A desultory breeze rustled through the forest of reeds growing along the Nile's eastern bank. The night was quiet save for the soothing clamor of frogs and insects, and the hiss of water spooling through the shallows. Well back from the river, hillocks rose from the rich, black soil. Atop them, farming villages sat like stately country squires, their lights dim and clouded, their finery diminished with age. Between the river and the villages, lay the fields that fed the teeming masses of Memphis.
Barca and Ithobaal stood at the edge of a muddy embankment, just inside a tangled copse of sycamores, and watched the lights of Memphis glittering across the dark waters of the Nile. "I'm going in tonight. Alone," the Phoenician said.
Ithobaal's knees creaked as he crouched and scooped up a handful of loose soil. "Alone? Are you mad?" He heard a cough, explosive in the silence, and glanced toward the noise. The Medjay sat in the darkness beneath the trees, too weary to prepare a fire or unsling their bedrolls. Eighteen faces stared at nothing; splashes of light from a sickle moon gave them a ghoulish cast, like wandering souls unburied, unmourned. Soil trickled between Ithobaal's fingers. "This forced march has exhausted the men. It's exhausted you. Why not bide the night here and rest until dawn? We made good time from Leontopolis. What difference will another day make?"
The city across the river consumed Barca's attention. His answers were there, in the inscrutable darkness that thrived where the small circles of light failed. He continued as if Ithobaal had never spoken. "Get some sleep and enter Memphis at dawn, on the first ferry. Find lodging around the Square of Deshur and wait for me. I'll get word to you when I have something useful. If any should ask, tell them you're guards for a caravan out of Jerusalem."
Under casual scrutiny the Phoenician could easily pass for an itinerant caravaneer. Clad in a threadbare tunic and sandals, a knife thrust into his belt at his back, he had shed his armor and shield and ordered his men to do the same. Their telltale uadjets would draw too many curious stares. A troop of Medjay in Memphis would place the Greeks on their guard. Barca needed stealth; he needed freedom to move about with as much anonymity as possible.
Ithobaal stood. His nerves were stretched thin, close to breaking. "How, in the name of horned Ba'al, will you get across the river, little brother? The ferries have ceased for the night, unless you're Greek. You plan to swim the Nile?"
Barca clapped the Canaanite on the shoulder. "Have faith, Ithobaal. There's more than one way into Memphis."
"Then, why go alone? At least let a few of us accompany you. The odds…"
Barca shook his head. "The odds worsen with every passing moment. If twenty men follow me in, that's twenty chances that the Greeks will get wind of us. We're already playing against time. Once the Greeks hear about what happened to their messenger at Leontopolis, do you think they'll sit idle? I don't. I think they'll set their plans in motion as fast as they can. Tonight, I'm going to find Matthias ben lesu. If anyone knows what's been happening, he will."
"If the old Jew still lives," Ithobaal muttered as he turned and walked back to the loose circle of Medjay. "I may be old, but I'm not daft, little brother. You've come to kill Greeks, and the gods preserve any who get in your way! "
Barca dismissed the Canaanite with a wave of his hand as he descended the embankment and headed south, following the curve of the river. Mud squelched underfoot. He forged a treacherous path around boulders and gnarled roots, risking a twisted ankle or worse should a slick rock turn under his weight. Papyrus stalks rattled in a faint breath of wind.
Barca withdrew into himself, his senses alert, his body moving over and around obstacles. Ithobaal was right. Exhaustion gnawed at him. His bones and muscles ached; his joints felt like they were spun from glass. Rest would have been a godsend, had it been at all possible. Deep down Barca could feel the Beast stirring, flexing its claws in anticipation. This dormant bloodlust was akin to having another living being inside his skin, a lean wraith whose hunger flogged him to action, despite pain or weariness. Barca knew he had come to Memphis to aid Pharaoh. No one could argue otherwise. Yet, the truth of Ithobaal's condemnation stabbed like a white-hot knife of guilt. Had he also come to Memphis to gorge the Beast on Greek blood?
