by Wilbur Smith
Only then did I realize my danger. Here was a wounded beast that, like a lion in the same straits, must surely charge at me. The stallion and I stared at each other, and I felt fear fall away like a discarded cloak from my shoulders.
His eyes were huge and swimming with pain. Gentle eyes, beautiful eyes that made my heart swell with pity. He made a soft, fluttering sound, and limped towards me. I held out my hand and touched his muzzle and it felt like warm Arabian silk. He came directly to me, and pressed his forehead to my chest in a gesture of trust and appeal that was almost human. I knew that he was asking for my help.
Instinctively I flung my arms around his neck and embraced him. I wanted more than anything in my life at that moment to save him, but from his nostrils warm blood trickled down my chest. I knew he was hit through the lungs and that he was dying. He was far beyond any help that I could give him.
‘My poor darling. What have those stupid, ignorant bastards done to you?’ I whispered. Dimly in my distress and spiritual agony, I realized that my life had changed again, and that this dying creature had made that change. Somehow I seemed to sense that, in the years ahead, wherever I left my footsteps in the African earth, the hoof-prints of a horse would lie beside them. I had found another great love to fill my days.
The stallion made that fluttering sound once more and his breath was warm on my skin. Then his legs collapsed under him and he fell heavily on his side and lay gasping air into his punctured lungs. Bright red bubbles frothed from the wound in his chest. I went down beside him, and lifted that noble head into my lap and waited with him until he died. Then I stood up and went back to where the Breath of Horus was beached.
It was difficult to see my way, for my own hot tears blinded me. Once again I cursed myself for a soft and sentimental fool, but that never did much to help me brace myself. I was always so vulnerable to suffering in another creature, human or otherwise, especially in one that was noble and beautiful.
‘Damn you, Taita! Where have you been?’ Tanus railed at me as I scrambled aboard. ‘There is a battle raging. The whole army cannot wait around while you have another of your famous daydreams.’ Yet for all his bluster, he had not deserted me.
* * *
Tanus would not even hear me out, but cut brusquely across my request for leave to follow the herd of runaway horses out into the desert, and for men to go with me.
‘I want no truck with those foul and unholy creatures!’ he shouted at me. ‘I only regret that my men let them escape and that they did not slaughter the lot of them. Let us hope that the lions and the jackals make good that default.’ I realized then that he hated them as much as did the most ignorant lout in his regiments.
‘Were you there on the plain of Abnub?’ I do not usually indulge in loud argument, but his intransigence infuriated me. ‘Or was that some other dull-witted oaf standing beside me? Did you not see the future charge at you on hooves and wheels and chop your men to jackal-food? Do you not understand that without chariot and horse, you and this Egypt we know are finished?’
This amicable discussion was taking place on the poop-deck of the Breath of Horus. Tanus’ officers were silent and stiff with shock to hear a slave address a Great Lion of Egypt and the commander of all her armies as a dull-witted oaf. However, I was past all restraint and I rushed on.
‘The gods have given you this wonderful gift. Three hundred horses placed in your hands! I will build you the chariots to go with them. Are you so blind that you cannot see it?’
‘I have my ships!’ Tanus roared back at me. ‘I don’t need these foul man-eating beasts. They are an abomination in the face of decent men and all benevolent gods. They are creatures of Seth and Sutekh, and I want no part of them.’
Too late I realized that I had pushed Tanus into a position from which he could not retreat. He was a clever and intelligent man, until his pride hamstrung his reason. I moderated my tone and made my voice mellifluous.
‘Tanus, please listen to me. I have held the head of one of these animals in my hands. They are strong, but strangely gentle. Their eyes shine with the intelligence of a faithful dog. They do not eat meat—’
‘How could you tell that from one brief touch?’ he sneered at me, still proud and affronted.
‘The teeth,’ I answered. ‘They do not possess the fangs or claws of a carnivore. Pigs are the only hoofed creatures that eat flesh, and these are no pigs.’
