Ben Bova: Vengeance of Orion

A servant came rushing into the room and fell to his knees, skidding on the polished floor and almost bumping into the prince.

“Your royal highness! The high priest of Ptah is dead! By his own hand!”

Aramset leaped to his feet, knocking over the chair behind him. “By his own hand? The coward!”

“Who shall tell the king?” the servant asked.

“No one,” snapped Aramset. “I will see this suicide first.” He started for the door.

I went with him, and motioned the Hittite guards to accompany us. One of them I sent for Lukka, with orders to bring the rest.

We crossed the starlit courtyard and entered the vast temple of Ptah. Up the stairs and along the corridor to the same office where surly Nekoptah had first received me.

He lay on his back, a huge mound of flesh with a deep red gash across the rolls of fat of his throat. In the flickering light of the desk lamp we saw his painted face with eyes staring blankly at the dark wooden beams of the ceiling. His golden medallion lay over one shoulder, blood already caking on it. The rings on his stubby fingers glinted in the lamplight.

I stared at the rings.

“This is not Nekoptah,” I said.

“What?”

“Look.” I pointed. “Three of his fingers have no rings. Nekoptah’s fingers were so swollen that no one could have taken the rings off without cutting off the fingers themselves.”

“By the gods,” Aramset whispered. “It’s his brother, made up to look like him!”

“Nekoptah murdered him, and he’s roaming free in the palace right now.”

“My father!”

The prince bolted off toward the door. The Hittite guards cast me a confused glance, but I motioned for them to go with Aramset. He was right: His first duty was to protect his father. Nekoptah could go anywhere in the palace, disguised as his twin brother. I doubted that he intended to harm the king, but Aramset was right to go to him.

I knelt over the dead body of poor Hetepamon for a few moments, and then suddenly realized where Nekoptah would strike next.

I got to my feet and ran for Helen’s quarters.

I understood the high priest’s murderous plan. His goal was to undo the alliance between the Achaians and the Egyptians, to show the king that Prince Aramset had brought the barbarian menace into the very capital of the land. Who knows, I thought as we raced through the palace toward Helen’s apartment, perhaps he will get Menalaos to kill the prince.

If he has Helen he has control of Menalaos, I knew. Even if he doesn’t murder the prince, if he can get Menalaos to run amok in the palace, Prince Aramset’s newfound influence with his father is gone. Nekoptah returns to power with a haughty “I told you so.”

Past startled guards I ran, guided by my memory of the palace’s layout. But there were no guards at Helen’s door. It was slightly ajar. I pushed it open.

Nefertu lay sprawled on the floor, a jeweled dagger sticking out of his back.

I rushed to him. He was still alive, but just barely.

“I thought… chief priest of Amon…”

His eyes were glazed. Bright red blood flowed from his mouth.

“Helen.” I asked, “Where did he take Helen?”

“The underworld… to meet Osiris…” Nefertu’s voice was the faintest whisper. I could feel his pain. He tried to breathe, but his lungs were filled with blood and agony.

I had no time to be gentle. He was dying in my arms.

“Where did Nekoptah take Helen?”

“Osiris… Osiris…”

I shook the poor old dying man. “Look at me!” I demanded. “I am Osiris.”

His eyes widened. Feebly, he tried to reach for my face with one limp hand. “My lord Osiris…”

“Where has the false priest Nekoptah taken the foreign woman?” I demanded.

“To your temple… at Abtu…”

That was what I needed to know. I lay Nefertu’s gray head down on the painted tiles of the floor. “You have done well, mortal. Rest in peace now.”

He smiled and sighed and stopped his breathing forever.

The temple of Osiris at Abtu.

I went to Prince Aramset and told him what had happened. “I cannot leave the palace, Orion,” he said. “Nekoptah’s spies and assassins may be anywhere. I must remain here with my father.”

I agreed. “Just tell me where Abtu is and give me the means to get there.”

Abtu was a two-day chariot drive north of the capital. “I can have fresh horses ready for you every ten miles,” the prince said. Then he offered me Lukka and his men.

“No, they are your personal guard now. Don’t strip yourself of their loyalty. A charioteer and relays of fresh horses will be all I need.”

“Nekoptah won’t be alone at Abtu,” warned Aramset.

“That’s right,” I said. “I will be there.”

Before the sun rose I was standing in a war chariot, light and tough, beside a nut-brown Egyptian who lashed the four powerful chargers along the royal road northward. I carried nothing but the clothes I had been wearing and an iron sword, Lukka’s own, given to me by the Hittite captain as I took my leave of him. And the dagger had been my companion for so long that it had left its imprint on my right thigh.

We raced furiously along the road, kicking up a plume of dust behind us, the horses thundering along the packed earth, my charioteer grunting and puffing with the exertion of controlling the four of them.

We stopped at royal relay posts only long enough to change horses and take a bite to eat and a sip of refreshing wine.

By dawn of the second day my charioteer was exhausted. He could hardly drag his stiff and sore body from the chariot when we stopped at the halfway point. I left him at the relay post there. He protested. He begged me to let him continue, saying that the prince would have him flogged to death for abandoning me. But there was no sense taking him farther.

I took the reins in my own hands. I had watched him long enough to know how to handle the horses. Fatigue clawed at my body, too, but I could consciously damp down its warning signals and pour more oxygen into my bloodstream by hyperventilating as I drove four fresh animals pell-mell into the brightening morning.

The river was on my left, and I passed many boats floating downstream on the Nile’s strong current. Not fast enough for this mission. I cracked my whip over the horses’ ears and they strained harder in their harnesses.

At a bend in the road I happened to turn and glance back behind me. Another rooster tail of dust rose behind me, far back at the horizon. Someone was following me in just as mad a hurry as I was. Had the prince sent troops to back me up? Or could it be Menalaos rushing to rescue his wife? Either way, it would be help for me. Then another thought struck me: Could it be followers of Nekoptah, rushing to back him ?

As the sun set, I drove madly through a village of small houses, scattering the few people and children on the main road, and past a mile or so of precise formal gardens bordered by rows of trees and gracefully laid-out ponds. The temple of Osiris stood in their midst, facing a long rampway that led to the river. A single boat was tied up at the pier.

A half-dozen guards in bronze armor stood before the temple’s main gate as I pulled up my lathered horses and jumped from the chariot.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” demanded their leader.

I was willing to fight them if I had to, but it would be quicker and easier if I could avoid it.

“On your knees, mortals!” I boomed, in my deepest voice. “I am Osiris, and this is my temple.”

They gaped at me, then laughed. I realized that I was caked with dust from the road, and hardly the glorious radiant figure of a god.

“You are one of the foreigners that my lord Nekoptah told us would try to enter the sacred temple,” said the guard leader. He drew his sword and the others moved to surround me. “For your blasphemy alone, you deserve to die.”