by Wilbur Smith
The narrow way is thin as the blade of bronze.
The goddess who guards the second pylon
is treacherous and her ways are devious.
Lady of flame, whore of the universe,
with the mouth of a lioness,
your vagina swallows men up,
they are lost in your milky dugs.
Gradually his voice and his movements became weaker, and a little after the sun had made its noon, he gave one last shuddering sigh and was still. I stooped over him and felt for the life-throb in his throat, but there was none, and the skin was cooling under my touch.
‘Pharaoh is dead,’ I said softly, and closed the lids over his staring eyes. ‘May he live for ever!’
The mourning cry went up from all who were assembled there, and my mistress led the royal women in the wild ululation of grief. It was a sound that chilled me and made invisible insects crawl upon my skin, so I left the cabin as soon as I was able. Tanus followed me out on to the deck and seized my arm.
‘You did all in your power to save him?’ he demanded roughly. ‘This was not another of your devices?’
I knew that this unkind treatment of me was an expression of his own guilt and fear, so I was gentle in my reply. ‘He was slain by the Hyksos arrow. I did all that was in my power to save him. It was the destiny of the Mazes of Ammon-Ra, and there is no guilt or fault in any of us.’
He sighed and placed one strong arm around my shoulders. ‘I had not foreseen any of this. I thought only of my love for the queen and for our son. I should rejoice that she is free, but I cannot. Too much is lost and destroyed. All of us are merely grains of dhurra corn in the grinding-mill of the Mazes.’
‘There will be a time of happiness for all of us hereafter,’ I reassured him, although I had no basis for this claim. ‘But there is still a sacred duty on my mistress, and through her, on you and me also.’ And I reminded him of the oath that Queen Lostris had sworn to the king, that she would preserve his earthly body and give it proper burial to allow his Ka to move on to the fields of paradise.
‘Tell me how I can help in this,’ Tanus replied simply, ‘but remember that the Hyksos is sweeping through the Upper Kingdom ahead of us, and I cannot guarantee that Pharaoh’s tomb will not be violated.’
‘Then, if needs be, we must find another tomb for him. Our first concern must be to preserve his body. In this heat it will be decaying and crawling with maggots before the sun sets. I am not skilled in the embalmer’s art, but I know of only one way in which we can keep our trust.’
Tanus sent his sailors down into the barge’s hold, and they swung up one of the huge clay jars of pickled olives from our stores. Then, under my instructions, he emptied the jar and refilled it with boiling water. While the water was still hot, he mixed into it three sacks of the finest-quality sea salt. Then he filled four smaller wine jars with the same brine and set them all out on the deck to cool.
In the meantime I was working alone in the cabin. My mistress had wanted to help me. She felt that it was part of her duty to her dead husband, but I sent her away to care for the prince.
I slit open Pharaoh’s corpse down his left flank from ribs to hip-bone. Through this opening I removed the contents of chest and belly, freeing them along the diaphragm with the knife. Naturally, I left his heart in place, for this is the organ of life and intelligence. I left the kidneys also, for these are the vessels of water and represent the sacred Nile. I packed the cavity with salt and then sutured it closed with cat-gut. I did not have an embalming-spoon to push up through the nostrils and remove that soft yellow mush from the gourd of the skull, so I left it in place. In any event, it was of no importance. The viscera I divided into its separate parts: liver, lungs, stomach and entrails. I washed out the stomach and intestines with brine, which was a loathsome task.
When this was done, I took the opportunity to examine the king’s lungs minutely. The, right lung was healthy and pink, but the left lung had been pierced by the arrow, and had collapsed like a punctured bladder. It was filled with rotten black blood and pus. I was amazed that the old man had lived so long with such an injury. I felt that I was absolved. No physician could have saved him, and there was no fault or failure in my treatment.
At last I ordered the sailors to bring in the cooled jars of brine. Tanus helped me to fold Pharaoh’s body into the foetal position and we placed him in the olive vat. I made certain that he was completely immersed in the strong brine. We packed his viscera into the smaller Canopic wine jars. We sealed all the jars with pitch and wax, and lashed them securely into the reinforced compartment below decks in which the king stored his treasure. I think Pharaoh must have been content to rest thus, surrounded by gold and bars of silver.
