Mintaka lay on her mattress and listened to the sounds of revelry. She tried to compose herself to sleep, but Nefer was in the forefront of her mind. The sense of loss that she had held at bay all day, and her concern for Nefer's injuries, flooded back, and though she tried to prevent them, tears welled up. She smothered her sobs in her pillows.
At last she sank into a black, dreamless sleep, from which she woke with difficulty. She had sipped only a little of the wine, but she felt drugged and her head ached. She wondered what had roused her. Then she heard raucous voices through the side of the hull, and the barge rocked under her as a weight of men clambered aboard. There was drunken laughter and voices, and heavy footfalls from the deck over her head. From their comments it seemed that her father and her brothers were being carried on board. It was not unusual for the men in her family to drink themselves into this condition, but she was worried about little Khyan.
She dragged herself from her bed and began to dress, but she felt strangely listless and confused. She staggered as she climbed up on deck.
The first person she met was Lord Trok. He was directing the men who were carrying her father. It took six of them to handle his huge inert bulk. Her elder brothers were in no better case. She felt angry and ashamed of them.
Then she saw Khyan being carried by a boatman, and she ran to him. Now they have done it to Khyan also, she thought bitterly. They will not rest until they have turned him into a drunkard too.
She directed the boatman to carry Khyan down to the mattress in her father's cabin where she undressed him and forced a distillation of herbs between his lips to revive him. The potion was a cure-all that Taita had mixed for her, and it seemed to be efficacious. At last Khyan murmured and opened his eyes, then fell back immediately into a deep but natural sleep. 'I hope he learns from this,' she told herself. There was nothing more she could do other than leave him to sleep it off. Besides, she still felt lethargic and her headache was unbearable. She went back to her own cabin and, without bothering to undress, she dropped on to the mattress, and almost immediately succumbed to sleep again.
The next time she woke she believed that she was in nightmare for she could hear screams and she was choking on clouds of thick smoke that scalded the back of her throat. Before she was fully conscious she found herself bundled out of her bed, swaddled in a blanket of furs and carried on deck. She struggled, but she was as helpless as an infant in a powerful grip.
On deck the moonless night was lit by leaping flames. They were roaring out of the open forward hatch of the royal barge, climbing the masts and rigging in a hellish orange torrent. She had never seen a wooden hull burn before and the speed and ferocity of the flames appalled her.
She could not stare at it for long, for she found herself carried swiftly across the deck and down the side into a waiting felucca. Her senses returned to her in a rush, and she began again to struggle and scream. 'My father! My brothers! Khyan! Where are they?'
The felucca pushed off into the stream and now she fought with all her strength to free herself, but the arms that pinioned her were remorseless. She managed to twist her head and see the face of the man who held her.
'Trok!' She was angered by his presumption, at the way he was handling her, and ignoring her cries. 'Let me go! I command you!'
He did not respond. He held her easily but he was watching the burning galley with a calm, detached expression.
'Go back!' shrieked at him. 'My family! Go back and fetch them!'
His only response was to snap an order to the oarsmen. 'Hold the stroke!' They shipped their paddles and the felucca rocked on the current. The crew watched the burning hulk with fascination. There were agonizing screams from those trapped below the decks.
Abruptly part of the after-deck collapsed in a tower of flame and sparks. The mooring cables burned through and the galley swung round slowly on the current and drifted downstream.
'Please!' Mintaka changed her tone. 'Please, Lord Trok, my family! You cannot let them burn.'
Now the screams from inside the hull died away and were replaced by the low thunder of the flames. Tears poured down Mintaka's cheeks and dripped from her chin, but still she was helpless in his grasp.
Suddenly the main hatch on the burning deck was thrown open, and the crew of the felucca gasped with horror as a figure emerged. Lord Trok's arms tightened around Mintaka until it seemed that he would crush in her ribs. 'It cannot be!' he grated.
Seen through the smoke and flames it seemed like an apparition from the shades of the underworld. Naked and covered with hair, great belly bulging, Apepi staggered towards the side of the barge. He carried the body of his youngest son in his arms, and his mouth was wide open, gasping for air in the holocaust of flame.
'The monster is hard to kill.' Trok's anger was tinged with fear. Even in her own distress Mintaka read the meaning of his words.
'You, Trok!' she whispered. 'You have done this to them.' Trok ignored the accusation.
The hair on Apepi's body singed and in a puff of heat was gone, for a moment leaving him naked and blackened. Then his skin began to blister and fall away in tatters. His bush of beard and the hair upon his head burst into flame like a pitch-soaked torch. He was no longer moving forward, but he stood with legs astraddle and lifted Khyan high above his head. The boy was as scorched as he was, and the raw flesh showed red and wet where his skin had been burned away. Perhaps Apepi was attempting to throw him over the ship's side into the river to escape the flames, but his strength failed him at last and he stood like a colossus with his head in flames, unable to summon the last reserves to hurl his son to safety in the cool Nile waters.
Mintaka could not move and she was silenced by the horror of the spectacle. To her it seemed to last an eternity, until suddenly the deck under Apepi's feet burst open. He and his son dropped through, and in a tall fountain of flame, sparks and smoke were gone into the guts of the hull.
'It's over.' Trok's voice was dispassionate and detached. He released Mintaka so suddenly that she fell into the bilges of the felucca. He looked at his horrified crew. 'Row to my galley,' he ordered.
'You did this to my family,' Mintaka repeated, as she lay at his feet. 'You will pay for it. I swear it to you. I will make you pay.'
