THE ANCIENT WORLD SERIES - Complete Haggard Edition. Henry Rider Haggard
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But Meriamun looked down the hall with cold eyes, for she feared neither Death nor Life, nor God nor man.
And while she looked and while the Wanderer counted, there rose a faint murmuring sound from the city without, a sound that grew and grew, the thunder of myriad feet that run before the death of kings. Then the doors burst asunder and a woman sped through them in her night robes, and in her arms she bore the naked body of a boy.
“Pharaoh!” she cried, “Pharaoh, and thou, O Queen, look upon thy son —thy firstborn son—dead is thy son, O Pharaoh! Dead is thy son, O Queen! In my arms he died suddenly as I lulled him to his rest,” and she laid the body of the child down on the board among the vessels of gold, among the garlands of lotus flowers and the beakers of rose-red wine.
Then Pharaoh rose and rent his purple robes and wept aloud. Meriamun rose too, and lifting the body of her son clasped it to her breast, and her eyes were terrible with wrath and grief, but she wept not.
“See now the curse that this evil woman, this False Hathor, hath brought upon us,” she said.
But the very guests sprang up crying, “It is not the Hathor whom we worship, it is not the Holy Hathor, it is the Gods of those dark Apura whom thou, O Queen, wilt not let go. On thy head and the head of Pharaoh be it,” and even as they cried the murmur without grew to a shriek of woe, a shriek so wild and terrible that the Palace walls rang. Again that shriek rose, and yet a third time, never was such a cry heard in Egypt. And now for the first time in all his days the face of the Wanderer grew white with fear, and in fear of heart he prayed for succour to his Goddess—to Aphrodite, the daughter of Dione.
Again the doors behind them burst open and the Guards flocked in— mighty men of many foreign lands; but now their faces were wan, their eyes stared wide, and their jaws hung down. But at the sound of the clanging of their harness the strength of the Wanderer came back to him again, for the Gods and their vengeance he feared, but not the sword of man. And now once more the bow sang aloud. He grasped it, he bent it with his mighty knee, and strung it, crying:
“Awake, Pharaoh, awake! Foes draw on. Say, be these all the men?”
Then the Captain answered, “These be all of the Guard who are left living in the Palace. The rest are stark, smitten by the angry Gods.”
Now as the Captain spake, one came running up the hall, heeding neither the dead nor the living. It was the old priest Rei, the Commander of the Legion of Amen, who had been the Wanderer’s guide, and his looks were wild with fear.
“Hearken, Pharaoh!” he cried, “thy people lie dead by thousands in the streets—the houses are full of dead. In the Temples of Ptah and Amen many of the priests have fallen dead also.”
“Hast thou more to tell, old man?” cried the Queen.
“The tale has not all been told, O Queen. The soldiers are mad with fear and with the sight of death, and slay their captains; barely have I escaped from those in my command of the Legion of Amen. For they swear that this death has been brought upon the land because the Pharaoh will not let the Apura go. Hither, then, they come to slay the Pharaoh, and thee also, O Queen, and with them come many thousands of people, catching up such arms as lie to their hands.”
Now Pharaoh sank down groaning, but the Queen spake to the Wanderer:
“Anon thy weapon sang of war, Eperitus; now war is at the gates.”
“Little I fear the rush of battle and the blows men deal in anger, Lady,” he made answer, “though a man may fear the Gods without shame. Ho, Guards! close up, close up round me! Look not so pale-faced now death from the Gods is done with, and we have but to fear the sword of men.”
So great was his mien and so glorious his face as he cried thus, and one by one drew his long arrows forth and laid them on the board, that the trembling Guards took heart, and to the number of fifty and one ranged themselves on the edge of the daïs in a double line. Then they also made ready their bows and loosened the arrows in their quivers.
Now from without there came a roar of men, and anon, while those of the house of Pharaoh, and of the guests and nobles, who sat at the feast and yet lived, fled behind the soldiers, the brazen doors were burst in with mighty blows, and through them a great armed multitude surged along the hall. There came soldiers broken from their ranks. There came the embalmers of the Dead; their hands were overfull of work to-night, but they left their work undone; Death had smitten some even of these, and their fellows did not shrink back from them now. There came the smith, black from the forge, and the scribe bowed with endless writing; and the dyer with his purple hands, and the fisher from the stream; and the stunted weaver from the loom, and the leper from the Temple gates. They were mad with lust of life, a starveling life that the King had taxed, when he let not the Apura go. They were mad with fear of death; their women followed them with dead children in their arms. They smote down the golden furnishings, they tore the silken hangings, they cast the empty cups of the feast at the faces of trembling ladies, and cried aloud for the blood of the King.
“Where is Pharaoh?” they yelled, “show us Pharaoh and the Queen Meriamun, that we may slay them. Dead are our first born, they lie in heaps as the fish lay when Sihor ran red with blood. Dead are they because of the curse that has been brought upon us by the prophets of the Apura, whom Pharaoh, and Pharaoh’s Queen, yet hold in Khem.”
Now as they cried they saw Pharaoh Meneptah cowering behind the double line of Guards, and they saw the Queen Meriamun who cowered not, but stood silent above the din. Then she thrust her way through the Guards, and yet holding the body of the child to her breast, she stood before them with eyes that flashed more brightly than the uraeus crown upon her brow.
“Back!” she cried, “back! It is not Pharaoh, it is not I, who have brought this death upon you. For we too have death here!” and she held up the body of her dead son. “It is that False Hathor whom ye worship, that Witch of many a voice and many a face who turns your hearts faint with love. For her sake ye endure these woes, on her head is all this death. Go, tear her temple stone from stone, and rend her beauty limb from limb and be avenged and free the land from curses.”
A moment the people stood and hearkened, muttering as stands the lion that is about to spring, while those who pressed without cried: “Forward! Forward! Slay them! Slay them!” Then as with one voice they screamed:
“The Hathor we love, but you we hate, for ye have brought these woes upon us, and ye shall die.”
They cried, they brawled, they cast footstools and stones at the Guards, and then a certain tall man among them drew a bow. Straight at the Queen’s fair breast he aimed his arrow, and swift and true it sped towards her. She saw the light gleam upon its shining barb, and then she did what no woman but Meriamun would have done, no, not to save herself from death—she held out the naked body of her son as a warrior holds a shield. The arrow struck through and through it, piercing the tender flesh, aye, and pricked her breast beyond, so that she let the dead boy fall.
The Wanderer saw it and wondered at the horror of the deed, for he had seen no such deed in all his days. Then shouting aloud the terrible war-cry of the Achaeans he leapt upon the board before him, and as he leapt his golden armour clanged.
Glancing around, he fixed an arrow to the string and drew to his ear that great bow which none but he might so much as bend. Then as he loosed, the string sang like a swallow, and the shaft screamed through the air. Down the glorious hall it sped, and full on the breast of him who had lifted bow against the Queen the bitter arrow struck, nor might his harness avail to stay it. Through the body of him it passed and with blood-red feathers flew on, and smote another who stood behind him so that his knees also were loosened, and together they fell dead upon the floor.
Now while the people stared and wondered, again the bowstring sang like a swallow, again the arrow screamed in its flight, and he who stood before it got his death, for the shield he bore was pinned to his breast.
Then wonder turned to rage; the multitude rolled forward, and from either side the air grew dark with arrows. For the Guards at the sight of the shooting of the Wanderer found heart and