A short time later, a cluster of shanties emerged from the darkness: a mud-dweller's village. Despised by their agricultural neighbors, the mud-dwellers were the poorest of the poor, a gypsy folk who drifted with the currents, who eked whatever living they could from fishing, scavenging, and outright theft. Their villages were barely habitable. Tumbledown huts of cast-off mud brick, roofed with reed mats and dried palm fronds, clung to the shore like barnacles to a ship's hull. The village would vanish with the next inundation, and the mud-dwellers would vanish with it, scattered by the Nile's indomitable will.
Barca plunged through the maze of huts. An open sewer cleft the village square, allowing slops and human waste to drain into the river. The Phoenician stepped over this fetid trench. Through curtained doorways he could hear the sounds of men snoring, the hard crack of a fist on flesh, laughter. In the distance a dog howled in pain.
Ahead, a ramshackle jetty sprang from the river muck, a leprous finger of wood prodding at the Nile's breast. Small boats scraped the pilings, their oars shipped, sails furled. Barca crept out onto the jetty and peered into each boat. He found what he sought in the last one. A village boy lay curled around the base of the mast, his head cradled on a cushion of rope. He was young, ten years old at most; hard years if the long puckered whip scars lacing his shoulders and back were any indication. In one fist he clutched a small horn, chipped and worn from rough use, while the other held a knife made from a shank of corroded copper. No doubt he was charged with standing guard over the boats tied to the jetty.
Barca knelt. Gently, he prodded the young sleeper with the tip of his sheathed sword. The boy groaned, swatting at the intrusion. Barca poked him again. "Wake up, lad," the Phoenician said. "I have a task for you." At the sound of Barca's voice, the boy's eyes flew open. He scrabbled across the bottom of the skiff brandishing his makeshift knife, his horn held out like a shield. The boat thumped against the rotting pilings of the jetty. The boy glared at Barca, his mouth open in a soundless scream.
He was tongueless.
Barca held his hands out, palms up, in a gesture meant to be friendly. "Is this your boat?" he said, his voice low and even. The boy shook his head, nodding back toward the village. It belonged to his father, then. Or an uncle. Likely the same person who whipped him without mercy and cut out his tongue. A slow rage boiled in Barca's veins. "Can you sail it?"
A vigorous nod. The boy stared at Barca's sword, his initial fear replaced by curiosity. He pursed his lips and extended a trembling hand. His body tensed; he expected to be slapped away, beaten for his presumptions. Barca surprised him by letting him run his fingers along the edge of the sheath.
"Like swords, do you?"
The boy grinned. He clambered to his knees and puffed out his chest, his little knife held aloft. Whatever he mimicked must have come from a Greek story. The Egyptians were dismissive of heroic tales. Their heroes' deeds were for the good of Egypt rather than glory's coarse rewards.
"You'll make a fine Achilles," Barca said. "But you'll need a better blade." Barca reached around and tugged the knife from the small of his back. It was a superb weapon, the curved iron blade inlaid with a tracery of gold vines and set in a hilt of yellowed bone. Avarice gleamed in the boy's dark eyes.
"I'll give you this," Barca said, "if you take me across the river."
The boy chewed his lip. He looked from the knife to Barca's face and back again. The Phoenician could see nothing naive in the boy's manner. If caught filching the boat, his elders would administer fresh beatings, perhaps even deprive him of more than his tongue. The knife, though … in his world a knife like that could save his life. Barca reckoned the boy no fool. After a moment's thought the youngster agreed and gestured for the Phoenician to hurry. Barca climbed down into the skiff, untied their moorings, and shoved away from the jetty as the boy raised the patchwork sail.
