THE REEDS WHISPERED against the hull as the boat neared the shore. “Stroke! Stroke!” Pepy-Nakht cried from the prow. The Kushites strained at the gunwales. Their oars clattered together, ever out of sync. Effective warriors they were, and strong swimmers—but terrible sailors. As if to demonstrate that a week on the Nile had taught him nothing, Qorobar vaulted over the side the moment he deemed the shore close enough. He judged poorly. He vanished with a splash and came back up sputtering. Cursing breathlessly, he paddled after the boat.
The bow rose as it cleaved the riverbed. “Now you can jump,” Pepy said with clear exasperation. The mercenaries pulled in the oars and splashed down in the shallows. Eleazar took his place beside them and grabbed a fistful of the bundled reeds that formed the hull. Qorobar waded past them to lift the prow on his shoulder—a feat that ought to have taken three strong men, but one he managed alone. Together, as the plump Egyptian gave the count, they heaved the laden vessel halfway onto the steep bank, far as it would go. They propped up the stern with rocks and logs to prevent it from drifting away in the night.
Then they set about making camp. Pisaqar chose a thicket of thorny trees as the campsite. The word didn’t mean much; as far as Eleazar could gather, Kushites didn’t think much of tents, preferring either solid roof or open sky. They hacked away a clearing, then built a fire and arranged their woven bedrolls around it.
“Wouldn’t it be a fine thing,” redheaded Tariq mused aloud, “if we could all spend the night in a cozy tavern?”
“With soft beds,” said Amani, a suggestion that caused both Tariq and Kalab to study her closely. Eleazar gathered they were competing to woo her, though she seemed less than receptive to the acolyte’s advances.
“And as much beer as you could drink,” added Nibamon.
Qorobar shook his head. “You ought to open one if you want it so badly, Tariq.”
“Don’t tempt me with dreams, big man!”
When the camp was made, Yesbokhe slipped off to scout the immediate area. He returned bearing a clutch of quails, much to Eleazar’s relief. He was sick to death of picking miniscule fish bones out of his teeth. And chewing Egyptian bread was almost worse. Though it tasted fine, it always had a sandy grit that Eleazar couldn’t bring himself to trust.
With another long day of sailing behind them, the Kushites settled down around their fire. Jugs of beer were passed around as the priest began to roast the birds. He tossed some onions onto the coals as well, but Qorobar didn’t bother waiting for his to blacken. To Eleazar’s horror, the towering axe man snatched one up and chomped into it, crinkling skin and all. He caught Eleazar staring at him in disgust.
“Is this a problem for you, little traitor?” he said, chewing with his mouth open.
Eleazar sipped his wine while the others chuckled. He’d grown weary of tolerating their unsubtle jabs. From the big one, especially. “Eat your onion and be still. Your armpits squelch whenever you move.”
There was a moment of awed silence, then uproarious laughter.
“The Israelite has some balls, after all!” Tariq cried, slapping his knee.
Qorobar scowled as the mirth rippled around the fire, his eyes narrowed to slits. “Funny little man.”
“It is not I who flopped into the Nile like a sack of clay. A good show.”
“Aye, I fell into the water. I also lifted the prow of that great boat as if it were nothing. You ought to save your jests for someone your own size.”
“It was a titillating feat of strength, to be certain,” Eleazar mocked.
Pisaqar spoke up. “Be calm, the both of you. This is not productive.”
The circle went obligingly quiet. But the acolyte couldn’t resist getting another rude word in. “You ought to watch yourself around our foreign friend, Qorobar. This one’s a slayer. He breaks whole cities.”
Amani scrutinized Eleazar. “What’s that mean?”
“I did some asking in Jerusalem,” said Kalab, clearly thrilled to have her attention. “That’s what they called him. They say he was with the Assyrians at—”
“Babylon,” Eleazar finished for him. He regretted saying anything in the first place. When he failed to break the expectant silence, Amani did instead.
“Are you going to tell us about it or not?”
“She’s never been to Babylon,” said Tariq. “Call it curiosity.”
