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

'I know you will not.' Lostris smiled a sweet, haunting smile, and her image faded into the desert night.
He woke, with his face wet with tears, and gathered up his few possessions. He paused at the cave
entrance only to check his direction by the stars. Instinctively, he looked for the bright particular star of
the goddess. On the seventieth day after the Queen's death, on the night that the long ritual of her
embalmment had been completed, that star had appeared suddenly in the heavens, a great red star that
glowed where none had been before. Taita picked it out and made obeisance to it. Then he strode away
into the western desert, back towards the Nile and the city of Thebes, beautiful Thebes of a hundred
gates.



That had been over fourteen years ago, and now he hungered for the silent places, for only here could
his powers grow back to their full strength, so that he could carry through the charge that Lostris had laid
upon him. Only here could he pass some of that strength on to the Prince. For he knew that the dark
powers of which she had warned him were gathering around them.



'Come!' he said to the boy. 'Let us go down and take your godbird.'



--



On the third night after leaving Gallala, when the constellation of the Wild Asses made its zenith in the
northern night sky, Pharaoh halted the squadron to water the horses and to eat a hasty meal of sun-dried
meat, dates and cold dhurra millet cakes. Then he ordered the mount-up. There was no sounding of the
ram's horn trumpet now for they were into the territory where often the patrolling Hyksosian chariots
ranged.



The column started forward again at the trot. As they went on the landscape changed dramatically. They
were out of the bad lands at last, back into the foothills above the river valley. Below them they could
make out the strip of dense vegetation, distant and dark in the moonlight, that marked the course of great
Mother Nile. They had completed the wide circuit around Abnub and were in the rear of the main
Hyksosian army on the river. Although they were a tiny force to go in against such an enemy as Apepi,
they were the best charioteers in the armies of Tamose, which made them the finest in the world.
Moreover, they held the element of surprise.



When Pharaoh had first proposed this strategy and told them he would lead the expedition in person, his
war council had opposed him with all the vehemence they could muster against the word of a god. Even
old Kratas, once the most reckless and savage warrior in all the armies of Egypt, had torn at his thick
white beard and bellowed, 'By Seth's ragged and festering foreskin, I did not change your shit-smeared