The Season of the Hyaena (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) Read Online Free Page B

we can trust, led by the only two senior generals—’
    ‘We can trust.’ Huy finished the sentence.
    Horemheb and Rameses fell silent.
    ‘If we send the Horus and Isis,’ Ay sighed, ‘all we will have left are our mercenaries and Nakhtimin’s imperial regiment. If we faced revolt or mutiny here,’ he shrugged, ‘how long would any of us survive?’
    ‘We must wait,’ Maya intervened. ‘The temples and palaces must be restored, the treasuries filled, the allegiance of every regiment guaranteed. Until then our allies in Canaan must look after themselves.’
    ‘Wait!’ Horemheb shouted. ‘Wait!’ He turned and glared at me. ‘Mahu, you are Chief of Police, and Overseer of the House of Secrets. Internal security is your concern.’
    ‘Is it now?’
    ‘You sit there silent,’ Rameses taunted. ‘As if half asleep. Still dreaming about the glory days, Mahu?’
    I held Ay’s gaze. I was his ally. He knew that I knew it was not for any liking. We were just men manacled together. We had no choice in the matter. We either stayed together or fell together.
    ‘Mahu the dreamer,’ Rameses repeated.
    ‘General Rameses!’ I paused.
    ‘We wait with bated breath,’ my tormentor murmured.
    ‘General Rameses, you are a dead man. No, don’t let your hand near that dagger you’ve hidden beneath your robes. Don’t you realise?’ I answered his furious look with my own. ‘Every man in this chamber is a dead man! God’s Father Ay sings the hymn and we know the chorus. Each of us was a friend of Akenhaten, he whom the priests of Amun-Ra and Thebes now call the Great Heretic. We are blamed for what has happened.’ I gestured towards the windows. ‘Ask Sobeck. Wander the streets of Thebes, if you dare. There are men who would pay good gold to see your head, and mine, pickled in a barrel! They would love to either impale us alive or bury us in the hot sands of the Red Lands.’
    ‘If we had followed the Aten?’ Meryre intervened. ‘If we had kept faithful to our master’s vision?’
    ‘Shit!’ Rameses shouted. ‘It’s because we followed that vision.’ His voice faltered.
    ‘That’s right, General Rameses,’ I agreed. ‘Because of that, we are now in crisis. We are so weak, we daren’t even let you out of our sight, not to mention your precious regiments. I have reports of unrest from the Delta to beyond the Third Cataract: conspiracies, covens, disaffected officers, treasonable mayors. Did you know certain powerful ones are seriously considering asking the Mitanni or the Hittites to intervene in Egypt?’
    ‘Never!’ Maya protested.
    ‘True,’ I replied. ‘We have no names, yet in every city along the Nile, from the Third Cataract to the Great Green, treason and treachery bubble like water in a pot.’
    ‘So what do you advise?’ Horemheb asked quietly. ‘That we should be careful?’
    I stretched out my arms. ‘On the one hand we have those who hate us because we followed the Great Heresy. And on the other,’ I glared at Meryre, Tutu and others of their coven sitting across the council chamber, ‘there are those who hate us because we deserted the Aten, the Great Heretic’s vision. We have no friends, no allies.’ I gestured at Anen, Ay’s kinsman, who had been installed as High Priest of Amun-Ra in Thebes. ‘He is our high priest, yet he dare not even officiate in his own temple. Have you heard of the Shabtis?’
    ‘Shabtis?’ Rameses mocked. ‘Statues put in a tomb?’
    ‘Statues put in a tomb,’ I echoed, ‘to represent the servants who will serve their master when he reaches the Fields of the Blessed beyond the Far Horizon.’
    ‘Come to the point,’ Horemheb growled.
    ‘I am Chief of Police, and rightly so. All I know is that there is a group, a secret society who call themselves the Shabtis of Akenhaten. Fanatical followers who believe we deserted their master and so should pay for our treachery with our lives.’
    The council chamber fell ominously silent.
    ‘You