I saw him waver at last, and I pressed my advantage. ‘If that is not enough, look then at the stores that the Hyksos have brought across the river. Do they need that mountain of fodder to feed a pride of meat-eating lions?’
‘Meat or fodder, I will not argue further. You have heard my decision. We will let those cursed horses perish in the wilderness. That is my decision, and it is final.’ He stamped away, but I muttered under my breath, ‘Final, is it? We will see about that.’
There have been very few occasions when I have not been able to have my own way with my mistress, and hers was now the highest authority in this very Egypt. I went to her that very evening, as soon as the royal barge came once more under the protection of the war galleys.
Without the knowledge of her commander and lover, I showed her the tiny working model of a chariot with the miniature carved horses in the traces, which I had crafted for her. Queen Lostris was enchanted by it. Naturally she had never seen the squadrons of war chariots in full flight, and had not conceived for them the same hatred as had the bulk of her army. Having captured her full attention with the model chariot, I then described the death of the stallion in such harrowing detail that both of us were reduced to tears. She can resist my tears as little as I am able to resist hers.
‘You must go immediately and rescue these marvellous animals from the desert. When you have them, I order you to build a squadron of chariots for my armies,’ she cried.
If Tanus had spoken to her before I had the chance to persuade her, I doubt that she would have given that order, and the history of our world would have been very different. As it was, Tanus was furious with my deception, and we came as close to a permanent rift in our relationship as we ever had in all the years.
It was fortunate that I had been summarily ordered ashore by Queen Lostris, and was able to escape the full force of his wrath. I had only a few hours in which to gather around me a few helpers, and the chief of these was the most unlikely of them all.
I had never taken to Hui, the Shrike whom we had captured at Gallala and who had commanded one of the galleys which Tanus had scuttled at Abnub. He was now a captain without a ship, and a man looking for a reason to go on. He sought me out as soon as rumour of my mission spread through the fleet.
‘What do you know about horses?’ he challenged me, which was a question I was not prepared to answer at that moment.
‘Obviously not as much as you do?’ I made it a cautious question.
‘I was once a syce,’ he boasted, in his usual endearing fashion.
‘And what creature is that?’
‘A groom, one who cares for horses,’ he replied, and I stared at him in amazement.
‘Where did you ever see a horse before that bloody day at Abnub?’ I demanded.
‘As an infant my parents were killed, and I was captured by a tribe of barbarians who roamed the plains far to the east, a year’s travel beyond the Euphrates river. My captors were people of the horse and, as a child, I lived each day with those animals. Mare’s milk was my food and I slept beneath the horses’ bellies for shelter in the night, for a slave was not allowed into the tents of the tribe. When I escaped from slavery, it was upon the back of my favourite stallion. He carried me fast and far. But he died long before we reached the Euphrates.’
Thus Hui was with me when a galley set down my small party of reluctant horse-catchers upon the west bank. Sixteen men were all that I could recruit, and most of them were the dregs and riff-raff of the army. Tanus had seen to it that none of his best men would join me. He could not countermand the wor
d of the regent of all Egypt, but he made it as difficult as he could for me to carry out her orders.
At Hui’s suggestion, I had equipped my men with light linen ropes and bags of crushed dhurra corn. All of them, except Hui and myself, were terrified to the point of incontinence by the mere thought of the creatures that we had set out to follow. When I woke in the morning after our first night’s camp, I found that every single one of these stalwarts had disappeared, and I never saw them again.
‘We will have to turn back,’ I despaired. ‘There is nothing we can do alone. Lord Tanus will be pleased. This was exactly what he knew would happen.’
‘You are not alone,’ Hui pointed out cheerfully. ‘You have me.’ This was the first time that my feelings began to warm towards the young swaggerer. We divided the load of ropes and the leather bags of crushed corn, and we went on.
