Lion of the Sands Read online

The Lion of the Sands

  Book 1

  The Long Journey of Agymah Chahine

  Robert Sullivan

  Copyright © 2015 by Robert Sullivan

  Dedicated to Jean and Bob Sullivan. We keep

  you in our thoughts and our hearts, always.

  “Beware the Lion of the Sands.”

  Bedouin Proverb

  20th Cent BC

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. My Father Tells a Fearful Tale

  2. The Army of the Pharaoh

  3. A Terrible Defeat

  4. God of Gods

  5. Under a Boiling Sun

  6. We Journey to Heliopolis

  7. The Pillars of Hercules

  8. By the Coast of Maroc

  9. The Djinn of Envy

  10. Giants of the Deep

  11. A Great Storm

  12. Arks of Ice

  13. Safe Harbour

  14. Of Golden Isles

  15. Men of Earth and Straw

  16. Douwwi and Pasine

  17. Farewell to Buta

  City of Memphis

  Kingdom of Egypt

  1912 BC

  Part I - My Father Tells a Fearful Tale

  (Here is written the first night of words of Agymah Chahine of Abydos – scribed by Imhotep, Son of Shariff, in the City of Memphis in the 33rd year of Kheper-Ka-Re. So it is written in the month of Abib in the Season of the Harvest.)

  My name is Agymah Chahine. I am an old man. I believe that I have seen three score and five summers. But my wife Eti, to whom I have been joined for so long, says that she has seen only two score and ten summers. Now I recall that when first we met, I had only two more summers than she, so it must be that I am confused. For in my travels I have journeyed to far places, where in some years it has seemed that there were two summers, and in some years two winters, or even more. Perhaps then I am not so old. Perhaps my age is only a little more than that of the two score and ten summers of my wife. Or, as my old friends Nedemeb and Naguib would say, perhaps that of an egret barely out of its nest. But of course they jest. For I am no longer a young man. It is time to tell this story.

  For these many years my daughter Khuyb, she of waspish tongue and flashing brown eyes, has been asking that I complete a journal. As a child she heard of my adventures with the armies of the Pharaoh, of the Lion of the Sands, of its terrible ferocity, of our journey to the far side of the world and, finally, of our journey home. It is a strange tale, that is certain, and an unlikely one. For the dangers were great, and we placed ourselves at great peril so many times that our survival must have been ordained by the Gods. It was written.

  And so it is, on this 7th night of the month of Abib, in the Season of the Flood, that I sit with young Imhotep, son of Shariff and Nebettah, and friend to my daughter Khuyb. Imhotep is a scribe and will capture my story as I speak. He says this will take many nights and will likely cost a goat or two. Of course it will. He is a businessman. He has a sharp eye this one, not at all like his parents. I can see that he will go far.

  I have decided that I will start my story in my sixteenth year, the year in which so many of my adventures began. So have I always believed. For I had lived an idyllic and peaceful life, free of misfortune or want, with good food and the kind words of my mother and my father to guide me. As I cast my mind back I see still my father’s face, in the flickering light of the fire, as he spoke earnestly with us, telling us yet again of the dangers of the terrible plague that had come down the valleys from the Empty Quarter during the 4th year of our Pharaoh, Senusret I. I did not know it then, but the idyllic and peaceful days of my early life would not come again. I would look back in later years and wonder at my youth and the peace and tranquility that had passed forever.

  We sat in a ring upon the floor, I and my brothers, Khanefer, Djosur and Mekhu, our grandmother’s woven rug beneath. My father sat upon a chair, made by his own hand. My mother, Takemet, sat next to my father. My father’s name was Suad, which means ‘he of slender means’. Now it was true that my father’s father had been a poor farmer and seller of grain on the banks of the Nile, far to the south, near the land of the Nubians. But he had taken his family north to Abydos where he became prosperous. And it was also true that my father, after a hard but much loved childhood, had also bettered himself, leaving Abydos in his thirteenth year and journeying to Thebes to become an apprentice to an aged furniture maker of the name of Hosni. My father worked long and hard for the furniture maker and, after many years, was able to marry and settle in Memphis. Here he opened the doors of his own business, and built a large house with four rooms and a courtyard with a date palm. He also raised four sons, all of who learned well at the temple school. My father, as it was with his father, was no longer ‘he of slender means’.

