by Wilbur Smith
Taita and Nefer gave their full attention to the unfolding battle in the valley below. Trok’s men and horses had drunk until their bellies bulged and now they were mounting. Even though he had lost so many chariots on the approach march, Trok still outnumbered Nefer’s forces at least three to one.
“We dare not meet him on open ground,” Nefer mused, and looked down upon the mass of refugees escaping up the valley below them. To begin with there had been very few women in the city—Nefer had deliberately kept their numbers down to eke out the reserves of food for his fighting men—and even they, including Mintaka and Merykara, together with all the children, the sick and wounded, had been evacuated from Gallala two days before. Meren had gone on one of the wagons carrying the contents of the treasury, the gold they had lifted from the false pharaohs. Nefer had sent them all to Gebel Nagara, where Trok would never find them, and the tiny spring of water would just support them until after the battle was decided.
Now Gallala was stripped of everything of value, every chariot, weapon and piece of armor. He gazed down on the refugees with satisfaction. Even from this close it was difficult to tell that they were not women and civilians, but disguised foot soldiers. Many of these stalwarts were tripping and stumbling in their long skirts and shawls. The bundles they carried in their arms were not swaddled infants, but their bows and swords wrapped in shawls. Their long lances had been cached among the rocks higher up the valley where his main force was concealed.
All Trok’s chariots had finished watering and they were coming on across the pastures in tight and ordered formations, wave after wave of fighting vehicles. The water had revived then miraculously, and before them lay the promise of plunder and rapine.
“Pray Horus that we can entice Trok to take up the pursuit and enter the valley,” Nefer whispered. “If he does not take the bait and seizes the undefended city instead, then he denies us the water and grazing. We would be forced to come to battle on the open ground where he would have every advantage.”
Taita said nothing. He stood with the golden Periapt pressed to his lips and his eyes turned upward in the attitude that Nefer had come to know so well.
The enemy were close enough now for Nefer to be able to pick out Trok’s chariot among the moving mass of vehicles, as it wheeled into a position across the mouth of the valley crowded with the fleeing refugees. Trok was in the center of the leading rank, ten of his chariots on each of his flanks, on a front wide enough to sweep the valley from side to side. Behind him the rest of his chariots were formed up. The dust settled around them and a terrible silence fell over them. The only sound was the faint babble and hubbub of the fleeing rabble in the gut of the narrow valley ahead of them.
“Come, Trok Uruk!” Nefer whispered. “Order the charge! Ride into history!”
In the leading chariot in the front rank of the massed forces, Ishtar the Mede crouched beside Trok’s massive armored figure. He was so agitated that he reached up to tug at the ribbons of Trok’s beard.
“The smell of the Warlock hangs in the air like the reek of a ten-day-old corpse.” His voice was shrill, and saliva frothed on his lips and flew in a cloud with the force of his emotion. “He waits for you up there, like a man-eating beast. I can feel his presence. Look up, mighty Pharaoh!”
Trok was distracted enough to glance up at the sky. The vultures had dropped lower.
“Yes! Yes!” Ishtar pressed the small advantage. “They are Taita’s chickens. They wait for him to feed them with your flesh.”
Trok looked back up the valley at the prize that lay before him, but the shadows of the vultures flitted over the earth between them and he hesitated.
Hidden among the boulders on the steep side of the valley Nefer watched him. He was so close now that Nefer fancied that he could read his expression.
“Forward, Trok!” Nefer murmured. “Sound the charge. Lead your army into the valley.” He could sense doubt in the manner that Trok fiddled with the reins in his hand, and turned his head to look down at the skinny figure of Ishtar beside him.
The Mede’s blue-painted face was turned up to him earnestly, and he touched Trok and tugged at his armor with the force of his entreaties. “It is a snare laid for you by the Warlock. If you never trust me again, you must trust me now. There is death in the air, and the stench of treachery. I can feel Taita’s spells like bats’ wings beating against my face.”
Trok scratched his beard, and glanced over his shoulder at the ranks of chariots parked wheel to wheel and his troopers leaning forward in cruel anticipation of his order.
