal Hyksosian princess, Mintaka had never been called upon to cook a meal or sweep out a chamber, so her first efforts were disastrous. As he chewed a charred mouthful Taita remarked, 'If we want to destroy Trok's army the most effective way would be to send you to them as a cook.'

'If you are so skilled, then perhaps you might honour us with your great culinary skills.'

'It is either that or starve,' Taita agreed, and took her place at the hearth.

Nefer resumed his old role of hunter, and after his first day out in the desert returned with a plump young gazelle and four marvellously patterned giant bustard eggs that were only slightly addled. Mintaka sniffed her share of the omelette Taita made and pushed it away. 'Is this the same man who complained of my cooking?' She looked across the fire at Nefer. 'You are as guilty as he is. Next time I will go with you to make sure that what you bring back is edible.'

They lay side by side in one of the shallow wadis that cut through the hills and watched a herd of gazelle feeding towards them.

'They are dainty as fairies,' Mintaka whispered. 'So beautiful.'

'I will shoot if you have qualms,' Nefer told her.

'No.' She shook her head. 'I did not say I would not do it.' Her tone was determined, and by now he knew her well enough not to query hear decision.

The ram moved ahead of his herd. His back was a delicate cinnamon shade and his underbelly was the silvery white of one of the thunder-heads that rose above the horizon. His horns were lyre-shaped and polished between his pricked, trumpet-shaped ears. He turned his head on the long curved neck and gazed back at his small herd. One of the lambs began to stot, bouncing on stiff legs with its nose almost touching its bunched hoofs. This was the alarm behaviour.

'The little creature is just practising and showing off.' Nefer smiled.

The ram lost interest in this juvenile display, and came on towards where they lay in ambush. He picked his way over the stony ground with studied grace, stopping every few paces to look about warily for danger.

'He has not seen us, but he soon will,' Nefer whispered. 'We do not have Taita to gull him.'

'He is out of range,' she whispered back.

'Fifty paces, no more. Shoot or he will be gone in an instant.'

Mintaka waited until the ram once more turned away his head. Then she rose slowly to her knees and drew the bow. It was one of the short recurved weapons they had salvaged from a buried chariot. She released the arrow and it rose in a gently arc against the pale desert sky.

With those huge dark eyes, the gazelle had instantly picked out her small movement of rising. His head switched round and he stared at her, on the point of flight. At the twanging release of the bowstring he leaped forward while the arrow was still in the air. He skimmed away, tiny puffs of dust rising where his hoofs touched the earth. The arrow rattled against the stones, where moments before, he had been standing. Mintaka jumped to her feet and laughed to watch him go, showing no sign of chagrin at having missed the shot.

'Watch him run, like a swallow in flight.'

Taita had taught Nefer that the true hunter loves and honours his quarry. He admired Mintaka the more for her compassion towards the creatures she hunted. She turned to him, still laughing. 'I am sorry, my heart. You will go hungry to bed this night.'

'Not with Taita at the cooking fire. He will pluck a feast from the very air.'

They raced each other to retrieve her spent arrow. She had a head-start, and reached it ahead of him. She stooped to pick it up, and the back of her short tattered skirt flew up. Her thighs were smooth and brown and her buttocks perfect rounds, the skin pale and unblemished where the sun had never touched it, lustrous as precious Oriental silk.

She straightened and turned in a flash to catch the expression in his eyes. Though she was virgin and unversed in sensuality, her feminine instincts were full blown. She could see what passion her innocent gesture had roused in him, and the knowledge stirred her too. Seeing how he desired her made her want him with an intensity that was painful. She felt her loins melt with love for him, overflowing sweet and viscous like a honeycomb left in the heat of the midday sun.

Timidly she swayed towards him, but Nefer felt hot shame at the carnal desire that had almost overwhelmed him again. He remembered his promise to her. 'I would rather die than break my oath, and bring dishonour upon you,' he had told her, and at the memory he forced himself to turn away. He found that his hands were shaking and his voice was gruff as he said, with his eyes averted, 'I know where there is another herd, but we must hurry if we are to find them before dark.' He set off without looking back at her, and she felt bereft. She had wanted more than anything on this earth to feel his arms around her and his hard young body pressed to hers.

She gathered herself quickly and followed him, trying to push away the strange feelings that had so nearly engulfed her, but they would not so easily be set aside. She caught up with him, and trotted a few paces behind him.

She studied his back. She watched how his thick dark curls bounced on his shoulders. She wondered at how wide his shoulders had grown since she had first met him. Then she looked further down, and felt her cheeks burn as she watched his buttocks moving under the thin stuff of his short apron. She enjoyed a delicious sense of shame at her own lascivious feelings.