They drifted slowly toward the center of the river, a night breeze tugging at the sail as the boy used an oar to keep them on course. Like an old sailor, the lad navigated against the current, following Barca's hand gestures. The wind drove them south, past the mouth of the canal that led to the royal quays, past clusters of ships tied for the night to mooring posts. Barca discerned the Mansion of Ptah, with its soaring ramparts backlit by the countless torches left burning throughout the night. Past the temple, trees lined the rising bank, screening slums and villas, alike. A short time later, the Phoenician caught sight of his goal.
"There. Get me as close as you can."
His destination was the Nilometer, an angled stone staircase cut into the high bank of the Nile. Steps chiseled with hieroglyphs measured the level of water from season to season. Life in Egypt, all life, depended upon the rhythms of the river, on the annual inundation of the Nile. Low floods were harbingers of famine; high floods promised ruin. A perfect inundation meant granaries full of emmer, cisterns full of beer, and a year of prosperity for all.
The boy inched the nose of the skiff into the Nilometer until the hull scraped stone. Barca clambered out of the boat and gripped the prow. Cool water lapped at his ankles. He paused before handing the lad his knife. "Forget you saw me," he said. The boy nodded, flashing a gap-toothed smile. He accepted his prize as if it were given for valor. Barca gave the boat a shove, watching it spiral out into the river. Satisfied the boy would find his way home, the Phoenician turned and ascended the algae-slick stairs of the Nilometer.
The mouth of the Nilometer lay inside the walled enclosure of the temple of Osiris, on the southern edge of Memphis. Through a dark veil of palm trees, Barca saw the glimmer of white stone marking the ceremonial entrance of the temple; to his right lay a scattering of chapels and outbuildings. Though the sanctuary was dedicated to Osiris, the temple grounds housed countless other gods, along with shrines to the deified pharaohs and tombs of high-ranking priests.
The folk of Egypt, Barca reckoned, were religious to the point of excess. Ritual and magic permeated their lives. Mothers taught their daughters prayers to insure bread would not burn, milk would not spoil, and children would sleep through the night. Fathers passed along to their sons the words of power that would make crops grow, arrows fly true, and crocodiles look the other way. The wealthy knew dozens of incantations that would keep their gold safe; the poor knew just as many to make that gold safe to the touch. This unquestioned faith in the unseen, in the divinity of Pharaoh, and in the gods, was the force that bound Egypt into a unified whole.
Barca slipped out of the Nilometer and followed the circuit of the wall. He came to a small side gate that opened on one of the city's infamous winding alleys and stopped, listening. No priests stirred about at this late hour; no suppliants came to beg Lord Osiris for succor in the next world. The only sounds came from the wind rustling through the trees and the commotion of the nearby Foreign Quarter. The Phoenician drew the wooden bolt and slipped out the gate.
He felt a momentary flash of claustrophobia. Accustomed to the wide-open sky of the Eastern Desert, Barca felt surrounded by those ancient mud brick walls. A thin strip of starlight overhead mocked him. Clenching his teeth, stifling the fear that somehow the buildings would collapse on him, Barca set off at a trot.
He headed west, crossed a broad lane lined with humanheaded sphinxes, and plunged into the tangled warren of the Foreign Quarter. Barca's informant lived on the southern edge of this turbulent district, on the Street of the Chaldeans, in the shadow of a solitary obelisk known as the Spear. At least, Barca hoped Matthias ben lesu still dwelt there. Five years had passed since his last visit; five years could encompass a lifetime in a city such as Memphis, a city in a state of constant flux. Barca chided himself for not maintaining contact with the aging Judaean. If he had, perhaps he could have squashed this potential crisis months ago.
Barca ghosted down the alley, past doors and windows, past mud brick crevices and jagged chasms that yawned like the gates of Hades. The heat, coupled with the stench rising from a thin runnel of sewage, made his lungs ache. Sweat drenched his tunic; stinking muck caked his sandaled feet. It was like moving through the bowels of a stone leviathan. After an hour, he knew he must be closing in on his destination.
