This is meant to be a sequel to an earlier story of mine titled The Battle Roar of Sekhmet, which you can also read on this website’s blog.
Egypt, 1345 BC
I crouched at the edge of our raft of woven papyrus and peered down at the dark green-blue water with harpoon in hand. Near the reeds along the river’s edge, there drifted a plump tilapia almost two feet in length. I licked my lips at the thought of chowing down on its succulent flesh. The fish would feed both Nebet and I for at least one whole day, if not two.
I stabbed after the tilapia. It escaped by darting over to the reeds where it vanished. Under my breath, I cursed Sutekh’s mischief for hexing my aim yet again. The aardvark-faced Lord of Chaos had caused me nothing but grief and disappointment since we had set out on the day’s expedition this morning.
Nebet, my niece of ten years, held up a line of rope with a hook that transfixed a tiny morsel of mutton. “You sure you don’t want to use the lure, Aunt Takhi?”
I gave her a half-serious scowl while accepting her lure with a grumble. I would always protect the child with my life, but I had to admit that she had grown into quite the smart mouth over the last few years.
I plopped the hook into the water. “I must have underestimated how rusted my fishing skills have grown. When I was your age, Nebet, I would put all the boys to shame at this!”
“Maybe find yourself a man who would do the fishing for you?” Nebet asked. “There should be plenty to go around, and most of them seem to like you.”
I raised my eyebrow. “How would you know that?”
“Whenever you go by, they always seem to look at you twice. And you know that old Vizier Ay from way back? I remember he sounded like he wanted you for himself.”
The memory of that shriveled husk of a man, that lecherous lackey of the false Pharaoh, flooded the inside of my mouth with a sour flavor. The passage of five years since we last crossed paths had not softened my distaste for him and his minions. I would sooner swim with crocodiles than occupy the same room as him.
“You have seen much more than any child your age should see, my little niece,” I said. “As far as men are concerned, the problem I have isn’t that I can’t attract any. If anything, they like me more than I like any of them.”
“Then maybe you like women more, Aunt Takhi?” Nebet said. “Maybe you could have another woman in place of a man?”
I rolled my eyes with a laugh. “No, no, I prefer men in the way you mean. It is only that I haven’t found a man worthy of our house. Maybe I should consult the priestesses of Hetheru. They might know why.”
For most of my life, it was Sekhmet I had served more than any of the other old gods or goddesses. Yet the stories held that Sekhmet, she of the lion mask and blood-stained gown, was in truth another guise of the loving bovine Hetheru. Perhaps calling upon my patron goddess would convince her to shift forms and answer my prayer for love.
“I thought there weren’t any more priestesses of Hetheru?” Nebet said. “The Pharaoh shut all their temples down long ago. Don’t you remember?”
She was right. Too often, my mind drifted back to the better days of my youth, before the false Pharaoh had assumed the throne and desecrated everything his righteous father had built and maintained. I had to return to the present, not think too much of the past or future, and get back to fishing.
I checked our hook beneath the water’s surface. The bait had disappeared, yet there was no fish still attached. They must had figured how to bite off the meat without getting themselves caught. How foolish I had been to let myself get distracted!
A wave rocked our raft from the side. Over by the far bank of the river, a man screamed while splashing and thrashing his arms in the air. Zipping through the water towards him was the bumpy, olive-brown wedge of a crocodile’s head.
I told Nebet to watch the raft and dove in. Moving my arms in sweeping arcs while kicking my legs behind me, I propelled myself through the warm and murky river after the struggling man. The current kept pulling him away from me, and the crocodile advanced with greater speed still.
Another splash ahead of me, and a cloud of blood stung my eyes under the water’s surface. The crocodile had seized the man’s arm and was pulling him deeper into the river. I took a deep breath and swam after the reptile, whipping out my bronze dagger from the sash around my loincloth. The beast’s swishing tail kept pushing me back with stirs of the current.
I could not catch up to it, no matter how much I pushed myself through the water. What I had to do was attack from afar.
