Wilbur Smith - Egyptian 03 - River God

1321 Pages·2016·2.54 MB·English

by  Smith Wilbur

RIVER GOD

Wilbur Smith

This book, like so many others before it, is for my wife, Danielle Antoinette.

The Nile that flows through this story has both of us in her thrall. We have spent
days of delight

voyaging together upon her waters and idling upon her banks. As we are, so is
she a creature of this very

Africa of ours.

Yet this great river runs neither so strongly nor so deeply as my love for you, my
darling.

THE RIVER LAY HEAVILY UPON THE desert, bright as a spill of molten
metal from a furnace. The

sky smoked with heat-haze and the sun beat down upon it all with the strokes of
a coppersmith’s

hammer, hi the mirage the gaunt hills flanking the Nile seemed to tremble to the
blows. Our boat sped

close in beside the papyrus beds; near enough for the creaking of the water
buckets of the shadoof, on

their long, counter-balanced arms, to carry from the fields across the water. The
sound harmonized with

the singing of the girl in the bows.

the singing of the girl in the bows.

Lostris was fourteen years of age. The Nile had begun its latest flood on the very
day that her red

woman’s moon had flowered for the first time, a coincidence that the priests of
Hapi had viewed as highly

propitious. Lostris, the woman’s name that they had then chosen to replace her
discarded baby-name,

meant ‘Daughter of the Waters’.

I remember her so vividly on that day. She would grow more beautiful as the
years passed, become

more poised and regal, but never again would that glow of virgin womanhood
radiate from her so

overpoweringly. Every man aboard, even the warriors at the rowing-benches,
were aware of it. Neither I

nor any one of them could keep our gaze off her. She filled me with a sense of
my own inadequacy and a

deep and poignant longing; for although I am a eunuch I was gelded only after I
had known the joy of a

woman’s body.

Taita,’ she called to me, ‘sing with me!’ And when I obeyed she smiled with
pleasure. My voice was one

of the many reasons that, whenever she was able, she kept me near her; my tenor
complemented her

lovely soprano to perfection. We sang one of the old peasant love songs that I
had taught her, and which

was still one of her favourites:

My heart flutters up like a wounded quail

when I see my beloved’s face

and my cheeks bloom like the dawn sky

to the sunshine of his smile?

From the stern another voice joined with ours. It was a man’s voice, deep and
powerful, but it lacked

the clarity and purity of my own. If my voice was that of a dawn-greeting thrush,
men this was the voice

of a young lion.

Lostris turned her head and now her smile shimmered like the sunbeams on
the surface of the Nile.

Although the man upon whom she played that smile was my friend, perhaps my
only true friend, still I felt

the bitter gall of envy bum the back of my throat. Yet I forced myself to smile at
Tanus, as she did, with

love.

Tanus’ father, Pianki, Lord Harrab, had been one of the grandees of the Egyptian
nobility, but his

mother had been the daughter of a freed Tehenu slave. Like so many of her
people, she had been

fair-headed and blue-eyed. She had died of the swamp fever while Tanus was
still a child, so my memory

of her was imperfect. However, the old women said that seldom before had such
beauty as hers been

seen in either of the two kingdoms.

On the other hand, I had known and admired Tanus’ father, before he lost all his
vast fortune and the

great estates that had once almost rivalled those of Pharaoh himself. He had been
of dark complexion,

with Egyptian eyes the colour of polished obsidian, a man with more physical
strength than beauty, but

with a generous and noble heart?some might say too generous and too trusting,
for he had died destitute,

with his heart broken by those he had thought his friends, alone in the darkness,
cut off from the sunshine

of Pharaoh’s favour.

Thus it seemed that Tanus had inherited the best from both his parents, except
only worldly wealth, hi

nature and in power he was as his father; in beauty as his mother. So why should
I resent my mistress

loving him? I loved him also, and, poor neutered thing that I am, I knew that I
could never have her for

myself, not even if the gods had raised my status above that of slave. Yet such is
the perversity of human

nature that I hungered for what I could never have and dreamed of the
impossible.

Lostris sat on her cushion on the prow with her slave girls sprawled at her feet,
two little black girls from

Cush, lithe as panthers, entirely naked except for the golden collars around their
necks. Lostris herself

wore only a skirt of bleached linen, crisp and white as an egret’s wing. The skin
of her upper body,

caressed by the sun, was the colour of oiled cedar wood from the mountains
beyond Byblos. Her breasts

were the size and shape of ripe figs just ready for plucking, and tipped with rose
garnets.