Nawidemaq massaged a knob of bronze in one hand. “City of Marduk. It was beautiful.”
The thief girl told him, “That’s very nice, Nawidemaq, but I want to hear it from him.”
Eleazar looked to Pisaqar for intervention. The captain regarded him levelly. “Tell them, Eleazar. Make them see why I have chosen to trust you.”
The Israelite understood that he was being ordered to bare his soul. He hesitated, weighing his words. When he replied, he spoke to the fire. “We of Sennacherib’s army marched on the city to quell the usual troubles. The Babylonians are proud people, not overfond of paying tribute for long. To lay eyes on their city, one understands why. Imagine for yourselves building a city in the midst of the scorching desert, between two rivers, and then rutting the space between with a network of canals to rival Egypt’s great delta. Into these canals flows trade from across every land, such that the city spreads and spreads until there is nowhere to go but up. The buildings themselves stretch into the sky. Even the merest hovel in Babylon is three, four, five floors tall. Atop every one, the people built—of all things—sun terraces. So great is Babylon’s prosperity that when its people tire of their cool paradise, they venture onto their roofs to entertain themselves with the heat of the desert. As a novelty.
“We, Assyria’s soldiers, did not think much of this. When we took the city, we drove the Babylonians into the streets so that we could pillage their homes without their wails filling our ears. We took all we could carry. After this, we went among the people to find the strongest men who would make for good laborers. We sent them into the desert in chains, toward Ashur. Once the men were gone, we picked out the most beautiful women to become our wives. The heavens shook with their lament.
“We used great lengths of rope to pull down their prized terraces. We dragged them off the roofs. We spilled their fragments into the street, onto the heads of the ones we had driven there. We took care with our task. A great many were crushed. Those who tried to flee, we chased back with whips and clubs. My comrades laughed to watch them scurry to and fro. It gave us pleasure to watch the upstart Babylonians punished by their own wealth. Once Sennacherib deemed the city appropriately humbled, we took our plunder and slaves and wives, and we left Babylon cowed beneath a pall of dust.”
He looked up to find the Kushites staring at him in open amazement. Their discomfort made him smile. “These are the masters I chose to abandon. For this, you call me traitor. I wear the title gladly.”
Qorobar dusted the rinds off his hands. “And you gave me shit for eating an onion.”
Ermun kept his expression neutral, but contempt smoldered in his eyes. “What a deed. How did it feel then, to participate in such a heartless culling?”
“One does not feel much at all,” shrugged Eleazar. “It was work. A farmer does not consider the wheat stalks he scythes down. Only much later did I dwell on what we had done. I remembered that before the Assyrians took me from Israel, they merely killed my father with an axe. A mercy, compared to the way we killed the Babylonians.” Eleazar was somewhat surprised to note that his vision swam with tears. “I could not bring that fate on Judah. Not on my own people.”
Pisaqar gripped his shoulder. Loud enough that his Kushites could hear, he said, “I could claim that I am proud of all the deeds I have done for Egypt. But I would be a liar, then.” He looked around at the rest of them. “It is no cowardly thing to cast off an unworthy master. It is a lesson I have now learned for myself. If Eleazar is a traitor, then we are as well.”
Amani, though, wasn’t satisfied. “What about your wife?”
Eleazar’s heart throbbed at the memory of poor Nidi. Her lilting laugh, her agonized moans. Her gentle caresses, her desperate grasp. Her amber eyes—so full of joy, so horribly vacant. “She died in Assyria. She died giving birth.”
“You raped and murdered her.”
“No!” The horror of the accusation stole his breath. He couldn’t find the words to contest the lie.
“Exactly the same way you did her home.”
“I loved… She… I had no…”
“No choice?” Amani’s eyes reflected the flames. “There’s always a choice, Israelite. You might have made the right one in the end. That doesn’t excuse the things you did before.”
“It was expected of us,” protested Eleazar. “I did not wish to take a wife. Had I refused my reward, another would have claimed her in my place, someone cruel. There were many who enjoyed what we did to Babylon.”
“His reward, he says,” sneered Amani.