I threw my dagger into the crocodile’s neck. It let go in its recoil, and I scooped up the man in my arms. He weighed more than me, but I wasted no time in hauling him back to the surface.
Sharp teeth pierced my calves. The crocodile dragged me back into the depths, stretching the muscles of my leg with every shake of its head. I rammed my other heel into its snout to no avail at all.
Something shot into the space between the crocodile’s eyes. Releasing me, it fell limp into the darkness below, with the narrow shaft of a harpoon sticking out through the blood that jetted from its wounds. In the distance emerged the enlarging silhouettes of more crocodiles which all closed in on their injured neighbor. As I made my way back up, I could hear their ravenous chomping amidst the gurgle of water.
Once I had resurfaced, I found our raft floating right next to me in the middle of the river. “Did you throw that harpoon there, Nebet?”
She shook her head. “That would be him.”
The man I had rescued lent his hand to pull me onto the raft. His coppery skin, more typical of the provinces of Lower Egypt much further downriver, contrasted with my own dark umber color by a couple of shades.
“I owe you everything I have for saving my life over there,” he said with a subtle Lower Egyptian drawl.
I wrung the water out of my dreadlocks. “The same for you. You’re not from around here, are you?”
“You guessed correctly, my girl. My family’s from the countryside near Djedet. Matter of fact, I’ve been up here at Waset for, what, only since the last inundation?”
He ran his hand over his shaven scalp and smiled at me with full lips between his moustache and short beard. I had to admit that he was somewhat handsome in a trim and lean way. Judging by the way he ran his eyes along the contours of my figure, he seemed even more interested in my own good looks.
“Sorry, forgot to introduce myself,” the man said. “Call me Nenwef. And you are…?”
“I am Takhaet. And this would be my niece, Nebet. I had to take her in after her parents, well, got into some trouble with the Pharaoh.”
“Takhaet, you say? I’ve heard of you somewhere before. Yes, you were one of the last Pharaoh’s favorite warriors!”
I grinned as I stroked one of the gold fly medals attached to my necklace. “Those were the good times. If only our new Pharaoh would find as much for me to do.”
“Tell me about it. He seems so preoccupied with that whole new god of his that he’s left everything else to the jackals. Which, come to speak of it, is why I left Djedet for here in Upper Egypt. You’ve heard the whole Delta’s been overrun with pirates and bandits, haven’t you?”
“By the gods, no! Has it gotten that bad down there?”
Nenwef gave me a grim frown. “Believe me, girl, that’s putting it mildly. Some of them come from all around the Great Green Sea, such as the Canaanites, the Greeks, and these newcomer barbarians they call the Sea Peoples. The saddest thing, however, is that some of our people have been going pirate as well, either due to bad influences or simply to make ends meet. Wherever they’re from, they’re all turning Lower Egypt into a mess worse than a den of ravenous hyenas.”
“Excuse me, Nenwef, but what were you doing in the middle of the river, anyway?” Nebet asked.
“Oh, I was out catching some fowls for my evening meal. Then I bumped into some ornery hippos, and you know the rest.”
Along the far riverbank, I spotted a distant herd of hippopotami milling about in the water. Yet I could not make out anything that looked like a capsized raft. Perhaps the gluttonous brutes had eaten the reeds that made up its body in entirety.
“I should have a few ducklings stored at my place,” I said. “You’ll be welcome to spend the evening there. Tomorrow, we’ll row you back home.”
Nenwef bowed to me. “Thank you very much again, my lovely lady.”
I felt a warm flush in my cheeks. Behind me, I could hear little Nebet’s giddy snickering.
We did not have anything grand for our evening meal. All I had to do was warm up some of those ducklings I had stored, along with a bowlful of bread, in my front yard’s oven. I took these and three cups of frothy beer on a platter up to our hut’s flat thatched roof, where Nebet sat in watch while Nenwef rested on my wooden bed. Blood-stained linen bandages covered the area on his arm where the crocodile had bitten him.
I laid the platter by the bed, and he plucked up a duckling with his good arm and bit into it. “Not bad. Almost as good as the ones my old mother would cook when I was a boy.”
