Ramses, Volume III

by Christian Jacq

  “Raia was spying for the Hittites.”

  “That’s . . . well, that’s simply beyond belief! How could I have known? All the best people bought from him . . .”

  “You’re putting up a good defense, Shaanar, but it’s no use. I know how your blind ambition led you to betray your country and collaborate with our enemies. The Hittites needed contacts inside our borders, and you were the answer to their prayers. You, my own brother.”

  “Have you lost your reason, Ramses? You think I’m a snake in the grass?”

  “I know you are.”

  “You seem to enjoy insulting me for no reason.”

  “I’ll tell you where you went wrong, Shaanar: thinking that every man has his price. You went straight for my closest friends, never dreaming that friendship can truly be as solid as granite. That’s how you fell into my trap.”

  Shaanar’s eyes rolled back.

  “Ahsha has never been your man, Shaanar. He’s reported back to me from the very beginning.”

  The king’s older brother gripped the arms of his chair.

  “I know everything you’ve been up to,” Ramses continued. “You’re evil, Shaanar, and you’ll never change.”

  “I . . . I demand a trial!”

  “You’ll have one, and you’ll be sentenced to death for high treason. Since it’s wartime, you’ll be held in the main jail in Memphis, then transferred to a desert outpost until your trial can begin. The law dictates that Pharaoh must deal with domestic threats before leaving for foreign wars.”

  Shaanar’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “You don’t dare kill me because I’m your brother . . . and the Hittites will slaughter you! When you’re dead, they’ll hand the country over to me!”

  “A king must know how to look evil in the face,” Ramses said calmly. “Thanks to you, Shaanar, I’ll be a better warrior.”

  FIFTY

  Arinna had told Ramses all about her adventures with Ahsha and her journey to Egypt. Once she had crossed the border and produced her message, she was promptly ushered in to see the Pharaoh.

  In keeping with Ahsha’s promises, Ramses had offered Arinna a modest home in Pi-Ramses and a stipend to cover her household expenses. Overcome with gratitude, she wished she could tell the king what had become of Ahsha, but she hadn’t a clue.

  Ramses faced the facts. His friend had been arrested and probably executed. Of course, Ahsha might have tried one final ploy: claiming that he was in league with Shaanar, on the side of the Hittites. But would he have even been allowed a chance to defend himself, much less convince them?

  No matter how he had ended up, Ahsha had fulfilled his mission admirably. His message contained only three words, but they were enough to send Ramses marching off to war:

  Kadesh. Fast. Danger.

  He wrote no more for fear that his message might be intercepted. He’d told his mistress nothing, unsure how far he could trust her. But those three words said it all.

  When Meba was notified of the council meeting, he bolted for his bathroom and vomited. To cover his sour breath, he rubbed on strong cologne made from attar of damask rose. Since Shaanar’s dramatic arrest, Meba, as his right-hand man, was expecting to be collared at any moment. Running away would be an admission of his guilt, and Meba could no longer even contact Ofir, who’d gone underground.

  On his way to the palace, Meba tried to think. What if Ramses didn’t suspect him? The Pharaoh knew he was no friend of Shaanar, who had replaced him as secretary of state, kept him on the sidelines, and then reinstated him with the sole and obvious intention of lording it over him. That was how the court saw it, and perhaps the king did, too. Meba was the innocent victim, gratified by his persecutor’s fall from grace.

  The elder statesman decided to keep a low profile, not offering to serve in his old position. The best course was maintaining the composure of a dignified public servant, blending in with the scenery, until war tipped the scales in favor of either Ramses or the Hittites. If it turned out to be the Hittites, he’d make his move.

  The full complement of generals and commanding officers was present at the council meeting. Pharaoh and the Great Royal Wife took their place on their thrones, side by side.

  “Due to information reaching us from the north,” declared Ramses, “Egypt is declaring war on Hatti. Under my command, our troops will march forth from the city beginning tomorrow morning. We have just sent the emperor Muwattali a dispatch announcing our intentions. I pray that we may vanquish the forces of darkness and keep our land safe in the hands of the law of Ma’at.”