I had done my best to help my mistress make good her vow. In Thebes I would hand the king’s body over to the embalmers, if the Hyksos had not arrived there first, and if the city and its inhabitants still existed by the time we reached it.
* * *
When we reached the walled city of Asyut, it was apparent that the Hyksos had left only a small force to invest it, and had continued southwards with their main army. Even though it was merely a detachment with less than a hundred chariots, the Hyksos besiegers were far too strong for us to attack them with our decimated army.
Tanus’ main aim was to rescue Remrem and his five thousand, who were within the city walls, and then to push on up-river to join forces with Lord Nembet and his thirty thousand reinforcements. Anchored out in the main stream of the river, secure from attack by those deadly chariots, Tanus was able to signal his intentions to Remrem on the city walls.
Years before, I had helped Tanus draw up a system of signals, using two coloured flags by means of which he could spell out a message to any other within sight, across a valley, from peak to peak, or from city wall to plain and river. With the flags Tanus was able to warn Remrem to be ready for us that night. Then, under cover of darkness, twenty of our galleys raced into the beach below the city walls. At the same moment, Remrem threw open the side-gates, and, at the head of his regiment, fought his way through the Hyksos pickets. Before the enemy were able to harness their horses, Remrem and all his men were safely embarked.
Immediately, Tanus signalled the rest of the flotilla to weigh anchor. He abandoned the city of Asyut to sack and plunder, and we bore on upstream under oars. For the rest of that night, whenever we looked back over the stern, we saw the flames of the burning city lighting the northern horizon.
‘Let those poor bastards forgive me,’ Tanus muttered to me. ‘I had no choice but to sacrifice them. My duty lies south of here in Thebes.’
He was soldier enough to make the hard choice without flinching, but man enough to grieve bitterly over it. I admired him then as much as I loved him.
* * *
Remrem told us that our signal frigates had sailed past Asyut the previous day, and that by now the despatches that I had drawn up on Tanus’ behalf must be in Lord Nembet’s hands.
Remrem was also able to give us some intelligence and news of the Hyksos, and his sweep to the south. Remrem had captured two Egyptian deserters and traitors who had gone over to the enemy and who had entered Asyut to spy on the defenders. Under torture they had howled like the jackals they were, and before they died, had told Remrem much about the Hyksos that was of value and interest to us.
The Hyksos king, whom we had so disastrously encountered on the plain of Abnub, was named Salitis. His tribe was of Semitic blood and originally a nomadic and pastoral people who had lived in the Zagros mountains near Lake Van. In this my first impression of these terrible Asians was confirmed. I had guessed at their Semitic origins from their features, but I wondered how a pastoral people had evolved such an extraordinary vehicle as a wheeled chariot, and where they had found that marvellous animal that we Egyptians now spoke of as a horse, and feared as though it were a creature from the underworld.
In other areas it seemed that the Hyksos were a backward people. They
were unable to read or write, and their government was a harsh tyranny by their single king and ruler, this bearded Salitis. We Egyptians hated him and feared him even more than we did those wild creatures that drew his chariot.
The chief god of the Hyksos was named Sutekh, the god of storms. It needed no deep religious instruction to recognize in him our own dreaded Seth. Their choice of god was fitting, and their behaviour did the god honour. No civilized people would burn and plunder and murder as they did. The fact that we torture traitors cannot be weighed in the same scale as the atrocities committed by these barbarians.
It is a truth that I have often observed, that a nation chooses its gods to suit its own nature. The Philistines worship Baal, and cast live infants into the fiery furnace that is his mouth. The black Cushite tribes worship monsters and creatures from the underworld with the most bizarre rituals. We Egyptians worship just and decent gods who are benevolent towards mankind and make no demands for human sacrifice. Then the Hyksos have Sutekh.
