Saved By Her Enemy Warrior

Intef might have laughed. It was a humorous situation to be sure. He would retell it to his fellow soldiers one day to riotous applause.

‘And it was dark inside the tomb, you see,’ he would say, ‘and hot as the mines of Hammamat. There was not a single breeze. The air stood as still as death. But I took comfort among Pharaoh’s loincloths, for they smelled of lavender and felt like soft clouds...’

He could hear their laughter already. ‘Ha-ha-ha!’ they roared. ‘Ho-ho-ho!’

Not really, though. He was fooling himself. It was not his friends’ imagined laughter he heard, it was the pounding of his own heart inside his ears.

Chapter Three

Aya had run out of prayers. The heir was in danger and there was nothing she could do to protect him. She tugged hopelessly at her bonds. Already she was losing her strength. She was failing Tausret in death as she had failed her Pharaoh in life, and the people of Egypt would suffer for it.

No—this could not be. How had she not anticipated the High Priest’s treachery? He was the wealthiest, most powerful man in Egypt, with an ambition to match his lands. Now that the throne was empty, he would stop at nothing to seize it.

There were only two things in his way: General Setnakht, the rebel leader in the South, and the true heir to the double crown, whom most did not believe even existed.

But Aya knew otherwise and, apparently, so did the High Priest.

He had meant to scare the heir’s location from Aya by tying her here, but it was of little consequence that he had failed. He had informants in every village and spies in every nome. He would set his minions upon the North, focusing his attentions on the Delta, where Tausret had made her capital.

Aya could picture the High Priest’s spies combing the Delta’s waterways and sifting through its cities. We seek a young man of unusually good education, they would say, flashing the image of a triangle inside a circle. He wears this tattoo somewhere upon his skin.

A bounty would be offered and peasants from Memphis to Avaris would jump at the chance to collect. Eventually, the young man would be found—Tausret’s son, the last living god in Egypt—and slaughtered like a bull.

The corrupt High Priest would then only have to defeat the rebel General Setnakht, an easy enough endeavour when he combined Pharaoh’s standing army with his own loyalists. And thus a new dynasty would be founded, a new history chiselled into stone. The priest would rob the treasury to build his monuments and neglect the peasants, just as he had done in his tenure at the Temple of Amun. Egypt would be ruined.

And Aya could do nothing about it. She could only stare into the inky blackness and wait for her end to come.

She passed the moments reciting stories inside her head.

This is a tale of two brothers, one from the North and one from the South...

Words had power; they carried magic.

This is the story of the eloquent peasant. He never knew his words were recorded for the pleasure of the King...

When woven into a tale, words could cradle the heart.

This is the story of Sinuhe who wandered far from his home. ‘Take me back, long road. Take me home to Egypt...’

Still, there did not seem to be enough words in the world to allay her misery.

Her back ached, her stomach throbbed and her throat scratched with thirst. How long would she survive, bound as she was, without the ability to move? She did not wish to know. Time was passing so slowly, as if it had become a frozen thing, giving her the opportunity to consider all the things she had never done.

She had never ridden a horse or tended a garden. She had never visited her father’s homeland, or learned how to properly shoot an arrow. She had failed in her efforts to learn Akkadian and had never once gone swimming in the Great Green Sea.

She had never before fallen in love.

A tear surfaced. Of all the things to make her weep! She had always suspected romantic love to be a kind of madness—a chaotic whirlwind of souls that always seemed to end in woe.

Why did she care that she had never fallen in love? She had certainly enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh. Like all young women, she had attended the Festival of Drunkenness and indulged in its holy rites. She had painted her body with henna and anointed it with frankincense oil and stepped inside the goddess’s temple, where she had selected from among the many eager young men.

‘Will you make me your Hathor?’ she had asked, several different times over the years. Always her chosen partner had accepted and they would share a cup of beer and lie together, helping to ensure that season’s flood.

Though now, at her advanced age of four and twenty, even that sacred indulgence had lost much of its intrigue.

Once, Aya had made bold to ask Pharaoh if she had ever fallen in love.