“Turn aside, mighty Trok. Seize the city and the water fountain. Nefer Seti and the Warlock will perish out there in the desert, as we so nearly did. That way is certain. The other way is madness.”
On the hillside Nefer narrowed his eyes as he watched his disguised troopers scurrying away up the valley, and he knew that the moment was passing. “What is holding Trok? Will he not commit to the charge?” Nefer cried aloud. “If he does not charge now…”
“Look to the head of the valley.” Taita had not opened his eyes. Even in his agitation Nefer glanced up the valley, and stiffened with alarm. His fist tightened on the hilt of his sword until the knuckles turned white as bone.
“It is not possible!” he growled.
Near the top end of the valley, but fully visible from where Trok’s chariots were drawn up, was a slab of rock. Square and ochre-colored, it stood like a man-made monument beside the road. On top of this, above the stream of fleeing refugees, had appeared a single figure. It was a woman, young and slim, with long dark hair that hung to her waist. Her chiton was the crimson of the royal House of Apepi: it stood out brilliantly, a speck of color in the bleakness of bare rock and sand.
“Mintaka!” Nefer breathed. “I ordered her to go with Meren and Merykara to Gebel Nagara.”
“We know that she would never have disobeyed you.” Taita opened his eyes and smiled ironically. “Therefore, it seems that she must have misheard you.”
“This is your doing,” Nefer said bitterly. “You are using her as bait for Trok. You have placed her in mortal danger.”
“Perhaps I can control the khamsin,” Taita said, “but not even I can control Mintaka Apepi. What she does, she does of her own free will.”
Below them Trok had turned to give the order for his chariots to wheel away, to let the rabble escape and to seize the fountain and the city of Gallala as Ishtar was urging him. Before he could speak he felt Ishtar stiffen beside him, and heard him whisper, “This is something that Taita has conjured.”
Trok jerked around and stared up the long rising valley. He saw the tiny figure in the crimson dress, standing high on the yellow rock platform. He recognized in an instant the object of all his hatred and rage. “Mintaka Apepi,” he snarled, “I have come for you, you adulterous little dog-bitch. I will make you plead for death.”
“It is an illusion, Pharaoh. Don’t let the Warlock deceive you.”
“That is no illusion,” Trok said grimly. “I will prove it to you when I bury my prong in her warm flesh, and prod her until she bleeds.”
“The Warlock has blinded you,” Ishtar howled. “There is death all around us.”
He tried to leap down from the footplate and run, but Trok seized him by his lacquered locks and hauled him back. “Nay, stay with me, Ishtar the Mede. I will let you have a taste of her sweet crevice before I throw her to my bully-boys to finish off.” He raised his clenched fist high above his head and shouted, “Forward! March!”
The chariots on either hand rolled forward together, and the ranks behind followed Trok into the valley, the sun sparkling on the javelin heads, and the dust rose around them like smoke. The tail of the fleeing refugees was three hundred paces ahead when Trok gave his next order.
“Forward at the gallop! Charge!”
The horses leaped away, and in a rising thunder of hoofs and wheels they swept up the narrow valley.
“Trok has committed,” Nefer said soft
ly. “But at what cost? If he takes Mintaka…” He could not bring himself to go on, but he stared in anguish at her tall, lithe figure standing serenely in the path of the storm.
“Now you have something to fight for,” Taita said gently.
Nefer felt all his love and deadly concern for Mintaka become battle rage, but it was a cold hard rage that sharpened every one of his senses and filled his being to the exclusion of all else.
As the phalanx of chariots swept by below where he stood on the side of the valley, he stepped out from behind the rock that had concealed him. The complete attention of Trok and his troopers was fixed on the helpless victims ahead of their racing chariots. They had no eyes for the tall figure that appeared suddenly high on their flank. But all Nefer’s men could see him clearly. They were hidden among the boulders down both slopes of the valley. Nefer raised his sword above his head, and as the last chariot sped past he brought it down sharply.