By this time the tracks of the horses were three days old, but they had stayed together in a single herd and so had beaten a road that was easy to follow. Hui assured me that the herd instinct was strong amongst them, and that with such lush grazing along the river-bank, they would not have wandered far. He was certain they would not have gone out into the desert, as I had feared that they might.
‘Why would they do that? There is no food or water for them out there.’ And in the end Hui proved right.
With the coming of the Hyksos, the peasants had deserted their farms and gone into the shelter of the walled towns. The fields were untended and the corn half-grown. We found the herd before noon the second day. It was spread out and grazing peacefully in one of the fields. Even after my experience with the wounded stallion, I was still rather nervous of these mysterious creatures.
‘It will surely be a difficult and dangerous matter to capture a few of them,’ I confided in Hui, seeking his reassurance and advice. At this stage, the notion of capturing all three hundred horses had not even occurred to me. I would have been satisfied with twenty, and delighted with fifty of them. I imagined that we would be forced to run each of them down and bind it with the ropes we had brought with us for that purpose.
‘I have heard that you have the reputation of being a very clever slave,’ Hui grinned at me, cocky and delighted by his superior understanding of the subject. ‘Clearly, it is a reputation that is ill-founded.’
He showed me how to twist and braid a halter from the ropes. We made a dozen of these before he was satisfied. Then each of us armed himself with one of these and a leather sack of crushed corn, and we started towards the grazing herd. Following Hui’s example, we never walked directly towards them, but strolled obliquely at a leisurely pace past the animals in the fringe of the herd.
‘Slowly now,’ Hui cautioned me, when they flung up their heads and studied us with that peculiarly frank and almost childlike gaze that I would come to know so well.
‘Sit down.’ We sank into the standing corn and remained motionless, until the horses started feeding again. Then we moved forward until they became restless once more.
‘Down,’ Hui ordered, and when we were crouched in the corn, he went on, ‘They love the sound of a gentle voice. When I was a child, I sang to my horses to quieten them. Watch this!’ He started to sing a refrain in a strange language, which I presumed was the barbaric tongue of his childhood captors.
Hui’s voice was as melodious as the squawking of crows squabbling over the rotting carcass of a dead dog. The nearest horses stared at us curiously. I laid my hand on Hui’s arm to quieten him. I was certain that the herd must find his efforts at song as distressing as I did.
‘Let me try,’ I whispered. I sang the lullaby that I had composed for my prince.
Sleep, little Mem, who rules the dawn,
sleep, little prince, who will rule the world,
rest that curly head, filled with wondrous dreams,
rest those arms, make them strong for sword and bow.
One of the mares closest to us took a few steps towards me, and when she stopped, she made that same soft fluttery sound with her lips. She was inquisitive, and I sang on softly and seductively. She had a foal at her heels, a lovely little bay-coloured creature with an appealing head and pricked-up ears.
With my special feeling for and understanding of birds and animals, I was already beginning to recognize the desirable points of breed in these new animals. I was learning swiftly and instinctively how to deal with them. I was no longer completely reliant on Hui to instruct me.
Still singing gently, I scooped up a handful of the crushed cornmeal and held it out to the mare. I could see at once that she had been hand-fed before, and that she understood my offer. She blew noisily through wide nostrils, and took another few paces towards me. Even now I can remember the thrill that almost stopped the beating of my heart when she took the last pace up to me, and delicately lowered her muzzle into my hand to taste the white meal. It powdered her whiskers as she ate, and I laughed with the joy and excitement of it. She made no effort to pull away from me as I slipped my other arm around her neck and laid my cheek softly against hers to inhale the strange, warm smell of her hide.
‘The halter,’ Hui reminded me softly, and I slipped it over her head, as he had shown me.
‘She is yours,’ Hui said.
‘And I am hers,’ I replied without thinking, but it was true. We had captured each other.
The rest of the herd had watched all this. As soon as the halter was on the mare, they settled down and trustingly allowed Hui and me to walk freely amongst them. They came to eat from the hand and allowed us to lift their hooves and stroke their necks and massive shoulders.