‘Long ago,’ Tausret had admitted with a mysterious grin. She had pressed her fingers to her lips in the sign of a secret. ‘With a Libyan man—a warrior. He had blue eyes just like yours.’

‘How did you know it was love? How did it feel?’

‘As though my soul opened up and gifts began to flow out of it,’ Tausret had said, her dark eyes sparkling.

Aya had frowned.

‘As though I could embrace the hippos and kiss the crocodiles,’ Tausret had added, laughing.

‘You jest, Mistress?’ Tausret never jested. She rarely even smiled.

‘I merely attempt to describe the indescribable,’ Tausret had waxed. ‘How I wish that you could experience it for yourself, Aya! One day you will.’

‘But how will I know it is love?’ Aya had asked.

‘You will feel as if you are a heavy stone who has suddenly exploded into a cloud of dust.’

It was true, then—love was madness. Clearly it was, if it could inspire the Living God to spout such strange poetry.

Pah! Life was mad enough as it was. Besides, romantic love usually required the participation of a man and men could not be trusted.

Did you trust your Libyan? That was what she should have asked Tausret that day. Certainly the answer would have been no. For a woman in power, men were as treacherous as a wadi in a storm.

Or a priest inside a tomb.

Her stomach continued to ache and she was clinging to each breath as if it were a memory.

‘The will of Osiris,’ she said. ‘Let it be done.’

There it was again—the whisper. It diffused into the air like a puff of smoke. It was louder this time and he could distinguish the words: ‘The will of Osiris. Let it be done.’

He was hearing things now. He had been stuffed inside this wooden oven for so long that his mind had been cooked.

Unless Pharaoh herself had issued the whisper. But that was impossible.

It would be many hours before Pharaoh’s akh, her transfigured spirit, would return from its journey. Until then, the only soul inside the chamber was Intef, along with a dried, withered mummy inside a coffin of gold.

And the soft echo of a sigh.

Intef blinked. First whispers and now a sigh? But it could not be so. Surely it was Intef himself who had sighed.

He moved his sweaty brow against the soft linen surrounding him. It had grown warmer inside the chamber since the entryway had been sealed. He would need to break through those mud bricks soon.

Intef recalled how the mad old woman had protested the setting of the bricks to seal the chamber. Did she not understand the necessity of sealing the chamber? Tomb robbery was a veritable plague across Egypt and especially here, in the Pharaohs’ royal burial grounds.

Though it was possible the woman had not been protesting the sealing of the chamber itself, but merely its contents. ‘You will not find him,’ she had added in a whisper, referring to the fabled heir to the throne.

Perhaps the woman had truly lost her wits. Everyone knew that Tausret had been unable to produce an heir for her late husband, Pharaoh Seti the Second. Tausret’s fallow field was so widely known that it had lately become the topic of songs and laments. In a sense it was the very reason Intef was here.

Intef paused, hearing another noise. He was certain that he had not produced it. It seemed to have come from the middle of the chamber.

‘Oouu...’

Not a sigh, but a strange, plaintive sound that might have been emanating from the sarcophagus itself. He focused his attention, hardly believing his ears. It sounded very much like a woman crying.

Had one of the slaves been left behind? It could not be. To bury a person inside a house of eternity was against the law—slave or not. It was also contrary to every religious text that had ever been written. There could be only one woman inside this House of Eternity, and she was no longer of this world.

‘Oouu...’

There it was again. Intef’s whole body stiffened. This is not real, he told himself, and then thought back to Hepu’s grave advice. No matter what Intef did, he must not panic. ‘The will of Osiris,’ he said. ‘Let it be done.’ He gripped his bronze chisel and wedged it between the wood.

There was the sound of splitting wood, and Aya nearly jumped out of her skin. ‘Pharaoh?’ No, it could not be. The akh of her beloved mistress was well on its way to the Underworld by now.

Was it not?

Aya’s heart pounded. ‘Pharaoh Tausret?’ she said again. She wiped her eyes against her bound hands and peered into the darkness.

‘Stand down, wretched demon!’ shouted a deep, masculine voice.

Aya shrieked. She strained against her bonds, craning her neck.

