Testament, page 19
Holding her burning gaze, Akkan weighed her words. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You may have some use after all.’
Then he looked towards Piay and Hannu and told them, ‘The woman will light our path through the darkness to our ultimate destiny. And we will keep you alive, as our slaves, for as long as she does everything we command and guides us truly. But should she falter, should she deny us at any stage, we will kill first one of you, then the other.’
‘Why don’t you threaten to chop me up, one piece at a time, if she doesn’t tell you what you need to hear? That was your brother’s bright idea. And yet . . . here I am, all in one piece.’
‘Khin is nothing. He is a dead man who does not yet know he has walked away from the land of the living.’
Piay forced himself to grin. ‘Ah, brotherly love. There’s nothing like it.’
The Hyksos commander slid his sword out of its sheath and pressed the tip against Piay’s throat. His flesh burned as the bronze edge bit.
‘If you have any wisdom at all in your head, you would not anger me, Pharaoh’s man.’
Piay lowered his head in a slight bow, feeling the blade dig deeper. ‘If you say so.’
The gusting wind whined around the shadowed reaches of the chamber, sending gritty particles of sand skittering across the limestone floor. Akkan stared into Piay’s face. Piay could see the other man was wondering if he should simply press hard on his sword and be done with it.
Akkan restrained that impulse. He stepped back.
‘Tie them up,’ he ordered his men. ‘It’s time we were on our way.’
Before the Hyksos warriors could move, Myssa cried out, ‘My love!’
She lunged towards Piay, throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his neck so that it seemed she had fainted. But as she moved in close, Piay felt her hot breath on his ear and heard the whispered words that could not have been caught by anyone else there.
Two of Akkan’s men pulled her away. Others moved to grab Piay and Hannu.
‘Now!’ he shouted; then, ‘Run, Myssa, run!’
Piay rammed the torch towards the chest of the nearest Hyksos warrior, held it just away from him for an instant, then shoved it hard against his tunic. The light was snuffed out with a muffled hiss, plunging the temple into an all-consuming darkness.
An instant later, sparks glowed where the burning end of the brand had ignited the robe, and then a flame licked into life. In an instant, the fire rushed up the cloth, swallowing the man’s head. Screeching, he whirled in a crazed dance, the desperate flapping of his hands only serving to further whip up the blaze.
An animal howl echoed through the dark reaches of the temple. Flames consumed flesh, and though his comrades rushed to extinguish the blaze, it was already too late.
The column of fire seared a circle of light in the dark, shifting in an erratic spiral with the man’s slowing movements.
Piay snatched Hannu’s arm and silently dragged him away into the darkness of the temple. One glance back was all he allowed himself. In the dying glare, Hyksos faces twisted with fury. But though Myssa was fighting like a wildcat, she had not escaped the hands that held her captive.
Piay had already memorised the direction of the entrance, and as the reek of cooking flesh fell behind them, they raced out of the temple into the cool night. The wind had picked up again and it moaned among the buildings of the temple complex, desolate and relentless.
Behind them, angry shouts rang out. Only now that their comrade was dead had Akkan’s men realised Piay and Hannu had used their confusion to escape.
‘You have a plan, I suppose?’ Hannu asked.
‘I have half a plan,’ Piay replied. He was still holding the extinguished brand.
‘That’s better than usual.’
Piay led Hannu between the towering buildings, following a twisting path that he hoped would buy them some time before their pursuers caught up with them. He felt sick. He had been forced to abandon Myssa to murderous barbarians; he could only pray that her value to Akkan would keep her alive. But she had anticipated this outcome, he knew. Her whispered words still rang in his head. There was still just a shred of hope.
The wind had picked up again and howled around the pyramid complex.
‘If we leave this place, they’ll catch us in no time,’ said Hannu. ‘Unless you leave me behind.’
‘I’m not leaving you behind.’
‘Then they’ll keep searching this place until they find us—’
‘Perhaps.’
‘. . . and trap us.’
Behind them, the call and response of the hunting pack rang out as the warriors fanned out in pursuit.
