"Egyptian 01 - Warlock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

'What is it?' Pharaoh whispered close behind him.

'I thought I heard voices on the crest,' Naja answered, 'speaking the Hyksosian tongue. Wait here, Majesty, while I clear the path ahead.' Pharaoh and the five troopers sank down and squatted beside the path, while Naja went on stealthily. He stepped around a large boulder and his dim figure disappeared from view. The minutes passed slowly and Pharaoh began to fret. The dawn was coming on swiftly. The Hyksosian king would soon be breaking his camp, and moving on, out of their grasp. As a soft whistle came down to him he sprang to his feet eagerly. It was a skilful imitation of a nightingale's dawn call.

Pharaoh hefted his fabled blue sword. 'The way is clear,' he murmured, 'Come, follow me.'

They went on upwards, and Pharaoh reached the tall rock that blocked the pathway. He stepped round it then stopped abruptly. Lord Naja faced him at a distance of twenty paces. They were alone, hidden by the rock from the men who followed. Naja's bow was at full draw and the arrow was aimed at Pharaoh's naked chest. Even before he could move, the full realization of what confronted him blazed in Pharaoh's mind. This was the foul and loathsome thing that Taita, with his clairvoyant powers, had smelt in the air.

The light was strong enough for him to make out every detail of the enemy he had loved as a friend. The bowstring was pulled hard against Naja's lips, twisting them into a dreadful smile, and his eyes were honey gold and fierce as those of the hunting leopard as he glared at Pharaoh. The fletching of the arrow was crimson and yellow and green, and in the Hyksosian fashion the arrowhead was made from razor-sharp flint, designed to tear through the bronze of an enemy's helmet and cuirass.

'May you live for ever!' Silently Naja mouthed the words as though they were a curse, and he loosed the arrow. It flew from the bowstring with a twang and a hum. It seemed to come quite slowly, like some poisonous flying insect. The feathers spun the shaft, and it made one full revolution as it covered the twenty paces. Though Pharaoh's eyesight was sharpened and his other senses were heightened by the mortal danger in which he found himself, he could move only with the slowness of nightmare, too slowly to avoid the missile. The arrow took him high in the centre of his chest, where his royal heart pounded in its cage of ribs. It struck with the sound of a boulder dropped from a height into a bed of thick Nile mud, and half the length of the shaft was driven through his chest. He was spun round by the force of the impact, and thrown against the red rock of the boulder. For a moment he clung to the rough surface with his hooked fingers. The flint arrowhead had pierced him through and through. The blood-clotted barb stood out of the knotted muscles that ran down the right side of his spine.

The blue sword dropped from his fist, and a low cry burst from his open mouth, the sound muffled by a gout of his own bright lung blood. He began to slide down to his knees, his legs buckling under him, his fingernails leaving shallow scratches on the red rock.

Naja sprang forward with a wild cry, 'Ambush! Beware!' and he slipped one arm around Pharaoh's chest below the protruding arrow.

Supporting the dying king he bellowed again, 'On me, the guards!' and two stout troopers appeared almost instantly from around the rock wall, responding to his rallying cry. They saw at a glance how Pharaoh was struck and the bright bunch of feathers on the base of the arrow.

'Hyksos!' one yelled, as they snatched Pharaoh from Naja's grasp and dragged him back behind the shelter of the rock.

'Carry Pharaoh back to his chariot while I hold off the enemy,' Naja ordered, and whirled around, pulling another arrow from his quiver and loosing it up the path towards the deserted summit, bellowing a challenge, then answering himself with a muffled counter-challenge in the Hyksosian language.

He snatched up the blue sword from where Tamose had dropped it, bounded back down the path and caught up with the small party of charioteers who were carrying the king away, down to where the chariots were waiting in the wadi.

'It was a trap,' Naja told them urgently. 'The hilltop is alive with the enemy. We must get Pharaoh away to safety.' But he could see by the way the king's head rolled weakly on his shoulders that he was past any help, and Naja's chest swelled with triumph. The blue war crown toppled from Pharaoh's brow and bumped down the path. Naja gathered it up as he ran past, fighting down the temptation to place it on his own head.