  Our windows were shuttered, made fast with bolts of wood. The two doors to our house were closed, strong wooden bolts thrown across each to hold it safe. Outside I could hear the wind moaning against the tiles, and the whisper of sand scratching at our doors. The flickering light of the fire painted my father’s face in patches of gold and yellow, giving to it the look of a mask, a head with no body, floating in the darkness. It was a frightening tale that he told. One that you would not speak of to your children at their bedtime. Not unless it was to assure their salvation. And my father assured us it was for this reason that he spoke to us, that he did not wish to cause us fear, but that he wished to warn us, to prepare us, for the terrors that may come. Needless to say he succeeded in terrifying everyone almost to death. We had heard such frightening tales before, at the souq, or while drawing water at the well. And while we knew a thrill of fear as we gossiped at the souq, when our father spoke to us of such terrors it caused our blood to freeze.

  In the years that had passed, more than two or three, we had heard terrible stories from the Great Sand Desert and beyond. My father called it the Empty Quarter, that part of the land where no man or beast could live. Where the dust devils take a strong man and within the day leave him dried and shriven like the husks of corn we hang from the roof beams. Where the Djinn walk in the shadows, their eyes black and empty, their jaws hungry with broken teeth and shattered bone. Where even the Gods turn away, a land of rock and stone and sand, so hot in the day that a camel’s feet will blister and crack. And so cold at night that the water in your goatskin might turn to ice. Truly, a terrible place. But not so terrible as the danger that it spawned.

  Some stories were carried to us by the Bedouin, the desert people, they that live in the shifting sands, their lives ever dependent upon their animals and the water of each distant oasis. Other stories came from travelers from the south and the west. The Dervishes, their clothes whirling about them as they spin and bob in their strange dances. The black, shining Nubians, their skins lumpy with strange patterns, which for some reason they find beautiful, their eyes and teeth yellow and staring, their heads shaven or coated in dark curls and, often, painted red with ochre and mud. I feared the Nubians at that time. But then I did not know them. That came later.

  I remember best a tale told to us by the old Bedouin, one afternoon early in my sixteenth year, perhaps two or three moons before my father spoke with us. The Bedouin and his family had journeyed from the west. They had been six moons in the desert, moving from waterhole to waterhole, gathering dates, living from the milk and meat of their goats. The family was greater than three score in number and had many children of all ages. The group clustered together near the well, the women with their eyes turned away, the children close. The men stood around them in a loose circle, their faces dark and menacing, their hands close to the axes hanging at their belts. The animals were tethered nearby but they did not settle. They were wild eyed and nervous, pulling at their tet
hers and pawing the earth. They were fearful. Just as the family was fearful. And when the old Bedouin spoke I too began to fear. For they had seen a terrible thing.

  Two moons earlier, in the distant valley of the Kush, the group had spent several nights at a small waterhole on the road to the oasis of Qu’um. They had planned to make their camp at the oasis but the spring at the waterhole, though slow to fill a gourd, gave water that was clean and sweet. And so they had stayed. And they knew now that if they had not stopped that night at the waterhole, but had journeyed on to the oasis, then it was certain that a fearful death had awaited them. It was written in their eyes.

  The waterhole was but a short distance from Qu’um. At most a ride of half a day on the dry watercourse that stretched along the valley floor and across a wide fan of sand that emerged onto the desert plain. At night they could see the flicker of light from the fires of Qu’um and, if the wind was from the west, they could sometimes hear the soft beat of a drum. The old Bedouin said that they were sitting upon their rugs, on the evening of their second night at the waterhole, facing the soft breeze, their meal of dates and goat meat completed, serene with tea and hookah, when they heard the first screams. The terrible cries came faintly on the wind, full of pain, causing all in the family to leap to their feet. In the distance they could see bright lights and fires burning, more than usual. The camels became restless and began to bray and pull on their tethers. The children awoke and began to cry and the women ran to them. Then it came.

