I headed straight toward them.
One of them spotted me approaching and said a word to his two companions. They were not alarmed. Slowly they picked up their long spears and got to their feet to face me.
“Who are you and what do you want?” the leader called to me.
I came close enough for them to recognize my face in the firelight. “I am Orion, of the House of Ithaca.”
That surprised them.
“Ithaca? Has Odysseus come here? The last we heard he had been lost at sea.”
They lowered their spear points as I came to within arm’s reach of them. “The last I saw of Odysseus was on the beach at Ilios,” I said. “I have been traveling overland ever since.”
One of them began to remember. “You were the one who had the storyteller for a slave.”
“The blasphemer that Agamemnon blinded.”
An old anger rose inside me. “Yes,” I replied. “The one Agamemnon blinded. Is the High King here?”
They looked uneasily at one another. “No. This is the camp of Menalaos.”
“Are there no other Achaian lords with him?”
“Not yet. But soon there will be. Menalaos is mad with rage since his wife ran away from him after Troy fell. He swears he won’t leave this land until she is returned to him.”
“If I were you, Orion,” said the third one, “I’d run as far from this camp as I could. Menalaos believes you took Helen from him.”
I ignored his warning. “How does he know she is in Egypt?”
The leader of the trio shrugged. “From what I hear, he’s had a message from some high and mighty Egyptian, telling him that the lady Helen has come here. They’re holding her in some palace someplace.”
“That’s what they say,” another of the guards agreed.
The story that Nefertu had unknowingly revealed to me was stunningly accurate. Nekoptah must have sent word to Menalaos as soon as Nefertu had reported Helen’s presence in Egypt, months ago. Of course Nefertu had recognized that she was an important woman of the Achaian nobility; he had finally told me as much. And Nekoptah, wily scoundrel that he was, immediately saw how he could use Helen as bait to bring Menalaos and the other warlords of the Sea Peoples into his own service.
I said, “Take me to Menalaos. I have important news to tell him.”
“The king is asleep. Wait until morning. Don’t be in such a hurry to get yourself killed.”
I debated within myself. Should I insist on waking Menalaos? They were giving me a chance to escape his anger. Should I go back to Lukka and our camp, then return in the morning? I decided to wait here at the beach and get a few hours’ sleep. Menalaos’s wrath seemed of little consequence.
They looked at me askance, but found a blanket for me and left me to sleep. I stretched out on the sand and closed my eyes.
To find myself in a strange chamber, surrounded by machines with blinking lights and screens that showed colored curving lines pulsing across them. The entire ceiling glowed with a cool light that cast no shadows.
I turned and saw the sharp-featured Creator I had dubbed Hermes. As before, he was clad in a glittering silver metallic uniform from chin to boots. He dipped his pointed chin once in greeting.
Without preamble he asked, “Have you found him yet?”
“No,” I lied, hoping that he could not see my mind.
He arched a brow. “Really? In all the time you’ve been in Egypt, you have no idea where he’s hiding?”
“I haven’t seen him. I don’t know where he is.”
With a thin smile, Hermes said, “Then I’ll tell you. Look into the great pyramid. Our sensors here detect a power drain focused on that structure. He is obviously using it as his fortress.”
I countered, “Or he is allowing you to think so, while actually he’s somewhere — or some when — else.”
Hermes’s eyes narrowed. “Yes… he is clever enough to decoy us. That’s why it is vital that you get inside the pyramid and see if he’s actually there.”
“I am trying to do that.”
“And?”
“I am trying,” I repeated. “There are complications.”
“Orion,” he said, making a show of being patient with me, “there is not much time left. We must find him before he brings down this entire continuum. He’s gone quite mad, and he’s capable of destroying us all.”
What of it? I thought. Perhaps the universes would be better off with all of us dead.
“Do you understand me?” Hermes insisted. “Time is running out for us. There is only a matter of days!”
“I’m doing the best I can,” I said. “I tried to penetrate the great pyramid, and it didn’t work. Now I must enter it physically, and for that I need the cooperation of the king, or possibly the chief priest of Amon.”
Hermes gusted a great impatient sigh. “Do what you must, Orion, but for the love of the continuum, do it quickly !”
I nodded, and found myself blinking at the first streaks of dawn in the clouded sky of the Egyptian shore.
Half a dozen armed guards were standing around me, one of them poking the butt of his spear into my ribs.
“On your feet, Orion. My lord Menalaos wants to roast your carcass for breakfast.”
I scrambled to my feet. They grabbed my arms and held me fast as they marched me off toward the king’s tent. I had no chance to reach for my sword, still laying on my blanket. But the dagger that I kept strapped to my thigh was still there, beneath my kilt.
Menalaos was pacing like a caged lion as the guards brought me before him. Several of his nobles stood uneasily before the tent, swords already at their sides, although they wore no armor. Menalaos was clad in an old tunic, and had a blood-red cloak over his shoulders. He was quivering with fury so that his dark beard trembled.
“It is you!” he bellowed as the guards brought me to him. “Light the fires! I’ll roast him inch by inch!”
The nobles — all of them younger than Menalaos, I noticed — looked almost frightened at their king’s rage.
“What are you waiting for?” he snapped. “This is the man who stole my wife! He’s going to pay for that with the slowest death agonies anyone has ever suffered!”
“Your wife is well and safe in the capital of Egypt,” I said. “If you will listen to me for a…”
Enraged, he stepped up to me and smashed a backhand blow across my mouth.
My temper snapped. I shrugged off the two men pinning my arms, then smashed them both with elbows to their middles. They fell gasping. Before they hit the ground I had whipped out my dagger and, clutching the startled Menalaos by the hair, I jabbed its point to his throat.
“One move from any of you,” I growled, “and your king dies.”
They all froze: the nobles, some of them with their hands already on their sword hilts; the other guards, their eyes wide, their mouths hanging open.
“Now then, noble Menalaos,” I said, loudly enough for them all to hear, even though my mouth was next to his ear, “we will discuss our differences like men, or face each other as enemies in a fair duel. I am not a thes or a slave, to be bound and tortured for your pleasure. I was a warrior of the House of Ithaca, and now I am the leader of an army of Egypt, an army that’s been sent here to destroy you.”
“You lie!” Menalaos snarled, squirming in my grasp. “The Egyptians have welcomed us to their shores. They are holding my wife for me, and have invited me to sail to their capital to reclaim her.”