Too soon they reached the rim of the long wadi that cleaved the mountains. He turned his head to look back at her and almost caught her studying his body. She raised her eyes to his just in time.

'There are hundreds of old tombs in the bottom of the cliff here. I first saw them when my father brought me this way, just before he was-' He broke off, saddened by the memory of the last day he had spent with Tamose.

'Whose tombs are they?' she asked, to distract him from something so painful.

Taita says they are a thousand years old, from the time of Cheops and Chephren who built the great Pyramids at Giza.'

'Then they must be almost as old as the Magus himself.' She smiled and he laughed.

'Have you ever explored them?' she asked.

He shook his head, 'Since we first arrived here, I have thought of doing so often, but there has never been an opportunity.'

'Let us do it now,' she said.

He hesitated. 'We should have ropes and lamps.' But she was already scrambling down the cliff, and he was forced to follow her.

At its base, they soon found that most of the tombs were out of their reach, set high in the sheer cliff face with a deadly drop below them.

After a while Nefer picked out an opening he thought they might be able to reach. They climbed a section where the cliff face had collapsed, and reached a narrow ledge. They worked their way along it cautiously, Nefer leading. He reached the dark opening and stooped to peer into it. 'Of course, it will be guarded by the spirits of the dead.' He tried to make it sound like a joke, but she sensed his unease and was affected by it.

'Of course!' she joked back, but behind her back made the sign against evil.

'It's very dark in there,' Nefer said thoughtfully. 'We should return tomorrow with an oil lamp.'

Mintaka looked over his shoulder. A short passageway led at a slight upward angle into the solid rock. Even after the passing of centuries, engravings were still clearly visible on the walls.

'Look.' Mintaka touched one. 'This is a picture of a giraffe, and this is a man.'

'Yes,' Nefer grinned, 'and a very friendly man, at that. There is no mistaking it.'

She pretended to bridle, but could not hide her smile. The ancient artist had endowed the figure with a huge erect member.

'Here.' She moved deeper into the passage. 'These are writings. I wonder what they mean.'

'Nobody will ever know,' Nefer said, and stepped past her, 'The key to that ancient script has long been lost. We should go back.'

The floor was covered with a layer of soft windblown sand. After a short distance the recesses of the shaft were obscured by sinister darkness.

'We can explore just a short way further,' Mintaka said stubbornly.

'I don't think that's a good idea.'

'Here.' She pushed past him. 'Let me go first.'

'Wait!' He tried to restrain her, but she laughed and pulled away. He placed one hand on the hilt of his dagger and followed her, shamed by her example and his own reluctance.

The gloom thickened with each step forward until even Mintaka stopped and peered uneasily ahead. He stooped to pick up a chip of flint from the sandy floor and threw it over her shoulder into the dark reaches of the shaft. It rattled on the stone walls. 'Nothing,' she said in the silence that followed, but before she could take another step forward something moved in the darkness ahead. They heard a rustling sound that was magnified in the narrow space. They froze in their tracks, and stared into the darkness. There was a high-pitched shriek, echoed immediately by a chorus, the rustle became a rushing roar, and out of the darkness straight into their faces hurled a squeaking, fluttering cloud of darting shapes, whose wings lashed their startled faces.

Mintaka screamed, whirled around, ran straight into Nefer and threw both her arms around his neck. He seized her and held her hard, drawing her down on to the sandy floor.

'Bats,' he told her. 'Only bats.'

'I know!' she said breathlessly.

'They can't hurt you.'

'I know.' Her voice was calmer, but she made no effort to unwind her arms from around his neck. He pressed his face into her thick, springy hair. It smelt rich and perfumed as new-mown grass.

She made a soft, murmuring sound of pleasure, buried her face against his throat, and moved softly against him.

'Mintaka,' he tried gently to push her away, 'I gave you my promise that this would not happen again.'

'I release you from that promise.' Her voice was so soft as to be barely audible. She lifted her face to his. Her breath was warm and sweet-smelling. Her lips were tender and full, and quivered as though she were on the point of tears. 'I want to be your wife more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.'

He reached down and took her mouth with his own. It was wet and so hot that it seemed to scald his. He lost himself in it. She felt that she belonged nowhere else but in his embrace. Still kissing her he explored the angles and curves and plains of her back with his fingertips. He traced the outline of her spine, like a string of pearls running down between the firm ridges of muscle.

He placed a hand on her hip, and felt the curve of her waist like the shape of a precious ceramic vase. He reached behind her and enclosed one buttock in each hand, astonished by their symmetry and elastic firmness.

