Sting of the Scorpion (4 page)

“They’re hidden by the dunes. Even if we did wait here until we caught sight of them, we wouldn’t be able to catch up with them.”

The sun was low in the sky. They were all dead tired after their ordeal. Ramose and Karoya crawled back down the dune and collapsed.

As the darkness crept around them, the three friends huddled together. Ramose closed his eyes. He saw an image of the desert, nothing but sand in every direction as far as the eye could see. On the endless sand he could see three small black dots. That was them. They were lost, hopelessly lost. They had no food, and hardly any water. Ramose could think of nothing on earth that could save them. He prayed to Seth, who was also the god of the desert and foreign lands, not to abandon him and his friends.

“We could last for quite a while without food,” Karoya said, as they sat in the growing light the following morning. “But without water, we haven’t got a chance.”

She shook their waterskin. It was less than a quarter full.

“Zeyd will come back and look for us, won’t he?” Hapu asked hopefully.

Karoya stroked Mery and shook her head.

“He helped us before.”

“He didn’t change the path of his journey, though. Nomads have to keep moving to the next oasis. They couldn’t risk the lives of their goats by stopping to look for us. Without the goats the nomads die.”

They sat in silence as the sun rose in the sky.

Ramose sat up. He still felt very weak. “We should walk east, towards the Nile.”

“The river must be many days march away,” said Karoya. “We can’t possibly reach it without food or water.”

“I’d rather walk than sit and wait for death.”

“Okay. We’ll walk,” said Hapu.

Karoya nodded. She sewed the sleeve back onto Ramose’s nomad coat as best she could with a length of fishing line.

“I’m sorry,” Ramose said. “Neither of you would be in this situation if it wasn’t for me.”

Ramose looked at his friends. Why had they chosen to take this journey with him? It was the duty of all Egyptians to serve the pharaoh and his family, but when Hapu started to help Ramose, he didn’t even know he was the pharaoh’s son. Karoya should have hated him. It was the pharaoh who was responsible for her being taken from her family and becoming a slave.

“You shouldn’t have followed me, Hapu.”

Hapu put his bag on his shoulder. “It’s the will of the gods,” he said.

“You could have gone to Tombos, Karoya. You would have been closer to your home. Why did you choose to come with me?”

Karoya shrugged. “You needed my help.”

Ramose had hoped that when he became pharaoh, he would be able to reward his friends for their friendship. It didn’t look like that was going to happen now.

Ramose turned towards the rising sun and started to walk. Hapu followed him. Karoya picked up Mery’s basket and set out after Hapu.

No one spoke. There was nothing to say. The sun beat down on them. It felt hotter than it had on the other days they’d spent in the desert. By mid-morning they had already drunk all the water. Ramose could think of nothing but how thirsty he was. He imagined large terracotta jars of water, pools and ponds; he remembered the Nile. He didn’t look ahead, but just stared at the sand beneath him, and his feet making one pointless step after another. They trudged through the valleys between the huge mounds of sand, skirting around dune after dune.

“Ramose,” said Karoya behind him. Her voice sounded dry and crackly like a piece of burnt papyrus. “You’ve turned south. We aren’t heading east any more.”

Ramose looked up at the sun. It was directly above them. When the sun was in that position he found it hard to tell which way was which.

“What does it matter?” he said, continuing to walk in the same direction.

Karoya didn’t argue. She followed in his footsteps. Hapu’s eyes were glazed over. Ramose had seen that look in animals that were close to death. He guessed his own eyes had the same look. Ramose kept walking.

The visions of water in Ramose’s head grew stronger. He remembered the jars and jars of water that the palace servants had poured over him day after day as they bathed him. He also remembered the lotus pool in the palace gardens. He pictured the irrigation canals in the Nile valley, recalling with envy the water poured on the rows of vegetables. He would have given anything for a cup of water, just the amount given to a single lettuce or onion plant. But he had nothing to give.

