Khu: A Tale of Ancient Egypt (14 page)

“Are you aware that they refer to you as He Who Wields Death?” Khety had asked this with a smile, though he was not truly amused by it. He
actually found it rather disturbing and ominous.

“Worse things have been said,” Ankhtifi replied
indifferently, his eyes gazing away at nothing.

He
seldom made eye contact with Khety or anyone else for that matter; rarely held anyone’s gaze. And when he did, there was something cold within his eyes. It was as though he felt nothing inside—was
incapable
of feeling anything—neither joy nor sorrow. He was stoic to the point of seeming inhuman at times.

Khety just stared at the chieftain
and surreptitiously touched the amulet hanging from his neck, as he suppressed an inexplicable chill that left him uncomfortable. He distrusted the man. Yet Khety could not say why, or what it was about Ankhtifi that made him wary and watchful. It was more of an instinct cautioning him to be alert and on guard. It was as though he were standing in front of a wild and unpredictable animal which had been raised to do his bidding. But for all his training, the animal was still feral at heart. He was a savage in civilized guise.

Although
Khety had known Ankhtifi for many years, he realized that he really did not truly
know
him. It was impossible to really know the man. There was something very guarded and enigmatic about him. Ankhtifi lacked the empathy to understand or relate to others’ feelings. It was as though he were surrounded by a thick stone wall.

Ankhtifi was not one for conversation either
. He didn’t say very much, nor did he laugh. He did not find humor in anything, even when others were joking and laughing around him. All implied humor went right over his tall wolfish head.

O
ver the years Khety had learned to be very direct and explicit with Ankhtifi. He knew that the man seldom strayed from routines. He was highly functional and prosperous yet took little delight in his affluence. He was the kind who found satisfaction in the accumulation of wealth, rather than in its spending, as though it really did not mean any more to him than its intrinsic value. He was an intelligent man, and highly skilled at calculations so that he was aware of the precise values of all items imported and exported from his settlement, and he kept the many details of these calculations mysteriously stored in his mind.

Ankhtifi
was also very independent; so independent that he had never married nor had any children. He showed no interest in relationships due to his inability to relate to others. But he was loyal to Khety, and that was all that mattered as far as Lower Egypt’s monarch was concerned. He had been loyal to him since childhood.

A
s far as Khety knew.

Khety watched Ankhtifi as he stood quietly before him. He pondered the chieftain’s response and how he had disposed of his enemies’ remains. Ankhtifi’s answer satisfied him. He had wanted his enemies dead. And he had wanted their immortal souls to be forever vanquished from the Afterlife. Burying them in goat skins was one of the worst things that could be done to the deceased, for it would prevent them from entering the Eternal Dominion of the Just, impure and unclean as they were. And severing their right hands would cripple them in the Hereafter, by taking their strength for eternity.

Khety
subsequently rewarded Ankhtifi with more power and wealth, and asked him to move from his settlement in the north so that he could govern the land of Nekhen in the south as a neutral lord, replacing the former chieftain who had died from illness. But the move was mutually beneficial. Not only would Ankhtifi get the much-coveted land which had once been the ancient religious and political center of Upper Egypt, Khety would also have a spy planted within close proximity to his arch-nemesis in Thebes. Ankhtifi would be the eyes and ears of Lower Egypt’s monarch. He would keep Khety abreast of the comings and goings of Mentuhotep.

Many
seasons of the Inundation had passed since Ankhtifi first became Chieftain of Nekhen—the City of the Falcon, after the falcon-god Horus. It had been shortly after the tragic deaths of Khety’s wife Shani and their children, when the bereaving ruler attempted to spend his dark and fathomless grief on a rampage of Lower Egypt. One by one, Khety had slaughtered his enemies, driven away threats, and cleansed the land of any potential adversaries with the help of Ankhtifi’s iron fist. But the ensuing peace was transitory, for a peace wrought in blood is nothing short of tyranny.

Ankhtifi had claimed Nekhen
about that time, moving to the settlement lying south of Thebes, under a pretext of neutrality in the great schism dividing Lower and Upper Egypt, all while helping Khety to purge the north of his enemies. But what Khety did not know, was that Ankhtifi had acted inexcusably beyond the duty of helping Khety to solidify his kingdom and rid him of his enemies. He had traitorously gone behind Khety’s back, and secretly raided other settlements in the ensuing years as well—blameless, neutral settlements that had nothing to do with Khety’s enemies; something Khety would have despised, had he known; despised enough to have even rightfully condemned Ankhtifi to death.

Khety loathed treachery of any kind, and he
abhorred deceit and disloyalty, especially where his own warriors were concerned. But he had not been aware of his enforcer’s clandestine raids. He had no knowledge whatsoever of Ankhtifi’s heinous crimes, and the innocent blood staining the man’s already-blackened soul. While Khety had sometimes felt a bit leery of Ankhtifi’s peculiarities, he needed Ankhtifi to help keep hold of his kingdom, and he relied on his assistance in achieving his longtime ambitions.

Perhaps it was the influence of Ankhtifi’s men that urged him to commit such
vile atrocities. They were certainly motivated by greed and the promise of plunder—whatever meager loot they might find in those small villages they attacked. Perhaps it was the dark, perverted satisfaction Ankhtifi took from the raids that had become routine for him, which led him to continually pursue a blazing and violent path of destruction with death in its wake. Perhaps it was his inability to connect emotionally with others, or to feel anything but a twisted sense of accomplishment which he derived from the wickedness of his actions; or a compulsion to savagery and evil he embraced with a dead conscience.

Whatever the cause or reason,
Ankhtifi had amassed a large band of loyal men over time, and he paid visits to several of the villages scattered along the edge of the Nile’s floodplain, as he made his way back and forth on his innumerable journeys between his home in Nekhen and Khety’s palace in Nen-nesu.

