Mintaka and Merykara spent long hours during the waiting days in the newly renovated temple of Hathor, sacrificing for their men and praying for the protection and intervention of the goddess on their behalf.
--
Thirty-five days before the full of the moon of Horus a strange caravan arrived in Gallala. It had come up from the coast, from the port of Safaga. It was led by a one-eyed and one-armed giant of a man named Aartla. The five warriors of the Red Road went out to meet him when he was still three leagues outside the city walls. They carried him back to Gallala in honour, for he was a brother warrior of the third degree who had run the Red Road almost thirty years before. Twenty years ago an arrow had pierced his eye during the Libyan campaign of Pharaoh Tamose, and five years later a Nubian axeman had sheared his arm with a single stroke below the elbow.
Aartla was a wealthy man now. He owned a travelling company of entertainers, men and women of special talents and skills. One of his troupe was reputed to be the strongest woman in the world. She could lift two horses into the air, one with each hand, and she could bite the end off a bronze rod and then bend the metal stump with the grip of her vagina. Another of his women was famed as the most beautiful in the world, though few had set eyes on her face. She came from a land so far to the north that at certain seasons of the year the rivers turned to white stone and ceased to flow. Aartla charged ten taels of silver for the privilege of seeing her face unveiled. They said she had golden hair that hung to the ground, and eyes of different colours, one golden and the other blue. The price that Aartla charged for viewing the rest of her charms was in proportion, and only a rich man might sample all her delights.
In addition Aartla possessed a black slave girl who ate fire, covered herself from head to foot with a cloak of live scorpions, and draped a great python around her neck. At the climax of her performance she enticed the serpent to crawl into the secret opening of her body until all its length had disappeared into her womb.
These wonders were intended merely to whet the appetite of the audience for the main attractions of Aartla's circus, which were his champions: a company of fighting men, wrestlers and swordsmen who stood to meet all contenders in combat. Aartla offered a purse of a hundred taels of pure gold to any man who could defeat one of his champions. The side wagers made on these contests were legendary and were the source of Aartla's immense wealth. Though nowadays he never fought, he was still a warrior at heart and a devotee of the Red God.
When word reached him that a pharaoh of the Tamosian dynasty was determined to run the Red Road, he brought his champions across half the world to oppose him. He loved the game so well that he made no charge for this service.
His brother warriors had prepared one of the ancient palaces of the city to house Aartla and his troupe. On the night after his arrival they held for him a great welcome banquet, to which only Nefer and Meren were not invited. 'We could not have accepted,' Nefer explained to Mintaka. 'We are not brothers of the order. Besides, to sit down with the men who will oppose us would be flying in the face of convention and tradition.'
The day after the welcoming banquet the champions resumed their never-ending practice and training, under the sharp eye of Aartla. They worked in the courtyard of the ancient palace, and all strangers were excluded. Aartla was too shrewd to let other gamblers assess the form and style of his champions without paying good gold for the privilege.
However, Taita was no stranger. When Aartla had lost his arm Taita had trimmed and sewn up the stump, and saved him from the gas gangrene that had infected the wound and threatened Aartla's life. Aartla welcomed him to the practice courtyard and sat him on a pile of cushions on the side of his good eye. The most beautiful woman in the world served him honey-flavoured sherbet in a golden bowl, and smiled at him with those haunting mismatched eyes from behind her veil.
First, Aartla gave Taita the latest news of the Egyptian campaign in Mesopotamia, whence he had come. It seemed that King Sargon, with his armies broken and scattered, had retreated behind the walls of Babylon, his capital city. The final outcome could not be in doubt. The armies of the false pharaohs would soon be free to return to Egypt and deal with the other threat posed to their monarchy by the little army of Gallala. When he said this his look was significant, a timely warning to an old friend.
While they sat on the cushions and discussed many other things, politics, power and war, medicine, magic and the gods, Taita seemed engrossed in their discussion, hardly glancing at the athletes who struggled and sweated in the sunlight. But his pale ancient eyes missed not a single throw or swordstroke.
The champions lived by their murderous skills. They were devotees of the Red God, and their endeavours were a form of worship. When Taita returned to his cell that evening, where Nefer and Meren waited for him, he was grave. 'I have watched your adversaries at practice, and I warn you that there is still much work for us to do,' he said, 'and only days left to us.'
Tell us, Old Father,' Nefer said.
'First there is Polios, the wrestler ...' Taita began, and he outlined the character and strength of each champion, his style of combat and his particular strengths. Then he discussed any weakness he had discerned in them, and how that might best be exploited.
--
The five warriors of the order, assisted by Aartla, began to lay out the course to be run. They spent day after day in the wilderness, surveying a wide circular track that began in the central forum of Gallala, went up into the hills and the broken lands, then three leagues later came back down the long valley past the fountain of Taita, and through the city gates to finish back in the forum. Once they had laid out the course, they sent parties of workman to build the obstacles along the way.
Ten days before the contest, Hilto and Shabako read out the proclamation to the populace of the city. They described the course in detail, and the rules governing the trial. Then they named the champions who would oppose the novices.
'In the ordeal of wrestling, Pharaoh Nefer Seti will be matched against Polios of Ur.' The crowd sighed for Polios was a famous fighter. His nickname was the Backbreaker. Recently he had killed a man in Damascus, his seventeenth victim in the ring.
'Meren Cambyses will be matched against Sigassa of Nubia.' They knew him almost as well. He was called the Crocodile, for some strange disease had made his skin as hard, lumpy and black as that of one of the great reptiles.
'In the ordeal by sword, Pharaoh Nefer Seti will meet Khama of Taurine.'
'Meren Cambyses will meet Drossa of Indus.'
That night Mintaka and Merykara sacrificed a white lamb to the goddess, and wept as they pleaded for her