‘It is only a matter of time,’ Hannu insisted.
‘Stop moaning – and start running!’
Their footsteps cracked off the walls. Piay pushed north, then swung along one avenue before doubling back along another that ran parallel to it. The sounds of pursuit echoed closer. Hannu was right – they could not outrun the Hyksos.
Piay cocked his head. Not far away he could hear the beat of leather soles drawing closer to their position. One man, by the sounds of it. He prayed it was just one.
Glancing around, he identified a hiding place – a deep alcove in a tomb where a massive statue had once stood. If they ducked into its shadow they could ambush the lone man as he went by. Piay tapped Hannu’s shoulder and pointed in the direction of the alcove. Hannu followed him in, but no sooner had they disappeared from the sight of any passer-by than a voice rang out above the rooftops, deep and clear. It was Akkan.
‘I have your woman. My blade is against her throat. Give yourselves up, or she dies.’
The words were blown away on the wind. Piay could not tell if his enemy was bluffing. Why would he kill the person best able to lead him to his goal?
As if reading Piay’s mind, Akkan called out, ‘I do not need her as badly as you imagine. I have another guide. Seth will show me the way.’
‘If that’s the case, why hasn’t he already done it?’ Hannu hissed in Piay’s ear. ‘Akkan needs Myssa and he fears us. We know too much.’
‘I can’t leave her. Just can’t . . . And it’s my fault. I should never have left her behind.’
Piay took a step forward, but Hannu grabbed his upper arm and held him fast.
‘Look, you tried. It didn’t work, but we’re still alive and so is she. And that Hyksos bastard isn’t going to kill her. Not yet. Not till he’s got what he wants.’
‘I’m not my father. I don’t abandon the people I love.’
Hannu pulled harder on Piay’s arm, drawing him back into the shadows.
‘Listen, I understand,’ he whispered. ‘I felt the same about my wife before those Hyksos savages slaughtered her. But you must trust Myssa.’ Hannu gripped even tighter. ‘Trust her.’
Piay swallowed, then nodded.
‘Good. Now put it out of your thoughts, and you just tell me what two unarmed men are going to do against a boatload of Hyksos.’
‘We’re not unarmed,’ Piay said, plunging his hand into his kilt and rummaging around his crotch.
‘Brother, this is hardly the time or place . . .’
Then Piay withdrew his hand, which was holding a short but viciously pointed dagger.
‘Taita gave it to me, after the battle, along with this kilt, which has a hidden pocket. Myssa calls it my little friend, because . . . well . . . Anyway, do you want to hear my plan?’
It didn’t take long to describe. Within seconds, Hannu had slipped out of the alcove and into the shadows of a narrow path that ran between two high walls. Piay eased around the corner of another wall and pressed his back against the limestone. He breathed in the musky scents of great age seeping from every part of that place, of dank stone and dust.
Footsteps came closer, pausing every now and then when their pursuer stopped to look around. One man – Piay was certain of that now.
He pictured the Hyksos warrior, prowling along the avenue just around that corner, hunched over his sword, dark eyes darting. The footsteps were getting closer and closer.
Holding his breath, Piay waited until the very last possible moment, then stepped out onto the avenue, in clear view of the man who’d been searching for him.
The warrior jolted in surprise, then grinned. Piay didn’t even have his blade in his hand.
Piay stepped back, once, twice, feigning hesitant movements, as if he was gripped by fear. The warrior’s full attention lay upon him.
Hannu burst from the shadows, bent low. The Hyksos did not even sense the blur of activity until the cruelly sharp blade of Piay’s dagger sliced across the back of his right leg just above the knee, severing the muscles and tendons. As he crashed to the flagstones, his agonised scream tore across the pyramid complex.
Hannu limped to Piay’s side, holding the curved Hyksos sword he had just taken from Akkan’s follower.
‘That should bring them all running,’ he said. ‘And here’s your dagger. Taita knows his weapons.’
Making sure the crippled warrior was aware of their movement through the mist of his pain, Piay led Hannu to the west. Once they were out of sight, Piay twisted back to the north and then east again. The roars of Akkan’s men swept towards their wounded comrade, but Piay and Hannu had already passed them by and were moving towards their original route.
