by Cliff Graham
Another man was stabbing wildly at my thigh with his dagger. It penetrated my flesh twice deeply before I caught the hilt and tried to shove the tip back toward my attacker.
I strained, pushed, the man shouted, the shouts muffled in the sand that was filling the cavern, and I made the mistake of taking a full gasping breath, the first thing you are taught not to do when suffering through a khamsin.
My mouth filled with sand instantly. I clenched my jaws and could feel my teeth grind against it, soaking up any remaining moisture on my tongue. I gagged and coughed as the sand swarmed down my throat into my lungs.
The tip of the Amalekite’s knife found my thigh again. He was turning my leg muscles into a pulp.
My only advantage was that my swollen eyes were allowing hardly any sand in through my lids. Somehow I managed to see a flash of movement from my attacker’s arm and avoided his next blow, found his skull with my hand and dug my fingers into his eye sockets. He flailed and shrieked in pain. Then someone fell on my head and crushed my face, but I did not relent on my grip, digging my fingers in as deep as I could, willing them to penetrate all the way through to the other side of his head.
My rage was complete. Pain, suffocation, all of it subsided and I could only think of killing every Amalekite within my reach.
We grappled in the dark like animals. I could hear only grunting and gagging and the roar of the khamsin.
Despite this, I had an idea.
“Outside!” I yelled in our tongue. “We can escape their army in the khamsin!”
Senek did not answer.
“Senek! Senek!” I shouted. “Majesty! Are you there?”
I wrenched my hand away from the skull of the man I had been blinding because he was no longer struggling. I sensed my elbow pressing against something metal. My blade.
I pulled it out and shoved it into the torso of whoever was on top of me. I hoped it was an Amalekite. His guttural curse told me it was.
“Lord king! Are you alive!”
“I am alive, soldier,” he called from the other side of the cave.
The sun had risen fully, and while it was still quite dark inside, I could make out what was happening as I got on my feet again. The Amalekites had stopped searching for us and were huddled against the cave walls, covering their faces with cloaks. Sand had drifted up to our waists, covering the corpses entirely.
“Run to the entrance as soon as you can break free!” I called to the king.
“Madness!” he answered back.
“It’s our only chance to evade their army; we can escape in the storm. Senek! Where are you?”
“He journeys through the Duat,” the king said over the roar.
I felt the punch of this news deeply. “Are you certain, your majesty?”
“I am certain.”
I allowed myself to the count of five to grieve my comrade. Both of them gone. Amek and Senek. My brothers.
“Majesty, run! Run for the entrance!”
We began staggering toward the mouth of the cavern. The sand sprayed us, and the wind howled like spirits of the underworld across the entrance. I felt an Amalekite’s hand reach out to stop me. I swung my sword down heavily, nearly cutting his arm off. The hand released.
Thutmose and I waded through the sand drifts and emerged at last from the entrance. The wind buffeted us, nearly tossing us back inside. We lowered our profiles.
Of all things, the scorpion sting hurt the most. Not the knife wounds in my leg, not my possible broken ribs—nothing hurt like that creature’s little stinger. Oh, how it irritated and angered me. My lungs rasped and wheezed from the poison. But my swollen eyes continued to be an advantage, keeping out the windswept sand. I could not see well, but I could see.
I stripped off my tunic from my waist and wrapped it around my face. Now I could breathe slightly better, as the cloth protected my nose and mouth.
We pushed our way through the sand. I was immeasurably tired and thirsty. The king collapsed several times; he did not have the endurance I had from all my training. I had to pick him up each time he fell.
I did not know where we were going. My leg ached. I remembered Amek and Senek every few steps, suffering grief for them heavier and heavier. How had Senek died? An Amalekite blade? I kept trying to ask the king if he knew, but my mouth would not form the words. I was growing delirious. I saw ships sailing in front of me on the Nile and I believed it to be so, until another hour of walking toward them brought me no closer.
The khamsin’s wind finally started to die down by late afternoon, leaving a dull brown haze all around. Visibility was limited still, but at least the sand was not being sprayed against us anymore.
I made out formations of rocks that looked familiar. We were still on the ridge, now much farther along. By the will of the gods, or so I thought then, we were being led back to our men.
By evening we were in Pharaoh’s camp. He was swarmed by caretakers and physicians and priests and dozens of others in his court. I made my way to the nearest campfire, seized the largest waterskin I could find, and drank until I could hardly see straight, all while my brothers in the regiment crowded around me to hear the tale and learn what happened to the others who had gone on our ill-fated chariot ride.
And when it was late and my leg and other wounds had been cleaned and bound, I sank into my bedroll and wept and wept for my friends Amek and Senek.
Pharaoh presented me with the Gold of Honor a few weeks after we returned to Memphis. He declared that my courage and heroism were to be admired and emulated by all.
I knelt down before him and his entire elegant court of nobles and ladies, who applauded for me. But the entire time I knew everyone was thinking the same thing. Why is a foreigner receiving such an honor?