The wagons were poised on the steep gradient, with their wheels chocked and lashed to hold them. They were screened from view with dried grass the exact color of their surroundings, and they were so heavily laden with rocks that the axles sagged. At Nefer’s signal his wagoners pulled out the wooden chocks and slashed away the lashings that held the wheels. From both sides of the valley the wagons rolled forward, gathering speed, bounding down on top of the massed chariots below.
When Ishtar screamed at his side, Trok tore his eyes from Mintaka’s figure at the far end of the valley, and he saw the huge vehicles tearing down upon his squadrons. “Back!” he shouted. “Break away!” But even his bull voice was lost in the uproar. The charge once launched could not be stopped, and there was no space to maneuver in the narrow floor of the valley.
The first wagons crashed into the head of the charge. There was the rending of wood, the screams of crushed men and horses, the thunder of wagons overturning and capsizing, shedding their loads of rock.
Suddenly the way ahead of Trok was blocked by one of the cumbersome carts, and his horses swerved into the chariot running beside him. In an instant the magnificent charge was transformed into a shambles of shattered and overturned vehicles, and crippled horses.
The wagons had sealed off the valley at both ends. Even the chariots that had not been smashed and capsized were now bottled up in a struggling mass. The whole purpose of the chariot, its strength and threat, was its ability to run and turn, to charge and pull back at speed. Now they were immobilized, held by walls of stone, and Nefer’s archers were on the slopes above them. The first volleys decimated the unprotected charioteers. Within minutes the valley was transformed into a slaughterhouse.
Some of Trok’s men jumped down from their trapped vehicles and charged up the sides of the valley on foot. But they were exhausted by the grueling approach march, and burdened with their armor. The ground was steep and rugged and they moved only slowly. From the cover of the boulders and walls of hastily erected stone zarebas, Nefer’s men met them with long lances and hails of javelins. Most were cut down before they had reached the first rank of defenders.
Trok looked around him wildly, seeking some way out of the trap, but one of his horses was dead, crushed by the spilled load of rocks from the wagon that blocked his way forward. Behind him the other vehicles were so crowded that there was no room for him to turn or back up. Arrows and javelins were singing around him, clattering against the sides of the chariot, clanging off his helmet and breastplate.
Before Trok could restrain him, Ishtar took advantage of the confusion to spring down from the footplate and scuttle away between the wrecked chariots and plunging, shrilling horses. Then Trok looked ahead again, and incredulously he saw Mintaka still standing unmoved on the top of the ochre rock pile just ahead of him. She was staring at him with a cold look of revulsion on her lovely face that turned his rage to madness.
He snatched up his war bow from the rack at his side and reached for an arrow from the quiver, but then he changed his mind, threw the weapon aside and shouted at her over the heads of his rearing and plunging horses. “No! An arrow is too good for a bitch in heat. I am coming to get you with my bare hands, I want to feel you struggling as I squeeze the last breath out of you, you filthy little harlot.”
He drew his sword and sprang down to the ground. He ran forward under the hoofs of his rearing horse, and scrambled over the overturned body of the wagon. Two of Nefer’s men jumped out from behind the rocks to oppose him, but he hacked them down and ran over their twitching corpses. His eyes were fastened hungrily on the girl in the crimson dress standing tall and proud ahead of him, the flame to the moth.
Nefer saw Trok break out of the trap, and he ran down the slope, springing from rock to rock. “Run, Mintaka! Get away from him,” he shouted urgently, but either she did not hear him or she would not listen.
Trok did hear him, and he stopped and looked up. “Come on, then, my pretty boy, I have enough blade for both you and your whore.”
Without breaking his run, Nefer hurled the javelin in his hand, but Trok caught it neatly in the center of the light targe he carried on his shoulder, and the weapon spun away, clattering on the rock, and landed at Mintaka’s feet. She ignored it.
The throw had been enough to divert Trok for the moment, and Nefer sprang down onto the level ground in front of him. Trok went on guard as Nefer confronted him and then his face twisted into a ferocious grin. He crouched behind the bronze shield and waved the sword in his right hand. “Come, puppy,” he said. “Let us test your claim to the double crown.”
