Servant of the Gods (13 page)

Dismissed like a common servant. Kamenwati fumed. How had Narmer learned of what passed in the south?  If he learned who it was, he would pull the entrails from their living body with his own hands, foot by slow foot. If he’d only had a little more time…

Feeling his control of Narmer slip through his fingers, Kamenwati strode from the hall.

Then he smiled. It was no matter. It was obvious they’d come as he’d bid. It remained only to see what they could do. He needed to learn what it was they did. He’d bought them some little time with his stalling. That time was over. What would they do now, in the face of the army of Egypt?

As had become their habit, the priests and priestesses of the major Gods and Goddesses gathered at the end of the day in Isis’s temple when there were no pressing duties. With the attempted assassination of the King still unresolved and this new threat from the south, Kahotep knew they were all were worried. It felt oddly as if they were besieged even though there was no direct threat they could name.

Those who lay on the pallets in the courtyard below belied the peacefulness of Thebes.

The sun set magnificently over the city, washing everything with brilliant amber light nearly the color of fire, or blood. To the south and west though, farther than most could see, a shadow lay and it was growing.

Looking out over the darkness that spread across the distant horizon, a great blotch that obscured the stars themselves, Kahotep said, “It has begun. There is and can be no doubt now.”

The time of prophecy.

He could no longer deny it, not even to himself.

Finally the King had acted, calling up the armies, but all of them feared it was too late to stop what was coming. Even so General Khai had sent word to them with thanks for their assistance – or at least Irisi’s – along with a request for aid, healers and such, from the temples.

“Are you certain, Kahotep?” Nafre asked, her soft voice anxious.

“What is it you see, Priest of Horus?” Banafrit asked.

Kahotep Looked, concentrating on the eye tattooed between his brows, Horus’s eye, and closed that Eye against what he saw.

“Death and destruction,” he said. “And in their wake a darkness even my Sight cannot penetrate, but the voices cry out…the Darkness that was prophesied has come…”

Bowing her head, Banafrit nodded. “It’s as we expected.”

It was time. Priests and priestesses, even the King, must know, and know for certain, what it was they faced.

“Summon Irisi, please,” she said to one of the messengers waiting in the hall. That one leaped to her feet and ran.

“Does she know?” Djeserit asked, her dark eyes sparking red in the gathering darkness.

With a gesture and a murmured spell, Kahotep set the lamps alight.

Slowly, Banafrit shook her head. “No. She will soon enough. What would it be to carry the weight of such a prophecy on her shoulders? It’s best as it is. She’ll know soon enough, it seems.”

Irisi inclined her head to the messenger who summoned her, trying not to notice the baleful look on Saini’s face. He’d long looked to be Banafrit’s successor and assumed it would be so. Until Irisi arrived. She wasn’t so blind she didn’t see what it was Banafrit intended. Nor was Saini and it clearly stung him. Although Irisi hadn’t sought it, it was still being handed to her. She was concerned. This trouble with Saini didn’t bode well for the future. Still, there was nothing she could do about it at that moment.

Instead, she went in answer to the summons as she must and trusted that Banafrit knew what it was she did.

The eyes of the other priests and priestesses of Isis followed her worriedly.

All in the temple had watched the higher priests and priestesses arrive. They’d also seen the trickle of refugees become something that more closely resembled a flood. People trailed into the temple daily, some with horrific wounds, the marks of teeth and claws. The teeth and claws of nothing any of them had seen before.

The stories they heard were terrible, tales of a terrible darkness falling, of something like smoke that poured between the huts, and from that smoke emerged creatures no one could describe and the screams of the dying. Where the darkness was, nothing survived. No word escaped from those places. Those who fled were white-eyed, their skin gray with shock.

In the face of the threat, the King had finally called back the army from the North, sending it south and west. Irisi tried not to think about Khai, or the danger he might be marching to face.

She entered the High Priestess’s chambers, and bowed to Banafrit and the others.

“My Lady.”

Taking a breath, Banafrit looked at the girl. A slender vessel on which all their hopes rested, but a strong one. Those foreign eyes, the eyes of the Goddess, met hers evenly, as always.

“We send you south and west, to the army and beyond. We need to know what passes there,” Banafrit said. “Can you ride?”

Few of their folk did as it was a rare skill, but Irisi was foreign. In the time she’d known the girl, it hadn’t been tested so Banafrit didn’t know. A litter could be arranged but it would take far longer for her to reach the army, and time was something of which they had little to spare, it seemed. Events moved quickly now.

Looking from one to another of the priests and priestesses gathered there, Irisi said, frowning a little, “I can.”

Irisi had learned to do so while she’d been with the mercenaries during her time in the north. Some of the folk there rode as if they were a part of the animal. Some called them centaurs, although they weren’t, not truly. They’d been happy enough to teach her what they knew, though. A good sturdy horse large enough to ride had been one of her first purchases with the coin the King had settled on her.

“Then ride hard, my Lady,” Kahotep said, his tone grim.

He was a tall, spare, balding man with kind, intelligent dark eyes and a warmth to match his compassion. His dark eyes were shadowed.

South and west to where the troubles were. Khai had sent a squad there. Only one had returned.

Irisi looked at them, her head tilted in question even as her mouth tightened. Fear moved through her but she knew this was what Banafrit had feared when she’d taken her as acolyte.