The Gold of Honor opened the doors of the kingdom for me. As long as I wore it around my neck, I would be given whatever my heart desired. Merchant partnerships. Women. The best food harvested in the fields. The best wine from the best vineyards. Adulation from the masses who would gape at me in astonishment.
It was everything I could have hoped and prayed to the gods for. My pleasure was complete.
But soon enough, in the quiet corners of my heart and mind, I began to wonder if it mattered at all.
10
The Wife of Youth
You are wondering whether I ever met a woman. I sense it. A natural question.
My Hebrew wife is gone to Sheol these twenty years. She was good to me and raised my children. I loved her. But it is not yet time for her to enter my story.
I had a woman in Egypt as well. Golden eyes and golden skin. Soft and painted. A pagan, yes, but then I was a pagan too. What I thought was beauty was what she had.
I met her while on leave from training with the pharaoh’s guards. Normally on the last evening of the week, the soldiers stood outside in formation and listened to the latest guidance from our commanders. They warned us against the health dangers of the filthy women in the wharf district and said that because of who we were, we were always the targets of spies from neighboring kingdoms. We were not to drink wine and share secrets.
So, naturally, when the men were released from formation they promptly found the easiest and cheapest whores in the kingdom and got so drunk that they spilled every detail about palace life to anyone who would listen. By rights, our pharaoh should have been strangled in his sleep every week by a foreign assassin because of these security lapses. Perhaps Yahweh spared him just to have him on the throne when Moses came.
It was after one of these instructions, as the others clamored away to begin the carousing that soldiers are known for, that I made my way with my friends to a quiet tavern where the officers usually met up. Yes, we would engage in shameful behavior as well, but in a manner more dignified. More controlled.
We paid for our wine and drank it calmly. The prostitutes who came to officers were of the higher class. They and the men who owned them knew we had more money than the common troops.
; None of them appealed to me that particular night, though. I was too tired from training to concentrate on them.
I left Amek and Senek early in the evening—this was long before the battle when I won the Gold of Honor—and made my way down to the wharf. I liked sitting by the water on nights like that one. Waves lapped gently against the posts holding up the docks. A cool breeze came from the south. Rowdy and bawdy noises drifted from the city behind me. I didn’t mind them. It helped me to feel less lonely.
I’m not sure I knew it at the time, at least not directly, but what I was longing for was a woman. The warmth and satisfaction of her body, yes, and also more. I had had women available to me ever since I won a position with the Red Scorpions, and yet it was never satisfying. My physical thirsts were quenched, but the cistern I wanted to drink from was deeper.
I wanted someone to collect my pay from the paymaster. Someone to fold my bedroll for campaigns. Someone to miss me when I was gone and be joyful to see me when I returned.
Most men, even among our own people, only value the company of women for physical satisfaction and how they can be served. That is understandable. It is also incomplete. No matter how much of a rogue a man believes himself to be, he has a heart, and that heart yearns for the companionship that only a woman can provide. As much as I loved my battle brothers, they were not women. I could not dip my face into the soft flesh of their necks or let them stroke my forehead while I lay in their laps and they listened to the things that troubled me.
None of that was on my mind as I sat on my favorite dock on the wharf and listened to the warm night around me. All I knew was my loneliness—which was interrupted by a female voice in the darkness behind me.
“I like to come here as well,” she said.
I turned and searched for the source but saw only the shadows cast from nearby huts, the city behind them.
“Reveal yourself,” I said.
“That would spoil my fun.”
The voice was playful. Feminine.
I tilted my head to discern where it was coming from. I heard a giggle. There . . . in the shadow of a hut to my left.
My first instinct was to stand up and walk away. I have always been awkward around women; even those who were paid copper and gold rings to keep me company. You are likely marveling at how forward this woman was for addressing a stranger. I was used to the forthright behavior of Egyptian women by this point, but even still, I was hesitant to move.
Then, after a few moments of silence, I decided to leave.
“I am sorry. Please forgive me.” The voice had moved, and now I heard it coming from an alley between the huts.
“Are you a deck whore?” I asked loudly. It was a fair question. Harlots roamed the wharf for fishermen and sailors fresh off the barges with rings to spend. But I saw how my question may have been too abrupt.
“Certainly not,” she said indignantly. “And you would not be able to afford me even if I were.”
Playful again. I cleared my throat and fingered the dagger in my waist belt nervously, then marveled at what I thought I might do with it. I had already called her a deck whore. Why not stab her as well?
“I can tell you are a soldier by your build and demeanor, and by your complete inability to speak with a woman who was not paid to speak with you.”
I had always thought myself skilled of tongue, but I was completely unable to give her a response.
“What is your name, soldier?”
“Caleb, of the Kenazzites,” I stammered.
“The very same?”
A figure emerged out of the alley. Slender, covered in a shawl, not out of modesty—the Egyptians had none—but because of the night chill.
“He who wears the Gold of Honor?”
