Desert God (41 page)

She retired gracefully from the contest, and diverted all energy into teaching Colonel Hui the game of bao. Hui made a lamentable student. She drubbed him mercilessly. When he at last rebelled at the torment she switched his lessons to singing and dancing and riddling.

To the surprise of us all Hui had a good voice and a light step. He excelled in the first two disciplines, especially as the dancing gave him an excuse to embrace his teacher. However, his great strength was his riddling. Bekatha struggled to keep pace with his devious reasoning.

‘Two mothers and three daughters go out riding. How many horses do they need?’ He put the question to her.

‘Five, of course.’

‘Wrong,’ he gloated. ‘They need only three. They are grandmother, mother and daughter.’

‘Oh, you silly man!’ She threw the pomegranate she was eating at his head. Hui caught it and took a bite before he threw it back at her.

Ambassador Toran’s chef lived up fully to his master’s promises of excellence. He served us with a succession of delicious meals which we ate under a canvas sun-awning on the poop deck to the music of a four-man band of flutes and other wind instruments.

The Cyclades wines that Toran served were a glory on the tongue, and only the conversation sparkled brighter.

They were happy days, and like carefree children we all laughed a great deal and were happy.

Of course, nothing is ever perfect. It seemed that the
Sacred Bull
was infested with rats or some other strange nocturnal creatures. When we had all retired to our bunks I heard them scampering surreptitiously up and down the passageway outside my cabin, or rustling and squeaking in the cabins on either side of mine, where I was sure my innocent girls were fast asleep.

Even the master cabin of Ambassador Toran, across the aisle from mine, was not free from these mysterious disturbances. He did not seem to resent them for at intervals I heard him chuckling and whispering, and the replies he received sounded very much to me like feminine Minoan exhortations to greater endeavour.

W
e had been fourteen days at sea, and Toran and I were sitting in the shade cast by the mainsail over the foredeck. We were deep in conversation over a flagon of his excellent wine when we were disturbed by sudden activity on the poop deck.

I glanced up and saw that Captain Hypatos, the Minoan commander of the
Sacred Bull
, was flying signal flags at the masthead. I stood up abruptly, interrupting Toran in the middle of a sentence.

‘Something is happening that might be important. Come with me.’ We hurried back along the deck to the group of ship’s officers gathered on the poop deck. All of them were staring ahead.

‘What is it, Hypatos?’ Toran demanded of his captain, who pointed over our bows.

‘A signal from one of our scouting galleys, sir. But the distance is extreme. I’m sorry, but the message is unclear,’ Captain Hypatos apologized.

I glanced at the ship which was hull down on the horizon. It was my own ship, the
Outrage
, now being commanded by Akemi. ‘They are reporting that their sister ship is under attack and being boarded by the crew of a strange vessel.’ I translated the flag signal to plain language for them. ‘Akemi signals that he is going to Dilbar’s assistance.’

‘How do you deduce all that information, my lord?’ Hypatos looked astonished.

‘I simply read Akemi’s signal,’ I explained patiently.

‘At that distance?’ Toran intervened. ‘That seems like witchcraft to me, Taita.’

‘The falcon is my personal hieroglyph,’ I told him lightly. ‘Both that bird and I have sharp eyesight. Please order Hypatos to set all sail and order his rowers to go to attack speed.’

It took us over an hour to catch up with our vanguard galleys. When we did so we discovered that they were hove to, with oars shipped and sails backed. They were locked in battle with an Arabian dhow. It was a larger ship than either of my galleys; with twin lateen sails and a headsail, which were now all aback and in disarray. It was obvious that the fighting was almost over, for the crew of the dhow were throwing down their weapons, and raising their empty hands.

As we closed with the locked vessels I saw that the name of the captured dhow was printed on her bows in Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was the
Dove
. I smiled at the incongruity of it. She was certainly no bird of peace.

‘Lay us alongside the enemy!’ I ordered Hypatos. He completed the manoeuvre skilfully; and I clambered down the rope ladder and landed on the deck of the embattled dhow. Zaras followed me closely as a sheepdog. I could sense how disappointed he was to have missed the fighting. Both Dilbar and Akemi came to meet me, sword in hand.