‘I would say that was almost a plan,’ Hannu grunted as they ran.
‘The start of one,’ Piay replied.
Ahead, the stepped pyramid blocked out the stars. As he stared at the towering stone mountain, a mountain created by mortal men, Piay felt himself shiver. The eyes of the dead would be upon him – perhaps those of the gods, too – in this place where the living walked among the departed. He could feel age-old fears suffocating him.
‘We should not be here.’
On the north side of the pyramid, Piay crept to the edge of a deep pit disappearing into a black void. A hide rope dangled down one side.
‘Grave robbers dug this when they looted Djoser’s tomb in days long gone,’ Piay murmured.
Hannu stared into the abyss. ‘I’m not going down there.’
‘Down there is the only chance we have of escaping this alive.’
Hannu chewed his lip. ‘We’re desecrating the grave.’
‘Or dying up here.’
‘How did you know about this place?’
‘Myssa told me, when she got back from the temple.’
Piay dropped the extinguished torch into the pit. On the wind, he caught the sound of angry voices.
‘They’ll find us here soon enough,’ Hannu said.
‘That’s the idea.’
‘In a pit where there is nowhere to run.’
Piay grasped the hide rope and braced himself as he stepped backwards over the edge.
‘See you in the land of the dead,’ he said.
‘Why did you say that?’ Hannu snapped, but Piay was already walking down the wall of the pit into the void.
As the darkness closed around him, the raging voices above died away, suffocated by the deep silence of the tomb. Gradually Piay felt his eyes adjust to what thin moonlight made it down the shaft. When his feet touched the bottom, he felt around for the torch and waited as Hannu’s grunts and grumbles drifted down to him. Finally, Hannu was standing beside him, holding the torch and striking his flint. The flames burst back into life and the darkness rushed away to reveal tunnels reaching out on all sides.
‘A labyrinth,’ Piay said, ‘designed to confuse robbers and thereby protect the tomb.’
‘Not likely,’ Hannu growled. ‘In my experience, the lust for gold overcomes all obstacles.’
‘That kind of lust can easily prove fatal. By all accounts, these tunnels are endless. A man could get lost down here forever. So use your flint to mark our way on the wall. A little arrow to show the direction we came. But do it down low, where no one else will see it.’
Grabbing the torch, Piay pressed on along the nearest tunnel, stooping so he didn’t crack his head on the roof. Hannu followed behind, dutifully scratching on the wall every twenty paces or so.
The space was tight, the air dry and stale. Piay tasted the bitterness of the dust of ages whisked up by the trudge of their feet. A little way along the tunnel, the dancing light of the torch illuminated a chamber to the left. Vessels of different shapes and sizes filled the room, constructed from limestone and alabaster, slate and siltstone. Names were inscribed on each one: Adjib, Sekhemib, Qa’a . . .
‘Old kings,’ Piay muttered, remembering fragments from Taita’s lessons.
A little further on they came to a cross-tunnel. As Piay turned left he felt something hard under his foot, then a snapping as it broke under his weight, like a twig.
He looked down and started as he saw the skeleton, with the broken shin bone, on which he had just trodden.
‘Not a god!’ he joked, trying to make light of the gruesome sight.
‘No,’ Hannu said. ‘A message, and we should listen to it. I’d rather take my chances with Akkan’s mob than die in the dark down here.’
‘Trust me,’ Piay said, ‘we’ll get out of here, alive and well. Promise.’
As he walked, Piay burned the route he was taking into his mind, counting the paces between one tunnel junction and another, trying to imagine the pattern of the maze. After they’d circled a few times to be certain, following the marks Hannu had carved into the walls, Piay felt satisfied. He could walk this route without eyes, he was sure of it.
Slipping into one of the many chambers along the way, he eased aside some of the vessels until there was a space behind them in which to hide.
‘What now?’ Hannu asked.
‘Put out the torch.’
‘And stay here in the dark?’
Piay could hear all Hannu’s fears crackling behind his words.