Images of his dear sister and Keneben, his tutor, drifted into his mind. The last time he had seen them was the day they had escaped from the high priest. The royal barge had sailed past them on its way to Thebes. Aboard it, Ramose had seen his beautiful sister, Princess Hatshepsut, and Keneben. He had thought Keneben was still banished in the distant land of Punt.

Ramose had also glimpsed his father on the barge. Pharaoh had looked unwell, but he was healthy enough to make the long river journey to Thebes. Ramose had splashed into the river waving and shouting, but they hadn’t seen him. They didn’t know where he was. They would never know what had happened to him. He had also seen his half-brother, the brat Prince Tuthmosis, and the boy’s evil mother Queen Mutnofret.

When darkness fell, they collapsed in the sand. When the sun rose, they struggled to their feet and walked again. They walked without thinking about which direction they were going in. They each stared down at their feet, as if a great deal of concentration was required to keep them moving. Their steps became slower and shorter, until they were merely shuffling through the sand a few finger-widths at a time.

Ramose looked up at the sky. The sun was lower. Was it morning or afternoon? He couldn’t remember. Was this only the second day of walking? Surely it had been longer. He looked around him. The dunes had softened and become smaller and lower. Instead of walking around them, they walked in a straight line over them. It was easier than having to decide which valley to follow. Ramose stopped. Up ahead he saw something glint in the sunlight. It was a reflection of the blue sky.

“The devil’s mirror,” said Ramose hoarsely, pointing to the reflection.

Karoya looked to where he was pointing. She nodded. Her knees collapsed beneath her, as if the effort of nodding had taken all the energy she had. She slumped to the ground. Hapu collapsed next to her. Ramose kept his eyes on the bright glint of reflected light. This mirage was more detailed than the ones he’d seen before. He could actually see faint images of palm fronds. Ramose thought it must be the effects of lack of water. He stumbled a few more steps. The reflection disappeared, but the image of the palm tree grew clearer.

“I must be close to death,” he whispered, though the words couldn’t get out of his parched mouth. “I’m seeing things.”

He shuffled up the gentle slope of the next sand dune, but his legs crumpled beneath him. He crawled on his hands and knees, as the palm fronds in front of him multiplied and tamarisks appeared as well. Suddenly, the sand beneath him sprouted tufts of dry grass. He crawled to the top of the dune. A green valley stretched before him. A forest of date palms, tamarisks and acacia trees sprung from the ground. In the middle of the trees was a pool of water, perfectly reflecting the sky. Ramose stared.

He croaked out a call to his friends. They struggled to their feet and made their way very slowly to the top of the shallow dune. They blinked as they stared at the brilliant vision of green and blue—colours they hadn’t seen for days and days.

“Is it real?” Hapu’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Or have we passed into the underworld?”

Ramose stood up and took a few steps towards the trees and the pool. They didn’t edge further away as he approached, as the heat haze had. Instead they grew closer. He could see that the palms were laden with dates. Ramose found a last reserve of energy and ran towards the pool. He splashed into the water and then fell full length. The coolness of the water took his breath away. He gulped in mouthfuls of it.

“It’s real,” he spluttered.

Karoya and Hapu approached the pool more cautiously. Karoya dipped her fingers into the water and scooped up a handful. She drank it and then sank to her knees to drink more. Hapu stood ankle-deep in the water and cried.

“I don’t understand how there can be a pool of water in the middle of the desert,” Hapu said, after they had drunk their fill. The water had a bitter, salty taste, but no one was complaining. They were sitting in the shade of a tamarisk tree chewing on the dried-up dates that had fallen on the ground. No one had the strength yet to climb one of the palms for the fresher fruit.

“It’s an oasis,” said Ramose.

“Without them nomads wouldn’t be able to survive,” said Karoya.

“But where does the water come from?” asked Hapu, still puzzled.

“It comes up from the great invisible river that runs beneath the earth,” replied Karoya.