I prodded my elbow into his ribs. “Almost as good?”
“Don’t feel ashamed. Not many could even compare to her cooking.”
“Her birds were hand-caught, I presume? Because I bought these at the marketplace a couple of days ago. Small wonder they’d be a step down from whatever your mother could fix.”
Nebet was already polishing off her duckling’s bones. “I bet my mother could cook even better than yours.”
Nenwef laughed. “I’m sure she’d be flattered to hear that, but there couldn’t be any contest between them, believe me.”
“Nor should there be,” I added.
Nenwef got off the bed to stand up and turn his gaze around at the surrounding village of huts, dirt roads, and palm and sycamore fig trees planted between the buildings. When he faced the direction of the Nile to the west, its waters shimmering gold from the sunset, he beamed with a contented sigh.
He pointed to some alabaster-white structures rising from the treetops beyond the river’s farthest bank. “You can see the old Pharaoh’s palace across the river from here, you know? If only we had such lovely views back near Djedet.”
“It’s all flat swampland outside that city, isn’t it?” I said. “Though I hear it is quite lush regardless.”
“I suppose it is.”
Nenwef directed his eyes to my necklace of gold flies. “I don’t know if it’s true, but word on the street around here says that you, O Takhaet, fended off a whole pride of lions once. Or was it leopards?”
The breeze blowing over my village, once balmy, had turned cold as midnight. How had he even heard of that incident five years ago? “It…was both. There were only three of them, and they were each a cross between lion and leopard.”
“I see. And they also said you sent a whole herd of gazelles stampeding over the Pharaoh’s men when they were out to arrest you for heresy.”
“That’s true as well. In fact, I later sent those lion/leopard cats after them too. But how do you know about all that? Ay promised me he’d cover the whole affair up.”
With a sly smirk, Nenwef shook his head. “Oh, I didn’t have to hear it straight from the Vizier. Like I said, it was word on the street.”
I remembered that my whole village had celebrated our act of rebellion against Akhenaten’s henchmen. There had been jubilant drumming and dancing, the roasting of cattle and game, and the chanting of everyone in praise of Sekhmet. The battle roar I had let out in her honor rang within my ears again. I should have known the people of my village would recall that occasion with the same vivid colors.
“Whatever way I came to hear of it, those have to be the most amazing feats I’ve ever heard of,” Nenwef said. “So amazing, indeed, that they’ve inspired me to stand up to the false Pharaoh’s tyranny myself. He can’t go on lazing in that shining new palace of his while the rest of Egypt breaks down with barbarians at its gates. No, I intend to march in there and give him a piece of my own mind!”
I spat out the beer I had imbibed. “You don’t expect he would even let you set a single foot in his great house, do you?”
“He is supposed be Pharaoh, the steward of Upper and Lower Egypt, is he not? He has no choice but to listen to his people at some point, even if what they’re telling him isn’t what he wants to hear. You expect me to do nothing while he lets raping thieves tear my home province apart?”
“No, of course not! What I do expect, however, is that he’ll have you thrown out. Maybe fed to his lions, or whatever he keeps in his little menagerie.”
Nenwef laid a hand on my shoulder with a grin. “Which is where you’ll come in, my girl. Why don’t we persuade him together? His best guards couldn’t restrain a seasoned warrior like you even if they tried.”
I dropped my cup of beer onto the thatching below. “No. Out the question. I can’t leave Nebet here all alone while I go off with you.”
Nebet looked up at me with sparkling eyes, wringing her fingers together. “Then why not bring me with you, Aunt Takhi? I’ve always wanted to see what the Pharaoh’s new capital looks like. I heard it’s magnificent.”
“I heard that too, but you should know it’s all been built on the backs of starving men, women, and even children your age,” I said. “And I would never dare let either Akhenaten or his slavering pack of jackals near you. You should stay where you’ll be safe, little baboon.”
“I wouldn’t assume she would be in danger,” Nenwef said. “Akhenaten might be cruel, but even he should know that hurting a child for the world to see would turn all his subjects against him. Not to mention, he goes out of his way to present himself as doting on his own young.”
