Andre Norton - Shadow Hawk (2 page)

Chapter 1

BORDER PATROL

No wind arose over the parched land to drive away the overpowering stench that billowed out in a dirty yellowish smoke from the filthy huts of the squalid Kush village. The Nubian- Egyptian archers of the Desert Scouts went about the business of setting fire to the huts with the competence of long practice. When the roofs of untidy thatch or tenting of badly cured hides had fallen to ash, they would pry apart the stones of the circular walls, and another raider nest would cease to exist as a border menace—for a while.

The Kush were like ants, wearily decided Rahotep, the young captain of Scouts, who stood on a hillock that raised the chieftain's hut above its fellows. You could plant your sandal forcibly on a hill, or even go so far as to dig up the tunneled earth beneath, getting bitten in the process. But within a day or two another city would spring into being in its place.

A curl of smoke wreathed his head, and he coughed. But he did not retreat from his post. He knew—as did every one of the outwardly unconcerned archers under his command—that there were hostile eyes watching—with hate and, he hoped, a little wholesome fear. Though a tangle of dark, barbarian bodies lay among the huts, not ail the Kush of this village had ended with the red war arrows of the patrol in them. And Rahotep had not ordered a pursuit for captives—there was too long a sprint across the desert wastes to the fort to be burdened with prisoners.

"They will not hole up here again, Lord!" There was the ring of honest satisfaction in that observation. Kheti, Raho- tep's underofficer, swung up the hillock with a hunter's loose- jointed tread. The Nubian towered a good six inches over the slighter, more delicately made Egyptian, for the captain was of the old stock from the north with no mixture of blood. The tall bow, which only Kheti could string, projected above both their heads as a regimental standard. When the smoke caught Kheti, he grimaced and spat.

"They will find another nest soon enough!" Rahotep said.

"So be it!" Kheti had the cheerfulness of one who is ready to accept orders and carry them out, but who is not required to plan any campaigns on his own. "Do men not know that to a cruising Hawk none of such pestilent holes will long lie hidden?"

Rahotep's level black brows knitted under the straight edge of his striped linen headdress. The reminder of his lost heritage in Egypt was irritating. It was folly to claim to be the lord of the Striking Hawk Nome when that holding had been for a generation in the firm grip of the Hyksos invaders. He was only Rahotep, a landless, and almost friendless, officer of Scouts, not the Hawk. Even that title was used against him jeeringly now by his half brother Unis and those who would flatter Unis. "Shadow Ilawk" they called him—lord of a shadow land.

A few more roofs fell with puffs of denser smoke, showers of sparks. As the archers worked away at the walls, Rahotep measured the angle of the sun with a frontiersman's knowledge. They must be away before nightfall.

"A short space yet." Kheti caught his glance aloft. "It is a very great pity we were not able to send Haptke to his unsavory fathers. But one cannot always have the full smile of fortune."

"Now!" The captain thrust the baton-flail, which was the symbol of his authority, into the belt of his short kilt and gripped the bronze sistrum-rattle, used to alert men in the field. He swung it with a sharp crack of the wrist, bringing

from its wire-strung beads the buzz of an angered viper.

As the archers assembled in a loose line of march, Kheti pushed into his commander's hand a small clay image he had fashioned when the call for this patrol had come to the fort. Rahotep held it out in the sunlight, well aware that hidden eyes saw it and that hidden ears would hear every word he had to say in the tongue of the Kush.

"Haptke." He gave the Kush chieftain the name by which he was known to the Scouts. "Haptke, son of Taji, and all those who follow at his heels, his warriors, his swift runners, liis friends, those who eat from his pots and lie in the shadow of his hut, who rebel, who lay waste the land, who kill with ax and knife, spear and arrow, who may think of wasting the land or killing, upon them and their lord Haptke lies now this curse. And as I do this, so will it be done unto Haptke and those I have named—in the sight of Amon-Re, Lord of the High Heavens, and of His son upon earth, Pharaoh, Lord of the Two Lands!"

