by Stephan Loy
Hordedev and his comrades hid themselves beyond the breach in the villa wall. Some crouched against the wall itself while others burrowed below scant rises in the sandy terrain. Hordedev lay just behind a shock of wilted grass. Four other men shared the same tiny space, each one lying atop his stash of rocks. They waited through screams and the banging of rocks, through the cries of children, cut short. Hordedev wanted to charge at that last, but the others held him down, held him waiting. There were many more of them than there were Setim soldiers. They just had to wait, as the plan required.
And whose plan was it? No one knew. No one knew anything except a need to fight.
The others, the bait, poured through the breach, Setim soldiers behind. Hordedev sprang to hurl his arsenal, then charged like a madman into the enemy. All the Setim went down, flint axes snatched from their hands and used against them with glee. The refugees streamed back into the villa, pummeling the remaining soldiers, roaring through the front gate in a lust of bloodletting. They chased down the guards with the stolen women, burned their boat, then part of the mob hurried downstream to extend their tide of triumph into the Setim barricades.
Hordedev, exhilarated, returned instead to the villa. He pranced among his fellows and among celebrants rushing from the stricken house. As he reveled, the dead became invisible, the dying of little merit, the mourning a sign of weakness. He was king in his domain, a killer of Setim dogs. His laughter seemed inexhaustible, until he found his mother.
She sat in the sand before the granaries, hunched in an agony of lament. A tiny, bloodied body lay clutched in her iron arms. She ignored the other three girls, who cried, gawked, or struggled from their hiding places. All she loved in that small moment lay limp in her lap, spattered with tears.
In that moment, Hordedev learned the true wages of war. His euphoria vanished. His cockiness deflated into guilt. He went to his mother, so strange in grief, and kneeled by her side. He moved to embrace her but cowered instead from the intensity of her bereavement.
“Mother. Nefera...?”
Sanni answered with a mournful shriek.
Other mothers replied in kind.
They buried their dead at the desert’s edge. Each of the deceased earned a traditional shallow grave, an ovoid depression into which they were folded knees to chest, as if sleeping like a child. Hordedev wrapped Nefera’s tiny form in linens taken from somewhere in the house, then arranged her facing east in the hole, that she might greet the first light of Ra every day of her afterlife. She owned no possessions, so none were buried with her beyond a few crusts of the bug-eaten bread that had furnished her final meal. It wasn’t much, but might well prevent starvation once she awoke on the other side. Anyway, Hordedev could do no better. While his mother lamented beside the grave and others cried nearby, he covered his sister with sand, then piled her with rocks to keep out scavengers.
They stayed by the grave a very long time, Mother moaning for her lost daughter and crying out for her missing husband. She lamented all that lay behind and all that lay ahead. Her three remaining girls clutched at her, sniveling in grief, confusion and fear, and begging to go back home. It seemed the desert was a chorus of dirges; many had died that day.
Hordedev mourned in stony silence, his newfound darkness swallowing him. He craved vengeance against his sister’s killers, against those who had smashed his home, his family, and his familiar, if difficult, routine of life. He desired their deaths, deaths without graves, deaths that fed hyenas, that plunged his enemies deep into oblivion without any Ka to guide them. He wanted this, he wanted it badly, but reason wrestled his visceral emotions; it spoke to him through the mournful cries of women and children. Reason asked who would care for his mother. Father had left him the man of the family; he could not ignore that duty. But could he protect his family by running from its enemy? Hadn’t running caught up with Nefera, as it had so many before? Shouldn’t he serve his family by facing down its besiegers?
Despite his pretensions to manhood, Hordedev was still a boy, so resolution came slowly and with pain. Vengeance. Duty. Both found purchase in his aching heart, but after hours of tortured reflection, he decided to break with the refugees, to return to Abydos among other like-minded youths and fight and kill the Setim. He decided to tell his mother as they prepared with the others to continue on their way, but she was so broken, so alone, that he couldn’t rouse the heart to leave her. He continued downstream that day and the next, caring for his sisters while his mother yet could not.