“I should take my swords then?”

Banafrit nodded, her voice was gentle. “Yes, Irisi.”

That time had indeed come then.

Irisi looked at her High Priestess, her friend, and saw it in her eyes.

“As you wish,” Irisi said. “When do I leave?”

“Now,” Banafrit said.

Startled , only a moment, Irisi just stared. Now? Was the situation so dire as that?

Then she nodded. “South and west, to the army. What is it you wish me to do?”

Banafrit considered it.

Was it wisest to send Irisi so soon, if this was the prophecy they feared? To put their only hope at such risk against what she might find there? Yet she dared send no other. Few among them had the skill with a sword Irisi did and while healing wasn’t her strongest gift, none but Banafrit herself could match her with magic. Whoever went might need all those talents. Desperately.

She took a breath. “We need to know what comes, Irisi. Seek out this darkness and learn of it, but keep your distance. Take guards with you and whatever you need to reach that place quickly. Return to tell us what you find.”

Irisi saw the concern in all their eyes, not just Banafrit’s.

Only one of Khai’s men, skilled soldiers all, had returned after facing what came. She’d be a fool not to be a little frightened. She set herself against it.

“Yes, my lady.”

Irisi took a breath, nodded and went to do as she was bid, sending servants for the temple’s traveling tent, summoning the guards who would accompany her. She stopped at her quarters only long enough to pick up the few things she knew she would need… and Nebi, the brightest of her four cats. Another servant was sent to fetch her horse from the stables while she packed.

A messenger passed her in the hall as she left, bearing the King’s warrant.

Irisi watched him pass and wondered what it was the King sought from Banafrit.

The guards awaiting her looked at her cautiously as she walked toward them with a young lion pacing at her side, but none said a word as she mounted up. None would. She was a priestess, it was not their place to question.

She signaled them to ride out.

It had been a long time since she’d camped in the desert… Five years previous? Six? With Khai…on the journey to Thebes.

The memories of those days swept through her and she smiled a little, remembering.

Now she rode to join him once again.

The army marched steadily. For a change the three Generals – Akhom, the King’s chief General; Baraka, who commanded the charioteers, and Khai with his mix of chariot and foot soldiers – rode together. More often than not in the past they had either ridden with their own troops or were scattered across the known world. Save for this, a danger that came out of their own lands, out of the deep desert.

The news from the south and west wasn’t good, as Khai and the other Generals could see for themselves.

A steady stream of refugees passed. The faces of the evacuees reflected their shock and horror as they clutched their meager belongings to their chests. Even when they spoke most were so terrified they were barely intelligible.

A man clutched at the side of Khai’s chariot.

“It was nothing but teeth and claws,” he said…and sobbed, too parched by the sun to weep. Then he staggered away with the others.

Khai watched them go, out and away from the deeper desert, toward the broad green banks of the Nile. Toward Thebes and the relative safety they thought they might find there.

What followed?

The army set camp for their first night in the open desert, spread out around the General’s command tents as the tents and those of their staff’s were set up.

Wood and charcoal fires glowed dully in the growing darkness, as well as from a central firepit for each command. Even with only a fraction of the King’s army accompanying them, they still spread as far as the eye could see, from rise to rise. Akhom had been unwilling to commit their full forces until they knew what they faced.

So it was that Irisi found them, riding past the refugees streaming east, many of whom cried out to her as she passed, recognizing her as a priestess by her robes.

“Lady,” they cried, “save us!”

She didn’t know if she could, but her heart went out to them, remembering the day her own village had been attacked by thieves. Knowing what it was to lose everything you’d known and held dear. Father, mother, home…to go among strangers…

The soldiers were mostly silent, although many stood or bowed their heads in respect as she went by them.

A captain, seeing her, ran ahead to tell the generals a priestess of Isis was coming.

So many.

Even during her days among the mercenaries, she’d rarely seen so many men in one place. To one side were the charioteers, their chariots empty at the moment. The horses were hobbled as they ate the grain that had been set out for them, lipping it up from the hard ground.

To the other side were the foot soldiers and archers, the core of the army, its heart and soul.

Although, she thought with a small wry smile, she might be a little partial as she’d once been one of them. The memory of her days as a mercenary echoed through her.

In the thin moonlight Irisi could see the tents of the Generals, the light of torches and lanterns glowing through the walls of them like beacons in the night.

A man ran up to take her horse and she bowed her head to him in gratitude, waving at her guards to dismount and take their rest.

With a signal from her, Nebi settled to the ground at a slight distance from her horse. Irisi smiled and ruffled his thick mane fondly as she went by him.

Shaking his shaggy head, he chuffed out a sigh.

Taking a moment, Irisi shook the grit from her kalasaris to present a more dignified appearance and then gestured to her escort to stay.

Another man ran to hold the flaps of the main tent, undoubtedly General Akhom’s by the location, open for her. She ducked her head a little as she stepped inside.

Three men awaited her, all familiar – if two of them only by sight.

“General Akhom,” she said, quietly and inclined her head.

The gesture wasn’t required of a priestess, but it cost her nothing to give him the respect he was due as Narmer’s chief General.

Akhom was a tall, golden-skinned man with graying hair who liked his food a little too well, but there was still strength to his build. He had a face that might have been carved from some rich dark wood, all sharp angles, and dark, intelligent eyes.