The rattle of gravel and more clay announced the arrival of Kheti. Granting the cub full room for fear of frightening it into a retreat that would carry it over the ledge, the tall Nubian surveyed the dead leopardess. He prodded the body with his ax and stooped to inspect the chewed shaft protruding from her body.
"Kush. But it is an old wound. She has been dead two days at least."
Rahotep made a swift pounce. His fingers nipped the loose skin behind the cub's head, and the cub voiced the same yowling cry that had first drawn his attention from a distance. He picked it up, its four paws sawing wildly at the air.
"Horus pleases to give a gift, Lord," Kheti remarked. "Now I wonder why. Gifts from the Great Ones who rule from beyond the sky often carry mixed luck with them. And a leopard who has a hide akin in color to that of the Kush— though such are rare—is notably vile of temper. However, this is so young a cub, he may yet be brought to follow at the heel and obey on the hunting trail or in war. He is strong to live—aye, and fight, too—when his sister and dam have died. But shield those claws, small as they are, Lord, if you do not wish to bear some smarting battle wounds!" He laughed as the enraged cub wrinkled its small mask in a snarl and continued to beat furiously at the air.
Rahotep shook out the folds of his cloak awkwardly with his left hand. Kheti seized one corner of the stout length of cloth and threw it about the struggling captive, helping to make a heaving bundle that the captain pressed against his chest as he reclimbed the heights and went down to join his waiting men.
He jogged ahead to the ass herd. Yes, he was right. There was a mare with a very small colt running beside her. And with the assistance of several would-be leopard tamers, and some expenditure of effort, he acquired a measure of milk in an earthenware cup. As the party moved on, the captain carried the now limp and exhausted cub in the crook of his arm, lowering a strip of linen first into the cup one of the archers held ready and then putting it into that small, panting mouth. The cub caught the idea quickly enough, sucking avidly, only its black head protruding from the cloak wrappings.
"A strong one indeed, Lord," commented the cup bearer. "Shall I try for more milk now? Hori has the she-ass ready in a leading rope."
Rahotep shook his head. "We cannot delay again this side of the river. Once across that—before Re departs from the sky—"
He saturated the rag with the last few drops of milk and felt the persistent tug of the cub's mouthing. They marched with all the precautions proper in hostile country—with an alert rear guard and flankers out. The Desert Scouts were well seasoned patrolmen. But the captain did not intend to make camp until they reached a site he had earlier marked for that purpose because of its defenses. Haptke and his band of border raiders had a reputation for predawn attacks. Not that the Kush could ever hope to catch any company of Scouts unprepared—as they could the unwary farmers of the northern fields. But Rahotep had long ago learned that, in the border wastes with the Kush nosing about like lean black hounds, no wise man took chances.
Their trail dipped into a cup of faded green about the dwindled river, where the mud of the banks was cut again and again by the hoofs and pads of the animals that came there to drink. The captain took the fording as slowly as his sense of duty allowed, savoring to the full the soft wash of water about his feet and legs. But that welcome moisture dried all too quickly as they breasted the slope beyond and came to the hill, with its crown of ruins, which he had set for their goal.
The defaced statue of a seated king frowned over them toward the lowlands, facing in challenge the border and the lands of the Kush. Clay and sand had silted up about its base, but in the sunset's red glow Rahotep could still read the royal name—Sesostris, the Theban Pharaoh, first of his name, who had added Nubia to the holdings of Egypt almost a thousand years before the captain had been born. A Pharaoh of pharaohs indeed, before whom the Kush had groveled and slunk away like wasteland scavengers. If only such a one ruled today! The leader of Scouts raised his baton in salute as he passed that brooding king of stone.
Time had breached the walls of the ancient fort; its inner courts were half filled with rubble. But those same walls were more protection against a rush attack than the open desert hillocks beyond.
One of the archers who had been on flank duty came in with a gazelle slung over his shoulder, and a fire was made. The loose animals were turned into the roofless enclosure of the old granary. They would be watered sparingly, but tonight they must go hungry.
Rahotep began his rounds of the encampment, inspecting the picket lines of the burden asses, stationing or checking upon sentries. Then at last he came to stand at the foot of the statue once again, looking south. There was no movement, not even of a dust devil raised by a wind puff, between the fort and the river. But he doubted that they lacked trailers. Haptke's men lurked there, ready to avenge their defeat on any straggler they could cut off, eager to spear-point an attack if the chances of success seemed good.
The captain turned to the west, where the sun was a scarlet fire on the horizon, still almost too brilliant to face. He stripped himself of his emblems of command, the sistrum from his wrist and the baton-flail, and laid them on the sand. Then he lacked off his sandals and stood humbly before the greatest of Overlords, the sun. Rahotep looked straight into that blazing glory of red and gold before he made the salute of a warrior to his commander, his palms earthward at knee level. Having done so, the Egyptian straightened once more, proud in his heritage as a believer in Re, and chanted:
"I give praise when I see Thy beauty,
I hymn Re when He sets."