His quandary never left him, but pricked deeper when they came to Hammamiya. The city had once been a thriving government center, the second seat of Abydos. Now it smoked from across the river, little more than a pyre of broken hopes. Bodies lay tangled like driftwood along both banks of the river. Rats feasted on that bounty and vultures perched in leafless trees, looking fat and happy. Hordedev wondered if the whole world had fallen to Set.
Sanni found a measure of strength in that grisly, hopeless tableau. It forced personal tragedy into a shaky perspective, demonstrating that her heartache in no way marked the bounds of misery. At least her Nefera rested in the earth; she would not be food for fish or crocodiles. At least she didn’t suffer in a Setim rape camp, or plod through dead, violated landscapes hunting bugs to live. Sanni hardened at this summit with death and ordered her family on without pause. Someplace somewhere escaped Set’s grip. Somewhere, she could heal.
Camp became a hushed affair despite the addition of Hammamiya’s survivors. The usual stories were left untold as the murdered city glared from upstream, too tragic for words. Only the young showed fire enough to grumble, their surly gatherings augmented by arrogance mimed with captured weapons. They huddled in clutches and pronounced curses against the gods, and each day their numbers dropped as they filtered back upstream, to Set. Sanni watched Hordedev as the men left. She knew he longed to march among them. But duty pushed him away from vengeance, and onward down the river.
A day later, the ragtag refugee procession passed a horror far greater than Hammamiya. Across the river, the city of Badari thrived almost within sight of its stricken neighbor's smoke. Boats ran, the quayside market thrived with crowds, and children played in the river. The earth still suffered in blackened, crackling death and the desert took farms in its smothering embrace, but the people of Badari seemed not to notice. Natural calamities failed to touch them; only the diversions of business and pleasure molded their happy lives.
The refugees marveled at the unexpected sight, so used were they to a harder reality. Many rejoiced at that promise across the Nile, until they noticed the boats at the quays: Setim warboats with Setim crews. Setim soldiers milled in the market among the ordinary people, and were granted deference obvious even from across the water.
“They’ve sold themselves to Set.” Hordedev gnashed his teeth. “They saw what happened to Hammamiya, and thought it best to embrace rather than fight their enemy.”
“They’ve saved their children,” Sanni rejoined.
“They’ve made their children slaves,” Hordedev protested.
Sanni stared at that shining promise of food, safety, and almost forgotten comfort, and wished Badari’s choice had been offered to her home. She would still have her children -- all of them -- and they’d be playing in the water as if crocodiles were a lie.
“We’d best move on,” she said, her voice as dead as the land. “We’d best move on, before they see we’re here.”
They found the same at Mostagedda, and then at Matmar, the last great city of Abydos. It seemed less alive than its neighbors, and for good reason, Sanni soon discovered.
A man sat on the bank across from Matmar, shaded by the bulk of a carefully maintained shaduf. He stared at the water drifting past his feet, unmindful of the refugees plodding along behind him. He had the look of a farmer with his burned, leathery skin and hard muscles, but was dressed in a city dweller’s kilt instead of the traditional heavy labor loincloth. Sanni recognized his look of defeat; her
Qebera lived with those same slumped shoulders. Qebera, she sighed, who had struggled as a farmer even on rich soil with ample water, whose land had prospered only when his wife and son adopted it. She ached for her husband, clumsy, inept hands and all, and her ache pried compassion into her wounded heart.
“Rather dressed up for whipping this dirt into shape,” Sanni said toward the man, an attempt at playful challenge.
The farmer froze with his arm cocked to pitch a stone into the river. He looked up the bank to Sanni, then turned back to heave his pebble. “This place doesn’t whip,” he sighed. “At least, not for several days.”
“It looks bad,” Sanni agreed, and brought her children up short. “We’re farmers ourselves, out of Abydos. But we lost our land to men, not to nature.”
The man stared at her. “I hear it’s bad upstream. I have a meal of bread and dried fish. I’m willing to share in exchange for news.”
