Mintaka hesitated and looked eastwards into the bleak desert, which he wanted her to attempt. 'I might lose the way,' she murmured fearfully.
'I will guide you,' he answered, confident in the instruction that Taita had given him in desert travel. 'It's our best chance.'
She swung the team to the left, marking a blue shale hillock in the direction Nefer had pointed out to her.
When they were strong and well they both delighted in the motion of a chariot running hard over broken ground, and they rode the pitch and roll with young legs. But now, even though she kept the horses down to a walk or a trot, the collision with every stone or hump, the drop into every hole, was transmitted through the rigid chassis into Nefer's torn body. He winced and sweated, but tried to hide his pain and discomfort from her. Yet as the hours wore on, his wounds stiffened, and the pain became unbearable. He groaned aloud at a particularly nasty impact, and slumped into unconsciousness.
Immediately Mintaka reined the pair to a halt, and tried to revive him. She soaked a pad of linen with water and squeezed a few drops between his lips. Then she sponged his pale, sweating face. But when she tried to rebandage his wounds she found that the gash in his thigh was bleeding again. She worked to staunch it, but succeeded only in reducing it to a slow leak. 'You are going to be all right, my darling,' she told him, with a confidence she did not feel. She embraced him gently, kissed the top of his dusty blood-caked head, and took up the reins again.
An hour later she gave the last of the water to Nefer and the horses, not drinking herself. Then she stood as high as she could on the dashboard of the chariot and looked about her at the gravel and shale hills that danced and wavered in the heat mirage. She knew she was lost. Have I drifted too far eastwards? she wondered, glancing up at the sun and trying to calculate its angle. At her feet Nefer stirred and moaned, and she looked down with a brave face and smiled. 'Not much further now, my heart. We should see the river over the next crest.'
She rearranged the sheepskin from the bedroll under his head, then stood up, gathered the reins and braced herself. Suddenly she realized how exhausted she was: every muscle in her body ached and her eyes were sore and red from the sun's glare and the dust. She forced herself and the team onwards.
Soon the horses were showing signs of distress. They had stopped sweating and the salt rime dried white across their backs. She tried to urge them into a trot but they could not respond, so she climbed down, took the stallion's head and led them on. Now she was staggering herself, but at last she found the tracks of a chariot in a sandy valley bottom, and her spirits lifted.
'They are heading west,' she whispered, through lips that were beginning to swell and crack. 'They will lead us back to the river.' She kept moving along the wheel ruts for some time, until she stopped in confusion as she found her own footprints in front of her. It took her some time to realize that she must have walked in a circle and was following her own tracks.
At last despair overtook her. She sank down to her knees, helpless and lost, and whispered to Nefer as he lay, still unconscious, 'I am sorry, my darling. I have failed you.' She stroked the matted hair from his face. Then she looked up at the low hilltop to the east, and blinked. She shook her head to clear her vision, glanced away to rest her burning eyes, then looked back. She felt her spirits surge upwards once again, but still she could not be sure that what she was seeing was illusion or reality.
On the crest of the hills above them, a gaunt figure stood on the skyline, leaning on his long staff. His silver hair shone like a cloud, and the hot light breeze off the desert flapped his skirts against his heron-thin legs. He was staring down at them.
'Oh, Hathor and all the goddesses, it can't be so,' she whispered.
Beside her, Nefer opened his eyes. Taita is near,' he murmured. 'I feel him close.'
'Yes. Taita is here.' Her voice was faint, and she held her own throat in shock. 'But how did he know where to find us?'
'He knows. Taita knows,' Nefer replied, closed his eyes and slumped back into unconsciousness.
The old man was striding down the rugged slope towards them now, and Mintaka pulled herself to her feet and tottered to meet him. Swiftly her fatigue fell away and she waved and screamed greetings at him, almost delirious with joy.
--
Taita drove down the escarpment towards the river and the village of Dabba. The horses responded to his touch, moving to an easy motion that cosseted the wounded boy on the footplate. Taita seemed to have known with some deep instinct just what medicines and dressings Nefer would need, and he had carried these with him. After he had re-dressed the wounds he had led the horses to a hidden water seep nearby, where the bitter water had revived them. He had taken Mintaka up on the footplate and turned the horses' heads unerringly in the direction of Dabba and the river.
Beside him, Mintaka had pleaded with him, almost tearfully, to explain to her how he had known that they needed him, and where to find them. Taita had smiled gently, and called to the horses, 'Gently now, Hammer! Steady, Stargazed'
On the floorboards Nefer was deep in the drugged sleep of the Red Shepenn, but his wounds were staunched, cleaned and bound with linen bandages.
A red and angry sunset was fading over the Nile like a dying bush-fire. The boats of the fleet were still anchored in the stream, like children's toys in the fading light.
Apepi and Naja rode out to meet them from the village of Dabba. Lord Naja was highly agitated, and Apepi bellowed at his daughter as soon as they were in range of his bull voice, 'Where have you been, you stupid child? Half the army is out looking for you.'
Lord Naja's agitation abated as soon as he came close enough to see Nefer bandaged and unconscious in the bottom of the chariot cockpit. He became almost sanguine when Taita explained to him the extent of Pharaoh's injury.
Barely conscious, Nefer was carried down to the riverbank on a litter and lifted gently aboard one of the galleys by a party of boatmen. 'I want Pharaoh taken up to Thebes with all possible speed,' Taita told Naja, 'even if it means a night journey. There is a very real danger that the wounds will putrefy. This happens with injuries received from one of the great cats. It is almost as though their fangs and claws are steeped in some virulent poison.'
'You can order the galley to sail at once,' Naja said, in front of the company, but then took Taita's arm and led him a short way along the riverbank to where they could not be overheard. 'Bear in mind, Magus, the charge laid on you by the gods. Clearly I discern their divine intervention in these extraordinary circumstances. If Pharaoh were to
