The Last Camel Died at Noon - Elizabeth Peters [139]
He clapped his hands sharply and turned. Two soldiers entered, gripping a prisoner. Roughly they forced him to his knees. His arms were bound behind him, not at the wrists, but at the elbows, a particularly uncomfortable position familiar to me from ancient Egyptian depictions of captives. The hood still covered his face, and the coarsely woven kilt was the one he had worn the night before. They must have taken him shortly after he left us. We had delayed too long—or someone had laid a trap for him. I looked around for Amenit. She had disappeared, and so had Reggie.
Nastasen stood gloating over his brother like a stage villain. “He has quite a talent for melodrama,” Emerson muttered. “I wonder if they still perform the old religious plays here? Get ready for the next scene, Peabody.”
I moved closer to Emerson. He slipped his arm around my waist. There was a slithering sound behind me as Ramses moved; whither, I could not tell.
Nastasen was enjoying his triumph and his theatrics too much to heed us. “He hides his face like a coward, but I know him! My eye sees all, knows all. Your eyes are weak; perhaps you do not know him. Look then!”
He snatched the hood off. I was relieved to see that except for a few scratches Tarek appeared to be unharmed. He was a trifle paler than usual, but there was no sign of fear on his face, only contempt, as he looked steadily at his brother. Nastasen gripped him roughly by the hair and pulled his head back. Whipping a knife from his belt, he laid the sharp blade against the beating vein in Tarek’s throat.
A faint moaning sound, like a sad winter wind, echoed through the room. The little people were watching; they mourned the death of their hope with the capture of their hero.
A thin trickle of blood slid down Tarek’s bronzed throat. He made no sound, nor did his expression change. Emerson’s fingers moved along the leather of my belt, as if he were tightening his grasp. I felt a small body press against my back in apparent terror; extending my hand toward my son I felt, not trembling flesh but a hard metal shaft. I closed my fingers around it and waited.
With a sudden movement, Nastasen sheathed his knife. “The king does not kill except in war,” he declared. “This death would be too merciful.”
I had anticipated some such conclusion, but I was immensely relieved all the same, for weak, unbalanced personalities do not always behave predictably, and Nastasen’s hatred of his brother distorted every feature of his face.
He pushed Tarek into the grasp of the soldiers, who dragged him to his feet. “Now,” he said, turning to us. “Here is your friend, the traitor. You will share his fate, but not until after you have witnessed the failure of your plans and the crowning of the rightful king. Do you wish to say farewell to your friend the traitor? You will not see him again until you meet before the altar of the god. And then… then, I think, he will have no tongue with which to speak.”
“What an unpleasant little swine he is,” said Emerson in a conversational tone. “Now, Peabody.”
I had planned to burst into tears and fling myself at Nastasen’s feet, but I simply could not make myself do it. The shriek I emitted instead proved equally effective; Nastasen started back, but he was not nimble enough to avoid me as I rushed at him, waving my arms in feigned agitation and screaming at the top of my lungs. A carefully calculated stumble and a failed recovery brought my lowered head into painful contact with the prince’s midsection. He took one of the soldiers down with him as he fell; another dropped when my parasol got tangled in his legs.
I rolled over in time to see Tarek dash toward the back of the room with one of the soldiers hot on his heels. The great spear was raised, it was about to leave the pursuer’s hand, when a wicker basket loaded with linens shot across his path with the fine accuracy of a pitch to the wicket. The spear clattered to the floor, the soldier fell on top of it, and Ramses prudently