“Set receive your cursed soul,” the Nubian snarled.  Kenkenes leaped across the prostrate soldier, and simultaneously the weapons went up, descended and clashed.  Then followed a wild and fearful battle.

The Egyptian falchion was nothing more than a sword-shaped ax.  Therefore, these were not tongues of steel which would whip their supple length one across the other and fill the air with the lightning of their play and the devilish beauty of their music.  The vanquished would not taste the nice death of a spitted heart.  There was yet the method of the stone-ax warriors in this battle, and he who fell would be a fearful thing to see.

Perhaps it was because Kenkenes was stronger and more agile; perhaps he remembered Deborah at that moment, or perhaps he was simply a better fighter.  Whatever the cause his blade went up and descended at last, before the Nubian could parry, and the second servitor of Har-hat fell on his face and died.

Chilled by the instant sobering, which follows the taking of life, the young man sickened and whirled away from the quivering flesh.  Plunging his falchion in the sand to hide its stain, he went back to the fallen soldier.

He knew by the look on the gray face, by the dark pool that had grown beside him, that the warrior had fought his last fight.  Kenkenes raised the man’s head, and heard these words, faintly spoken: 

“He sent them in pursuit.  I knew he meant to do it, but I could not get near to kill him.  So I followed them.  But thou art her lover; do thou protect her now.”

“Her!  Rachel?” Kenkenes cried.  “Who art thou?”

“Atsu, once her taskmaster, always her—­” the voice died away.

“Where is she?” Kenkenes implored.  “In the name of thy gods, go not yet!  Where is she?”

The lips parted in answer, but no sound came.  The arm went up as if to point, but it fell limp without indicating direction, and with a sigh the soldier turned his face away.

Sobbing, wild with anxiety and grief, Kenkenes shook the inert body, pleading frantically for some sign to guide him to Rachel.  But there was no response, for the dead speak not out of Amenti.

At last Kenkenes laid the body down and stood up.  It had come to him very plainly that, but for Atsu, already these dead servitors would have been beyond overtaking in pursuit of his love.  Though a worshiper of Israel’s God, Kenkenes was still Egyptian in his instincts.  The man who had died to save Rachel he could not bury uncoffined in a grave of sand, where the natural processes of dissolution would destroy him utterly.  His and Rachel’s debts to Atsu were great, and the demand was made upon him now to discharge all that was possible in the one act of caring for the dead soldier’s remains.  Kenkenes could not bear the body back to the group he had left about the king, for he had a mission which concerned all the living who were dear to him.  Furthermore the sky was threatening, the desert was a terrible place during high winds, and he dared not delay.