‘Who speaks, by the gods?’ commanded Aya. ‘Name yourself!’

There was a loud crash, as if a piece of holy furniture had just been destroyed. ‘Mother of—’

‘Cease your cursing!’ shouted Aya. ‘Identify yourself!’

‘Identify myself?’ gasped the spirit. ‘Identify yourself!’

‘I am Aya, Pharaoh’s Most Beloved Advisor.’ Her voice was trembling. ‘Speak your name!’

‘I am Intef, son of Sharek, soldier of Egypt,’ the voice said. ‘I—I seem to have lost the feeling in my legs.’

Aya paused. The spirit had a title? And legs?

‘Then you claim that you are...living?’ Aya asked. Madness was taking her, surely. It was the only explanation for what she thought she heard.

‘I know that I am living!’ the man—Intef—shouted. ‘I should ask you the same.’

‘I am very much living,’ said Aya. This was the strangest conversation she had ever had.

‘Well, now that we have determined that we are living, I can tell you that in this moment, I quite wish to die.’

This was truly odd. ‘Why do you wish to die?’ she asked.

‘Because it feels as though a thousand tiny scorpions are travelling down my legs, stinging as they go.’

Aya nearly laughed. Scorpions! Travelling down the legs of a real man in real pain!

He moaned. ‘My legs are on fire.’ He seemed to be sucking the air through his very teeth.

‘They are merely returning to life,’ Aya explained, feeling as if she were describing her own spirit. ‘Have patience... Intef.’

Intef, she thought—after that line of old warrior kings. She was not alone. On the contrary, she was accompanied by a warrior. Slowly, her sobs returned, but this time they were joyous.

At length his seething breaths subsided. ‘Why do you weep?’ he asked.

‘I am...grateful to hear your voice.’

‘You scold me for cursing and now you are grateful to hear my voice?’

‘Are you not grateful to hear mine?’

Another pause. ‘I had not expected to find a...woman in this House of Eternity,’ he said. ‘A living one, anyway.’ He laughed then—a deep, gravelly growl that might have belonged to the King of the demons himself.

Aya felt her skin tickle with fear. ‘You refer to Pharaoh, the Powerful One, Chosen of Mut, Daughter of Re, Lady of Upper and Lower Egypt?’

‘I assume she is the only other woman in this chamber,’ said Intef. ‘Unless the Powerful One has also brought along her flock of wigmakers?’

Aya stifled a gasp. Did this man have no respect for the sanctity of the deceased? Aya prepared herself to issue another scolding, then paused.

‘What, I beg, are you doing in this House of Eternity, Intef, son of Sharek?’

‘What do you think I am doing?’

She made her voice meek. ‘Have you come to save me from murderous priests?’

Intef spouted a laugh. ‘Not quite.’

Aya felt her stomach twist into a knot. He had not come to rescue her, or aid her in any way. Of course not. He had come to aid himself. This man was a tomb robber.

‘I fear that you are here for a nefarious purpose,’ she ventured.

Intef said nothing in response and Aya’s heart filled with horror. Tomb robbers were the lowest and rudest of men. They were desecrators and defilers. They snubbed their noses at the gods and placed the souls of the deceased in peril. And yet it seemed that Aya’s own life now depended on one.

‘How did you get here?’ she asked.

‘I should ask you the same,’ he said. When she did not respond he said, ‘I was smuggled inside a locked chest.’

‘And how did you release the lock?’ she asked.

‘How do you think?’

‘Force?’

‘I happen to be rather strong. And I carry a large chisel.’

Aya shuddered.

She perceived movement in the darkness. Intef seemed to be straining to stand. She heard another piece of wood slide across the floor and wondered which of the sacred chests he had destroyed.

Whichever chest it was, its contents had been despoiled by contact with the man’s skin. And that—Aya realised—was just the beginning of the desecration he planned.

‘Call to me,’ Intef said across the darkness. ‘So that I may find you.’ Aya shut her mouth. Suddenly she did not wish to be found.

‘You are tied, are you not?’ asked Intef. ‘The High Priest said something about rope.’