“So you think that means he’ll have mercy on the children of his enemies, too?”
“What I mean is, we could use your niece’s presence to temper his wrath. I say bring her along with us. Together, we can convince Pharaoh of the error of his ways!”
He curled his hand into a fist and nodded at me. “Do we have a deal, Takhaet?”
“You mean all the error of his ways, or simply the error affecting your province back in Lower Egypt?” I asked.
“All his ways, trust me.”
With a shrug, I gave his fist a bump with my one. “Then we have a deal.”
Nebet clapped her hands. “Yay! I get to see the Pharaoh’s new city after all.”
I gave her puffs of fluffy hair a playful scratch. “And maybe help change the course of his rule for all history to record.”
The sun had only begun to sail up from the east when we walked off the ferry onto the dock. Yet the towering entrance to Akhenaten’s new capital already blasted us with the brilliant glow of walls a purer white than the limestone casing of the ancient pyramids. Inscribed on each side of the entrance were the painted likenesses of the Pharaoh and his Queen, both receiving the gold-handed rays of his god Aten with open hands. Flanking both their parents were the relatively miniature figures of their children.
Nenwef hadn’t lied when he said Akhenaten wanted to present himself as benevolent towards his own family. For all I knew, perhaps he was. Yet the knowledge that the false Pharaoh had conscripted whole gangs of youths and children, some no older than my little niece, to build his new home had dimmed the luster of the architecture awaiting me.
From beside the entrance’s doorway, two royal guards marched towards us. One of them bowed his head to Nenwef, who whispered something into the man’s ear. I thought that little exchange strange for a native of Lower Egypt who claimed to be a newcomer to all the upriver provinces.
“Welcome to Akhetaten, our new capital,” Nenwef said. “I was, uh, telling the guard that we wanted an audience with the Pharaoh.”
“Will we get to see the menagerie soon after?” Nebet asked.
Nenwef winked at her. “Soon, little one. Very, very soon afterward.”
The guard he had addressed earlier displayed a cheerful smile full of radiant white teeth. “We’ll be very happy to give you a tour of Akhetaten in all its glory, my lady. First, however, the Pharaoh requests your presence in the Temple to Aten. Follow us!”
The singsong chime the guard had spoken with made me shudder with a chill despite the morning’s rising warmth. Nor did I care for the name Akhenaten had chosen for his new abode. It sounded too much like his own name, except for a hard “t” in place of the “n”. He could only have intended that similarity.
We followed the guards through the entrance and then a series of white-walled plazas and alleyways, all shaded with rows of columns and stands of trees and flowers that flooded the place with a natural fragrance. Even the tiled floors dazzled with a smooth polish unmarred by the dirt or grime of a normal city street. Did Akhenaten have his legion of servants wash the entire city every evening? Not even Amenhotep the Third, his nobler father and predecessor on the throne, would be so meticulous in keeping everything in his capital so clean.
Unless, of course, this whole city was nothing more than an overgrown palace for the false Pharaoh himself, rather than a place for people from all walks of life to call home.
We walked down an avenue bordered on both sides by a row of sphinxes watching us with stoic silence as we passed them. At the end reared the entrance to the Temple of Aten, an edifice twice as tall as the city entrance we had already gone through. Images of Aten itself, portrayed as a golden disk shooting down dozens of arms like a monstrous corruption of an octopus from the Great Green’s waters, adorned the temple gateway’s left and right sides. This, then, was the face of the false god Akhenaten wanted to force upon all of Egypt instead of the ones we had always venerated!
Once we had entered the temple, there awaited a broad, open courtyard fringed with palm and acacia trees. There stood at its center none other than the Pharaoh himself, together with his Queen Nefertiti.
Akhenaten did not appear much like his statues and wall reliefs portrayed him. They also showed him as a tall and lean man, albeit with a strange paunch on his belly like a pregnant woman’s womb. What stood before us instead, his arms crossed and holding the royal crook and flail, was a stout bulb of a man whose enormous gut glistened with oil like a ball of grease-stained mahogany. A devious grin spread across his pudgy face when he laid his beady eyes on me.
