Tanus lopped twenty-three heads, I was counting them to distract myself from the waves of debilitating compassion that assailed me, until the first of the condemned men broke down. He was young, not much more than a boy. In a shrill voice he gabbled out the replies before Tanus could actually pose the three questions to him.
'My name is Hui. I am a blood-brother of the clan of Basti the Cruel. I know his secret places, and I will lead you to them.' Tanus smiled with grim satisfaction and gestured for the lad to be led away. 'Care for him well,' he warned his gaolers. 'He is now a trooper of the Blues, and your companion-in-arms.'
After the defection of one of them, it went more readily, although there were still many who defied Tanus. Some of them cursed him, while others laughed their defiance at him until the blade swept down, and their bravado ended with their very last breath that burst from the severed windpipe in a crimson gust.
I was filled with admiration for those who, after a base and despicable life, at the end chose to die with some semblance of honour. They laughed at death. I knew #iat I was not capable of that quality of courage. Offered that choice, I am certain that I would have responded as some of the weaker prisoners did.
'I am a member of the clan of Ur,' one confessed.
'I am of the clan of Maa-En-Tef, who is baron of the west bank as far as El Kharga,' said another, until we had informers to lead us to the strongholds of every one of the remaining robber barons, and a shoulder-high pile of recalcitrant heads to add to the pyramid beside the well.
ONE OF THE MATTERS TO WHICH TANUS and I had given much thought was the disposal of the three robber barons we had already captured, and the score of informers we had gleaned from the ranks of the condemned Shrikes. ___ We knew that the influence of the Shrikes was so pervasive that we dared not keep our captives in Egypt. There was not a prison secure enough to prevent Akh-Seth and his barons from reaching them, either to set them free by bribery or force, or to have them silenced by poison or some other unpleasant means. We knew that Akh-Seth was like an octopus whose head was hidden, but whose tentacles reached into every facet of our government and into the very fabric of our existence.
This was where my friend Tiamat, the merchant of Saf-aga, came into my reckoning.
Matching now as a unit of the Blue Crocodile Guards, and not as a slave caravan, we returned to the port on the Red Sea in half the time that it had taken us to reach Gallala. Our captives were hustled aboard one of Tiamat's trading vessels that was waiting for us in the harbour, and the captain set sail immediately for the Arabian coast, where Tiamat maintained a secure slave-compound on the small off-shore island of Jez Baquan, run by his own warders. The waters around the island were patrolled by packs of ferocious blue sharks. Tiamat assured us that no one who had attempted escape from the island had ever avoided both the vigilance of the warders and the appetites of the sharks.
Only one of our captives was not sent to the island. He was Hui from the clan of Basti the Cruel, the same youngster who had been the first to capitulate to the threat of execution. During the march to the sea, Tanus had kept the lad close to him and had turned all the irresistible force of his personality upon him. By this time Hui was his willing slave. This special gift of Tanus' to win loyalty and devotion from the most unlikely quarters never failed to amaze me. I was sure that Hui, who had buckled so swiftly under the threat of execution, would now willingly lay down his worthless life for Tanus.
Under Tanus' spell, Hui poured out every detail that he could remember of the clan to which he had once sworn a blood-oath. I listened quietly, with my writing-brush poised, as Tanus questioned him and I recorded all he had to tell us.
We learned that the stronghold of Basti the Cruel was in the fastness of that awful desert of Gebel-Umm- Bahari, on the summit of one of the flat-topped mountains that was protected by sheer cliffs on every side. Hidden and impregnable, but less than two days' march from the east bank of the Nile and the busy caravan routes that ran along its banks, it was the perfect nest for the raptor.
'There is one path to the top, cut like a stairway from the rock. It is wide enough for only one man to climb at a time,' Hui told us.
'There is no other way to the summit?' Tanus asked, and Hui grinned and laid his finger along his nose in a conspir-atory gesture.
'There is another route. I have used it often, to return to the mountain after I had deserted my post to visit a lady Mend. Basti would have had me killed if he had known I was missing. It is a dangerous climb, but a dozen godd men could make it and hold the top of the cliff while the main force came up the pathway to them. I will lead you up it, Akh-Horus.'
It was the first time that I heard the name. Akh-Horus, the brother of the great god Horus. It was a good name for Tanus. Naturally, Hui and our other captives could not know Tanus' real identity. They knew only in their simple way that Tanus must be some kind of god. He looked like a god and he fought like a god, and he invoked the nametrf Horus in the midst of battle. So, they had reasoned, he must be the brother of Horus.
Akh-Horus! It was a name that all Egypt would come to know well in the months ahead. It would be shouted from hilltop to hilltop. It would be carried along the caravan routes. It would travel the length of the river on the lips of the boatmen, from city to city, and from kingdom to kingdom. The legend would grow up around the name, as the accounts of his deeds were repeated and exaggerated at each telling.
Akh-Horus was the mighty warrior who appeared from nowhere, sent by his brother Horus to continue the eternal struggle against evil, against Akh-Seth, the lord of the Shrikes.
Akh-Horus! Each time the people of Egypt repeated the name, it would fill their hearts with fresh hope.
All that was in the future as we sat in the garden of Tia-mat the merchant. Only I knew how hot Tanus was for Basti, and how eager to lead his men into the Gebel-Umm-Bahari to hunt him down. It was not only that Basti was the most rapacious and pitiless of all the barons. There was much more to it than that. Tanus had a very personal score to settle with that bandit.
From me, Tanus had learned that Basti had been the particular instrument that Akh-Seth had used to destroy the fortune of Pianki, Lord Harrab, Tanus' father.
'I can lead you up the cliffs of Gebel-Umm-Bahari,' Hui promised. 'I can deliver Basti into your hands.'
Tanus, was silent awhile in the darkness as he savoured that promise. We sat and listened to the nightingale singing at the bottom of Tiamat's garden. It was a sound totally alien from the evil and desperate affairs that we were discussing. After a while Tanus sighed and dismissed Hui.
'You have done well, lad,' he told him. 'Fulfil your promise, and you will find me grateful.'