‘Yes.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then we wait.’
P
iay felt as if he was swimming in an endless black ocean. The darkness was so complete that he could find no barrier between the world without and the thoughts racing through his head. He breathed in, tasting the bitter tang of Hannu’s sweat drifting from where his friend was crouching somewhere nearby. The silence crushed down. They were entombed, experiencing death before death.
As a cold wash of dread rose in his guts, Piay forced himself to focus on Myssa’s face like a beacon in the night.
The beat of his heart thumped in his head and he was gripped by what appeared to be white sparks floating in the endless dark. Were they imagined – some hallucination – or truly there? He turned his head, but if Hannu had seen them he could not tell. His friend did not move, his breathing regular. Perhaps he was asleep.
The sparks swirled, then began to coalesce into a shape. A figure was forming.
Piay’s heart beat harder.
Had Djoser returned to punish him for defiling his tomb? He swallowed, but his mouth was as dry as the dust that lined the tunnels.
As the sparks blurred into a shimmering pale glow in the shape of a man, Piay felt a calm descend on him. Now he sensed a familiar presence. It was the Traveller. Surely this could only be a dream. But dreams, as everyone knew, were the way that the gods communicated with men.
In the dark, Khonsu hovered before him in his mummy form, with the sidelock of hair of the innocent child hanging to his shoulder. The menat necklace gleamed on his chest and he gripped the crook and flail.
Piay mouthed a silent prayer.
‘One day, and soon, I will be the Greatest God of the Great Gods.’ The words echoed deep in Piay’s head.
‘I am your servant.’ Piay heard his words, though he had no idea if he had actually spoken them.
Khonsu raised his left hand, palm outwards, and Piay felt his vision swim. An instant later he was standing on the cooling sands under a sky filled with stars. The patterns of the constellations were clear to him, and at the heart of this night sky glowed the crescent moon of Khonsu, the god of light in the night.
As he stared in wonder at the bright celestial bodies sweeping across the sable sky, Piay felt a familiar dread swell within him. Something tugged at his attention and he lowered his gaze to look out across the sands that rolled out to the horizon. The Great Pyramid loomed in front of him, and not far away, the Sphinx, still in its original, undamaged prime before the desert had started to claim it, proudly stared towards the east.
Piay shuddered as he finally saw the source of his dread. Seth towered above those monuments, almost obscuring the stars, the beast-head staring down at Piay. The god of deserts, of chaos, of violence, the god of the Hyksos. Seth opened his mouth, revealing rows of gleaming fangs, and then he began to swallow those vast stone structures, the desert, the night sky, even the crescent moon.
The vision vanished in the blink of an eye and once again Piay was staring at Khonsu. The god slowly lowered his hand and once again words echoed in Piay’s head.
‘They are coming.’
Piay jolted as if shocked from a deep sleep. Khonsu was gone; the dark was all that remained. But now Piay could hear the distant rumble of voices. Akkan’s followers had found the shaft and were descending to explore further. Perhaps they had seen Piay and Hannu’s footprints in the dust. It mattered little. This had all been foreseen.
‘It is time,’ Piay said.
T
he flickering glow of an oncoming torch played across the tunnel wall. Piay crouched in the shadows of a side passage, watching the light grow stronger as the Hyksos warriors came closer. The sporadic bursts of conversation were low, occasionally whispered. They were as afraid of venturing into the tomb as Hannu had been.
Piay’s fingers tightened around the handle of his bronze knife. The vision of Khonsu had somehow given him strength. His wavering faith in his own ability was fortified once again.
But as the first of the warriors crept into view, his sword swinging from side to side and his eyes darting, Piay stiffened. Perhaps it was a trick of the light and the shadows on the hewn rock, but the glow upon the tunnel wall seemed to shimmer into the form of Seth, the beast-head hovering just behind the approaching Hyksos as if the god was protecting them. Piay shuddered. The air itself seemed to grow heavier, like the feeling in the desert before a storm struck, and Piay felt certain he could sense that dread presence simmering through those claustrophobic tunnels.
