Or perhaps, Ra thinks sombrely, they sense what I sense, that my days are numbered, and it troubles them. Or else, which is worse, it doesn't trouble them.

They are soon gone, at any rate. Only Set remains, and that is because he has the second of his daily tasks to fulfil.

Apophis rises once more. The giant serpent, now healed, explodes from the river, and as ever Set leaps to wrestle with it. As ever, he is victorious. Apophis dies again, and for a time the river is all froth and crimson tumult.

And so the voyage is over. The Solar Barque reaches the western gate of heaven and moors there. Ra is by now weighed down with cares. A gloom has well and truly descended on him. He has nothing to look forward to but a night in the netherworld, Mandet drifting along a black river through caverns of utter darkness, the air glacially still, and only Aker for company, a stoic, uncommunicative presence, peering intently ahead at all times, his golden eyes like lamps in a tomb. No sleep, no rest, just a period of deathlike isolation, to counterbalance the brightness and gregariousness of day.

Ra steps off Mesektet and onto Mandet, heavily.

Dusk, as always, brings sorrow.

6. Caravan

The camels spat and grumbled, and the children laughed harshly and thrashed them all the harder with their switches. In a long line the beasts of burden picked their way across the desert, with a straggle of goats bleating behind. Their young drivers showed them little mercy.

Occasionally, during a rest stop, one of the fouler-tempered camels might take its revenge and bite. The children seemed to find this funny too. The bitten boy — it was always a boy — would giggle, rub the spot where the camel had sunk its teeth in, then turn on the offending animal and thrash it soundly. It was as if pain, giving it and receiving it, was all a game to them.