  The old Bedouin said it was the shriek of the demons of the night, that the air shivered around them, that their beasts began screaming, and several were able to tear free of their ropes and run into the darkness. He said that the sounds grew until they seemed to come from every direction, from every dune, and every gully, and that the very air itself shook. It was as if the earth had split asunder and the Gods had freed the demon spawn. The family stood as if rooted in the ground, the fear so heavy in their hearts that they could not move, their bodies as if made of stone. And then came the smell of the charnel house. One of the women fell to the ground, coughing and choking, her meal spilling from her throat into the sand. She was followed quickly by two others while several men also covered their mouths. For the wind was filled with the stench of death. A vile smell. That of a thousand dead animals. So strong that it forced itself into your mouth and nose and touched your throat as if with the dung of the hyena. The old Bedouin also fell to his knees and brought forth his last meal.

  His eyes were red and weeping as his told his story. And as he spoke, in whispers, he cast his eyes about, sweeping his head from side to side as if he feared attack from every quarter. I saw, too, that the other men watched in the same strange manner, looking to the tops of the dunes in the west, to the low hills in the east. What are they looking for I wondered as I felt my skin crawl upon my body? Why is it that they are so fearful? The old Bedouin’s beard was stained and red, perhaps from eating too many of the leaves and nuts of the betel tree. He did not stop rubbing it as he spoke and I could see that his fingers were thick and twisted, the knuckles rough and lumpy from years of pulling ropes tight in the dark cold of the desert mornings, the nails brown and cracked. He did not appear to be an old man for he stood tall and strong. But his face was old. He had seen too much.

  The family watched in fear until the distant fires died, and no more cries or screams could be heard in the darkness. The terrible smell departed, as if blown on the wind, though it clung still to the cloth of their djellabas and to the eaves of the tent. The family sat unmoving throughout the night, their robes pulled close around them as the faint, thin moon passed across the sky and the stars rolled through the heavens, the fire a ruin of cold embers. They huddled close for warmth for, while they craved the heat of a fire, they did not wish to provide a beacon for the evil that had taken Qu’um.

  The family rose as one with the sun and, after many words and much disagreement, decided they must approach Qu’um. They knew a terrible fate had befallen Qu’um, but they knew also that it was their duty to provide aid to the folk of the oasis. And so they packed their tents and rugs and set off, reluctantly, towards the dark pillars of smoke that rose high in the morning sky. As they approached the oasis they saw that it had been destroyed. And they heard the growls and yapping of jackals and hyenas so they knew a great foreboding. For this reason, as they came closer to the oasis, the women and children were kept back, protected by a handful of younger boys, while the men and older boys went forward. The old Bedouin said that the oasis had been quite beautiful, with a number of palms that gave many dates, a deep, clear spring that sent forth sweet green water in winter and summer, and large mud brick houses that remained cool in summer and warm in winter. Some twenty families had lived there. But its beauty was gone forever.

  As they stepped down the slope of the last dune towards the oasis, one of the men cried out and pointed. In the sand in front of them was the torn body of a man. They saw terrible wounds. The sand was dark with blood that slowly blackened and dried in the hot desert sun, the hum of the black desert flies beginning to fill the air. No other sound could they hear, not even the wind. In their nostrils they smelled a strange but familiar smell, that of spilled blood, one known too well by the men and, though strange to the boys who had not known death other than that of the odd goat, as one to them as their mother’s milk.