How could he possibly begin to explain what they’d shared? They’d been children stolen from massacred nations, forced to build new lives in a wicked land. She should have despised him as a coward, Nidi, but she had chosen to love him instead. Her strength had been so great that it had outlived her body, swept him away from Assyria even as he grieved her, borne him back to the land of his people. If he managed to do any good with his pitiful life, she was why.
But when he saw the look Amani reserved for him, those words died in his throat. Nidi had looked at him the same way when he’d carried her from smoking Babylon.
Qorobar spat a gobbet of phlegm between his feet. “What a shitty stand-in for Pakheme.”
Tariq hid his face behind his braids.
Pisaqar jumped to his feet. “Your willingness to judge Eleazar does you no credit. You are not the first man to have lost everything, Qorobar. And you, Amani! A person is more than the worst thing he—or she—has ever done. I know it well. But you, of all people, should have learned that best.”
Qorobar snatched up his axe. Eleazar stilled, certain he was about to be hacked into screaming chunks. Instead, the big man stomped off into the night. The thunking of an axe head on wood rose, punctuated by wheezing grunts. A splintering crash announced the felling of a tree. Then the thunks started up again.
Amani, for her part, accepted her captain’s rebuff with unnerving calm, belied only by the tears shining at the corners of her eyes. Tariq reached out to her, but she slapped his hand away, in no mood to be touched. She stared into the flames, sniffing. Eleazar could only guess what she saw.
“Here.” Kalab was holding out a spitted fish to him. Eleazar took it in a shaking hand, scarcely caring that the quail had already been shared out. He saw Pisaqar looking his way, but couldn’t find it in himself to meet the man’s gaze. Not for the first time in his life, he was trapped in a land among foreigners who’d happily see him dead. He had a dreadful feeling that he would finish his long journey as a bloated corpse in the Nile, sour nourishment for Egypt’s crops.
* * *
Tariq had been acquainted with Amani long enough to know she took solace in water, just the same way he did. It was little surprise to find her ankle deep in the river. She was watching the ripples as they gleamed in the moonlight, her arms crossed and expression hard.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
She accepted the beer he offered, signaling her willingness for company. “I’ve never taken fatherly scoldings that well,” she admitted.
“Fathers usually mean well by it.”
“My first one didn’t.” She swilled her cup. “Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve just listened to the old shit, stayed married. Farmed cats.”
Tariq was taken aback, and not a little amused. “You. Married. Raising cats.”
“That’s the way I felt about it. The instant I spoke the vows, the whole thing just seemed so damn bland.”
“You’re telling me that you divorced your husband in the same breath that you married him.”
She gave him a defensive look. “Is there a rule saying when I get to divorce?”
“Well no. There isn’t. But I think a scolding might have been a little warranted.”
“A little,” she laughed. “Would you like to guess how much my father would’ve gotten as a bride price if I’d kept my end?”
“Two cows,” Tariq said promptly.
“That was… Who told you?”
“People talk, you know.” He raised his hands as she narrowed her eyes. “Pakheme, I think.”
“It sounds like you were asking Pakheme about me. Interesting.”
“I like to be in the know. When I look at a girl, I ask myself, ‘How much would this one’s father want for her hand?’ You, I took one glance, and I decided straight away you were out of my price range.” Her smile became a simper, which was the signal for the backhand of the compliment. “But then I got the truth from Pakheme.”
“Little shit!” She went to punch him, but he darted out of reach.
Eventually, when their laughter died down, she turned back to the water. “I wouldn’t fetch two cows nowadays,” she sighed.
A fresh joke died on Tariq’s lips as he saw how the humor had gone out of her. Trepidly, he asked, “Is this to do with what Pisaqar said?”
“Suppose so.”
He waited on her.
At last, she said, almost offhandedly, “Only embalmers use knives like this, you know.” She held out her blackstone dagger. “They’re heirlooms. I got this one from my uncle.”
“I didn’t know women embalmed.”
“That’s because they don’t.”
“Oh.”
