Sovereign of Stars

by Lavender Ironside

  Nehesi smiled wryly. “It seems your troops increase, Great Lady.”

  “Give me your sword belt, Nehesi.”

  He frowned. “I cannot defend you without my blades. What good will they do either of us on your hips?”

  She laughed at Nehesi. “I need no protection from these men.”

  What a curious lightening in her chest. Her heart seemed to float, buoyed on a raft of confidence. She realized with growing awe that for the first time since Iset's death she felt strong and secure. The feeling warmed her deep in her middle, made her limbs feel pleasantly loose and energetic.

  When Nehesi handed her his sword belt with stiff reluctance, she swung it about her hips and cinched it tight. It was heavy; it pulled at the knot of her kilt and made her sway a little as she walked. But she clapped her hands briskly and made for the pyramid at the edge of her camp, with Nehesi dogging her heels and her women trailing behind.

  The old monument had been raised by some long-dead Pharaoh or other – Huni, she thought his name was, the second or third Pharaoh to reign after Narmer. It was not nearly so great as the mighty tombs of Khufu and his kin, far to the north. She had seen those massive pyramids once as a child and again as the Great Royal Wife, observing them in silent reverence from the rails of ships as the Iteru carried her north. Those were monuments to make the gods weep. The massive bulk of them, the precision of their symmetry, made them seem as permanent and enduring as the sun itself, even from the middle of the river, and she recalled gaping at them, disbelieving that there had ever been a time when the pyramids had not stood. Huni's redstone monument was less than a dwarf by comparison, the height of a few men only. But it would serve her purpose well enough.

  She clambered up the first of its several steps and stood gazing down on the fields of Behdet. The city's young men were greeted with cheers by her own soldiers as they came into the camp. They kept marching through, directly toward her as if her kas whispered, Come to me. Come and find your king, and the men obeyed.

  At last they stood in a ragged assembly at her feet, staring up at her in the simple white war kilt, a heavy belt laden with blades slung about her hips, the golden vulture's wings spread across her heart. She could feel the ancient slope of red stone rising at her back, drawing their eyes ever upward, across her, through her, with her into the sky where Amun-Re ruled. They ceased their songs and jesting; an expectant hush settled over the camp.

  “My good men,” she said, and though her youth and her sex pitched her voice high, still her words rang out clear and strong. “Never has a new king come to the throne in peace. Always the strength of Egypt is tested, by Kush or by Hatti, or by the Heqa-Khasewet. When my brother reigned as Horus, Kush picked at our southern towns for two years, as cringing dogs pick at bones. I tell you Kush will rise to plague us again. They are flies on a horse's hide – no more than that. But they thirst for Egyptian blood.”

  Voices swelled at her feet. Never! They are dogs! Cowards hiding amongst their rocks!

  “I say this: if the Kushites want our blood, let us bring it to them! Let us bring it still in our veins, still in our strong Egyptian hearts! Let them see how hot our blood runs. Let them feel Egypt fall upon them as Horus falls upon his prey, swift and sharp-taloned!”

  She drew Nehesi's sword from its sheath and held it high. The camp erupted into cheers; the crude hunting spears and bludgeons of Behdet's youth raised alongside the fine bronze blades of her Waset soldiers. The roar of the cheering crowd settled into a rhythmic chant: the name she had chosen on her ascension to the throne, the only name by which her subjects might address her. Maatkare! Maatkare!

  Nehesi lifted her down from the pyramid's step, and made the way through the crowd back toward her tent. “The men of Behdet are welcome at every cook fire,” she told the stewards of her camp, shouting the command so that all might hear. “They are mine now; all my soldiers are brothers. Bring casks of wine from my ships and share it amongst my brothers equally.”

  Inside her tent she relinquished the blades to Nehesi while her women fussed over her bed. Night was falling outside; Tabiry struck the tent's small braziers alight. The smell of sweet oil and dark smoke enveloped the king.