She had set aside her formal wig, and wore her natural hair in a side-lock that
fell in a thick dark rope

over one breast. The slant of her eyes was enhanced by the silver-green of
powdered malachite cunningly

touched to the upper lids. The colour of her eyes was green also, but the darker,

touched to the upper lids. The colour of her eyes was green also, but the darker,
clearer green of the Nile

when its waters have shrunk and deposited their burden of precious silts.
Between her breasts,

suspended on a gold chain, she wore a figurine of Hapi, the goddess of the Nile,
fashioned in gold and

precious lapis lazuli. Of course it was a superb piece, for I had made it with my
own hands for her.

Suddenly Tanus lifted his right hand with the fist clenched. As a single man
the rowers checked their

stroke and held the blades of their paddles aloft, glinting in the sunlight and
dripping water. Then Tanus

thrust the steering-oar hard over, and the men on the port bank stabbed their
backstroke deeply, creating

a series of tiny whirlpools in the surface of the green water. The starboard side
pulled strongly ahead. The

boat spun so sharply that the deck canted over at an alarming angle. Then both
banks pulled together and

she shot forward. The sharp prow, with the blue eyes of Horus emblazoned upon
it, brushed aside the

dense stands of papyrus, and she lanced her way out of the flow of the river and
into the still waters of

the lagoon beyond.

Lostris broke off the song and shaded her eyes to gaze ahead. ‘There they are!’
she cried, and pointed

with a graceful little hand. The other boats of Tanus’ squadron were cast like a

with a graceful little hand. The other boats of Tanus’ squadron were cast like a
net across the southern

reaches of the lagoon, blocking the main entrance to the great river, cutting off
any escape in that

direction.

Naturally, Tanus had chosen for himself the northern station, for he knew that
this was where the sport

would be most furious. I wished it was not so. Not that I am a coward, but I have
always the safety of

my mistress to consider. She had inveigled herself aboard the Breath of Horus
only after much intrigue in

which, as always, she had deeply involved me. When her father learned, as he
surely would, of her

presence in the thick of the hunt, it would go badly enough for me, but if he
learned also that I was

responsible for allowing her to be in the company of Tanus for a full day, not
even my privileged position

would protect me from his wrath. His instructions to me regarding this young
man were unequivocal.

However, I seemed to be the only soul aboard the Breath of Horus who was
perturbed. The others

were simmering with excitement. Tanus checked the rowers with a peremptory
hand-signal, and the boat

glided to a halt and lay rocking gently upon the green waters that were so still
that when I glanced

overboard and saw my own reflection look back at me, I was struck, as always,
by how well my beauty

had carried over the years. To me it seemed that my face was more lovely than
the cerulean blue lotus

blooms that framed it. I had little time to admire it, however, for the crew were
all abustle.

One of Tanus’ staff officers ran up his personal standard to the masthead. It was
the image of a blue

crocodile, with its great coxcombed tail held erect and its jaws open. Only an
officer of the rank of Best

of Ten Thousand was entitled to his own standard. Tanus had achieved such
rank, together with the

command of the Blue Crocodile division of Pharaoh’s own elite guard, before
his twentieth birthday.

Now the standard at the masthead was the signal for the hunt to begin. On the
horizon of the lagoon the

rest of the squadron were tiny with distance, but their paddles began to beat
rhythmically, rising and

falling like the wings of wild geese in flight, glistening in the sunlight. From
their sterns the multiple

wavelets of their wakes were drawn out across the placid waters and lay for a
long while on the surface,

as though moulded from solid clay.

Tanus lowered the gong over the stem. It was a long bronze tube. He allowed
the end of it to sink

below the surface. When struck with a hammer of the same metal the shrill,
reverberating tones would be

transmitted through the water, filling our quarry with consternation. Unhappily
for my equanimity, I knew

that this could readily turn to a murderous rage.

Tanus laughed at me. Even in his own excitation he had sensed my qualms.
For a rude soldier he had

unusual perception. ‘Come up here in the stern-tower, Taita!’ he ordered. ‘You
can beat the gong for us.

It will take your mind off the safety of your own beautiful hide for a while.’

I was hurt by his levity, but relieved by the invitation, for the stern-tower is high
above the water. I

moved to do his bidding without undignified haste, and,‘as I passed him, I
paused to exhort him sternly,

‘Have a care for the safety of my mistress. Do you hear me, boy? Do not
encourage her to recklessness,

for she is every bit as wild as you are.’ I could speak thus to an illustrious
commander of ten thousand,

for he was once my pupil and I had wielded the cane on more than one occasion
across those martial

buttocks. He grinned at me now as he had in those days, as cocky and impudent
as ever.

‘Leave that lady in my hands, I implore you, old friend. There is nothing I would
relish more, believe

me!’ I did not admonish him for such a disrespectful tone, for I was in some
small haste to take my place

in the tower. From there I watched him take up his bow.