All this seemed to me at the time to be miraculous, but after only a little consideration I realized that it was quite natural. They were accustomed from birth to being handled and petted, to being fed and harnessed. They had lived always with the close and constant presence of man. The true miracle came later, when I realized that they recognized affection, and that they were able to return it in full measure.
Hui had selected and haltered one of the other mares, all the time lecturing me and displaying his learning and experience in matters equine. I was in such a euphoric mood that for once his bumptiousness did not annoy me.
‘Very well,’ he said at last, ‘we will mount up now.’ And to my utter astonishment he placed both hands on his mare’s back, drew himself up and flung one leg over her, to sit astride her back. I gawked at him in disbelief, expecting the mare to react violently, to rear up and dash Hui to earth, or, at the very least, to seize his naked leg in those powerful white teeth and drag him from his perch. She did none of these things, but stood quietly and subserviently.
‘Hi up, my darling!’ he called to her, and dug his heels into her ribs. The mare started forward obediently, and when he urged her on again she broke into a trot and then a gallop. Hui guided her effortlessly in a manner that was not then apparent to me. Horse and rider traced out elegant patterns of movement across the field, and then circled back to where I stood.
‘Come up, Taita. Try a gallop!’ I could see that he was expecting me to refuse, and it was that which made me overcome my reluctance. I would not allow the little whippersnapper to have the better of me.
My first attempt at mounting up was unsuccessful, but the mare stood stoically, and Hui laughed. ‘She has a great deal to teach you. You should call the poor animal Patience.’ I did not see the humour of it then, but the name stuck and the mare was Patience from then onwards.
‘Pull yourself higher before you swing your leg over, and be careful not to trap your balls under you when you come down,’ Hui counselled, and then howled with laughter. ‘And that’s a piece of advice that you need not worry about. My guess is that you would love still to have a pair of those to sit on!’
All the warm feelings I was beginning to have towards Hui cooled again at that sally, and I threw myself on to the mare’s back and clung with both hands around her neck, in fear of broken limbs and cracked skull.
‘Sit up straight
!’ Hui began my instruction, and Patience assisted me with her sweet and forgiving nature.
I surprised myself by thinking of these creatures in human terms, but over the following days as we rode south towards Thebes, I discovered that they could be stupid or clever, suspicious or trusting, dour or mischievous, friendly or aloof, brave or timid, nervous or phlegmatic, long-suffering or impatient, surprising or predictable—in short, as close to man in temperament as any creature that walks on four legs. The more I learned about them, the more I wanted to learn. The longer I spent working with them, the more I grew to love them.
I rode ahead on Patience, her foal at heel. The herd trailed after us compliantly, all three hundred and sixteen of them. Hui brought up the rear to sweep up any stragglers. With each league we covered, I became more confident and proficient upon Patience’s back, and the rapport between us became firmer. The mare became an extension of my own body, but so much swifter and stronger than my own feeble limbs. It felt so natural and right to be astride that broad and sturdy back that I was amazed that so few others were willing to share the experience with me.
Perhaps it was not only the terror that had struck them so devastatingly on the plain of Abnub, but also the words and attitude of Tanus, Lord Harrab that affected the regiments of our army. Whatever the reason, I could find no Egyptian who would mount upon the back of a horse, except Hui and, very much later, Prince Memnon. Of course, they learned to husband and breed the horse and care for him. Under my tutelage they became dexterous and dashing charioteers, but I never saw a man of them mounted on horseback, save only myself and Hui and the prince. When the chariots that I would design with their light, spoked wheels swept all before them, and made Egypt the master of this creation, Tanus never followed our example, and I never heard him express a kind sentiment towards those willing and brave animals who dragged him into battle.
Even in later years, when the horse was commonplace through all our realm, it was considered somehow indecent and obscene to mount them. When the three of us rode past astride, many of the common people spat on the ground three times and made the sign against the evil eye.