But it was not until they were in Rahotep's private quarters that Methen, leaning against the wall by the bathing slab while the captain ladled the welcome water over his parched skin, spoke crisply and to the point.
"Unis had taken into his hands the gold seal of office. He controls Semna and Nubia for the time being. Now he plays a waiting game—"
"A waiting game?"
"One of Prince Teti's captains came at once. It is rumored that his lord follows him closely. The Lady Meri-Mut has received this captain in the inner courtyard twice. Unis has sent messages to all commandants of border forts. They are to detach ten men here, twenty there, ready for some unknown service when the Viceroy orders—"
"Messengers to the forts! But here at Kah-hi—surely Ham- set could not have kept secret such news!" Rahotep drew the towel back and forth about his thin middle, frowning. True, he had been out on two patrols during the past thirty days, once spending ten days away from the fort. But in Kah-hi quarters were atop one another. It was impossible to keep any secrets from eyes or ears. And he knew of old how not only truth, but also the most extravagant rumor, spread from man to man as fire licks across a plain of withered grass.
"It seems that Kah-hi was overlooked in this general diffusion of important news," commented Methen dryly. "Your supply train came in yesterday—that would have brought Hamset some knowledge. But—officially he had heard nothing before my own arrival. It was only when I did not hear from you that I discovered what had been arranged."
Rahotep smiled wryly. "Unis takes the precautions of an elephant hunter to steal upon a flea. Does he believe that I shall gather a host and march upon Semna to wrest Ptahho- tep's seal from his finger—?" But his smile faded as he watched Methen's sober face. "He can't!" he protested. "To think that is sheer stupidity, and Unis cannot be accused of that!"
"Unis is not stupid; he is only human. He does, as all of us, judge others' motives by his own. It is what he would do if he stood in Kah-hi and you sat in Semna. Why do you think you have been so long assigned to Kah-hi?"
"I am a captain of Scouts, we patrol the border, and Kah-hi is the first fort to front the Kush—"
But Methen was shaking his head, and his expression suggested that he had expected brighter wits in his protege.
"Kah-hi is the least of all the border forts, the one most exposed to danger. Should the Kush arise in force and overrun this territory—as they have done in the past and will doubtless do many times in the future until we have a Pharaoh strong enough to teach them wisdom—Kah-hi would speedily cease to be. And among all the Nubian forces the losses are the greatest among the Scouts."
Rahotep put one hand against the water-splashed wall. He felt a little sick and dizzy, as if a mace had crashed against the side of his skull.
"My father sent me here." His voice was hardly above a whisper.
"You have lived five years on the border," Methen replied. "There are venomous creatures hidden in the sands of Semna's gardens—as the Viceroy himself discovered at last. A man can defend himself against the Kush. Against such secret sand creepers and those who may plant them in his path, he has a lesser chance. Ptahhotep may have saved your life by seeming to agree to throw it away—"
The sickness that had been a bitter taste in the captain's mouth ebbed. Methen's tone was measured, his words well chosen. Now Rahotep clung to the hope that he spoke the truth. His father had been aloof, but there had been no dealings between them in the past that had suggested that the Viceroy had a twisted or evil nature. One could better believe that he had deliberately sent his younger son into an open danger to protect him from a more subtle peril at home.
Perhaps that stab of suspicion and the relief that had followed with Methen's words sharpened the captain's wits, for another thought came so quickly that he shared it with the older officer.
"A son who did not come to mourn his father upon the tidings of his death could be rumored a traitor—could be accused of lingering to make mischief—" Rahotep dropped the towel and kicked it away, reaching for a fresh kilt to buckle on. As he slid his dagger home in the belt sheath, he heard Methen laugh softly.
"You have not filled your head with sand after all, boy. But I also do not doubt that Hamset may have received certain orders with his supplies—"
Rahotep had taken up his baton-flail; now he swung around to face the other. His usually well-curved lips were set in a thin line, giving his face some of the remote sternness of the forgotten statue in the ruined fort by the river.
"Hamset's orders are for the officers under his command. But if I turn over to him my baton-flail, he no longer commands me and dares not stand between me and the outer gates of Kah-hi."
Methen folded his arms across his broad chest, and Rahotep braced himself for a hot retort. To Methen, the warrior's life was the best one. He would hardly support the captain's resignation from service.
But instead he was nodding. "I could wish you were leading a company when you reach Semna. But there are those there who have not forgotten bread eaten in the past, nor where true allegiance lies."
"It is said"—Rahotep pulled the words out of childhood memory—
" 'Fight for his name, purify yourselves by his oath, and ye shall be free from trouble. The beloved of the king shall be blessed; but there is no tomb for one hostile to Pharaoh; and his body shall be thrown into the waters.' "
"It is so said," Methen echoed.
"But"—Rahotep pointed out the obvious—"where is there a Pharaoh to serve? I take no oath to Unis!"
Methen smiled. "To that also we may find an answer in Semna. But the road lies open to our feet, and Re anchors His sky boat for no man. We must be on our way before sundown."
