The Quest - Smith Wilbur (читать лучшие читаемые книги TXT) 📗

Meren was an expert scout and tracker.

'Impossible to be certain, Magus. More than three days, less than ten.'

'Then already the Eos worshipper is far ahead of us.'

A they turned back for the shelter of the huts a pair of dark eyes watched their every move from the hills above the camp. The dark brooding gaze was that of Soe, the prophet of Eos who had bewitched Queen Mintaka. It was he who had written the inscription on the wall of the hut. Now he regretted having announced his presence.

He lay in a patch of shade thrown by the crags above him. Three days previously his horse had stepped into a cleft in the rocks on the path and broken its foreleg. Within an hour a pack of hyenas had arrived to pull

down the crippled animal. While it still screamed and kicked they ripped chunks of flesh from it and devoured them. Soe had drunk the last of his water during the previous night. Stranded in this terrible place he had resigned himself to death, which could not be long delayed.

Then unexpectedly, and to his great joy, he had heard hoofs coming up the valley. Rather than rush down to greet the newcomers and beg to accompany them, he had spied upon them warily from his hiding place.

He recognized the troop immediately it came into sight as a detachment of the royal cavalry. They were well equipped and superbly mounted. It was plain that they were on a special assignment, possibly on the orders of the pharaoh himself. It was even possible that they had been sent to apprehend him and drag him back to Karnak. He knew that he had been noticed at the ford of the Nile below Thebes by the magus Taita, and that the magus was a confidant of Queen Mintaka. It did not need a stretch of the imagination to realize that she had probably confided in him, and that he knew of Soe's involvement with the queen. Soe was patently guilty of sedition and treason and would stand no chance before a tribunal of Pharaoh. Those were the reasons why he had fled Karnak.

Now he recognized Taita among the troopers camped below where he lay.

Soe studied the horses that were tethered among the huts on the riverbank. It was not clear which he needed most to ensure his survival: a horse or the bulging waterskins that a trooper was offloading from his pack mule. When it came to his choice of a mount, the mare that Taita had tethered outside his hut was indubitably the strongest and finest of them all. Even though she was with foal, she would be Soe's first choice, if he could reach her.

There was a great deal of activity in the camp. Horses were being fed and watered, copper pots were being carried up from the river pool and placed on the fires at which men were busy preparing food. When the meal was ready, the troopers divided into four platoons and squatted in separate circles around the communal pots. The sun was well above the horizon before they found a little shade in which to settle down. A somnolent silence fell over the camp. Soe marked the position of the sentries carefully. There were four at intervals round the periphery. He saw that his best approach would be along the dry riverbed, so he gave the sentry on that side his full attention. When he had not moved for some considerable time, Soe decided that he was dozing. He slipped down the flank of the hill, screened from the eyes of the more alert sentry on the near-side boundary. He reached the dry river course half a league

below the camp and made his way quietly upstream. When he was opposite it he raised his head slowly above the top of the bank.

A sentry was sitting cross-legged only twenty paces away. His chin was on his chest and his eyes were closed. Soe ducked below the bank again, stripped off his black robe and bundled it under his arm. He tucked his sheathed dagger into his loincloth and climbed to the top of the bank.

Boldly he headed for the hut behind which the grey mare was tethered.

In nothing more than a loincloth and sandals he could try to pass himself off as a legionary. If he was challenged he could reply, in fluent, colloquial Egyptian, that he had gone to the riverbed to attend to his private business. However, no one challenged him. He reached the corner of the hut and ducked round it.

The mare was tethered just beyond the open doorway, and a full water skin lay in the shade of the wall. It would be the work of a few seconds to swing it over the mare's withers. He always rode bareback and needed no saddle blanket or rope stirrups. He crept up to the mare and stroked her neck. She turned her head and sniffed his hand, then shifted restlessly, but quieted again as he murmured to her soothingly and patted her shoulder. Then he went to the waterskin. It was heavy but he lifted it and threw it over her back. He slipped the knot of her halter rope and was on the point of mounting when a voice called to him from the open doorway of the hut, 'Beware the false prophet. I was warned about you, Soe.'

Startled, he glanced over his shoulder. The magus stood in the doorway.

He was naked. His body was lean and muscled like that of a much younger man, but the terrible scar of the old gelding wound showed silver in his crotch. His hair and beard were in disarray, but his eyes were bright. He raised his voice in a loud cry of alarm: 'On me, the guards!

Hilto, Habari! Meren! Here, Shabako!' At once the cry was taken up and shouted across the camp.

Soe hesitated no longer. He swung up on to Windsmoke's back and urged her away. Taita threw himself into her path and seized her halter rope. The mare came to such a sudden halt that Soe was thrown on to her neck. 'Stand aside, you old fool!' he shouted angrily.

He carries a knife. Fenn's warning echoed in Taita's head, and he saw the flash of a dagger in Soe's right hand as he leant down from Windsmoke's back to slash. If he had not been forewarned Taita would have received the thrust full in the throat, where it was aimed, but he had just enough time to duck to one side. The point of the dagger caught him high in the shoulder. He stumbled backwards, blood streaming down

his shoulder and flank. Soe urged the mare forward to run him down.

Clutching the wound, Taita whistled sharply and Windsmoke shied again, then bucked furiously and hurled Soe headlong into the fire, knocking over the water-pot in a hissing cloud of steam. Soe crawled off the hot coals, but before he could regain his feet two burly troopers pounced on him and pinned him to the dust.

“Tis a little trick I taught the mare,' Taita told Soe quietly, and picked the dagger out of the dust where he had dropped it. He placed the point against the soft skin of Soe's temple just in front of the ear.

'Lie still or I will skewer your head like a ripe pomegranate.'

Meren rushed from the hut naked, sword in hand. He took in the situation instantly, and pressed the bronze point into the back of Soe'sI neck, then looked up at Taita. 'The swine has wounded you. Shall I kill him, Magus?'

'No!' Taita told him. 'This is Soe, the false prophet of the false¦ goddess.'

'By Seth's sweaty testicles, I recognize him now. It was he who set the_ toads on Demeter at the ford.”¦ 'One and the same,' Taita agreed. 'Bind him well. As soon as I have seen to this cut I desire to converse with him.'¦ When Taita emerged from the hut a short while later, Soe was trussed up like a pig for market and laid in the full glare of the sun.

They had stripped him naked, to ensure he had no other blade concealed, and already his skin was reddening under the caress of the sun.

Hilto and Shabako were standing over him with drawn swords. Meren placed a stool with a seat of leather thongs in the shade thrown by the wall of the hut, and Taita took his ease upon it. He took time to survey Soe with the vision of the Inner Eye: the man's aura was unchanged from the last time he had scried it, angry and confused.