She thrust her hips forward to meet his, and he pulled her even harder to him. He felt his loins swell and stiffen, and tried to arch his back to hide it from her. She made a small sound of remonstrance, forbidding him to avoid her. She moved against him, glorying in this proof of his arousal, of how much he wanted her.

She had a fleeting memory of Trok thrusting his monstrous blue-veined thing at her, but that horrid episode had no relevance to what was happening here. Without effort the memory was expunged from her mind.

She felt Nefer's fingers running slowly down the cleft between her buttocks, and she concentrated on the sensation, marvelling that she could feel it echoed in the swelling tips of her breasts and in her secret depths.

Touch me.' She spoke into his mouth. 'Yes! Touch me. Hold me.

Stroke me. Love me.'

The sensations blended so that they seemed to envelop her every fibre, every part of her mind and body. He broke the kiss at last, and she felt his lips nuzzling her bare shoulder. She knew instinctively what he needed, and opened the front of her tunic and took out one of her breasts. It felt heavy in her hand, the tip aching and swollen. She entwined the fingers of her other hand in the thick curling hair at the back of his head, and placed her nipple in his mouth. When he sucked it, like a hungry infant, she felt something spasm and contract deep in her belly, and realized with wonder that it was her own womb.

Gently she changed him from one breast to the other, and the sensation did not fade, but instead grew fiercer.

In a daze of pleasure she became aware of his fingers lifting the front of her skirts and fumbling with her loincloth. She moved her legs apart to allow him to reach her more easily, and then, with her free hand, she helped him untie the knot at her hip. The cloth fell away and the air of the tomb was cool on her naked bottom and belly.

She felt him stroke the crisp pelt of curls that covered her pudenda, then he found the swollen lips that bulged from her cleft and parted them gently with trembling fingers. She cried out as if in pain and, without conscious volition, pulled aside the skirts of his apron and reached in to find him. She was startled by its girth and encircled it with thumb and forefinger. It leaped like a living thing in her grasp, and she wanted to look at it. Without releasing her grip, she pushed him back so that she could see down between them.

'You are so beautiful,' she breathed, 'so smooth, so strong.'

Then she kissed him again, and holding her mouth to his she fell backwards dragging him down upon her belly, spreading her thighs to welcome him, sensing his lack of experience. It made her feel maternal and possessive. In her own ignorance, she was guiding him, feeling him sliding and slipping in her overflowing desire, probing at the entrance to her very self. She altered the angle of her hips and he flew deeply into her, his belly flat against hers, filling her until she felt he might cleave her apart, crying out triumphantly in the bittersweet pain of it.

He was riding her like a runaway horse, and she paced him, meeting the thrusting drive of his hips with her own, mounting with him higher and faster, until she knew that she had reached the limit. Then, unbelievably, they went on far past that limit. Breaking free of earth and its bonds, then at the ends of the heavens, feeling it burst out of him, and flood her with liquid heat, swelling up within her so that she matched and met him, their separate beings welding together, so that they became a single entity. Their voices a single jubilant cry.

Long afterwards, when they had returned together from those distant heights, they lay in each other's arms, their sweat and their breath mingling and cooling, still linked by his flesh deep within hers.

'I don't want this ever to end,' she whispered at last. 'I want to stay like this with you for ever.'

A long while later he sat up languidly and looked towards the opening of the shaft. 'It is becoming dark already,' he said, in a wondering tone. 'The day has passed so swiftly.'

She came up on her knees, smoothed down her skirts, and he touched the fresh stains upon the hem. 'Your maiden's blood,' he whispered in awe.

'My gift to you,' she answered. 'The proof of my love for you alone.'

He reached up and tore from the hem of her skirt an encarmined shred the size of her little fingernail.

'What are you doing?' she asked.

'I will keep this for ever as a memory of this wonderful day.' He opened the locket he wore at his throat and placed the fragment of cloth with the lock of her dark hair that it already contained.

'Do you really love me, Nefer?' she asked, as she watched him close the locket.

'With every drop of blood that flows through my veins. More than life eternal.'

--

When they came into the room in the ancient building that they had restored and made habitable, Taita was at the hearth stirring the contents of the pot upon the coals. He looked up at Mintaka as she stood in the open doorway with the last light of the day behind her. Her skirt was still damp where she had washed it in the scanty waters of the well and it clung to her thighs. 'I am sorry we are so late back, Taita,' she said shyly. 'We followed the gazelle out into the desert.'

