Vengeance of Orion (27 page)

"Oh, I'm sorry . . ."

"The baby died also."

"How awful!"

The king seemed to make an effort to focus his eyes on her. "I have one son," he muttered.

"Prince Aramset," inteijected Nekoptah. "A comely lad. He will make a fine king, one day." But his face clouded, and he added, "Of course, his royal majesty has many other fine sons by his royal concubines, as well."

Merneptah lapsed into silence again. Helen glared at the fat priest.

And so it went through the whole supper. At last it was finished and the king bade us good night and left. I noticed that Nekoptah barely bowed to his king; not that he could have gotten far, as fat as he was.

As the guards escorted us back to our quarters, I asked Helen, "Do you think the king is ill?"

Her face showed how troubled she felt. "No, Orion. He is drugged. I have seen it before. That fat beast is keeping him drugged so that he can control the kingdom for himself."

I was glad that she spoke only Achaian and the guards could not understand her. At least, I hoped that they could not.

The situation was painfully clear to me. Nekoptah was in control of the capital and the king. He was using me to set up a deal that would trade Helen for the security of the delta country against the Sea Peoples. For good measure, he was going to remove the chief priest of Amon and tighten his hold on the entire kingdom.

To guarantee that I do as he wished, Nekoptah would hold Helen hostage in the capital, not realizing that I knew he intended to hand her back to Menalaos.

And the Golden One had made a fortress for himself inside the great pyramid.

It all looked hopelessly snarled. Until I saw that with one stroke I could cut the knot. Like a message sent by some god, a plan took shape in my mind. By the time Helen and I had returned to our apartments, I knew what I had to do.

Chapter 39

I had not expected the prince of the realm to join our expedition downriver.

As Lukka and his men marched aboard the boat that would take us to the Lower Kingdom, a sedan chair flanked by a guard of honor was carried by six sweating Nubians slowly down the stone pier and stopped at our gangplank. A young man pushed the curtains aside and stepped lithely from the chair, slim, well muscled, and as light of skin as Merneptah and the priests I had seen.

His name was Aramset: the only legitimate son of the king. He was barely old enough to have a bit of down fuzzing his chin. He was a handsome lad, a good indication of what his father must have looked like as a teenager. He seemed eager to take part in a war.

The nominal leader of our expedition, the limping, overweight General Raseth, bowed low to the prince and then introduced me to him.

"We're going to slaughter the barbarians," Aramset said, laughing. "My father wants me to learn the arts of war, so that I will understand them when I rule."

He seemed pleasant enough. But inwardly I knew that Nekoptah had arranged this royal addition to our expedition. If the prince happened to get himself killed in battle, and there was no other legitimate heir to the throne, it strengthened his grip on the power of the kingdom even further.

Again I had to admire Nekoptah's cunning.

I had taken leave of Helen that morning, trusting her safety to the care of Nefertu. She did not fully understand all the machinations swirling around us, but she sensed that schemes within schemes were taking me away from her.

"Menalaos still seeks me," she said, as I held her in my arms.

"He is hundreds of miles away," I said.

She leaned her golden head against my chest. "Orion, sometimes I think that it is my destiny to return to him. No matter what I do, he still pursues me, like the hounds of fate."

I said nothing.

"He will kill you if you do battle against him," she said.

"No, I don't think so. And I don't really want to kill him, either."

She pushed away from me slightly and gazed up into my eyes. "Will I ever see you again, my protector?"

"Of course."

But she shook her head. "No. I don't think so. I think this is our final farewell, Orion." There were tears in her eyes.

"I will come back," I said.

"But not to me. You will seek your goddess and forget about me."

I was silent for a moment, thinking to myself that she was right. Then I said, "No one could ever forget you, Helen. Your beauty will live through all the ages."

She tried to smile. I kissed her one last time, knowing that someone was watching us, and then bade her good-bye.

Nefertu accompanied me to the docks, and I asked the slim old man to watch over Helen and protect her against the intrigues of the palace.

"I will, my friend," he said. "I will guard her honor and her life."

So, as our boat pushed off from the dock with the early morning sun slanting through the obelisks and monumental statues of the capital, I waved a final salute to Nefertu, knowing in my heart that one gray-haired minor functionary would never be able to protect anyone—even himself—against the growing power of Nekoptah. My only hope was to do what I had to do quickly, and get back to the capital to deal with the fat chief minister before he could cause harm to Helen or my newfound Egyptian friend.

