by Paul Doherty
‘I will take Mahu, the Baboon from the South.’ His eyes held mine. ‘He shall be my tedjet.’
Sobeck immediately clambered down. I glanced at Colonel Perra who just shrugged. Weni was giggling behind his hand. Tuthmosis stood a little distance away, hands on his hips, a knowing look on his face.
‘I will be the driver.’ The Veiled One did not shout but his voice carried, an imperious command which no one dared question. He asked the names of my horses and, when I told him, he whispered to each, caressing their necks, letting them hear his voice and smell his sweat. He glanced up. ‘We forget how horses can smell so keenly. But come, before they cool!’
The Veiled One let his shawl slip away exposing copper-skinned shoulders, their blades protruding, his back slightly bent. Resting on his cane, he walked along to the chariot and clambered in, ignoring my gesture of support. He slipped his cane into the empty javelin container and grasped the reins, spreading his bare feet, clicking his tongue. I sensed that his skill was as great as mine though the chariot was strange and the horses new. He stood next to me, misshapen yet graceful, careful not to brush or knock me. Beads of sweat ran down his neck, and his body exuded a sweet cloying perfume. Clear of the veil I now noticed how strange his head was: the sloping forehead, the egg-shaped skull, the strangely elongated neck. His movements were carefully measured. He backed the chariot out, turning it for the long run, urging the horses forward. Once we were some distance away he reined in and turned his face to the sun, staring up narrow-eyed. I wondered if his sight was as strong as our own.
‘Praise me, Father,’ he raised a hand, ‘as I have praised you who existed before all time began. Bless me, Father, as you have been blessed by all creatures under the sun. Support me, Father, Lord of Jubilees, Ruler of the Years, beautiful in aspect. Let the rays of your power guide my heart with an iron hand. Oh, Joyous One, listen to your son the beloved.’
The others could not have heard him. He turned and winked at me.
‘So we meet again, Mahu.’ He clicked his tongue and urged the horses on. ‘Even though I have watched you from afar.’ He then glanced over his right shoulder and spoke in a tongue I couldn’t understand, as if someone else was standing on the far side of the chariot. Sharp guttural words. I wondered if it was Akkadian, the language used by Pharaoh’s scribes when writing to his vassal kings. He spoke again and turned back. ‘You are not frightened, Baboon of the South?’
‘Should I be?’ I grasped the chariot rail.
The Veiled One chuckled. ‘Do you know a funny story, Mahu? Can you tell me one?’
I racked my memory. ‘An old woman had a very garrulous husband. He would never stop talking even when asleep.’
Again the chuckle. ‘Every day,’ I went on, ‘she used to lead the cart on which he perched down to the market.’
‘And?’ The Veiled One grasped the reins more firmly.
‘One day a passer-by ran up. “Oh ancient one,” he yelped, “your husband has fallen out of the cart.” “The gods be thanked,” the Old Woman replied, rubbing her ear. “Why is that?” the passer-by asked. “Because for a moment I thought I had gone deaf.”’
The Veiled One threw his head back and bellowed with laughter, loud and clear. He then urged the horses forward, snapping the reins, calling out their names, sometimes lapsing into that strange tongue. I was about seventeen summers old, the Veiled One a little older, but he drove like a Lord of the Chariots. Undoubtedly he had been trained yet he possessed a gift and I realised the chariot freed him of any disability; he could now fly like the Horus falcon. He stood slightly stooping, his arms, wrists and hands displaying surprising strength and skill. There is a time as any soldier knows when a war chariot, both horses and driver, become united, long like a spear speeding through the air; you are not aware of the barb, shaft or feathered flight, just its swift death-bearing beauty. The Veiled One urged the horses on. They galloped as one, their direction straight. He guided them round the potholes and ruts. I clung to the rail aware of the ground racing away beneath us, the buffeting breeze and the Veiled One immersed in the thrill of the charge. Now and again he would whisper under his breath. We reached the targets, turned and streaked back like a javelin to the mark. We slowed down, but then picked up speed again and the Veiled One, leaning slightly to the left then the right, made the horses perform the most complex twists, as any war chariot would in battle, slicing deep into the enemy foot. At last we stopped just in front of our admiring audience who cheered and clapped. The Veiled One grasped his cane and clambered down. A servant hurried up carrying his shawl, veil and dark leather wallet. The Veiled One grasped this, opened it and handed me an amulet of jasper, cornelian and red sandstone: it was carved to depict the two celestial hills of the Far Horizon with the sun rising between them. He pressed this aknty, this Sun-in-the-Horizon amulet into my hand, stroked my finger, winked and walked away.
