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will
deliver this letter to you. Kisses to you and Huni, a thousand times.
You are not to worry.
Naia.
Semerket’s heart began to beat
with excitement when he heard the splash of the anchor stone. He
realized that only a couple of hundred leagues separated him from his
beloved.
“I’m here, Naia,” he whispered. “Do you feel
it? Look up, and you will see me.”
SHAUL, THE
ELDEST SON of Elibar, together with a few of his father’s more
burly shepherds, escorted Semerket to the Babylonian border. Though the
land differed in no way from the rolling hills in which they had been
traveling for at least a week, Semerket knew the land to be Babylonian
by the tall, slim boundary stone that marked it. He stepped from
Shaul’s four-wheeled chariot to the ground. Dutifully, he knelt and
kissed the earth, thanking the gods for his safe arrival.
The boundary stone stood flat and gray at
the junction of two roads, carved with the names and images of the
Babylonian gods, invoking their curses should anyone violate the
hospitality of the people living behind it. Fierce gryphons with
slashing claws stood sentry on either side of the stone, promising
swift punishment to those who disregarded its warnings.
Semerket watched as Shaul and his companions
turned their chariots, returning to the west. He waited until they
disappeared over the rise; then, fighting an almost panicky feeling of
abandonment, he began to walk down the road that led south.
It took him the entire afternoon to reach
the next city. In all that time, he saw no one on the road. To his
relief, just as the sun began to fall behind the western hills, he
caught site of the ancient walls of Mari. A haze of black smoke hovered
above the city, thicker than the usual smut of cooking fires. As he
came nearer, he saw that the walls bore witness to siege engines
recently used against them. Holes gaped in their brown brick flanks,
and scars of soot and smoke zigzagged crazily across their ramparts.
In all the other cities of Mesopotamia
through which he had passed with Shaul and his companions, the noise of
human traffic and habitation had risen loudly to greet them. At Mari,
he heard only the occasional screeches of the carrion vultures wheeling
in high circles above. As he came nearer the walls, he saw bodies
heaped haphazardly in the fields on either side of the road. The
temperature had risen precipitously as he ventured further south, and
the bloating corpses seemed to melt together like fat left in the sun.
His nostrils curled at the sinister smell of rotting meat, overlaid as
it was with the pervasively acrid scent of human waste.
From behind the damaged city wall, he
unexpectedly heard male voices yelling in excitement. A gang of Elamite
soldiers suddenly burst through the ruined city gate, kicking a leather
ball, passing it to one another between their feet.
The squad of soldiers stopped abruptly when
they saw Semerket standing in the road. The ball came bounding over to
where Semerket stood, and he set off to catch it for them. When he bent
down, however, he saw that the leather wrapping covered a perfectly
distinct human head. Semerket recoiled, allowing the head to roll into
the field of corpses, losing it in the long shadows.
“Who are you?” one of the men asked in poor
Babylonian.
Semerket spoke haltingly. “I’m Semerket,
from Egypt. I’ve come to meet with your king Kutir and bring him
Pharaoh’s blessing.” Now that he had left the former colonies of Egypt,
he felt it safe to call himself by his own name.
When the lieutenant had translated his
words, the Elamites smiled cordially and nodded. “Welcome to the
kingdom of Babylon, Egyptian, or what’s left of it,” the soldier said
in his queerly accented Babylonian.
Semerket’s gaze wandered to the ruins behind
the gate. “What happened to this town, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“Its people gave — how do you say it?
Hiding? Protection…?”
“Shelter?”
“Yes! Just so! They gave