She had never apologized for their late return before, and Taita looked up at the two of them. Nefer was hovering over her with a soft, dazed expression. The emanation of their love was so strong that it seemed to form a shimmering aura around them and Taita could almost smell it in the air, like the fragrance of a wild flower.

So what was inevitable has happened at last, he mused. The only wonder is that it took so long. He grunted, noncommittal. 'It is evident that you did not catch up with them. Did they run too fast or were you distracted?' They stood awkwardly, covered with confusion and guilt, knowing that to him they were transparent.

Taita turned back to the cooking pot. 'At least there is one provider among us. I have been able to snare a brace of wild pigeon. We need not go hungry to bed.'

The days that followed passed for the two of them in a golden haze of delight. They thought they were being subtle and discreet in Taita's presence, trying to keep their eyes off each other, and touching only when they thought he was not looking.

Mintaka had made a boudoir for herself in a bare cell that led off the main living room of their quarters. Each night Nefer waited until Taita was snoring softly before he rose surreptitiously and crept to her sleeping mat in this little room. Each morning she would rouse him long before dawn and send him back to his own mat in the main room, when they thought Taita was still sleeping.

On the third morning Taita announced inscrutably, 'It seems that these rooms are inhabited by rats or other strange creatures for I am kept from sleep by their scurrying and whispering.' They both looked stricken, and he went on, 'I have found more tranquil accommodation.'

He moved his own sleeping mat and possessions to a small ruin across the square, and to these he retired each evening after they had eaten dinner together.

During the days the lovers wandered out into the desert, to pass their time in talking, making love, and forming a thousand plans for the future, deciding when and how they might marry, how many sons and how many daughters she would bear him and finding names for each.

They were so lost in each other that they forgot the world that lay beyond the lonely desert spaces, until one morning when they left the ruined city before dawn, carrying a coil of rope and two oil lamps, determined to explore the ancient tombs more thoroughly. By a circuitous route they reached the top of the cliff, where they sat down to catch their breath and watch the magnificent spectacle of the dawn breaking over the blue, secret hills.

'Look!' cried Mintaka suddenly, starting out of his arms and pointing back towards the west along the old trade route that led down into Egypt. Nefer jumped up, and they gazed down the valley at the strange caravan coming towards them. There were five ramshackle vehicles leading, followed by a straggling column of humanity.

'There must be a hundred men, at least,' Mintaka exclaimed. 'Who can they be?'

'I don't know,' Nefer admitted grimly, 'but I want you to run back and warn Taita of their approach while I go and spy on them.'

She did not argue, but set off immediately for Gallala, racing down the back slope of the hills, leaping from rock to rock with the agility of a wild ibex. Nefer cached the rope and the lamps, then restrung his bow and checked the arrows in his quiver, before creeping along the crest of the hills, keeping off the skyline and out of sight until he reached a point from where he could look down on the slow-moving caravan.

It was a sorry spectacle. As it came closer, Nefer saw that the first two vehicle were knocked-about fighting chariots drawn by thin, overworked horses. They were designed to carry two men, but each contained four or five. Behind them came an assortment of wagons and carts in no better case than the leading chariots. Nefer saw that they were laden with sick or wounded men, huddled miserably together or lying on makeshift litters. Behind the wagons straggled a long file of walking men, some hobbling along on crutches or leaning on staffs. Others carried litters on which lay other sick or wounded figures.

'In the name of Horus, they look like fugitives from a battlefield,' Nefer muttered, as he strained his eyes to make out the features of the men in the leading chariot.

Suddenly he stood up from behind the rock that had hidden him, and shouted with excitement. 'Meren!' He had at last recognized the tall figure who held the reins of the first chariot. Meren pulled up the horses and shaded his eyes to stare into the eye of the rising sun. Then he, too, shouted and waved as he saw Nefer on the skyline. Nefer ran down the slope, slipping and sliding in the loose scree, and he and Meren embraced, laughing and both speaking at once.

'Where have you been?'

'Where are Mintaka and Taita?'

Then Hilto was hurrying to Nefer, and making loyal salutations. Behind him crowded the host of exhausted and wounded men. Their faces were drawn and gaunt, and blood and pus had soaked through their dirty bandages and dried to a crust. Even the men in the wagons and on the litters, who were too far gone to stand, lifted themselves to stare in awe at Nefer.

With a quick appraisal Nefer could see that these were warriors, but warriors beaten in battle, their bodies and spirits broken.

After Hilto had greeted Nefer he turned back to them, and shouted, 'It is even as I promised you! Here before you stands your true Pharaoh, Nefer Seti. Pharaoh is not dead! Pharaoh lives!'

