Ladice smiled. 'It is hard to be the wife of a Pharaoh and not learn something of politics and intrigue. Truly, though, I sought you out to ask a favor of you.'
'You have only to ask, lady, and perhaps you can do Egypt a favor in return by availing yourself on Psammetichus. He needs your wisdom.'
Ladice bowed her head. 'You ask the one thing I cannot grant.'
'Why, lady?'
'Because,' Ladice looked up, tears sparkling in her eyes, 'I wished to ask your permission for my maids and I to accompany you to Pelusium.'
Nebmaatra frowned. 'But, I leave within the hour. There are many days of funerary preparations yet to complete for your husband. I do not see …?'
'Ahmose has crossed the River, Nebmaatra,' she said. 'The rites are an Egyptian formality. I have said my farewells after the fashion of my people. After a dozen years of living among Egyptians, I am not one step closer to understanding your liturgies or beliefs, but I do understand your people. We, my maids and I, desire to provide succor to the wounded at Pelusium as a way of repaying the kindness they have shown us.'
Nebmaatra had a thousand arguments for why she should stay and counsel Pharaoh, but as he looked at the tears wetting her cheeks, he could not bring himself to deny her.
'Now, it's you who think I'm foolish,' Ladice said.
Nebmaatra placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. 'No, lady. I understand very well. You should understand, too, that this will be dangerous. Should the battle go against us, I cannot guarantee your safety. If you fall into Persian hands …' He trailed off.
'I only wish for a chance to serve,' she said.
Nebmaatra stared at the lightening sky, at the ruddy glow spreading across the eastern horizon. It was going to be a beautiful morning. He sighed. 'To Pelusium, then.'
16
Her legs wrap around his waist, urging him deeper. Their bodies undulate with a sinuous grace. The sweat of lovemaking rolls down her breasts and pools in the hollow ofher throat. He grunts, hiships thrusting against her buttocks; she moans, purring in feline contentment. The room is dark save for a cone of brilliance illuminating their sweat-slick forms. A figure approaches from the shadows. The light strikes fire from a blade held in his hand. He sees the interloper, but he cannot move. Her legs and arms bind him to her. Shelaughs, her teeth cruel yellow points that rip his flesh. She laughs, caressing him with hands rotted to bone …
Barca jerked awake, eyes flaring open, hands fending off something only his mind's eye could see. He bit back a scream before it could escape his throat. Slowly, he sank back down on the bed. The Phoenician shifted his frame and tried to relax, listening to the sounds in the night. Beside him, Jauharah whimpered in her sleep. The tent soughed in the breeze. The flame in the lamp crackled, flickering, its oil almost exhausted. A horse whinnied in the distance, followed by the faint cry of a sentry's challenge.
You are a fool, Barca! He should have been angry with himself for what he had done, for breaking a twenty- year old promise to the gods to never let a woman close to him again, yet he had no anger in him. Not at this moment. Only a strange feeling even the after-effects of his nightmare could not taint. He looked down at Jauharah's sleeping form.
Her body was balled up tight against his side; her hands twitched, and the muscles in her legs quivered. A veil of hair hid her face from view, though Barca heard a faint moan escape her lips. He kissed her gently, stroking her scalp. Jauharah was an exceptional woman: strong yet compassionate, brave yet vulnerable. She could have been a queen had Fate not made her a slave. But then, in Barca's experience, Fate had a way of punishing the innocent and rewarding the wicked.
Quietly, he rose from the bed and slipped on his kilt. There was no way he could sleep, not with so many concerns running through his mind. How to handle Qainu, how to extract Callisthenes from the Arabian's grasp, how to defend Gaza from within and without, even how to treat Jauharah. What did he feel for her, and would it interfere with hisjudge- ment? He …
'Hasdrabal?' Jauharah said, her voice thick and drowsy. She stretched and rolled toward him. 'Is something wrong? Come back to bed.'
'No, everything's fine. I have never been able to sleep for any length,' Barca said. He picked up his breastplate and set it on the small table, trying to ignore the lush invitation her body made.
'Nightmares?' Jauharah asked. She reached down and snagged her shift off the floor, draping it across her naked breasts and thighs.
Barca shrugged. 'Sometimes. You have them too, I noticed.'
Jauharah sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. 'I only have one,' she said. 'Every time I close my eyes, I see Meryt and Tuya's tiny bodies drowning in a lake of blood. They're screaming my name, begging me to help them, but I can do nothing. I'm afraid, and that fear keeps me rooted to the spot as they slip under the surface …' Tears clung to her lashes, spilling down her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut.
Barca moved back to the bed and sat. His hand stroked her back. 'I'm sorry I wasn't there to save them.'
'You can't save everyone, Hasdrabal,' she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. 'You had your hands full that night, as I recall. No, I should have never left them. I try not to imagine what their last minutes were like. Their father lay dead in front of them. Their mother, too. I try not to think about how terrified they were.' She sighed and slipped her shift over her head, running her fingers through her hair. 'I failed them, and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.'
'There's nothing I can say that would ease your mind. The pain is something time will lessen, if you allow it. I'm proof that rage and guilt aren't simple things to live with.'
'I could never forget them,' she said.
'No. You'll never forget them, or what happened. Just try, as though your soul depends on it, not to let it control you.'
'How…' she began, then stopped. A scream drifted in, a cry of alarm that ended abruptly. Barca shot to his feet. His nostrils flared; he caught the acrid smell of smoke. The Phoenician swore as he grabbed his sword and raced from the tent. Jauharah snatched a knife off the table as she followed in his wake.
Outside, lurid flames leapt from the supply wagons and from tents on the outskirts of camp. In the ghoulish light, Jauharah saw the silhouettes of horsemen thundering through camp, men wearing the tell-tale robes and turbans of Bedouin. On the ground, a handful of Egyptians struggled to rise, to extricate themselves from the clinging folds of their shelters, only to be cut down by the flashing swords of their attackers. Men screamed in pain and rage.
'Awake, dogs!' Barca roared. 'Awake!'
They rode in from the northeast, a wedge of half-wild horsemen who trampled tents and slaughtered men as they bore down on the ruins forming the geographic center of the Egyptian camp. Chaos ruled as men, torn from the arms of slumber by Barca's cry, stumbled out of their tents only to be set upon by Bedouin wolves. Arab and Egyptian strained breast to breast, fighting with a primal fury that erased all vestiges of humanity. Men reverted to their animal natures, slashing with knife and sword, tooth and nail. Barca saw a naked Egyptian, his standard- bearer, drag a Bedouin from his horse and kill him even as another rode him down from behind.
Snarling, Barca slung his sword over his shoulder, snatched a bow from a weapons rack, and strung it on one fluid motion. The Bedouin were overwhelming his men, forcing them back to the ruins. With machine-like efficiency, Barca drew and loosed, sending arrow after arrow into the fray. He saw horses rear, pitching their riders into the dust. Men screamed as bronze-heads slashed into their bellies, their chests, their faces. So tightly were they compacted that the Phoenician's arrows could not miss.
The timbre of the battle changed as Barca's archery provided a toehold. The Egyptians shook off the effects