It seemed that Remrem’s captives were not the only Egyptian traitors travelling with the enemy host. With a hot coal in his anus, one of Remrem’s captives had told of some great Egyptian lord from the Upper Kingdom who sat upon King Salitis’ war council. When I heard this, I remembered how I had wondered at the knowledge that the Hyksos had displayed of our order of battle upon the plain of Abnub. I had guessed then at the presence of a spy among them who knew our secrets.
If any of this was true, then we must expect that the enemy knew all our strengths and weaknesses. They must know the plans and defences of all our cities. Especially they would know of that rich treasure that Pharaoh had accumulated in his funerary temple.
‘Perhaps this explains the haste with which King Salitis is driving on towards Thebes,’ I suggested to Tanus. ‘We can expect them to attempt a crossing of the Nile at the first opportunity that presents itself to them.’ And Tanus cursed bitterly.
‘If Horus is kind, he will deliver this traitorous Egyptian lord into my hands.’ He punched his fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘We must prevent Salitis from crossing the river, our ships are the only advantage that we hold over him. I must exploit them to full advantage.’
He stamped about the deck, and looked up at the sky. ‘When will this foul wind swing back into the north? Every hour the enemy’s chariots draw farther ahead of us. Where is Nembet’s fleet? We must join our forces and hold the river-line.’
* * *
That afternoon on the poop-deck of the royal barge the state council of Upper Egypt convened before the throne. The high priest of Osiris represented the spiritual body, Lord Merseket the chancellor stood for the temporal body of the state, and Tanus, Lord Harrab stood for the military authority.
Between them the three lords lifted Queen Lostris to the throne of this very Egypt, and placed her son upon her lap. While every man and woman on board the barge raised their voices in a loyal salute, the other ships of the fleet sailed past, and even the wounded soldiers dragged themselves to the rail to cheer the new regent and the young heir to the great throne of Egypt.
The high priest of Osiris strapped the false beard of the kingship upon my mistress’s chain, and it did nothing to detract from her beauty and manifest womanhood. Lord Merseket bound the lion’s tail around her waist and settled the tall red and white crown upon her brow. Finally, Tanus mounted the throne to place the crook and golden flail to her hands. Now Memnon saw the shining toys that Tanus carried towards him, and reached out to snatch them from him.
‘A king indeed! He knows the crook is his by right,’ Tanus applauded proudly, and the court roared their approval of this precocious behaviour.
I think this was the first time that any of us had laughed since that dreadful day on the field of Abnub. It seemed to me that the laughter was a catharsis, and that it marked a new beginning for all of us. Up until that moment we had been overwhelmed by the shock of defeat and the loss of Pharaoh. But now, as the great lords of Egypt went forward one at a time to kneel before the throne on which sat this lovely young woman and her royal child, a fresh spirit sprang up in all of us. We were rescued from the apathy of despair, and our will to fight and to endure was resuscitated.
Tanus was last of all of them to kneel before the throne and swear his allegiance. As she looked down upon him, Queen Lostris’ adoration for him was so evident that it suffused her lovely face and shone like the sunrise from those dark green eyes. I was amazed that no other in all that throng seemed aware of it.
That evening after the sun had set, my mistress sent me to the bridge of the state barge with a message for the commander of her armies. She summoned him to a council of war in the main cabin. This time Tanus dared not refuse her, for he had very recently sworn an oath of obedience.
This extraordinary war council of which I was the only witness had barely begun, before the new regent of Egypt imperiously banished me from the cabin, and sent me to guard the door and turn away all other visitors. The last glimpse that I had of them as I drew the heavy curtain was as they fell into each other’s arms. So great was their need, and so long had they been denied, that they rushed at each other like deadly enemies joining in mortal combat, rather than lovers.
The happy sounds of this engagement persisted for most of the night, and I was relieved that we were not at anchor but driving on up-river in haste to join with Lord Nembet. The clunk and swish of the oars, the boom of the drum setting the stroke and the chants of the rowers on their benches almost drowned out the tumult in the royal cabin.
