Desert God (57 page)

‘My baby!’ I cried. ‘My little one!’ For I was certain that she was lost. It seemed that all her life, as I had known it, replayed itself before my eyes. I saw her again
as a toddling infant and heard the baby endearments that she bestowed on me, her adoring nursemaid. I saw her grow to womanhood, and I remembered every joy and every heartache that she had caused
me. I loved her then in the moment of losing her even more than I had done in all those fourteen long years.

She fell upon the vast, blood-splattered back of the infuriated bull, and for an instant lay spread-eagled there like a human sacrifice upon the altar of some obscene religion. The bull whirled
about, mounting high out of the water, and he twisted his huge deformed head backwards, trying to reach her. His bloodshot piggy eyes glared with the insanity of his rage, and his great jaws
clashed as he snapped at her.

Somehow Lostris managed to gather herself and cling to a pair of the arrow-shafts that protruded from the bull’s broad back as though they were handles. She lay with her arms and legs
spread wide. She was not screaming now, all her art and strength employed in staying alive. Those curved ivory fangs rang upon each other like the blades of duelling warriors as they gnashed in
air. At each bite they seemed to miss her by only a finger’s-breadth, and any instant I expected one of her lovely limbs to be pruned away like a delicate shoot from the vine, and to see her
sweet young blood mingle with those brutish effusions that streamed from the bull’s wounds.

In the prow Tanus recovered swiftly. For an instant I saw his face and it was terrible. He tossed aside the bow, for it was useless to him now, and he seized instead the hilt of his sword and
jerked the blade free of its crocodile-skin scabbard. It was a gleaming length of bronze as long as his arm, and the edges were honed until they could shave the hair from the back of his hand.

He leaped up on to the gunwale and balanced there for an instant, watching the wild gyrations of the mortally wounded bull in the water below him. Then he launched himself outwards and dropped
like a stooping falcon with the sword held in both hands and pointing downwards.

He dropped across the bull’s thick neck, landing astride it as though he were about to ride it into the underworld. The full weight of his body and the impetus of that wild leap were
behind the sword as he struck. Half the length of the blade was driven into the hippopotamus’s neck at the base of the skull, and, seated upon it like a rider, Tanus worried and worked the
keen bronze deeper, using both arms and the strength of those broad shoulders. At the goad of the blade the bull went berserk. His strivings up to that point seemed feeble in comparison to this
fresh outburst. The bull reared most of his enormous bulk out of the lagoon, swinging his head from side to side, throwing solid sheets of water so high in the air that they crashed down on the
deck of the galley and, like a curtain, almost obscured the scene from my horrified gaze.

Through it all I watched the couple on the monster’s back tossed about mercilessly. The shaft of one of the arrows that Lostris was holding snapped, and she was almost thrown clear. If
this had happened she would surely have been savaged by the bull and chopped into bloody tatters by those ivory fangs. Tanus reached backwards and with one arm seized and steadied her, while with
his right hand he never ceased working the bronze blade deeper into the nape of the bull’s neck.

Unable to reach them, the hippopotamus slashed at his own flanks, inflicting terrible gaping wounds in his sides so that for fifty paces around the galley the waters were incarnadined, and both
Lostris and Tanus were painted entirely crimson from the tops of their heads to the soles of their feet by the spurting blood. Their faces were turned to grotesque masks from which their eyes
whitely glared.

The violent death-throes of the bull had carried them far from the galley’s side, and I was the first aboard to recover my wits. I yelled to the rowers, ‘Follow them! Don’t let
them get away,’ and they sprang to their stations and sent the
Breath of Horus
in pursuit.

At that instant it seemed that the point of Tanus’ blade must have found the joint of the vertebrae in the beast’s neck and slipped through. The immense carcass stiffened and froze.
The bull rolled on to his back with all four legs extended rigidly, and he plunged below the waters of the lagoon, bearing Lostris and Tanus with him into the depths.

I choked back the wail of despair that rose in my throat, and bellowed an order to the deck below. ‘Back-water! Do not overrun them! Swimmers to the bows!’ Even I was startled by the
power and authority of my own voice.

