“I like not the look of them. I pray the Grasshopper they do not guide us across the River of Death.”
“Have no fear, General,” said the holy Tanofir from the other end of the tent. “If you and your men play their parts as well as the guides will play theirs, the ships are already burned together with their companies. Only take fire with you.”
So that general departed with the two guides, looking somewhat frightened, and soon was marching up Nile at the head of five thousand swordsmen.
Now Bes looked at me and said,
“It seems that you had better be gone also, my Brother, with the archers. Perchance the holy Tanofir will show you whither.”
“No, no,” answered Tanofir, “my guides will show him. Look not so doubtful, Shabaka. Did I fail you when you were in the grip of the King of kings in the East, and only your own life and that of Bes were at stake?”
“I do not know,” I answered.
“You do not know, but I know, as I think do Bes and Karema, since the one received the messages which the other sent. Well, if I did not fail you then, shall I fail you now when Egypt is at stake? Follow these guides I give you, and——” here he took hold of the quiver of arrows that lay beside me on the ground, and as certainly as though he could see it with his blind eyes, touched one of them, on the shaft of which were two black and a white feather, “remember my words after you have loosed this arrow from your great black bow and noted where it strikes.”
Then I turned to Bes and asked,
“Where do we meet again?”