P
eople whispered about the lawless barbarians that destroyed innocent lives and property. They spoke of the ruthless raiders in hushed tones as they touched a trembling hand to their amulets and invoked the protection of their gods so that it would not happen to them.

But the barbarism continued.

And keeping his identity hidden, Ankhtifi and his men laid waste to those smaller settlements. They descended upon the villages like a pestilence, killing their people, stealing their grain and livestock, and plundering their temples, tombs and treasures; leaving nothing but a bloody aftermath of death, defeat and devastation.

One of those villages had been Khu’s
.

It was Ankhtifi
who had led the massacre on that fateful day that destroyed Khu’s village, murdered his family, and forever changed the course of Khu’s life. The sun-god Re had already made his twelve-hour journey across the sky in his
Mandjet
solar boat, Barque of a Million Years, then descended beyond the horizon where he embarked on his
Mesektet
—night barque—through the twelve hours of darkness in the Underworld where he would journey eastward in preparation for his daily rebirth. The moon-god Khonsu rose full in the night sky, gilding the sleeping village with his silvery light.

No one stirred as
the vicious raiders glided along the Nile, drawing their oars soundlessly through the black shimmering water. Even the frogs and crickets that filled the night air with their chorus remained silent as they hid from sight. No breeze whispered through the doum palms, willows and sycamores bordering the plains, and their branches hung motionless in the night’s stillness.

The men
hopped out of their boats into the shallow water, and pulled their vessels through the dense reeds up onto the riverbank, leaving them with the oars inside. Their weapons gleamed in the moonlight as they stepped quietly on the soft grassy turf toward the sleeping village. No wild animals howled, no owls screeched, and no dogs barked in the stillness of the night as the invaders crept through the village and into each of the mud-brick homes to slit the throats of their sleeping occupants. The slayers moved with such calculated agility, that they managed to slaughter most of the village without a sound. No one but the moon-god Khonsu watched impassively from his sky throne as the pooling blood spilled in rivulets, and stained the ground. But even Khonsu had betrayed Khu’s village when he illuminated a treacherous path for the killers to accomplish their grisly deeds.

It was a scream that had
awoken young Khu and his family. He had been in the deepest stage of sleep and completely oblivious to the danger around him. He was in a room he shared with his parents and little sister when a woman’s voice had broken through the night’s silence. It was a short, startled cry that sent shivers up the spine of the young boy who sat up at once. But the sound was immediately cut off by the blade of an assassin.

“
Stay here,” Khu’s father ordered as he grabbed a sickle from a large earthen vessel sitting on the floor in a corner of the minimally furnished room. It was the reaping tool he used to cut the flax and barley in the fields lying just beyond the dwellings. Then he ran out the door with the tool’s wooden handle grasped firmly in his hand, its serrated flint blades poised to swipe at an unknown enemy.

He never returned.

Khu’s father was
ambushed from behind as he moved swiftly toward the sound that had woken his family. He was struck over the head with the heavy force of a blunt object before falling to the ground in a daze. And as the images of his wife and children crossed his mind for the last time, his own sickle was used to cut his throat.

Khu’s mother
was crouched over her children in the darkest corner of the room, away from the single window cut high into the wall. She was trying to shield them with her body and a linen sheet. Fear tightened her chest and she could feel her heart thumping against her ribs. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she strained to listen for clues of the danger sweeping through the village like a plague. She kept invoking the protection of Isis over her children, her eyes searching the darkness, as she called upon the goddess who was friend to the poor and prosperous alike.

“Sweet
Isis, wife and sister of Osiris,” she muttered softly, “be with us in this dark hour, protect us from harm. Protect my children especially, you who are a mother divine—mother of Horus. Use the true name of Re to banish those who seek to inflict a scourge upon us.”

“Mother,” Khu
peeked from beneath the linen sheet hiding him and his sister.

“
Shh,” his mother whispered with a panicked shake of her head. “Shh… it’s alright, it’s alright. Just be very quiet and we’ll be alright,” she tried convincing herself more than anyone else.

“They have moved
away, Mother. We must go.”

“No,” his mother’s eyes were wide.
“We are safest here.” She gnawed at her lower lip anxiously, paralyzed by indecision. She was both too terrified to step outside, and too frightened to remain there.

“But—”

“Your father said to stay. We must stay. It’s alright. We’ll be alright.”

For a few
minutes they just waited in the gloom. The silence was oppressive. Each moment felt like an eternity. Their hearts fluttered like sparrows trying to break free from a tight cage, their wings beating against the bars trapping them.

Shadows
stretched across the length of the bare walls, and hunkered down in corners like goblins.

“
They will come back, Mother. They are not finished. They will come back and find us.”

“No…
” she shook her head rapidly in denial, “no, child… shh… it’s alright… just be still and silent, and we’ll be alright.”

Khu could see the fear in his mother’s eyes.
She almost seemed dazed by it. “We must go while we can,” he said. “This is our only chance.”

Khu’s mother just stared at him
, her face full of uncertainty and dread, while her mind’s eye probed the narrow alleys and obscured pathways running throughout the village.

During the day
, the village radiated a comforting warmth with the familiar sounds of craftsmen and artisans hammering away in their shops, or bakers filling the air with the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread prepared in clay ovens. There were donkeys carrying baskets filled with vegetables, fish or grain. Oxen pulled carts laden with pottery or bricks, and goats were herded from one place to another. These were the reassuring sights, sounds and smells of daily life. But on this night, the darkness that usually cast a peaceful hush over the bustling village, had transformed it into a daunting labyrinth. It had been cloaked in menacing, inky shadows which hid the raiders who would ambush them like waterfowl ensnared by hunters.