“So when my father couldn’t get the bride price back, he was obviously angry with me. He sent me to Memphis to live with his brother. Turns out my uncle was none too pleased to be caring for some wayward niece.” She paused a moment, trapped in a recollection. “Let’s say I spent some time locked in tight places.”
“He didn’t,” Tariq said, dismayed.
“I think you have the right idea,” she said grimly. “The thing I did—the thing Pisaqar was talking about—was stab my uncle while he snored, with his own fancy knife. It was onto the streets after that. If you want to eat, you need something to trade. Most girls in that situation only have the one thing. But luckily for me, I was somewhat prepared. I had this sling. I’d spent a lot of my childhood picking off jackals when they came sniffing after the cats. I got very, very good at shooting rats. If I got tired of greasy meat, felt like a change in fare? All I had to do was find a sack of grain to cut. Of course, you can only steal so many times before you get caught. That’s how Pisaqar came across me: with my wrist on the axe man’s block.”
She lifted her shoulders, a movement that was flippant and false. “All told, farming cats would have been easier.”
Tariq glanced at the obsidian knife tucked into Amani’s belt. He’d always wondered how she’d acquired it. Now, he wasn’t sure he was better off for knowing. “That’s what Pisaqar was talking about? The worst thing you’ve ever done?”
“It’s in the running.” She forced a smile. “Alright. Your turn.”
Ropey pink intestines that dangle about Pakheme’s knees, quivering as he screams, swords hacking him down in crimson sprays…
He swallowed hard. The moment drew itself out while he fumbled for words, sifting through one awful memory after the next and realizing, in the process, how much willpower it must have taken for Amani to tell him what she just had. It was a feat he couldn’t hope to match.
To his amazement, she took his hand. “It’s fine. Don’t worry.”
The answer came to him. “It’s not the worst thing,” he confessed, “but I think it qualifies as bad.”
“Tell it.”
“This one time, there was this girl I was sweet on. But she never looked my way, and besides that, she’d just stopped seeing some prick and I didn’t want to bother her. It was tough on me, you know. People saw it. Someone came up to me and he said, ‘Tariq, I have just the solution. You need to brew up a love potion.’”
Her mouth opened. “Come on, now.”
“Well, I didn’t think it would actually work. So, I went to the only priest I knew. He told me that, fine, he’d put together the love potion, but he needed a certain ingredient. Something from the girl.”
“Tariq, I’m warning you, if this goes the way I think it is, I’m going to stab you.”
“Spit.”
“What?”
“He said he needed some of your spit. It wasn’t all that tough to get, honestly. You drool in your sleep.”
“Tariq, did you fucking feed me my own saliva?”
“No—by Amun, put the knife back! This was supposed to be funny!”
“I was supposed to be hearing the worst thing you’ve ever done, not this horrifying shit!”
“That’s what I’m telling you! You didn’t drink the potion, I did.”
She paused with her knife half drawn. She snorted an accidental laugh. “You drank my spit.”
“Right. And the other vile shit Ermun threw in. Eye of crocodile. Shank of cat fur. Flat beer.”
She turned his way with a swish of water. “And the potion worked?”
“If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why you’ve fallen suddenly and madly in love with me, there’s your answer.”
“That’s just stupid. You’re the one who drank it, not me.”
“And here’s you, acting as if magic potions behave in some sensible way.”
She dumped out the rest of her beer and waded past him onto the shore, her head wagging in disbelief. But she was smiling. “I’m going to sleep now.”
“Wait! This conversation was supposed to end with you on top of me!”
“Pleasant dreams, Tariq.”
“Good night, Amani,” he grinned. He looked out over the lapping shore. On the far bank, a pair of palm trees swayed, dancing together in the light breeze. “You, raising cats. Can’t believe it.”
* * *
“Explain what you mean by rampage.”
Senanmuht flexed his aching leg, glad for his full-length robe. Behind his kneecap, the arrowhead was biting again, just as it always did this time of year. A wholly objectionable means of sensing that Inundation was upon the land. The old wound was courtesy of a certain Kushite savage some ten years past.