From the camp came the answering boom of the archers' rich voices:
"Who hearest him that prays,
Who hearest the entreaties of him who calls upon Thee,"
"Who comest at the voice of him who utters Thy name—" the captain intoned, and thought that the words were reechoed, as if by the stone figure beside him. "Thy name— Thy name!"
Rahotep drew his upper arm wearily across his grimed face, longing for a few comforts—water to wash in, fresh clothing. To such simple luxuries had his world shrunk during the past five years. But tomorrow, if Re favored them, he would have those again when they reached the fort.
He gathered up sistrum and flail and went down into camp, seating himself cross-legged on the mat Kheti had spread for him. There was another cup of milk to be fed to the cub. But when the captain took up his own portion of roast meat, the small furry head turned in his direction, the little mouth opened in shrill complaint, and tiny teeth tore eagerly at the shred he proffered.
"That is good," Kheti commented. "This one was almost weaned. He shall be the easier to raise for that. We have had a profitable foray this time, Lord. It will be long before Haptke can make trouble again—if he ever can. And a Great One has been moved to honor you with a gift—that very Great One who is the totem of your own clan—"
The young officer smiled with a bitterness that made an odd shadow on his youthful face. "Did you yourself not say, Kheti, that gifts from Great Ones are to be suspect, that they sometimes bring with them mixed fortune?"
"True enough, Lord. But it is also true that when a man's fortune has long been dark, then any change may be for the better—"
A jackal barked in the desert. Rahotep tensed, and the leopard cub hissed at the sudden tightening of the captain's grip upon its body.
"You believe that my fortune has been dark?" "Lord, are we not foster brothers between whom there is little ever to be hidden? Do I not well know why you, the son of the Viceroy, run the desert with the Scouts and do not instead take your ease and hold a measure of power in Semna with your equals? And when your brother, the Lord Unis, comes to be Viceroy in his turn, it shall fare even worse with you. On that day, my brother, it would be well to depart from this land, lest you be made to eat dust, and the eating of dust is not for the Hawk—"
"I am not the Hawk!" Rahotep countered, but his control was better as he put down the cub and ran his fing
ers soothingly along the curve of the small feline head. "There is no such nome, there is no longer an Egypt as there was. Have not the Hyksos, those sons of Set—those eaters of offal, followers of the Eternal Darkness—overrun the land? They have broken asunder the dwellings of the Great Ones, defiled the sacred places, slain those who would stand against them for the honor of the Two Lands—"
Kheti shrugged. "To every king his day. These defilers of the north have sat overlong in the high seat, and they do not sit there by the graces of your Amon-Re. Suppose someone arose strong enough to tumble them from that seat; would not those who marched at his back rise with him? And if the Hyksos are driven forth from the lands they have stolen, would not such lands come again into the hands of those with a rightful claim upon them? Do not throw aside your heritage, my brother—but neither can you claim it by standing afar from its boundaries."
"You have been talking with Methen," Rahotep half accused.
"Brother, you have friends as well as enemies in this land. The Commander Methen served your grandfather, the Hawk.
He was loyal to your mother, the Lady Tuya, when she came into exile. Is it not reasonable that he wishes to see her son in his rightful place? And there is no future for you in Nubia. Should your father depart to his horizon—may Dedun of the Many Goats forbid that disaster"—Kheti made a warding-off- evil sign with crossed fingers—"then shall the Lord Unis rule this land and you shall be nothing. For his mother, the Lady Meri-Mut, has mighty kinsmen to favor her son. Also they are allied with Prince Teti—"
"Teti is close to a traitor! He sees Nubia as a separate kingdom with the crown on his head!"
"That is as it may be, brother. But neither he nor the Lady Meri-Mut forgets that one of their ancestors sat on the throne of Egypt itself for a space and held the Crook and the Flail of Pharaoh over north and south together. In troubled times such as these, that might happen again. To be king in Nubia is to be more than halfway to Pharaoh in Egypt, if a man is strong and daring enough! We do not want to see Unis viceroy here—would Egypt profit if Teti sat in her high seat?" "But my father has set his face against my going north—" "Aye, the Viceroy has no wish to lose an officer upon whom he can depend."
Rahotep shivered, though as yet the chill wind of nightfall had not found them out. It was true. In the eyes of his father, Ptahhotep, Viceroy of Nubia, he was merely a responsible officer of Scouts. Since his mother's death, he had been cut off from the life of his father's court, a fact that weighed heavily on his spirit. He had been sent from one border fort to another and had grimly centered his existence upon his profession, learning from the archers with whom he coursed the desert all they had to teach.
There was no love between him and his half brother, Unis. Unis was his father's heir, for he was the son of the Great Wife, the Lady Meri-Mut, heiress of an important family of mixed Nubian-Egyptian blood. Rahotep's mother, the Lady
Tuya, had been only a secondary wife, though she was indeed heiress of the Striking Hawk Nome in the Egypt her son had never seen. She had been sent south to safety after the invading Hyksos had overrun her father's holding and had killed him in a last battle.