Already that bow was famous throughout the army, indeed throughout the
length of the great river from

the cataracts to the sea. I had designed it for him when he had grown dissatisfied
with the puny weapons

that, up until that time, were all that were available to him. I had suggested that
we should try to fashion a

bow with some new material other than those feeble woods that grow in our
narrow riverine valley;

perhaps with exotic timbers such as the heartwood of the olive from the land of
the Hittites or of the

ebony from Cush; or with even stranger materials such as the horn of the
rhinoceros or the ivory tusk of

the elephant.

No sooner had we made the attempt than we came upon a myriad of problems,
the first of which was

the brittleness of these exotic materials. In their natural state none of them would
bend without cracking,

and only the largest and therefore the most expensive elephant tusk would allow
us to carve a complete

us to carve a complete

bowstock from it. I solved both these problems by splitting the ivory of a smaller
tusk into slivers and

gluing these together in sufficient girth and bulk to form a full bow.
Unfortunately it was too rigid for any

man to draw.

However, from there it was an easy and natural step to laminate together all four
of our chosen

materials?olive wood, ebony, horn and ivory. Of course, there were many
months of experimentation

with combinations of these materials, and with various types of glue to hold
them together. We never did

succeed in making a glue strong enough. In the end I solved this last problem by
binding the entire

bowstock with electrum wire to prevent it from flying apart. I had two big men
assist Tanus in twisting the

wire on to it with all their combined strength, while the glue was still hot. When
it cooled, it set to an

almost perfect combination of strength and pliability.

Then I cut strands from the gut of a great black-maned lion that Tanus hunted
and killed with his

bronze-bladed war spear out in the desert. These I tanned and twisted together to
form a bowstring. The

result was this gleaming arc of such extraordinary power that only one man out
of all the hundreds who

had made the attempt could draw it to full stretch.

The regulation style of archery as taught by the army instructors was to face
the target and draw the

nocked arrow to the sternum of the chest, hold that aim for a deliberate pause,
then loose on command.

However, not even Tanus had the strength to draw this bow and hold his aim
steadily. He was forced to

develop a completely new style. Standing sideways to the target, addressing it
over his left shoulder, he

would throw up the bow with his left arm outstretched and, with a convulsive
heave, draw back the

arrow until the feathered flights touched his lips and the muscles of his arms and
chest stood proud with

the effort. In that same instant of full extension, seemingly without aiming, he
would loose.

At first, his arrovlfe flew at random as wild bees leave the hive, but he practised
day after day and

month after month.

The fingers of his right hand became raw and bleeding from the chafing of the
bowstring, but they healed

and toughened. The inside of his left forearm was bruised and excoriated where
the bowstring slashed

the bowstring slashed

past it on the release of the arrow, but I fashioned a leather guard to protect it.
And Tanus stood at the

butts and practised and practised.

Even I lost confidence in his ability to master the weapon but Tanus never
gave up. Slowly, agonizingly

slowly, he gained control of it to the point where, finally, he could launch three
arrows with such rapidity

that they were all in the air at the same instant. At least two of the three would
strike the target, a copper

disc the size of a man’s head set up at a distance of fifty paces from where Tanus
stood. Such was the

force of those arrows that they would fly cleanly through the metal which was
the thickness of my little

finger.

Tanus named this mighty weapon Lanata which was, quite coincidentally, the
discarded baby-name of

my mistress. Now he stood in the bows with the woman at his side, and her
namesake in his left hand.

They made a marvellous couple, but too obviously so for my peace of mind.

I called sharply, ‘Mistress! Come back here immediately! It is unsafe where
you are.’ She did not even

deign to glance over her shoulder, but made a sign at me behind her back. Every

deign to glance over her shoulder, but made a sign at me behind her back. Every
one of the crew of the

galley saw it, and the boldest of them guffawed. One of those little black vixens
that were her

handmaidens must have taught Lostris that gesture, which was more appropriate
to the ladies of the

riverside taverns than to a high-born daughter of the House of Intef. I considered
remonstrating with her,

but at once abandoned such an imprudent course, for my mistress is amenable to
restraint only in certain

of her moods. Instead, I applied myself to beating the bronze gong with
sufficient vigour to disguise my

chagrin.

The shrill, reverberating tone carried across the glassy waters of the lagoon,
and instantly the air was

filled with the susurration of wings and a shade was cast over the sun as, from
the papyrus beds and the

hidden pools and open water, a vast cloud of water-fowl rose into the sky. They
were of a hundred

varieties: black and white ibis with vulturine heads, sacred to the goddess of the
river; flights of honking

geese in russet plumage, each with a ruby droplet in the centre of its chest;
herons of greenish-blue or

midnight black, with bills like swords and ponderous wing-beats; and ducks in
such profusion that their

numbers challenged the eye and the credibility of the beholder.