The infuriating irony devoured him as he watched Taharqa lift his next potential bride’s chin. The girl—a cousin of Senanmuht’s—wrung her hands as the Kushite afflicted her with his scrutiny. Surely in that moment she wished for her true husband, but he was beyond her reach—slain along with many more noble sons outside Jerusalem. All thanks to Taharqa’s folly. The desire to smite the man was overpowering. For a moment, Senanmuht forgot he’d been asked a question. Until Taharqa let the poor girl’s chin fall and glared at him with the malevolence so typical of his kind.
“I merely suggest,” Senanmuht said, bowing and hating the act, “that Pisaqar’s commitment to the Divine Order is not as strong as he has led us all to believe.”
“And you base this suggestion on the word of some grasping priest from the bowels of Memphis. What is your name, girl?”
“Iput,” the young woman said, her voice quavering with what Senanmuht imagined was indignant fury.
Taharqa chuckled kindly. “Come forward, Iput.”
The general moved on to the next prospect as she stepped out of line, visibly trembling now. Her beauty had damned her. Perhaps Taharqa would invite her to sup with him and her father. Or perhaps he’d wish to gaze on her nude form before he made his final decision. Senanmuht wasn’t certain which was more humiliating for a daughter of Sais. As if being gifted to a Kushite invader wasn’t degrading enough.
Senanmuht stifled his roiling anger. There was still a game to play. “I agree that the priest’s news alone is not cause for alarm. However, we must keep in mind broader events. In the Sinai, a column of your men has been massacred. In Sena, shortly after, a cloth merchant reported being robbed blind by a Kushite bowman. In Memphis, isfet is unleashed. A false Apis is paraded through the city. A tavern is demolished. Food riots at the docks.”
Taharqa ambled past the next prospects—proud widows of Eltekeh and Jerusalem—with disinterest. “Old. Plump. Plain.” He clicked his tongue. “Sais runneth dry.” He turned to face his advisor. “Of your family’s meager offerings, your counsel manages to be the most distasteful by far, Senanmuht. All you’ve done is scrape together a handful of random troubles and presented them to me as evidence of … what, exactly?”
“Of a mercenary who seeks to sow discord in the nation you’ve brought peace,” asserted Senanmuht.
“What madness, Senanmuht. Pisaqar has always served ma’at. His self-proclaimed virtue would never allow him to stoop even to simple theft, much less murder.”
“With utmost respect, General, Pisaqar is no longer your teacher. He is a sellsword. One whom you have deprived of payment.”
“An act I regret deeply, necessary though it was. Pisaqar knows this.”
Senanmuht dared to play his best piece. “You could not trouble yourself to reclaim his man’s body.”
Taharqa became very still. The women lining the walls shrank back as they sensed the great man’s rage nearing a boil.
Fully aware of the danger he was in, Senanmuht quickly added, “That is how Pisaqar views the matter, dear General. He told me himself.” A lie, but not an unreasonable assumption. “The forfeited payment was an offense, true. But allowing the Assyrians to keep his man’s corpse for whatever unholy purpose … that was an affront, whether you intended it or not. Pisaqar will never forgive you for it.”
Taharqa paced the room, contemplating. At last, he pointed at Senanmuht. “I want Pisaqar found. You will neither approach nor attempt to apprehend him. Discover his intent. Only once I know the truth of the matter will I move against him.”
Senanmuht carefully kept the anger from his face. “General, as your trusted advisor, I must recommend strong action. You have made an enemy of this man. If he is allowed free rein, there is no telling what havoc he might wreak.”
“No, Senanmuht. Pisaqar was as a father to me, once. I owe him restraint.”
“General—”
“I have given my command. See it written. Let it be done.”
“But of course.” Senanmuht bowed deep. The ache in his knee had become a steady throb, as if Pisaqar’s arrowhead was stirring at the mention of its master.
“And Senanmuht?”
“I serve, General.”
“Send for Iput’s father.” Taharqa gestured to poor Iput, who turned ashen as her worst nightmare was brought into being. “Tell him his lovely daughter has managed to charm me. I shall dine with them both this evening to discuss the bride price.”