force crossing the border.'
'What's done is done,' Phanes replied, trapping Sadeh's hardened nipples between his thumb and forefinger. He twisted them gently, sending her into spasms of pleasure. 'The hand of Apollo has blessed us.'
'The blessing of Apollo's not proof against failure,' Lysistratis said. 'Barca himself leads these Medjay and he's not a man to be trifled with. He stands high in Pharaoh's counsel. That alone makes him a dangerous opponent.'
Phanes said nothing for a while, his tongue engaged in a duel with Sadeh's. Though Memphis had countless prostitutes and courtesans — women of Syria, Greece, Libya, and Nubia — Phanes limited his sexual encounters to young Egyptian women of the upper class, chosen as much for their looks as their parentage. Under Phanes, Sadeh would learn to embrace her primal side, her innate lasciviousness. He would use her, treat her no better than a common whore, then cast her aside like so many who had come before her. The thought sent a ripple of pleasure through his loins.
He broke their kiss, leaving Sadeh breathless. 'Barca! Phoenicians should keep to the sea, where they belong! Meddlesome bastard!'
'Bar-ka,' Sadeh panted in Egyptian, recognizing the name. 'He is a goblin the matrons of … of Sais use to frighten s-small …' Her voice faltered as she shook through the throes of yet another orgasm.
'Mind your business, girl,' Lysistratis said, 'lest we put your mouth to better use.' Then, to Phanes, 'Look, Barca is notorious for being a thorn in the side of Pharaoh's enemies. He has two choices: he can go to Sais and warn Amasis, or he can come to Memphis and attempt to interfere. Granted, he's one man, but — '
'If he comes here, Lysistratis, I want him dead. Before he can cause problems,' said Phanes. 'Double the guards on the eastern shore and send out additional patrols.'
'I'll see to it tomorrow.' Lysistratis floated up behind Sadeh, cupping her breasts as he kissed her. She stretched her hands above her head, her nails digging into the Spartan's neck. Her moans redoubled.
'Ah,' Phanes said, his hands spreading Sadeh's buttocks to allow the Spartan to enter her, 'if only the rest of Egypt could be plundered as easily as you, my dear.'
3
A desultory breeze rustled through the forest of reeds growing along the Nile's eastern bank. The night was quiet save for the soothing clamor of frogs and insects, and the hiss of water spooling through the shallows. Well back from the river, hillocks rose from the rich, black soil. Atop them, farming villages sat like stately country squires, their lights dim and clouded, their finery diminished with age. Between the river and the villages, lay the fields that fed the teeming masses of Memphis.
Barca and Ithobaal stood at the edge of a muddy embankment, just inside a tangled copse of sycamores, and watched the lights of Memphis glittering across the dark waters of the Nile. 'I'm going in tonight. Alone,' the Phoenician said.
Ithobaal's knees creaked as he crouched and scooped up a handful of loose soil. 'Alone? Are you mad?' He heard a cough, explosive in the silence, and glanced toward the noise. The Medjay sat in the darkness beneath the trees, too weary to prepare a fire or unsling their bedrolls. Eighteen faces stared at nothing; splashes of light from a sickle moon gave them a ghoulish cast, like wandering souls unburied, unmourned. Soil trickled between Ithobaal's fingers. 'This forced march has exhausted the men. It's exhausted you. Why not bide the night here and rest until dawn? We made good time from Leontopolis. What difference will another day make?'
The city across the river consumed Barca's attention. His answers were there, in the inscrutable darkness that thrived where the small circles of light failed. He continued as if Ithobaal had never spoken. 'Get some sleep and enter Memphis at dawn, on the first ferry. Find lodging around the Square of Deshur and wait for me. I'll get word to you when I have something useful. If any should ask, tell them you're guards for a caravan out of Jerusalem.'
Under casual scrutiny the Phoenician could easily pass for an itinerant caravaneer. Clad in a threadbare tunic and sandals, a knife thrust into his belt at his back, he had shed his armor and shield and ordered his men to do the same. Their telltale uadjets would draw too many curious stares. A troop of Medjay in Memphis would place the Greeks on their guard. Barca needed stealth; he needed freedom to move about with as much anonymity as possible.
Ithobaal stood. His nerves were stretched thin, close to breaking. 'How, in the name of horned Ba'al, will you get across the river, little brother? The ferries have ceased for the night, unless you're Greek. You plan to swim the Nile?'
Barca clapped the Canaanite on the shoulder. 'Have faith, Ithobaal. There's more than one way into Memphis.'
'Then, why go alone? At least let a few of us accompany you. The odds…'
Barca shook his head. 'The odds worsen with every passing moment. If twenty men follow me in, that's twenty chances that the Greeks will get wind of us. We're already playing against time. Once the Greeks hear about what happened to their messenger at Leontopolis, do you think they'll sit idle? I don't. I think they'll set their plans in motion as fast as they can. Tonight, I'm going to find Matthias ben lesu. If anyone knows what's been happening, he will.'
'If the old Jew still lives,' Ithobaal muttered as he turned and walked back to the loose circle of Medjay. 'I may be old, but I'm not daft, little brother. You've come to kill Greeks, and the gods preserve any who get in your way! '
Barca dismissed the Canaanite with a wave of his hand as he descended the embankment and headed south, following the curve of the river. Mud squelched underfoot. He forged a treacherous path around boulders and gnarled roots, risking a twisted ankle or worse should a slick rock turn under his weight. Papyrus stalks rattled in a faint breath of wind.
Barca withdrew into himself, his senses alert, his body moving over and around obstacles. Ithobaal was right. Exhaustion gnawed at him. His bones and muscles ached; his joints felt like they were spun from glass. Rest would have been a godsend, had it been at all possible. Deep down Barca could feel the Beast stirring, flexing its claws in anticipation. This dormant bloodlust was akin to having another living being inside his skin, a lean wraith whose hunger flogged him to action, despite pain or weariness. Barca knew he had come to Memphis to aid Pharaoh. No one could argue otherwise. Yet, the truth of Ithobaal's condemnation stabbed like a white-hot knife of guilt. Had he also come to Memphis to gorge the Beast on Greek blood?
A short time later, a cluster of shanties emerged from the darkness: a mud-dweller's village. Despised by their agricultural neighbors, the mud-dwellers were the poorest of the poor, a gypsy folk who drifted with the currents, who eked whatever living they could from fishing, scavenging, and outright theft. Their villages were barely habitable. Tumbledown huts of cast-off mud brick, roofed with reed mats and dried palm fronds, clung to the shore like barnacles to a ship's hull. The village would vanish with the next inundation, and the mud-dwellers would vanish with it, scattered by the Nile's indomitable will.
Barca plunged through the maze of huts. An open sewer cleft the village square, allowing slops and human waste to drain into the river. The Phoenician stepped over this fetid trench. Through curtained doorways he could hear the sounds of men snoring, the hard crack of a fist on flesh, laughter. In the distance a dog howled in pain.
Ahead, a ramshackle jetty sprang from the river muck, a leprous finger of wood prodding at the Nile's breast. Small boats scraped the pilings, their oars shipped, sails furled. Barca crept out onto the jetty and peered into each boat. He found what he sought in the last one. A village boy lay curled around the base of the mast, his head cradled on a cushion of rope. He was young, ten years old at most; hard years if the long puckered whip scars lacing his shoulders and back were any indication. In one fist he clutched a small horn, chipped and worn from rough use, while the other held a knife made from a shank of corroded copper. No doubt he was charged with standing guard over the boats tied to the jetty.
Barca knelt. Gently, he prodded the young sleeper with the tip of his sheathed sword. The boy groaned,
