Читать книгу Enslaved By The Desert Trader - Greta Gilbert - Страница 9

Chapter One

Memphis, Khemet, year twenty-three in the Reign of King Khufu, 2566 BCE

The serpent’s tongue tickled her toes. It glided over her foot without fear, as if daring her to move. Its horns were large enough for her to see them clearly, even in the low morning light. Kiya sucked in a breath. Of the hundreds of men standing in the grain line, the horned viper had chosen her—the one man who was no man at all. It was just her ill fortune. After a full season of labouring undiscovered upon the Great Pyramid of Stone her life was now threatened by a creature the size of a chisel.

The men in the line near her had not noticed. Not yet. They continued to chatter, folding and unfolding the empty grain sacks they carried, their bare feet shuffling in the sand. They had all gathered—the quarrymen, the masons, the haulers—hundreds upon hundreds of pyramid conscripts, all awaiting their promised allotment of grain. They stood in a single sprawling line that encircled the Great Pyramid like a snare.

‘Move on, brother,’ urged a voice behind Kiya, but she pretended not to hear. If she lifted her foot the viper would surely bite her, and she would have to stifle her scream—the scream of a woman.

She opened her palms to the sky and lifted her eyes heavenward, for no one could lawfully disrupt an act of prayer. Blessed Wadjet, Serpent Goddess, she beseeched in silence, let the viper pass. Still the viper did not move. It was as if the giant pyramid at her side were blocking her plea.

King Khufu’s House of Eternity was not just a pyramid—it was a mountain splitting the sky. Now almost complete, the giant tomb would be ready to receive King Khufu when his time came. It would conduct the great King to the heavens, where he would secure the safety and abundance of Khemet for all time.

Or so said the priests.

The holy men who oversaw the construction of the tomb wore fine linens. They walked with their arms folded across their chests, self-satisfied and proud. But their priestly posture belied an insidious truth: it had been twenty-four full moons since the last flood—two terribly trying years. The Great River was but a stream—no longer navigable by the large imperial barges. Its life-giving waters had ceased to teem with the silvery perch and tilapia that normally filled Khemetian bellies. The riverside plantations of flax, barley and wheat—once green with growth—now stood barren and cracked.

The people of Khemet, too, were cracking. Their sacred Black Land—named for the colour of the rich, life-giving earth of the Great River’s floodplain—had become brown and lifeless. Every day Khemetians grew thinner and hungrier. The priests assured them that the fate of Khemet would change once the Great Pyramid was complete.

But the tomb workers, whose food rations grew sparser each day, wondered if Khemet wasn’t instead being punished. As they pulled their stone-laden carts up the dark, twisting inner tunnel they whispered among themselves: What if King Khufu’s ambition has grown too great? What if this tomb displeases the King’s heavenly father, Osiris, God of Death and Rebirth? What if, with the stacking of each stone, we are not exalting the land of Khemet but dooming it to death?

Kiya always kept her head down in the tunnel—and held her mouth shut. ‘Mute Boy’ she was called among her gang, and her strange infirmity cloaked her with an air of mystery that distracted them from her concealed gender. It was a useful part of her ruse, and necessary. A woman labouring upon the Great Pyramid of Stone was a sin against the King himself. If she were found out she would be punished. Under King Khufu, that punishment would likely be death.

Now the viper coiled itself more tightly around Kiya’s ankle. She could feel its muscles squeezing her, its tongue gently caressing her skin. It was preparing to bite. When it did, the poison would quickly paralyse her, and death would come on swift feet. She opened her hands and mouthed the words: Wadjet, I beseech you.

‘There will be time to pray later,’ insisted the man behind her. ‘Close the gap.’

He had spoken verily: she had allowed a gap to form in the line ahead of her. She needed to distract him. Impulsively, she pointed her finger eastward, towards the Great River, as if there were some significant sight to observe there. But something was there—or someone, rather. It was a man—a rider. His mounted silhouette made a sharp shadow against the paleness of the dawn.

‘Who is that?’ asked the man behind her.

Kiya shook her head. The rider was unusually large and broad-shouldered, as if he spent his days ploughing fields or hauling stones. He rode a strange hoofed beast whose long legs and thick, luxuriant tail set it apart from a familiar donkey. His flowing dark robes marked him as a Libu, an enemy of Khemet, yet his stature and carriage indicated other origins. He unwrapped his headdress and began waving it in the air above him vigorously, as if in warning. Then his figure dissolved instantly—obscured in the eruption of the Sun God’s light.

