Desert God (54 page)

Whereas every other aurochs I had ever seen was brindled black and dark brown, this bull was as gleaming white as the spume on the crest of the tidal wave which had destroyed the city of Knossos. His eyes were as bright as polished rubies. His body seemed to swell even larger with rage as he swung his massive head from side to side, seeking a focus for his rage.

His colossal rack of horn was ivory white. The tips were glistening black and sharp as spearheads. Their spread was twice the span of a man’s outspread arms.

Then the creature fixed his gaze on the two naked children standing before it, and it lowered his head. The great hump between his shoulder blades seemed to swell even larger with anger, and it pawed the ground.

I realized suddenly from its colour and its size, as well as from the aura of evil that exuded from it, that this was no creature of forest and mountain, but something that had been sent from the fiery depths of the volcano to accept the sacrifice on behalf of its demonic master.

It snarled at its prey. Its upper lip curled back to expose long canine fangs: the teeth of a carnivore, not those of an herbivore.

‘I bring you royal virgin blood to drink. I bring you royal virgin flesh to devour,’ the Supreme Minos had urged this creature. ‘Kill! Eat!’

I shook off the horror which threatened to paralyse me. ‘Zaras! Hui!’ I lifted my voice above the deafening clamour of the Minoan congregation. ‘We have to get down there to protect them. Use the curtains, but get down there.’

The two of them barged past me, almost knocking me off my feet in their haste. One after the other they dived over the railing of our balcony, and they seized the hanging curtains as they dropped. They used them to break their fall as they slithered down to the floor of the arena. But I saw they were going to be too late to save Tehuti.

The gleaming white bull had focused all its attention on Tehuti and now it launched into its charge, thundering straight at her.

Bekatha screamed. It was a sound that must surely inflame the monster’s temper. Zaras and Hui had only just reached the floor, and they still had half the ring to cross before they could intervene.

I drew and shot an arrow. It hit the bull’s massive shoulder exactly where I had aimed, but I saw that it had struck bone and been deflected. It whined away and struck one of the noble Minoans in the audience. He dropped out of sight.

The bull was no more than scratched by my arrow. I dared not shoot again, because Bekatha had broken away from her sister. In blind panic she ran directly into the line of the charging bull.

The bull swerved towards her and dropped its monstrous head. It hooked one of the long gleaming horns at her, and the point caught her in the upper arm. I saw bone break and blood fly as she was thrown high over the bull’s back. She hit the ground and I think the soft sand broke her fall. The bull turned to follow her.

Tehuti reacted more swiftly than any of us. She raced forward to intercept the bull’s charge, screaming shrilly and waving her arms to divert its attention.

She ran under its flaring nostrils from which the steam of its hot and stinking breath spurted in the damp air of the cavern. As she passed she snatched the tiara of roses from her own head and dashed it into the face of the beast.

Taken aback, the great bull checked slightly, giving Tehuti just enough leeway to spin around and race towards where she saw Zaras only halfway down the curtains to the arena floor.

‘Zaras!’ she screamed. The bull hesitated for only an instant before it turned away from where Bekatha lay and came in pursuit of Tehuti. She was quick as a gazelle, but the bull was faster. It was almost on top of her when she jinked and changed direction, gaining herself a yard before the bull could follow her around.

I saw she would now pass almost directly beneath where I stood against the rail of the balcony. I drew the sword from the scabbard on my belt, lifted it high and hurled it down into the arena. It struck point first and pegged into the sand with its hilt standing upright in front of her.

‘Get the sword!’ I yelled down to Tehuti.

Once more Tehuti reacted with the speed and strength of a natural athlete. She swerved in her run and as she passed the sword she plucked it from the sand and settled the hilt in her right hand.

The bull was almost on her again. It swung its head and the point of its left horn hissed through the air as it sliced past her shoulder. Tehuti ducked under it and doubled back on the beast, sucking in her belly as the bull brushed past her. Then as the bull tossed up its head to recover its balance Tehuti seized hold of its nearest horn with her free hand, just behind the point.