“News we have in good measure,” Sanni said, and released her children to sit on the bank. They didn’t go far; their playful spirits were all but erased. Sanni climbed down to the right of the man, Hordedev to his left. They were three forlorn sculptures off the water.
“Two weeks ago, this place was fine,” the man said. “A passable harvest from last season, vegetables in the garden, and plenty of sweet beer. Now, it’s all gone. Even the beer is shot with rot.” He opened his kilt’s linen belt and removed an oiled goatskin package. Inside the package were two dried fish and a few hunks of bread. He handed the bread to Sanni. “Give these to the little ones. It’ll make their bellies feel fuller. I’m sorry, it’s all I have.”
Sanni thanked him, then called over her family to dispense the meal.
“Where did you get even this?” Hordedev asked. “We’ve found nothing along the bank. The earth and the river are barren.”
The man shrugged, and tore the fish into sections. “Only here. Downstream into Fayum, the granaries burst with emmer. Everything we eat these days is imported. And you have to eat it quick, for it spoils almost immediately. A curse is upon us, I tell you, ever since the Setim came.” He shook his head in disgust. “Top barter for one day’s provisions. It won’t be long before we starve. They say Osiris abandoned us, that he abdicated to Set and his wife ruts with the evil god of deserts.”
“It’s a lie,” Hordedev sneered, causing the man to stare. But Hordedev settled himself and relaxed the twist of anger in his face. He took a proffered piece of meat, and apologized. After that he began, in halting, thoughtful tones, to tell the story of Abydos.
It surprised Sanni how short a tale it made.
The man nodded. “Well, that explains a lot. You saw what happened upstream? Hammamiya questioned the legitimacy of Set’s rule. The smoke blackened the sky for days, and some of the fires still burn. The Badaris were forced to clean up the Nile. The bodies had threatened to foul the water, and the crocodiles swam in for miles.”
“But your people survive,” Hordedev said, the accusation plain.
The man refused to bristle. “Yes, young man, we survive. As slaves. We play along with our Setim overlords, trapped between the garrison at Badari and another garrison here. We smile at them and give way to them, and we even worship their despicable god. Our young men speak much as you, but we keep their anger in check.”
“Why?”
The man huffed. “Because we saw Hammamiya.”
They sat for a moment, finishing the fish and saying nothing. Sanni licked her fingers. “Thank-you for the meal. We must be leaving you.”
Their host looked startled. “Where will you go? Beyond this city lie miles of desert. Even the river banks are dead, as you see.”
“We’ll walk to Fayum,” Sanni said. “I must find a place for my children. Someplace safe.”
The man folded his bit of goatskin. "It’s not my business, of course, but I wouldn’t do it, if I were you.”
“Why not?” Hordedev asked. “You get supplies from Fayum. You said so yourself.”
“Yes, but we’re supplied by ship, young man. That’s a far cry from travel on foot.”
“We’ll stick to the river,” Sanni explained. “We’ve eaten bugs and grass. What could be worse?”
“No bugs or grass,” the man said. “Understand, things have changed. There’s the desert and the river, and no fertile land between. Soon, the dunes will spill into the water. Besides, there’s that garrison guarding the border. Didn't you say your husband was an official of Osiris? Many of my people were moved to Mostagedda to make room for troops. Those troops are looking for the likes of you.”
Sanni was unimpressed. “I must protect my children. I can’t stay in the land of Set.”
The man nodded. He looked at the ground for a long minute, lost in thought. By the water welling about his eyes, those reflections had to be bad.
“I understand,” he finally said. “Some of us had the chance to flee, but we didn’t see the threat in time.” He opened his mouth, then closed it again. When next he spoke, he changed the subject. “But you’ll need rest before making the trip. You could stay with me, if you like.”
Sanni eyed him, her appraisal hard.
“I’m not suggesting anything,” the man assured her. “I just can’t in good conscience allow you to take such a risk unprepared. You could eat, get your strength, take on provisions just before you leave. You could stay here on my farm, safely out of the city...”
“Why?” Sanni asked.
He shrugged, and frowned. “Because I hate the desert,” he said.
