by Andre Norton
"Re above us! Re favor us!" Ahmose leaped to the top of the cart ahead and with a marksman's eye began hurling the upper layer of the stuffed bags at the milling and bewildered guards. Those missiles were not heavy enough to injure, but they provided the necessary confusion until the men hidden below burst out, scarlet-faced and gasping, but with daggers and spears ready.
Rahotep saw Icar throw off his hindering cloak and cut his way with that whirling long sword to a corner where a gang of amazed labor slaves crouched against the wall. With an ear- punishing whoop, the seaman swung that sword, slicing through neck nooses, while Menon roared something in the speech of the labor lines and tossed daggers in their direction.
Then the fighting closed in with a swirl as the Hyksos struck back. It was a mad matter of thrust, strike, and away. Rahotep sent a screaming Bwedani mercenary to the ground and then caught sight of a stair to the top of the wall. He looked about him for Kheti and saw Huy instead, using a limp Hyksos officer as an overseer might use a flail to scatter a pocket of resistance.
"Wahhhhh—waaaah—!" The captain gave the full power of his lungs to the Nubian war cry. He was up three, four of the steps now, and he saw heads turn in his direction. With a beckoning sweep of his arm, he summoned the archers and waited only to see that four of them, including Kheti, were fighting their way to join him—before he turned to take the stairs at a runner's pace.
He met a Hyksos guard within three steps of the top, and he might have met death at that same instant, for a shortened spear was aimed at the base of his throat. But another death, a black one, had streaked behind him and now slashed with fangs and claws at the spearman. Totally unprepared for such an attack at his legs, the man swerved, lost his footing, and, with a scream of terror, fell out, to strike upon the cart.
Rahotep, shaken, scrambled on to the top. But he had his bow ready and now he reached for an arrow. Bis crawled belly-flat before him along the wall crest, his eyes slits of green anger, his ears flat against his skull. Less than half- grown though he was, the menace in that silent advance slowed the next guardsman who had run forward to meet the captain. And that slight pause gave the Egyptian a chance to get to steady footing. A whistle in the air ended in a grant of pain, and the Hyksos went down, an arrow protruding from between his ribs.
"Waaah—" The roar of the Nubians rang out above the clamor below. Kheti, Huy, Kakaw, Mahu—they were taldng the stair on the double. Rahotep was already intent upon clearing the stretch of wall above the gates. As his first arrow bit skyward and the loosened bow cord drummed against his grandfather's silver braces, he reached for a second shaft.
"This is as easy as shooting meat for the pot, brother," shouted Kheti. "Let us pluck strings while Dedun so smiles!"
However it was only for a short space that they had the advantage. Hyksos slingers and Bwedanii bowmen were not napping. Already they had conquered the shock of their first surprise—shields went up against arrows and the battle swayed back to the gates.
Mahu staggered back, his face a gory hole spouting red as some slinger loosed a well-aimed stone. The Nubian clutched at the air with an agonized cry and then was gone.
"Spread out!" Rahotep shouted. But he commanded no green boys. The archers were already skimming along the space their arrows had cleared, pausing to shoot and then run again. They did not provide targets easy to mark down.
It was then that Rahotep saw Huy deliberately leap from the wall to the cart. Someone had killed the oxen, immobilizing the heavy wagon at the inner gate as the other had been left to block the outer. A chariot headed full tilt down the blocked road, but the driver was expert enough to pull up in time when he sighted that obstruction. He was not expecting, however, to meet Huy who jumped up beside him.
There was not even a straggle. The gaudily dressed officer was tossed from his vehicle as Icar appeared out of nowhere to grab at the reins of the rearing horse. By main strength the seaman got it down on four feet again, then forced the snorting nervous animal back while Huy slashed with his dagger at its harness. When the horse was free, Icar did what Rahotep thought could not be done—he mounted on the surprised animal's back astride, knotting one hand in the coarse mane that was braided with ribbons, while with the other he swept his sword in a curve over his head and shouted something to those slaves who had joined in the fight.
With a party of them racing behind him, the northerner headed the horse back into the town, a small wedge of determined men bursting into those crooked lanes where Nebet ruled.
Then those on the wall had only their own segment of the fight to follow, for the slingers were well within range and Nesamun dangled a broken arm, forced to drop his despised Egyptian bow for an ax. Wedging his injured arm into one of his chest belts, he made the same jump Huy had taken earlier, landing in the cart and so reaching the ground where his ax would be more effective.
"—ten!" Kheti's voice was growing hoarse. "Ten sent to face Dedun's crocodiles this day! Ho, this is hunting, brothers! Let us claw these dogs as they have never been ear-clipped before!"
" 'This army hacks the land of the horsemen,
It fires the houses of a host,
It slays their tens of tens, their tens of hundreds.
Rejoice, ye sons of the bow, this army treads upon kings!' "
That was Kakaw, and the regular whistling of the arrows, the drum of released bow cords, kept time to barbaric thunder of his war chant.