When the aurochs lifted her on the horn she did not resist. Instead she went with him, jumping in the same direction. She sailed high over the aurochs’s humped back and as she dropped she straightened her sword arm and aimed the point of the weapon down into its withers.

Here there was no bone to turn the point. With all her weight behind it Tehuti drove the full length of the blade down between its shoulder blades, transfixing the creature’s heart. She released her grip on the hilt and left the blade in the wound.

Then she arched her back as she dropped lightly to her feet behind the stricken bull and pirouetted away, with both arms held high above her own head. She stood poised and watched the monstrous animal pull up short. It spread its front hooves wide apart, and lowered its head until its muzzle almost touched the sand. It opened its mouth wide and bellowed. From its throat shot a torrent of bright blood.

Then it staggered backwards until its back legs collapsed under it and it hit the floor of the arena with a sound like the fall of an axed cedar tree. It rolled on to its side. Its back legs kicked spasmodically, and then at last it lay quiescent. The silence in the cavern persisted for as long as it took me to fill my lungs with air.

Then the great god Cronus in the volcano across the bay gave full rein to his rage. He had been denied his sacrifice. The creature that was his
alter ego
had been slain in the precincts of his own temple.

I raised my head from the spectacle in the temple arena, and I gazed out across the Bay of Knossos and I beheld a wondrous sight.

In the extremity of rage Cronus destroyed his own stronghold. It seemed to happen very slowly. The entire mountain exploded into a thousand massive chunks of rock, some of them as large as Crete itself, and some much larger. They were hurled aloft by the catastrophic forces that were released from the very centre of the volcano that lay thousands of feet below the surface of the sea. The rock had been heated in this deep furnace until it melted and burned with a brilliant white light that seemed to dim the sun and illuminate our entire world. When the rock fell back below the surface, the sea boiled.

The steam from the boiling waters exploded into spinning white clouds that climbed skywards again, obliterating everything. It was all gone: sea and earth and sky. Only the dense wall of steam remained.

All this seemed to happen in silence while the world and every living creature in it held its breath.

Then came the noise of the cataclysm. It had taken that long to cross the waters of the bay. The sound smashed into the island of Crete like a solid object, something almost as substantial as the falling rock itself.

Even though we were partially shielded by the walls of the cavern that surrounded us, we were hurled to the ground by the ferocity and volume of the sound. We lay whimpering and clutching our own deafened ears.

The sound and the quaking of the earth prised great slabs off the roof of the cavern above us. All around me men were crushed screaming and sobbing to death by the falling rock, and the floor leaped and swayed under us like the deck of a ship in a hurricane.

I was amongst the first to gather my senses. But my eyes were still dazzled by the light of the burning mountain; and my hearing was dulled by the thunderous sound. I rolled on to my knees and gazed around the cavern. I was not the only person stirring.

Zaras had crawled to where Tehuti lay beside the carcass of the bull. He was cradling her in his arms. I could see she also was dazed and bewildered.

Hui was kneeling over Bekatha. He seemed afraid to touch her. This was a warrior who had bestridden many a battlefield, but he was terrified by the blood of the woman he loved. She was cradling her broken arm and looking up at Hui like a child seeking comfort from a beloved parent.

I looked beyond them and I saw the Supreme Minos. He was standing in the opening of the cavern facing the clouds of steam which obliterated the place where Mount Cronus had once stood.

The Minos was holding the frail body of his mother in both hands high above his head. I saw that her skull was crushed and her eyes were bulging out of their sockets. She had been struck and killed by the rocks falling from the roof of the cave.

‘Why have you done this to us? I am your own son, mighty Cronus,’ the Minos bellowed. ‘My mother was your lover and your wife. Could you not have accepted the sacrifice I offered you and spared her?’

I knew that I had to kill him before he was able to let loose more evil upon our world. This time I knew he would destroy us all: my princesses, my friends and companions and me.

I threw up my bow and shot the arrow across the cavern. It struck the Minos in the centre of his golden backplate. It transfixed his body, and black blood sprayed from the hole that my arrow had ripped in his armour. The stench of it filled the temple like that of rotting corpses that had lain ten days in the sun.

