The Blood Star (25 page)

“You would follow me, then?”

I had my answer, without a word spoken.

“Then so be it,” I said, gesturing for him to
rise. “Have you a name? By what do men call you?”

He shook his head once more.

He is like the great beast man in the legend,
I thought. “The locks of his hair sprouted like grain, and all who
saw him were numb with fear, for he was mighty.” He is like the
companion of great Gilgamesh.

“Yes—Enkidu,” I said out loud. “You must be
called something, and that is as fine a name as any.”

And if ever destiny showed itself in a name,
it did in that one, for, while I was no hero of legend, Enkidu,
whose voice no man ever heard, followed me through many adventures
in many strange lands and was my friend and my preserver to the
very hour of his death.

We were many more days in the Wilderness of
Sin, time enough to form some more definite impression of this
strange colossus who now answered readily enough to a name from
legend. It became apparent that he was no less quick in his wits
than other men, for all that he could not or would not utter a
syllable. Yet there was no denying that he was set apart, not only
by his silence and his great size and strength, but by an almost
feral apprehension—not the slightest sound nor the most distant
object escaped him. If there was a spring of fresh water about, he
would find it. If the dead earth held anything that might sustain
life, he knew where to look for it. Once when we were close to
starving he discovered a riverbed, dry perhaps for years, and cut a
hole in the stone-hard mud. From this he pulled a nest of snakes
that fed us for two days. I will always believe that without him we
should soon have perished in that terrible waste.

He was, so far as I was ever able to
determine, a being empty of carnal passions, tenacious of life yet
utterly without fear of death. The fixed and ruling principle of
his character seemed to be loyalty, and that as absolute as the
god’s own purposes. I never knew the tie by which he was bound to
the man whose corpse we found him defending that day in the
Wilderness of Sin, nor do I know why he then chose to transfer his
ceaseless vigilance to me—perhaps it was nothing more than that I
was the first to happen by and to show myself not an enemy—but
after that it never wavered.

And best of all, Enkidu had put us in
possession of a camel.

“It is a pretty creature, is it not?”
Kephalos asked, grinning. “I will keep my vow, and you will never
hear me speaking ill of this or any of its race. My Lord, I think
now we may flourish.”

And flourish we did, for a camel places a
comfortable distance between a man and his own death, and that was
the only conception of prosperity the desert allows a man to hold.
When our own water ran out, we could force a stick down the beast’s
throat and make it disgorge that which it kept stored in its
belly—rank and nasty stuff, but still drinkable even after five or
six days. We had recourse to this extremity before we finally
escaped from the Wilderness of Sin.

Beyond the main plateau there were first
ravines, vast, deep and empty, some of which obliged us to follow
their course for many hours before we discovered a crossing, and
then there were mountain ranges, one before the other, like waves
upon a troubled sea. These were many times so sheer that we had to
look for passes, and more than once we found ourselves confronted
with a blank wall of stone, or a chasm the bottom of which was
hidden in darkness, or some other obstacle that forced us to
retrace our steps and search again. We were ten more days, resting
infrequently, eating and drinking little, and traveling as much as
possible by night, before we saw another sign of human
presence.

And then, suddenly, there it was, no more
than one long day’s march ahead of us: a tiny settlement of stone
buildings beside an oasis. Even at such a distance, we could just
make out the shapes of men walking about in that calm, random way
that implies carelessness of danger. They appeared to us very
little less than gods.

Really, it was only then that our many days
of suffering seemed to weigh on us, and I remember wondering if my
legs could possibly be made to carry me all the way to this distant
paradise. My strength seemed to drain away at the mere sight of
it.

That final day was the hardest. Yet at the
end we were rewarded with fresh water and the sound of a strange
human voice—and a sight of the most extreme human misery. We had
arrived at a copper mine, manned by slaves and run by a small
contingent of Egyptian soldiers, a group of whom watched us
silently as we stopped beside the oasis’ water hole.

