Khu: A Tale of Ancient Egypt (16 page)

And he suspected trouble was brewing.

Every so often these things would arise. It was part of the bad blood which had poisoned the land since the great nation of Egypt had split. Part of the venom that had been the blight of both Lower and Upper Egypt, plunging the opposing kingdoms into a period of darkness. It was time to purge that darkness threatening not only Mentuhotep’s throne, but the future of Egypt as a whole. That threat was far closer than the king would have liked. His suspicions had deepened after they visited the township of Nekhen, four days into their journey, where Ankhtifi was chieftain.

Mentuhotep
often visited many settlements on his way to Kush. He liked to keep abreast of their activities himself, instead of relying solely on the reports of his viziers. Nekhen had a port that stretched along a section of the Nile which curved inward, forming a natural harbor. It had been paved with large blocks of stone to keep the river from muddying the banks during the Season of Inundation. A few of the barges used to lug the heavy limestone columns and sandstone blocks that were elaborately carved with hieroglyphs, or painted in vivid colors and  used in the construction of temples and tombs, had been pulled ashore to keep them from rotting.

“Where is Lord Ankhtifi?” the king asked an administrator who greeted their arrival after they docked at the port.

The man
helped manage Ankhtifi’s affairs while the chieftain was away. Mentuhotep had disembarked the ship with Khu, Nakhti, Qeb, and a retinue of officials who usually accompanied Upper Egypt’s monarch on all his administrative visits. The man bowed to the king in a show of subservience that attempted to mask the surprise he felt at Mentuhotep’s question.

“
Forgive me, Lord King, but we did not expect you,” he replied after a moment as he gathered his wits about him, hoping to deflect any probing questions from the king. “Lord Ankhtifi is away.”

“Away?”
Mentuhotep asked as he stared at the man, before darting Khu a sidelong glance.

Khu was
standing next to Nakhti and Qeb. He observed the man quietly, noting the nervousness flowing from him like the steady buzzing of cicadas perched on a tree.

“On some trade matte
r, Sire, and a pilgrimage,” he hastily added, clearing his throat nervously.

“North or south?” the king asked
with narrowed eyes.

The man’s eye
brows shot up before he could reply, betraying his discomfort. He looked anxious. Khu wondered what the man was hiding, and how much he knew of Ankhtifi’s affairs. Khu had heard of Nekhen’s chieftain, though he had never heard of the rumors whispered about him by adversaries in the north. Neither had he ever met him before, at least he did not remember ever meeting him. Khu had no idea that it was Ankhtifi who had led the attack and slaughter on his village, a massacre he had buried far too deeply within the dark recesses of his mind to recall.

“Uh,
n-north, Sire,” the man stuttered, blinking rapidly.

He
glanced over at Qeb with a frown, wondering about the tall Kushite who managed to look both impassive and intimidating at the same time, before he turned his gaze to Nakhti. But when his eyes arrived to Khu, he drew back involuntarily, touching an amulet as he shuddered from the catlike eyes that stared right back at him. The man was thin with stooped narrow shoulders, bulging eyes, and a long hooked nose whose tip hung by a mouth that reminded Khu of one of the catfish gliding along the bottom of the Nile.

“North,” the king repeated with a nod, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Yes, Lord
King. He took linen, pottery and other goods with him.” The man pursed his lips and frowned, then squeezed his eyes shut momentarily, as though silently chastising himself for blurting out more information than necessary. He was fidgety, and kept scratching the skin on one of his elbows.

The king
arched his brows, but he said nothing. He knew that linen and pottery were commonly made products in the north. Why would Ankhtifi trade them? It did not make sense, but he did not say so aloud. Ankhtifi never struck him as the type to go on pilgrimages either.

Mentuhotep
noted the nervous manner in which the official behaved. The man shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and worked his jaw before speaking again. He seemed to be hiding something.

“Where exactly was he headed?” The king asked
with narrowed eyes. “I have some news for him, and wish to share it with him myself,” he fibbed with a forced smile.

The man took the bait and
smiled back, “Abdju, Sire. For the Festival of Osiris.”

The last time Mentuhotep had seen Ankhtifi was several years before, and only briefly at that,
when the king had sailed down on one of his visits to Swentet. He did not usually stop in Nekhen, but would send an emissary to conduct any official matters on his behalf. But this time he wanted to show Khu and Nakhti the settlement which was known for its crafts. Their jewelers were among the most talented in Upper Egypt, and the king wished to have a beautiful collar necklace made for Khu’s mother Tem, so she could wear it at the next Festival of the Inundation. It would be a gift from Khu as a sign of respect and honor to his mother, and would be presented to her when Khu reached his fifteenth season of the Nile’s flooding, as was the custom for boys who had made it into adulthood. In a time when infant and childhood mortality ran rampant, those children who had reached adulthood often bestowed a token of gratitude to their mothers who had nurtured them through the often hazardous period of youth.

Mentuhotep had never quite trusted Ankhtifi. He did not know if it was due to
the predatory aspect of the man’s canine face, or to the way the man’s dark eyes took in all of his surroundings, or even to the way he spoke with a slow and deliberate articulation. There was something guarded about the chieftain; something both aloof and menacing at the same time which he could not quite identify.

The king was
satisfied enough to conduct his affairs through an emissary who would trade goods with the neutral settlement. Because Nekhen was not under Mentuhotep’s rule, the king did not collect any livestock, grain, crops, and finished goods as part of the yearly taxes owed him, as he did from other settlements in his kingdom. But he did exchange goods. Nevertheless, the king liked to keep a close watch on his enigmatic southern neighbor.

