Eye of the Moon

by Dianne Hofmeyr

  A cacophony of howls, shrieks, and whinnying horses rose up. The dawn was dark with arrows. The air around my ears whined with their passage. Then suddenly we galloped free from the throng of struggling Egyptian foot soldiers. The spittle of the horses flew back at me. The air rushed past my face. We were out in the open with nothing but an empty space between our chariot and the bowmen of Kush.

  The charioteer ran full tilt toward them. I made out row upon row of them with arrows drawn, their shields strapped to their arms, marching toward us in a solid, unbroken mass.

  I was going to die . . . killed by the arrows of my own men, arrows I had made myself. There was no saving me now.

  In one dark cloud, a flight of arrows came straight at the chariot. I flailed and tried to wrench myself free, screaming out in blind panic, “Hold your arrows! It’s me! The fletcher! Don’t shoot!” But there was no getting away from the Egyptian’s grip. In the noise of battle it was hopeless. No one heard me.

  Hathor, protector of women, have mercy. Sekhmet, lioness of war, strike him down. Katep! Tuthmosis! Anoukhet—someone among the Kush, please recognize me.

  As if in answer, in the midst of the noise, a shout rang out.

  “Hold up!” It was Anoukhet’s voice.

  The rain of arrows from the Kushite bowmen stopped abruptly, as if choked by the unexpected shrillness of a woman’s voice in the middle of battle.

  A moment of utter silence followed.

  The whistle of a single spinning arrow passed my face. I heard a thud behind me, followed instantly by a single intake of breath.

  I turned. The arrow had taken the Egyptian high in the center of his chest. It had pierced his flesh and found his heart.

  It was an arrow with green feathers and shreds of red ribbon.

  His scream shook both sides into action. Arrows fell once more all around us. The wounded chariot driver clutched the rail, still holding me. I felt the warmth of his blood seep against my back. My own hands came away sticky with it as I struggled to pull free of him.

  I caught the blurred movement of Anoukhet rushing forward. She leaped wildly past the horses and toward the chariot, trying to hold on to the railing and at the same time trying to wrestle me from the Egyptian’s grip.

  We were suddenly surrounded by Kushite bowmen. I heard the metal slurring of swords being drawn.

  But before we could leap from the cart into the safety and protection of the Kushite men, the Egyptian archer grabbed the reins from the slumped charioteer. He wheeled the horses around so fast that the nearest Kushite swordsmen fell under the rearing hooves. Then he galloped at full speed back toward the Egyptian side.

  Anoukhet grabbed my arm. “Quick! Jump!” she commanded. “Jump! This is our only chance!”

  But my legs went numb. The spinning spokes of the wheels and the thundering hooves turned my knees to water.

  In a blur of movement the chariot gained the other side and the Egyptian army closed ranks around us.

  We were dragged off and passed as roughly over the soldiers’ heads and with as little care as bags of durum wheat being tossed from the hold of a ship. Finally a space was made and we were flung down onto the ground.

  Our hands were wrenched behind us, and although we struggled and fought and bit at our captors, we were dragged before a stake, pushed to the ground, and tied back to back on either side of it, our arms pinned and trussed tightly against our bodies.

  “Be brave,” Anoukhet whispered as she tried to reach backward for my hand. I held her fingers in my own as firmly as I could manage. “Katep and Tuthmosis will come for us. They know we’re here. Listen. That’s why they’ve let up their arrows.”

  Amid the commotion and confusion of horses and men and chariots around us, I listened and knew she was right. The hail of arrows had stopped. But for how long? The Kushites wouldn’t care about Anoukhet and me. They were hardened soldiers. They wouldn’t stop their battle against the Egyptians just for the likes of us.

  “Vixens!” an Egyptian soldier hissed at us. “We show no more mercy to female soldiers than we do to men!” He drew his khopesh from his girdle.

  Anoukhet spit into the sand at his feet. I cringed as I imagined a dull blow to her neck.

  Another soldier stepped forward. “Wait!”

  I could see by his cloak and gold broad collar that he was a man of rank. He nodded his broad, brutish face in our direction. “They’re bargaining tools. Not to be killed outright, but punished, rather! To use as an example. So the Kushites will appreciate the strength of the Egyptian army. And know we can’t be trifled with.”