Finally one of them approached and addressed
a question to us in a tongue I had never heard before. I answered
him, first in Arabic and then in Aramaic, with which, as it turned
out, he had a halting familiarity.

“Have you any food?” I asked.

“Yes, and wine too. Have you the means to pay
for them?”

“Yes—trade goods. You will not find yourself
poorer for your hospitality to us. What is this place?”

“The oasis at Inpey, a bad place.”

“I have seen some that were worse.”

He regarded me for a moment through narrow,
inquisitive eyes, as if he did not believe me. He was a
dark-skinned man who looked as if he was accustomed to shaving his
face and scalp but had neglected to do so for four or five days.
His face was pinched and suspicious and carried a few scars which,
from his general appearance, I would guess he had acquired in
tavern brawls. He was wearing what must once have been a uniform of
some sort. I did not like him very well.

“Who are you?” he asked finally. “Where have
you come from?”

“We are travelers, shipwrecked by pirates,” I
answered, not really expecting to be believed. “That was five and
twenty days ago, I think, but perhaps I have lost count.”

“You have been five and twenty days in the
desert?”

“So it seems.”

He laughed at this. It was not a pleasant
laugh.

“Then you have done well to stay alive. Men
have died out there in three. Pay me first, and I will bring you
wine and bread and the flesh of a goose killed only yesterday.”

Among the items for which the nomads had
murdered Enkidu’s former master was a silver cup, well worked and
weighing not less than ten shekels. I gave it to our host.

“We will stay here a few days,” I said,
“until we are replenished and fit to go on. This should compensate
you for our support until then. What is the way to Egypt from
here?”

“North, to the fortress at Tufa. Beyond that
is a port where ships stop before entering the Duck’s Foot. They
will take you anywhere upriver you wish to go.”

“What is this ‘Duck’s Foot’?”

He laughed again, as if I must be a fool not
to know.

“The many legs of Mother Nile—they spread
wide before the sea tickles her, for she is an old harlot.”

“Thank you. Now, if it pleases you, we would
eat and drink.”

The wine was watered, and the whole jug would
not have cost two copper pieces in Nineveh. The bread was plentiful
but stale. The goose had died of old age long before yesterday. Yet
we were more than content and thought ourselves very well provided
for. Such is the effect of deprivation.

That evening, when we had rested and washed
our sunburned limbs, delighting in the coolness and the abundance
of water, the slaves began filing out of a stone hut built over the
opening of the mine where they had labored all day. A long chain
shackled them together at the wrist, but this precaution seemed
unnecessary. I have never seen men in a more abject state—starved
and listless, their skins grown pale as limestone from months of
working underground, far from the sun’s sacred light. They walked,
hardly troubling to lift their feet, but they seemed less alive
than the dust caked onto their legs.

“What have they done to be punished so?” I
asked.

“They are criminals,” was the answer. “They
have angered Pharaoh and must be punished for it. A year in this
place will finish any man, so they will not suffer long. No need to
pity them.”

They had angered ‘Pharaoh’—the name the
Egyptians give their king, whom they believe to be a god. In the
Land of Ashur only prisoners of war and traitors would have been
punished thus, but in Egypt a farmer can anger Pharaoh by not being
able to pay his taxes in a year of bad harvests. A poor man who
runs afoul of a priest can end his life in the mines. I understood
what the soldier had meant when he called this ‘a bad place’. In a
few days, when our strength had come back, we were glad to
leave.

“The fortress at Tufa is but two days from
here. The trail is well marked, and there is water.”

“Will we be received kindly there?”

“That is between you and the commander. You
will have to offer him a substantial bribe, for he has many
officers under him with whom he will be obliged to share it.
Otherwise, he will decide you are up to some mischief and feed you
to the vultures.”

“Leave this commander to your servant,”
Kephalos said to me, as soon as we were on our way north. “I
understand such men better than you. All will be well.”