Though the Kush speech was harsh, Rahotep managed to give it the roll of a temple chant. He raised the clay figure over his head and hurled it against the flame-marked wall of Haptke's late headquarters. The sun-dried clay burst into powdery rubble, and the archers gave cries of approval. Men had done their best against these raiders; now the aid of the gods had been invoked as well.

They left the ruined village with the famous distance-eating trot of their corps, herding with them the spoils they had taken—asses and a brace of fine Sudanese greyhounds, now snapping and growling but towed along by leashes in the hands of their new masters. The archers were inclined to regard this as a successful foray, but Rahotep would have gladly traded four times the value of their booty for the certainty of Haptke's death. They might have destroyed the den, but the lion had gone free to ravage again.

Sun-browned vegetation of the dry season closed about them as they threaded a path beside a narrow water course where the stream had sunk to a series of scummed pools. Disturbed insects arose in clouds, and Rahotep used his captain's flail for a flywhisk as their pace carried them on steadily. The regular thud of sandaled feet was echoed by the sharp clatter of asses' hoofs on water-smoothed gravel.

They had reached that section of scrub land bordering the true desert where red clay was broken by stone outcrops when a shadow swept across the ground, bringing Rahotep's attention skyward. Over that unclouded bowl glided his own symbol, a hawk. It appeared to hover above the column of men and animals, as if in that dusty company it had found the prey it sought.

Coasting silently, the bird moved ahead of the archers almost like a guide. It was losing altitude, drifting toward the ridges of sandy hills through which their northern road ran. Then—in an instant—it swooped and was out of sight.

"The Messenger of the Great One hunts." Kheti's voice came from behind the captain. "Wish the Servant of Re, Horus-of-the-Keen-Eyes, luck as good as ours has been this day, Lord."

Rahotep slowed to a stop and whirred his sistrum in an imperative jangle, which halted the whole line of men. No, he had not been mistaken! He heard again a thin, yowling cry from beyond, a sound he could not identify.

Dagger in hand, he moved up the slope, picking his way with a stalker's caution. Kheti, belt ax unslung, was at his heels. They went down to their hands and knees as they mounted the rise behind which the hawk had disappeared. Then, lying flat, they edged forward to look down upon a scene so amazing that Kheti uttered a grunt of pure amazement.

There was a cave hollowed in the drop below them, and before it, a ledge of stone, scoured free of earth and sand by the wind. Stiff and contorted, her muzzle a mask of snarling, death-frozen hate, a gaunt female leopard lay there, the matted fur about a chewed arrow shaft in her haunch bearing witness to the long hours of her dying.

A quarter-grown yellow-furred cub, as stiff in death as its mother, huddled against the wall by the cave mouth. And on its back perched the hawk, its sharp-beaked head turning slowly from side to side as it considered intelligently something before it. The bird's attitude was not that of hunting eagerness or of rage, but one of curiosity, as it watched a small bundle of black fur.

The black fur ball opened its kitten mouth and spat, arched its back, and raised a claw-extended paw to menace the feathered intruder. But to Rahotep's amazement the winged hunter did not retaliate with punishing talons or stabbing beak. Its fierce head lifted and it voiced a scream, beating the heat- hazed air with its wings, though it did not fly.

Rahotep topped the rise, but his descent was more rapid than he had planned as clay crumbled under his weight and he coasted down in a miniature avalanche of sun-baked earth. The hawk screamed hoarsely for a second time, and the captain made a propitiating sign with his dusty fingers.

The hawk took to the air, spiraling steadily up into the late afternoon sky. Rahotep watched it go, fearless and free, before he turned to the small, belligerent warrior in black fur.

This was no helpless baby creature, but a growing cub with open eyes and a wild thing's temper. Though it must be starving, its little body showing a rack of bones beneath its fur, it was alert for his every move, as quick with its hissed warning as it had been when facing the hawk.

The rattle of gravel and more clay announced the arrival of Kheti. Granting the cub full room for fear of frightening it into a retreat that would carry it over the ledge, the tall Nubian surveyed the dead leopardess. He prodded the body with his ax and stooped to inspect the chewed shaft protruding from her body.

"Kush. But it is an old wound. She has been dead two days at least."

