Andre Norton - Shadow Hawk (25 page)

But Rahotep found sleep hard to pursue in the slave quarters of Neferusi. He regretted the hours that must lapse before he could be about the business that had brought him there. And when Icar's breathing close to his ear became an intermittent snoring, he half resented the other's ability to rest. Then he nodded into a broken dozing in which dream monsters lurked.

The seaman had been right. The guards came in with their rousing whips before the light was gray, and a second installment of food was brought to those penned in that stinking hole. Rahotep bit into a hot onion and cooled his mouth with the bread, which was half husks. But they were given only a limited time to eat. On order, Icar pulled at his shoulder, urging him to the door and whispering, "Those first out are deemed the strongest. They shall be used for the wall work—"

That suggestion was enough to make Rahotep press forward so eagerly that again his mentor had to caution him. "What slave runs to his toil, comrade? Be out early, aye, but do not clamor for labor."

They were lined up in squads of ten in the courtyard, and Rahotep kept to the side of the seaman. There were three Nubians also in his group, and he watched them speculatively. Like Icar, they appeared not to have suffered so severely from their hard life, though they were clearly underfed and overworked. But Nubians! If he could have the chance to sound them out, he might discover other lieutenants besides Icar among these chattels of the Hyksos. The rest of the group were a Bwedani—a small, wiry man with a vicious face, a criminal Rahotep thought, rather than a serf or war captive— and four Egyptians, dull, patient men with all the rebellion and intelligence starved and beaten out of them.

They were strung together in neck nooses, a minor torturous arrangement whereby any man not keeping pace with his fellows could well strangle his neighbors—so enlisting their vigilance to add to that of the guard. Thus they were marched to the walls, a destination Rahotep greeted eagerly.

He had thought that his life on the Kush frontier and the hardships of the past weeks had inured him to all discomfort. But he had not been before a burden slave, and he speedily discovered that neither the deserts of the south nor the dungeons of Anubis had prepared him for this. The Egyptians worked with dogged patience; the Bwedani shirked when he could, though their overseer was a conscientious man determined to get the best out of his squad, and the thongs of his lash found the back of the small man regularly until he was driven to pulling his weight with the rest. Icar and the Nubians had the greater strength, and they hoisted stones in a rhythm fitted to the Nubians' monotonous work song.

They were given rests measured by the sun's creeping up a notched stick, and during one such Rahotep, greatly daring, spoke to the Nubian who had thrown himself down between the captain and the pile of stones they were to set in place.

"By the horns of the Spotted Goat, this is work to roast a man in his own juices."

The eyes in that dark face opened, and the man stared at him.

"Who are you," he asked in the same low-pitched whisper, "who swears by the Spotted One of the bowmen?"

"One who has drawn bow cord in their company." Rahotep bit down his excitement. By chance, or by some design beyond his comprehension, his password had been right. The man he had spoken to was, or had been, of a southern warrior clan.

"I am Huy who was tricked into taldng service with these dogs of evil, only to discover that the service was not that of the bow but of the back." He spat. "And you who have also held the bow—what do you here?"

"If I say to make trouble for the sons of Set, will you believe it?"

Those white teeth showed in a leopard's grin. "Believe it? Rather will I say let me join in such trouble—"

"And there are others here of a like mind?"

Huy's head went back against the ground once more, and the captain was warned. His tender shoulders gritted against the rough stone, and he stared vacantly down at his hands as a detachment of Hyksos wall guards tramped by. But he had counted them and assessed their arms—slinger, spearmen, two bowmen.

"There are others—" That was the merest thread of speech from the seemingly sleeping Nubian.

The southerner had no time to enlarge on that, for a messenger was making the rounds of the work gangs. As he paused by each overseer, the resting slaves were shouted at and beaten to their feet and lined up ready to march away. From the exclamations of surprise about him, Rahotep gathered that such a move was contrary to ordinary routine, and for the first time since he successfully passed the guard the night before, the Egyptian captain felt uneasy concerning his own safety.