  He came closer and glared down at Anoukhet. “It was your arrow that killed our best charioteer? You found his heart!” Then he turned to a soldier at his side. “Cut off her bow fingers—so she’ll no longer know the accuracy of her draw. Take them off well. Make sure the dagger is sharp.”

  I felt all blood drain from me. “No!” I gasped.

  Two men grabbed hold of Anoukhet’s right hand, spread her fingers wide against the ground, and pinned them down. I twisted my head from side to side looking for a glimpse of Katep or Tuthmosis.

  “Take her bow fingers! Take her bow fingers!”

  “No! Don’t!” I shouted as I twisted and tried to pull free. “Take mine . . . not hers!”

  The man with the gold collar sneered down at me. “Why should I?”

  “She’s not a bowman. Examine her hands. She has no calluses. She’s hopeless with a bow. Her bow fingers are of no consequence.”

  “If that’s the case, she won’t mind losing them. But you lie. I know differently. She shot my charioteer. She was carrying a bow when she was caught. A very fine bow at that. With very fine arrows. So she is a bowman.”

  “By the truth of the feather of Maat, how can you be sure it was her? There were Kushite bowmen everywhere.”

  “What? You have the audacity to swear by Egyptian gods?”

  “The gods do not belong to Egypt!”

  Anoukhet struggled next to me. “Shh! Kara!”

  “You’re Egyptian—yet a traitor to all that is Egyptian,” the man hissed. He turned to a soldier. “Take hers as well!” Then he kicked at me with his foot. “Be glad your punishment is mild! When the Egyptian army under the great Amenhotep last fought the Kushites, we took seven hundred and forty prisoners. From the fallen, we cut not just fingers, but took three hundred and twenty hands as punishment.”

  “What?” I spit at him. “Only three hundred and twenty hands! And still the land of Kush didn’t fall under Egypt’s control. How pale a victory!”

  He turned abruptly to the soldier. “Yes, by the gods . . . take her fingers as well. Teach them both a lesson. Take their bow fingers, now! I command it!”

  A murmur went up. “Yes! Yes!”

  “Take the bow fingers!”

  “The loss of two fingers is nothing to me!” I spit out. “I could easily learn to draw a bow with my left hand.” I stared at them unflinchingly. My blood was pulsing hot and angry now. If I had not been tied up, I’d have attacked them with my fists. “Take all my fingers! Take my hands, for all I care! That’s if you have the stomach for maiming girls—you cowards!”

  “No! No!” Anoukhet begged. “Don’t taunt them, Kara! They’ll do it! I know the campaign they speak of.”

  But before she could say more, the soldiers bent forward and spread her fingers again. I felt my throat constrict. Felt the words shrivel on my tongue. Then everything turned soundless. As if my ears were blocked. Yet I knew there was noise all around me.

  The dagger came down swiftly. I squeezed my eyes shut so as not to witness it find its mark—but not fast enough to stop me from seeing the spray of Anoukhet’s blood that fanned out across the sand.

  And then, they took the first two fingers of my own right hand as well.

  26

  TUTHMOSIS

  Afterward it seemed a blur. What actions came in which order is hard to sort out in my mind.

  My head was dizzy
with what had happened. So dizzy I thought I’d faint.

  I remember the blind, numbing pain and my body shaking. I remember the vague outline of the man in the gold broad collar standing over us as we sat trussed together against the post.

  Coward! I wanted to shout—to be so set on maiming two girls. It’s a victory for us that you need to cut off our bow fingers! It’s a victory for us that you have sunk so low! We’ve more bravery in the fingers you’ve sliced off than you have in your whole body!

  But the pain was too great. My mouth couldn’t seem to form all the words. Whether I spoke them aloud or not, I can’t be sure.

  A sudden swell of voices roused me.

  “Victory is Egypt’s!”

  “The Kushites have ceased their fight! They’ve given up!”

  Cheers broke out. Men beat their swords against their shields. The earth shook with the stamp of hundreds of feet. “Vic . . . tory! Vic . . . tory! Vic . . . tory!” came the chant.