Closer to expectation was his Queen, a slender woman with gleaming dark chestnut skin and a tall blue crown like a cylinder which flared out at the top. Come to think of it, the woman herself stood a head taller than her husband.
Behind them stood another, much lankier man with a dreadlocked wig much too pure black for his wrinkled date of a face. There was no mistaking his smug sneer as that of anyone other than Ay, the old Vizier himself.
Akhenaten spread his arms wide apart. “Welcome home, my soldier Rameses. I knew you’d catch what once eluded my Vizier.”
“And I have to say you dress like a quite convincing commoner,” Nefertiti said. “You could’ve fooled even me.”
The man I had known as Nenwef until then bowed at the waist before the Pharaoh. “It helped that I did use to be one, before Your Highness lifted me up from my poverty. Though, I must remind you to give some credit to old Ay. The trap was his design, remember?”
I would have drawn out another one of my daggers, except I had left all of them at home since they would have confiscated any weapons on me anyway. I could only screech out the worst profanity that came to mind. “How could you, Ay? It’s been five years!”
Ay strutted to me with a vindictive cackle. “Five years was all the time I needed for you to lower your guard, young Takhaet. Or were you foolish enough to think those ‘concessions’ I made, right after your beastly friends had decimated my men, were sincere in the least?”
He handed a bronze sword over to Rameses, who ran his finger over its blade with a satisfied look before pointing it at my gullet.
“She sure was gullible enough to believe I was a poor and oppressed commoner seeking rebellion like herself, wasn’t she?” Rameses said.
I took one step back until I bumped into the guards’ cowhide shields behind me. “What do you want from me this time? Because I’d sooner die than throw away the gods of our ancestors in favor of yours, you false Pharaoh!”
Akhenaten clapped his hands. “I admire your heroic devotion to the old ways, my subject, but you misunderstand me this time. I don’t seek to change your faith, but that of the one closest to you.”
Nefertiti knelt before my niece and reached a finger to stroke the girl’s chin, but Nebet jerked away to huddle by my side.
“You have to admit, she looks like she’s grown up in poverty,” the Queen said. “And you’ve been raising her all by yourself, like a single mother in the slums. That’s no way for a child to grow up, is it?”
“You’re wrong, you mean lady!” Nebet said. “We’re not poor, and Aunt Takhi has taken better care of me than you ever could!”
“Aw, she thinks I’m a mean lady, doesn’t she? Maybe she’ll think differently when I take her in. Unlike you, Aunt Takhi, we can afford all kinds of toys for our children in our big and clean, comfortable home. We even have a whole menagerie of animals from all over the world right here in this city. Wouldn’t you like to see the chimpanzees at least, little girl?”
I drew my hand back to slap the Queen, but Rameses grabbed my hand and pinned it against my body. The cold bronze tips of the guards’ spears dug into the nape of my neck.
“That isn’t going to work, bitch!” I said. “You can try to manipulate her all you want, but nothing you have to offer could ever replace her love for me. Or her mother, or her father! What happened to them, may I ask?”
“They…were every bit as unrepentant as you,” Akhenaten said. “So, I had to address them the only way I could. You need to understand, my subject, that I cannot allow a single voice of dissent to remain if I am to realize my vision for Egypt. If I do, who knows how many dozens might hear that voice? And whom might those dozens speak to in turn? You see how it could lead to my eventual undoing?”
“You would have nothing to fear were you a just ruler, Akhenaten.”
“Ah, but I do see myself as a just ruler. A ruler so just that he wishes to usher in a new age for our civilization, instead of clinging onto the obsolete traditions of our ancestors like cowardly children. Since you, on the other hand have demonstrated time and time again that nothing I can do can change your mind, I have no choice but to eliminate you.”
“And I know precisely how you should do it,” Rameses added. “Credit where it’s due, this woman did save my life from a crocodile while I was in the river. Let us see how she fares against a whole float of them!”
Nebet tightened her arms on me. “No! How could you do that to her? Leave my Aunt Takhi alone!”
