Ancient World 02 - Raiders of the Nile (28 page)

At last the shouting died down.

“Well, then, that’s settled.” Artemon clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Now you have only to take the pledge, and face the initiation.”

I was not sure which I dreaded more, taking a false oath or enduring some unknown trial, but there could be no turning back.

“Is there a particular god by whom I need to swear?”

Artemon shook his head. “There are no gods here—or hadn’t you noticed? ‘By all the gods that are not’—that’s how our oath begins.” Many of the men laughed heartily at this. “You look at the men before you as you take the oath. It’s to them that you make your pledge. It’s they who’ll make sure you keep it, and punish you if you don’t.”

I nodded to show that I understood.

“Very well then, Pecunius, place your hands upon your testicles.”

“What?”

“Do it!”

I took a wider stance and clutched myself through my clothing, then flushed a bit at the good-natured laughter this evoked.

“Upon your honor as a man, and upon pain of losing those precious orbs between your legs—as well as your head—do you hereby swear that you shall be loyal to the men assembled before you, the brave, stalwart men of the Cuckoo’s Gang?”

I cleared my throat. “I swear it!”

“Do you swear that you shall do nothing to betray us or bring harm to the group, and that you shall alert us at once to any threat that might harm us?”

“I swear it!”

“Do you swear that you shall obey the laws of the Cuckoo’s Gang, as decided by its members and enforced by its leader?”

“I swear it!”

“Do you swear that even if you should become separated from us, or be captured by our enemies, or leave us of your own volition, you will continue to obey this oath, and do nothing that would bring harm to any member of the Cuckoo’s Gang?”

“I swear it!”

“Very well then, by the gods that are not, I declare you to be a member of the Cuckoo’s Gang. Now you may remove your hands from your testicles.”

I did so, to uproarious cheering and laughter from the crowd.

“Now, Pecunius, you’re truly one of us—if you survive your initiation.”

XXVI

As if on cue, from somewhere deep in the thicket beyond the clearing came the peculiar, chilling roar I had heard when I first arrived.

My heart skipped a beat. “What
is
that noise?” I said.

Artemon gave me a thin smile. “Shall we go and find out? Follow me, Pecunius.”

He stepped from the dais and made his way to a trailhead almost hidden by vegetation at the edge of the clearing. The narrow path headed in a direction new to me. The way was little used, to judge by the rank vegetation that turned the path into a tunnel of sun-dappled greenery. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that the rest of the men followed us in single file, headed by Djet and Menkhep.

After many a twist and turn, we emerged in another clearing, so similar in size and shape to the one we had just left that for a moment I thought we had doubled back. Then I saw the long, wide pit that ran from one side of the clearing to the other, so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom of it. Artemon pulled me aside, allowing the others to file past us into the clearing. They encircled the long pit and crowded along its edges.

Ismene appeared, standing only a few feet away from me. She was dressed in a voluminous midnight-colored robe spangled with yellow stars. The garment was too big for her and looked like something filched from a Babylonian astrologer. She wore no makeup, but her fingers were encrusted with gaudy rings, and around her neck was a chain strung with gleaming lumps of amber. Seeing her by the bright light of day in such an outlandish costume, with her wild, uncombed hair forming a ragged halo around her head, I couldn’t decide whether she looked ridiculous or frightening.

The men crowded around the pit took notice of her. From the awestruck, almost reverent expressions on their faces, it was clear that they saw nothing absurd about the woman they called Metrodora.

Menkhep stepped toward her, then dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “Thank you, soothsayer! The mission you sent us on yesterday was a fruitful one, and all—almost all of us—came back safely. Your foresight was true once again.”

The others followed Menkhep’s example, dropping onto one knee, bowing their heads in her direction, and muttering words of thanks. Even Artemon did so. I saw no choice but to follow their example. After bowing my head, I looked up to see that Ismene was watching me with a look of faint amusement.

Any amusement I might have felt was stopped short by a sudden roar. It was louder than ever before, and much closer. In fact, it seemed to come from the nearby pit.

