Nosferatu moved south about two hundred yards until he reached a cleft in the rock face. He climbed down to the shore and considered his options. His heart was racing, not so much from the descent, but from the nearness of human blood. He could literally smell the people nearby. He crept closer but paused as the guard woke one of the sleeping figures.
The two switched places, the guard wrapping himself in a blanket and lying under the bench. The newly woken man leaned the sword against the mast and climbed off the boat and walked stiffly toward the cliff. Nosferatu began moving again, closing the gap. The new guard was urinating onto the pebbles when Nosferatu came upon him from behind. His hand clamped over the man’s mouth, stifling any cry, and he wrapped his other arm around the man’s body, pinning his arms to his sides. Nosferatu’s head darted forward, mouth open, and he sank his teeth into the man’s neck, tearing at the flesh.
Blood. Human blood. As the man’s struggles grew weaker, Nosferatu grew stronger from the blood surging into his mouth. He completely drained the man in less than a minute.
Nosferatu slowly let go of the body, lowering it to the ground. He turned toward the boat and considered the two sleeping men. His lust for blood was strong and the urge to take another victim almost made him go forward, but he held back. He needed them. As they would need him.
Nosferatu took the body and threw it over one shoulder. He made his way south. He crammed the body into a split in the cliff wall, covering it with rocks so it couldn’t be seen. Then he went to his tube and covered it completely. He took a piece of cloth and wrapped it around his head, covering his eyes with a double layer. Then he waited for dawn.
When the sun came up, light penetrated the cloth, but it was filtered enough for him to be able to see shapes and forms without pain. The boat did not appear until almost noon. Nosferatu assumed the two survivors had spent the morning searching in vain for their missing comrade. He waved as the boat grew closer and he could see the two sailors arguing, already jittery from the unexplained disappearance of one of their own and having difficulty handling the boat lacking one man. Nosferatu reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of gold coin and waved it, the sun reflecting off the precious metal.
Greed overcame fear and the men drew the boat in closer, calling out in a strange tongue. Nosferatu simply shook the gold, then pointed at himself and the tube, then at their boat, then to the south. There was no mistaking his desire. He pantomimed rowing, and that really got their attention as the boat needed three men to move if the wind failed them, as it often would along this coast — two men on the oars and one on the rudder.
The two sailors brought the boat to a halt about fifty feet from shore, still arguing. Nosferatu waited. Greed and reality won as he suspected it would. The boat came closer to shore and he waded out to it. The sailors were obviously asking him questions but he ignored them, waving a hand in front of where his mouth was and shaking his head. He also pointed at his eyes, then at the sun, shaking his head more vigorously.
Then they pushed the boat back out into the swell, raised the short sail, and began heading south, one of them manning the rudder, the other sitting on the bench next to the left oar. Nosferatu sat next to the right oar, but for now no rowing was needed. Nosferatu’s eyes ached even though the turban wrapped around his head blocked most of the sunlight. He wanted to hide under one of the benches and sleep, but he knew it was too soon, the sailors too jittery, to do this now.
He pretended to sleep that night and the next day spent the time on the middle bench, suffering the sunlight that forced its way through the cloth. Not long after dawn they were becalmed and Nosferatu joined the other sailor in rowing. It was agony but he continued in this way for eight days as they made their way south. During that time he listened to the two sailors talk, picking up words and phrases. He learned they were from a land far to the north, above the opening to the Inner Sea along which Egypt lay, a country which they had never heard of.
They’d been blown far out to sea during a storm. It had taken them over a week to make it back into sight of land and when they tried to make their way north along the west coast of Africa both the current and wind defeated them. They’d then made the difficult decision to go with the flow and head south.
Sketching with a piece of charcoal on the deck, Nosferatu drew for them a rough representation of the continent as he remembered it. He drew a line around the southern tip and up to the north. Lying, he indicated there was a way to sail up the Red Sea and into the Middle Sea on which they had come, not that they needed convincing as they had already given up on going back up the west coast even before they met him.
Two cycles of the moon after getting on board the boat, they passed the southern tip of Africa and began making their way northward. Nosferatu pretended to eat the scant food they offered him, but slipped it overboard when they weren’t watching. Nosferatu’s eyes had adjusted slightly to the sun, but he still kept them covered with the cloth. He felt the hunger inside growing. The land grew more lush as they made their way up the coast and one day the sailors proposed stopping to hunt. Nosferatu begged off, letting them go inland with their bows and knives. Once they were out of sight, he also left the boat, taking a different direction.
He had to travel far to find a village, arriving just before dark. He waited until the middle of the night before striking, taking down a warrior who came out to investigate when the dogs barked at Nosferatu’s approach.
Nosferatu came back to the boat just before dawn to find his two comrades with fresh kill and full of fear over his disappearance. He explained nothing, keeping to his silence, even though he understood their language well now.
Thus they continued. He killed and fed on humans five more times before they rounded the horn of Somalia and entered the Red Sea. After such a long sleep and a long journey, even Nosferatu began to become anxious. He was nearing Nekhbet. When he saw the sands of the Arabian Desert to his left, he knew it was time to leave the boat.
He departed one night, leaving the two sailors alive, even though he had the hunger. As he crossed the desert between the Red Sea and the Nile he slept during the day, covering himself with sand to protect his eyes and skin from the sun and moving at night. The third night he fed on a lone Bedouin. The next night he spotted a camp of Bedouins, probably the group from which his earlier victim had wandered.
Nosferatu was stopped by a guard as he approached the cluster of tents. He greeted the guard in the same manner he had all he met that he did not feed on — with a hand raised, holding gold.
The negotiations with the Bedouin chief were fast and simple. Nosferatu hired a half dozen of the desert warriors for a full moon of service. No questions were asked about what tasks were to be fulfilled or destinations. Along with the six desert dwellers and their mounts, he also hired four extra camels. The next evening, right after nightfall, they left the camp and headed west.
On the fifth day the lead Bedouin in his group indicated they were near the Nile.
The moon was three-quarters full as Nosferatu climbed up the steep slope of a large dune and caught his first glimpse of the heart of Egypt since he’d left. He was staggered by what he saw. A massive pyramid built of stone and almost five hundred feet high capped the Giza Plateau. It was flanked by two other pyramids almost as large. In front of the Great Pyramid, where the Black Sphinx had once lain in a depression, the ground had been covered and there was a similar sphinx made of stone with a painted face. Between the paws of the stone sphinx was a statue that Nosferatu recognized: It was of Horus. A temple had been built in front of the large pyramid, with a long causeway connecting the two. To the north, along the river, there was the glow of a huge city.