The World's Desire Part 10

"The tale has not all been told, O Queen. The soldiers are mad with fear and with the sight of death, and slay their captains; barely have I escaped from those in my command of the Legion of Amen. For they swear that this death has been brought upon the land because the Pharaoh will not let the Apura go. Hither, then, they come to slay the Pharaoh, and thee also, O Queen, and with them come many thousands of people, catching up such arms as lie to their hands."

Now Pharaoh sank down groaning, but the Queen spake to the Wanderer:

"Anon thy weapon sang of war, Eperitus; now war is at the gates."

"Little I fear the rush of battle and the blows men deal in anger, Lady," he made answer, "though a man may fear the G.o.ds without shame.

Ho, Guards! close up, close up round me! Look not so pale-faced now death from the G.o.ds is done with, and we have but to fear the sword of men."

So great was his mien and so glorious his face as he cried thus, and one by one drew his long arrows forth and laid them on the board, that the trembling Guards took heart, and to the number of fifty and one ranged themselves on the edge of the das in a double line. Then they also made ready their bows and loosened the arrows in their quivers.

Now from without there came a roar of men, and anon, while those of the house of Pharaoh, and of the guests and n.o.bles, who sat at the feast and yet lived, fled behind the soldiers, the brazen doors were burst in with mighty blows, and through them a great armed mult.i.tude surged along the hall. There came soldiers broken from their ranks. There came the embalmers of the Dead; their hands were overfull of work to-night, but they left their work undone; Death had smitten some even of these, and their fellows did not shrink back from them now. There came the smith, black from the forge, and the scribe bowed with endless writing; and the dyer with his purple hands, and the fisher from the stream; and the stunted weaver from the loom, and the leper from the Temple gates. They were mad with l.u.s.t of life, a starveling life that the King had taxed, when he let not the Apura go. They were mad with fear of death; their women followed them with dead children in their arms. They smote down the golden furnishings, they tore the silken hangings, they cast the empty cups of the feast at the faces of trembling ladies, and cried aloud for the blood of the King.

"Where is Pharaoh?" they yelled, "show us Pharaoh and the Queen Meriamun, that we may slay them. Dead are our first born, they lie in heaps as the fish lay when Sihor ran red with blood. Dead are they because of the curse that has been brought upon us by the prophets of the Apura, whom Pharaoh, and Pharaoh's Queen, yet hold in Khem."

Now as they cried they saw Pharaoh Meneptah cowering behind the double line of Guards, and they saw the Queen Meriamun who cowered not, but stood silent above the din. Then she thrust her way through the Guards, and yet holding the body of the child to her breast, she stood before them with eyes that flashed more brightly than the uraeus crown upon her brow.

"Back!" she cried, "back! It is not Pharaoh, it is not I, who have brought this death upon you. For we too have death here!" and she held up the body of her dead son. "It is that False Hathor whom ye worship, that Witch of many a voice and many a face who turns your hearts faint with love. For her sake ye endure these woes, on her head is all this death. Go, tear her temple stone from stone, and rend her beauty limb from limb and be avenged and free the land from curses."

A moment the people stood and hearkened, muttering as stands the lion that is about to spring, while those who pressed without cried: "Forward! Forward! Slay them! Slay them!" Then as with one voice they screamed:

"The Hathor we love, but you we hate, for ye have brought these woes upon us, and ye shall die."

They cried, they brawled, they cast footstools and stones at the Guards, and then a certain tall man among them drew a bow. Straight at the Queen's fair breast he aimed his arrow, and swift and true it sped towards her. She saw the light gleam upon its shining barb, and then she did what no woman but Meriamun would have done, no, not to save herself from death--she held out the naked body of her son as a warrior holds a shield. The arrow struck through and through it, piercing the tender flesh, aye, and p.r.i.c.ked her breast beyond, so that she let the dead boy fall.

The Wanderer saw it and wondered at the horror of the deed, for he had seen no such deed in all his days. Then shouting aloud the terrible war-cry of the Achaeans he leapt upon the board before him, and as he leapt his golden armour clanged.

