'Which way?' she asked.

  'The rest of the squadron will be far up the valley by now, and they will be driving too fast for us to catch them. Also they are heading in the wrong direction,' he told her. 'The other hunters are scattered across the desert, We could search for them all day without finding them.'

  'We must return to where the fleet is lying at Dabba. There is a surgeon with the ships.' She had reached the only feasible conclusion, and he nodded. She urged the horses into a walk, and they left the grove and climbed to the high ground heading south once again.

  'It's three hours or more to reach Dabba,' she said.

  'Not if we cut across the loop of the river,' he answered. 'We can shorten the return by at least four leagues.'

  Mintaka hesitated and looked eastwards into the bleak desert, which he wanted her to attempt. 'I might lose the way,' she murmured fearfully.

  'I will guide you,' he answered, confident in the instruction that Taita had given him in desert travel. 'It's our best chance.'

  She swung the team to the left, marking a blue shale hillock in the direction Nefer had pointed out to her.

  When they were strong and well they both delighted in the motion of a chariot running hard over broken ground, and they rode the pitch and roll with young legs. But now, even though she kept the horses down to a walk or a trot, the collision with every stone or hump, the drop into every hole, was transmitted through the rigid chassis into Nefer's torn body. He winced and sweated, but tried to hide his pain and discomfort from her. Yet as the hours wore on, his wounds stiffened, and the pain became unbearable. He groaned aloud at a particularly nasty impact, and slumped into unconsciousness.

  Immediately Mintaka reined the pair to a halt, and tried to revive him. She soaked a pad of linen with water and squeezed a few drops between his lips. Then she sponged his pale, sweating face. But when she tried to rebandage his wounds she found that the gash in his thigh was bleeding again. She worked to staunch it, but succeeded only in reducing it to a slow leak. 'You are going to be all right, my darling,' she told him, with a confidence she did not feel. She embraced him gently, kissed the top of his dusty blood-caked head, and took up the reins again.

  An hour later she gave the last of the water to Nefer and the horses, not drinking herself. Then she stood as high as she could on the dashboard of the chariot and looked about her at the gravel and shale hills that danced and wavered in the heat mirage. She knew she was lost. Have I drifted too far eastwards? she wondered, glancing up at the sun and trying to calculate its angle. At her feet Nefer stirred and moaned, and she looked down with a brave face and smiled. 'Not much further now, my heart. We should see the river over the next crest.'

  She rearranged the sheepskin from the bedroll under his head, then stood up, gathered the reins and braced herself. Suddenly she realized how exhausted she was: every muscle in her body ached and her eyes were sore and red from the sun's glare and the dust. She forced herself and the team onwards.

  Soon the horses were showing signs of distress. They had stopped sweating and the salt rime dried white across their backs. She tried to urge them into a trot but they could not respond, so she climbed down, took the stallion's head and led them on. Now she was staggering herself, but at last she found the tracks of a chariot in a sandy valley bottom, and her spirits lifted.

  'They are heading west,' she whispered, through lips that were beginning to swell and crack. 'They will lead us back to the river.' She kept moving along the wheel ruts for some time, until she stopped in confusion as she found her own footprints in front of her. It took her some time to realize that she must have walked in a circle and was following her own tracks.

  At last despair overtook her. She sank down to her knees, helpless and lost, and whispered to Nefer as he lay, still unconscious, 'I am sorry, my darling. I have failed you.' She stroked the matted hair from his face. Then she looked up at the low hilltop to the east, and blinked. She shook her head to clear her vision, glanced away to rest her burning eyes, then looked back. She felt her spirits surge upwards once again, but still she could not be sure that what she was seeing was illusion or reality.

  On the crest of the hills above them, a gaunt figure stood on the skyline, leaning on his long staff. His silver hair shone like a cloud, and the hot light breeze off the desert flapped his skirts against his heron-thin legs. He was staring down at them.

  'Oh, Hathor and all the goddesses, it can't be so,' she whispered.