When he came to the poop-deck at the change of the night-watch, Tanus had the smile and the satisfied air of a general who had just won a famous victory. My mistress followed him on deck shortly afterwards, and she glowed with a new and ethereal beauty that startled even me, who was accustomed to her loveliness. For the rest of that day she was loving and kind to all around her, and found numerous occasions to consult the commander of her army. Thus Prince Memnon and I were able to spend most of the day together, a circumstance that suited both of us very well.
With the prince’s dubious assistance I had already started carving a series of wooden models. One of these was a chariot and wooden horses. Another was a wheel on an axle that I was experimenting with.
Memnon stood on tiptoe to watch the wheel spin smoothly on its miniature hub.
‘A solid disc is too heavy, don’t you agree, Mem? See how swiftly it loses momentum and slows down.’
‘Give it to me!’ he demanded, and snatched at the spinning disc. It flew form his chubby fingers, dashed to the deck and shattered into four almost equal segments.
‘You are a Hyksos ruffian,’ I told him sternly, which he seemed to take as a great compliment, and I went down on my knees to gather up my poor model.
The broken segments still lay in a circular pattern, and, before my hand touched them, I had a strange aberration of vision. In the eye of my mind, the solid segments of wood became spaces, while the cracks between them appeared solid.
‘Sweet breath of Horus! You’ve done it, Mem.’ I hugged him. ‘A rim supported by struts from the hub! When you are Pharaoh, what other miracles will you perform for us?’
Thus did the Prince Royal, Memnon the first of that name, Ruler of the Dawn—with just a little help from his friend—conceive of the spoke wheel. Little did I dream then that one day the two of us together would ride to glory upon it.
* * *
We came upon the first of the Egyptian dead before noon. He came floating down the river with his bloated belly buoying him up, and his face gazing blankly at the sky. There was a black crow perched upon his chest. It picked out his eyes and threw back its head to swallow them one at a time.
In silence we stood at the ship’s rail and watched the dead man float serenely by.
‘He wears the kilt of the Lion Guards,’ Tanus said quietly. ‘The Lions are the spear-head of Nembet’s army. I pray to Horus that there will be no others following this one down the river.’
But there were. Ten more, then a hundred. More and still more, until the surface of the river from bank to bank was carpeted by floating corpses. They were thick as the leaves of the water-hyacinth which clog the irrigation canals in summer.
At last we found one who still lived. He was a captain of the Lion Guards who had been seconded to Nembet’s staff. He clung to a mat of floating papyrus stems in the current. We fished him from the water and I attended to his wounds. The head of a stone mace had shattered the bones of his shoulder and he would never use that arm again.
When he had recovered sufficiently to speak, Tanus squatted beside his mattress.
‘What of Lord Nembet?’
‘Lord Nembet is slain, and all his staff with him,’ the captain told him hoarsely.
‘Did Nembet not receive my despatch warning him of the Hyksos?’
‘He received it on the eve of the battle, and he laughed as he read it.’
‘Laughed?’ demanded Tanus. ‘How could he laugh?’
‘He said that the puppy was destroyed—forgive me, Lord Tanus, but that was what he called you—and now sought to cover his stupidity and cowardice with spurious messages. He said that he would fight the battle in the classic manner.’
‘The arrogant old fool,’ Tanus lamented. ‘But tell me the rest of it.’
‘Lord Nembet deployed upon the east bank, with the river at his back. The enemy fell upon us like the wind, and drove us into the water.’
‘How many of our men escaped?’ Tanus asked softly.
‘I believe that I am the only one of those who went ashore with Lord Nembet who survived. I saw no other left alive. The slaughter upon the river-bank was beyond my power to describe to you.’
‘All our most famous regiments decimated,’ Tanus mourned. ‘We are left defenceless, except for our ships. What happened to Nembet’s fleet? Was it anchored in midstream?’
‘Lord Nembet anchored the greater part of the fleet, but he beached fifty galleys in our rear.’
‘Why would he do that?’ Tanus stormed. ‘The safety of the ships is the first principle of our standard battle plan.’