Traveling at night, we set a better pace
than, apparently, the Egyptians did, so we arrived at Tufa midway
through the morning of the second day. The fortress walls were made
of sandstone, no more than three times the height of a man, and
enclosed an area anyone might walk around in an hour. I guessed
that the garrison was probably two hundred strong and that they did
not live in much dread of attack—we were within half a
beru
of the gates before a rider came out to challenge us. As he
escorted us inside, I saw that the walls were hung with corpses
left dangling head-down from ropes tied round their ankles. It was
not an encouraging sight.

“Leave all to me,” Kephalos said. “Stay
behind with the Macedonian and do not let him kill anyone. I will
speak for us all.”

So Enkidu and I waited on the parade ground,
under the bright sun, surrounded by soldiers who perhaps were
merely curious but looked as if they were anticipating the pleasure
of hanging us over the wall with their other trophies.

It was an hour before Kephalos returned.

“The commander does not believe that we could
have crossed the desert from the Red Sea,” he said, quite calmly,
as if relating a trifle. “He affects to believe we are spies, yet
he is willing to lay aside his suspicions since I have written a
letter under my own seal to a business acquaintance of mine, one
Prodikos, a merchant of the city of Naukratis, who will come here
to vouch for us—bringing with him two talents of gold, which will
speak to the commander far louder than Prodikos ever could. The
commander is a practical man and realizes that no spy has such a
sum at his disposal.”

“And this Prodikos, you are sure he will
come?”

“He will if he is still alive, and he was two
years ago when I deposited many more than two talents of gold with
him. If he is dead, then the commander will have us killed, but the
journey is at least ten days in each direction and we are thus safe
enough for a while. The commander will treat us well, for two
talents of gold is more than he could have hoped to see in his
whole life—he finds great merit in having been born the son of a
scribe attached to the royal granary, so his notions of wealth are
modest enough.”

And it was true that while we awaited the
arrival of Prodikos we were not on the footing of prisoners but
were treated with the courtesy which is normally extended to
diplomatic hostages. Since there was nowhere within two days’
journey to which we could have escaped, we were left unguarded and
enjoyed the liberty of the fortress. After the Wilderness of Sin,
it was an agreeable enough place.

For the first few days there, I had the
curious sense of having ended one life to be born into another. I
had evaded death so many times since my flight from Nineveh that I
started to entertain the hope that the Lady Ereshkigal, Mistress of
the Dark Realm, had at last forfeited her claim to me and that I
might now begin once more, as someone else. Tiglath Ashur, son of
Sennacherib—the world I was about to enter knew nothing of him. I
could be as other men in that world. I could begin to think myself
safe.

Thus do I bear witness to my own folly, for
there is no greater fool than he who assumes that the gods have
grown blind to him.

The fortress at Tufa afforded little in the
way of amusement. One day I reached such a pitch of boredom as
actually to be driven to playing the old soldier and inspecting the
fortifications. Like the spy the commander pretended to believe me,
I measured the height and thickness of the walls, climbed into the
watchtowers to see how well they covered the surrounding area, and
satisfied myself as to the water supply and the size and location
of the storehouses. In short, I learned all that would be needful
to me to know should I ever command an army laying siege to this
place.

But a siege appeared to be the last thing the
garrison at Tufa expected. Indeed, at this outpost of the mighty
Kingdom of Egypt, a land of wealth and power, fabled for a thousand
years as the mighty sovereign of the west, the dry rot of
inactivity had taken such firm hold that the men there seemed
almost to have forgotten they were ever meant to be warriors.

I had seen such garrisons before—indeed, I
had once commanded one, at Amat, among the northern mountains in
the Land of Ashur—places on the borders of empire where men are
sent as a punishment, men whom no officer wants in his command. All
the same symptoms were present at Tufa: the slovenly uniforms, the
parade grounds littered with refuse, the watch details who spent
their time gambling.