Later that day we celebrated, though Tuthmosis and the Veiled One were not present. Colonel Perra had also gone to the palace to convey the Squadron’s congratulations to the Princes. Naturally we discussed the Veiled One’s skill, his strange, ungainly movements yet his mastery of the horses. Horemheb looked a little jealous, not so much of me, but rather that he had been outclassed: however, he had the good grace, once the beer loosened his tongue, to praise the Veiled One’s prowess. Naturally I was teased and taunted. The beer jug was passed round. We stretched out our hands to the brazier, welcoming its heat against the cold night air. Weni, of course, was already drunk – clasped, as we say, in the arms of Lady Hathor. He abruptly put the jug down and, picking up a soiled napkin, covered his face and pretended to be the Veiled One driving the chariot, flailing his arms and hands around and provoking bursts of laughter from everyone except myself and Maya. Encouraged in his parody, Weni persisted, demanding what would happen if the Veiled One engaged in battle with a sheet across his face? Or, what if his chariot crashed? Again the imitation.
‘Would he go hobbling round the battlefield?’
I emptied my beer jug onto the ground and walked away.
The following day was a festival. There was no drill but we went down to the stables to tend to our horses, and check the harness, frames and wheels of our chariots. I was immersed in memories of the previous day; the amulet I kept in a wallet, and now and again I would walk away, take it out and study it carefully. I stayed late that day, long after the others had left. Sobeck came hurrying down.
‘Mahu, you’d best come!’
‘What’s the matter?’
Sobeck wiped sweat from his face. ‘Weni has been found dead, drowned in a pool.’
I recalled that olive grove, the dark reedfilled pond, Weni leaning against the tree, beer jug in hand. I hurried back to the barracks where Weni’s green-slimed, water-drenched corpse had already been laid out on the bench on which he had so often stood to lecture and berate us. Death is always pathetic but Weni’s was even more so. He lay, eyes, nostrils and mouth clogged with brackish mud, his loincloth sopping wet, trickles of dark water running down his legs. With his swollen belly he looked like a landed fish and his face had the same look of surprised horror. I took a napkin and covered his features and recalled what Weni had done the previous day. Orderlies brought a stretcher to convey the corpse to the House of Death. The others drifted around, muttering amongst themselves. Meryre had tried to intone a mortuary prayer but the others were not interested.
‘Get him prepared quickly,’ Horemheb bawled at the orderlies, ‘before he begins to smell.’
I crouched down and took the ring from Weni’s stubby fingers. He’d always been proud of that, a gift from the Magnificent One’s father. I placed this on the corpse and looked carefully at the nail of that finger, plucking at the little strips of leather. The corpse was removed. I walked around the barracks through the side gate and into the olive grove. I found Weni’s tree; the beer jug lay cracked on the ground beside it. The muddy edges of the pool were marked with the feet of those who had pu
lled him out. I noticed something gleaming in the grass and picked it up. It was a small copper stud, certainly not from the war-kilts of anyone in the Kap. I had seen such studs on the war-kilts of the Veiled One’s Kushite retinue. I weighed this in my hand and got to my feet. Weni was an old soldier, a drunkard, but sure on his feet, careful what he did. Going back to the olive tree, I sat down and imagined Weni sitting there, half-drunk, those dark shapes creeping through the trees. A sharp, short struggle, the jug being thrown to the ground, Weni being dragged to the pool and forced in, his head and face held underwater until all life left his heart. I recalled Weni laughing mockingly the night before.
‘Is there anything wrong?’
I whirled around. Sobeck stood staring at me curiously.
‘No, no, nothing.’ I got to my feet and threw the copper stud into the pool. ‘No, there’s nothing wrong, Sobeck, at least for the moment.’