The elderly commandant of Kah-hi did not reach for the baton Rahotep extended. His face, seamed by years into a pattern of sun wrinkles and skin-over-bone, showed little expression. His eyes, heavy-lidded, rose neither to his youthful subordinate nor to Methen.
"There comes a time," he spoke meditatingly, "when a man is no longer pulled hither and thither by ambition or desire. I )reams die and take with them some of our fears—so that one is empty of both. I, Hamset, hold this fort of Kah-hi and do what I can also to hold back the Kush. What care I for the problems of greater lords and captains? The Viceroy is dead. I have no order over any seal concerning you. Go as you wish, Captain. It is fitting that a son bid a last farewell to his father. Who am I to interfere in other matters? You are detached from Kah-hi in all honor—here you have served ably and well. And you are also authorized to take with you an archers' guard of your own choosing—" His voice trailed into silence, but when Rahotep would have thanked him, he held up a forbidding hand.
"Go your way but tell me nothing, Captain. I am the commandant of a small and well-nigh-forgotten post, and that position I would keep until I depart to the horizon. I have no official word concerning you—and to strange stories that may have been whispered in a man's ear hinting this and that I am deaf. But you do well to march out of Kah-hi before I am forced to take other action. May the fortune of Re be with you—you have been a good officer, young and foolhardy at times after the fashion of youth, but nevertheless you have earned your bread here."
He did not even raise his eyes when Rahotep gave him a last salute, so perhaps he never knew that Methen granted him the same recognition. And he did not appear later when, after the arrival of Kheti and the rest of Rahotep's company at the fort, the young captain chose his ten men. All of them were young, all were without wives or families in the quarters to tie them to Kah-hi. And they marched from the fort two hours before sundown without seeing Hamset again.
The leopard cub traveled in a bag, the thongs of which were slung over Rahotep's shoulder. None fed or tended him save the captain, so that while he snarled and spat at most of the men, he began to give a grudging respect to the one who carried him, and at last willingly allowed himself to be handled and suitably caressed behind the ears and under the jaw like a tame cat.
/> They did not reach Semna until the fourth day, though Rahotep pushed the pace. The vast western fort with its thirty-foot walls had been finished some three hundred years before. Then the Pharaoh had ruled from the delta in the north beside the bitter waters to Kerma in the hot lands of the far south. Now there was no king in Egypt save the Hyksos lord in his delta city of Avaris, and in Nubia none paid him tribute.
The gate sentries were brusque. Rahotep guessed that if they had been a little more sure of their ground, he might have been turned away. That they were not sure was a small indication that Unis might still be two-minded concerning his half brother's importance—or else not expecting any bold move on Rahotep's part.
Kheti's hand rested lightly on his belt ax as he looked about him speculatively.
"It is always good to pay respect to the dead," he commented, "but even the Great Ones do not demand that a man lay his unguarded hand within the jaws of a wild lion. It might have been well, brother, to have set yourself a more northern goal than this fort." His nostrils widened as he drew in a deep breath. "There is a smell about this place which alerts the wary."
The fortress troops with their tall shields of red-and-white- spotted cowhide, their spears and slings, were in contrast to the lean, dark desert coursers among whom Rahotep had lived so long, and he found himself estimating how well they might stand up against a determined Kush dawn rush.
Rahotep's company, rounding a storehouse to come to the Hall of Judgment, stopped short to survey in open wonder a light vehicle being driven slowly back and forth. Two hundred years earlier the Hyksos had broken the Egyptian army with their ruthless chariot charges, riding over demoralized companies who had never faced horses before. Since then, the princes of Thebes and the southern nomarchs had acquired similar horse troops. But in Nubia they were still unknown.
The stallion in the harness of the light two-wheeled cart shook his head and blew impatiently, the plumes on his metal head crest bobbing up and down.
"There is a proper way to give wings to the feet!" Kheti exclaimed. "Plant those along the border and Haptke will be overrun before he has time to think up any naughtiness. Aah, brother, what a deal of sand slogging they would save a man—"
"Save that those wheels need a road of sorts to follow," observed the captain. The chariot—and its horse—was a marvel right enough, and one that at another moment he would have been content to examine carefully. But the identity of the chariot's master was now a question of importance to his own future.
"Teti is here!" Methen's whispered warning answered that question.
With only a second's hesitation, Rahotep marched forward, his men falling in step behind him. They reached the portal of the hall, and the keeper on duty there arose from his stool, his wand of office out as a barrier.
But as Rahotep brought his baton down, bearing the wand earthward, the man stepped aside nimbly with a half grin. It was plain that, like the sentries at the gate, he was not yet ready to stand against Ptahhotep's younger son.
The sound of raised voices reached the small party as they came into the central hall.
"—in the Name of Pharaoh" someone was saying with that dipped accent that Rahotep had heard in his mother's speech, in Hentre's, and in Methen's. Plainly a northerner spoke.
"The Lord Ptahhotep has departed to the west—"
And there was no mistaking that voice either. Rahotep frowned. As a small child, he had been overawed by the Lady Meri-Mut's autocratic brother, Pen-Seti, Chief Priest of Anu- bis. As a growing lad he had distrusted the lean dark man with his fanatic's eyes, his iron self-control. And, upon his own banishment from Semna, the captain had known his distrust to be well founded.