Nefertiti pounced onto her and dragged her into her embrace. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to watch. Like I promised, I’ll take good care of—”
She shrieked when Nebet bit down on her arm. “Why, you little…! Let’s see, should I feed you to the chimpanzees, or throw you down into the crocodiles with your aunt instead? I say, the latter sounds more fitting a punishment to me. Wouldn’t you say, Rameses?”
“Agreed. If they love each other as much as they claim, why don’t we watch them die together?”
Everyone around Nebet and I laughed together like hyenas on the hunt. Even more so than Akhenaten or the rest of his clique combined, it was Rameses whose laughter made my legs buckle.
The guards never withdrew their spears from my neck until they had already escorted me into the city’s menagerie. Fences of bronze atop mudbrick foundations enclosed the animals’ living spaces, each of which contained trees, rocks, and at least one waterhole for drinking. I did appreciate that these pens all resembled their animals’ native habitats to one extent or another. The hippos got a pool framed with papyrus and tall grass, the lions an expanse of sand and grass with a couple of acacia trees, and the chimpanzees a grove of fig and palm trees in imitation of their jungle home to Egypt’s far south.
Akhenaten must have taken better care of his exotic pets than he did his human subjects.
We stopped at another pool in the menagerie. Unlike the hippopotamus pool, this one had the bones of fish, goats, and cattle strewn around scattered islets of stone, together exuding an even more rancid odor than the musty one that rose from the still water. Over the edges of the pool swayed slender eucalyptus trees with white bark that seemed to be peeling off.
“These wouldn’t be like the crocodiles we have over in the Nile, mind you,” Rameses said. “We brought these over from a land very far away tothesoutheast. They can thrive even in seawater, hence why the natives call them ‘saltwater crocodiles’. Aren’t they all beauties?”
I could only see the top of one crocodile’s head poking up from the pool’s opaque, muddy water. Even from a distance, however, it did appear nearly twice as big as the one I had saved “Nenwef” from. I gulped down a mouthful of air.
“I think they need something to bring them out of hiding,” Nefertiti said. “How about feeding time?”
With a rocking swing of her arms, she tossed Nebet over into the pool. I tore away from the guards, hurdled over the fence, and plunged myself into the water. It was deeper than I had anticipated, for my entire body sank beneath the surface. Unlike the Nile a few days earlier, I could not see much more than a forearm’s span through this briny murk.
What I could make out was the shrill sound of a child’s scream. I breast-stroked through the pool to the source of the outcry, where the most gigantic crocodile I had ever witnessed clutched Nebet within its jaws. I threw my arms onto its neck and squeezed onto it, pushing myself against the monster’s tremendous weight.
Another crocodile clamped onto the fringe of my loincloth. I hammered my sandal’s heel into the hinge of its jaw while still shoving myself against the first one. The second crocodile withdrew with a rip of linen in its mouth. Thus freed, I wrapped my legs around the first crocodile’s waist and turned it over onto its back. Flung out of its mouth, Nebet squealed with terror.
I swam for her until another crocodile blocked my way with its bulk. The other two were closing onto me from behind, jaws agape with the stink of rotten flesh wafting out. Grabbing onto the third crocodile’s flank, I leapfrogged over it to where Nebet had fallen.
A fourth crocodile had seized her by the foot. After punching it in the eye, I inserted my fingers between its front teeth and pulled onto its jaws. I could only pry them open enough to release my niece’s foot before the beast shoved me back with a thrust of its snout. My back smashed against yet another one of the monsters’ jagged hides.
The crocodiles had us surrounded in the pool, locked in a tight circle of scaled flesh and snapping jaws. Nebet and I had no way to get around them.
The only way we could go was down.
I hugged Nebet close to me and told her to take a deep breath. Together we dove straight down into the pool’s salty muck and went beneath the crocodiles’ pale bellies. Some of their brethren had already submerged and given chase, their jaws chomping mere inches from our toes.
One of the reptiles slapped us into a column of rock with its tail as it came out in front. It spun around and zoomed in, jaws agape with the cavernous black hole of it gullet wide open before us. As it approached, our lungs drained of air.
