'Please let me come with you, Tata,' he changed his tune. The little devil was attacking me on all fronts. I found it impossible to resist him when he exerted all his charm. Then I was struck with inspiration. 'Lord Harrab is the commander of this expedition. You must ask him.'
The relationship between these two was a strange one. Only three of us?the two parents and myself?were aware of Memnon's true paternity. The prince himself thought of Tanus as his tutor and the commander of his armies. Although he had come to love Tanus, he still held him in considerable awe. Tanus was not the type of man that a small boy, even a prince, would trifle with.
The two of them looked at each other now. I could see Memnon was pondering his best plan of attack, while I could feel Tanus trembling with the effort of holding back his laughter.
'Lord Harrab,' Memnon had decided on the formal approach, 'I wish to come with you. I think it will be a very useful lesson for me, After all, one day I will have to lead the army.' I had taught him logic and dialectic. He was a student to be proud of.
'Prince Memnon, are you giving me an order?' Tanus managed to cover his amusement with a horrific scowl, and I saw tears begin to well up in the prince's eyes.
He shook his head miserably. 'No, my lord.' He was a small boy once more. 'But I would very much like to come hunting with you, please.'
'The queen will have me strangled,' said Tanus, 'but hop up here in front of me, you little ruffian.'
The prince loved Tanus to call him a ruffian. It was a term that he usually reserved for the men of his old Blues regiment, and it made Memnon feel that he was one of them. He let out a yelp of glee and almost tripped over his own feet in his haste to obey. Tanus reached down and caught his arm. He swung him up and placed him securely between us on the footplate.
'Hi up!' Memnon shouted to Patience and Blade, and we drove out into the open desert, but not before I had sent a messenger back to the fleet with a message for the queen to tell her that the prince was safe. No lioness could be as fierce as my mistress in the care of its cub.
When we struck the migration road, it was a broad swathe of churned sand many hundreds of yards wide. The hooves of the oryx are broad and splayed to cover the soft desert sands. They leave a distinctive track, the shape of a Hyksos spear-head. Many thousands of the huge antelope had passed this way.
'When?' Tanus asked, and I dismounted to examine the trail. I took Memnon down with me, for I never missed an opportunity to instruct him. I showed him how the night breeze had eroded the spoor, and how small insects and lizards had superimposed their own tracks over those of the herd.
"They passed here yesterday evening at sunset,' I gave my opinion, and had it endorsed by the prince. 'But they are travelling slowly. With luck we can catch them before noon.'
We waited for the wagons to come up. We watered the horses, and then went on, following the broad trodden road through the dunes.
Soon we found the carcasses of the weaker animals that had succumbed. They were the very young and the oldest, and now the crows and the vultures squawked and squabbled over their remains, while the little red jackals slunk around the fringes, hoping for a mouthful.
We followed the broad road until at last we saw the thin filtering of dust upon the southern horizon, and we quickened our pace. When we topped a line of rugged hills whose crests danced in the heat-mirage, we saw the herds spread out below us. We had reached the area where the thunderstorm had broken weeks before. As far ahead as we could see, the desert had been transformed into a garden of flowers.
The last rains might have fallen here a hundred years ago. It seemed impossible, but the seeds of that harvest had lain sleeping all that time. They had been burned and desiccated by sun and desert wind, while they waited for the rains to come once again. For any who doubted the existence of the gods, this miracle was proof. For any man who doubted that life was eternal, this held out the promise of immortality. If the flowers could survive thus, then surely the soul of man, which is infinitely more wonderful and valuable, must also live for ever.
The landscape below us was painted with shades of soft greens, the contours and the outlines of the hills were picked out with sweeps of darker green. This formed a background to the wonderful rainbow of colour that lit the earth. The flowers grew in banks and drifts. The blooms of each variety seemed to seek the company of their own kind, as do the herds of antelope and the flocks of birds. The orange-coloured daisies grew in pools and lakes together, those with white petals frosted entire hillsides. There were fields of blue gladiolus, scarlet lilies and yellow ericas.
Even the wiry brush plants in the gorges and nullahs, that had seemed seared and dried as mummies of men dead a thousand years, were now decked in fresh robes of green, with wreaths of yellow blooms crowning their ancient blasted heads. Lovely as it now was, I knew that it was ephemeral. Another month and the desert would triumph again. The flowers would wither on the stem, and the grass would turn to dust and blow away on the furnace blasts of the winds. Nothing would remain of this splendour except the seeds, tiny as grains of sand, waiting out the years with a monumental patience.
'Such beauty should be shared with the one you love,' Tanus breathed in awe. 'Would that the queen were with me now!'
That Tanus had been so moved by it proved the glory of the spectacle. He was a soldier and a hunter, but for once he gave no thought to the quarry, but gazed upon the spectacle with a religious awe.
It was a shout from Kratas in one of the following chariots that roused us from this reverie of beauty. 'By Seth's stinking breath, there must be ten thousand of them down there.'
The oryx were spread out to the green silhouette of the farther hills. Some of the old bulls were solitary, keeping all others away, but the rest of them were in herds of ten or a hundred, and some of the herds were beyond count. They were merely huge tawny stains, like cloud shadow upon the plains. It seemed to me that every oryx in all of Africa was gathered here.
We watered the horses again before the hunt began. This gave me a chance to go forward and to gaze down upon this great concourse of living things. Of course, I took Mem-non with me, but when I tried to lead him by the hand he disentangled his fingers from my grip. 'Don't hold my hand in front of the men, Tata,' he told me solemnly. 'They will think I am still a baby.'
As we stood on the sky-line, the nearest animals raised their heads and regarded us with mild curiosity. It occurred to me that they had probably never before seen a human being, and that they detected no danger in our presence.
The oryx is a magnificent creature, standing as tall as a horse, with the same full, flowing, dark tail that sweeps the ground. Its face is painted with intricate whorls and slashes of black upon a pale, sand-coloured mask. A stiff, dark mane runs down the neck, enhancing the horse-like appearance, but its horns are like those of no other animal created by the gods. They are slim and straight and tipped like the dagger on my belt. Almost as long as the animal that bears them is tall, they are formidable weapons. Whereas all other antelope are meek and inoffensive, preferring flight to aggression, the oryx will defend itself even against the attack of the lion.
I told Memnon of their courage and their powers of endurance, and explained how they could live their entire lives without drinking water from pool or river. "They take then-water from the dew, and from the desert roots and tubers which theyidig out of the earth with their hooves.'
He listened avidly, for he had inherited the love of the chase in his father's blood, and I had taught him to revere all wild things.
'The true huntsman understands and respects the birds and the animals that he hunts,' I told him, and he nodded seriously.