The galley’s forward way was checked, and before I could reflect on the prudence of what I was doing, I found myself heading a rush of hulking warriors across the deck. They would probably
have cheered while they watched any other officer drown, but not their Tanus.

As for myself, I had already stripped off my skirt and was naked. Not the threat of a hundred lashes would have made me do this in any other circumstances, for I have let only one other person
ever see those injuries that the state executioner inflicted upon me so long ago, and he was the one who had ordered the castrating knife used upon me in the first place. But now, for once, I was
totally oblivious of the gross mutilation of my manhood.

I am a strong swimmer, and although in retrospect such foolhardiness makes me shudder, I truly believe that I might have dived over the side and swum down through those blood-dyed waters in an
attempt to rescue my mistress. However, as I poised myself at the ship’s rail, the waters directly below me opened and two heads bobbed out, both of them streaming water and as close as a
pair of mating otters. One was dark and the other fair, but from both of them issued the most unlikely sound I had ever heard. They were laughing. They were howling and shrieking and spluttering
with laughter as they floundered towards the ship’s side, locked so firmly in each other’s arms that I was certain that they were in real danger of drowning one another.

All my concern turned instantly to outrage at this levity, and at the thought of the dreadful folly which I had been on the point of committing. Like a mother whose first instinct on finding her
lost child is to thrash it, I heard my own voice lose all its previous deep authority and turn shrill and querulous. I was still berating my mistress with all my famous eloquence as she and Tanus
were dragged by a dozen willing hands from the water on to the deck.

‘You reckless, unbridled little savage!’ I railed at her. ‘You thoughtless, selfish, undisciplined little hoyden! You promised me! You swore an oath on the maidenhead of the
goddess—’

She ran to me and threw both arms around my neck. ‘Oh, Taita!’ she cried, still bubbling with laughter. ‘Did you see him? Did you see Tanus spring to my rescue? Was it not the
noblest deed that ever you heard of? Just like the hero of one of your very best stories.’

The fact that I had been on the point of making a similar heroic gesture was quite ignored, and this only increased my irritation. Added to which I suddenly realized that Lostris had lost her
skirt, and that the cold, wet body she pressed to mine was entirely naked. She was displaying to the rude gaze of officers and men the neatest, tightest pair of buttocks in all Egypt.

I snatched up the nearest shield and used it to cover both our bodies while I shouted at her slave girls to find another skirt for her. Their giggles only increased my fury, and as soon as both
Lostris and I were once again decently covered, I rounded on Tanus.

‘As for you, you careless ruffian, I shall report you to my Lord Intef! He will have the skin flogged from your back.’

‘You will do no such thing,’ Tanus laughed at me, and threw one wet muscled arm around my shoulders to hug me so soundly that I was lifted off my feet, ‘for he would have you
flogged just as merrily. Nevertheless, thank you for your concern, old friend.’

He looked around quickly, with one arm still encircling my shoulder, and frowned. The
Breath of Horus
was separated from the other ships of the squadron, but by now the hunt was over.
Every galley but ours had taken its full share of the bag that the priests had sanctioned us.

Tanus shook his head. ‘We did not make the most of our chances, did we?’ he grunted, and ordered one of his officers to hoist the recall signal to the squadron.

Then he forced a smile. ‘Let us broach a jug of beer together, for now we have a while to wait and this has been thirsty work.’ He went to the bows where the slave girls were fussing
over Lostris. At first I was still so angry that I would not join their impromptu picnic on the deck. Instead I maintained an aloof dignity in the stern.

‘Oh, let him sulk a while,’ I heard Lostris’ stage-whisper to Tanus as she recharged his cup with foaming beer. ‘The old darling gave himself an awful scare, but he will
get over it as soon as he is hungry. He does so love his food.’

She is the epitome of injustice, is my mistress. I never sulk, I am no glutton, and at that time I was barely thirty years of age, although to a fourteen-year-old anyone above twenty is an
ancient, and I admit that, when it comes to food, I do have the refined tastes of a connoisseur. The roast wild goose with figs that she was ostentatiously displaying was one of my favourite
dishes, as she very well knew.