  “A fine show,” Nehesi admitted. “Brewers' boys and farmers' whelps are often eager to prove themselves in battle, but you brought them running like loosed horses toward the stables. I've never seen men so ready to be shot full of Kushite arrows.”

  “I suppose it was the procession this morning that did the trick.”

  “You made them feel welcomed,” Tabiry said, “and fierce. The last king never did as much for his men.”

  “The last king was a fool.”

  “Ah, Majesty; you will hear no argument from me.”

  Hatshepsut dismissed Nehesi and, when she had finished her supper of boiled eggs, melons, and wine from a jar unsealed by her own hands, she summoned harps and flutes to play for her. She lay on her cot drifting in and out of a strange, exultant half-dream in which she flew up to the sun on falcon's wings and dove like an arrow to strike at a strange, shadowy enemy whose face she could not see. Now and then a shout of Maatkare drew her back to bleary consciousness as outside the men celebrated around their fires. She was only partially aware of Tabiry and Keminub dismissing the musicians, tamping out the flames in the braziers, straightening the fine, light sheet over her body.

  “Iset,” she murmured, but the only answer was the din of her camp, celebrating its victories long before they were won.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hatshepsut arrived once more at Egypt's southernmost fortress, deep in the tjati of Ta-Seti, as she had done a year ago when she had carried the tiny spark of Neferure in her womb. This time when she passed the thunderous cataracts spilling white froth between dark claws of stone she was not afraid. A year ago the journey had filled her with anxiety. Now, the roar of the water seemed to swell a great surge of rage and power within her heart, raising and spreading it as the demon wind spreads walls of sand in the desert.

  The trek south had taken three weeks – longer than usual, for she had stopped in every city along the way to raise her troops and to inspire the courage and loyalty of Egypt's young men. At first she had maneuvered the same as she had done in Behdet, parading to the garrison in a show of vitality and pomp, then camping just outside each city with wine flowing freely and every cook fire ringing with camaraderie for new recruits.

  But after a handful of days, word raced ahead of her ships, as she knew it would, and soon it was she who was greeted with parades, with soldiers turned out in their finest and generals boasting of their swelled ranks, of the boys who clamored to conscript themselves to Egypt's cause. By the time she reached Ta-Seti her fleet had more than doubled, sailing on a current of masculine fervor, the rails of the boats ringing with warriors' calls and the clangor of bronze. Amidst Waset's fine war ships sailed the boats of fishermen and merchants, laden with soldiers. Their encampment filled the plain below Ta-Seti's fortress from hill to hill.

  Now she stood on the walls of the fortress – her fortress, the one she had restored with her own riches, her first achievement as Great Royal Wife. The general Ramose detailed his strategy while she and Nehesi observed the camp growing across the plain below. She had sent three small, fast messenger boats up the Iteru ahead of her war fleet, carrying words for Ramose's ears only. They had reached Ta-Seti days before the Pharaoh, and Ramose was well prepared.

  “I have kept my men monitoring the ravines since I received word from Your Majesty,” the general said. “A few Kushite scouts have come near, but none survived to carry word home again.”

  “Good.”

  The plain where the fortress stood was separated from the settlements of Kush by a half-circle of steep hills. Four or five ravines cut through these hills, ancient stream beds, now dry, that afforded stealthy access to Kushite raiders.

  “Nevertheless, they will learn of your presence here. We will not hold the advantage of surprise for long.�
�

  “I agree. And I tasked you with putting that advantage to good use.”

  “Ah, Majesty; I believe I have.”

  Ramose turned his back on the plain, looking down instead to the interior of the fortress. Hatshepsut followed his gaze. In the pale stone courtyards between barracks and stables, dozens of men worked in the hot sun, readying chariots, backing horses into their traces, strapping hard leather armor to one another's chests and backs.

  “We move today,” Ramose said. “Within the hour. The northernmost ravine leads to a village beyond the hills.”

  “Within the hour?” Nehesi shook his head. “Her men cannot move so soon. They have been aboard ships for days. They need time to sort their gear, to ready themselves.”