Rahotep made a swift pounce. His fingers nipped the loose skin behind the cub's head, and the cub voiced the same yowling cry that had first drawn his attention from a distance. He picked it up, its four paws sawing wildly at the air.

"Horus pleases to give a gift, Lord," Kheti remarked. "Now I wonder why. Gifts from the Great Ones who rule from beyond the sky often carry mixed luck with them. And a leopard who has a hide akin in color to that of the Kush— though such are rare—is notably vile of temper. However, this is so young a cub, he may yet be brought to follow at the heel and obey on the hunting trail or in war. He is strong to live—aye, and fight, too—when his sister and dam have died. But shield those claws, small as they are, Lord, if you do not wish to bear some smarting battle wounds!" He laughed as the enraged cub wrinkled its small mask in a snarl and continued to beat furiously at the air.

Rahotep shook out the folds of his cloak awkwardly with his left hand. Kheti seized one corner of the stout length of cloth and threw it about the struggling captive, helping to make a heaving bundle that the captain pressed against his chest as he reclimbed the heights and went down to join his waiting men.

He jogged ahead to the ass herd. Yes, he was right. There was a mare with a very small colt running beside her. And with the assistance of several would-be leopard tamers, and some expenditure of effort, he acquired a measure of milk in an earthenware cup. As the party moved on, the captain carried the now limp and exhausted cub in the crook of his arm, lowering a strip of linen first into the cup one of the archers held ready and then putting it into that small, panting mouth. The cub caught the idea quickly enough, sucking avidly, only its black head protruding from the cloak wrappings.

"A strong one indeed, Lord," commented the cup bearer. "Shall I try for more milk now? Hori has the she-ass ready in a leading rope."

Rahotep shook his head. "We cannot delay again this side of the river. Once across that—before Re departs from the sky—"

He saturated the rag with the last few drops of milk and felt the persistent tug of the cub's mouthing. They marched with all the precautions proper in hostile country—with an alert rear guard and flankers out. The Desert Scouts were well seasoned patrolmen. But the captain did not intend to make camp until they reached a site he had earlier marked for that purpose because of its defenses. Haptke and his band of border raiders had a reputation for predawn attacks. Not that the Kush could ever hope to catch any company of Scouts unprepared—as they could the unwary farmers of the northern fields. But Rahotep had long ago learned that, in the border wastes with the Kush nosing about like lean black hounds, no wise man took chances.

Their trail dipped into a cup of faded green about the dwindled river, where the mud of the banks was cut again and again by the hoofs and pads of the animals that came there to drink. The captain took the fording as slowly as his sense of duty allowed, savoring to the full the soft wash of water about his feet and legs. But that welcome moisture dried all too quickly as they breasted the slope beyond and came to the hill, with its crown of ruins, which he had set for their goal.

The defaced statue of a seated king frowned over them toward the lowlands, facing in challenge the border and the lands of the Kush. Clay and sand had silted up about its base, but in the sunset's red glow Rahotep could still read the royal name—Sesostris, the Theban Pharaoh, first of his name, who had added Nubia to the holdings of Egypt almost a thousand years before the captain had been born. A Pharaoh of pharaohs indeed, before whom the Kush had groveled and slunk away like wasteland scavengers. If only such a one ruled today! The leader of Scouts raised his baton in salute as he passed that brooding king of stone.

Time had breached the walls of the ancient fort; its inner courts were half filled with rubble. But those same walls were more protection against a rush attack than the open desert hillocks beyond.

One of the archers who had been on flank duty came in with a gazelle slung over his shoulder, and a fire was made. The loose animals were turned into the roofless enclosure of the old granary. They would be watered sparingly, but tonight they must go hungry.

Rahotep began his rounds of the encampment, inspecting the picket lines of the burden asses, stationing or checking upon sentries. Then at last he came to stand at the foot of the statue once again, looking south. There was no movement, not even of a dust devil raised by a wind puff, between the fort and the river. But he doubted that they lacked trailers. Haptke's men lurked there, ready to avenge their defeat on any straggler they could cut off, eager to spear-point an attack if the chances of success seemed good.