missing the kill. The tiercel dropped down the sky like a thrown javelin. A single pigeon was coasting unsuspectingly near the base of the cliff. Nefer recognized the moment when the plump bird became suddenly aware of the danger, and tried to avoid the falcon. It turned so violently towards the safety of the rock face that it rolled over on to its back in full and frantic flight. For an instant its belly was exposed. The tiercel tore into it with both sets of talons, and the big bird seemed to dissolve in a burst of puce and blue smoke. The feathers drifted away in a long cloud on the morning wind and the falcon bound on, locking its talons deep into its prey's belly, and plunged with it into the gorge. The killer and its victim hit the rocky scree slope only a short distance from where Nefer stood. The heavy thud of their fall echoed off the cliff and resounded down the gorge.
By this time Nefer was dancing with excitement, and even Taita, who had always been a lover of the hunting hawks, gave voice to his pleasure.
'Bak-her!' he cried, as the falcon completed the ritual of the kill with the mantling: it spread its magnificently patterned wings over the dead pigeon, covering it and proclaiming the kill as its own.
The female falcon came down to join him in a series of graceful spirals and landed on the rock beside her mate. He folded away his wings to let her share the kill, and between them they dismembered and devoured the carcass of the pigeon, ripping into it with their razor-sharp beaks, and pausing between each stroke to lift their heads and glare at Nefer, with those ferocious yellow eyes, while they gulped down the bloody fragments of flesh and bone and feathers. They were fully aware of the presence of the men and horses, but tolerated them as long as they kept their distance.
Then, when all that was left of the pigeon were a blood spot on the rock and a few drifting feathers, and the usually sleek bellies of the falcons were crammed with food, the pair launched into flight again. Wings flogging now to carry them, they rose up the sheer cliff face.
'Follow them!' Taita hitched up his kilt and scampered over the treacherous footing of the scree slope. 'Don't lose them.'
Nefer was faster and more agile, and he kept the rising birds in sight as he raced along the shoulder of the mountain beneath them. Below the peak the mountain was split into twin needles, mighty pinnacles of dark stone, terrifying even from below. They watched the falcons rise up this mighty natural monument, until Nefer realized where they were headed. Where the rock overhung, halfway up the eastern tower, there was a V-shaped cleft in the stone face. Stuffed into it was a platform of dried branches and twigs.
'The nest!' Nefer shrieked. 'There is the nest!'
They stood together, heads thrown back, watching the falcons alight, one after the other, on the edge of the nest, and begin to heave and strain to regurgitate the pigeon flesh from their crops. Another faint sound came to Nefer on the wind that soughed along the cliff-face: a chorus of importunate cries from the young birds demanding to be fed. From this angle he and Taita could not glimpse the falcon chicks, and Nefer was hopping with frustration. 'If we climb the western peak, there,' he pointed, 'we should be able to look down into the nest.'
'Help me with the horses first,' Taita ordered, and they hobbled them, and left them to graze on sparse clumps of mountain grass nurtured by the dews carried by the breeze from the distant Red Sea.
The climb up the western peak took the rest of the morning, but even though Taita had unerringly picked out the easiest route around the far side of the peak, in places the drop beneath them made Nefer draw in his breath sharply, and look away. They came out at last on to a narrow ledge just below the summit. They crouched there for a while to compose themselves, and to stare out at the grandeur of land and distant sea. It seemed that the whole of creation was spread beneath them, and the wind moaned around them, tugging at the folds of Nefer's kilt and ruffling his curls.
'Where is the nest?' he asked. Even in this lofty and precarious place, high above the world, his mind was fixed on one thing only.
'Come!' Taita rose and shuffled sideways along the ledge with the toes of his sandals overhanging the drop. They made their way round the angle and slowly the eastern peak came into view. They looked across to the vertical rock face only a hundred cubits away, but separated from them by such an abyss that Nefer swayed with vertigo.
On this side of the gulf they were slightly higher than the nest, and could look down upon it. The female falcon was perched on the edge, obscuring its contents. She turned her head and stared implacably at them as they rounded the shoulder of the peak. She raised the feathers along her back, as an angry lion lifts its mane in threat. Then she let out a wild cry and launched herself out over the drop, to hang almost motionless on the wind, watching them intently. She was so close that every feather in her wings was clearly revealed.
Her movement had exposed the interior of the cleft that contained the nest. A pair of young birds was crouched in the cup of twigs and branches lined with feathers and the wool of wild goats. They were fully fledged already, and almost as large as their mother. As Nefer stared across at them in awe, one raised itself and spread its wings wide, then beat them fiercely.
'He is beautiful.' Nefer groaned with longing. 'The most beautiful thing I have ever seen.'
'He practises for the moment of flight,' Taita warned him softly. 'See how strong he has grown. Within days he will be gone.'
'I will climb for them this very day,' Nefer vowed, and made as if to go back along the ledge, but Taita stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
'It is not something to enter into lightly. We must spend a little precious time in planning it carefully. Come, sit beside me.'
As Nefer leaned against his shoulder Taita pointed out the features of the rock opposite them. 'Below the nest the rock is smooth as glass. For fifty cubits sheer there is no handhold, no ledge on which to place a foot.'
Nefer tore his eyes from the young bird and peered down. His stomach churned, but he forced himself to ignore it. It was as Taita had said: not even one of the rock hyrax, those furry, sure-footed rabbit-like creatures that made these lofty places their home, could have found a footing on that pitch of vertical rock. 'How can I get to the nest, Tata? I want those chicks - I want them so.'
'Look above the nest.' Taita pointed across. 'See how the cleft continues upwards, to the very top of the cliff.'
Nefer nodded - he could not speak as he stared at the perilous road Taita was showing him.
'We will find a way to reach the summit above the nest. We will take up the harness ropes with us. From the top I will lower you down the crack. If you wedge your bare feet and bunched fists sideways into the opening they will hold you, and I will steady you with the rope.'