They were silent and apathetic, sick and demoralized. They stared at Nefer uncertainly.

'Your Majesty,' Hilto whispered to him, 'please stand on this rock so that they may have a clear view of you.'

Nefer sprang up on to it and surveyed them with interest. They stared back at him in silence. Most had never laid eyes on their king before. Even the few who had seen him in formal palace processions had done so from a distance. Then he had been a doll-like figure, covered from throat to foot in splendid robes and jewels, his face a white mask of makeup, sitting stiffly on the royal carriage drawn by the white bullocks. They could not reconcile that remote, unnatural figure with this strapping young man, virile and hard-looking, his face tanned by the sun and his expression alive and alert. He was not the child-pharaoh they had known by reputation alone.

While they still stared without comprehension, or exchanged dubious glances, another figure seemed to materialize out of the air. Like a djinn he appeared beside Nefer on the rock. This one they knew well, both by repute and by sight.

''Tis Taita the Warlock,' they breathed with awe.

'I know what you have suffered,' Taita told them, in a voice that carried clearly to every ear, even to the sick and wounded on the wagons. 'I know what price you have paid to resist the tyranny of the assassins and usurpers. I know that you have come here to find if your true king still lives.'

They murmured in agreement, and suddenly Nefer knew now who they were. These were some of the survivors from the rebellion against Naja and Trok. Where Hilto had found them was a mystery, but these shattered remnants had once been fighting troopers, elite charioteers and warriors.

'This is where it begins,' Taita said softly at his side. 'Hilto has brought you the seeds of your future legions. Speak to them.'

Nefer surveyed them for a moment longer, standing proud and tall before them. He picked out a man in the ranks, who was older than the others, with the first snows in his hair. His eyes were sharp and his expression intelligent. Despite his rags and half-starved body he had the air of authority and command. 'Who are you, soldier? What is your rank and your regiment?'

The man lifted his head and squared his gaunt shoulders, 'I am Shabako. Best of Ten Thousand. Adept of the Red Road. Commander of the centre of the Mut regiment.'

A lion of a man! Nefer thought, but said only, 'I greet you, Shabako.' He lifted the skirt of his chiton and exposed the tattooed cartouche upon his thigh, 'I am Nefer Seti, the true Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt.'

A sigh and a hum went through the scarecrow ranks when they recognized the royal cartouche. As one man they threw themselves to earth in obeisance.

'Bak-her, Divine One, beloved of the gods!'

'We are your loyal subjects, Pharaoh. Intercede for us with the gods.'

Mintaka had come with Taita and now stood below him. Nefer reached down and took her hand. He lifted her on to the rock beside him. 'I give you the Princess Royal, Mintaka of the House of Apepi. Mintaka, who will be my queen and your sovereign lady.'

They greeted her with another shout of acclamation.

'Hilto and Shabako will command you,' Nefer decreed, 'For the time being Gallala will be our base, until we return victoriously to Thebes and Avaris.'

They rose to their feet, even the gravely wounded attempting to climb from their litters, and they cheered him. Their voices were thin and almost lost in the great silences of the desert, but the sound filled Nefer with pride and renewed his determination and resolve. He climbed up into the leading chariot, took the reins from Meren and led his little raggle-taggle army down into his ruined capital city.

--

When they had set up their barracks among the ruins, Nefer sent for Shabako and Hilto and the other officers among them. Late into that first night, and for many nights that followed, he sat with them and listened to their accounts of the rebel-lion, the fighting, and their ultimate defeat by the combined forces of the two pharaohs. They told him of the terrible retribution that Trok and Naja had visited on those rebels who had fallen into their clutches.

At Nefer's orders they detailed the order of battle of the new Egyptian army, the names of the commanders, the numbers and names of their regiments and the total of men, chariots and horses that Naja and Trok had at their disposal. There were three army scribes among the fugitives and Nefer set them to work, writing down all these details and the lists of the enemy garrisons and fortifications on clay tablets.

In the meantime Taita, with Mintaka assisting him, set up an infirmary where all the wounded and the sick were housed. Hilto had brought a dozen or so women with him, wives of some of the fugitives, or merely camp-followers. Taita brought them in to act as nurses and cooks. Taita worked during all the daylight hours, setting broken bones, drawing barbed arrowheads from the flesh with his golden spoons, stitching sword-cuts and in one case even trepanning a cracked, depressed skull that had received a blow from a hardwood war club.

When the light faded and he could no longer work with the sick, he joined Nefer and his commanders as they pored over the maps drawn on tanned lambskins, planning and scheming by the light of the oil lamps. Although Nefer was nominally their supreme commander, in reality he was a student of the art of war and these experienced old soldiers were his instructors, the lessons he learned from them invaluable.

