Running to the first of the crackling fires along the quayside, Piay kicked out at the burning bricks of dung and straw. The sailors lurched out of their drunken warmth, shouting and cursing, as sparks cascaded around them. Embers flew over the edge of the wharf. Some sizzled into the water, but some would land on the vessels moored below.

  He was racing to the next fire as a roar rose up from the sailors behind him. Glancing back, he saw smoke rising past the edge of the quay, and an amber glow. One of those papyrus skiffs was aflame.

  Piay dashed up to the next fire and kicked the burning blocks over the side once more. In their drunken beer-haze, the sailors were barely aware of what he had done. That bought him some time.

  But when he raced towards the third fire, the rivermen were on their feet, bellowing and shaking their fists. Deciding he had drained the last of his luck, Piay dropped back. But he had already achieved everything he had hoped for. A tide of panic washed along the harbour as the sailors milled about, thundering their impotence into the night.

  A wall of fire licked up. Flames leaped from skiff to boat to wooden ship along the closely packed moorings. Bales of silk and papyrus sizzled, the perfect tinder for the inferno.

  One riverman lumbered towards him in a fury. Piay thrust him aside, clouting him around the side of the head for good measure. Others began to turn towards him as word spread that he was the source of this disaster. Behind him, the Hyksos were out of the city, their horses pounding over the limestone paving towards the harbour.

  Piay darted away from the gathering mob, towards the area the inferno had not yet reached. As his enemies bore down on him, he hurled himself off the quayside and landed in a skiff. The vessel rocked wildly, but Piay rolled, thrust back to his feet and then dived off the stern.

  The chill black waters swamped him. Piay kicked out to stay beneath the surface, letting the current drag him. After a moment, he swam up. Treading water, he looked back at what he had wrought. Flames roared so high he could no longer see the walls of Avaris. Crosses blazed against the night sky as the masts sucked the fire up to the heavens. Wisps of burning sailcloth fluttered on the breeze. Piay’s ears rang with the din of that inferno, like an enormous beast awakening to fill its belly, and the throat-rending cries of the men surging along the quayside. He blinked at the glare of the blinding light in the dark and could just make out the fleeting shadows of the barbarians riding back and forth. What could they do? He had shown them the might of a wakening Egypt. Another great victory.

  The Hyksos would not forget the visit of Piay the Spy.

  He craned his neck and shouted ‘Hannu!’

  A response rolled back across the water, and after a few more hails, Piay glimpsed the silhouette of the skiff. He struck out towards it and a moment later rough hands grasped him and heaved him over the side into the vessel.

  Piay sprawled on to his back, laughing as exhilaration coursed through his body.

  ‘What a night, eh, Hannu?’ he roared. ‘The tales they will tell of this. Piay the Great! One man who tweaked the beards of the mighty Hyksos!’

  ‘I would wager they are telling tales now.’ Hannu settled on to his bench and snatched up his oars. ‘Of an enemy who dared venture into the heart of their land on a foray of some great importance. Of a spy whose name and face are now known to all. And of the fury. Aye, imagine that. Fury so great that this wanderer will never be forgiven and who will now have the entire might of the Hyksos empire hunting him down to the ends of the earth, like a rabid dog.’

  Piay’s grin faded. He watched the stars drift by overhead, and shrugged.

  ‘Well, that is a problem for tomorrow.’

  Hannu dipped his oars into the water and leaned into the first stroke. A tuneless whistle broke out as he laboured. Piay knew that sound. His companion only blew that note when he was worried.

  F

  lies buzzed over the vast papyrus swamps in the heat of the morning. The wetland reached out into the hazy distance on either side of the narrowing channel of the river, lakes and lagoons glaring in the brassy light as they mirrored the blue sky. A white stork soared up from where it had been feeding, its huge wings beating. The air was thick with the reek of rotting vegetation and that black mud.

  From the shade beneath the shelter, Piay squinted as he searched the waving rushes. Tomorrow had arrived and the problem seemed larger. That triumph was nothing more than a fading dream. Everywhere he looked he was seeing enemies. Hannu was right. The Hyksos would not rest now. He had a price on his head. He may well have put the entire assignment at risk. More, he could have thrown away the last chance they had to save his people.