My blood turned cold in my veins. I rose to my feet. So did the others. They took their eyes from Ismene. Some stared down into the pit. Some looked at me, with grave expressions. A few flashed what I took to be malicious grins, which took me aback, for until that moment I thought that no one in the Cuckoo’s Gang wished me ill.

Artemon led me to one end of the long pit. The men crowded along the edge stepped back to make room for us. I saw what lay before me, and sucked in my breath.

The pit was at least ten feet deep, with sheer earth walls on all sides. I judged it to be twenty feet wide and at least twice that long. A slender wooden wall the height of the pit ran all the way down the middle, beginning directly in front of me, dividing it into two enclosures, one to my left and the other to my right. The wall appeared to be a rather makeshift affair, thrown together from pieces of scrap wood.

Palm leaves and other bits of dried vegetation had been strewn across the bottom of both enclosures. Amid the leafy debris I saw human skulls and other bones. At first it seemed that the enclosure to the right was unoccupied; then a sudden movement caught my eye, as a crocodile, half-hidden by a palm leaf, gave a start and scurried with unnerving swiftness from one end of the pit to the other, scattering bones along the way, furiously swinging its tail and snapping its jaws.

Nothing could have been more terrifying than the crocodile, I thought, until my gaze fell upon the creature that occupied the other half of the pit.

Growing up in Rome, I had seen many exotic animals in gladiator games and other spectacles put on by the magistrates. In my travels, I had seen even stranger beasts, some in the flesh and some in paintings or mosaics. But I had never encountered or even imagined a monster such as this.

In basic form it resembled a lion, with four legs, a tail, and a mane, but there the resemblance ended. Lions are tawny gold, but this creature was multicolored—the legs were bright orange, the back was purple, and the mane was a fiery red with black spots. The mane didn’t fall back from the creature’s brow as that of a lion does, but radiated outward, as if a burst of flame surrounded the creature’s face—a face that terminated not in a leonine snout, but in a strange sort of tusk, like that of a rhinoceros. Its tail was more like that of a scorpion than a lion, a horrible, segmented thing that made a clacking noise as it swished this way and that. The tail terminated in a hideously swollen, barbed stinger.

The creature stood at the far end of the pit. While I watched, it threw back its head and roared. There was a keening, howling quality to the sound that set my teeth on edge.

Just as the jerky, reptilian movements of the crocodile sent a thrill of revulsion through me, so the appearance of this creature revolted me. There was something unnatural about it, as if multiple animals had been chopped up and sewn together. What sort of monster was this, and where had it come from? I realized that Ismene was close beside me, and gave a start. Had sorcery created this abomination?

Ismene drew closer. She whispered into my ear. “Choose left, not right. Don’t flee, but fight.”

What doggerel was this? I was about to ask her to repeat herself when Artemon placed one hand squarely between my shoulder blades and gave me a hard shove. With a howl of protest I staggered forward and abruptly found myself atop the wall that bisected the pit. The wall was topped by a series of slender palm trunks laid end to end, like a rail. These trunks were as wide as my foot, but rounded, so that securing a steady purchase was difficult. As I struggled to find my balance, I heard a creaking noise and felt the whole wall jerk and sway beneath me. When I instinctively stepped backward, something sharp poked the small of my back.

“No turning back, Pecunius. You can only go forward.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw that Artemon was holding a long spear, with the point pressed firmly against my back. I turned to look ahead, straining at every moment to keep my balance. From the men lining the edges of the pit I heard a roar of laughter. Did they mean for me to walk the whole length of the rickety wall, from one end of the pit to the other?

“Impossible!” I hissed, though clenched teeth. “This is madness!”

No one heard me. They were laughing too hard.

I had thought that the men of the Cuckoo’s Gang were my friends, or at least not my enemies. They had welcomed me to their ranks; they wanted me to become one of them. Now the applause and cheers I had received only moments earlier seemed a cruel joke. No man could possibly walk the whole length of such a narrow, rickety wall without falling to one side or the other. And if I fell …

In my right ear I heard the snapping of the crocodile’s jaws, and a clattering of bones as it swept the ground with its powerful tail. In my left ear I heard the bloodcurdling yowl of the monster.