" 'It slays their tens of tens, their tens of hundreds!' " Rahotep took up the words. Kheti added his bull roar as if the very howling of those boasts would blow away all opposition.
" 'This army hacks the land of the horsemen,
Mighty is the elephant as he goes out upon his foes!
Rejoice, ye sons of the bow, for you tread upon the faces of kings.' "
"Lord!" Mereruka called, barely audible in the din, "Pharaoh comes!"
Rahotep released an arrow and dared to glance out across the plain beyond the wall. A line of chariots was sweeping in toward Neferusi in a wide arc, which seemed to cover half the land, and beside them ran footmen. The standard in the center chariot was no brighter than the blue helmet of him who guided it so skillfully.
"Ho, more than the Pharaoh comes!" warned Kheti, and Rahotep's attention snapped back to the action at hand.
Which was very well, for exposed as they were upon the wall, they were now the target of not only the guards along its expanse, but also of small groups who had climbed to nearby housetops. They lost Hori before they fought their way into a breathing space. Rahotep was determined to dispute every foot of retreat. But at the same time he ordered his men to take what cover they could until they could see the direction for a most telling thrust.
"Waaaaah—" That war cry did not come from the small party on the gate wall, but from the city itself. Rahotep inched his way to a point from which he could look down into Neferusi, and he was just in time to see the rottenness of the poor quarter break wide open. Men—and women too— with starved, maimed bodies, faces carved by hatred into the masks of Kush night demons, poured out. That first wave was led by Icar, still miraculously astride Iris mount, using his voice and the flat of his sword to urge on his cohorts. He was heading them to the stalled wagon at the gate where the Hyksos had been driven back. And now this fetid wave from the dens, such as Nebet's, went to that wagon. Men pulled, scrambled, tore for the weapons that had been brought them, even fought among themselves for possession of a spear or dagger.
Those who had been aiming at the archer party on the wall now turned a measure of attention to the boiling mass in the streets below. And Rahotep and Kheti sent their men on to the top of one of the square towers above the gate, giving them better protection as well as height for good bow work.
The first wave of the Egyptian advance without hit the wall of Neferusi now. Men seeped over and around the first cart, cutting into the passage before the second gate. There were Hyksos bowmen and slingers on the roofs to thin their numbers. But thos
e same defenders had to face in return the fire of the archers on the tower. And though men fell below with pierced bodies and smashed bones and heads, the entering stream swelled and steadied.
"Re for us!" The rallying cry of the regulars grew stronger. A human battering ram had formed, the point of which was the troops chosen by Ahmose and Nereb—those that were still alive and on their feet. They had fought their way to the foot of the wall stair and now they came up, while Rahotep's men covered them as well as they could.
"Clear the wall!" The prince stood now at the top of the stair, motioning men past him. And every second one of those newcomers wore a coil of rope about his waist, prepared to drop that line to the companies without.
A rope bearer died with a dart in his throat, coughing out his life across the prince's feet. Ahmose tore loose the cord he bore, trailing one end of it behind him as he ran on. Archers and slingers cleared the way, pouring a rain of missiles ahead while the others dropped their ropes down the outer side of the walls.
"Re with us!" That became a thunderous petition rising to the sky. Men crawled up the ropes to gain the crest of the walls. Some fell, but others moved on to help in the sweep that cleared more surface, gave space to sling over other ropes.
In the city itself there was dire trouble. The ill-armed slaves and criminals from the slums were fighting after a vicious fashion of their own. It was a fighting that skulked and ran and could not be organized to any purpose except to afford confusion generally.
Worse still, they were looting the dead and beginning to knife the wounded of both sides. Rahotep shot a rogue in the space below who was about to slit the throat of a feebly resisting Egyptian archer.
"Brother!" Kheti sputtered in his ear. "Why can we not take to the roofs over there? Then we can watch this scum as well as help clear the streets."
"And how do we get over to them?" Rahotep demanded. By the design of those who had fortified Neferusi there was a wide street girdling the buildings of the city, leaving a gap between them and the wall top. And below was the muddle of battle through which it might be possible to fight one's way, true enough, but to descend into it and then try to reach the heights again would be wasteful of both time and manpower.
"By that bridge, Lord—"
The captain, his eyes following the other's pointing finger, could not at first see the possibilities of the wreckage Kheti had marked down. One of the inner leaves of the second gate had been forced askew by the oxcart as the fighting swirled back and forth across it. Now it was more than three quarters of the way across the street, wedged so by bodies and two wrecked chariots the Hyksos had driven in to disaster.
Perhaps a man could edge along the top of that frail support, but Rahotep was inclined to doubt it. However, Kheti must have taken his silence for consent, for, slinging his bow over his shoulder, the Nubian officer dropped to the gate and ran along it, his outstretched arms balancing him—as he had run along log bridges in the Kush country. And with the same unconcern, Kakaw, Mereruka, and the others one by one followed his example. From the end of the gate the Scout jumped to the roof of the gatehouse and then climbed from that to the roof of a taller building behind it. Bis crouched on the ledge from which the archers had jumped to the gate. With his head cocked a little to one side, the leopard cub watched the swift passage of the men and then went after them in his turn. Rahotep laughed wryly. Though he was not too certain of his own power of balance and footing, he had to bring up the rear of that strange procession—and a triumphant shout and beckoning from Kheti who had reached his goal across the street acted as a spur.