  ‘Was she worth it?’ Hannu said, as if he could read Piay’s thoughts.

  ‘Meryt is a fine woman and her passion always runs hot.’

  ‘As hot as that fire you lit along the harbour?’

  ‘If you knew her, you would have found her hard to ignore.’

  ‘Her husband will no doubt be thinking of you with as much passion, though of a different kind. I would imagine he’s telling the Hyksos everything he knows about you. And of course we already informed the tax collector of our destination.’

  ‘Then we’d better reach Sena before our pursuers. We have a head start. The current is strong. Row harder. Earn your keep.’ Piay sighed. ‘Why do you insist on finding a storm cloud in every sky?’

  ‘When that storm cloud is a tempest, it’s hard to ignore.’

  Piay watched the stork glide across the papyrus beds, but his thoughts settled on the sensation of Meryt’s skin beneath his fingertips.

  ‘I often muse on the meaning of love, Hannu. I have never found it, as much as I enjoy the pleasures of a woman. The poets weave words of wonder about it. I have heard others speak of it as if they were lifted up to the gods. I think it is a myth. What say you, Hannu?’

  ‘Love is real.’

  ‘You’ve found it?’

  ‘With my wife.’

  Piay frowned. ‘You never told me you had a wife.’

  ‘You never asked.’

  ‘What . . .? Where is she?’

  ‘Dead. Killed by the Hyksos.’

  Hannu leaned on the oars with steady strokes. He stared into the middle distance, past the shelter where Piay sprawled, seemingly seeing nothing, thinking nothing. But Piay sensed a change had come over him, so subtle it barely registered – a stiffness in the shoulders, perhaps.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘While I was away harrying the barbarians with the Blue Crocodile Guards, she remained with her father and mother. She was in the fields one day at their farm when the Hyksos came. She died. They all died.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that.’

  ‘What’s done is done.’

  ‘But still—’

  ‘The captain of the Blue Crocodile Guards took pity on me. He ordered us to track down the war band responsible. We slaughtered them all. I plunged my own sword into the heart of the one who had ordered it.’

  ‘Then there was justice. That must bring you some comfort.’

  Hannu rowed, one stroke after another in perfect time. Eventually he said, ‘That was the day I took the wound to my leg. I was no use to the Blue Crocodile Guards then.’

  ‘I was surprised to find you begging. I thought the Blue Crocodile Guards looked after their own.’

  Hannu said nothing. Piay watched him for a long moment, puzzling over the thoughts that might be running through his assistant’s mind. Hannu was a mystery at the best of times.

  Eventually he felt his eyelids droop and he drifted to the gentle splash of the oars.

  S

  ena simmered under a blazing sun. The port nestled beyond the marshes, on the eastern extremes of the delta, caught between the bleak, unforgiving vastness of the Sinai and the cooling breeze blowing from the Uat-Ur sea – ‘the Great Green’, as it was known to all Egyptians.

  Piay watched the expanse of rolling waves, as terrible in its own way as the great waste of the Sinai at its back. He felt trepidation as he imagined the voyage he would soon have to take across that gulf, and the tales he had heard of the dangers that beset travellers. His life would be in the hands of the gods.

  Hannu grunted as he tied up the skiff on the muddy bank. His arms would be aching, Piay knew. The journey from Avaris had been relentless in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of the barbarians who would be pursuing them. He’d taken his own turns at the oars to give his assistant a rest, but Hannu had insisted on rowing harder and for longer. He was a good man to have on an adventure like this.

  Piay peered upriver. There was no sign of that pursuit, but he knew not to let his guard down. The barbarians would reach Sena soon. He’d made the decision to leave the skiff here, away from any attention their arrival might bring at the busy river harbour. And if the gods were willing, they could collect it upon their return, hopefully with an army at their backs.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Hannu asked as they strode past the flax fields towards the city.

