The Assassins of Isis Read Online Free

Libyan.’ Heby had followed Nadif’s gaze; he touched the scar. ‘Out in the western deserts he cut my ear, but I took his penis along with four others and burnt them as an offering to the god.’
    â€˜I’m sure you did.’ Nadif stepped back. ‘But shouldn’t we do something about your master?’
    â€˜The snakes,’ Heby replied. ‘If we go on that roof we too will journey into the West. I don’t think my master would want that.’
    Nadif tried to hide his unease. He had met many people who had experienced the sudden death of a friend or relation, and their reactions were often surprising. Some became hysterical, others wept, a few became icy quiet; but these three were acting as if they were half asleep or drugged.
    Nadif became aware of the clamour in the rest of the house. The hall of audience was filling with servants and the curious from other houses along the Nile. He immediately
instructed all those not belonging to General Suten’s retinue to leave. He dispatched a runner into the city to inform his superiors what had happened, and tried to impose some order. He ordered a fire to be lit in the hall of audience and organised the servants, telling them to put on heavy boots and gauntlets, anything they could find to protect their feet, legs and arms. From a servant he borrowed some leather leg guards and an apron for his front, wrapping his hands and arms in rolls of coarse linen, then, armed with poles and garden implements, he and Heby led the servants on to the roof terrace. Some were terrified and refused to go, but Lupherna, who now asserted herself as head of the house, promised all those who helped a lavish reward, and Nadif soon had enough volunteers to help him clear the roof.
    It was a grisly, gruesome business. The horned vipers had emerged from their hiding places, attracted by the heat and food. Most of them were sluggish. A few were killed but the servants were superstitious and regarded the snakes as a visitation from a god, so Nadif compromised, and where possible the horned vipers were placed in a leather bag and taken away. Eventually they reached the general’s corpse. Nadif ordered it to be taken below, and it was laid on a divan in the hall of audience. Lady Lupherna knelt beside it. She took off her wig, placing her jewellery beside it, then rent her beautiful robe and, taking dust from the fireplace, sprinkled it over her head and body, staining her face, chest and shoulders. She knelt keening, rocking backwards and forwards, as Nadif laid out the corpse and stripped it of its robe.
    The general had been an old man, well past his sixtieth summer, and his body had been lean and hard. Nadif counted that he must have been bitten a dozen times, each bite mark a dark bluish red, the skin around it deeply discoloured. The general’s face had also become swollen, the hollow cheeks puffing out, the lips full, with white froth dribbling out of one corner. Nadif found the
half-open eyes eerie, as if the general was about to look up at him and snap out an order. He had glimpsed Suten from afar in the uniform of a staff officer, his armour glittering, the gold collars of valour and the silver bees of courage shimmering in the sunlight. Now he looked like a pathetic old man caught in a dreadful death.
    A local physician was summoned from a nearby house. He turned the corpse over.
    â€˜At least fifteen times,’ he intoned. ‘I’m not an expert; my specialities are the mouth and anus.’
    At any other time Nadif would have laughed at this pompous physician.
    â€˜You don’t have to be an expert,’ he snapped, ‘to count how many times a man has been bitten.’
    â€˜I’m merely stating,’ the physician retorted. ‘It’s rather strange that General Suten didn’t try to escape. He appears to have allowed himself to sit there and be bitten.’
    Nadif narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you