“Best get on with it, Pecunius,” said Artemon. He chortled and gave me a poke with the spear.

Standing there, trapped atop the wall with no way back, surrounded by laughing onlookers, gripped by the realization that my life might come to a horrible end in a matter of seconds, I experienced one of those supremely strange moments that come to a man only a few times in his life. My senses had never been so acute; every sight and sound seemed at once hugely magnified and yet distilled to its essence. Smells, too, registered with unprecedented intensity. Each of the creatures in the pit below me exuded its own particular stench. The monster emitted a sour, putrid smell, like that of a festering wound. The crocodile had a rank, moldering odor, like seaweed rotting under the hot sun.

And yet, in that moment, I felt no fear. Indeed, I seemed to feel nothing at all, as if I were a mere observer of a scene that was peculiar and mildly interesting but had nothing to do with me.

I looked at the faces of the onlookers, and wondered at their expressions. Yes, they were laughing, but in a good-natured way, not jeering or shouting insults. They seemed to be richly amused at my plight, yet exhibited no signs of malice, as if they were responding to a joke, not delighting at the prospect of a man about to be torn to shreds. What sort of men were these? Or more to the point, in what sort of situation did I find myself? That was my first inkling that all was not as it appeared to be.

Among them, poised at the very edge of the pit above the enclosure with the monster, I saw Djet. He alone seemed not to understand the joke. His eyes were huge and his face was pale. He swayed unsteadily, as if he might faint, but I had no fear that he would fall, for I could see that Menkhep was holding him firmly by the shoulders.

From somewhere I found the necessary motivation—I can hardly call it courage, since fear had deserted me—to raise my right foot and bring it down in front of my left.

“That’s the way to do it!” shouted Artemon.

“That’s the way!” said Menkhep. “Go for it! Go!”

The men began to clap and chant. “Go! Go! Go!”

Now they seemed to be encouraging me, not to fall but to get on with crossing the wall, as if such a feat might actually be possible. A thought occurred to me: if this was truly the gang’s standard initiation ritual, and not some wicked trick, then many or most or perhaps all of the men present had gone through the very same ordeal and come out alive. If they could do it, then so could I.

I took another step.

“Go! Go! Go!” they shouted.

I glanced at Djet. His eyes were still huge, but he slowly raised his hands and began to clap in time with the others.

I took another step, and another. Then more steps. My balance was flawless. I took a deep breath, and felt at peace. After all, traversing the top of the wall was no more difficult than walking a straight line on solid ground.

Then, on my next step, the wall pitched ever so slightly to one side, then to the other, then seemed to sway madly back and forth.

The laughter and clapping abruptly stopped. I was surrounded by a chorus of gasps. I swung my arms and kept my eyes straight ahead to see that Artemon and Ismene had circled around to the far end, as if to meet me, if I should get that far.

By some process beyond rational thought, my body righted itself. Slowly the wall stopped its motion and became steady again. The swaying had been only a tiny thing, I realized, a matter of a finger’s width, but it had felt enormous.

I took another step. I was now more than halfway across. Above the pounding of my heart I heard the men begin to laugh and chant and clap again.

In my abstracted, tightly concentrated frame of mind, I had almost forgotten the creatures in the two enclosures below. Had they been moving about and making noise the whole time? If so, I had not been aware of it, but suddenly I heard the snapping of the crocodile’s jaws to my right and the roar of the monster to my left, both very close, as if each was right below me. The stench from both creatures combined to create a supremely foul odor that made my head spin. My heart pounded even louder in my ears, and I felt a quiver of fear.

“Begone!” I said aloud, not to the two beasts, but to the fear. For a moment, at least, the spell seemed to work, for I managed to take a few more steps.

Then I came to the gap in the wall.

Somehow, I had not seen it before. From the vantage of my starting point, the top of the wall had appeared to run continuously from one end to the other, without interruption. This illusion had persisted as I took one step after another. Yet now, looking down, I saw that the wall suddenly dropped several feet, then after a considerable gap returned to its previous height.