'Get out of it, you old fool,' Tanus grated in my ear. 'Leave me. Run for it!'
The elephant lifted his head and shook it in the same way that a dog shakes the water from its ears after it has swum back to the shore. Those vast leathery ears slapped and rat-| tied against his own shoulders, and Blade's crushed carcass slid off the tusk and was hurled aside as if it were no heavier I than a dead rabbit. The strength of the elephant bull was I past all belief. If he could toss the weight of horse and | chariot so easily, what might he do with my own frail body? 'Run, for the love of Horus, run, you fool!' Tanus urged |. me, and tried to push me away, but some strange obstinacy prevented me from leaving him, and I hung on to his shoul-| der. Afraid as I was, I could not leave him.
The bull had heard the sound of Tanus' voice and he swung around with those ears flaring wide open like the mainsail of a fighting galley. He stared full at us, and we were less than fifty paces from him.
I did not know then, as I would learn later, that the eyesight of the elephant is so poor that he is almost blind. He relies almost entirely on his hearing and his sense of smell. Only movement attracts him, and if we had stood still he would not have seen us.
'He has seen us,' I gasped, and I dragged Tanus with me, forcing him to hop on his good leg beside me. The bull saw the movement and he squealed. I shall never forget that sound. It deafened and stunned me, sending us both reeling so that we staggered together and almost fell.
Then the bull charged straight at us.
He came with long, driving strides, and his ears flapped about his head. Arrows bristled from the great weathered forehead, and blood streamed down his face like tears. Each time he squealed, the lung blood spurted in a cloud from his trunk. As tall as a cliff, and as black as death, he came at us in full charge. I could see every seam and crease in the folded skin around his eyes. The lashes of his eyes were thick as those of a beautiful girl, but such a glare of rage shone through them that my heart turned to a stone in my chest, and weighed down my legs so I could not move.
The passage of time seemed to slow down, and I was overcome with a sense of dreamlike unreality. I stood and watched death bear down upon us with a slow and stately deliberation, and could make no move to avoid it.
'Tata!' A child's voice rang in my head, and I knew that it was a delusion of my terror. 'Tata, I am coming!'
In total disbelief I swung my head away from the vision of death before me. Across the open ground of the grove a chariot was tearing towards us at full gallop. The horses were stretched out and their heads were going like the hammers on a coppersmith's anvil. Their ears were laid back, and their nostrils flared wide open, pink and wet. I could see no driver at the reins.
'Get ready, Tata!' Only then did I see the neat little head, barely showing above the dashboard. The reins were gripped in two small fists, the knuckles white with tension.
'Mem,' I cried, 'go back! Turn back!'
The wind blew his hair out in a cloud behind his head, and the sunlight struck ruby sparks from the thick dark curls. He came on without a pause or check.
'I'll thrash the little ruffian for disobeying me,' growled Tanus, as he teetered on one leg. We had both of us forgotten our own danger.
'Whoa!' Memnon cried, and brought the team down from a full gallop. He wheeled the carriage into such a sharp turn that the inside wheel stopped dead and swivelled on its rim. He had cut in front of the two of us, shielding us for an instant from the charging bull, and as the chariot spun about there was a moment when it was standing still. It was beautifully done.
I heaved my shoulder up under Tanus' armpit and threw him sprawling on the footplate. The very next instant I hurled myself headlong on top of him. As I landed, Memnon gave the horses their heads, and we bounded forward so sharply that I was almost jerked backwards off the platform, but I grabbed at the side-panel and steadied myself.
'Go, Mem,' I screamed, 'for all you're worth!'
'Hi-up!' Memnon screamed. 'Yah hah!' The chariot careered away with the frightened horses driven to full flight by the enraged squeals of the charging bull close behind.
All three of us stared back over the tail-board. The head of the bull hung over us, seeming to fill all my vision. The trunk reached out for us, so close that each time the bull squealed, the bloody cloud sprayed over us and speckled our upturned faces, so that we looked like the victims of some horrible plague.
We could not draw clear of his rush, and he was unable to overtake us. Matched in speed, we went racing through the glade with the great bloody head hanging over us as we cowered on the floorboards of the bouncing chariot. It needed only one small mistake from our driver to send us into a hole or rip our wheels off against a stump of a fallen tree, and the bull would have been upon us in an instant. But the prince handled the traces like a veteran, picking his route through the grove with a cool hand and practised eye. He sent the chariot careening through the turns on one wheel, within an ace of capsizing, holding off the bull's mad charge. He never faltered once, and then suddenly it was all over.
One of the arrows buried in the bull's chest had worked itself in deeper and sliced open the heart. The elephant opened his mouth wide, and a flood of bright blood shot up his throat and he died in his tracks. His legs went out from under him and he came down with a crash that jarred the earth under us, and lay upon his side with one long curved tusk thrust up in the air as if in a last defiant and regal gesture.
Memnon pulled in the horses, and Tanus and I stumbled down out of the carriage and stood together staring back at that mountainous carcass. Tanus clung to the side of the chariot to favour his damaged leg, and slowly turned back to look at the boy who did not know he was his father.
'By Horus, I have known some brave men in my time, but none of them better than you, lad,' he said simply, and then he lifted Memnon in his arms and hugged him to his chest.
I did not see much more of it, for those everlasting and tedious tears of mine blotted out my vision. Even though I knew myself for a sentimental fool, I could not staunch them. I had waited too long to see this happen, to watch the father embrace his son.v -.
I only managed to regain control of my errant emotions when I heard the faint sound of distant cheers. What none of us had realized was that the chase had taken place in full view of the fleet. The Breath of Horus lay close in against the bank of the Nile, and I could see the slim figure of the queen upon the high poop. Even at this distance
