Hannu’s gaze skittered across the dark fields. He wasn’t scared, Piay knew – he was never afraid. The instincts he’d honed in battle during his former life as a soldier were coming to the fore.

Piay remembered stumbling across Hannu begging on a dusty street in Thebes. His ruined leg, hacked in some battle, meant he could no longer be a member of the elite Blue Crocodile Guards. Many thought he was useless, with no future. But Piay had seen something in this fierce little man that day, in his incisive stare and his contempt for well-educated strangers. He was also knowledgeable and wise, two things that an even wiser man valued. Piay had hired him as an assistant, an occasional advisor, servant and diplomat.

Hannu took it upon himself to keep Piay’s feet upon the ground.

‘I admit I sometimes let my confidence get the better of me,’ said Piay.

‘And your mouth.’

Piay tightened his lips. ‘I am a spy of great renown, foremost in all skills—’

‘Except humility.’

‘. . . trained in the arts of war and peace, by the great Taita himself, but I defer to your knowledge of blood-soaked battlefields and the smell of defeat.’

Hannu narrowed his eyes.

‘We will continue with caution. And at the first sign of trouble we will retreat. Is that fair?’

Hannu grunted again. His assent wasn’t convincing.

Piay raised his hand and snapped his fingers forward. Away they went, deeper into enemy territory.

Laughter split the air across the swaying crops. Piay could smell the heavy musk of the barbarians’ beasts. The horse had once been unknown in Egypt, so he had been told. But that was long before he had been born.

Taita had told him the story of when the Hyksos had first swept like a storm upon the backs of their mounts. Taita had witnessed this fearsome sight himself, so he said, and if that were true then Taita must have been blessed by the gods, for he looked barely older than Piay.

Piay heard the beasts snort and stamp their hooves. They were close but not close enough.

They’d known of these strange barbarian people from the distant east, the Hyksos, for many years, Taita had said. They came from a mountainous land and had once been farmers until they learned the way of the crescent sword and the bow. When their small bands had started to move into the Sinai and along the fringes of the Nile, the Hyksos had been considered little more than an irritant, raiding caravans and turquoise mines and isolated settlements.

In those days, who could have guessed they had designs upon Egypt itself?