  The oasis was small, its shape that of a gourd. The houses formed a half circle near to the narrow end, creating a small open area. But all was in ruins. The dwellings had been destroyed, their walls and doors broken, the roofs fallen. Many were burned and blackened, smoke still rising slowly from the ashes. Of the date palms only three stood, untouched. All others were broken sticks, snapped at the root or at mid point of the trunk. Some of these too had been burned. The area in front of the houses was filled with broken furniture and blackened timber. And everywhere lay broken bodies. The Bedouin watched as hyenas and jackals ran from body to body, tearing away pieces and snapping at each other, the hyena laugh strangely muted in the silence. One animal ran from the oasis, dragging the remains of a child.

  The old Bedouin said that they knew they must go into the ruins of the houses, so to provide aid to those who may lie wounded within. But they found it difficult to go forward. They knew what they would find. And so they stood, silent and staring, for a long time, the taste of death on their tongues, the sounds of death an echo in their ears. Finally they began to search the ruined oasis, looking within the fallen houses and in the surrounding sands. Of the twenty families, almost five score in number, they found not one alive. All had perished. And more horrible than can be imagined, they found no body in a single piece. All were torn apart as if from great violence. Many were beheaded, many torn asunder. All had limbs missing, though some of this was perhaps the work of jackals and hyenas. The men muttered to themselves. What could have happened? What evil had been done here? And who, or what, had done it? They whispered short prayers to the Gods, asking for protection, and that they might soon return to their families and take them to the safety of a large town.

  It was a heart-wrenching task that they saw before them. They collected the dead and placed them together inside one of the less damaged houses. There they would burn the dead and send their spirits to the afterlife. It was not according to the teachings of the priests but they could do no more. It was as they began this sad task that they came upon the strange animal. One of the men had ventured to the west of the oasis to retrieve one of the fallen. What he saw when he crested the small dune but a small distance from the oasis made him cry out in terror. All others in the group rushed to join him, as much in fear as in curiosity.

  They gathered at the top of the dune and there in the shallow valley before them lay the body of an enormous Beast. But what sort of Beast? It lay upon its side, a spear jutting from its left eye. Around it a pack of jackals and hyenas fought, their heads deep in the flesh of its underbelly, ripping and tearing then running off wi
th their jaws trailing long strands of intestine or other horrible things. The Bedouin did not draw any closer but they could see that the animal was huge, much larger than a camel, larger even than five camels. The carcass was covered in blood and swarming with scavengers but still fearsome to the eye. Its head was as large as a small dhow, the jaws open in a terrible grimace, showing long yellow fangs and a purple tongue; its body was as long as that of three oxen, the hide thick and plated; its legs were larger even than the pillars of the temple, corded with muscle with great, cloven feet. Even from where they stood atop the dune they could see the claws, almost a cubit in length. And the huge sheath of plates behind the head. The animal was terrifying, even in death. They had never seen anything like it.

  It was clear that the animal, if that is what it was, was dead. Perhaps one of the defenders of the oasis had flung a lucky spear in the last moments of his life, striking the Beast in the eye and wounding it such that, after tearing him apart, it dragged itself away to die. The old Bedouin said he did not think it the jackals or hyenas that pulled it down. They are carrion feeders he said. They come only for the dead. They do not often attack the living, not unless they are near to death. And this Beast, this animal, was so large that even near death it would be a fearsome opponent. The man, or woman, who had made that last well aimed but desperate thrust may have lived for but a moment. The Beast would have taken much longer to die.

  Was this animal the cause of all the death they had seen? Did it strike down the dwellers at the oasis and tear them limb from limb? If so, from whence did it come? Qu’um was on the edge of the Empty Quarter and only fools or thieves ventured further. To the west lay nothing but endless seas of sand and stone, dune upon dune marching forward from the horizon, each one steep and treacherous, each peak impossibly high, the temperatures in the middle of the day so hot as to cause fingernails to split and the tongue to clove to the roof of the mouth, a sea of sand and rock that would take a strong caravan more than thirty days to cross, thirty days without water. So from what black halls of horror did the Beast spring? It was a question for which they had no answer.