Aya heard his footfalls as he neared. ‘It would be helpful if you would indicate your location,’ he said and she felt the weight of his body collapse atop hers.

‘Get off of me!’ she shrieked.

‘I am trying.’ A groping hand grazed her thigh, then another pressed against her waist. ‘Where is the rope?’ he demanded.

‘Just here around my wrists. Please... I—’ She felt a hand graze her breast and gasped.

‘Further up,’ she managed to say. Her heart pounded as his hands finally found her bound wrists. She exhaled.

‘Do not celebrate yet.’ She sensed him moving away from her. He called across the chamber, ‘I think I have found what is anchoring the rope.’

‘What is it?’

‘A very large chair.’

The sacred Horus throne. ‘You must not touch it.’

He made a loud straining noise, as if he was trying to lift it. ‘What you are attempting is sacrilege,’ she warned.

‘I am not attempting, I am doing,’ he said with a heave.

‘It is a crime punishable by—’

‘Do you wish to discuss levels of impiety or do you wish to be freed?’

She drew a breath. ‘To lift the Horus throne requires the strength of four men.’

‘Or the strength of one soldier.’

She held her tongue. Between his next series of heaves, he began to whistle a cheery tune. Who was this arrogant demon and how dare he whistle in a place like this? ‘Seth’s bloody—’ he said at last, swallowing the last part of the curse.

Aya supposed she should have been grateful for his restraint, but she could only cringe as he returned to where Aya lay and she sensed him taking his seat beside her head. ‘It is only because I have not had any sustenance that I cannot lift the throne,’ he boasted. ‘I am merely weakened by my hunger and thirst.’

‘Of course,’ said Aya.

‘If only I had a dagger, I could easily sever your bonds.’

‘You did not bring a dagger?’

‘A dagger would have made me even heavier inside the chest. Besides, I knew I would have my pick of daggers once I gained entry to the tomb.’

‘Have your pick of them?’ Aya repeated, her anger surging. ‘The jewel-encrusted golden ones, you mean?’

‘Precisely.’

Aya’s heart roared. The audacity of this man! The ribald frankness with which he described his planned pillaging of this sacred house!

‘Do you happen to know where those daggers have been stored?’ he asked.

‘I am afraid I have no idea,’ she lied.

He sat puzzling for many long moments and she hoped he would not become frustrated. Surely a man such as him would have a short temper.

‘I am grateful for your efforts,’ she added out of fear.

‘Do you usually offer thanks before it has been earned?’ he replied.

Aya swallowed her anger. ‘What tools did you bring with you?’

‘A hammer and chisel.’

Aya paused. She had been expecting him to say a shovel, for she assumed that the only way out of this tomb was to dig through the mass of rocks and earth with which the long entry corridor was currently being filled. ‘Do you mean to chisel your way out, then? Is that your plan?’

No response.

‘What other tools did you bring?’ she asked.

‘Flint to light a torch.’

‘Well?’

Chapter Four

Flint. A flame. He could sever the rope by means of one. It was a good idea and he certainly would have thought of it himself momentarily. It irked him that she had done so first. She was one of those grandmotherly types who seemed to delight in her superior knowledge of things. He could almost sense her smirking beneath her wrinkles.

Yet she was right. By setting fire to the rope with which she had been tied he could not only free her, but fashion a torch with the scorched ends.

But should he free her? It was clear that he was going to have a problem with this woman, whatever he did. From the way she had corrected his use of language to the derision in her tone when she had asked about the daggers, she was going to make his job more difficult.

He should have had the foresight to lie to her. He should have told her that he was indeed sent to save her, that she had hidden allies in the Temple of Amun or some other nonsense.

Though once he chiselled his way out of this tomb, he and his fellow tomb raiders would be taking much more than just a few jewel-encrusted daggers. The sooner this woman—what had she called herself? Aya? As soon as Aya came to terms with this inevitability, the easier his job would be.

Still, he sensed he needed to be careful with her. If she was anything like her monarch, then she was dangerous and even ruthless. It was rumoured that Pharaoh Tausret had killed her late husband Seti’s heir, an innocent young man whom Seti had conceived with a harem wife.