  “Given up? They can’t have!” I twisted around to look at Anoukhet. “This is all my doing. It’s because I was captured. They’ve lost the battle because of me!”

  “Never!” she growled back at me. “They would never give up!”

  A soldier pointed at us. “What about them?”

  “Let’s load them onto a chariot and display them to the Kushites to show how easily a battle is won when women are made soldiers.”

  “The battle is not over!” Anoukhet bellowed. “The Kushites would never cease to fight!” I felt her struggling to free herself. “Cut these ropes. I’ll tell them what cowards the Egyptian soldiers are. That you hide behind chariots and horses using girls as your shields, while they, the Kushites, fight out in the open, shoulder to shoulder as one man. Free me so I can return to battle. I will use my other arm!”

  There was raucous laughter. “She’s a wildcat!”

  The captain walked across and crouched down next to her. I strained my neck to see. He cupped a hand under her jaw and lifted her head so that she was incapable of looking anywhere but directly back at him. A horrible sneer was etched across his brutish face. “And then? What then, my lovely?”

  “You’ll be the first to die by my arrow!” Anoukhet spit out.

  “I think not!” he sneered. “Do you think I’m troubled by the threat of a slave girl? We’ll capture you again. And then it won’t be just your bow fingers we’ll cut off. We’ll chop you up bit by bit. And your bowmen will be ridden down like dogs under our horses’ hooves.” He flung her jaw away from him and stood up abruptly. “Then let’s see your Kushites come groveling and begging us for mercy.”

  “Never!”

  “Don’t you see they’ve deserted you? Don’t you see what cowardly dogs they’ve proved to be for having retreated, leaving two girls to our mercy?”

  “Mercy? Ha! When did an Egyptian soldier ever show mercy? Is cutting off a finger mercy?”

  Without warning, an arrow whistled through the air and flew down at an angle, pinning the toe of the captain’s left boot to the ground. Then another came in quick succession and shivered to a halt in the toe of his other boot. The arrows had bright red feathers without a pattern.

  Despite the pain, I felt a smile creep across my face at the sight of the captain pinned down with two red-feathered arrows sticking up from his toes.

  I twisted around to see from which direction the arrows had come, searching for a sign of Katep.

  Then his voice bellowed down from the cliffs. “The Kushites have retreated by my commander’s orders. But not for long. Look to the top of this cliff. You’ll see five hundred arrows pointed directly at you and your men—each one marking the heart of his individual target. The commander has only to shout the command and they’ll be released. Each arrow will find an Egyptian heart.”

  The captain’s eyes flashed with anger as he searched the cliffs for Katep. Then he wrenched his feet free of the two arrows. “Ha! From such an angle and from so far, you’ll not find your target,” he bellowed. “You’ve not even found my foot!”

  “I could find the mole on your cheek. We are the People of the Bow, remember. There are no better marksmen on earth.”

  “Be brave enough to show yourself, then.”

  There was a movement to my side. I saw an Egyptian soldier very slowly and stealthily lift his bow.

  “Show yourself!” the captain taunted again.

  “No! Katep! Don’t!” I bellowed.

  A dagger was suddenly at my throat, pressing hard up against my skin with its sharp tip. “You’re better off silent!” the captain hissed next to my ear.

  From the corner of my eye I saw a figure suddenly appear on the cliffs. It wasn’t Katep but Tuthmosis.

  “Let her go!” his voice rang out.

  He stood above us totally transformed. He’d found a leopard cloak. It hung from his shoulder and wrapped his body with its great claws. Even from a distance I could see the gold pectoral shining against his chest. And on his head he wore the single tall white ostrich plume of Truth. He carried no weapons.

  “So you’re Katep! What use are you without your bow?” the captain sneered.

  “I’m not Katep. Let her go, I say!”

  The captain gripped me harder. His arm was choking me. I felt a small trickle run down my neck. Sweat or blood—I wasn’t sure.

  “Who are you to order a captain of the Egyptian army? You have no authority over me!”

  “Do as I say!”

  “What is she to you? What will you do to save her life?” he sneered.

  I felt the blood hammer behind my eyes as I struggled to breathe. One swipe and the dagger would slice through my throat. One sharp jerk of his arm and my neck would be broken. There was silence. Everyone focused on Tuthmosis and waited for his answer.