  It was the shortest council meeting since the beginning of the Pharaoh’s reign. There was no discussion. Courtiers and generals filed out in silence.

  Serramanna walked past Meba without so much as a glance.

  Back in his office, the old diplomat downed a full jar of white oasis wine.

  Ramses kissed his children, Kha and Meritamon, who were chasing around with Watcher, the king’s dog. Under the tutelage of Nedjem, the onetime gardener whom the king had selected as his secretary of agriculture, they were making great strides in their study of hieroglyphs. They were also experts at the popular board game called Snake, the object of which was to keep from falling into the underworld and land in the realm of light. For the boy and his half-sister, this would be a day like any other. They cheerfully trailed after Nedjem until he agreed to read them a story.

  Sitting on the grass, Ramses and Nefertari enjoyed one of their rare private moments, contemplating the acacias, the pomegranate and jojoba trees, willows and tamarisks, which rose above the beds of cornflowers, irises, and larkspur. The king wore a simple kilt, the queen a skirt with shoulder straps that left her breasts uncovered.

  “Are you hurt by your brother’s betrayal?” asked Nefertari.

  “I would have been more surprised to find out he was loyal. Thank God for Ahsha! I’m afraid there’s more to this affair than meets the eye. The evil sorcerer is still at large, and Shaanar probably had other allies, inside or outside the country. Be very careful, Nefertari.”

  “I’ll be thinking of Egypt, not myself, while you risk your own existence to defend your country.”

  “I’ve ordered Serramanna to stay in Pi-Ramses and watch over you. He was so primed for battle that he’s furious with me.”

  Nefertari laid her head on Ramses’ shoulder. Her hair was free, silken against the king’s arm.

  “I’ve barely recovered from the sorcerer’s curse, and now you’re marching off to battle again. I wonder if we’ll ever know peace and quiet, the way your father and mother did.”

  “Perhaps, if we tame the Hittites. Avoiding this confrontation would be the end of Egypt. If I don’t come back, Nefertari, you become Pharaoh, and rule in the face of adversity. Muwattali enslaves his conquered nations. I hope our people will never be reduced to that.”

  “No matter what happens to us, we’ve been happy. We’ve been touched with the gift of joy, fleeting as perfume or the murmur of the wind in the treetops. I’m yours, Ramses, like a wave on the sea, like a wildflower blooming in the sunshine.”

  The left strap of Nefertari’s dress slipped off her shoulder. The king’s lips grazed her warm and scented flesh as he slowly removed the remainder of the clothing from the queen’s inviting and eager body.

  A flock of wild geese flew over the palace gardens as Ramses and Nefertari became one fire.

  Shortly before dawn, Ramses dressed in the “pure place” of the temple of Amon and prayed over the food and drink to be used in religious ceremonies. Then the Pharaoh left the sanctuary to witness the rebirth of the sun, his protector. Every night the sun disappeared to wrestle with the demons of darkness—the same battle he was about to launch against the fierce Anatolians. The dawning orb appeared between two hills on the horizon, where the legend said two huge turquoise trees stood, parting to let through the light.

  Ramses said the words of the prayer said by every pharaoh through the ages: “Hail to you, light born of the primo
rdial waters, filling the Two Lands with your beauty. You are the living soul that comes into being from nowhere. You fly through the sky like a falcon with many-colored plumage, banishing evil. The bark of night is on your right, the bark of day on your left; the crew of the bark of light rejoices.”

  Perhaps Ramses would never again perform this ceremony, if death awaited him at Kadesh. But another voice would follow his and the magical words would not be lost.

  In the city’s four bases, the troops were going over their final checklists. Thanks to the monarch’s constant attention over the past few weeks, their morale was high even though the approaching encounter was expected to be bloody. They were glad to be well supplied with well-forged weapons.

  As the troops marched out of the bases to meet at the city’s main gate, Ramses drove his chariot from the temple of Amon to the temple of Set. It stood in the oldest part of town, which had long ago been the site of the Hyksos invaders’ capital. To exorcise the evil, subsequent pharaohs had maintained a temple there, dedicated to the most powerful force in the universe. Ramses’ father, Seti, had been named for the god Set. He had mastered the force and transmitted the secret to his son.