Nefer used the impetus of his run down the slope and came at him without a pause. Trok caught the first blow on the circle of bronze. Nefer jumped back just as Trok cut at him over the top of the targe. Nefer closed in again, trading thrust for cut.
Nefer’s men had seen him charge down the hillside. They followed his example, left the cover of the rocks and came bounding down in waves. Within seconds the full length of the valley was choked from side to side with struggling, hacking, thrusting men.
Nefer feinted at Trok’s hip, aiming at the joint of his armor. When Trok covered, he swung backhanded at his face. Trok was surprised by the change of direction and by the speed of the stroke. Though he jerked his head back the point of Nefer’s blade split his cheek open and the blood gushed into his beard. The wound galvanized him, and Trok roared and rushed at Nefer. He swung blows from every angle with such rapidity that his sword seemed to form an impenetrable wall of shining bronze around him. Nefer was forced to fall back before the attack until he felt the stone slab on which Mintaka stood pressing into his back.
He could no longer retreat or maneuver, and he was forced to pit himself against all Trok’s bull-like strength, and trade him blow for blow. In a contest of this nature, there were few men who could stand against Trok, who never seemed to flag, and he laughed as Nefer managed to turn some of his blows. “Let us see how long you can stem the tide, boy. I can go on like this all day, can you?” he asked, without missing a stroke. Metal clanged and rang on metal, while Trok moved gradually to the right blocking the only way that Nefer might slip out of his clutches.
Trok’s strength was like some malignant force of nature. Nefer felt that he was caught in a great storm wind, as helpless as if he were carried away on a riptide of the ocean. As much as the years of battle training had hardened him, they had not prepared him for this. He felt his right arm tiring and slowing as he tried to match Trok.
Trok nicked the side of his neck, and then seconds later sliced open his leather corselet and scored him along the ribs. Nefer knew that his only chance of surviving the storm was to trade his speed and agility against Trok’s brute strength, but he was pinned against the rock. He had to break away.
He caught the next cut high on his blade and deflected it just sufficiently to make an opening through which he could escape, but as he leaped into it he exposed his left flank. Trok recovered and drove in a low thrust that laid open his thigh just above the tattooed cartouche. The blood
ran down into his sandal and squelched at every pace he took.
The last of Nefer’s strength was ebbing away, and Trok swept up his blade and locked it with his own, forcing his guard higher and higher. Nefer knew that if he attempted to break away he would expose his chest for the killing thrust. Yet the cut in his thigh had weakened and slowed him still further. The grin on Trok’s face was triumphant. “Courage, boy! It is nearly over. Then you can rest—for ever,” he gloated.
Nefer heard Mintaka shout something, but it made no sense, and he could not afford the distraction. Gradually Trok forced aside his blade and towered over him, so they came chest to chest, then suddenly he shifted his weight to the left, toward Nefer’s wounded leg. Nefer tried to counter, but his leg gave way under him. Trok hooked his foot behind Nefer’s heel and threw him over backward.
The sword flew from Nefer’s weakened grip, and as he sprawled on the sunbaked earth, Trok lifted his blade above his head with both hands for the killing stroke. He was poised like that when suddenly his expression changed to one of surprise and bewilderment. Without completing the blow he reached up behind his own neck with one hand. He brought the hand back and held it before his face. It was wet with his blood. He opened his mouth to say something, but a double stream of bright blood trickled from the corners of his mouth and he turned slowly away from Nefer. Trok stared up at Mintaka, who stood on the pinnacle of the rock above him. With a detached feeling of disbelief, Nefer saw the shaft of the javelin sticking out of the back of Trok’s neck.
As she saw Nefer go down, Mintaka had snatched up the javelin that lay at her feet, the weapon that Nefer had thrown at the start of the engagement. She hurled it at Trok’s back. The point took Trok beneath the rim of his bronze helmet and went in deeply, just missing the spinal column, but opening the carotid artery.
Standing like a gargoyle with his mouth wide open, blood spewing out in a fountain, Trok dropped his sword and reached up. He seized Mintaka around the waist and dragged her screaming from her perch above him. He was trying to say something, but the sheets of blood pouring from his mouth drowned his voice.