The force of my striking arrow hurled the Minos bodily through the opening in the cavern wall. He fell from my sight. His mother’s corpse lay where he had dropped it, like a pile of old black rags.

I jumped over the balcony wall and slid down the curtains to the floor of the arena. Then as I ran to where Bekatha lay I unhooked the sword scabbard from my belt. I knelt beside her and told Hui, ‘Hold her firmly. This will hurt her.’

She whimpered as I straightened the broken bones in her arm, and used the sword sheath as a splint to fix them so. Then I took the wine flask from the pouch on my hip and handed it to Hui.

‘Give her as much as she asks for,’ I told him. ‘But it’s a fine Cyclades, and much too good for a ruffian like you.’

Bekatha smiled through her pain and whispered, ‘Hui is my man. From now onwards wherever he goes, I go. His home is my home. And the wine I drink is his to share with me.’ I was proud of her.

I looked around the temple and saw that the virago guards from the royal seraglio had fled. I thought that all the Minoan nobles had gone with them, but then I saw Toran standing beside Zaras and Tehuti with his arm around Loxias.

‘Will you come with us, my old friend?’ I asked him, and Toran paused for a moment before he replied.

‘The Minoan Empire has perished here today. It will never rise again. This was prophesied five hundred years ago.’ His expression was sombre, but after a moment he went on speaking. ‘I have lost my homeland. But Egypt has lost her most powerful ally against the Hyksos scourge.’ He sighed. ‘Nevertheless Loxias and I will go with you to Thebes and make it our new homeland.’

‘I am afraid to ask you, Zaras and Tehuti,’ I said as I turned to the two of them. It was no surprise to me that Tehuti spoke for both of them.

‘Darling Taita, I love both you and Egypt but I love Zaras more,’ she said simply. ‘If I return with you to Thebes my brother will seek to marry me to another mad king in some other barbaric land. I have served my Pharaoh and my country to the very limits of my duty. Now I want to be free to live the rest of my life with the man I love.’ She took Zaras’ hand. ‘We will go with Hui and Bekatha, and find another home in the northern lands beyond the Ionian Sea.’

‘I wish I could go with you but I cannot,’ I told her. ‘My duty is with Pharaoh in Thebes. I will tell him that you and Bekatha are dead so that he will never send to search for you.’

‘Thank you, darling Tata,’ she said, and then she hesitated before she spoke again. ‘Perhaps one day, if the gods are kind, you will come to find us again?’

‘Perhaps!’ I agreed.

‘I will name my first son after you,’ she promised and I turned away to hide the tears that filled my eyes. Then I climbed the tiers of stone benches which now were empty. I reached the opening of the cavern wall through which my arrow had thrown the body of the Minos.

I stood on the verge of the drop, and looked down three hundred feet to where he lay spreadeagled on the rocks below in a pool of his own congealing blood. My arrow stood out of his silver breastplate. His helmet still covered his head. I could see nothing through the dark eye-holes that seemed to stare up at me.

‘What were you?’ I pondered the question aloud, but speaking softly. ‘Were you man or monster, devil or godling?’ Then I shook my head. ‘I pray never to know the answer to that question.’

The body of Pasiphaë, the mother of the Minos, lay at my feet. I picked it up and dropped it over the cliff. When I looked down again I saw that they lay together with arms and legs obscenely tangled like those of lovers, rather than mother and son.

I turned away and went down into the arena where my girls waited for me. All of us left the temple and went out through the labyrinth to where the horses waited in the forest. We mounted and rode together as a family for the last time. We climbed the slopes of Mount Ida and we drew rein on the shoulder and looked back across the Bay of Knossos.

Mount Cronus was gone, sucked back into the abysmal depths of the ocean once more. Only the turbid waters of the boiling sea marked its grave.

Then we looked ahead to where the port of Krimad had once stood and we saw all six ships of the flotilla had survived the tidal wave, and were anchored safely offshore. They were waiting to receive us.

All those around me shouted with joy and excitement, urging their horses down the path through the forest. They rode in pairs, Lord Toran with Loxias, Hui cradling Bekatha to his chest to shield her injured arm and Zaras with Tehuti up behind him urging him to greater speed.