Magnus and Ziri quickly slung an arm over each shoulder and dragged Corvinus to the open door.
Peering outside into the moonlit agora, Vespasian could see no one close by, but their attackers were running over to the other side of the square where a group of figures surrounded the storeroom to which the comatose troopers had earlier been dragged to sleep off the date wine.
‘There’s nothing that we can do about them,’ Vespasian hissed, turning away and grabbing Corvinus’ ankles, ‘they’ll have butchered them by now. Let’s get out before those bastards get their reinforcements.’
Running as fast as possible with the dead weight of Corvinus between them, they skirted around the edge of the agora; coming to an alley leading away, they turned up it as an almighty shout came from over by the storeroom.
‘Shit! That’s them after us,’ Magnus said as they raced up the dark alley. Corvinus started to moan; his head lolled from side to side. ‘I fucking wish old matey-boy here could hold his drink.’
Suddenly the alley opened onto a main street; they paused and looked each way, it was deserted. Darting across the road they found another alley and sprinted up it. Behind them they could hear the shouts of their pursuers growing closer.
Almost a hundred pounding heartbeats later the mean houses on either side of the alley abruptly ended and they came out into a date palm forest.
‘Straight ahead!’ Vespasian puffed. ‘And keep an eye out for somewhere to hide; we’ll never outrun them with him dragging us down. Let’s pray that they didn’t see which alley we went up.’
‘Why don’t we just leave him?’
‘If it comes to a choice between all four of us getting killed or just him, we will.’
‘I think we’ve just reached that point, sir,’ Magnus observed as a horde of silhouetted figures flooded out of the alley, just over a hundred paces behind them.
With a quick glance between them they dropped Corvinus and sprinted away.
Weaving through the moonlit palms they managed to put on a good turn of speed but their pursuers, more used to the terrain, were gaining on them.
‘Split up,’ Vespasian shouted, veering left, ‘we’ll meet up back at that lake soon after dawn.’
With a grunt of acknowledgement Magnus ran off to the right, taking Ziri with him, leaving Vespasian pelting through the night on his own; his legs were beginning to ache with the exertion. His chest started to tighten and his heartbeat thumped in his inner ears. The shouts of the pursuers told him that they were following him and catching up.
He burst out into a clearing, cursed himself for breaking cover and sprinted towards the far side.
Ten paces before gaining the comparative safety of the palms an ear-splitting cry stopped him in his tracks; he fell to the ground, hands over his ears. The cry then turned into a wailing note, mid-range and wavering at first, like a beautiful, mourning hymn of the gods; it worked its way ever higher until it reached peaks of such a piercing intensity and clarity that all other senses retreated as Vespasian listened to the sublime sound. Gradually it started to slow and ease down in pitch, as if the singer, tired by the emotion of the song, had decided to bring the piece to a close with a series of exquisite notes, ever lowering, ever softening, until, after one final gentle breath, there was silence.
Vespasian got to his knees, stunned by the aural experience that he had just been subjected to. He looked back; his pursuers were all grovelling on the ground on the far side of the clearing.
A sudden, golden flash caused him to shut his eyes tight and lower his head; he felt a warmth on his skin that began to grow gradually. He opened his eyes; the clearing was awash with light, gaining in intensity as if it were imitating visually the song just sung.
‘Bennu! Bennu!’ the grovelling men cried.
Vespasian looked up and, shielding his eyes, saw that the source of the light was a beacon perched implausibly on top of a tall date palm close to him on the edge of the clearing. Golden sparks fell from it, turning orange and then red as they floated to the ground to collect in an ever growing pile of glowing embers at the base of the tree.
Burning with increasing ferocity the flame became pure white at its peak; heat from it scorched Vespasian’s face and hands as it bathed him, kneeling on the ground, in a pool of light.
Cries of ‘Bennu! Bennu!’ filled the air.