His gleanings that morning had been meager. A few hasty estimates of the types of soldiers within Neferusi from the bodies of troops he had seen from the wall, tag ends of rumor picked up from the slaves, most of whom were too brutalized to care or note the affairs of their masters, and a very healthy respect for the fortifications he labored to make even more impregnable were the sum total of his gatherings.

From the vast amounts of provisions being brought in by oxcart, he guessed that Neferusi was being prepared to stand siege. But he had overheard a comment from a gate guard going off duty that those heavily laden carts bore only a portion of supplies for the city, that the majority of their cargoes was the tribute collected from the surrounding districts, now to be sent north under the new general's orders to the Asiatic armies of the Hyksos.

Rahotep had set himself during the past hour to watch the arrival of such cart trains and their reception at the gates. While there was a guard about every three or four carts and the officer in charge had to present a tally to the gatemen, there was no search of the wagons themselves. A memory of the way they had transported their secret prisoners from the Valley of the Lizard to the royal city, together with what he had seen here, suggested a plan to him. But it seemed that he was going to have little chance to advance his investigations on the spot.

The messenger was now talking to the overseer of Rahotep's gang, but as he used the Hyksos tongue, the listening Egyptian was no wiser. It was Icar who warned him. Behind the overseer's back the seaman made a beckoning gesture, which the captain obeyed. He moved up to join the taller barbarian, so that when they were once more noosed neck to neck, he was between Icar and Huy of the Nubians. They then stood aside for the passing of a line of tribute carts and Icar spoke.

"They have heard that there is a spy in Neferusi, concealed among the slaves—"

Rahotep's hands had been at his throat to ease the pull of the noose, now they tightened on that chafing cord. How— who—?

"The word was brought to them from without the city," Icar added swiftly.

From without the city! Were there more traitors within the Egyptian camp? Yet he had thought his a well-guarded secret. Only the Prince, Nereb, and his own command had known what he attempted here. And Kheti would keep an eye on those of the archers who were noted as being loose tongued. Or had that hiding place in the reeds been discovered and were Kheti and the others prisoners now?

Chapter 15
NEBET OF NEFERUSI

The slave gangs that had been on the walls were herded back into the space fronting the inner barrier by the warehouse where they had spent the night. As they filed in, Rahotep saw what a mixture of races and nationalities they represented, for the empire of the Hyksos spread far beyond the boundaries of Egypt. There was more than just a sprinkling of Nubians, Asiatics from the Eastern lands, and some fair-skinned, fair-haired barbarians from the north, perhaps seamen who had fallen into captivity through the same trap as had closed upon Icar. But the majority were Egyptians, and Rahotep thought that with his scarred back he could well mix with these unfortunate countrymen of his without raising suspicion, unless he was personally known to the one who had betrayed his arrival in the city.

But whether he
was
known or not, this was the time he must be prepared to make his play for freedom. His right hand went to the cord that bound the slave's scanty apron cloth to his hips and then arose once more to the noose at his throat. Lying flat on his palm was the tiny bronze knife that had been Kheti's prized possession twenty-four hours earlier. He sawed at the neck rope under the pretext of easing its constriction, and then held the parted thongs together with his hand.

The knife was no weapon to aid him further. And now he could be generous with it. There were guards before them, but the Hyksos warriors paid them scant attention as long as they stood still. Rahotep's left hand brushed Icar's, pressing the small knife into the seafarer's grasp. The other showed no surprise as his fingers curled about it.

A party of Hyksos officers came along a side lane. Rahotep watched them narrowly, eager to see if they had a captured archer or an Egyptian in their midst—someone dragged here to point him out.

Icar's hand was at his throat noose. Then the knife was pressed back into the captain's hand again. Rahotep regarded his closed fist for a long moment before he transferred what lay within it to the other hand and so to Huy. Lucidly the Nubian was quick-witted and mastered any sign of the astonishment he must have felt.