‘Such is he who has decayed,
All his bones are corrupt …
His flesh is turned into foul water.’
(Spell 154: The Book of the Dead)
Chapter 3
In the second month of the summer season shortly after the Festival of the Valley in the thirty-third year of the Magnificent One’s reign, the Land of Egypt went to war. Fires were lit in the Temple of Montu and the priestly chorus of Amun-Ra began their verbal assault on the assembled deities of Egypt. The Word of War had come from the King’s own mouth to be carried the length and breadth of the Kingdom of the Two Lands. The vile Kushites in the Eastern Desert had risen in revolt. They had put small garrisons to the sword and slaughtered the workers in the mines and settlements which produced the copper, gold and amethyst which had been placed there for the Divine One’s use. The reports brought by the Sand Dwellers were truly horrific. Royal roads had been attacked, imperial messengers butchered and the honour of Egypt gravely insulted. The King’s messengers, fleet of foot, took the decisions of the imperial will to every corner of the kingdom. The Kushite rebels were to be crushed.
Hotep himself, God’s Father, came down with Colonel Perra to announce that the entire division, the ‘Glory of Amun’, of 5,000 men, not counting mercenaries, foragers, scouts and commissariat, would be despatched to deal with the rebels. The Horus unit, the Children of the Kap, would be included. Hotep raised a hand to quell our excitement as we crouched around him in the courtyard.
‘Both Royal Princes will join the expedition. We depart in three days.’ He raised his fan, spreading it out with one flick of his wrist. ‘You, too, will go with them and bring glory to the Divine One’s name.’ His clever eyes searched each of our faces. ‘We live for Pharaoh! We die for Pharaoh!’ he added.
We thanked the Divine One for this opportunity to demonstrate our loyalty. Once he had left, accompanied by the palace guard, Colonel Perra provided further details: the Veiled One would be a member of the Horus unit. Weni’s untimely death was now forgotten. My suspicions were suppressed in the stirring preparations. We all readied to leave, though Maya fell ill of a fever. We found him sweating in the early hours, his fat body shaking so much he was despatched to the House of Life.
‘We won’t miss him,’ Horemheb muttered.
I doubt if any of us would have missed each other. Weni’s corpse had been embalmed and despatched to the Far West without a second thought. Maya sent us messages of good will and begged Sobeck to visit him but he was caught up in the frenetic preparation of war. Armour was distributed, weapons brought out of store, chariots readied, the horses carefully checked by leeches from the Royal Stud. The regimental units began to mass in the fertile Black Lands north of Thebes. Hotep was given the temporary title of ‘King’s Son of Eastern Kush’, with all the powers of a viceroy. We took our oaths of loyalty in the incense-filled outer courtyard of the Temple of Montu where the unit received its standard, the falcon head of Horus perched on the back of a crocodile. The Divine One himself deigned to show his face and the citizens of Thebes lined the Avenues of Sphinxes and Rams to throw flowers and greenery as we left the city in full battle regalia surrounded by the priests, choirs and imperial orchestras providing string music.
The army moved South by barge and boat, then force-marched to the great Fortress of Buhen just above the Second Cataract. By the time we reached it we were all sore, bruised, tired and dusty whilst the army could only be described as chaotic and confused. The High Command, the Viceroy, Scribes of the Army and the Lieutenants of Chariotry stayed in the fort whilst order was brutally restored. Both foot and chariots had organised into corps of companies of fifty under a pedjet. Our commanding officer was nominally Crown Prince Tuthmosis with Colonel Perra as second-in-command, being Standard Bearer of our platoon of fifty chariots. Our unit, now called the ‘Glory of Horus’, was composed of ten chariots, a small squadron with Horemheb as Captain.