The captain kicked off his sandals for a better grip on that narrow path and took off, the portal seeming to him to sway dangerously under his weight. But at last dark hands stretched down to him and he was drawn up as he had been out of the dungeon of Anubis.
Breathing hard, he stood on the new attack point looking about him. It was now possible for one to make a way from roof to roof into the heart of the city. And he was not alone in that idea. Small parties of warriors, both Egyptian and Hyksos were appearing aloft now, moving back and forth, disputing advances in small fierce melees, which were only samples of the conflict in the streets.
Now the Egyptians held more than half of the wall surface. More and more men were climbing up the ropes and sliding down into Neferusi. The Hyksos, prevented from using their chariots to any advantage in the streets, harassed by the looters and freed slaves, rolled down in determined, enraged companies upon the section about the gates and the walls, hoping to trap their enemies against those barriers and to grind them to defeat. Again and again groups of well-trained foot soldiers charged. But the bowmen on the walls, which the Egyptians now held, and the small parties on the house roofs opposite, cut them down from above until some of the narrow lanes were so choked with dead and wounded that they were walled off to both defenders and invaders.
These fortifications had been built to withstand sieges, against the possibilities of assaults from without. But Neferusi was an ancient Egyptian town to which the foreigner's walls had been added as an afterthought. And the Hyksos found themselves now being forced back, away from the few open spaces where they could have used their more telling weapons, into places where no man could sling a spear or draw a bow cord without ramming his arm ineffectively against his neighbor.
But there was a second place for them to rally, and it was there they prepared to make their stand—the old hall of judgment, where the nomarch of this nome in the old days had once held court, and the temple of their god had been knitted together into an inner fortress where again there were strong walls—with a wide space about them.
Slowly, as the long minutes passed and the royal forces bored in from all sides, the Hyksos, in spite of their skill at arms, their confidence and training, fell back to that fortification for their last stand.
Rahotep gulped water out of an earthenware bowl, his eyes upon that second wall and the bristle of spears and bows along it, which told that it would be no nut easy for the cracking. A squadron of chariots was drawn up before its gate, facing toward the encircling city through which the boil of battle was advancing, slowly but relentlessly. There was no hope of using those vehicles in any but a few streets leading to this center, but here in the open they might prove of some value.
Kheti crossed to the roof where Rahotep stood, and the captain offered him a drink from the jar of water Kakaw had found while prowling the deserted house under them. The Nubian underofficer drank as if savoring every drop, making his report between gulps.
"They have left us no other way in, Lord, save to batter through those gates yonder. And that will be like facing a lioness with cubs when one has but a broken spear. We cannot play that cart trick on them a second time—"
Rahotep, granted this short breathing space to examine their gains, knew a growing wonder over their success so far. He had been used to the short punitive expeditions and attacks along the border, and had a healthy respect for such chieftains as Haptke. Warfare there was something of a grim game between usually evenly matched opponents. But since his birth his ears had been filled with tales of the unconquerable Hyksos and their skill in battle, their superior strength of arms, then- unbeatable regiments. Was it now true that their long years of consuming the fat of a supine Egypt had set up an inner rot in their organization? Or had they never been the super warriors legend had painted them?
Now he could understand why this first victory was so important to the royal army. It would destroy that legend of the enemies' invincibility, provide a cushion for any future defeat. And so—he faced that smaller fortress before them—this, for the sake of their whole cause, must be cracked open and utterly destroyed! Though how it was to be done, a captain of Desert Scouts could not see.
What he could, do, he would. So, he dispatched Ikui to bring up a supply of arrows, gathering them where he could along their back trail. Kakaw, having once proven he could provide water, was sent to nose out food. And R
ahotep made preparations for fortifying the roof on which they had taken their stand.
"Aim at the officers—and the drivers of those chariots." He gave what he knew to be unnecessary orders, but he added one other, which was a stern warning. "Be sure of your mark. We cannot present these sons of Set with the contents of our quivers unless they pay well in return!"
Kheti was measuring the distance from their roof to the wall of the inner fortress with a wishful eye. With the right wind and a great deal of luck, he might be able to nick some unwary defender. But it looked as if there were none of those, for no man showed more than a portion of helmet or shield, unless he were well out of range.
"So, Hawk, you have found a vantage point from which to strike?"
Rahotep spun about to face the Prince Ahmose. The Royal Son's broad face was banded with a crust of blood and dust, and he had a strip of stained linen, torn from some kilt, bound about his upper right arm, while only the ragged end of his prince's tassel bobbed from his headdress. But he crossed the flat surface of the room with the tread of an unwearied lion, coming to survey that space where the chariots shifted and waited to charge, with an eye that marked every advantage and disadvantage of their own position.