  Today, Ramses had not come to challenge the angry god. He was there to attempt a feat of magic: linking Set to the Storm God worshiped by the Syrians and Hittites. He needed to make that mighty energy his own, to turn it against his enemies.

  The confrontation was swift and intense.

  Ramses’ stare met the red eyes of Set’s statue, a standing man with a canine head, a long muzzle, and drooping ears.

  The pedestal shook. The god’s legs appeared to move forward.

  “O Mighty Set, you who embody power, let me join in your ka, let me share your strength.”

  The gleam in the red eyes softened. Set had granted the Pharaoh’s petition.

  The priest of Midian and his daughter were worried. Moses, who had led the tribe’s main flock of sheep out to graze in the mountains, should have returned two days ago. The old priest knew his son-in-law was a solitary man who liked to meditate in the wilderness, sometimes experiencing strange visions. Moses had also refused to answer his wife’s questions and had shown little interest in the son born to him in exile.

  The tribal leader knew that Moses was always thinking about Egypt, the bountiful country where he had been born and achieved high status.

  “Do you think he’ll go back there?” the old man’s daughter asked him.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why is he hiding in Midian?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t want to. Moses is an honest, hardworking man, a good husband; what more could you ask?”

  “He seems so distant, so secretive . . .”

  “Accept him as he is, my child. You’ll be the happier for it.”

  “If he comes back, Father.”

  “Have faith and take care of the little one.”

  Moses did come back, but his face had changed. His brow was furrowed and his hair was white.

  His wife threw her arms around his neck. “What happened, Moses?”

  “I saw a bush burst into flame. It was on fire, but it didn’t burn. From the middle of the bush, God called to me. He told me His name and gave me a mission. God is One, and I must obey Him.”

  “Obey Him? Does that mean you’re going to leave us, me and your child?”

  “I must fulfill my mission, for no one can disobey God. His commandments are far greater than you and I. What are we, if not instruments in the service of His will?”

  “What is this mission you speak of, Moses?”

  “You’ll find out when the time comes.”

  The Hebrew sat alone in his tent, reliving his encounter with the angel of Yaweh, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

  Shouts interrupted his meditation. A man on horseback had just galloped into the encampment and was breathlessly recounting how a huge army, with Pharaoh himself at its head, was marching north to attack the Hittites.

  Moses thought of Ramses, his boyhood friend, and the amazing energy that drove him. In that instant, he wished him victory.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The Hittite army was massed in front of the capital’s ramparts. From atop a watchtower, the priestess Puduhepa watched the chariots line up, then the archers and foot soldiers. Perfectly disciplined, they embodied the invincible power of an empire that would soon make Ramses’ Egypt a province of Hatti.

  According to form, Muwattali had responded to the Pharaoh’s declaration of war with an identical letter in diplomatic terms.

  Puduhepa would have preferred to keep her husband at her side, but the emperor had demanded that Hattusili, his chief adviser, be present at the front.

  General Uri-Teshoop marched toward his soldiers, torch in hand. He lit a bonfire next to a never-used chariot. Swinging a sledgehammer, he smashed the chariot to pieces and threw them into the fire.

  “Such is the fate of any soldier who runs from the enemy. The Storm God will unleash the fury of his fire upon you!”

  By means of this magical ceremony, Uri-Teshoop endowed his troops with a cohesion that no confrontation, however intense, would weaken.

  The general held his sword out to Muwattali as a sign of submission to the emperor.

  The imperial chariot headed out toward Kadesh, the future burial ground of the Egyptian army.

  Ramses’ two splendid horses, Victory in Thebes and the Goddess Mut Is Satisfied, pulled the royal chariot, leading an army comprising four divisions of five thousand men each, placed under the protection of the gods Amon, Ra, Ptah, and Set. The four division commanders passed their orders on to unit commanders, lieutenant generals, and standard-bearers. As for the five hundred chariots, they were divided into five regiments. The soldiers’ gear included tunics, shirts, breastplates, leather greaves, helmets, small two-sided axes, and a wealth of other weapons to be distributed by the supply corps as necessary.