It was after midnight usually before Nefer could adjourn these grave councils, and sneak away to join Mintaka on the sheepskin mat where she patiently waited for him. Then they made love and whispered together. Although they were both exhausted by their labours, the dawn was often creeping over the silent desert before they fell asleep in each other's arms.

In total there were less than a hundred and fifty souls and fifty horses in Gallala, but within the first few days it became evident that the bitter wells of the city could not support even these meagre numbers. Each day they emptied them and each night it took longer for them to refill. Even the quality of the water began to deteriorate: it became more bitter and brackish every day, until it was only barely potable unless mixed with mare's milk.

They were forced to ration the water. The horses were distressed and the mares lost their milk. Still the trickle of underground water shrivelled.

At last Nefer called an emergency council of his commanders. At the end of an hour of solemn talk, Hilto summed up gloomily, 'Unless Horus works a miracle for us, the wells will dry completely, and we will be forced to abandon the city. Where then will we flee?'

They looked at Nefer, who turned expectantly to Taita. 'When the water dries up, where do we go, Magus?' he asked.

Taita opened his eyes. He had sat in silence through the long debate and they had thought he was dozing. Tomorrow, at first light, I want every man who can walk and wield a spade assembled before the gates of the city.'

'To what end?' Nefer asked, but Taita smiled enigmatically.

In the cool of the dawn fifty-six men were waiting before the ancient gates when Taita stepped through. He was wearing all his regalia, the Periapt and the gift of Bay, and his other necklaces, bracelets and amulets. He had washed his hair until it shone, and Mintaka had braided it for him. He carried his staff with the carved serpent's head. Nefer was beside him, a solemn expression covering his mystification. Taita looked over the assembled men. As he had ordered, they all carried digging tools - wooden spades and shovels, metal-tipped digging staves. He nodded with satisfaction then descended the steps and set off up the valley.

At a word from Nefer the men shouldered their tools and followed the old man, falling naturally into a military marching formation. However, they had not far to go, for Taita stopped at the foot of the hills and stared up at the heights.

Nefer recalled that this was the area where Taita had spent so much time over the last few months. Often he and Mintaka had seen him sitting here, drowsing in the sun with hooded eyes like a blue-headed lizard, or prodding and tapping among the rocks with his staff.

For the first time Nefer studied the rock formation of this section of the hills and realized that they were different. The rock was friable and veins of grey limestone had intruded into the schist. A profound fault ran diagonally through the face on the bare, burned hills, edged with strata of different colours. Then he noticed something else. Recently someone had placed marks on some of the stones, esoteric hieroglyphs painted with a white paste, probably made from crushed limestone mixed with well water. There were also cairns of stones placed in a pattern on the earth.

'Nefer, the men must be divided into the five teams,' Taita told him, and Nefer gave the orders. When they were ready, Taita ordered the first forward. 'Start driving an adit into the hillside here.' He pointed out the hieroglyphs that marked the opening to the horizontal shaft where he wanted them to begin digging.

The men looked at each other, puzzled and uncertain, but when Taita glared at them wordlessly, Shabako took over quite naturally. 'You heard the Magus. Get on with it, now, and handsomely!'

It was hard work, even though the underlying rock was shattered along the line Taita had chosen. They had to prise out each lump, then dig out the loose earth that lay behind it. Clouds of dust rose around them, and soon their bodies were powdered with it. Even though their hands were toughened by use of club and sword, their palms blistered, tore and bled. They wrapped them with linen strips and worked on without complaint. The heat came up swiftly with the rising sun, and Shabako pulled the first team out of the excavation and sent in the next.

They rested for an hour at noon when the heat was at its height. Taita went into the shallow cave and inspected the rock face intently. He emerged into the sunlight without comment, and Shabako ordered the work to continue. It went on until it was too dark to see what they were doing, then Shabako released them and sent them down the hill to their frugal dinner. The supplies of dhurra millet were dwindling almost as swiftly as the well waters.

Taking advantage of the coolness, they started again before dawn. By nightfall they had driven the adit only twenty cubits into the hillside. There they struck a solid stratum of blue, crystalline rock. The bronze-tipped staves made no mark upon it, and the men began to mutter.

'Are we warriors or miners?' mumbled one old veteran, as he inspected his bruised and blistered palms.

'What are we supposed to be digging? Our own tombs?' asked another, as he bound up the deep cut in his shin inflicted by a carelessly wielded stave.