I was used to this by now. So few had ever won the valor prize given by the god-king that their names were spoken of in reverence from the delta to the cataracts.
“Yes,” I said. That was all I said. Very eloquent, I know.
She walked up close to me, and I saw her face for the first time. She was attractive. Not the most beautiful woman in the Two Kingdoms, but . . . the way she carried herself, held her hands behind her back, tilted her head as she looked at me, her dark eyes and skin—all of it was alluring to me.
I felt a need to say something. Nothing came from my mouth. I looked past her to find somewhere else to direct my eyes.
“I heard you saved the king himself,” she said, stepping even closer so that I smelled the perfume I came to love the first time.
“The king is a god,” I replied. “He did not need to be saved.”
She smiled. Her mouth was lovely. Her best feature. “I did not know that Amalekite arrows could recognize the flesh of a god-king and know to avoid it.”
I could not help but laugh. Perhaps it was because I was nervous. It occurred to me then that I had never really spent time around intelligent, poised noblewomen. For that was what she had to be, I knew it instantly. The common women did not have time for the idle pleasure of sitting by the shoreline on an evening’s lark.
Her bearing informed me as well. She had been trained in posture and language. Her grammar was eloquent, free of the abuses and slang of common speech.
That was it, I thought. That was why I felt so uncomfortable. I was not used to a lady of her kind.
“My lady, please allow me to escort you from this place. It is not safe for you to be here alone.”
“I frequently come here alone.”
“Then the gods have been generous with you. I cannot imagine that they will do so forever. You will be captured and sold.”
“What price do you think I would fetch?”
“By whom?”
“My captors. Their ransom price. Do you think it would be high?”
“Well . . . yes, I do. I think you would be worth at least a lakh of gold if your father is nobility.”
“What makes you assume that he is?”
“Your bearing speaks it. A river rogue would see it in you immediately. A lakh.”
She nodded. “Would you pay that for me?”
“I do not understand.”
“You certainly do understand. Would you pay it for me?”
“I need to take you home.”
Even for an Egyptian, this woman’s forward manner was disconcerting to me. But of course I was intrigued and did not want her to leave.
Women. There you have it.
“I will allow you to take me home, Gold of Honor winner,” she said. “No other man would be worthy of it.”
Flattery. I sensed danger in it, knowing never to trust a woman’s flattery. But she smiled so easily, so honestly, that I could not hold back a grin of my own.
“Is that it?” She was staring at my neck. I reached up and fingered the gold chain and nodded.
“May I handle it?” she asked.
I nodded. She ran her fingers over the chain. I tried to ignore my longing for them to move to my skin. I do not believe it was lust for her in my heart then. Longing, yes, but not lust. I was lonely. She was there. We were alone.
I gently pushed her fingers away. “I must take you home now. How far do you live from here?”
“Not far.”
She walked in front of me, and I searched the corners and shadows as we walked, wary of anyone who may have been following her and waiting for the chance at ambush.
“Why do you come down here?” I asked.
“I like to sit and think and be alone and watch the Mother River for signs of my future. It appears she answered me and delivered a heroic warrior who commands the adulation of the kingdom.”
I chuckled to myself, feeling more at ease by now.
“Is something funny?” she asked.
“What does a woman think about?”
She glanced back at me. “The same things as men, I would assume.”
“Not likely. You do not want to know what men think about.”
“Now I am curious. Tell me.”
“We
think of wine, women, and war.”
“I like wine. I do not know war. I am a woman, so I suppose I think about them.”
“Not like a man does. And be glad you know nothing of war.”
“Do you have a woman, then?”
“I do not.”
We walked a few more steps in silence.
“Has a man claimed you for marriage yet?” I ventured.
“A few have challenged for it. My father has not given his permission. He will give it to you, though. You wear the Gold of Honor.”
I shook my head. “Egyptian women are very forward. You assume much.”
“Do I? Describe the women in your land to me.”
“The truth is that I did not know them very well. I came here as I reached the age of noticing them.”
“And what do you say of Egyptian women?”
“That they are forward.”
“It saves time, does it not? You find me pleasing to look at?”
I noticed movement ahead and studied the spot, then saw a cat run into an alley. “I do.”
“I find you pleasing to look at as well. And you wear the Gold of Honor. You must have every wharf whore in Egypt tossing herself at you.”
“I have not had the time.”
“Nonsense. Soldiers have needs.”
“The ones who wear this have no time for needs. Only training.”
This went on for a while as we ascended the embankment from the river delta to the district where the nobility lived. We passed ever larger alabaster homes with exquisitely detailed paintings and carvings. I had provided some of them myself. We passed a lion I was particularly proud of, carved above the doorway of an estate owned by a fat old nobleman who had a fleet of fishing boats and spent his days getting fatter and more idle while his young wives pleasured him. He did not strike me as worthy of the lion carving.
“We continue to climb the hill. That means your father is important,” I said.
“He is of minor importance. He does have money.”
We arrived at the gate of her home, a large place I recognized from having worked on the estate across the road from it.