  Beside her, Nefer opened his eyes. Taita is near,' he murmured. 'I feel him close.'

  'Yes. Taita is here.' Her voice was faint, and she held her own throat in shock. 'But how did he know where to find us?'

  'He knows. Taita knows,' Nefer replied, closed his eyes and slumped back into unconsciousness.

  The old man was striding down the rugged slope towards them now, and Mintaka pulled herself to her feet and tottered to meet him. Swiftly her fatigue fell away and she waved and screamed greetings at him, almost delirious with joy.

  --

  Taita drove down the escarpment towards the river and the village of Dabba. The horses responded to his touch, moving to an easy motion that cosseted the wounded boy on the footplate. Taita seemed to have known with some deep instinct just what medicines and dressings Nefer would need, and he had carried these with him. After he had re-dressed the wounds he had led the horses to a hidden water seep nearby, where the bitter water had revived them. He had taken Mintaka up on the footplate and turned the horses' heads unerringly in the direction of Dabba and the river.

  Beside him, Mintaka had pleaded with him, almost tearfully, to explain to her how he had known that they needed him, and where to find them. Taita had smiled gently, and called to the horses, 'Gently now, Hammer! Steady, Stargazed'

  On the floorboards Nefer was deep in the drugged sleep of the Red Shepenn, but his wounds were staunched, cleaned and bound with linen bandages.

  A red and angry sunset was fading over the Nile like a dying bush-fire. The boats of the fleet were still anchored in the stream, like children's toys in the fading light.

  Apepi and Naja rode out to meet them from the village of Dabba. Lord Naja was highly agitated, and Apepi bellowed at his daughter as soon as they were in range of his bull voice, 'Where have you been, you stupid child? Half the army is out looking for you.'

  Lord Naja's agitation abated as soon as he came close enough to see Nefer bandaged and unconscious in the bottom of the chariot cockpit. He became almost sanguine when Taita explained to him the extent of Pharaoh's injury.

  Barely conscious, Nefer was carried down to the riverbank on a litter and lifted gently aboard one of the galleys by a party of boatmen. 'I want Pharaoh taken up to Thebes with all possible speed,' Taita told Naja, 'even if it means a night journey. There is a very real danger that the wounds will putrefy. This happens with injuries received from one of the great cats. It is almost as though their fangs and claws are steeped in some virulent poison.'

  'You can order the galley to sail at once,' Naja said, in front of the company, but then took Taita's arm and led him a short way along the riverbank to where they could not be overheard. 'Bear in mind, Magus, the charge laid on you by the gods. Clearly I discern their divine intervention in these extraordinary circumstances. If Pharaoh were to die from his wounds no person in either kingdom would take it as unnatural.' He said no more but gazed into Taita's face with those piercing yellow eyes.

  'The will of the gods will prevail against all else,' Taita agreed quietly, but enigmatically.

  Naja read in his reply what he wanted to hear. 'We are in accord, Taita. I place my trust in you. Go in peace. I will follow you back to Thebes after Apepi has been taken care of.' The phrasing of this last remark struck Taita as unusual, but he was too distracted to ponder it. Naja smiled mysteriously and went on, 'Who knows? We may have momentous news for each other when we meet again.'

  When Taita hurried back on board the galley, and went to the small deck cabin in which Nefer lay, he found Mintaka kneeling beside the litter in tears.

  'What is it, my darling?' he asked her gently. 'You have been as brave as a lioness. You have fought like a warrior of the guards. How can you dissolve into despair now?'

  'My father is taking me back to Avaris in the morning, but I should be with Nefer. I am his betrothed. He needs me. We need each other.' She looked up at him piteously, and he could see that she was both physically and emotionally exhausted.

  She seized his hand. 'Oh, Magus! Will you not go to my father and ask him to let me go back to Thebes to help you to take care of Nefer? My father will listen to you.'