‘What have we here?’ I asked them as they saluted me. With the bloodied blade of his weapon Dilbar indicated the lines of prisoners kneeling on the deck. Their hands were locked behind their necks, and their foreheads were pressed to the planking.

‘These little rascals took it that we were sailing alone,’ Dilbar explained. ‘They made out that they were floundering and asked for assistance. There were only a few of them on the deck. When we came up alongside those who had been hiding below jumped out, and grappled us with boarding hooks. Then they all came storming over our side.’ He looked smug. ‘Of course we were ready for them. We kept them busy until Akemi arrived and joined in the revels.’

‘How many have you captured?’ I demanded.

‘I’m afraid we were forced to kill a few of them, before these other motherless bastards had the good sense to surrender,’ Akemi apologized. He knew that I preferred slaves to corpses. ‘However, we have bagged thirty-eight live ones.’

‘Good work, both of you. Share them out between your galleys, and find them employment on the rowing benches.’

As our men began hoisting the captives to their feet and shoving them to their new stations on the slave decks of my galleys, I spotted one of prisoners who was trying to make himself inconspicuous in the rear rank. This was a futile effort. He was obviously the pirate leader, for he was the most richly dressed and, despite his attempt at servility, there was about him a natural air of grace and self-assurance. Nevertheless he was trying to avoid making eye contact with me.

‘Nakati!’ I accosted him, and he straightened his back and lifted his chin before he looked into my face. Then he gave me a guard’s salute, clenched fist held to his chest.

‘My lord!’ he acknowledged me. ‘I prayed never to meet you again.’

‘The gods are not always attentive to our pleas,’ I commiserated with him.

‘Do you know this animal, master?’ Dilbar intervened in our conversation.

‘He was a captain in the red battalion of Pharaoh’s guards. Five or six years ago he knifed his own colonel to death in a drunken squabble over a tavern harlot in Abydos. He disappeared before he could be apprehended and hanged.’

‘Shall I kill him now?’

I shook my head. ‘Let’s delay that pleasure for a little while longer.’ There had been a time when Nakati had been a first-rate fighting officer, seemingly destined for higher rank and greater things. ‘In the meantime keep him busy at the oars.’

‘Should I spare the whip on him?’

‘Surely you jest, Dilbar? See to it that he is given his full measure of all the slave rations, including the lash.’

‘I recall that you were always beneficent, Lord Taita.’ Nakati kept a straight face. I found his sense of humour laudable in the circumstances and he spoke my name with respect. I nodded to the deck officer to take him away with the other prisoners. Then I crossed to the main cargo hatch of the
Dove
.

‘Dilbar, have your men knock out the wedges and prise open this hatch.’ When the cover of the hatch crashed back on to the deck I peered down into the hold. It was packed with ingots of copper and tin. It was obvious that we were not the first customers to receive the attentions of Nakati and his crew.

‘Transfer this hoard into the
Outrage
,’ I ordered Dilbar. ‘Then put a prize crew into the pirate and bring her along in convoy with us to Crete.’ An imaginative plan was already forming in the back of my mind. However, I wanted Nakati to spend sufficient time on the rowing bench to put him in the proper mood to listen to my proposition with his full attention.

I waited until we were only four or five days short of our landfall on the island of Crete; then I ordered him to be ferried across to the
Sacred Bull
and escorted to my cabin.

All his fine feathers had been plucked. He was dressed only in his chains and a brief and filthy loincloth. His arrogant manner had been ameliorated. His back was scored by the lash. His arms were lean and hardened from heaving on the oar. His belly was as concave as that of a starving greyhound. There was no superfluous meat on his frame.

However, I judged that although he had been well whipped, he was not yet beaten. The coals still glowed beneath the ashes of his pride. He had not disappointed me.

‘Have you still got a wife in Thebes or has she run off with somebody else?’ I asked him and he stared at me. His eyes were hard and bright. His famous sense of humour was restrained.

‘Children?’ I persisted. ‘How many? Boys or girls? Do they ever think of you, I wonder? Do you ever think of them?’

‘Why don’t you grow yourself another set of genitalia, then go and fuck yourself to death?’ he suggested, and I suppressed a smile. I really admired his panache. I ignored his suggestion and went on as though he had not voiced it.