The alley turned sharply and widened, becoming a small irregular square. To his right, gleaming like an alabaster spike above the skyline, Barca caught sight of the Spear. The obelisk belonged to an ancient temple facade, its stone cannibalized during one of the interregnums of pharaonic power. Now it stood isolated, a reminder of darker times. Barca glanced around the square. He wasn't alone. Shapes huddled in the corners; he heard muttered curses, smelled the raw stench of human waste. From the shadows at his feet, a filth-encrusted hand plucked at the Phoenician's tunic.
"Mercy," a voice wheezed in Egyptian, densely accented. "Mercy for an old soldier?"
Barca brushed the hand aside. A few other pitiful forms leaned out and importuned him, begging for coin. Like the mud-dwellers, the beggars of Memphis were a caste unto themselves, an indigenous population who slipped through the cracks of Egypt's rigid society. They were the insane, the infirm, the solitary, cast aside and forgotten as their usefulness waned. This could be my fate, Barca thought, feeling a glacial abscess in the pit of his stomach. He glanced down at the beggar. "A soldier, you say?"
"Aye," the beggar said, crawling to his knees. A cloud of flies rose from his filthy nest. "Much younger, I was. Carried spear and shield in the company of Lord Huy of Bubastis." The beggar exhaled, a wheezing chuckle that reeked of rotted onion.
"I'm a soldier, as well, and I need to know if a man still lives nearby. A Judaean …"
"The astrologer! " The beggar pawed at Barca's belt. His fingers brushed the Phoenician's sheathed scimitar and jerked away as if burned. "You're Phoenician … yes, he told us to be expecting you. He told us you'd be seeking the Jew. "
"Who? Who told you?"
"The man with the copper bangles."
One of the other beggars hissed. "Not `pose to tell `im, fool! "
"We're soldiers, he and I! Brothers! Not like you other dogs! You'd sell your mothers for a jug of beer! "
Barca crouched. "The man with the bangles, was he Greek?"
The beggar shook his head. "Egyptian. Tall as a palm trunk. Wanted us to tell his mate, over by the Spear, if we saw you. These other curs might. Not me. Too tired to fight. Too tired. . " The beggar's head drooped. None of the others moved, either; even the one who hissed a warning curled up in an old shawl and fell asleep muttering to himself.
"My thanks, brothers," Barca whispered, rising. Someone had spotted him, but how? How? With a savage growl, Barca moved to the alley mouth, flattened his body against the wall, and peered out into the street.
The Street of the Chaldeans was not a well-planned thoroughfare. Some buildings thrust out beyond their neighbors or sat at odd angles, as if the architect suffered from a malady that made him incapable of straight lines. At one end of the street, a grove of palm trees rose around the base of the Spear. At the other, a small wine shop still did a brisk custom at this late hour, catering to foreign merchants and caravan guards. The house of Matthias ben lesu lay halfway down the street, toward the obelisk, its dilapidated facade recessed into shadow.
Movement under the palm trees caught Barca's eye. A man waited there, just as the beggar had said. The figure stood, stretched, then crouched down again, barely visible in the darkness. His attitude spoke of wariness, patience, as if he were waiting for something. Or someone. Barca's eyes narrowed. No matter. He knew another way in.
Matthias ben lesu wrote by the uneven light of an oil lamp. Failing eyes forced his body into a question mark over the sheet of papyrus, his back bowed like the Hebrew slaves of legend who toiled beneath the vicious eyes of Pharaoh. Matthias paused, scraping the tip of his reed pen across a moistened cake of ink, then continued:
Memphis is a cruel city, cousin. Cruel and unforgiving. In Babylon they respected my art; it was sought after by prince and pauper, alike. Here, in Egypt, theyrevile me as a charlatan. Iha ye no hope. That is the crux of this letter, dear cousin. I wish to return, to have my banishment lifted so at the very leastI can die with dignity
"Dignity." Matthias set his pen aside and straightened, flexing his cramped fingers. With his gray-black beard and fringe of hair ringing his bald scalp, Matthias ben Iesu could have passed for a desert patriarch. He stared into the wavering flame of the oil lamp, his eyes lost amid the lines and folds of his face. "Is that too much to ask, 0 Lord of Hosts?"
