Year of the Hyenas Read Online Free PDF Page B

No
wife or slave girl warmed his bed; Pawero was drawn to the lean, hard
life of the most rigorous priesthood. He was a zealot, in fact, who
secretly disapproved of the increasingly casual way Pharaoh performed
his religious duties in his later years. Pawero longed for the day when
a more god-fearing pharaoh might rule; perhaps— Amun willing—a pharaoh
from his own family, whose lineage was far more ancient than Ramses’.
    Such a miracle
was a
possibility, too, for Pawero’s sister Tiya was the second of Ramses’
great wives and had borne him four sons. One son in particular, his
nephew Prince Pentwere, was commander of an elite cavalry unit and a
great hero to the Thebans. He would make a splendid pharaoh. But to
even imagine the death of a pharaoh was an act of treason, and Pawero
sternly banished such thoughts from his mind.
    As Pawero
descended
from his barge, head held high as the slaves and temple guardians
bowed, he crossed in silence to the jetty. The effect would have been
grand, indeed, had he not placed his sandaled foot in fresh horse dung
left by a passing chariot. Stopping abruptly, gazing down, Pawero
murmured a most unprayerful word.
    Paser’s laugh
bellied
out across the quay. “That should teach you to raise your sights too
high, Pawero. You’ll only land yourself in shit.”
    The Western
Mayor’s
eyes went as flat and deadly as a cobra’s. “I must heed my revered
colleague,” Pawero said as his valet rushed forward to clean his
sandal. “For he comes from shit himself.”
    In the uneasy
silence
Paser laughed loudly again, as if appreciating a fine jest. Only Nenry
recognized the cold, subtle anger that lurked in it. “I’ve never made
any secret about my lack of pedigree, Lord Mayor,” Paser said.
“Everyone knows your glorious birthright, while I merely had my wits to
get me by. But here we are, all the same, equals.”
    “Equals?”
Pawero
mused. “Yes. As we all are before the gods, even Pharaoh himself.”
    “Well, you
must tell
Pharaoh that, for I don’t have the nerve.” Paser bade his bearers to
set his chair on the ground. After a few false starts he was able to
wrench himself at last from the narrow seat and hurtle himself over to
where Pawero stood. Their contrast was never more evident than at that
moment. Lean and fat. Haughty and simple. Tall as a reed. Compact as a
wrestler. Yet they were united in something greater than their
differences: their pure and utter loathing for one another.
    Paser held his
arm for
Pawero to lean on. Together, they ascended the long ramp that led into
Ma’at’s Temple of Justice, each clutching his identical staff of
office. To all who saw them from afar, it seemed the mayors were the
most cordial of friends. But Nenry privately was reminded of the
stilted and wary courtship dances performed by certain desert spiders,
where death, not mating, was often the result of such delicate footwork.
    The high
vizier
received the two mayors in the usual temple anteroom reserved for such
meetings. Outside, a long line of petitioners and litigants waited.
With shouts and pleas they tried hard to catch the vizier’s attention,
for Toh was not often in Thebes these days, being instead at
Pi-Remesse, the northern capital where Pharaoh resided. If the
petitioners could not catch the high vizier’s ear, or failed to bribe
him sufficiently, it might be weeks or months before Toh was again in
the south.
    The vizier was
a
wrinkled old man of some seventy years, older than even his friend, the
Pharaoh. He tottered slowly to his chair, waving his hand in the
direction of the litigants, and exchanged compliments with the mayors.
Wanly, he directed a slave to take them a bowl of fried dates and other
dainty tidbits. Beer mixed with palm wine—a most heady brew—was next
brought, and the old man treated himself to a hefty draft to fortify
his liver. He then directed all the litigants to wait outside and wiped
his toothless mouth with his hand, ready for the