'How can we dig through solid rock?' Yet another wiped the running sweat and mingled dust from his bloodshot eyes.

Taita sent them down the valley to where a thick grove of dead acacia trees stood as a silent monument to the water that had long ago dried. They cut cords of the dried branches and carried the bundles back to the diggings. Under Taita's instructions they stacked the firewood on the adamantine rock, and lit it. They let the fire burn through the night, stoking it at intervals, and the next morning, when the rock glowed with the heat, they quenched it with skins filled from the failing wells. In clouds of hissing steam, the rock crackled, burst and exploded.

One man was hit by a sharp flying fragment, and lost his right eye. Taita removed its remains, and stitched the lids closed.

'The gods gave us two eyes for just such a mishap,' he assured his patient. 'You will see just as well with one as you did with two.'

They let the shattered rock cool then prised out great blackened chunks of it. Behind these the rock was still solid and impenetrable. They stacked fresh cords of firewood upon it and repeated the arduous, dangerous process, with the same result. They had gained a few cubits for the expenditure of days of heartbreaking labour.

Even Nefer was discouraged, and told Mintaka so when they lay together in the darkness that night.

'There are many things that we do not understand, my heart,' she cradled his head and whispered.

'We don't even know why he is making us dig this hole, and when I ask him he gives me that infuriating look of his, like an ancient tortoise. The men have almost had enough of it, and so have I.'

She giggled. 'Ancient tortoise! You had better make sure he doesn't hear that. He might turn you into a toad, and I should not like that at all.'

Early the following morning, the teams of weary, disgruntled men traipsed up the valley and assembled around the mouth of the tunnel to await the arrival of the Magus.

With his usual sense of the dramatic, Taita came up the slope with the first rays of the rising sun behind him, suffusing his silver bush of hair with light. He carried a roll of linen cloth over one shoulder. Nefer and the other officers stood to welcome him, but he ignored their salutations and gave instructions to Shabako to hang the linen over the mouth of the shaft like a curtain. When it was in place he entered the screened shaft alone, and a silence fell over the men gathered outside.

It seemed like a long wait but was in reality less than an hour, for the sun had risen only a hand's breadth above the horizon, when the linen curtain was jerked aside and Taita stood in the entrance of the cave. Either by chance or the Magus' design, the sunlight shone directly into the shaft. The blank face of the adit was brilliantly lit, and the ranks of men crowded forward expectantly. They saw that now a representation of the wounded eye of the great god Horus was painted on the blue rock.

Taita's expression was rapt as he began to chant the invocation to the Horus of Gold. The waiting congregation fell to their knees and came in with the chorus:

'Horus of Gold, mighty butt!

Invincible in strength!

Master of his foes!

Holy in His rising!

Wounded eye of the universe!

Attend our endeavours.'

After the last verse Taita turned and, with every eye fixed avidly upon him, strode back down the adit until he stood before the blue-grey wall of newly exposed rock at the end. Tiny crystals of feldspar were embedded in it and sparkled as the sun played on them.

'Kydash!' Taita cried, and struck the wall with his staff. The men at the entrance shrank back, for this was one of the words of power.

'Mensoar!'

They gasped with awe, and he struck again.

'Ncube!' He struck for the third and last time, then stepped back.

Nothing happened, and Nefer felt a sinking disappointment and anticlimax. Taita stood unmoving, and slowly the sun climbed higher and the shadow spread across the rock wall.

Abruptly Nefer felt a tingle of excitement, and the men around him stirred and whispered. In the centre of the rock face, under the painted eye, a dark damp spot appeared. It spread gradually, and a single drop of moisture oozed out, sparkling like a tiny gem in the sunlight. Then it trickled slowly down the wall and balled in the dust of the floor.

Taita turned and walked out of the shaft. Behind him there was a sharp sound, like the breaking of a dry branch, and a fine crack split the rock from top to bottom. Water dripped to the floor, drop after drop, the tempo accelerating into a rapid patter. Another sound, like a shard of pottery snapping in flames, and a chunk of rock fell out of the wall. A sluggish trickle of yellow mud oozed out of the opening it left. Then, with a roar, the entire rock face collapsed, there was a rush of mud and a gushing fountain of crystal-bright water. Knee-deep, it swept the length of the shaft, burst from the mouth and spilled down the hillside, bounding and rippling over the rocks.

There were shouts of amazement, praise and disbelief from the dusty ranks. Suddenly Meren ran forward and plunged headlong into the rushing torrent. He came up spluttering with his wet hair slicked down over his face. He scooped up a double handful and gulped it down. 'Sweet!' he shouted. 'It tastes sweet as honey.'