Unis had shown little liking either for his uncle in those boyhood days, but they might well have joined forces now. Rahotep believed this was true as he studied the group standing before the empty high seat at the other end of the hall.
Unis, Rahotep decided critically and with an inner satisfaction, had not worn well. Accustomed to the fine trained bodies of the Scouts, the captain found the rounded plumpness of his half brother an indication of softness—of body, if not also of will and spirit. His brother's belly bulged over the richly ornamented belt of his sheer outer audience skirt, and his heavy wig was thick with scented oil, making an extra wide frame for his broad, flat-featured face.
He was accompanied by Pen-Seti, the priest's tall frame bending a little forward as if he were some runner set on the mark. The austerity of his white skirt and shawl and the bony outline of his shaven head made a stark contrast to Unis's softness.
Unis, Pen-Seti, and—Teti! The rebel Nubian prince was seated on a stool, leaning back against one of the blue lotus- carved pillars, his handsome face, with its sparkling eyes alert to the slightest move, turned to the scene as if his host had arranged it for his amusement.
Fronting this triumvirate was a stranger. By his dress he was a high-ranking officer. But the insignia heading his baton, the symbol painted on the corselet of leather reinforced with bronze strips that he wore, was not known to the Scout captain. On seeing him, however, Methen's breath hissed between liis teeth. He pushed forward to stand arm to arm with Rahotep.
"You dare to defy our lord?" the stranger was demanding with heat as Rahotep's party advanced.
"Not so." That was Pen-Seti speaking in a rush of words intended to overwhelm his hearers. "The message which you bore hither was for the Lord Ptahhotep. To the Lord Ptahho- tep has it been delivered. Your mission is accomplished, Lord Nereb, as you may truthfully report to him who sent you. That the Lord Ptahhotep may no longer be interested in the affairs of Nubia—or of those of Egypt—is no man's fault."
"Aye, your message bore my father's name—to my father's tomb it has been taken." Unis smiled slyly. "Thus all dispute is ended, for that which has been sealed unto the Lord Ptahhotep is his alone."
"You hold by the letter and defy the spirit!" The strange officer's gaze went from face to face, resting for a second or two longer upon Prince Teti. "Beware lest Pharaoh takes another view—"
"Do you speak in the name of Apophi?" retorted Pen-Seti. "For to our knowledge the king of the Hyksos holds the north, and what that alien despoiler of the gods orders is no concern of ours!"
"I speak in the name of the Pharaoh Sekenenre, the Beloved of Re, who, seated upon the great throne, holds forth the flail for his enemies, the crook for his people. I am the mouth of the Lord of the Two Lands, a runner for the Son of Re—"
Teti yawned and allowed his gaze to wander to the far wall, where he stared with the intentness of an artist at a very ordinary painting of birds among marsh reeds.
The audience, if audience it was, came to a sudden end as Unis, looking past the stranger, caught sight of Rahotep. His sly smile contorted into a scowl. And so marked was his surprise and displeasure that the Lord Nereb half turned to see who stood at his back.
"What do you here?" spat Unis.
"My duty, brother. Is it not seemly that a man's son follow him to the tomb in all honor?"
"My father is buried. You are overlate in your duty—"
"Your messenger was late, brother, so late that he did not arrive at all. Perhaps he was met by a Kush arrow instead of by my men. At Kah-hi, the raiders sniff close to the trails. But nevertheless I am here."
"Where there is no place for you! Return to your Kah-hi from which you had no right to depart without orders."
Rahotep walked forward. The leopard cub opened its eyes to stare at Unis unblinkingly. When its master stopped a spear-length away from Unis, it mouthed a hiss. Rahotep surveyed his brother slowly, from the perfume-matted ceremonial wig to those plump feet that had never done a full day's march, and back again—just as he might examine a recruit being paraded before him for the first time. Five years ago Unis had been one of the powerful adults whose assurance had made his younger brother feel inferior. But at this meeting Unis no longer held that advantage.
"We have not seen your arrows in flight
among ours, brother." Deliberately he used the familiar address of equality, knowing how it must rasp the other. "He who gives orders to a warrior wears also the plume upon his own head—"
"Impudent fool, you speak to the Viceroy!" Pen-Seti's long neck bobbed forward. His shaven head with its beak of nose had the outline of a winged carrion eater. "Guard your tongue, lest this noble lord forget the tie of blood—"
But Unis had been stung. He was in no mind to let another speak for him. His fleshy fingers darted out and snatched from his half brother's hand the captain's baton.
"No officer are you in my service, Rahotep! Look now to your own holding, Shadow Hawk!" He laughed with the same old high whinny.
"Now"—one word tumbled over another from Unis's lips, so eager was he to be done with them—"the audience is finished." He turned to Prince Teti. "The pleasure garden awaits us, Lord." With his hand familiarly on the Nubian noble's arm, he went out of the hall.