  “My men need no such time. Leave yours to prepare their encampment, Majesty. By moonrise my captains will take yours in squadrons into the ravines. With such great numbers we can hold all the passages into Kush easily; they will have no access to this plain, nor to any of Ta-Seti's villages or farms. And we shall move freely between here and there.”

  “I shall find my own captains, and tell them what we intend.”

  “No time. Let me send a man into camp to spread the word. We must move quickly if we are to maintain our advantage.”

  **

  Hatshepsut's body had never been lithe and curved like Iset's or Tabiry's. She was almost as straight and blocky as a man, and so Nehesi had no trouble choosing armor that fit her well. In the shade of the barracks she stood and allowed him to wrap about her a thick vest of layered linen hardened with linseed oil; it crossed over her breasts and was immediately stifling in the daytime heat. A sheen of sweat broke out on her bare belly and in the hollow of her lower back. He tied hardened leather breast- and backplates to her, fore and aft, until she felt as stiff and solid as a dung beetle. The plates were thin but quite rigid, and scarred from use by many of the fortress's soldiers. The leather smelled powerfully of horses and of men's sweat. The scent drove home the immediacy of the moment. I am going into battle. Here and now. Bless me, Amun; protect your son.

  Nehesi belted her with a wide, soft band of linen. It soaked the sweat from her skin. To this belt he fastened a groin shield, a dense inverted teardrop of thick-braided flax stems, dried hard and tough. It hung to her knees.

  “I haven't got much there to protect,” she said, trying to laugh away her sudden anxiety.

  “Ah, Lady, you have.” Nehesi tapped his own thigh, high up near the knot of his kilt. “This vein, here. One nick to it and you'll bleed out like a butchered goat.”

  “I see.” She turned away, trembling under the unaccustomed weight of her armor.

  Most of the chariots were ready now; their drivers walked their teams in tight circles or allowed the horses to dance forward and back in the sun and dust of the bare courtyard.

  Nehesi bent near her ear. “You do not need to ride into battle yourself, Great Lady. Let Ramose take the lead. You can stay here in the fortress and allow him to pledge his victory to your name when he returns.”

  “No; it will not do. I have come all this way to bind Ramose and all his men – and all the generals and all the soldiers in the Two Lands – to me.”

  Nehesi's face softened with something approaching genuine worry. “You don't even know how to use a spear.”

  “It seems a fairly simple concept.”

  He rumbled a laugh. “Ah, I suppose it is.”

  A collection of spears stood leaning against the barracks wall, ready for the soldiers' hands to take them up and carry them into battle. Nehesi sorted through them, testing the length and heft of a few before he settled on one and carried it to her. He showed her how to balance it for a thrust, where to place her hand.

  “Don't grip it so tightly. You'll fatigue your arm.”

  She loosened her hand, made a few experimental thrusts at her shadow on the barracks wall.

  “I have it, I think.”

  “You don't,” he said, not unkindly. “No amount of practice can prepare you for battle, what it's truly like to face your enemy and kill him if you can.”

  She knew she blanched as she looked up at him; she could feel the blood drain from her face.

  “Come along,” he said, glancing past her, his voice suddenly cheery. “Your chariot is ready, Great Lady.”

  **

  Hatshepsut was certain as they left the fortress that none of her men gathered on the plain knew it was she who rode into battle. There was nothing to declare the Pharaoh's presence to the casual observer – no banners, no gilding on her chariot, not even the blue war crown of royal tradition. She looked like any other soldier, gripping her spear with one hand and the chariot's rail with the other, swaying beside her driver, her head and neck shielded from the sun by a simple white cloth. She prayed the men nearest her – the men she now led toward the hills and the dark cleft of the ravine – could not see how her spear hand shook. Only her inexperience set her apart, but by the gods, what a great difference it made.