Mentuhotep had learned to trust his instincts over the years, even if there was nothing to substantiate the strange and eerie
impression raising his hackles and putting him on guard. The chieftain’s absence certainly unnerved him because it came at a time when rumors had begun to circulate about trouble making its way south like a sandstorm from the desert. And the Festival of Osiris would provide the chieftain with the perfect excuse for going to Abdju.

It could not be a coincidence that Ankhtifi was gone. Mentuhotep did not believe in coincidences.
He reached up to touch the gold amulet hanging from his neck as he brooded silently for a moment. He was certain the chieftain’s trade expedition had been a ruse, just as his own expedition to Kush was a ploy. He shook his head, relieved that he had decided to stop in Nekhen, yet mentally berating himself for not keeping closer watch over Ankhtifi.

Before they had
departed Nekhen, Ankhtifi’s administrator had personally escorted the king and his entourage on a tour of some of the settlement’s finest workshops and most talented artisans. A private meeting had been arranged for Khu to choose the precious gems that would be made into the collar necklace for Tem, and he picked yellow topaz and malachite which had become his mother’s favorite gemstones since she had claimed Khu as her own son. They were the stones that most nearly resembled his eyes.

“
Go to Abdju, Sudi,” Mentuhotep later instructed one of his most trusted men after they had spent part of the day in Nekhen, “and see what you can learn. Find out whatever you can about Ankhtifi’s visit—the
true
purpose of his visit.”

The king had been pacing back and forth
on the deck of his ship as he spoke to the man who would leave later that night, under cover of darkness.

“
He is afraid of something,” Khu later told the king about Ankhtifi’s administrator, when he, Nakhti and Qeb were alone with him, long after they had left Nekhen.

“Afraid of Ankhtifi perhaps,”
Qeb interjected.

But
Khu knew there had to be more to his fear than that.

“Why would he be afraid of Ankhtifi?”
Nakhti wondered aloud.

“Because he is hiding something
,” Khu replied as he turned his eyes on the king.

The effect of Khu’s gaze had never lost its uncanny power, and Mentuhotep could not help feeling
momentarily transfixed as he looked at his son. He stopped his pacing to stare with his lips slightly parted.

“Father,
” Khu distracted the king with a wave of his hand, “Ankhtifi must be planning something.”

But
Mentuhotep just turned away to stare out over the Nile as they made their way south to Swentet. It was what he had suspected as well.

“Ankhtifi is a bully,” the king said
, inhaling deeply through his nose, and exhaling though his mouth.

The night air was cool
, and the breeze smelled of the river, tall grasses, reeds and the rich mud along the bank, with hints of something floral, but its fragrance was lost on the king whose thoughts were preoccupied elsewhere.

Mentuhotep
pushed his shoulders back and pressed his lips together into a hard line. “It is not surprising that his administrators fear him,” he nodded slowly. He was remembering the chieftain’s bearing, and how there had been something aggressive in his stance. It was as though Ankhtifi were primed and ready to pounce on anyone who opposed him. There had been something slippery about his administrator too, like an eel slithering through the dark river. “He may be intimidating to some, but he is not that smart. He relies more on his brute strength than his wits.”

I
f Ankhtifi were indeed planning something, he would not be alone. Someone else would be coordinating it. Someone stronger and more powerful than the chieftain of Nekhen.

“So there is someone else involved,” Khu said
, almost reading the king’s mind. “Someone smarter.”

The king
nodded to Khu before turning to stare again out over the water lapping the sides of the ship as they glided through the river.

A half-moon
spilled its light from the sky onto the dark water, glossing its surface so it appeared like a thin layer of pewter floating on top. It was quiet, but Mentuhotep knew the stillness was deceptive. For a world of night creatures had awakened with the setting of the sun-god Re’s fiery
Mandjet
solar boat. A world that crept out in the darkness after the day was done. A world whose beasts—great and small—breathed and hunted and killed and devoured their unwary prey.

The king was very much aware
that he was part of that world, and he wanted to tread carefully through the realm whose thin line separating predator from prey was smudged in the darkness of men’s false hearts.

Mentuhotep turned his thoughts to Sudi, who had left already. Part of him feared for the man’s life. He might have been sending him into
the den of a wolf, but he was sly, quick and cunning enough to slip away before being caught. At least that is what Mentuhotep hoped.

Sudi
would be sailing on a skiff with two more men, posing as fishermen with nets, and floating along the muddy waters that would take them to Abdju, the cult center of Osiris. Once arriving, they would roam through the town, and among its inhabitants and many visiting pilgrims and merchants, discretely asking questions, prodding people to speak with the assistance of a subtle yet well-placed comment, and listening with every one of their senses to all that was said, and more importantly, to what was left unsaid.

They would
wander through the town like the numerous cats living there, roaming inconspicuously among the tombs, temples and townspeople to wait, watch and witness anything they might report back to their king, whose hackles were now raised, and whose ears were now perked in suspicion like a fox on the prowl. The king smelled a hint of treachery on the breeze ruffling the branches, whispering through reeds, and moving over the Nile’s surface as it flowed around a bend of trees whose trunks were gnarled and knotted as they bore the weight of their heavy branches and leaves.

Sometimes
a fox’s quarry requires some digging to unearth it from its shelter, perhaps even a trick or two to lure or flush it out of hiding. But once exposed, the king planned to trap and crush any traitors, much like the fox crushing the thin bones of his victim with teeth made sharper by a fierce and impassioned hunger.