If Aya really was the beloved counsellor she claimed to be, then surely she was implicated in that merciless deed. Intef feared that setting her free would be something like cutting the leash off a crocodile.

If only she were a common tomb robber, her treachery would be wholly manageable. The two could take turns chiselling through the limestone and come to some arrangement about the tomb’s...harvest.

According to Intef’s orders, it was going to take nine days to chisel his way out. With the aid of a partner they could work continuously and it would only take four or five.

But she was no partner. She was the kind of high-born woman who cringed when a lowly soldier set his hands on the golden throne. What would she do when he began to eat the holy breads? he wondered. How would she respond when he filled one of Pharaoh’s golden goblets with beer and took a long, gluttonous drink?

He returned to the middle of the chamber and gazed down at the rope. If he did not untie her, he would have to be responsible for caring for her himself. And what then?

He was here to complete a mission—the most important mission in Egypt. General Setnakht needed treasure to grow his ranks and seize the double crown once and for all. If Intef and his fellow tomb raiders could gather enough treasure here, it was possible that the General could buy himself an entire army. He could win the crown with a simple show of force. There might not have to be a fight and Intef was cursedly tired of fighting.

He retrieved his flint from the inside pocket of his kilt and launched his spark.

Flames erupted on the first try and he coaxed them through the fibres of the rope until it was severed in two.

‘You may untie yourself now,’ he called in the direction of the shrine. He blew on the burning fibres and severed another part of the rope, fashioning a makeshift torch. He rounded the corner of the shrine with his light. The old woman had more than untied herself. She had disappeared.

‘Aya?’

He felt a warm breath in his ear and a sharp prick against his back. ‘Drop the torch.’ He let the torch fall to the floor as a slender arm squeezed around his neck. ‘If you make any movement at all, I will kill you,’ she said. She moved the sharp object to the base of his throat.

Like a freed crocodile.

‘I am a soldier and protector of Egypt,’ he said. He was both stronger and smarter than this woman, or so he assured himself. ‘Do you really mean to kill me?’

‘Precisely.’

He did not believe her, despite her unexpectedly firm grip around his neck. ‘It is wrong to take a person’s life,’ he remarked.

‘It is worse to take a person’s afterlife.’

Thankfully the torch still smouldered on the floor and he caught a glimpse of the weapon she held—an arrowhead of the finest obsidian. It seemed she could deliver his death in an instant.

‘You would kill a man inside a house of eternity?’ he asked. He could sense a trembling in her hand.

‘I would kill a man who would despoil that house.’

‘And when that man’s corpse fills that house with the stink of death?’

‘The stink of triumph over evil.’

‘Only the god Osiris may judge what is evil.’ He reached for her arm, but she pressed the flat of the arrowhead harder against his neck.

‘I will not allow you to rob this sacred house,’ she said. There was fear inside her voice. He could feel the heavy thrum of her heart against his back. She seemed to be trying to gather the will to kill him.

He would have to seize both her arms at once, then quickly duck his head, but he needed to find the right moment.

‘You would kill a man before he has done anything wrong?’

‘I loathe men like you,’ she said. ‘You are a stain on the banner of Great Egypt.’

‘You cannot escape this tomb alone.’

‘I am certainly capable of wielding a hammer and chisel.’

‘Of course you are—perhaps for several hours,’ he mused, ‘but you would quickly tire. You would need to work for months. What you do not understand is that the god Shu does not enter here. After only eight or nine days, the air will grow sour.’

She paused, as if she had not considered that particular truth. ‘I will dig my way out, then.’ Another slight loosening of her grip.

‘Dirty, suffocating work,’ he commented blithely, ‘and I doubt you could break through the brick seals to the chambers.’

‘The mortar has yet to set. It will be easy enough to breach.’

‘Easy? The final seal will be as hard as rock by the time you reach it. And even if you could emerge from the entrance, what would you say to the guards of the Kings’ Valley? The Medjay are trained to kill intruders. How would you convince them not to kill you?’

‘I am confident,’ she said with no confidence at all, and that was his cue. In a single movement, he ducked under her grip. Then he seized her wrists.