  Ramses’ driver, Menna, was an experienced charioteer familiar with Syria. He was far from thrilled to have Fighter, the gigantic Nubian lion, keeping pace with the chariot, mane flaring in the wind.

  Despite the king’s attempts to dissuade them, Setau and Lotus had insisted on returning to run the medical unit and set up the field hospital. They also hoped to bring back some unusual snakes, since they had never traveled as far north as Kadesh.

  The army left the capital at the end of the month of April in Year Five of Ramses’ reign. The weather turned out to be mild, and nothing hindered their progress. After crossing the border at Sile, Ramses had followed the coastal route, studded with well-guarded watering places, then passed through Canaan and Amurru.

  At the place called the Dwelling of the Valley of Cedars near Byblos, the king reviewed his reserve troops, three thousand men who were stationed there to seal off the protectorates. They were ordered to continue north to Kadesh, approaching the fortress from the northeast. The generals opposed this strategy, arguing that the reinforcements would encounter stiff resistance and be cut off on their way up the coastal route. Ramses ignored their protests.

  The route the king himself was following cut through the Bekaa Valley, a flatland between two mountain ranges. The strange scenery had an unsettling effect on the Egyptian soldiers. Some of them were aware that the muddy streams were teeming with crocodiles and the thickly forested mountains crawling with bears, hyenas, wildcats, and wolves.

  The cypresses, pines, and cedars grew so thick that when they crossed a wooded area the soldiers lost sight of the sun and panicked. A general had to reassure the men that the sky had not fallen.

  The division of Amon was in the lead, followed by the Ra and Ptah divisions, with Set bringing up the rear. A month after leaving their home base, the Egyptian troops approached the colossal fortress of Kadesh, built on the left bank of the Orontes River, at the outlet of the Bekaa Valley. The fort marked the border to the Hittite empire and served as a base for the commandos sent to destabilize the provinces of Amurru and Ca
naan.

  The weather turned rainy at the end of May and the soldiers complained about the dampness. The fact that their rations were plentiful and tasty went a long way toward easing the discomfort.

  Ramses paused to reconnoiter a few miles outside Kadesh, at the edge of the gloomy forest of Labwi. It turned out to be a likely spot for an ambush. The chariots would be immobilized, the infantry unable to maneuver. Though Ahsha’s scrawled message—Kadesh, Fast, Danger—was constantly on his mind, the king made sure to proceed with caution.

  He called for a temporary halt, with a front line of archers and chariots keeping watch, and met with his war council. Setau sat in with them; as on their last expedition, the snake charmer and his wife had become very popular with the troops, treating their minor injuries and illnesses on the march.

  Ramses summoned his charioteer, Menna. “Unroll the map.”

  “We’re here,” Ramses said, pointing to the edge of the forest, “on the east bank of the Orontes. On the other side of the forest, there’s a ford where we can cross the river, out of range of the archers on the fortress watchtowers. The second ford, just to the north, is much too close. We’ll stay clear of the fortress and camp to the northeast so we can take it from behind. Do you all agree to my plan?”

  The generals nodded in unison.

  The king’s eyes blazed. “Then have you all lost your wits?”

  “The forest could give us trouble,” the general in charge of the division of Amon offered.

  “I was wondering when you’d notice. And do you think the Hittites will stand idly by and let us ford the river, then take our positions next to the fortress? This is the battle plan devised by you—you, my own generals. Unfortunately, you’ve neglected one minor detail: the Hittite army.”

  “The enemy will stay safe inside the fortress,” objected the general in charge of the Ptah division.

  “If Muwattali was an ordinary commander, that might be what he’d do. But he’s the Emperor of Hatti. He’ll attack us in the forest, at the ford, and in front of his stronghold at the same time. He’ll isolate our units and keep us from answering his fire. The Hittites will never make the mistake of staying on the defensive. Why would they keep their fighting potential walled up inside a fortress? You have to admit it would be most out of character.”