Hapu shook his head in disbelief. “It’s like magic.”

Ramose didn’t want to spoil his friends’ good mood, but he was already thinking of what lay ahead of them.

“The Nile is still many, many cubits away and we only have one small waterskin and nothing but dates to eat.”

“We can live here for a long time,” said Karoya. “There will be snakes, birds, frogs. We can find things to eat.”

“And stay here until we grow old?” Hapu didn’t like the idea.

“No,” replied Karoya. “We will wait until the next nomads arrive.”

“That could be ages.”

“It might be months, yes. Do you have a better idea?”

Hapu didn’t.

The sun was low in the sky.

“It will be getting cold soon,” said Karoya. “We need to collect fuel to make a fire.”

The three friends walked around the oasis collecting dead palm fronds and dry grass.

“Look what I’ve found,” shouted Karoya. She picked up a dead branch that had fallen from one of the tamarisk trees. “We’ll be able to have a good fire tonight.”

Wood was very precious in Egypt and they wouldn’t have dreamt of wasting it in a fire normally, but out in the desert it didn’t seem to matter.

Karoya arranged some stones to make a fireplace. She laid a pile of grass and palm leaves in the fireplace and then she got out her fire-making tools. These consisted of three pieces of wood: a flat stick with a well dug into it, a smooth rod and a stick with a length of gut tied at each end like a small bow. She wrapped the string of the bow around the rod and placed the end of the rod in the well in the flat stick. Then she started pulling the bow back and forth so that the upright stick twirled at great speed. Hapu laid small pieces of dry grass near the well, waiting for the wood to get hot enough to burn the grass. Ramose picked up the dead tree branch and broke it across his knee. The crack echoed in the silence. A shrill sound suddenly came out of the trees.

“Eigh! Eigh! Eigh!”

The friends all spun round. Hapu screamed in terror. A small dark creature, covered from head to toe in black rags, appeared from among the trees. It was wielding a heavy stick. The creature ran straight at Ramose, knocked him to the ground and started hitting him with the stick.

“It’s a demon,” yelled Hapu.

Karoya rushed at the demon, trying to rescue her friend.

“Stop!” she shouted.

The creature turned with a whirl of tattered rags and set upon Karoya, scratching her with long, curved claws and growling like a tiger. Ramose jumped to his feet and grabbed the demon, pinning its arms behind its back. He was surprised at how easy it was. The creature’s arms were thin and frail. He pulled back the black rags wrapped around its head to get a better look at their attacker. To his surprise, he discovered it was an old woman—an ancient woman. She had a tangle of grey hair, milky-white eyes and a dark-brown face that was wrinkled like an old leather bag. She screamed out horrible sounds and feebly tried to escape from Ramose’s grasp.

“It must be the spirit of someone who died in the desert,” said Hapu, looking at her fearfully.

“I don’t think spirits can bash people,” said Ramose, rubbing the bump on his head.

“Where did she come from?” asked Karoya, peering around in the growing darkness. “There’s no one else here.”

“Where are your people?” Ramose asked the old woman. “Where are you from?”

The woman didn’t seem to understand him. Hapu waved his hand in front of her eyes.

“I think she’s blind,” he said.

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” said Ramose. “You two see if you can find something to eat.”

Since their last meal with the nomads two days before, they’d had nothing to eat but a few dried dates.

“Hapu, can you climb up one of these palms and get some dates?”

Hapu nodded and started to climb a date palm.

“Dates,” said the old woman in an angry voice. “My dates.”

The three friends stared at the wrinkled face. She had spoken in Egyptian.

“We’re hungry,” said Karoya slowly. “Very hungry.”

The old woman’s brow wrinkled even more than it was already. She reached up and touched Karoya’s face.

“Children!” she exclaimed. She spoke with a heavy accent, and the word came slowly as if she was searching in a part of her mind she hadn’t used for a long time. “Come!” she said. “Come!”