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

'Lord Naja, I stand ready to carry out your orders.'

'Egypt is a child without a father.' Naja halted his chariot in front of the ranks of plumed and glittering warriors. Now he raised his voice so it carried clearly to the rear ranks. 'Prince Nefer is a child still, and not yet ready to rule. Egypt stands in desperate need of a regent to lead her, lest the Hyksos take advantage of our disarray.' He paused and stared significantly at Colonel Asmor. Asmor lifted his chin slightly in acknowledgement of the trust that Naja had placed in him. He had been promised rewards greater than any he had ever dreamed of.

Naja raised his voice to a bellow: 'If Pharaoh falls in battle, the army has the right by acclamation to appoint a regent in the field.' He fell silent and stood with one fist clenched on his breast and the lance in his other hand.

Asmor took a pace forward and turned to face the ranks of heavily armed guards. With a theatrical gesture he removed his helmet. His face was dark and hard. A pale scar from a sword slash twisted his nose to one side, and his shaven pate was covered by a plaited horsehair wig. He pointed his drawn sword to the sky, and he shouted, in a voice that had been trained to carry over the din of battle, 'Lord Naja! Hail to the Regent of Egypt! Hail to Lord Naja!'

There was a long moment of stunned silence before the legion erupted in a roar, like a pride of hunting lions, 'Hail to Lord Naja, Regent of Egypt.'

The cheering and the uproar lasted until Lord Naja raised his fist again, and in the silence that followed he spoke clearly: 'You do me great honour! I accept the charge you place upon me.'

'Bak-her!' they shouted, and beat upon their shields with sword and lance until the echoes broke like distant thunder on the hills of the escarpment.

In the uproar Naja summoned Asmor to him. 'Place pickets on all the roads. No man leaves this place until I do. No word of this must reach Thebes ahead of me.'

--

The journey from Gallala had taken three days of hard riding. The horses were worn out, and even Naja was exhausted. Yet he allowed himself only an hour to rest, bathe away the dust of the journey and change his apparel. Then, with his jaw shaven, his hair oiled and combed, he mounted the ceremonial chariot that Asmor had ready and waiting at the entrance to the tent. The gold leaf that decorated the dashboard shone in the sunlight.

Naja wore a white linen skirt, with a pectoral plate of gold and semiprecious stones covering his bare muscled chest. On his hip he carried the fabulous blue sword in its golden scabbard that he had taken from Pharaoh's dead body. The blade was beaten from some marvellous metal, heavier, harder and sharper than any bronze. There was none other like it in all Egypt. It had once belonged to Tanus, Lord Harrab, and had come to Pharaoh by his bequest.

The most significant of all his accoutrements, however, was the least eye-catching. On his right arm, held in place by a plain band of gold above the elbow, was the blue hawk seal. Like the sword Naja had taken it from Tamose's royal corpse. As Regent of Egypt, Naja was now entitled to wear this potent badge of imperial power.

His bodyguard formed up around him, and the full legion fell in behind him. With five thousand men at his back the new Regent of Egypt began his march on Thebes.

Asmor rode as his lance-bearer. He was young for the command of a full legion, but he had proved himself in battle against the Hyksos, and he was Naja's close companion. He, too, had Hyksosian blood in his veins. Once, Asmor had thought the command of a legion was the summit of his ambition, but now he had scaled the foothills and suddenly before him rose the glorious alps of exalted office, of power unfettered, and - dare he even think it? - elevation to the highest ranks of the nobility. There was nothing he would not do, no act so reckless or base that he would not undertake it willingly to hasten his patron Lord Naja's ascension to the throne of Egypt.

'What stands before us now, my old comrade?' It seemed that Naja had read his thought, for the question was so appropriate.

'The Yellow Flowers have cleared all but one of the princes of the House of Tamose from your path,' Asmor answered, and pointed with his lance across the grey silt-laden waters of the Nile to the far hills in the west. 'They lie there in their tombs in the Valley of the Nobles.'

Three years previously the plague of the Yellow Flowers had swept through the two kingdoms. The disease was named for the dreadful yellow lesions that covered the faces and bodies of the stricken before they succumbed to the pox's burning fevers. It was no respecter of persons, choosing its victims from every station and level of society, sparing neither Egyptian nor Hyksos, man nor woman nor child, neither peasant nor prince, it had mown them down like fields of dhurra millet before the sickle.

Eight princesses and six princes of the House of Tamose had died. Of all Pharaoh's children, only two girls and Prince Nefer Memnon had survived. It was as though the gods had set out deliberately to clear the path to the throne of Egypt for Lord Naja.

There were those who vowed that Nefer and his sisters would have died also, had not the ancient Magus Taita wrought his magic to save them. The three children still bore the tiny scars on their left upper arms where he had cut them and placed in their blood his magical charm against the Yellow Flowers.

Naja frowned. Even in this moment of his triumph he could still give thought to the strange powers possessed by the Magus. No man could deny that he had found the secret of life. He had already lived so long that no one knew his age; some said a hundred years and others two hundred. Yet he still walked and ran and drove a chariot like a man in his prime. No man could better him in debate, none could surpass him in learning. Surely the gods loved him, and had bestowed upon him the secret of life eternal.

Once he was Pharaoh, that would be the only thing that Naja lacked. Could he wring the secret out of Taita the Warlock? First, he must be captured and brought in along with Prince Nefer, but he must not be harmed. He was far too valuable. The chariots Naja had sent to scour the eastern deserts would bring him back a throne in the form of Prince Nefer, and life eternal in the human guise of the eunuch, Taita.

Asmor interrupted his thoughts: 'We of the loyal Phat Guard are the only troops south of Abnub. The rest of the army is deployed against the Hyksos in the north. Thebes is defended by a handful of boys, cripples and old men. Nothing stands in your way, Regent.'

Any fears that the legion under arms would be denied entrance to the city proved baseless. The main gates were thrown open as soon as the sentries recognized the blue standard, and the citizens ran out to meet them. They carried palm fronds and garlands of water-lilies, for a rumour had swept through the city that Lord Naja brought tidings of a mighty victory over Apepi of the Hyksos.

But the welcoming cries and laughter soon gave way to wild ululations of mourning when they saw the swaddled royal corpse on the floorboards of the second chariot and heard the cries of the leading charioteers: 'Pharaoh is dead! He has been slain by the Hyksos. May he live for ever.'

The wailing crowds followed the chariot that carried the royal corpse to the funerary temple, clogging the streets, and in the confusion no one seemed to notice that divisions of Asmor's men had taken over from the guards at the main gates, and had swiftly set up pickets at every corner and in every square.