River god - Smith Wilbur - Страница 60

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  It was some time before Tanus followed me up the ladder and sat shamefacedly in the doorway. I ignored him-and went on with my work, until at last he was forced to break the silence.

  'How are you, old friend? I have missed you.'

  'Others have missed you also. Kratas, for one. The squadron has been fighting down-river. They could have found use for another sword. My Lady Lostris, for another. She speaks of you every day, and holds her love pure and true. I wonder what she would think of that trollop I chased out of your bed?'

  He groaned and held his head. 'Oh, Taita, don't speak your mistress's name. To be reminded of her is unbearable?'

  'So broach another jug of wine and wallow in your own filth and your self-pity,' I suggested angrily.

  'I have lost her for ever. What would you have me do then?'

  'I would want you to have faith and fortitude, as she has.'

  He looked up at me pitifully. Tell me about her, Taita. How is she? Does she still think of me?'

  'More is the pity,' I grunted disgustedly. 'She thinks of little else. She holds herself ready for the day that you two are brought together again.'

  'That will never be. I have lost her for ever and I don't want to go on living.'

  'Good!' I agreed briskly. 'Then I'll not waste further time here. I'll tell my mistress that you did not want to hear her message.' I pushed past him, swarmed down the ladder and dropped into the skiff.

  'Wait, Taita!' he called after me. 'Come back!'

  'To what purpose? You want to die. Then get on with it. I'll send the embalmers out to pick up the corpse later.'

  He grinned with embarrassment. 'All right, I am being a fool. The drink has fuddled my mind. Come back, I beg of you. Give me the message from Lostris.'

  With a show of reluctance I climbed back up the ladder, and he followed me into the hut, staggering only a little.

  'My mistress bids me tell you that her love for you is untouched by any of the things that have been thrust upon her. She is still and will always be your woman.'

  'By Horus, she puts me to shame,' he muttered.

  'No,' I disagreed. 'Your shame is of your own making.'

  He snatched his sword from the scabbard that hung above the filthy bed and slashed out at the row of wine amphorae that stood against the far wall. As each one burst, the wine poured out and trickled through the slats of the floor.

  He was panting as he came back to me, and I scoffed at him. 'Look at you! You have let yourself go until you are as soft and as short of wind as an old priest?'

  'Enough of that, Taita! You have had your say. Mock me no more, or you will regret it.'

  I could see he was becoming as angry as I had intended. My insults were stiffening him up nicely. 'My mistress would have you take uj? the challenge thrown to you by Pharaoh so that you will still be alive and a man of honour and worth in five years' time, when she is free to come to -you.'

  I had his full attention now. 'Five years? What is this about, Taita? Will there truly be a term to our suffering?'

  'I worked the Mazes for Pharaoh. He will be dead in five years from now,' I told him simply. He stared at me in awe and I saw a hundred different emotions pursue each other across his features. He is as easy to read as this scroll on which I write.

  "The Mazes!' he whispered at last. Once long ago he had been a doubter, and had disparaged my way with the Mazes. That had changed and he was now an even firmer believer in my powers than my mistress. He had seen my visions become reality too often to be otherwise.

  'Can you wait that long for your love?' I asked. 'My mistress swears that she can wait for you through all eternity. Can you wait a few short years for her?'

  'She has promised to wait for me?' he demanded.

  'Through all eternity,' I repeated, and I thought he might begin to weep. I could not have faced that, not watched a man like Tanus in tears, so I went on hastily, 'Don't you want to hear the vision that the Mazes gave me?'

  He thrust back the tears. 'Yes! Yes!" he agreed eagerly, and so we began to talk. We talked until the night fell, and then we sat in the darkness and talked some more.

  I told him the things that I had told my Lady Lostris, all the details that I had kept from them both over the years. When I came to the details of how his father, Pianki, Lord Harrab, had been ruined and destroyed by his secret enemy, Tanus' anger was so fierce that it burned away the last effects of the debauchery from his mind, and by the time the dawn broke over the swamps, his resolve was once more clear and strong.

  'Let us get on with this enterprise of yours, for it seems the right and proper way.' He sprang to his feet and girded on his sword scabbard. Although I thought it wise to rest a while and let him recover fully from the effects of the wine, he would have no part of it.

  'Back to Karnak at once!' he insisted. 'Kratas is waiting, and the lust to avenge my father's memory and to lay eyes on my own sweet love again burns like a fire in my blood.'

  ONCE WE HAD LEFT THE SWAMP, TANUS took the lead along the rocky path, and I followed him at a run. As soon as the sun came up above the horizon, the sweat burst out across his back and streamed down to soak the waistband of his kilt. It was as though the rancid old wine was being purged from his body. Although I could hear him panting wildly, he never paused to rest or even moderated his pace, but ran on into the rising heat from the desert without a check.

  It was I who pulled him up with a shout, and we stood shoulder to shoulder and stared ahead. The birds had caught my attention. I had picked out the commotioji of their wings from afar.

  'Vultures,' Tanus grunted with ragged breath. 'They have something dead amongst the rocks.' He drew his sword and we went forward cautiously.

  We found the man first, and chased the vultures off him in a flurrying storm of wings. I recognized him by the shock of blond hair as the husband I had met on the road the previous day. There was nothing left of his face, for he had lain upon his back and the birds had eaten the flesh away to the bones of the skull. They had picked out his eyes, and the empty sockets stared at the cloudless sky. His lips were gone and he grinned with bloody teeth, as though at the futile joke of our brief existence upon this earth. Tanus rolled him on to his stomach, and we saw at once the stab-wounds in his back that had killed him. There were a dozen of these thrust through his ribs.

  'Whoever did this was making sure of the job,' Tanus remarked, hardened to death as only a seasoned soldier can be.

  I walked on into the rocks and a buzzing black cloud of flies rose from the dead body of the wife. I have never understood where the flies come from, how they materialize so swiftly out of the searing dry heat of the desert. I guessed that the wife had aborted while they were busy with her. They must have left her alive after they had taken their pleasure with her. With the last of her strength she had taken the infant protectively in her arms. She had died like that, huddled against a boulder, shielding her still-born infant from the vultures.

  I went on deeper into the broken ground, and once again the flies led me to where the bandits had dragged the little girl. At least one of them had summoned up the compassion to cut her throat after they had finished with her, rather than let her bleed slowly to death.

  One of the flies settled on my lips. I brushed it away and began to weep. Tanus found me still weeping.

  'Did you know them?' he asked, and I nodded and cleared my throat to answer.

  'I met them on the road yesterday. I tried to warn?' I broke off, for it was not easy to continue. I took a deep breath. "They had a donkey. The Shrikes will have taken it.'

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