  But Apepi snorted with laughter when Taita attempted to persuade him. 'Place my lamb in Naja's pen?' He shook his head with amusement. 'I trust Naja as I would a scorpion. Who knows what tricks he would try if I gave him that coin to bargain with? As for that young puppy, Nefer, he would be up her skirts as quick as a hawk on a bustard, if he hasn't travelled that road already.' He laughed again. 'I don't want to debase the currency of her virginity. No, Warlock, Mintaka comes back under my wing to Avaris until her wedding day. And none of your magic spells will change my mind on that.'

  Sadly Mintaka went to take her leave of Nefer. He was on the edge of consciousness, weak from the blood he had lost and the drug. But when she kissed him he opened his eyes. She spoke quietly, pledging her love, and he watched her eyes as she spoke. Before she rose to leave him, she took the golden locket that hung at her throat. 'This contains a lock of my hair. It is my soul, and I give it to you.' She placed it in his hand and he folded his fingers tightly around it.

  So Mintaka stood alone on the bank of the Nile as the swift galley bearing Nefer and Taita breasted the current. With twenty oarsmen a side and a white curl under her prow she headed upstream towards Thebes. Mintaka did not wave at Taita's tall silhouette on the stern, but watched him forlornly.

  --

  The next morning there was a final meeting between Apepi and the Regent, Lord Naja, on board the Hyksosian royal barge. All Apepi's nine sons were present and Mintaka was seated beside her father. Apepi had kept her on a tight rein since the previous evening when the ship bearing Pharaoh Nefer Seti had left. From long experience, he knew his headstrong daughter well enough to trust neither her judgement nor her sense of filial duty and obedience when she had set her heart on a course of action.

  The farewell ceremony took place on the deck of Apepi's galley, with protestations of mutual trust and devotion to the peace.

  'May it last a thousand years!' Naja intoned, as he bestowed upon Apepi the Gold of Eternity, an honour he had created for this auspicious occasion.

  'A thousand times a thousand,' Apepi replied, with equal gravity, as the chain of the order, encrusted with precious and semi-precious gems, was placed around his shoulders. The Regent and the king embraced with the affection of brothers, then Naja was rowed across to his own galley. As the two fleets diverged, one to return to Thebes the other to run down with the current hundreds of leagues to Memphis and Avaris, the crews cheered each other out of sight. Garlands and wreaths of palm fronds and blossoms tossed from one vessel towards the other bestrewed the surface of the wide river.

  The urgency of King Apepi's voyage did not dictate that his fleet should sail on in the darkness of this moonless night, so that evening they anchored at Balasfura, opposite the temple of Hapi, the half hippopotamus hermaphroditic god of the Nile. The king and his family went ashore and made sacrifice of a pure white ox at the altar in the sanctuary. The high priest disembowelled the bellowing beast, and while it still lived he drew and inspected the entrails to read the auspice for the king. He was appalled to find that the animal's guts were infested with stinking white worms, which spilled on to the temple floor in a seething mass. He tried to hide this hideous phenomenon from the king by spreading his cloak and beginning to make up some mendacious nonsense, but Apepi shouldered him aside and stared at the horrible sight. Even he was visibly shaken, and for once he was subdued as they left the temple and went down to the riverbank where Trok and the officers under his command had arranged a banquet and entertainment for him.

  Even the sacred black cockerels of the temple refused to peck at the contaminated entrails of the sacrifice. The priests threw the grisly mess on the temple fire, but rather than consume the entrails the fire, which had burned since antiquity, was extinguished by them. The signs could not have been more inauspicious, but the high priest ordered the entrails to be buried and the fire to be relit. 'I have never seen such an unhappy omen,' he told his acolytes. 'Such a sign from the god Hapi can only presage some terrible event, such as war or the death of Pharaoh. We must pray through all this night for the recovery of Pharaoh Nefer Seti from his wounds.'