Men threw off their clothing and rushed naked into the stream, splashing sheets of spray, throwing handfuls of mud, ducking each other and shouting with laughter. Nefer could not long resist the temptation before he shed all dignity and jumped in on top of Meren and wrestled him beneath the surface.

Taita stood on the bank of the stream and looked down on the mayhem with a benign expression. Then he turned to Mintaka. 'Put the thought out of your mind,' he said.

'What thought?' She feigned innocence.

'It would be an outrage to have a princess of Egypt cavorting with a rabble of rough, naked soldiers.' He took her hand and led her away down the hill, but she looked back wistfully at the revels.

'How did you do it, Taita?' she asked. 'How did you make the fountain appear? What kind of magic was it?'

'The magic of common sense and observation. The water has been there for centuries, just waiting for us to dig down to it.'

'But what about the prayers and the words of power? Were those of no effect?'

'Sometimes men need encouragement.' He smiled and touched the side of his nose. 'A little magic is a sovereign tonic for flagging spirits.'

--

For months thereafter every man was employed in the digging of a channel to lead the sweet flood of water down the hillside and into the old wells. These now became storage cisterns for the settlement. When they brimmed over, Taita surveyed the old fields at the lower end of the valley that were now a stony desolation. However, the outlines of ancient irrigation ditches were still visible. Their levels had been set out by the old inhabitants, and it took small effort to clean out the contour lines and divert the overflowing waters into them.

The desert earth was fertile; the goodness had not been leached out of it by heavy rainfall. The continuous sunshine, and abundant water had a miraculous effect. They planted the millet seed smuggled in from Egypt. All Egyptians were farmers and gardeners by nature and tradition, and they lavished their skills upon the land and the crops. Within months they had reaped their first harvest of dhurra. Then they planted grass fields for grazing, which flourished and provided far beyond their present needs. The women joined in the cutting, drying and stacking of fodder, and within the year they had sufficient to sustain an army of cavalry, though yet they lacked the horses.

Almost every day fugitives drifted into the city, having braved the desert crossing to escape the tyranny of the false pharaohs. They came singly or in small parties, weary and almost dying of thirst and starvation. The guards posted along the hills intercepted them, and sent them in to Hilto. He made them swear the oath of fealty to Pharaoh Nefer Seti, then issued them with rations and, depending on their suitability, sent them to the training regiments or put them to work in the fields or on restoring the dilapidated buildings of the old city. These waifs and foundlings were not the only recruits, however. A cohort of deserters from the armies of the false pharaohs marched in smartly with their javelins, shouting the praises of Nefer Seti as soon as they were in sight of the walls. Then a squadron of twenty chariots, driven by crack troopers of the Ankh regiment with a colonel named Timus at their head, came in under arms and joyously swore themselves in as the liegemen of Pharaoh Nefer Seti. Timus brought the momentous news that Naja and Trok were prepared at last to march on their combined offensive against King Sargon of Babylon and Assyria.

Over the last few months the two pharaohs had mustered their expeditionary force of three thousand chariots at Avaris, and now they had almost finished their preparations to cross the land bridge that linked Egypt with the eastern lands to the north of the Great Bitter Lake and Lake Timsah. First they had sent a column to drive in the Babylonian pickets along the border then, once the road was cleared, they had shipped in tens of thousands of water jars in carts and wagons and placed them at strategically located storage stations across the dry lands. The country beyond was fertile and well watered.

They planned to cross the land bridge in the full of the moon, using its light and the cool nights to sweep past Ismailiya and up over the Khatmia Pass and on to Beersheba, gathering up the forces of their vassal satraps as they went.

Nefer and Taita had been preparing the defences of Gallala against an imminent attack by the false pharaohs. They knew that their presence in the ancient city must by now be common knowledge throughout the two kingdoms. They had confidently expected Naja and Trok to move against them first, before starting on the Mesopotamian adventure. Therefore they were amazed to have this reprieve.

They have not taken seriously the threat that our presence so close to their borders poses,' Nefer exulted. 'If they had attacked us now while we are still so weak, we would have had no choice but to fly.'

'Perhaps they took that possibility into their calculations,' Taita agreed. 'Perhaps they are intent on conquering Mesopotamia and cutting off any support that we might have attracted in the Orient. Then they would have us surrounded. I think they have miscalculated, for they leave us to grow stronger for at least another year.'

'Can we be certain that this is not a diversion?' Nefer asked thought-fully. 'Is the eastern expedition a pretence? Perhaps their true offensive will be directed against us after they have lulled us into a sense of false security.'