  “I’m Tuthmosis, son of Amenhotep. By my authority as king, I order you to let her go.”

  “King?” The captain began to laugh as he released his grip.

  I slumped back against the post.

  “Do you hear that? This piece of dirt thinks he is the son of the great Amenhotep!” He looked around at the group of soldiers, then threw back his head and laughed even louder. “Come down and prove you are king!”

  With the speed of the leopard he wore, Tuthmosis jumped from the ledge right at the captain. They sprawled to the ground. The captain was taken by surprise. So was everyone else. Before anyone had the chance to react, Tuthmosis had wrestled the dagger away from him. Then, with one stride and a quick upward thrust, he sliced through the rope that bound both Anoukhet and me and eased us to our feet.

  I stood trembling, feeling I would vomit. Next to me Anoukhet was silent.

  I heard the soft swish of bows being lifted. Whether it came from the Egyptians or the Kushites on the cliffs, I wasn’t sure. My body stiffened.

  Tuthmosis stepped in front of us. “You may draw your arrows, but the Kushites on these cliffs are quicker. It’s true what Katep has said. You are surrounded. Each and every one of you has an arrow aimed at your heart.”

  For a moment there was complete silence.

  “You will regret this day!” the captain bellowed.

  “I think not!” Tuthmosis held up the heavy gold pectoral that hung across his chest. The carnelian and lapis lazuli caught the rays of the rising sun and glinted. But it was the huge central stone of the scarab that seemed like a living green light of fire. It sparked and flashed in every direction, invoking the power of the gods.

  “This is the pectoral insignia of my heritage. It bears my name.” His voice echoed around the cliffs and must have been heard by even the farthest soldier. “By this I’m the king’s son. Appointed by the gods to rule Egypt. I am the intermediary that stands between the gods and you—the people of Egypt. If you harm me, you harm the gods. Their wrath will come down on you, and your families, and Egypt, a hundredfold.”

  I sensed rather than saw the soldiers around me drop their bows. A soldier next to me clutched an amulet at his throat and anot
her drew a wedjat eye in the sand with the tip of his boot.

  “The god of chaos will come down on you. I will put the curse of—”

  I heard the soldiers gasp and call out to prevent Tuthmosis from speaking the name of the god of chaos.

  “Ha!” the captain spit out. “Don’t listen to him. If it’s true and he is Tuthmosis, then it’s true what Wosret said! He hides here among the Kushites. A traitor turned against Egypt.” He gave Tuthmosis a searing look. “You’re not the king. Your brother has been appointed by the high priests of Thebes as king. He is the living god—not you! You have no power over us! The gods will not listen to you!”

  “Kill him, Tuthmosis!” Anoukhet hissed. “He’s insulted you! If you don’t, I must.” She pushed through the crowd and tried to pull the knife away from Tuthmosis.

  “Be still, Anoukhet!” He gripped her hand tightly. “I don’t need his blood on my hands. It’s honor I want . . . not blood! There must be no more bloodshed.”

  Anoukhet tossed her head and thrust her shoulders back defiantly. “This is what we fought for,” she cried.

  For a moment the two of them stared at each other with blazing eyes. Then Tuthmosis turned. I saw him take in the scene of the bodies of the dead soldiers that lay around us. “No!” He shook his head. “Look around you. Is this what Egypt stands for? Bloody battle after bloody battle? Men slaughtered because of the need and avarice of a few? This was my father’s way. To show his power, my father made people die for him. Did that make him a good king?”

  “Your father was a brave man!” The captain spit the words out. “You’re nothing but a coward! It’s good the throne is not yours. It’s good your brother rules. Let’s hope he follows the example of your father.”

  “Kill him, Tuthmosis!” Anoukhet urged again.

  Tuthmosis turned to the captain with slate-hard eyes. He shook his head. “I won’t kill you. But take a warning back to Wosret.”

  “Ha! Wosret has no time for warnings. Least of all from you!”

  “This is a warning he’ll have to heed. Tell him the kingdom of Egypt belongs to my brother. But warn him that should he ever send his army south again to attack the Kushites and lay claim to their land and possessions, by this royal pectoral I will return to take my rightful throne.”