  On the riverbank Lord Trok had set up pavilions hung with vivid red, yellow and green curtains to receive the royal family. Whole oxen were grilling over the pits of glowing ash, and amphorae of the choicest wines were cooling in the river waters. Slaves staggered up the bank under the weight of them as one after the other they were drained by the company and Apepi bellowed for fresh jars to be brought.

  The king's sombre mood lightened with each bowl he lowered, and soon he encouraged his sons to join him in singing the ribald marching songs of his army. Some were so scurrilous that Mintaka pleaded exhaustion and a sick headache, and she and her slave girls rose to retire to the royal barge anchored offshore. She tried to take her youngest brother, Khyan, with her, but Apepi intervened. The good wine had helped him to throw off the misgivings brought upon him by the divination in the temple. 'Leave the boy where he is, you little vixen. He should be taught to appreciate good music.' He hugged the boy to him in an excess of affection, and held the wine bowl to his lips. Take a sup. It will make you sing all the sweeter, my princeling."

  Khyan adored his father, and such public comradeship reduced him to a transport of pride and hero-worship. At last his father was treating him like a man and a warrior. Even though he gagged upon it, he managed to drain the bowl and the company, led by Lord Trok, cheered him as though he had killed his first enemy in battle.

  Mintaka hesitated. She felt an almost maternal sense of protection for her little brother, but she realized that her father was beyond reason. With all dignity she led her maids down to the riverbank and, to the ironic and inebriated cheers of the company, they went aboard the barge.

  Mintaka lay on her mattress and listened to the sounds of revelry. She tried to compose herself to sleep, but Nefer was in the forefront of her mind. The sense of loss that she had held at bay all day, and her concern for Nefer's injuries, flooded back, and though she tried to prevent them, tears welled up. She smothered her sobs in her pillows.

  At last she sank into a black, dreamless sleep, from which she woke with difficulty. She had sipped only a little of the wine, but she felt drugged and her head ached. She wondered what had roused her. Then she heard raucous voices through the side of the hull, and the barge rocked under her as a weight of men clambered aboard. There was drunken laughter and voices, and heavy footfalls from the deck over her head. From their comments it seemed that her father and her brothers were being carried on board. It was not unusual for the men in her family to drink themselves into this condition, but she was worried about little Khyan.

  She dragged herself from her bed and began to dress, but she felt strangely listless and confused. She staggered as she climbed up on deck.

  The first person she met was Lord Trok. He was directing the men who were carrying her father. It took six of them to handle his huge inert bulk. Her elder brothers were in no better case. She felt angry and ashamed of them.

  Then she saw Khyan being carried by a boatman, and she ran to him. Now they have done it to Khyan also, she thought bitterly. They will not rest until they have turned him into a drunkard too.

  She directed the boatman to carry Khyan down to the mattress in her father's cabin where she undressed him and forced a distillation of herbs between his lips to revive him. The potion was a cure-all that Taita had mixed for her, and it seemed to be efficacious. At last Khyan murmured and opened his eyes, then fell back immediately into a deep but natural sleep. 'I hope he learns from this,' she told herself. There was nothing more she could do other than leave him to sleep it off. Besides, she still felt lethargic and her headache was unbearable. She went back to her own cabin and, without bothering to undress, she dropped on to the mattress, and almost immediately succumbed to sleep again.

  The next time she woke she believed that she was in nightmare for she could hear screams and she was choking on clouds of thick smoke that scalded the back of her throat. Before she was fully conscious she found herself bundled out of her bed, swaddled in a blanket of furs and carried on deck. She struggled, but she was as helpless as an infant in a powerful grip.

  On deck the moonless night was lit by leaping flames. They were roaring out of the open forward hatch of the royal barge, climbing the masts and rigging in a hellish orange torrent. She had never seen a wooden hull burn before and the speed and ferocity of the flames appalled her.

  She could not stare at it for long, for she found herself carried swiftly across the deck and down the side into a waiting felucca. Her senses returned to her in a rush, and she began again to struggle and scream. 'My father! My brothers! Khyan! Where are they?'