Sinking myself beneath the crocodile, I shot my fist up into its chin.
We flew back to the pool’s surface and held onto the stony pillar’s summit, gasping for air. The rest of the crocodiles were still slashing through the water after us.
Nebet pointed to one of the eucalyptus trees standing on the pool’s reedy bank. “Can’t we climb those, Aunt Takhi?”
I laughed with relief. “Good thinking, little baboon!”
I kicked off from the rock to the pool’s edge, crawling up from the mud and wrapping myself around the nearest tree. Holding Nebet on my back, I clambered up its height, ignoring how its shedding bark poked at my skin.
The tree shook. The crocodiles had gathered by its roots and were beating their heads against its trunk like woodcutters’ hatchets. One of them sprang and tore my sandal off, forcing me to slip down half the distance I had climbed. Right beneath my belly, the bole had begun to split.
The crocodiles kept leaping after us, their weight further knocking onto the tree with every fall. The instant the eucalyptus broke asunder at the waist, we jumped.
We had landed on the pavement outside the pool. The two guards stood over us, the tips of their spears hovering over us.
“Very impressive performance, I must say,” Akhenaten said. “I should’ve known not to have those trees planted there.”
I coughed out a puddle of salty mud. “At least you made those saltwater crocodiles feel even more at home, I presume.”
Rameses drew out his sword, his face darkened with a reddish tint of rage. “Since you eluded our crocodiles, you and your little brat will have to go the old-fashioned way!”
He chopped down. I rolled out of the blade’s way, hopped back onto my feet, and yanked the spear out of one of the guards’ hands. With its shaft, I whacked into Rameses’s ribcage and sent him tumbling into the crocodile pool. This time, I felt no impulse whatsoever to save him while the reptiles ganged up and bit him into pieces. No, the clamor of rent flesh and cracking bone had become triumphant music to my ears.
Akhenaten pointed his flail at me. “Don’t think you can escape this time, my cunning leopard. Get her!”
The two guards charged, one with his spear and the other pulling out his dagger sidearm. I used the spear I had stolen to pole-vault away and chucked it into its former owner’s face. The second threw his spear after me in turn, but I escaped with a sidestep and retrieved it too.
The surviving guard snarled. “You think you’re so clever, girl? Two can play that game!”
He threw his dagger at me. I raised the spear to parry it, but it split in two when the blade hit. As he pulled the other spear out from his fallen comrade’s skull, I sprinted and pounced towards him. The guard swatted me away in mid-arc, and I went over the fence into another one of the enclosures.
It was another one of the forested pens, but it was not the chimpanzees that awaited me inside. Instead, there dashed a stocky cat even bigger than any lion I had seen before, but without a mane. The black stripes running up and down its deep orange coat blended it into the shadows cast by the trees and tall grass in its surroundings. It bared its fangs with a roar harsher and more spine-rattling than anything I had ever heard from a lion.
I heard Nefertiti taunt me from outside the enclosure. She had in her arms a squirming Nebet, a hand pressed over the child’s mouth. “They call that a tiger over in the distant east. While he’s giving you trouble, I’m sure the chimpanzees will adore your feisty little niece as much as I do!”
Shouting my nastiest curse at her, I lunged in her direction. The tiger’s claws cut across my back, and I stumbled onto my knees. The cat crouched down behind me, twitching its tail like a housecat about to pounce again. I wheeled around and waved my spear’s severed head in front of my face as a warning to the predator. It launched itself at me, but I somersaulted underneath it and stabbed it in the hip. Under my breath, I begged Sekhmet forgiveness for having wounded one of her feline children.
I grabbed the branch of a fig tree and swung out of the tiger pen, landing on the remaining guard and knocking him out with a bang of my elbow. Nefertiti had already reached the chimpanzees and was stretching her arms over its fencing with Nebet in hand. Hollering out the battle roar of Sekhmet, I raced over and threw my weight onto her. I hooked an arm around the Queen’s neck, snatched her crown off her head, and tossed it over into the enclosure.