'Patience. The time is not yet ripe for that,' he chided himself silently, 'but already Egypt is mine, and all her crowns and pomp and power. I am become this very Egypt. I am become part of the godhead.'

He held the heavy crown protectively under his arm, and aloud he cried, 'Hurry, the enemy is on the path hard behind us. Hurry! The king must not fall into their hands.'

The troops below had heard the wild cries in the dawn, and the regimental surgeon was waiting for them beside the wheel of Pharaoh's chariot. He had been trained by Taita, and though lacking the old man's special magic he was a skilled doctor and might be capable of staunching even such a terrible wound as had pierced Pharaoh's chest. But Lord Naja would not risk having his victim returned to him from the underworld. He ordered the surgeon away brusquely. 'The enemy is hard upon us. There is no time for your quackery now. We must get him back to the safety of our own lines before we are overrun.'

Tenderly he lifted the king from the arms of the men who carried him and laid him on the footplate of his own chariot. He snapped off the shaft of the arrow that protruded from the king's chest and held it aloft so that all his men could see it clearly. This bloody instrument has struck down our Pharaoh. Our god and our king. May Seth damn the Hyksosian pig-swine who fired it, and may he burn in eternal flame for a thousand years.' His men growled in warlike agreement. Carefully Naja wrapped the arrow in a linen cloth, and placed it in the bin on the side wall of the chariot. He would deliver it to the council in Thebes to substantiate his report on Pharaoh's death.

'A good man here to hold Pharaoh,' Naja ordered, Treat him gently.'

While the king's own lance-bearer came forward, Naja unbuckled the sword-belt from around Pharaoh's waist, sheathed the blue sword and carefully stowed it in his own weapons bin.

The lance-bearer jumped on to the footplate and cradled Tamose's head. Fresh bright blood bubbled from the corners of his mouth as the chariot wheeled in a circle then sped back up the dry wadi with the rest of the squadron driving hard to keep up with it. Even though he was supported by the strong arms of his lance-bearer Pharaoh's limp body was jolted cruelly.

Facing forward so that none could see his expression, Naja laughed softly. The sound was covered by the grinding wheels and the crash of the chassis over the small boulders he made no attempt to avoid. They left the wadi and raced on towards the dunes and the natron lakes.

It was mid-morning and the blinding white sun was halfway up the sky before Naja allowed the column to halt and the surgeon to come forward again to examine the king. It did not need his special skills to tell that Pharaoh's spirit had long before left his body and started on its journey to the underworld.

'Pharaoh is dead,' the surgeon said quietly, as he stood up with the royal blood coating his hands to the wrists. A terrible cry of mourning started at the head of the column and ran down its entire length. Naja let them play out their grief then sent for his troop captains.

The state is without a head,' he told them. 'Egypt is in dire peril. Ten of the fastest chariots must take Pharaoh's body back to Thebes with all haste. I shall lead them for it may be that the council will wish me to take up the duties of regent to Prince Nefer.'

He had planted the first seeds and saw by their awed expressions that they had taken root almost immediately. He went on, with a grim, businesslike air that suited the tragic circumstances which had overtaken them, The surgeon must wrap the royal corpse before I take it home to the funeral temple. But in the meantime we must find Prince Nefer. He must be informed of his father's death and of his own succession. This is the single most urgent matter of state, and of my regency.' He had assumed that title smoothly, and no man questioned him or even looked askance. He unrolled a papyrus scroll, a map of the territory from Thebes down to Memphis, and spread it on the dashboard of his chariot. He pored over it. 'You must split up into your troops and scour the countryside for the prince. I believe that Pharaoh sent him into the desert with the eunuch to undertake the rituals of manhood, so we will concentrate our search here, from Gallala where we last saw him towards the south and east.' With the eye for ground of a commander of armies Naja picked out the search area, and ordered a net of chariots to be spread out across the land to bring in the prince.