Glancing around, he fixed an arrow to the string and drew to his ear that great bow which none but he might so much as bend. Then as he loosed, the string sang like a swallow, and the shaft screamed through the air. Down the glorious hall it sped, and full on the breast of him who had lifted bow against the Queen the bitter arrow struck, nor might his harness avail to stay it. Through the body of him it pa.s.sed and with blood-red feathers flew on, and smote another who stood behind him so that his knees also were loosened, and together they fell dead upon the floor.

Now while the people stared and wondered, again the bowstring sang like a swallow, again the arrow screamed in its flight, and he who stood before it got his death, for the shield he bore was pinned to his breast.

Then wonder turned to rage; the mult.i.tude rolled forward, and from either side the air grew dark with arrows. For the Guards at the sight of the shooting of the Wanderer found heart and fought well and manfully. Boldly also the slayers came on, and behind them pressed many a hundred men. The Wanderer's golden helm flashed steadily, a beacon in the storm. Black smoke burst out in the hall, the hangings flamed and tossed in a wind from the open door. The lights were struck from the hands of the golden images, arrows stood thick in the tables and the rafters, a spear pierced through the golden cup of Pasht. But out of the darkness and smoke and dust, and the cry of battle, and through the rushing of the rain of spears, sang the swallow string of the black bow of Eurytus, and the long shafts shrieked as they sped on them who were ripe to die. In vain did the arrows of the slayers smite upon that golden harness. They were but as hail upon the temple roofs, but as driving snow upon the wild stag's horns. They struck, they rattled, and down they dropped like snow, or bounded back and lay upon the board.

The swallow string sang, the black bow tw.a.n.ged, and the bitter arrows shrieked as they flew.

Now the Wanderer's shafts were spent, and he judged that their case was desperate. For out of the doors of the hall that were behind them, and from the chambers of the women, armed men burst in also, taking them on the flank and rear. But the Wanderer was old in war, and without a match in all its ways. The Captain of the Guard was slain with a spear stroke, and the Wanderer took his place, calling to the men, such of them as were left alive, to form a circle on the das, and within the circle he set those of the house of Pharaoh and the women who were at the feast.

And to Pharaoh he cast a slain man's sword, bidding him strike for life and throne if he never struck before; but the heart was out of Pharaoh because of the death of his son, and the wine about his wits, and the terrors he had seen. Then Meriamun the Queen s.n.a.t.c.hed the sword from his trembling hand and stood holding it to guard her life. For she disdained to crouch upon the ground as did the other women, but stood upright behind the Wanderer, and heeded not the spears and arrows that dealt death on every hand. But Pharaoh stood, his face buried in his hands.

Now the slayers came on, shouting and clambering upon the das. Then the Wanderer rushed on them with sword drawn, and shield on high, and so swift he smote that men might not guard, for they saw, as it were, three blades aloft at once, and the silver-hafted sword bit deep, the gift of Phaeacian Euryalus long ago. The Guards also smote and thrust; it was for their lives they fought, and back rolled the tide of foes, leaving a swathe of dead. So a second time they came on, and a second time were rolled back.

Now of the defenders few were left unhurt, and their strength was well-nigh spent. But the Wanderer cheered them with great words, though his heart grew fearful for the end; and Meriamun the Queen also bade them to be of good courage, and if need were, to die like men. Then once again the wave of War rolled in upon them, and the strife grew fierce and desperate. The iron hedge of spears was well-nigh broken, and now the Wanderer, doing such deeds as had not been known in Khem, stood alone between Meriamun the Queen and the swords that thirsted for her life and the life of Pharaoh. Then of a sudden, from far down the great hall of banquets, there came a loud cry that shrilled above the clash of swords, the groans of men, and all the din of battle.

"_Pharaoh! Pharaoh! Pharaoh!_" rose a voice. "Now wilt thou let the people go?"

Then he who smote stayed his hand and he who guarded dropped his shield.

The battle ceased and all turned to look. There at the end of the hall, among the dead and dying, there stood the two ancient men of the Apura, and in their hands were cedar rods.

"It is the Wizards--the Wizards of the Apura," men cried, and shrunk this way and that, thinking no more on war.

The ancient men drew nigh. They took no heed of the dying or the dead: on they walked, through blood and wine and fallen tables and scattered arms, till they stood before the Pharaoh.

