At Nefer's orders traps were set each evening on the dumps, and the following morning the captured animals were taken away in cages.
In the meantime Shabako and his most trusted men were sent as scouts and spies back to the towns and villages of the Nile valley. They drank in the taverns and questioned the travellers they met on the road. They scouted each fort and garrison, and counted the troops they saw entering, leaving and drilling. When they returned weeks later the intelligence they brought back was detailed and accurate.
They reported that the false pharaohs had left at least half of their infantry, spearmen, slingers and archers, to counter any threat to their rear. All the border forts were fully manned and guarded, and the garrisons seemed alert and vigilant.
'What of the remount divisions?' Nefer asked, when Shabako had come to the end of his long report.
Trok has taken most of his chariots with him to Mesopotamia. He has left less than two regiments in reserve in Egypt. However, all the army workshops are hard at work building more chariots.'
'Horses?' Nefer demanded.
They have commandeered every animal in both kingdoms that they could lay their thieving hands on. They have even sent army dealers to Libya to buy what they could find. It seems that the remount depots at Thane and Manashi are at full strength. However, most of these animals appear young and untrained. The battle-hardened animals have been taken with the main army to the east.'
'Thane,' Nefer decided. 'It's much closer to the edge of the desert than Manashi.' He recalled that Thane was where Taita had used his requisition order from Naja to obtain fresh horses and chariots from Socco, Hilto's old comrade-in-arms, while they were on their way to rescue Mintaka from Avaris. He cast his mind back and tried to memorize the layout of the garrison and the surrounding terrain, but it had all been a long time ago.
'Tell me all you can about Thane. Is Socco still in command there?'
'We drank beer in the local brothel with a sergeant of the garrison. He told me that Socco has done such a good job there that Trok has promoted him to the rank of Best of Ten Thousand.'
Ten days later Nefer and Taita sat in the thick green grass and pretended to watch over the herd of goats that grazed around them. Although the land around the garrison of Thane was well irrigated and rich in grazing, it was also flat, treeless and featureless. There were no hills from which they could overlook the camp. The nearest high ground was along the edge of the desert, a league to the east.
The two of them were dressed in the ragged dusty black robes of the Bedouin. In this guise they were able to blend into the landscape as readily as a pair of hares or crows. At intervals they stood and herded the goats a little closer to the garrison, then squatted down again in the characteristic attitude of the Bedouin herdsman.
Not far from where they sat the herds of remounts were also grazing, tended by armed and uniformed herders. 'I would think there are upward of two thousand animals here,' Nefer guessed.
'Perhaps not as many as that.' Taita shook his head. 'Closer to fifteen hundred, but still more than we can handle.'
They watched and waited through the long, lazy afternoon. In the stockades alongside the cavalry lines the handlers were at work breaking the young animals to the chariot harness. Their shouted commands and the crack of the stock whips carried faintly to where Nefer and Taita sat. In the late afternoon the herds of horses were driven in from the fields and stockades to the long horse lines beyond the fort. From a distance they watched them tethered and bedded down for the night.
As the sun was setting Nefer and Taita rounded up their goats and drove them slowly back towards the desert. In the dusk a small detachment of four chariots came bowling down the road from Avaris. At the reins of the leading vehicle stood a burly officer wearing the silver pectoral plate of the Best of Ten Thousand. As he came closer they both recognized him.
The curse of Seth on it,' Nefer murmured. ''Tis Socco, Hilto's old comrade-in-arms. Will he recognize us?'
They bowed their heads, slumped their shoulders in a submissive attitude, and shuffled along after the goats. Socco swerved off the road and drove directly at them. 'You stinking scum!' he shouted. 'How often must I warn you to keep your filthy, disease-ridden beasts off my grass and away from my horses?' He leaned out and struck Nefer across the shoulders. The whiplash hummed and cracked against his flesh, and red rage blinded Nefer. Before he could drag Socco out of the chariot, though, Taita made a restraining gesture that riveted him where he stood. It seemed to affect Socco too, for his tone moderated a little as he coiled his whip and said, 'If I catch you people here again, I'll lop off your balls and stick them up your bung-hole.' He steered the chariot back on to the road and trotted off towards the fort.
Six nights later in the dark of the new moon, they returned to Thane in force, every man from Gallala who could ride astride, forty horsemen with black-dyed robes and soot-daubed faces. Each rider carried a large bag slung behind him over his horse's haunches. The contents of the bags squirmed and writhed, emitting muffled yips and whimpers: for each contained two or three live jackals. Their legs were tied, and strips of flax twine were bound around their muzzles to gag them.
The horses' hoofs were muffled with leather boots so they made no sound as Nefer led them in single file in a wide circuit round to the westerly side of the fort, keeping well clear of the cavalry lines so that they did not alarm the sentries.
Every man knew what was expected of him for they had practised this manoeuvre many times, and they kept silently in their formation, a half-moon of dark horsemen between Thane and the river. They were spaced at intervals just close enough together that a quiet command could be passed down the line. Nefer was in the centre, Meren on the left wing and Shabako on the right.
When Nefer was satisfied that they were in position he gave the warbling call of a nightingale, three times repeated, and saw the red line of glowing spots in the darkness as his men opened the lids of the clay firepots they all carried and blew the tinder into flame. He did the same, and then he opened the mouth of one of the bags on his horse's rump and reached in. He brought out a fat vixen by the scruff of the neck. She writhed in his grip.
There was a harsh, tarry smell, strong enough to mask the natural odour of the animals. The fur and brush had been soaked in a black viscous liquid. Taita had gathered this sticky substance from a natural seep that he knew of in the wilderness. It oozed from the earth and Taita said that it came up from great depth. It was highly inflammable, but he had mixed it with another substance, a yellow crystalline powder, that made it even more so. Every one of the captured jackals had been treated with this mixture.
With his dagger Nefer cut the twine that secured the vixen's four paws together. When she sensed freedom,
