As he approached the king's apartments, Taita could hear Apepi from across the courtyard. He sounded like a black-maned lion caught in trap, and the roars grew louder as Taita entered the chamber. As he stepped over the threshold he was almost knocked over by three priests of Osiris fleeing the royal presence in terror, and a heavy bronze bowl crashed into the doorsill. It had been thrown across the room by the Hyksosian king, who sat naked on a muddle of furs and tangled bedsheets in the middle of the chamber.
'Where have you been, Warlock?' he roared, as soon as he saw Taita. 'I sent Trok to find you before dawn. Why do you come only in the middle of the afternoon to save me from those infernal priests with their stinking poisons and hot tongs?'
'I have not seen Trok,' Taita explained, 'but I came as soon as Lord Naja told me you were indisposed.'
'Indisposed? I am not indisposed, Warlock. I am .at the point of death.'
'Let us see what can be done to save you.'
Apepi rolled over on to his hairy belly and Taita saw the grotesque purple swelling on his back. It was the size of both the king's bunched fists. When he touched it lightly with a fingertip Apepi bellowed again and broke out in a running sweat. 'Gently, Taita. You are as bad as all the priests in Egypt together.'
'How did this come about?' Taita stepped back. 'What were your symptoms?'
'It started with a bitter pain in my chest.' Apepi touched it. 'Then I started coughing, and the pain became sharper. I felt something move in here, and then the pain seemed to move to my back, and there was this lump.' He reached over his shoulder with one hand to touch the swelling, and groaned again.
Before going further, Taita administered a draught of the Red She-penn, the sleeping flower. It was a draught that would have knocked a baby elephant off its feet, but though Apepi's eyes crossed and his voice was slurred he was still lucid. Taita palpated the swelling again, and the king groaned but made no other protest.
'There is some foreign object lodged deep in your flesh, my lord,' he stated at last.
'This comes as no great surprise to me, Warlock. Evil men, most of them Egyptians, have been sticking foreign objects into my flesh since I last sucked on my wet-nurse's paps.'
'I would have thought it was an arrowhead or a blade, but there is no entry wound,' Taita mused.
'Use your eyes, fellow. I am covered with them.' The king's hairy carcass was indeed laced and blotched with old battle scars.
'I am going to cut for it,' Taita warned him.
Apepi snarled, 'Do it, Warlock, and stop yapping about it.'
While Taita selected a bronze scalpel from his chest, Apepi picked up his thick leather belt from the floor and doubled a length of it. He bit down on it, and composed himself to the knife.
'Come here!' Taita called to the guards at the door. 'Come and hold the king.'
'Get out, you idiots!' Apepi countermanded the order. 'I need no man to hold me still.'
Taita stood over him, calculated the angle and depth of the cut, then made one swift, deep incision. Apepi let out a muffled bellow from between clamped teeth, but did not move. Taita stood back as a fountain of dark blood and thick yellow pus erupted from the wound. A gut-wrenching stench filled the chamber. Taita laid aside the scalpel and ran his forefinger deep into the opening. Blood bubbled up around it but he felt something hard and sharp in the bottom of the incision. He picked up the ivory forceps that he had placed ready to hand, and probed the opening until he felt the tip strike something solid.
Apepi had stopped yelling, and he lay without movement, except the involuntary shuddering of his back muscles. He breathed with loud porcine snuffles through his nose. At the third attempt Taita gripped the object with the jaws of the forceps, and tugged at it until he felt it give and start to rise towards the surface. It came out - the last inch with a rush of pus and detritus - and Taita held it up so that the light from the window fell upon it.
'An arrowhead,' he announced, 'and it's been in there for a long time. I am amazed it did not mortify years ago.'
Apepi spat out the belt and sat up, chuckling shakily. 'By the hairy testicles of Seueth, I recognize that pretty little bauble. One of your ruffians shot that into me at Abnub ten years ago. At the time, my surgeons said it lay so close to my heart that they could not reach it, so they left it in and I have been gestating it ever since.'
He took the triangle of shaped flint from Taita's bloody fingers and beamed at it with proprietary pride. 'I feel like a mother with her firstborn. I will have it made into a charm to wear around my neck on a gold chain. You can weave a spell over it. That should ward off any other missiles. What do you think, Warlock?'
'I am sure it will prove highly efficacious, my lord.' Taita filled his mouth with hot wine and honey from the bowl he had prepared and used a hollow brass tube to syringe out the pus and blood, squirting it deep into the wound.
'What a waste of good wine,' Apepi said, lifted the bowl with both hands and drained the remainder of the contents to the dregs. He hurled it against the far wall and belched. 'Now, as a reward for your services, I have an amusing tale for you, Warlock, that harks back to our last conversation on the tower top at Bubasti.'
'I am listening with fixed attention to your lordship's every word.' Taita bent over him and began to bandage the open wound with linen strips, murmuring the incantation for the binding up of wounds as he did so:
'I bind thee up, thing of Seth.
I stop thy red mouth, thing of great evil.'
Apepi interrupted harshly, Trok has offered a lakh of gold as a bride price for Mintaka.'
Taita's hands stopped moving. He stood with the bandage wound half around Apepi's barrel chest. 'What did you answer him, Majesty?'
He was so distressed that the royal title slipped out before he could check himself. This was a dangerous and unforeseen development. 'I told him the bride-price was five lakhs.' Apepi grinned. The dog is so hot for my little bitch that his prong is standing up between his eyes and blinding him, but despite the booty he has stolen from me over the years, even he can never find five lakhs.' He belched again. 'Do not worry, Warlock, Mintaka is too valuable