Matthias glanced up as a breeze redolent of smoke and Nile mud stirred the scrap of papyrus under his fingers. He sat beneath a loggia that partially enclosed his roof, forming a three-walled room he jokingly called his observatory. He could see very little beyond the circle of light cast by his oil lamp. A pair of potted plants stood just outside the loggia, a woven reed mat on the ground between them. The moon's thin illumination gave a sheen of silver to the surface of the knee-high brick wall ringing his roof.
Something moved in the deeper shadow near the edge of the roof. A cat? No, it was too large. Matthias frowned. He had been out most of the evening, dining at the wine shop down the street in hopes of overhearing bits of gossip, idle chatter, anything scandalous he could use to his advantage. Had someone followed him home, mistaking him for a man of means rather than the vagabond he had become? Annoyed, he rose and stepped out onto the rooftop terrace. "Is someone there?" he said.
An arm shot out of the gloom. The Judaean's eyes goggled as a hand clamped over his mouth. "Silence, Matthias," a voice exhorted, softly. A voice Matthias knew. "Forgive my rude entry, but men watch your house and unless I'm wrong, they watch for me."
"Barca?" He gaped. "Hasdrabal Barca? How … how didyou…T'
Barca grinned. "I scaled your wall. Mud brick is like a ladder to a Phoenician."
"Merciful God of Abraham! What are you doing here?" The Judaean clasped Barca's arm.
"It's a long, dry tale." Barca cocked his head to one side, listening. "Have you any wine, Matthias?"
"Look at me," Matthias said, "I have the manners of a swineherd. Come." He led Barca beneath the loggia. "It has been … what? … five years since we last crossed paths? It must be something momentous to draw you from your haunts in the East." From a shelf Matthias took down two terracotta bowls, chipped and burnished with age, and an amphora of deep russet pottery emblazoned with the symbol of the vineyards of Naxos. He poured a measure of resin-thickened wine into one bowl, then paused.
"You still take it unwatered?"
"Is there another way?" The Phoenician propped his hip against the desk.
Matthias chuckled and filled the other bowl, handing it to Barca. He set the amphora on the desk between them.
"What's happened, Matthias? Last I heard you were making gold like fabled King Midas. Now.. " He indicated the shabby condition of the house.
Matthias shrugged and sat. "Would you frequent an astrologer who couldn't discern his own fortunes? I wouldn't. No, my friend, I'm a victim of my own arrogance. These Egyptians, these astrologer-priests, they have forgotten more about the heavens than I'll ever know. I thought my years of study in Babylon would stand me in good stead among them. And for a while it did." The Judaean laughed bitterly. "But, when I wouldn't grovel on my belly before the First Seer of Amon — that heathen idolater! — they branded me a charlatan, a fraud. What wealth I had evaporated, and now the only custom I have comes from the dregs of the Foreign Quarter."
Barca looked disapprovingly at the old Judaean. "You should have come to me, Matthias. If it's money you need.. "
Matthias shook his head, smiling. "I would not accept it. The measure of my god's ill will is mine, and mine alone, to bear without complaint or charity, Phoenician. But, my thanks for the offer. You must tell me, before my curiosity gets the better of me, why have you come to Memphis?"
Barca drained his bowl and held it out for a refill. Matthias obliged. He stared at the Phoenician, unable to read the inscrutable look in his eye. Barca took his bowl back and, in a paucity of words, recalled the past few days: the battle at Leontopolis, the dead Persian, the letter. "Cambyses offered the garrison a king's ransom to switch their allegiances, and I fear Phanes has agreed."
"I am not surprised."
"What have you heard, Matthias?"
The Judaean smoothed his beard like a learned Pharisee. "It is not so much what I've heard as what I've seen. The Greeks rule Memphis like gilded tyrants, Barca. They do as they please with the blessing of the governor, Petenemheb. Those who speak out against them do so only once."