Rahotep was sure he could trust Icar. With Huy he might be taking a bigger chance, but his long service with Nubian warriors had given him a high opinion of their loyalty, courage, and resource in action, and he would prefer a Nubian as a fighting comrade to most of those he saw in Neferusi's slave pens.

He looked again to the Hyksos officers. They had come to the first gang of slaves, and the men were lining up before them for inspection. It was plain that they were searching for an Egyptian—those of other races in that gang were waved impatiently aside. But the natives were made to show their hands and their backs—inspected as if they were cattle put up to auction.

Rahotep glanced at his own fists. There were calluses there, old ones. A man could not use spear, bow, help to dig field fortifications, and not show hardened palms. But he wondered if the strip of lighter flesh on one finger, marking the place of his seal ring, could possibly show through the dirt he had rubbed in. And what about the same paler bands on his upper arms where his noble's bracelets had covered three-inch-wide circlets? Could they be detected? Even free of a neck noose, could he put up a fight with both guards and officers around him?

From the corner of his eye he saw Huy's hand touch that of his neighbor—another Nubian—and he guessed the knife was being passed along. But on the other side of that man was the wry-faced Bwedani in whom the captain did not rest any confidence and who might be moved to betray them all. He, Icar, Huy, the other Nubian—four of them against ten times that number of guards and the officers—unarmed, a hopeless fight—

Icar's fingers closed about his wrist in sudden cruel pressure. A warning—? But the Hyksos were not yet near. Then he was startled when the seaman shouted, "Up, eaters of dirt, fight for yourselves. They come to pick men to feed to their temple devils! They want meat for their snake-god!"

For an astounded second the slaves stared from the tall northerner to the officers. Then there came a murmur of protest, which rose in a wailing shriek, and the compound erupted in pure madness. The slaves before the Hyksos officers tried to shrink back, weaving here and there, knotted together by their neck nooses. And those farthest from that danger point faced their guards, screaming in an insane terror.

Rahotep was free, as were Icar and the Nubians. A small wedge of four, they plunged into the writhing mass of terrified slaves, swearing overseers, and guards. Rahotep saw two overseers pulled down by the sheer weight of desperate men, their whips torn from their hands, to be mauled to death. Huy grabbed one of those whips, reversed it, using its butt as a mace and so bowling out of their way a spearman.

The captain caught up the fallen guard's weapon. Icar stood over the moaning man long enough to snatch the dagger from his belt. Then they shoved shoulder to shoulder toward one of the lanes.

"Yaaaah! Waaaah!" Huy raised the savage war cry of his people and was answered by similar whoops from the twisting, whirling mass of slaves and guards. The first terror of the captives had risen to a frightening frenzy as those who had once been warriors remembered the past and determined to make one last stand against a common enemy. Twice Icar slashed a neck rope, put out a long arm to draw to them another freed fighter.

Once it was a squat, powerfully built man with a mat of red beard and a sldn as fair as Icar's own, the other time a Kush with the filed teeth of a man-eater of the Rain Forests bared in the grin of a night demon. Why he chose those two, or if he did it deliberately, Rahotep did not know. But both fell in behind the seaman as if they knew him for a leader they could rely upon.

That insane tangle within the narrow space between wall and warehouse had sucked in most of the guards by now. And the officers who had been examining the Egyptian laborers shouted for help before they were overwhelmed, drawing more men away from the outer circle. Rahotep and Huy, using their weapons when necessary, made for a gap, and the others bunched behind them. Icar's bellow roared in their ears, rising at times above the war cries of the Nubians, both tending to drown out the shouted orders and calls of the guards.

"Waaah! Drink blood!" screamed Huy, as he emerged a step or two in advance of Rahotep into a lane to face a squad of six warriors hastening toward the scene. Unfortunately for them, they were bowmen, and they were given neither time nor space to use their weapons to any advantage.