with a force that drove the air from his lungs. He cried out in agony and dropped to his knees, clutching his chest, unable to breathe. It was extreme pain, the pain of death, and he struggled with it as though with a serpent that had wound its coils about him. He managed to throw himself back down the path, and immediately the pain fell away.
Gil had heard him cry out and came bounding up the path. He seized Taita, and helped him to his feet. 'What is it? What ails you, my lord?'
Taita thrust him away. 'Go! Leave me! You are in danger here. This is a thing not of men but of gods and demons. Go! Wait for me at the bottom of the hill.'
Gil hesitated, but then he saw the look in those glittering eyes and recoiled as if from a ghost.
'Go!' Taita said, in a voice Gil wanted never to hear again, and he fled.
For a long time after he had gone Taita struggled to bring his body and mind back under his own control, to enable him to counter the forces arrayed against him. He reached into the pouch on his belt and brought out the Periapt of Lostris. He held it in his right hand and stepped forward again.
As he came to the exact spot on the pathway the pain struck once more with even more savage intensity, like a flint-tipped arrow through the chest, and he could barely prevent himself screaming as he reeled backwards and the pain fell away as it had before.
Panting, he stared down at the stony ground. At first it seemed unmarked and no different from any other point on the rugged pathway he had traversed. Then, a small ethereal shadow appeared on the earth. As he watched, it changed, became a shimmering dark scarlet pool. Slowly he sank to his knees. The heart blood of a king and a god,' he whispered. 'Here, on this very spot, died Pharaoh Tamose.'
He rallied himself and in a quiet yet firm voice spoke the invocation to Horus, so potent that only an adept of the seventh degree dared voice it. On the seventh repetition he heard the rustle of unseen wings, which stirred the desert air around him. 'The god is here,' he whispered, and he began to pray. He prayed for his Pharaoh and his friend, entreating Horus to relieve his suffering and lift his torture.
'Allow him to escape from this dread place,' he beseeched the god. 'It must have been murder for his soul to have been trapped here.'
As he prayed he made the signs for the exorcism of evil. Before his eyes the pool of blood began to shrink, as though it were soaking away into the dry earth. As the last drop disappeared Taita heard a soft, formless sound, like the cry of a sleepy child, and the terrible weight of loss and sorrow that had burdened him fell from his shoulders. As he stood up he felt a great sense of release. He stepped forward on to the spot where the pool of blood had been. Even when his sandalled feet were firmly planted upon it he felt no pain and his sense of well-being remained intact.
'Go in peace, my friend and my king, and may you live for all eternity,' he said aloud, and made the sign for long life and happiness.
He turned away, and would have started back down the hill to where the chariots waited but something stopped him in his tracks. He lifted his head and tested the air again. There was still a faint whiff of that evil smell, just an elusive trace of it. Warily he turned back up the slope, passing the place where Pharaoh had died, and went on. With each pace the stench of evil grew stronger, until it caught in his throat and made his gorge rise. Once again, he realized that this was something from beyond the natural order. He went on, until after twenty measured paces the odour began to fade. He stopped and retraced his steps. Immediately the stench grew stronger. He quested back and forth until it was at its zenith. Then he stepped off the path and found it stronger still, almost suffocating.
He was standing under the twisted branches of a thorn tree that grew next to the path. He looked up and saw that the branches were strangely shaped, as though they had been fashioned by a human hand into a distinctive cross that stood out against the blue of the sky. He looked down and a rock the size and shape of a horse's head caught his attention. It had recently been dislodged then replaced in its original position. Taita lifted it out of the depression in which it sat, and saw that it had covered a niche between the roots of the thorn tree. He laid it aside and peered into the niche. There was something in it and he reached in gingerly - it was the kind of shelter that might hide a snake or scorpion.
He brought out a magnificently carved and tooled object. He stared at it for a moment before he realized that it was an arrow quiver. There was no doubting its origin, for the design was in the Hyksosian heraldic style, and the image tooled into the leather cover was Seueth, the crocodile god of war revered by Hyksosian warriors.
Taita twisted off the stopper cover and found that the quiver contained five war arrows, fletched in green and red. He drew out one of the shafts and his heart beat fiercely as he recognized it. There could be no mistake. He had minutely examined the broken, blood-caked one that Naja had brought before the council. This was identical to the arrow that had killed Pharaoh.
He held it to the light and peered closely at the signet etched into the painted shaft. It was a stylized head of a leopard, holding the hieratic letter T in its jaws. This was the device he had seen on the fatal arrow. This was its identical twin. Taita turned it over and over in his hands, as though trying to draw from it the last grain of information. He held it to his nose and sniffed it. There was just the smell of wood, paint and feathers. The foul odour that had guided him to the cache had disappeared.
Why should the assassin of Pharaoh hide his quiver? After the fight the Hyksos had been left in possession of the field. They would have had all the time they needed to recover their weapons. This is a beautiful and valuable object. No warrior would abandon it, unless he were forced to, Taita thought.
For another hour he searched the hillside, but found no other item of interest, nor did he detect again the supernatural odour of putrefaction and evil. When he went down to where the chariots waited in the sand of the wadi he carried the quiver concealed under his apron.
--
They waited hidden in the wadi until after nightfall. Then, the wheel-hubs freshly greased with mutton fat to stop them squealing, the horses' hoofs covered with leather boots, and all the loose weapons and tack carefully muffled, they went on deep into Hyksosian territory, with Gil guiding them.
The lance-bearer knew the area well, and although Taita made no comment, he wondered how often the man had travelled this way with his master, and what other rendezvous they had kept with the enemy.
By now they were down on the alluvial plain of the Nile. Twice they had to turn off the road and wait while parties of armed men, anonymous in the darkness, rode past their hiding-place. After midnight they came to an abandoned temple of some forgotten god that had been hollowed out of the side of a low clay hill. The cave was large enough to shelter the entire squadron, vehicle, horses and men. It was immediately apparent that it had been