I scanned the palace buildings as our boat glided out into the Nile's strong current, looking for a terrace where a golden-haired woman might be waving to me. But I saw no one.

"So we begin to earn our pay."

I turned abruptly and saw Lukka standing beside me, his dour face set in a tight smile. He was glad to be away from the palace and heading toward battle, where a man knew who his enemies were and how to deal with them.

Aramset turned out to be a pleasant young man who laughed to hide his nervousness. General Raseth bustled about the boat constantly, hovering over the royal heir until the prince made it clear he would rather be treated as one of the regular officers.

Strangely, Lukka and the prince seemed to get along very well. The youngster genuinely admired the battle-scarred professional soldier, and seemed eager to learn all he could from him.

One hot afternoon, as the oarsmen paddled us past the ruins of Akhetaten, I heard Lukka telling the prince, "All that I have spoken to you in the past days means nothing, compared to the experience of battle. When the enemy comes charging at you, screaming their war cries and leveling their spears at your chest, then you'll find out whether your blood is thick enough for war. Only then."

Aramset stared at Lukka with great round eyes and followed the Hittite soldier around the boat like a faithful puppy.

Our boat carried fifty soldiers, and it was powered by sixty oarsmen: slaves, many of them black Nubians. Since we were sailing downriver, the Nile's own powerful current did the heaviest work for us.

Dozens of other boats joined us as we headed for the delta. At each city where we tied up overnight there were more soldiers waiting to join our expedition, and boats to carry them. I began to see the true power of Egypt, the organization that could bring together a fleet carrying the men and materiel for a mighty armed force that could strike over distances of hundreds of miles.

But I wondered which of the men on our own boat were spies for Nekoptah? Which were assassins? How many of the troops on the other boats had been ordered to fall back, once battle had begun, and let me and my Hittites be cut to pieces by the barbarian raiders? I knew I could trust no one except Lukka and, through him, his two dozen soldiers.

Over those long hot days and dark warm nights I got to know Prince Aramset. There was much more to him than a laughing, nervous youngster.

"I want Lukka and his Hittites to be my personal guard, once we return to Wast," he told me one evening, as we dawdled over the remains of supper.

We were tied to the pier of one of the cities that dotted the riverbank, rocking gently in the eddies of the main current. It was an oppressively hot, still night, and we ate on the open afterdeck of the boat, desperate to catch any stray breeze that might waft by. A slave slowly swept a palm-leaf fan over our heads to keep the mosquitoes away. General Raseth had fallen asleep at the table, drowsing over his empty wine cup. The prince never took wine; he drank clear water only.

"You couldn't pick a better, more loyal man, your highness," I said.

"I will pay you handsomely for them."

He had pride, this teenager. But I answered, "My prince, allow me to make you a gift of them. I know that Lukka would be pleased to serve you, and it would please me to make the two of you happy."

He nodded slightly, as if he had expected no less. "Yet, Orion, I shouldn't accept such a valuable gift without offering something in return."

"The friendship of the crown prince of the Two Lands is a gift beyond price," I said.

He smiled at that. Deliberately, I poured a cup of wine from the little Raseth had left and offered it to him.

He refused with a slight wave of his hand.

"To seal our bargain," I suggested.

"I never drink wine."

"You don't like its taste?"

His face turned sour. "I have seen what wine has done to my father. Wine—and other things."

"He is not sick, then?"

"Only in his soul. Since my mother died, my father wastes away within himself."

There was bitterness in his voice. He was out to prove to his father that he could be a worthy heir.

As delicately as I could, I asked about Nekoptah.

Aramset eyed me carefully. "The high priest of Ptah and the chief minister to the king is a very powerful man, Orion. Even I must speak of him with great respect."

"I understand his power," I said. "Will you keep him as
your
chief minister when you become king?"

"My father lives," the prince said flatly. No trace of anger at my presumption. No trace of rancor toward Nekoptah. He had learned to hide his emotions well, this young man.

"Yet," I pressed, "if your father should become unable to rule, through sickness or melancholy—would you be appointed to rule in his place, or would Nekoptah act for him?"

For long moments Aramset said nothing. His dark eyes bored into me, as if trying to see how far he could trust this stranger from a distant land.

Finally he said, "Nekoptah is perfectly capable of administering the kingdom. He is doing so now, with my father's approval."

There was no sense pressing him further. He was wise enough not to say anything against Nekoptah that might be overheard. But I thought he did not like the fat chief minister very much. His hands had balled themselves into fists at my first mention of him and remained tightly clenched until he bade me good night and walked off to his cabin.