I made them suffer for a while longer, and it was only when Tanus brought me a jug of beer with his own hand and cajoled me with all his charm that I deigned to relent a little and let him lead
me to the prow. Still, I was a little stiff with them until Lostris kissed my cheek and said, loud enough for all to hear, ‘My girls tell me that you took command of the ship like a veteran,
and that you would have dived overboard to rescue me. Oh, Taita, what would I ever do without you?’ Only then would I smile at her and accept the slice of goose she pressed upon me. It was
delicious, and the beer was of three-palm quality. Even so, I ate sparingly, for I have my figure to consider and her earlier jibe about my appetite still rankled a little.

Tanus’ squadron was scattered widely across the lagoon, but now it began to regroup. I saw that some of the other galleys had suffered damage, as we had. Two ships had collided in the heat
of the chase, while four others had been attacked by the quarry. However, they reassembled swiftly and took up their battle stations. Then, in line astern and with strings of gay pennants
fluttering at the mastheads to proclaim the size of each galley’s bag, they dashed past us. The crews raised a cheer as they came level with the
Breath of Horus.
Tanus saluted them
with a clenched fist and the Blue Crocodile standard was dipped at the masthead, for all the world as though we had just achieved a famous victory against daunting odds. Boyish display, perhaps,
but then I am still enough of a boy to enjoy military ceremonial.

As soon as it was over, the squadron resumed its battle stations and was holding its position against the light breeze that had sprung up, with skilful use of paddles and steering-oars. Of
course, there was no sign of the slaughtered hippopotami as yet. Although every galley had killed at least one, while some had killed two and even three, the carcasses had all sunk away into the
green depths of the lagoon. I knew that Tanus was secretly lamenting the fact that the
Breath of Horus
had not been the most successful boat, and that our protracted encounter with the
bull had limited our score to only that single animal. He was accustomed to excelling. Anyway, he was not his usual ebullient self and he soon left us on the prow and went to supervise the repairs
to the hull of the
Breath of Horus.

The bull’s charge had sprung the underwater planking and we were taking enough water to necessitate constant bailing of the bilges with leather buckets. This was a most inefficient
procedure which diverted men from their duties as rowers and warriors. Surely it could be improved upon, I thought to myself.

So while we waited for the carcasses of the dead beasts to rise, I sent one of the slave girls to fetch the basket that contained my writing instruments. Then, after a little further thought, I
began to sketch out an idea for mechanically removing the water from the bilges of a fighting galley in action, a method which did not demand the efforts of half the crew. It was based on the same
principle as the shadoof water buckets. I thought that two men might operate it instead of a dozen at the buckets, as was now the case.

When I had completed the sketch, I pondered on the collision that had caused the original damage. Historically, the tactics used in battles between squadrons of river galleys had always been the
same as those of land engagements. The ships would lie alongside each other and exchange volleys of arrows. They would then close and grapple and board, and finish the business with the sword. The
galley captains were always careful to avoid collision, as this was considered sloppy seamanship.

‘But what if—’ I thought suddenly, and I began a sketch of a galley with a reinforced bow. As the idea took firm root I added a horn like that of the rhinoceros at the water
line. It could be carved from hardwood and clad with bronze. Angled forwards and slightly downwards, it could be driven through the hull of an opposing vessel to rip out her belly. I was so
engrossed that I did not hear Tanus come up behind me. He snatched the papyrus scroll from me and studied it avidly.

Of course, he understood instantly what I was about. When his father had lost his fortune, I had tried everything in my power to find a rich patron to sponsor him to enter one of the temples as
a novice scribe, there to continue his studies and his learning. For I truly believed that, with my tutelage, he had every prospect of developing into one of the great minds of Egypt, perhaps in
time a name to rank with that of Imhotep who, one thousand years before, had designed those first marvellous pyramids at Saqqarah.

I had been unsuccessful, naturally enough, for the same enemy whose spite and guile had destroyed Tanus’ father had set out to bar the way to Tanus himself. No man in the land could
prevail against such a baleful influence. So instead I had helped Tanus to enter the army. Despite my disappointment and misgivings, this had been his own choice of career ever since he had first
stood upright and wielded a wooden sword on the other infants in the playground.