Uraeus whispered, "Kill her, master!"
"How do you kill something that isn't alive to begin with?" I asked him. "Burning her would sink us."
"Cut off her head. Now!"
She laughed at him.
"I don't have my sword," I told Uraeus, "and I wouldn't do it if I did. She isn't mine."
"Yet you will be mine someday." Holding the lid above her head, she lowered herself gracefully into her box. Now I write of that, and the other things, because I know I forget. Sometimes it is good to forget and feel no fear. Yet the time may come when I will have to know these things. If Uraeus does not tell me of them, this papyrus will.
13
AP-UAT IS THE god of soldiers. So says Aahmes and all the soldiers of Kemet. We went to the Magi and explained that we wished to make offerings to this god at his city, Asyut. He shook his head. He is under strict orders to make haste, and would not order our captain to stop there. We protested and he said that we would be free to make any offering we wished if we tied up there tonight. We asked for gold, which we might offer or use to buy a suitable offering. He said what gold he has was not his own but the satrap's, which he could use only for the satrap's purposes.
We went to the captain. He is a Crimson Man, and Myt-ser'eu says he is Muslak, our friend and Neht-nefret's special friend. He said we would pass Asyut about noon. My soldiers grumble at this. I have a little money and would use some of it to buy an offering, but of what use is that if we cannot go to the temple? I HAVE BEEN speaking with the healer. He asked what was troubling me. "I slept," I said. "Myt-ser'eu says I never sleep by day. She and I were sitting in the shade of the sail. At times we spoke. At others we kissed. At still others we were silent, happy to be in each other's company."
"I understand," he said, and sighed deeply. "You forget, Latro. Because you do, I am going to tell you something. You must tell no one today, and tomorrow it will be gone and others will have to tell you who I am."
"I understand," I said. "I wouldn't have known you for a healer and my friend Sahuset if she had not told me."
"Just as you have Myt-ser'eu, so I have a certain woman. She comes to me when I wake her. We are lovers then, and talk, kiss, and embrace."
I nodded.
"It does not surprise you? It would surprise everyone else on the ship, I think."
"I have Myt-ser'eu," I explained, "and the chief Crimson Man has Neht-nefret. Both are beautiful. Why should you not have a woman also if you wish one?"
"When I do not wake her, my lover sleeps," the healer said, and it seemed to me that he spoke to himself alone, and would say nothing more unless I spoke. Thus I asked whether she slept by day as I had that morning.
"By day and by night." He clasped my shoulder. He is thin, but as tall as I and taller. "And yet, Latro, there was a night not long ago when she woke without my waking her and came to me."
He sighed again. "We were camped on the shore in tents, for there was no inn at the village where we had stopped, only a beer shop. I was in my tent and was thinking that I might return to the ship, carry her to my bed there, and awaken her."
He clapped his hands, loud as a shout. "My door-curtain was thrown back. It was she, and she kissed and embraced me. I was happier that night than I had ever been, and that happiness has been repeated. There is an enchantment, Latro, on this ship, a spell I never wove. Perhaps it is Qanju's. I do not know. What was it you wished to ask me about?"
"My dream," I said. "Myt-ser'eu says I never sleep by day, but I died once by day while I was sitting with her beneath a tree."
The healer nodded to that, so it must be true.
"She thought I had died again and was terribly frightened. She woke me, but I remember my dream, or part of it."
"A frightening dream, from what you say."
"It was. Isn't there a wolf-headed god in this land? You're of it, and the most learned among us, Myt-ser'eu says."
"That god has many names," the healer told me. He recounted some of them.
I said my soldiers called him Ap-uat.
"Then we may call him that, so long as we keep in mind that he is the opener of the ways. When our army marches, Latro, it sends a few men ahead so that it cannot be ambushed."
"An advance guard," I said. "That is always wise."
"These are called the openers of the way. Often they see a wolf-headed man who walks in advance of them. Then they know the way is safe and the army will triumph. For that reason this god was on our pharaoh's standard."
"My men wished to stop at the city of this god," I explained, "so they might sacrifice to him before we reach the wild southern lands. We went to Qanju and explained this, but he would not stop there."
The healer nodded. "I see. Do you believe that this god sent your dream?"
"It seems to me he must. We spoke to Muslak as well. He said that we'd be far south of Ap-uat's city by the time we stopped for the night, perhaps as far as Akhmim."
"Thus you come to me."
I shook my head. "Thus I sat with Myt-ser'eu, and slept. I was in a dark land in which there lay many dead. Slowly, a wolf that was also a man crawled toward me, dragging itself with its hands, which were its forepaws as well."
The healer listened in silence.
"Seeing it crawl, I knew its back was broken. No man and no beast lives long with a broken back. With a man's voice it begged me to slay it, to take its life and end its agony. I-"
The healer raised his hand. "Wait. I have many questions. Did you recognize this man who was a wolf?"
"Yes, I knew who he was in my dream, but I cannot tell you now."
"Yet you knew him then. Was he friend or foe?"
"He had been my enemy," I said. "I knew that, too."
"He came to you begging mercy, nonetheless?"
I raised my shoulders and let them fall as men do. "There was no one else."
"Only you, and the dead."
"I think so."
"Very well. Go on."
"I did as he asked." I showed the healer my sword. "I killed him with this, and quickly, holding his ear while I slashed his throat. When he was dead I saw his man's face." I paused to think and to remember the dark plain of my dream. "After that, Myt-ser'eu woke me, fearing I had died."
The healer took four sticks of crooked gold from his robe, made a square of their corners on the deck before us, and did and said certain things I will not write. These things done, he picked up the gold sticks, speaking a word for each, shook them together, and cast them at my face.
I asked whether they spoke to him when they clattered to the deck. Angry, he motioned me to silence. After a time, he swept them up, shook them as he had before, and cast them again. "You are not telling me everything," he said when he had studied them a second time. "What is it you have not told?"
"I said girl as I cut his throat. Only that. I cannot explain it and it seems to me it cannot be of any importance."
"Girl."
I nodded. "Just that. The one word."
"You speak the tongue of Kemet better than most foreigners. Was it in this way that you spoke in your dream?"
"I spoke only one word in my dream. That one."
"Satet?"
"No, another word that meant the same."
"Bent?"
"I don't think it was in this tongue. It meant a tall girl, very young but tall and crowned with blossoms-meant that in my dream, I mean."
The healer looked out over the water. "We must stop at Asyut," he said.