  ‘Get on a ship. Cross the sea. Arrive in the land of the Mycaeneans.’

  Hannu nodded. ‘Good plan. Your master’s lessons on strategy did not go amiss.’

  ‘In situations like this, I’ve found it best to keep an open mind. The gods have a way of throwing obstacles into the path of a rigid thinker. A free mind leaves space for an agile response.’

  Hannu was not convinced.

  T

  he streets of Sena throbbed with life. As he pushed his way through the crowd, Piay kept his head down. They could lose themselves among this multitude, two more strange faces in a sea of travellers from seemingly all over the world. He drank in the unfamiliar shape of features and skin colours and clothes, more disparate even than he had seen in Avaris. Sena was the gateway to lands untold – to Arabia in the east and those places from across the Uat-Ur that he had only heard described in Taita’s stories.

  Not far from the harbour, Piay slipped into a small temple to make a prayer to Khonsu, the god of the moon and all travellers. His feet whispered across the white marble floor under the watchful gaze of the shaven-headed priests. Endless numbers of Egyptian sailors drifted in to make their offerings, requesting fair weather and good winds for the journeys that were to come. He waited until he could approach the altar. The statue of the god loomed over it and Piay looked up at the falcon head and the mummy-wrapped body, the crook and the flail grasped in its hands. He had never seen fit to pray to Khonsu before and he hoped the god would forgive him.

  Upon the marble altar, he laid a bundle of papyrus he had brought from the skiff and bowed his head.

  ‘My Lord Khonsu, god of light in the night, keep me free from harm on my voyage across the Great Green,’ he murmured. ‘Be my pathfinder. Guide me to safe shores. Fill the sails with wind and keep my time upon the waves short.’

  Piay’s skin prickled at the unfamiliar sensation of unease. No adventure had ever daunted him, but he had never been upon the sea before, had never even seen that vast expanse of water. He did not like this feeling.

  Once he’d ventured out from the cool interior into the baking heat of the day, he glimpsed Hannu hurrying through the crowd. Piay couldn’t read the man’s cold face at the best of times, but now he looked as if he had been carved from stone.

  ‘What did you find?’ Piay breathed as they bowed together close to the temple wall.

  ‘I searched along the waterfront, as you requested,’ Hannu said, ‘and there is a ship sailing for Mycenae later this day. Whether you can persuade the captain to let you buy passage with our bales of papyrus is down to that silver tongue of yours. But you will need to take care doing it. The harbour is swarming with Hyksos.’

  ‘Looking for us?’

  Hannu nodded, his eyes darting. ‘They wasted no time following our trail.’

  ‘A small obstacle,’ Piay said with a shrug. ‘Once we are sailing out into the Great Green we will have nothing more to worry about.’

  G

  ulls wheeled across the blue sky and the white-tipped waves rolled in. From the shadows of a warehouse wall, Piay stared out across the azure sea, so awed by the sight of the expanse that he barely heard the din of haggling merchants and ship-masters yelling for their apprentices. Across the quayside, sweating men heaved bales of linen and flax and staggered under the weight of clay pots. One newly arrived vessel was disgorging the contents of its hold. Seamen lurched down the planks with what seemed to be tin and copper, no doubt from Anatolia, loading the valuable cargo into a succession of carts.

  Hannu nudged him and jabbed a thumb. A gang of Hyksos warriors moved among the merchants and slaves, searching this way and that. They were dressed for battle in leather breastplates, their swords swinging at their hips. As he watched their progress, Piay thought how many had been sent to hunt him down. He must have angered them indeed.

  ‘Where is our ship?’ Piay breathed.

  Hannu pointed to where a vessel strained at its moorings on the swell.

  Piay marvelled. The ship was larger than he had imagined, with a central mast on which a red-and-white-striped sail was furled. There was a platform at the front where the navigator stood, and at the rear a higher platform for the master of the steering oar. Rows of benches lined the decks for the oarsmen. From the depth of the vessel, Piay imagined a huge hold lay beneath them. The hull was constructed from large planks of cedarwood lashed together with woven straps. Reeds had been stuffed between them to seal the seams, and pitch had been painted across the lower part of the hull to make it watertight.