  Ramose's face was imperturbable as his cart glided beside her own. He held his weapon with an easy confidence she knew she would never attain. His body shifted this way and that in an unconscious dance, absorbing the jolts and sways of travel. Their horses moved at a brisk walk toward the hills, and Hatshepsut watched Ramose grimly, silently, until at last he ordered his driver to draw rein at the mouth of the ravine.

  Hatshepsut glanced back over her shoulder. The ranks of chariots slowed and milled in the grassy flat behind her. Far beyond, the fortress was a bar of pale light against the slight haze that demarcated the presence of the Iteru. Her camp's tents were as small as pebbles from this distance.

  “The ravines are dangerous to traverse,” Ramose said.

  Nehesi, clutching the reins of Hatshepsut's chariot, eyed the ravine's floor. It angled sharply between two yellow cliff faces, bending into deep blue shadows. “The floor seems sandy enough. The rocks don't look so terrible.”

  “Ah, it's not the horses' legs we fear for.” Ramose jerked his chin upward to where the cliffs rose above them, jagged and streaked here and there with dark desert varnish. “Kushites hide up there. My men have held this ravine for days, Majesty, and I have had no word that any raiders have overtaken them. Still, one can never tell with Kushites. They are fierce as demons and far cleverer.”

  Hatshepsut swallowed a mouthful of saliva. “And so?”

  “And so we go quickly through, and hope that the cliffs are not full of enemy bowmen.”

  “Ah.”

  Ramose shrugged. “I believe we would have had word if our sentries had been displaced.”

  “You believe?” Nehesi said.

  “Most likely.”

  He nodded to his driver, and the man hissed to the horses. They sprang into a run, rattling Ramose behind them, raising a wake of yellow sand.

  “Amun's eyes,” Nehesi muttered, and shouted to their own beasts.

  Hatshepsut clung to the chariot's rail. The walls of the ravine closed around her immediately; they seemed to lean over her, and she felt the prickle of eyes watching from above, though whether they were Egyptian eyes or Kushite – or only the eyes of the cliffs, stony and impassive – she could not tell. For one brief moment she allowed herself to feel relief – it was cool in the ravine, almost cold, and the respite from the heat of sun and armor was welcome. Then her chariot jolted across a rut, and she lurched against Nehesi, righted herself on wobbling legs. The ravine walls shouted back at her with the tumult of their passage, magnifying it. It was a terrifying sound, and it drowned out her other senses. She was vaguely aware that she must keep her eyes sharp, must be alert for the sight of Kushites – but all she could do was hold tight to her chariot's rail and fight against the roaring in her ears that threatened to sweep her away like an unmanned boat down the cataracts.

  They sped through the ravine. She was dizzied by the nearness of the walls, their rapid flight; she hunched beside Nehesi, cringing from the frightening way this cha
riot or that would overtake them and then fall back, blurring in and out of the deep blue shadow of cold stone like demons flickering around a brazier's weak light.

  You are the daughter of Thutmose the First. You are the son of Amun.

  She gulped in a deep breath, then another; her chest pressed painfully against her armor. She forced herself to straighten, forced her legs to steady. Her men would see her stand proud and unafraid – they would, by all the gods. She raised her spear above her head, and when she heard the men behind her shout in response a frail wave of gratification battered against her fear. It nearly managed to break through.

  The ravine twisted this way and that; her horses leaned together in their harness, and she and Nehesi leaned with them, tilting their chariot to keep it on course. At last the cliff walls began to lower. She caught a flash of bright blue sky above, felt one quick buffet of heat as they passed through a patch of sun breaking over the hills to fall into the stream bed, then back into the dense coolness of shadow. Their passage straightened. She could see the far mouth of the ravine yawning upon the open sky, the green flush of new grass on the Kushite plain.

  In that gap of revealed horizon, growing nearer and more real by the moment, a smudge rose vertically into the sky. Cook fires – the ovens of some small village, busily baking loaves of bread or simmering grain slurry for beer.

  Gods. It's a village like any other, like any in Egypt. A village full of women and children, grandfathers and craftsmen.