With a sharp crack, like a Titan crashing two boulders together, the fire was suddenly extinguished as if it had unexpectedly consumed all its fuel, leaving no morsels with which it could die down gradually.
The last of the sparks fell to the ground and the light died.
In the dark the mound of embers glowed softly, like an untended campfire in the cold hours before dawn.
Vespasian turned to see his pursuers on their feet, still chanting ‘Bennu’, halfway across the clearing, walking towards him.
As he turned to run a cloud of hot ashes exploded over him from behind; a cry rose to the sky. He swivelled to see the mound of embers gone and replaced by a mist of glimmering red dust.
The cry ceased and the red mist started to swirl as if it were being wafted from above by a giant fan. Vespasian felt a wind beating towards him; it grew stronger with every pulse as if a great bird were swooping down on him from the dark. He ducked away from the unseen threat as a colossal gust caught him off-balance and threw him to the ground.
The air went still.
After a few moments Vespasian opened his eyes to see a pair of feet in front of him; he looked up.
‘You will not be harmed,’ Ahmose said, holding out his hand to help Vespasian up. His men surrounded him, looking at Vespasian with a mixture of fear and wonder. Ahmose’s eyes, wide with religious fervour, sparkled down at him in the moonlight. ‘You are blessed of Amun; you are safe.’
‘What about my comrades?’ Vespasian asked, getting to his feet.
‘They are still alive; we will sell them as slaves to the Marmaridae.’
‘Fuck your blessings,’ Vespasian spat, jabbing the priest with his right fist in the solar plexus. ‘We had a deal, you little shit.’
Ahmose doubled over as a half a dozen restraining hands grabbed hold of Vespasian.
After struggling a few moments for breath Ahmose looked up at him. ‘Do you really think that we could stop the Marmaridae picking off our people and sending them as slaves to Garama? We’re not warlike as they are, we are farmers; we have to sell them some slaves every year to keep them happy. Your friends will do nicely, but you won’t go; as a priest of Amun, it’s my duty to take you to His Oracle in the heart of Siwa where, if you are truly blessed by Him, you will, like Alexander himself and a few other chosen ones through the ages, hear His wisdom.’
Vespasian looked at the treacherous old priest with loathing. ‘Why is it your duty?’
‘You have been touched by the Wind of the Bennu and have bathed in the light of its fire. Amun knows that I have witnessed it.’
‘What is the Bennu?’
‘The sacred bird of Egypt whose death and rebirth marks the end of one age and the start of a new. A man who has bathed in its light and has felt the wind of its beating wings as it flies to the holy city of Heliopolis to lay its nest on the altar of Ra is destined to play a part in the new age. You know this bird in your language as the Phoenix.’
Vespasian was led east for the remainder of the night and all of the following morning. His sword had been taken from him but his hands were not bound; however, he made no attempt to escape, surrounded as he was by a dozen armed men. Even had he just been accompanied by the double-crossing Ahmose he would have followed willingly, saving his vengeance for another time, curious to hear what the Oracle of Amun would tell him; curious whether it would throw light upon the prophecy of the Oracle of Amphiaraos.
As they travelled deeper into the oasis they passed more bodies of water, much larger than the lake that he had bathed in only the day before. Irrigation channels had been dug to siphon the precious liquid to the smallholdings cultivating olive groves, chickpeas and vegetable gardens that clustered near them; sheep and goats grazed on rough pasture around the shores. People grew more numerous. Men in headdresses worked in the fields, tilling, picking fruit or loading their produce onto carts; women washed clothes and children at the lakes’ shores, fetched water in earthenware pots that they carried on their heads, or cooked over open fires outside their mud huts. It looked far more prosperous to Vespasian than the tax receipts from Siwa had led him to believe; evidently a quaestor had never visited to make a proper tax assessment. Making a mental note to review the demand on his return to Cyrene as part of his revenge on the people for so barbarously abusing the laws of hospitality, he calculated that the wealth of the oasis would go far to improving the province’s struggling finances.