They stayed a week before Hordedev spoke with his mother. He couldn’t complain of the food, which was hearty if not plentiful, and he couldn’t complain of the farmer’s hospitality. It turned out the man, Ay Horemheb, had lost his family when the Setim moved in. His wife and five children had been in the city, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and simply hadn’t come home. He pined for them and his dying land, and needed company to stumble through his grief. Sanni had felt his need, perhaps, and perhaps he had felt hers as well. The two became quick, if somewhat morbid friends. No, Hordedev couldn’t complain of much; only restlessness.
Sanni found him alone in the ruined garden, desiccated pole beans surrounding him like a brown, brittle cage. Though Ra peeked above the eastern horizon, casting the world in gold and shadows, Hordedev ignored the greatest of gods and faced south toward his languishing home. He heard his mother approach through the crackling grass, but still kept his eyes upriver.
“I have to go back,” he announced when he felt her hand on his shoulder.
“Yes,” she sighed. “I knew you’d leave one day.”
“I have to, Mother,” and his tone held a plea for forgiveness. “Someone has to fight...”
Sanni squeezed his shoulder.
“Gods, Mother, I’m sorry...”
“Don’t be, Hordedev. I knew you would go. It’s your father in you.”
They stood watching the south. Ra rose magnificently, ignored by two of his own.
“I talked to Horemheb. He said you can stay as long as you need to. There are others in the refugee camp. They’ll go with me...” Hordedev cursed himself. He seemed about to cry.
“Do what you must,” Sanni whispered, “ and never think you’ve deserted us. I’ve always been proud of you, Hordedev, my son. I see no reason to change that now.”
He turned and hugged her with all his heart. She returned the gesture. “Remember us, Hordedev,” she breathed, streaming tears. “When you’ve nothing else to beat your heart, try to remember us.”
Chapter Four:
She could not defend against his attacks. She was, after all, a goddess of life; it was not in her nature to fight, but to give. So, she lived in terror of his all-too-frequent invasions, cowering at every sound outside her doors. When he chose to burst upon her, she took his abuse with howls of torment. She begged him to spare her, to cease his brutal defilement, but no entreaty diverted him, no display of wretchedness drew mercy from his soul. Her bod
y betrayed her. That body that had brought life and love to the world now called horror full upon her. It teased Set. Her curse in those days was that inescapable fact of her being: she was a goddess of life and could not control the power that made her what she was. She was life and he was mad for her. The body he brutalized felt warm and supple; the tears she shed were the water of life. He was dry, barren, so he wanted every part of her while hating every aspect of her. He desired to dominate her, to twist her, to make her fall, but also to caress that wonderful flesh. His laughter scorched her soul.
But the deepening torture engulfing Isis went far beyond her doors. As she endured Set’s abuse, the world that loved her anguished as well. It gave of itself in her defense, falling to the death denied its queen. All that grew in the fertile ground withered. Animals died and the people starved, what few of them were left. But their dead did not litter the streets as on the night of Set’s takeover. Bodies had become a loathsome commodity: the only food in Abydos.
A month passed in the hell of Osiris’s former kingdom. Then, on a moonlit night, a barge poled to the palace quay. It came from nowhere, just appeared in the night, steering for the bank. A figure sat enthroned aboard, silent, unmoving, and as shadowed as his boat. He stood as the vessel scraped against stone, and gestured a runner down to the courtyard gate. The messenger ran ahead to the palace main hall before his lord even stood upon earth.
A richly kilted and bejeweled escort marched up the aisle of the palace audience chamber. Four humans paraded in all, one herald followed by three men abreast. The latter carried standards of the finest gauzy linen on cedar staffs. The standards displayed a stylized bird and an icon of the moon. This was the cartouche of Thoth, chief judge of Ra. The god followed close behind.
“All hail Thoth!” the herald cried. “All attend the majesty of Thoth, the Questing Eye of Ra, Judge of Gods and Heart of Wisdom. All hail the glory of Thoth, Chancellor for the sleeping Ra!”