  ‘That looks sturdy enough, I suppose,’ Piay muttered.

  Before Hannu could protest, Piay strode across the quayside, weaving among the flow of bodies. Keeping his head down, he looked from under his brows until there was a sufficient gap among the prowling barbarians, and then he hurried to the ship.

  The captain was a short man with a hooked nose and half-lidded eyes that shifted with furtive movements. He introduced himself as Atmos.

  ‘We would like to buy passage on your vessel,’ Piay said as they stood by the plank to the ship. Hannu kept watch nearby.

  Atmos looked him up and down. ‘What can you offer?’

  ‘We have a skiff filled with good quality papyrus. You will not be disappointed. Your men can fetch it from our boat and store it in a warehouse here, if that is to your liking.’

  The captain showed an emotionless face, but his eyes flickered towards Hannu.

  ‘What business do you have in Greece?’

  ‘My own.’

  ‘Keen to leave in a hurry, I see.’

  ‘My business is pressing.’ Piay hardened at the captain’s questions. ‘I’m offering a fair trade. Do we have an agreement, or should I find another captain willing to take us.’

  Atmos fingered his chin, still watching Hannu.

  ‘We have an agreement.’

  Once Piay had given the details of where the skiff had been moored, he glanced along the vessels in the harbour. Bands of barbarians were searching each ship in turn. Cursing under his breath, he turned to the captain and said, ‘We must make ready. When do you intend to sail?’

  ‘When the sun has fallen to the tip of the mast.’

  ‘We will return by then.’

  ‘Make sure you do. If you are not here when we loose the moorings, I will not wait and I will not return your papyrus.’

  He marched up the plank.

  Piay beckoned to Hannu and they slipped across the quay to the shade of the warehouses.

  ‘They know our only way out of here is across the sea,’ Hannu grunted. ‘They’re not fools.’

  ‘No, but we will still outwit them,’ Piay replied in a confident voice.

  There was no gain in pointing out to Hannu that he had not yet lighted upon a plan to evade those constantly searching bands.

  As he watched, one of the barbarians strode up to where Atmos was overseeing the loading of his ship. The two men bowed their heads together in deep conversation. Piay stiffened, expecting heads to swivel in their direction, but after a moment the Hyksos warrior moved on to the next vessel.

  I

  n their ones and twos, the sailors made their way back to Atmos’ ship. Most settled into their places upon the benches, but Piay watched two seamen take their position by the moorings. It would not be long until departure. Yet the Hyksos were everywhere, still questioning merchants and captains, watching any movement on board the vessels.

  ‘Tell me again about that plan of yours,’ Hannu said.

  Piay looked around, his thoughts racing. His attention alighted on a slow procession of carts being dragged by donkeys to a vessel moored next to their intended ship. There, a line of sweating slaves hauled bolts of linen and tall jars off the back of the carts and passed them from hand to hand up on to the ship.

  ‘Follow me,’ Piay breathed.

  Hurrying along the street to the last of the line of carts, he told Hannu to climb on to the back one and burrow among the contents. Piay clambered in behind Hannu. He tugged over them both a sheet of cloth that had been used to protect the contents from the elements. As the cart trundled out on to the wharf, Piay peered out of the rear at the passing crowd.

  How clever I am, he thought. We would never have been able to get past the horde of barbarians if not for my sharp wits.

  But as they reached the point where he could hear the waves against the hulls, a loud voice commanded the caravan to stop. The cart juddered to a halt. Piay glanced back. Hannu was gritting his teeth, fearing what was to come.

  ‘They’re here somewhere. I can smell them.’

  Piay felt the hairs on his neck prickle. That voice sounded familiar. He sensed Hannu willing him to stay still, no doubt recognising that voice, too. An odd tinkling echoed when the breeze blew, another sound he had heard before. He should lie still as Hannu wanted, he knew, but he couldn’t resist easing up the edge of the covering cloth to get a better view.