"What of the garrison? How many men does Phanes have at his disposal?" Barca said. Matthias had never served in the army; indeed, Barca reckoned he had never picked up a blade in anger, but the Judaean's keen eyes and ears made him an invaluable source of intelligence.
"He has maybe two thousand hoplites and another five hundred mercenary peltasts, archers mostly, men of Crete and the Aegean. His polemarchs are a capable lot, veterans of those little civil wars the Greeks hold so dear. A Potidaean called Nicias commands the heavy infantry, the backbone of the garrison. Hyperides of Ithaca commands the light troops. Far more dangerous, though, is Phanes' second-in-command, Lysistratis, an exiled Spartan. There's a man Yahweh didn't bother wasting a soul on. He's brother to the serpent; as deadly as the scorpion underfoot. His men swear he is Patroclus to Phanes' Achilles. Surely, though, now that you know what's happening, your Medjay can stop the Greeks from defecting?"
"We could, but to send for them would leave the border undefended. Cambyses' envoys have stirred up the Bedouin. No, we have enough problems without having to repulse an invasion from Sinai," Barca said. "I've sent a man on to Sais. Once Pharaoh is informed, he can muster the regiment of Amon and the Calasirian Guard and be en route inside a week."
"If your man gets through." Matthias emptied his bowl and set it aside. The wine seemed tasteless now, oily. "And if he does, will Pharaoh even care?"
Barca frowned. "What do you mean?"
"We've all heard the rumors, Barca. Amasis is not the man he once was. He's become a drunkard, more interested in his harem than in governing. Even if only a fraction of the innuendo is true, well, it does not inspire me to confidence. Your man's warnings may fall prey to sheer apathy."
Weariness crushed Barca's bones to dust. "What's happened to Egypt's fear of Persian ambition?"
"Time has lessened it. Time and the aristocracy's hatred of Pharaoh. Amasis is a usurper. Though it's been fortyfour years since the deed was done, Egypt's nobility has a long memory." Matthias flashed a weak smile. "I cast my horoscope this evening. It spoke of titanic change. I should show it to that priggish idolater in Amon's temple and demand vindication. Have you a plan, Barca?"
The Phoenician stared into the depths of the lamp burning on Matthias' desk. A plan? The Greeks were entrenched in the soil of Memphis like the roots of a gnarled tree. It would take a major campaign to tear them out. A campaign that would cost the lives of many good men. Barca's eyes narrowed. "Tell me, Matthias, how does a tree protect itself against rot?"
"Against rot?" Matthias said, scowling. "Why, a tree will harden its exterior, adding new layers of bark to protect the heartwood from infection. What does that have to do with us?"
Barca stood. "That's what we must do. We must thicken Memphis against rot. No matter how cozy the nobles get with him, the average Egyptian will never trust Phanes. I have to play on that, and I have to trust that my man will rouse Pharaoh to action. It's our only hope." Barca stroked his stubbled jaw. "Help me and, if we make it out of this, I'll speak to Pharaoh on your behalf. I'll make sure everything the priests of Amon stole from you is returned, with interest."
Matthias clapped him on the shoulder. "Ah, Barca. You know me better than that. I'll help you because you're my friend."
"No," Barca said, shaking his head. "A friend who only seeks your company when it's convenient is a poor friend. I am not deserving of your kindness."
The Judaean smiled, a gesture of infinite patience. "The road to Sile runs in both directions. Do not shoulder the lion's share of the burden, Phoenician. Especially when it's not yours to shoulder. Now, tell me what can I do to help."
Barca walked out on the rooftop terrace and stared at the star-flecked sky. He said nothing for a long moment, then turned suddenly. "We need a diversion. Something that will delay whatever plans the Greeks may have and buy us time. I need men who have served before, either in the army or the temple guard, and a figurehead to fire their blood."
Matthias tugged his lip between thumb and forefinger. "I know someone who might fit your needs. He was a soldier, once. A general …"