Taita.
He shook his head. 'Drink, and drink deep.'
When they had all drunk as much as their stomachs would hold, Nefer turned on Taita again. 'What now?'
'Wait here.' Taita ordered and picked up his long staff, he began to climb the jagged side of the hillock.
'What about this zareba?' Nefer shouted after him, 'What purpose is it to serve?'
Taita paused on a narrow ledge thirty feet above them and looked down. 'Your Majesty will know when the time comes.' Taita began to climb again.
'A hiding-place? A tomb, perhaps?' Nefer called sarcastically after him, but Taita did not answer or look back.
He climbed without rest or pause until he reached the peak of the hillock. He stood there gazing back in the direction from which Trok would come.
The little party in the gully at the foot of the hillock watched him, some puzzled, some with hope and one angrily.
Nefer roused himself. 'Fetch the javelins and the rest of the weapons from the chariots. We must be ready to defend ourselves.' He ran to where they had left the chariots. He came back with an armful of javelins, and Meren and Hilto following behind him similarly laden.
'What is Taita doing?' he asked Mintaka. She pointed up at the crest.
'He has not moved.'
They stacked the weapons then settled down at the entrance to the rough shelter. All their eyes went up to Taita again.
He was outlined against that dreadful sulphur sky. Nobody spoke, nobody moved, until they heard that dreaded sound again. They turned their heads to listen to the faint rattle and squeal of chariot wheels, hundreds of them, the voices of men, sometimes muffled by the dunes, at others clear and menacing.
Slowly Taita raised both arms and pointed them to the sky. All their eyes followed the movement. In his right hand he held his staff, in the left the Periapt of Lostris, and at his throat he wore the gift of Bay.
'What is he doing now?' Hilto asked, in an awed tone. Nobody answered him.
Taita stood as still as if he had been chiselled out of the living rock. His head was thrown back, his hair fluffed out silver on his shoulders. His robes were belted up, so that his thin shanks were exposed. He looked like an old bird at roost.
The heavens swirled with low, heavy cloud. The light was transient, fading as the hidden sun was covered more heavily, flaring as the clouds thinned and fumed.
Still Taita did not move, his staff aimed at the pregnant belly of the heavens. The sound of the approaching column became clearer still, and suddenly there was a distant blare of a ram's horn trumpet.
'That is the battle call. Trok has seen Taita,' Mintaka said quietly.
--
Trok shouted at his trumpeter, 'Sound the advance!' but the warlike sound seemed to be swallowed up by the empty desert and the low, angry heavens.
'Wait!' said Ishtar the Mede. He was watching Taita's tiny figure on the peak of the rock hill. 'Wait!'
'What is it?' Trok demanded.
'As yet I cannot fathom it,' Ishtar said, without taking his gaze off the Warlock, 'but it is pervasive and powerful.'
The column remained halted, every man in it staring at the figure on the peak with awe. A terrible silence fell on the desert. There was no sound at all. Even the horses were still - there was no rattle or jingle of equipment.
Only the sky moved. It formed a whirlpool over the head of the Magus, a great turning wheel of smouldering cloud. Then slowly the centre of the whirlpool opened like the single eye of an awakening monster. From the heavenly eye a shaft of dazzling sunlight burst forth.
'The eye of Horus!' Ishtar breathed. 'He has called up the god.' He made a sign of protection, and at his side Trok was silent and rigid with superstitious dread.
The brilliant shaft of light struck the peak, and lit the figure of the Warlock like a bolt of blinding lightning. Around his head it spun a nimbus of silver radiance.
He made a slow circular pass with his long staff, and the Hyksosian charioteers cringed like curs under the whip. The clouds opened wider, and the sky was clear. The sunlight danced on the dunes and was reflected like a sheet of polished bronze into their eyes, dazzling and blinding them. They lifted their shields or their hands to protect their eyes from the strange radiance, but they made no sound.
On the peak Taita described another deliberate circle with his staff, and there was a sound at last: soft as a lover's sigh, it seemed to issue from the very heavens. Men's heads turned questioningly as they sought the source.
Once again Taita gestured and the sigh became a soughing, a gentle whistling. It came from the east, and slowly all their heads turned towards it.
Out of that strange, cloudless brilliance, they saw it coming. It was a solid dun wall that reached from the earth to the highest heavens.
'Khamsin!' Trok whispered the dread word.
The wall of airborne sand marched towards them with a terrible deliberation. It undulated and pulsed like a living creature, and its voice changed. No longer a whisper, it became a rising howl, the voice of a demon.