Kiya shielded her eyes and glanced downward. To her surprise, her tiny foe was gone—disappeared, just like the rider. But there was little time to celebrate for she felt the ground beneath her begin to tremble. In the place where the rider had been there was now a cloud of dust. Then they materialised—an army of men, advancing towards the pyramid at great speed.

‘Libu!’ someone shouted.

The men in line scattered, but Kiya could not bring herself to move. There must have been a thousand of them—rugged, robed raiders whose shrill battle cries invaded Kiya’s ears and filled her with terror. Some rode atop donkeys, but most came on relentless feet. As they approached they unleashed their arrows upon the tomb workers. A dozen of Kiya’s fellow workers were struck instantly, collapsing where they stood. The rest ran. Some sought refuge inside the Great Pyramid itself. Others escaped into the desert.

Kiya dropped to the ground, playing dead. She counted her breaths. One. Two. Three. Slowly the rain of arrows abated. Kiya opened her eyes to find the Libu raiders gathering around the grain tent. It was as Kiya suspected: the Libu had not come for war. They had come to the plain of Giza for the same reason she had—for that thing that had become, after two years of drought, more precious than gold: grain.

This could not be. Kiya needed her grain. She had earned her allotment of it. And she had been so close, so very close to receiving it.

‘Run!’ a man yelled from far away, but Kiya did not heed him. She had no family, and not a single aroura of land to her name. Without her ration of grain she would have to return to a life on the streets of Memphis—to the life of a beggar.

And that she simply refused to do.

Slowly, she stood. She gripped her grain sack and, in the confusion of Khemetians running away from the grain tent, began to run towards it.

She wrapped the empty sack around her head like a turban. She was a Libu now, a new kind of imposter. On swift legs she darted among the Libu donkeys, and the animals’ large bodies concealed her and protected her from the chaos.

Outside the grain tent few Khemetian guards remained alive. Their wooden shields had not been able to protect them. Like sacred bulls on feasting day the soldiers were being pierced, one by one, by Libu spears and arrows.

It was a grisly slaughter. So much Khemetian blood was spilt upon the sands. But Kiya could not afford to panic or to mourn. She rushed past the battling men and rolled under the tent’s loose hide. Inside, a pile of grain the size of a temple rose before her. She did not stop to gaze or even to think. She just took off her sack and started stuffing it, until it was so heavy with grain she could barely lift it. She did not even hear the ripping sound of her shirt as she rolled over the rough ground back out into the fray.

She could hardly see for the storm of dust outside the tent. She crouched low and kept the sack close to her body. The acrid smell of blood thickened the air and she choked for breath as she dashed eastward, towards the Great River.

As she ran she noticed that her shirt was gone, and that the wraps she had bound so tightly about her chest had been ripped. The tattered strips of fabric hung from her waist like a tailor’s loose strands and she felt the warm air upon her naked breasts. Her sex was exposed, but it did not matter for her sack was filled.

In fact it overflowed. She carried a windfall of grain—vastly more than she would have been allotted by the priests. And it was all hers. She hoisted it onto her back and felt her spirit grow large. It would be more than enough grain to sustain her through a full cycle of the sun. If she travelled far enough upriver she might even be able to find a plot of land to till and plant. She could trade some grain for her rent and await the flood, as farmers did.

She adjusted her course towards the southeast and became resolved: she would not be returning to the capital city. Never again would she skulk around its docks searching for fish heads, or roam the central market hoping to discover an onion peel or a half-eaten radish. With her boon of grain she would finally be free of want, finally merit her countrymen’s respect.

She heaved the bag onto the ground and shook her fist at the sky. ‘Is that all you have for me, evil Seth, God of Chaos?’ she shouted. ‘For that is nothing!’

Suddenly an arrow flew past her. Then another. She ducked her head, afraid to turn around. She heard the thunder of heavy hooves behind her—not a donkey, something larger. They pounded the ground like drumbeats. They were getting louder, closer. She hoisted the sack upon her back once again and coaxed her legs to run, but soon the large donkey-like creature was upon her. Its rider’s large, muscular arm reached down and wrapped itself around her body, and she and her sack were being lifted off the ground and into the air.

‘Do not fight,’ whispered a thick, husky voice into her ear. ‘Now you are mine.’