One of the chimpanzees, who had been banging rocks together, picked up the blue crown to examine it. The ape hit it with one of the stones, denting the metal, and shook its head in seeming disappointment. Its face lit up again with a smile as it placed the crown top-first on the ground and sat on the lid like it was a stool. I heard Nebet chuckle with girlish delight the same moment the whiff of feces hit my nostrils.
Nefertiti growled with disgust. “That is one vile child you have there, Takhaet!”
I smirked at her, still holding her neck in my arm. “You’re one to talk about others being vile, my Queen.”
Ay and Akhenaten stormed towards me, with the Pharaoh brandishing his crook and flail like twin war clubs.
“You know I have plenty more guards where those two came, commoner?” Akhenaten said.
I applied more pressure to Nefertiti’s throat. “Let’s see if they can get here before I choke the life out of this bitch you call your Queen!”
The Pharaoh’s eyes widened with horror. “Stop! What do you want?”
“Simple. Pardon my niece and I right now, and the Queen lives. Got it?”
“Fine. I shall clear both of your sentences…on one additional condition. You and your niece must leave Egypt forever. If we catch you returning thereafter, I’ll have you both thrown to the crocodiles. And by then, I’ll have all the trees in that pen cut down. You understand?”
I relaxed my grip on Nefertiti, but not only to carry out my end of the deal. All my life, I had fought on behalf of my country and its beliefs, even if it meant defying the false Pharaoh once he had taken power. And, as a child of Egypt, were I to die without a proper burial away from its shores, I would never reunite with my ancestors in the afterlife. Instead, I would face an eternity of oblivion.
Even worse, my little Nebet would experience the same.
Nebet knelt before the Pharaoh and whimpered in pleading. “No, you can’t make us leave. Egypt has always been our home!”
With a shake of his head, Akhenaten pressed the top of his crook onto the girl’s head. “I am Pharaoh, he who commands all of Upper and Lower Egypt. I have already granted you and your aunt the permission to live. Consider your citizenship the price.”
Ay smiled with fiendish glee. “And why not? You didn’t think we would surrender everything to you with such ease, did you?”
As much as I wanted to jump onto the old jackal and hammer out what remained of his pathetic life, I knew he was right. Akhenaten had a whole force of guards he could summon over within one pulse of my heart, not to mention the backing of his regular army. I could evade and fight back as much as I wanted, but I could never defeat him alone. Not while keeping my niece out of harm’s way.
All I could do kneel in front of the false Pharaoh, drooping my head with a defeated sigh. “I accept your sentence, Your Majesty.”
Akhenaten nodded with a victorious grin. “Excellent. I’ll give you a month to pack up your belongings and then see you at the border, wherever you choose to go. May Aten bless you with good fortune the rest of your life.”
“And may he watch over your child as well,” Nefertiti added.
I dipped my head down to them both. “I will pray every day that he will, O Pharaoh and Queen.”
I had lied. I had no intention of even muttering his false demon’s name ever again. If there was one thing I would never concede to Akhenaten, it was my faith in the gods of our ancestors.
Nebet ran up to bury her glistening tear-washed face into me. “You can’t do this, Aunt Takhi. We can’t leave home forever.”
I lifted her up in my embrace and stroked her hair. “I’m afraid we have no choice, my little baboon. But it may not be all that bad. If nothing else, we’ll spend the rest of our lives seeing the world together.”
I knew not where we would go. We might venture up the Nile south of the Kushite provinces, into the savannas and jungles and the many kingdoms therein. Or we might sail for the east, visiting the ziggurats of Babylonia, the temples and sacred wells of the Indus Valley, or the burgeoning cities of distant China. We might even head north to the rocky isles of the Greeks and Minoans, or even further into the snowy forests where tribes of red- and yellow-maned, white-skinned men prowled.
All I knew was that we could not remain in Egypt any longer. And that, wherever we did go, Nebet and I would always have each other.
As I walked away from the menagerie, heading for the city’s docks, I gave my niece a wink and a whisper. “It may not all be lost. Maybe we could, say, persuade someone abroad to take Egypt back for us. What say you, my little baboon?”