We reached the delta country at last, rich with green farmlands, crisscrossed by irrigation canals, lush with beautiful long-legged birds of snowy white and delicate pink. The local garrison commanders conferred with General Raseth and told him that the Sea Peoples had taken several villages near the mouth of a western arm of the river. They estimated the number of barbarian warriors at more than a thousand.

That evening, the general, Prince Aramset, and I took supper together in the small cabin atop the boat's afterdeck. Raseth was in a jovial mood as he dug into the stewed fish and onions, f

"Make allowance for the local troops' natural exaggerations," he said, reaching for the wine pitcher, "and we have nothing more than a few hundred barbarians to deal with."

"While we have more than a thousand trained men," said the prince.

Raseth nodded. "It's simply a matter of finding the barbarians and hitting them before they can scatter or get back to their ships."

I thought of the Achaian camp along the beach at Troy. I wondered if Odysseus or Big Ajax would be among my enemies.

"The horses and chariots are coming up on the supply ships," Raseth was muttering to no one in particular. "In a few days' time we will be ready to strike."

I looked at him from across the supper table. "Strike where? Are you certain the barbarians will still be in the villages where they were seen several days ago?"

Raseth scratched at his chin. "Hmm. They could move off elsewhere in their ships, couldn't they?"

"Yes. Using the sea, they could move quickly across the breadth of the delta and strike a hundred miles away before we know they've pulled out."

"Then we need scouts to keep watch on them," said Aramset.

The general beamed at his young prince. "Excellent!" he roared. "You will make a fine conquering general one day, your highness."

Then they both turned to me. Raseth said, "Orion, you and your Hittites will scout the villages where the barbarians were last seen. If they have gone, you will return here and tell us. If they are still there, you will keep them under observation until the main body of our army arrives."

Before I could say anything, Prince Aramset added, "And I will go with you!"

The general shook his blunt, bullet-shaped head. "That is far too great a risk to take, your highness."

Especially if I'm betrayed to Menalaos by one of Nekoptah's spies, I thought. Was Raseth working for Nekoptah? What secret orders did he carry in his head?

Prince Aramset was not pleased at being balked. "My father sent me on this expedition to learn of war. I will not sit in the rear safely while others are doing the fighting."

"When the fighting commences, your highness, you will be by my side," General Raseth said. "Those are my instructions." He added, "From the king's own lips."

Aramset was taken aback. But only for a moment. "Well, in the meantime, I can accompany Orion and his men on this scouting mission."

"I cannot allow that, sir," the general replied.

The youngster turned to me. "I'll stay beside Lukka. He won't let any harm come to me."

as gently as I could, I replied, "But what harm may come to Lukka, when he has you to look after and neglects his other duties?"

The prince stared at me, his mouth open to answer, yet no words coming forth. He was a goodhearted youth, and he genuinely loved Lukka. His only problem was that he was young, and like all young men, he could not visualize himself being hurt, or maimed, or killed.

Raseth took advantage of the prince's silence. "Orion," he said, his voice suddenly deep with the authority of command, "you will take your men overland to the villages where the barbarians were last seen, and report their movements to me by sun-mirror. You will leave tomorrow at dawn."

"And me?" the prince asked.

"You will stay here with me, your highness. The chariots and horses will soon arrive. There will be battle enough to satisfy any man within a few days."

I nodded grim agreement.

It was a two-day march from the riverbank where our boat had tied up to the coastal village where the black-hulled Achaian ships lay pulled up on the beach.

The land was flat and laced with irrigation canals, but the fields were broad enough to allow chariot warfare, if you did not mind tearing up the crops growing in them. Lukka had the men camp along the edge of one of the larger canals, by a bridge that could easily be held by a couple of determined men or, failing that, burned so that pursuers would have to either wade across the canal or find the next bridge, a mile or so away.

Then he and I crossed the bridge and made our way through the fields of knee-high wheat, tossing in the breeze, until we came to the edge of the village. It lay along the beach, and I saw dozens of small fishing boats tied up to weathered wooden piers. The Achaian warships were up on the sand, tents and makeshift shacks dotted around them, smoke from cook fires sending thin tendrils of gray toward the sky.

Despite the breeze coming in from the sea, the morning was hot, and the sun burned on our backs as we lay at the edge of the wheat field and watched the activity in the village. None of the ships bore the blue dolphin's head of Ithaca, and I found myself happy that Odysseus was not there.