‘I suspect that at heart you are still a son of our very Egypt; a civilized man and not a bloody pirate.’ He showed no reaction, but I kept on at him. ‘You made one mistake, and it cost you everything you ever had of value.’ Despite himself he flinched. Unerringly I had hit another raw nerve, and he flared at me:

‘What’s it to you, you smug bastard?’

‘Not much to me,’ I agreed. ‘But I suspect it means a great deal to your wife and children.’

‘It’s too late now. Not much anyone can do about it.’ His tone changed again, and there was an ocean of regret in his voice.

‘I can get you pardoned,’ I told him.

He snorted with bitter laughter. ‘You are not Pharaoh.’

‘No, I am not, but I am the bearer of the hawk seal. My word is as good as that of Pharaoh.’ I saw hope dawn in his eyes, and it was a good thing to watch.

‘What do you want of me, my lord?’ He was begging now; no more defiance.

‘I want you to help me free our very Egypt from the Hyksos hordes.’

‘You make it sound so simple, but I have spent more than half my life in that forlorn cause.’

‘It is apparent to me that since you fled Thebes you have become one of the princes of the Sea Peoples. I am certain many of your comrades are also Egyptian outcasts who would fight for the chance to return to their homeland.’

Nakati inclined his head in assent. ‘They would fight even harder for a little silver and a plot of rich black Egyptian soil to plough,’ he suggested.

‘That is the reward I can promise you, and them,’ I assured him. ‘Bring me fifty ships such as your
Dove
and the men to serve and fight them, and I shall give you back your pride, your honour and your freedom.’

He thought about what I had said and then at last he shook his head. ‘I could never find you fifty ships. But let me have my own
Dove
and her crew and within three months I will return with at least fifteen more ships. My solemn oath on it!’

I went to the door of my cabin and opened it. Zaras and three of his men were waiting there with drawn swords, ready to rush to my rescue.

‘Send to the galley and have the cook bring food and wine.’

When Zaras returned I was seated at the table with Nakati opposite me. He had washed his face in my basin and combed his wet hair. He was dressed in the clothing I had provided. Although he was tall and broad-shouldered he was lean, as I am, and my clothes fitted him well.

The cabin boy who followed Zaras set a large bowl of cold salted pork before Nakati and I poured three bumpers of red wine and gestured to Zaras to join us at the table. We started to talk, and we were still talking the next morning when the dawn broke.

C
aptain Hypatos backed his sails and our prize crew brought the
Dove
alongside. Nakati went down to her deck and resumed command of his dhow, then he sailed her across to the galleys in which I had imprisoned his crew. On each of them he went down to the slave deck and picked out his own men who were chained to the benches. Then he brought them up into the sunlight.

These men were in a sorry state. They wore only loincloths and like Nakati they all bore the marks of the lash. On my orders, Akemi and Dilbar had driven them hard. They had crossed the borderline of despair and resignation. I knew that if anybody could bring them back it would be Nakati. I would not have enjoyed the challenge.

Nakati saluted me from the poop deck of the
Dove
. Then he put the helm over and bore away on a northerly heading. The pirate fleet was out there, lurking in their lairs that were scattered among the myriad uninhabited islands of the Aegean archipelago.

‘Will you ever see him again, I wonder?’ Zaras asked, and I shrugged. I would not tempt the dark gods by replying affirmatively to the question; however, I had an agreement with Nakati, and I am a good enough judge of men to believe that I could trust him to do his very best to keep to it.

I had already proven to my own satisfaction, and to the chagrin of the enemy, that I could land a large detachment of chariots at any poorly defended spot on the Hyksos-occupied shore, visit death and mayhem on Gorrab’s forces, and then take to the ships again before the enemy could retaliate. Of course, my tiny army could never hope to engage in a full-scale campaign against the tyrant, but I could certainly force him to divert a very large number of his main troops from his southern border with our very Egypt to defend his extended northern front.

I had agreed to pay Nakati and his men one thousand silver mem each as a bounty to compensate them for the plunder they would have to forgo when they sailed under me. Then when the campaign against the Hyksos led eventually to the liberation of all of Egypt his men would be pardoned for any offences they may have committed, including piracy and murder. Each of them would be honourably discharged from the navy and granted Egyptian citizenship. In addition they would be rewarded with five hundred kha-ta of fertile and irrigable land on the estate of Lord Taita of Mechir along the River Nile south of the city of Thebes.