Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [126]
“They are coming,” Ramses whispered. “They will find this place.”
“No. Look.”
High on the cliffside to the south, a small figure had appeared. It stood upright, waving its arms and shouting—insults and challenges, Ramses deduced, for the pursuers turned to look in that direction. One of the soldiers nocked an arrow and loosed it. His quarry ducked, with insulting ease. A few seconds later a boulder rumbled down the cliffside, carrying a number of smaller stones, a rain of pebbles, and one soldier with it. The small figure screamed defiance and vanished into a cleft in the rock.
“So that is how you fight them,” Ramses murmured, watching the decimated troop trying to find a way up the shattered cliff.
“One way.” Flat on his belly, his chin resting on his folded arms, Harsetef added, “They will have to give up soon, the god’s bark sails to the west. Then we will go on, you and I.”
“You are still loyal to Tarek, then.”
Harsetef turned his head and stared in surprise. “I belong to the Father of Curses, I am his man. The last words he said to me I have never forgotten. ‘Serve King Tarek as faithfully as you would serve me.’ He has returned, as we knew he would when he heard our prayers.”
So now Father is a demigod, Ramses thought. The role would daunt most men, but Emerson would undoubtedly take it in stride. No wonder the usurper wanted his support.
Their pursuers were retreating, slowly and with difficulty, taking with them the body of their fallen comrade. Harsetef seemed to be in no hurry. Presumably he was waiting for darkness. Ramses tried not to think about the hair-raising climb ahead of him. “Tell me about Tarek,” he said. “How did he lose his throne?”
“It is quickly told,” Harsetef replied. “When you left the Holy Mountain, there were still a few who resisted the king. He was merciful. He offered forgiveness to those who would lay down their weapons and swear loyalty.”
“Perhaps he was too forgiving.”
“No.” Harsetef shook his black head. “His brother was dead, there was no other king to fight for. The old High Priest of Aminreh died too—not by violence, for one does not raise one’s hand against the chosen of the god, but after a year of imprisonment. He was an old man.”
“And the white man—the redheaded Englishman who also supported Tarek’s brother?”
“He was most certainly a follower of Set,” Harsetef explained seriously. “The color of his hair was a sign of that evil god, and did he not fight against his sister, the Priestess of the divine Isis?”
Such, as Ramses’s father might have said, are the uses of religion. The ancient myth telling of the murder of the good god Osiris by his envious brother Set had been neatly twisted to fit a specific political need. Isis, sister of both Set and Osiris, had also been the latter’s wife, who had brought him back to life long enough to impregnate her with a son. Nefret had been Reggie’s cousin, not his sister, but that was a minor point. Ramses thought he detected the fine Meroitic hand of old Murtek, the High Priest of Osiris, one of the cleverest politicians he had ever met.
“So the man of Set—er—died?” he asked.
“Struck down by the hand of Osiris.”
Murtek’s hand, rather. Ramses wondered how he had carried out the execution.
Murtek was dead too, of natural causes. The canny old man had kept the various power cliques in balance, playing off the priests of Amon against those of Osiris, and controlling Tarek’s overly ambitious plans for reform. After he died, the trouble began. His successor was an elderly weakling who could not resist the ambitions of the priesthood of Amon. Tarek had made the fatal mistake of levying a toll on the wealthiest citizens, and on the temples, in order to carry out his reforms.
It was depressingly familiar. There was no standing army; like medieval knights, each nobleman had his own guard, and when open warfare broke out, these men followed their lord. The temple guardsmen rallied to the priests. The only soldiers who had remained loyal to Tarek were members of his own guard and a