The entire army paraded on the hard flat ground in front of the fortress, magnificent in its battle array. The Menfyt came first, the grizzled, battle-hardened veteran infantry in their stiffened body armour, wearing groin guards, khopesh swords thrust through their sashes, and carrying spears and shields, the latter adorned with the insignia of their unit. Behind them came the frightened raw recruits, similarly dressed – the Nakhtu-aa, the ‘Strong-Arm Boys’, who, in conflict, would stiffen the battleline. On our flanks marched irregular troops, hordes of Nubian archers, white plumes in their curled, bobbed hair, leopard or lion kilts around their waists, coloured baldrics stretching across their left shoulders then wrapped round their waists to form a sash. They wore thick, white tight collars round their necks and bracelets of a similar colour on their wrists. There were others: mercenaries from the Islands in the Great Green dressed in leather and carrying rounded shields and long swords, Libyan archers, virtually naked except for a phallus guard, their shoulders draped in ox or giraffe skin. All around these paraded the true power of Egypt led by the Maryannou, the Braves of the King, squadron after squadron of war-chariots, moving to the sound of rumbling wheels and neighing horses, a vivid array of different colours.
Trumpets blew and the royal standards, depicting different gods all paying obeisance to Amun-Ra, were lifted. Priests made sacrifice on the makeshift altars and the order of march was issued. Three corps, ours in the centre, were to advance east to secure the mines, re-fortify the settlements and mete out Pharaoh’s justice to the rebels: any enemy taken captive was to be executed immediately.
We began our slow advance into hostile territory, Colonel Perra in charge. The Veiled One, travelling in his cart, was attached to our unit which was sent far ahead of the rest. We moved forward across a landscape so heinous I thought I was in the Underworld: boiling sun above grey, arid land, broken by the occasional oasis, or small village. Dust devils stung our eyes and filled our mouths. We progressed slowly, dependent on water, foraging both for ourselves as well as the horses, oxen and donkey trains. We left the protection of other great forts, ‘The Repelling of Seth’, ‘The Defence of the Bows’ and ‘The Power of Pharaoh’, a slow-moving column of chariots, carts, horses, donkeys, oxen and men. At first the trumpets blared and different units sang ribald songs about each other, but soon the fiery heat sucked the life and breath out of us. Our feet, despite the leather marching boots, became scarred and stubbed by the hard ground. Above us the sun, our constant torturer, like a hole of fiery gold in the light-blue sky, moved along with us. Clouds of shifting dust and storms of sand, whipped up by the wind, made us look like a troop of ghosts moving across the arid Red Lands. The heat haze played tricks with our eyes, and taunted our hearts as well as our tongues with the prospect of cool running water. We piled our armour onto the carts and fashioned makeshift masks and hoods for our heads and faces, rubbing thick black kohl around our eyes. Sobeck quietly joked that we were now all ‘Veiled Ones’, though Horemheb pointed out that the secretive Prince, travelling in his chariot, asked for no special favours.
We kept to the fortified royal roads built years previously across the Province o
f Waat. Our scouts went out before us armed with maps to locate the wells and any source of running water. Of the other two divisions moving parallel to us we saw no sign. Their mission was to secure the amethyst mines in the North, ours was to reassert control of the gold and copper mines.
The rigour of the march shattered any illusion about the beauty of war. No longer were we glorious chariot squadrons moving majestically across the plain to confront an enemy; now it was nothing but a searing trudge through a boiling cauldron, dependent on brackish water, hard bread and stringy, salted meat. We’d camp at night near some well or oasis. The stars hung low in the dark velvet sky whilst the biting cold made us pray for the heat of the day. All the beasts of the blackness closed in around us, attracted to the smells from our cooking pots as well as the fresh flesh of our oxen and horses. Yellow-skinned, dark-eyed lions coughed and roared. Jackals bayed like some demented choir at the moon but the greatest danger were the hyena packs, striped or spotted, great ruffs of hair round their necks. They would come in very close, so we’d catch their stench, hear their grunting and watch their amber eyes glow in the dark. They were ready to brave the fire, or the danger of an arrow through the darkness, to steal in and attack the horselines or oxen pens. Hideous neighs and dreadful animal screams would pierce the night. Trumpets sounded as the alarm was raised and archers brandishing flaring torches hurried to drive the night prowlers away.
We soon grew used to the horrors of the night, only too pleased to sleep on the ground and forget our present troubles. We would be kicked awake long before dawn to continue our march, and be given coarse biscuit to chew on with a couple of mouthfuls of watered beer. We’d kneel to pray to the rising sun and honour the Divine One with a hymn thundered out to the heavens: