River God: A Novel of Ancient Egypt (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘I do not know Lord Nembet’s mind, except he may have kept them at hand to re-embark our troops expeditiously, should your warning have proved justified.’

  ‘What then is the fate of our fleet? Nembet lost our army, but did he save the ships?’ Tanus’ tone was rough with anger and distress.

  ‘Of the ships that were anchored in midstream, most are scuttled and burned by the skeleton crews. I saw the flames and the smoke even from where I lay on my papyrus float. A few of the others cut the anchor-lines and fled south towards Thebes. I shouted to the crews as they sailed past me, but so great was their terror that they would not heave-to and pick me from the water.’

  ‘The fifty ships that lay upon the beach—’ Tanus broke off and drew a deep breath before he finished the question. ‘What has become of the squadron that was beached?’

  ‘It has fallen into the hands of the Hyksos.’ The captain trembled as he answered, for he dreaded Tanus’ anger. ‘I looked back as I drifted with the current, and I saw the enemy swarming aboard the galleys on the beach.’

  Tanus stood up and strode to the bows. He stared upstream from where the corpses and the scorched and blackened planks of Nembet’s fleet still drifted down upon the steady green flow of the river. I went to stand at his side, to be ready to halter his rage when it came.

  ‘So the proud old fool has sacrificed his life, and the lives of all his men, simply to spite me. They should build a pyramid to his folly, for Egypt has never seen the like of it.’

  ‘That is not all his folly,’ I murmured, and Tanus nodded grimly.

  ‘No, not all his folly. He has given the Hyksos the means to cross the river. Sweet milk of Isis’ breast, but once they are across the Nile we are truly finished.’

  Perhaps the goddess heard him call her name, for at that moment I felt the wind that had blown so long into our faces veer. Tanus felt it also. He spun on his heel and roared an order to his officers on the poop-deck.

  ‘The wind turns fair. Make a general signal to the fleet Set all sail. Relieve the men at the oars every hour by the water-clock. Drummers, increase the beat to flank speed. Make all haste southwards.’

  The wind settled strongly into the north. Our sails filled and stiffened like the bellies of pregnant women. The drums gave the rowers the stroke, and we breasted the flow of the river as the whole battle-fleet raced southwards.

  ‘All thanks to the goddess for this wind,’ Tanus shouted. ‘Divine Isis, let us be in time to catch them on the water.’

  * * *

  The state barge was slow and ungainly. She began falling astern of the fleet. It seemed that the fates has intervened once more, for Tanus’ old galley that he had loved so well, the Breath of Horus, was sailing close to us in the formation.

  She was under a new captain now, but she was still a formidable little vessel, built for speed and attack. The sharp bronze ramming-horn protruded from her bows, just above the water line. Tanus hailed her alongside the barge and transferred his Blue Crocodile standard into her, taking over the command from her new captain.

  My place was with my mistress and the prince. I am not certain how I found myself on board the Breath of Horus, standing on the poop beside Tanus, as we tore along upstream. Sometimes I am guilty of folly almost as monumental as that recently demonstrated by Lord Nembet. I remember only that as soon as the state barge began to fall away astern, I began bitterly to regret my impetuosity. I thought of telling Tanus that I had changed my mind, and asking him to put about and drop me once more on the deck of the barge. But after one glance at his face, I decided that I would rather face the Hyksos again.

  From the deck of the Breath of Horus, Tanus issued his orders. By flag and voice-hail, they were passed from vessel to vessel. Without slackening the pace of our advance, Tanus redeployed the fleet. He gathered up the galleys around him, as he forged his way to the head of the flotilla.

  The wounded and those no longer fit to fight were transferred to the slower vessels which fell back to keep pace with the state barge. The faster galleys in the van were cleared for action. They were manned mostly by Remrem’s fresh troops whom we had relieved from the siege of Asyut. They were spoiling for a chance to avenge the disgrace of Abnub. Tanus hoisted the Blue Crocodile standard at his masthead of the Breath of Horus, and they roared with the lust of battle. How swiftly he had been able to stiffen their spirit since that bloody defeat!

  The signs of Nembet’s recent catastrophe became ever more obvious with each league that we covered. The corpses and wreckage and all the flotsam of war were stranded in the papyrus beds on each side of the river. Then, at last, in the sky ahead of us we saw once again the dust of the chariots mingling with the smoke from the cooking-fires of the Hyksos camp.

  ‘It is as I had hoped,’ Tanus exulted. ‘They have halted their headlong advance on Thebes, now that Nembet has presented them with the means of crossing the river. But they are not sailors, and they will have difficulty embarking their men and chariots. If Horus is kind, we will arrive in time to help them on their way.’

  In extended battle order we swept around the last wide bend of the river, and we found the Hyksos before us. By one of those happy freaks of war, we had arrived precisely at the moment that they were fully committed to the crossing of the Nile.

  There were the fifty captured galleys straggling across the river in the most lubberly fashion. The sails and sheets were in a tangle and every oarsman was keeping his own stroke. The paddles were splashing and crab-catching. The steering of each vessel was shaky and erratic, completely out of phase with the ships around it.

  We could see that most of the Hyksos manning the decks were in full bronze armour. Clearly they had not realized just how difficult it is to swim in that state of dress. They stared at us in consternation as we bore down upon them. Now at last the roles were reversed. We were in our element, and they were flying in the wind like a torn sail.

  I had a few moments to study the enemy, as we closed. The vast bulk of the Hyksos army was still upon the east bank. They had gone into bivouac, and they were so numerous that their encampment stretched away to the foothills of the desert, as far as I could see from the deck of the Breath of Horus.

  King Salitis was sending only a small force across the river. Almost certainly they were under orders to race down the west bank and to capture the funerary temple of Pharaoh Mamose, before we were able to remove the treasure.

  We bore down rapidly on the convoy of Hyksos ships, and I shouted to Tanus above the beat of the drums and the bloodthirsty cheers of our rascals, ‘They have taken their horses across already. Look over there!’

  Almost unprotected, except for a few armed guards, there was a huge herd of these terrible animals gathered on the west bank. I guessed there were several hundred of them; even at this distance, we could make out their long, flowing manes and tails streaming in the strong north wind. They were a disturbing sight to us. Some of the men around me shuddered and swore with loathing of them. I heard one of them mutter darkly, ‘The Hyksos feed those monsters of theirs on human flesh, like tame lions or jackals. That is the reason for this slaughter. They must have food for them. We can only guess how many of our comrades are already in their bellies.’

  I could not contradict him, and I even had a queasy feeling in my guts that he might be speaking the truth. I turned my attention from those beautiful but gory monsters to the galleys in the stream ahead of us.

  ‘We have caught them taking the chariots and the men over,’ I pointed out to Tanus. The decks of Nembet’s captured vessels were piled high with chariots and equipment, and crowded with the Hyksos charioteers who were being ferried across. As they realized their predicament, some of the Hyksos tried to turn and run back for the east bank. They collided with the ships that followed them, and locked together, they drifted helplessly on the current.

  Tanus laughed savagely to see their confusion, and shouted into the wind, ‘General signal. Increase the beat to attack speed. Light th
e fire-arrows.’

  The Hyksos had never experienced an attack with fire-arrows, and at the thought of what was coming, I laughed with Tanus, but nervously. Then suddenly I stiffened and my laughter choked off.

  ‘Tanus!’ I seized his arm. ‘Look! Look at the galley dead ahead! On the poop. There is our traitor.’

  For a moment Tanus did not recognize the tall, stately figure at the rail of the galley, for he wore fish-scale armour and a tall Hyksos war helmet. Then abruptly he roared with anger and outrage, ‘Intef! Why did we not guess it was him?’

  ‘I see it so clearly now. He has guided Salitis to this very Egypt. He went east and deliberately tempted the Hyksos with accounts of the treasures of Egypt.’ My outrage and hatred matched those of Tanus.

  Tanus threw up the bow Lanata and loosed an arrow, but the range was long and the point glanced off Lord Intef’s armour. I saw his head jerk round at the shock, and he looked across the water directly at us. He singled us out, Tanus and myself, and for a moment I thought I saw fear in his eyes. Then he ducked out of sight below the gunwale of the galley.

  Our leading squadron flew into the pack of confused and milling shipping. With a tearing crunch, our bronze ramming-horn struck Intef’s galley amidships, and I was thrown off my feet by the impact. When I struggled up again, the oarsmen had already backed water, and with another rending screech of timbers we disengaged from the stricken ship.

  At the same time, our archers were pouring a heavy rain of fire-arrows into her. The heads were bound with pitch-soaked papyrus stems that burned like comets, each leaving a trail of sparks and smoke as they flew into the sails and top hamper. The north wind fanned the flames and they leaped up the rigging with a fiendish exuberance.

  The waters flooded in through the gaping hole we had ripped in her belly, and she listed over sharply. The sails caught fire and burned with startling rapidity. The heat singed my eyelashes even at that distance. The heavy mainsail, burning fiercely, fluttered down over the deck, trapping the crew and crowded charioteers beneath it. Their screams shrilled in our ears as their hair and clothing burst into flames. I remembered the plain at Abnub and felt no pity as they leaped in flames from the ship’s side and were drawn under by the weight of their armour. Only a swirl of ripples and a lingering puff of steam marked where each of them had disappeared.

  All down the line, the Hyksos galleys were burning and sinking. They had neither the experience nor the skill to counter our attack, and they were as helpless as we had been before the assault of their chariots. Our ships backed off and charged again, crushing in their hulls and sending torrents of flaming arrows into them.

  I was watching the first galley that we had attacked, seeking another glimpse of Lord Intef. She was almost gone when suddenly he reappeared. He had thrown off his helmet and his armour, and wore only a linen breech clout. He balanced easily on the gunwale of the sinking ship, and then, as the flames reached out to embrace him, he joined his hands above his head and dived overboard.

  He was a son of the Nile, at home in her waters. He knifed through the surface, and came up a minute later and fifty paces from where he had struck, with his long wet hair sleeked back, so that he looked like a swimming otter.

  ‘There he goes!’ I screamed at Tanus. ‘Run the swine under.’

  Instantly Tanus gave the order to turn the Breath of Horus, but quick as the helmsman was on the steering-oar, she was slow to come around. Meanwhile, Lord Intef slipped through the water like a fish, reaching out overarm for the east bank and the protection of his Hyksos allies.

  ‘Swing hard!’ Tanus signalled his starboard bank of oars, and they thrust the bows around. As soon as we were on line with the swimmer, Tanus gave the order to pull together, and we shot in pursuit. By now Lord Intef was far ahead and close in to the bank, where five thousand Hyksos archers waited with their long recurved bows strung and ready to give him covering fire.

  ‘Seth piss on them!’ Tanus yelled in defiance. ‘We will take Intef out from under their noses.’ And he drove the Breath of Horus directly at them, bearing down upon the lone swimming figure.

  As we came within range of the shore, the Hyksos loosed a volley at us that darkened the sky, and their arrows fell in a whistling cloud around us. They dropped so thickly that the deck soon bristled with them like the quills in a goose’s wing, and some of our sailors were struck and fell writhing and bleeding from their benches.

  But we were already close on Intef, and he looked back over his shoulder and I saw the terror in his face as he realized he could not escape our sharp prow. I ignored the arrows and ran to the bows to scream down at him, ‘I hated you from the first day we met. I hated every loathsome touch. I want to watch you die. You are evil! Evil!’

  He heard me. I saw it in his eyes, and then his dark gods intervened yet again. One of the sinking Hyksos galleys drifted down upon us, spouting fire and smoke. If she had touched us we would have gone up with her in a tower of flame. Tanus was forced to put the steering-oar over, and to signal urgently for his oarsmen to back-water. The burning galley drifted between the shore and where we lay heaved-to. Lord Intef was hidden from my view, but when the burning galley was past, I saw him again. Three brawny Hyksos charioteers were dragging him from the water and up the steep bank.

  He paused at the top of the bank and looked back at us, and then disappeared from sight, leaving me trembling with rage and frustration. Our men were still being struck down by the falling arrows, so Tanus gave the order, and we wheeled away and sped back to join in the destruction of those few vessels of the convoy that were still afloat.

  As the last of these listed over and then rolled on to her back, the green Nile waters poured into her and quenched the flames in a hissing cloud of steam. Our archers leaned over the side and shot the few surviving Hyksos who splashed weakly on the surface.

  Immediately they were all drowned, Tanus turned his attention to the west bank and to the small party of the enemy and the herd of horses that were stranded there. As our galley sped in to the shore, the Hyksos herders scattered and ran, but our men leaped ashore, sword in hand, and raced after them. The Hyksos were charioteers, and accustomed to riding into battle. Our lads were foot-soldiers and trained to run. Like a pack of hounds after a jackal, our men isolated and surrounded them. They hacked them down and left a hundred bleeding corpses scattered across the green fields of standing dhurra corn.

  I had jumped ashore behind the first wave of our troops. I had serious business in mind. There was no point in making models and designing chariots without a means of driving the spoked wheels that I had seen in my imagination.

  It required an enormous act of courage on my part to start towards that herd of terrible creatures that the Hyksos herders had abandoned close to the water’s edge. Each step was an effort of will, for there were many hundreds of them, and they were obviously restless and alarmed by the shouting and the running of men and the clash of arms. I was certain that at any moment they would rush at me like wounded lions. I imagined them gobbling my still warm and twitching flesh, and my courage evaporated and I could go no closer. From a distance of a hundred paces, I stood staring in dreadful fascination at these savage predators, but I was poised to turn and rush back to the safety of the galley at the first sign of an attack.

  This was the first opportunity that I had been given to study these animals. They were mostly of a dun colour, but with subtle shadings of bay and chestnut and roan. One or two of them were as black as Seth. They stood as tall as a man, with a full barrel-chest, and long necks that arched gracefully. Their manes were like the tresses of a beautiful woman, and their hides glowed in the sunlight, as though they had been burnished.

  One of those nearest to me threw back its head and rolled its upper lip, and I recoiled as I saw the great square white teeth that lined its jaw. It kicked its hind-legs and emitted such a terrifying neighing sound that I turned and started back towards the ship with some alacrity.

  Then a hoarse y
ell from one of our soldiers near me arrested my cowardly retreat. ‘Kill the Hyksos monsters!’

  ‘Kill the monsters!’ The cry was taken up by the others.

  ‘No!’ I screamed, and my concern for my own safety was forgotten. ‘No! Save the horses. We need them.’

  My voice was lost in the angry war-cry of our troops, as they rushed at the herd of horses, with their shields raised and their swords still dripping with the blood of the herders. Some of the men paused to nock arrows to the bow and fire them into the herd.

  ‘No!’ I cried, as a glossy black stallion reared and screamed, with an arrow standing out of his withers.

  ‘No! Please, no!’ I cried again, as one of the sailors ran in with a light war-axe and hacked through the fetlock joint of a young mare. She was crippled by the blow and could not escape the next stroke of the axe that caught her between the ears and dropped her kicking in the dust.

  ‘Leave them! Leave them!’ I pleaded, but the arrows brought down a dozen of the animals, and the swords and axes maimed and killed a dozen more before the herd broke under the assault, and three hundred horses bolted and went galloping out in a mass across the dusty western plain towards the desert.

  I shaded my eyes to watch them go, and it seemed to me that part of my heart went with them. When they had disappeared, I ran to protect and tend to those animals that were left maimed and arrowed amongst the papyrus beds. But the soldiers were ahead of me. So great was their fury that they gathered around the fallen carcasses. In a frenzy of hatred, they plunged their blades into the unresisting flesh and hacked at the broken heads.

  A little to one side stood an isolated clump of papyrus reeds. Behind this, and screened from the rampaging soldiers, stood the black stallion that I had first seen hit by an arrow. He was sorely struck and staggering as he limped forward, the arrow deep in his chest. Without thought for my own safety, I ran towards him, and then stopped as he turned to face me.