While Rahotep's mother lived, he had been given all she had to grant him, the ancient learning, the training of a nobleman, everything that could be taught by Hentre, her father's administrator-scribe, and Methen, who had once commanded the Hawk force in the field.
After her death, Rahotep had been dispatched to the frontier posts, ostensibly to further his military training. It had been done under the seal of the Viceroy—that remote man who he found it difficult to believe was, in truth, his father.
Ptahhotep had long been under pressure to throw aside the title, Viceroy of the Pharaoh, and rule in his own name in Nubia. But he had never done so. He must know, however, that when he died, Unis would not be content to remain "Royal Son of the South," but would strive to a greater title and fuller power. Yet of late there had been tales drifting south from Thebes that a new Pharaoh had mounted the high seat, one ready to don the blue crown of war against the invaders. Methen had talked restlessly of that. If Theban rulers did rise again—! Rahotep stirred. He had always been moved by Methen's stories of past glories, by the older man's urging for action against the Hyksos. Yet his orders, under the Viceroy's seal, held him to the frontier of the far south.
Now, again, came the bark of a jackal, repeated thrice. Rahotep was on his feet, gazing into the dark. He heard the challenge of a sentry, and then the rattle of someone hurrying through the rubble-choked ways of the old fort.
A runner, his almost naked body coated with dust, pattered into the circle of firelight and stood with heaving chest.
He saluted the captain and then stooped to pinch up dust to throw upon his twisted headcloth.
"Grieve, Lord. The beloved of Re has gone to his horizon. The Viceroy Ptahhotep lives now only in the sunset!"
Rahotep froze. Then mechanically he bent in turn to gather up a handful of the gritty clay and smear it across his face in mourning.
"Blessed be Re, Who gathers His children into life everlasting." He made the conventional answer. But somehow he could not believe what he had just heard. Ptahhotep had always been remote, as remote almost as Pharaoh. But in Raho- tep's world he had been a secure fixture. The captain could not imagine a Nubia in which his father did not rule.
Chapter 2
PHARAOH SUMMONS
"When did the Lord Ptahhotep depart this life?" Rahotep did not know what inner suspicion prompted Kheti to ask that question. But the answer was as startling as a Kush arrow between one's shoulder blades.
"He has been beyond the horizon these thirty days and he will be laid in the place prepared"—the runner's lips moved silently as if he were engaged in some calculation—"three days from this sunset."
Rahotep stared, astounded. "But it takes seventy days to properly prepare the body—" he began almost stupidly, and then licked his lips to taste the flatness of the mourning dust. To hurry the burial of a great lord in this manner was unheard of, and he was alerted to danger as he might have been by a sentry's warning.
"It is said that the haste is necessary because the Lord Ptah- hotep died of poison from a sand thing he trod upon in the garden," explained the runner delicately.
"Thirty days," repeated Kheti. There was a metallic note in his voice. "And only now are the tidings brought to the Lord Rahotep. Where have you dallied on the road, runner?" His hand shot out, fixing upon the other's bare shoulder. On his face there was a look many a delinquent archer would have recognized and feared.
"I am not out of Semna," the man sputtered. "The Commander Methen is at Kah-hi and I am of his sending. And this also he told me, Lord." He looked beyond Kheti to Rahotep. "That you might know the truth was in my words—to say to you, 'Remember that which you wear on your right thigh and be warned!' "
Rahotep's hand fell to brush across that now faint scar, covered save for a finger's breadth by his short warrior's kilt. And the hidden meaning in that warning was clear in his mind. It was Unis's spear that had made that scar years ago during a lion hunt. Unis had been noisily remorseful for his clumsiness, a clumsiness that had never been explained to the satisfaction of either Methen or Rahotep. If Unis now ruled in Semna—and so in Nubia—that fact alone would explain both the captain's ignorance of his father's death and the hasty burial. Something was badly amiss. Rahotep turned to Kheti with crisp orders.
"This command is now yours. Send me Kakaw with filled waterskins. Runner, take your ease here and come on in the morning with the Scouts."
He thought he might have to argue against Kheti's protests, but the underofficer only nodded and called for the archer Kakaw, a noted tracker who had served as a messenger and knew the desert paths by day or night.
"Be sure, Lord," Kheti said as Rahotep, a waterskin thong cutting into his shoulder, prepared to leave, "we shall make a quick march to Kah-hi. There are those here—and there— who are your men in all ways."
It was midmorning when Rahotep sighted the palm trees marking the fields about the post of Kah-hi. He sketched an answer to the sentries' salute. Within the shadow of the gate another man stood waiting. He stepped forward, catching Rahotep by the shoulders and drawing him into the half embrace of close friends.
"It is well with you, boy?" He studied the drawn young face under its mask of trail dust, noting with approval the other's assured bearing and his unconscious aura of authority —as worn by a man not only used to giving orders, but also understanding well the reason for giving them.
"It is well with me, Methen. But it is not well—" He stopped in mid-breath, warned by the narrowing of the older officer's eyes. "I have come at your summoning," he ended more formally.
"There should have been an earlier summoning and not from my lips." Methen revealed a flash of anger.