"_Pharaoh! Pharaoh! Pharaoh!_" they cried again. "Dead are the first-born of Khem at the hand of Jahveh. Wilt thou let the people go?"

Then Pharaoh lifted his face and cried:

"Get you gone--you and all that is yours. Get you gone swiftly, and let Khem see your face no more."

The people heard, and the living left the hall, and silence fell on the city, and on the dead who died of the sword, and the dead who died of the pestilence. Silence fell, and sleep, and the G.o.ds' best gift--forgetfulness.

III

THE BATHS OF BRONZE

Even out of this night of dread the morning rose, and with it came Rei, bearing a message from the King. But he did not find the Wanderer in his chamber. The Palace eunuchs said that he had risen and had asked for Kurri, the Captain of the Sidonians, who was now the Queen's Jeweller.

Thither Rei went, for Kurri was lodged with the servants in a court of the Royal House, and as the old man came he heard the sound of hammers beating on metal. There, in the shadow which the Palace wall cast into a little court, there was the Wanderer; no longer in his golden mail, but with bare arms, and dressed in such a light smock as the workmen of Khem were wont to wear.

The Wanderer was bending over a small brazier, whence a flame and a light blue smoke arose and melted into the morning light. In his hand he held a small hammer, and he had a little anvil by him, on which lay one of the golden shoulder-plates of his armour. The other pieces were heaped beside the brazier. Kurri, the Sidonian, stood beside him, with graving tools in his hands.

"Hail to thee, Eperitus," cried Rei, calling him by the name he had chosen to give himself. "What makest thou here with fire and anvil?"

"I am but furbishing up my armour," said the Wanderer, smiling. "It has more than one dint from the fight in the hall;" and he pointed to his shield, which was deeply scarred across the blazon of the White Bull, the cognizance of dead Paris, Priam's son. "Sidonian, blow up the fire."

Kurri crouched on his hams and blew the blaze to a white heat with a pair of leathern bellows, while the Wanderer fitted the plates and hammered at them on the anvil, making the jointures smooth and strong, talking meanwhile with Rei.

"Strange work for a prince, as thou must be in Alybas, whence thou comest," quoth Rei, leaning on his long rod of cedar, headed with an apple of bluestone. "In our country chiefs do not labour with their hands."

"Different lands, different ways," answered Eperitus. "In my country men wed not their sisters as your kings do, though, indeed, it comes into my mind that once I met such brides in my wanderings in the isle of the King of the Winds."

For the thought of the aeolian isle, where King aeolus gave him all the winds in a bag, came into his memory.

"My hands can serve me in every need," he went on. "Mowing the deep green gra.s.s in spring, or driving oxen, or cutting a clean furrow with the plough in heavy soil, or building houses and ships, or doing smith's work with gold and bronze and grey iron--they are all one to me."

"Or the work of war," said Rei. "For there I have seen thee labour. Now, listen, thou Wanderer, the King Meneptah and the Queen Meriamun send me to thee with this scroll of their will," and he drew forth a roll of papyrus, bound with golden threads, and held it on his forehead, bowing, as if he prayed.

"What is that roll of thine?" said the Wanderer, who was hammering at the bronze spear-point, that stood fast in his helm.

Rei undid the golden threads and opened the scroll, which he gave into the Wanderer's hand.

"G.o.ds! What have we here?" said the Wanderer. "Here are pictures, tiny and cunningly drawn, serpents in red, and little figures of men sitting or standing, axes and snakes and birds and beetles! My father, what tokens are these?" and he gave the scroll back to Rei.

"The King has made his Chief Scribe write to thee, naming thee Captain of the Legion of Pasht, the Guard of the Royal House, for last night the Captain was slain. He gives thee a high t.i.tle, and he promises thee houses, lands, and a city of the South to furnish thee with wine, and a city of the North to furnish thee with corn, if thou wilt be his servant."

"Never have I served any man," said the Wanderer, flushing red, "though I went near to being sold and to knowing the day of slavery. The King does me too much honour."

"Thou wouldest fain begone from Khem?" asked the old man, eagerly.

"I would fain find her I came to seek, wherever she may be," said the Wanderer. "Here or otherwhere."