by Howard Fast
When Kotophar finished swearing at him, the slave broke into deep bellows of laughter.
“By all the gods in the world of death, I will kill you yet, you whore’s bastard!”
“And lose a sale? Oh, no—Kotophar.
“Well, there you are,” the slaver shrugged, turning to Moses. “You wanted a man of spirit, O Prince of Egypt.”
“How old is he?” Moses asked.
“Who knows? He answers no questions unless it pleases him. I would say no more than twenty years. His teeth are good and his beard is soft and new. He’s no good for work. He breaks tools and incites his fellow slaves. He’s afraid of nothing on earth. You feed him slop that would kill another, and he thrives on it.”
To all this, the slave was listening with interest, an expression of amused contempt upon his face.
“What is his name?”
“Nun.”
“Nun? An Egyptian name.”
“He’s no Egyptian, holiness. These Bedouins have lived outside the Delta for generations. They speak a sort of Egyptian and most of them have Egyptian names. They are a filthy, skulking lot. I’ve never seen one like him before.”
“Nun, can you drive horses?” Moses demanded.
The slave cocked his head thoughtfully, as if considering whether to answer or not. Then he grinned and said, “I have been driven, but driving is more in your way than mine, popinjay.”
“Men have died for saying less to a prince of Egypt,” Moses pointed out.
“But I am dead, popinjay, and if not one day, then it’s the next. So I spit on your kind.”
“I am not angry,” Moses thought. “I have never been talked to this way before except by my cousins, but I will not be angry.” He wanted the man. There had been two men in his life to whom his heart went out, Amon-Teph and Neph—and here was a third; but strangely so, for what he actually felt was that if he could win the respect and loyalty of such a man as this, he would win a new and necessary belief in himself. Kotophar was watching him keenly, attempting to decide what his own role in the matter should be, whether he should let this bitter jest of his run its course, or whether he should prove his own regard for the god-kings of Egypt by calling the guards and having them run this miserable Bedouin through. All his knowledge of quality in slaves cried out against such destruction, but meanwhile he was feeding a man who would never find a master.
Moses decided for him. saying, “You, Nun—I go to the wars in the Land of Kush as a captain of chariots. I want a chariot driver and a man who will fight when he has to fight. Are you my man?”
“Grow up before you talk of wars, popinjay!”
“I will buy him,” Moses said quietly. “Untie his arms.”
Kotophar’s face fell, for to take the price he and his companions had decided upon for this wild creature would be both outrageous and fraudulent. “But the price, Prince of Egypt?” he protested weakly.
“Whatever your price is, go to Seti-Moses, and he will pay you. Now untie his arms.”
“Now he is yours, O Prince of Egypt, so please untie his arms yourself.”
“I said, untie his arms, slaver!” Moses snapped.
Kotophar shrugged. His hand on the hilt of his knife, he approached the stone slab cautiously and warily, and when he came within three feet of the slave, Nun stepped forward and spat in his face. Enraged, Kotophar drew his knife and flung back his arm, but Moses shouted,
“He is mine, Kotophar! You kill him—so help me, I will kill you!”
Trembling with frustrated anger, and rage at the prince as well as the slave, Kotophar withdrew, knowing that SetiMoses, the palace steward, would take all excess profit from the deal, and also knowing that he could do nothing about it. He told the slaves in attendance to untie Nun, and this they did, the Bedouin remaining rigid. The moment his arms were free, legs still hobbled, he made a mighty leap from the stone, his arms outstretched for Kotophar’s throat. The slave-dealer, trying frantically to get away, tripped and sprawled on the ground, where he lay screaming for the guards. Meanwhile, Moses, in a motion as quick as the Bedouin’s, stepped in, caught one outstretched wrist, and met the charging Nun with a lowered shoulder. He heaved and jerked the man’s arm, and with the force of Nun’s charge, flung him like a sack, head over heels, so that he hit the ground on his back with a mighty crash that knocked the breath out of him.
The guards came running with their long spears lowered to stick the slave like a wounded animal, where he lay, but Moses stopped them with a roar of warning.
“He’s mine! Hands off!”
Nun staggered to his feet now and advanced on Moses as fast as his hobbles would permit, and already they were ringed by a crowd of buyers, dealers, slaves and loiterers. Head down, shouting hatred at Moses in his own tongue, they closed, and Moses felt the grip of that awful strength. He drew his dagger and slammed the weighted hilt against Nun’s head. The slave staggered and lost his grip, and Moses flung him off and struck him on the side of the face with his clenched fist. The blow was a hard one; it was like striking a post; yet the slave only reeled, and once again Moses seized his wrist, braced, and flung him over his shoulder on to his back. Moses stood over him this time, and when Nun attempted to rise, Moses drove his heel into the man’s face. Again, Nun tried to fling himself erect, his face covered with blood, and this time Moses seized the chain that hobbled him and pulled it out, sending the slave crashing back on the ground, where the man lay, not trying to rise again, but watching Moses with a new look of wariness and respect on his bloody face.
For the first time, Moses became conscious of the frenzied screaming of the crowd. It was applause. He was being applauded for the triumph of subduing a hobbled and unarmed Bedouin slave—and they were all too fogged with the chance to cheer one of the godly inhabitants of the palace to realize that the victory was sheer luck, abetted by a dagger hilt and a bronze chain. Suddenly Moses felt sick to his soul, sick with the memory of the viciousness he had displayed towards the slave, sick with the knowledge that they all feared any slave who could not be broken by the whip, sick with the spectacle he had made of himself in a bloody hand-to-hand fight at the slave mart.
Then Moses did something that was unthinkable for any prince of Egypt, something that was remembered by the people of old Tanis when most else about him was forgotten—something that changed him in a moment from a hero of the crowd to the complete opposite, for those who cheer heroes on the street. He became a prince who was unprincely in this manner: He tore off his linen kilt, leaving himself naked to his loincloth; he walked over to the fallen slave and went down on one knee beside him; and with the holy linen cloth, he wiped the blood and dirt from the man’s face and neck and body.
The crowd fell silent, and Moses heard the silence as he had heard the cheering. Better, he thought, and told himself that never again in all his life would he want to hear cheering over anything he did. He called to Kotophar to open the hobble.
“He is your man, O Prince of Egypt,” sneered Kotophar, throwing him the key. It fell close to Nun, but Moses did not move to pick it up. Instead he rose and looked at Kotophar—a look that Amon-Teph or Neph or his mother would have remarked upon as something in Moses that they had never seen, something frightening and hard as a diamond and implacable too. Nun saw the look and so did Kotophat and so did those in the crowd, and if they had any notion of playing with insult, they gave that up. Kotophar stared back for only a moment; then he picked up the key and unlocked the hobble, and Nun smiled thinly at him, a smile as humourless as his master’s expression.
When the hobble was off, Moses said, “Get up and follow me, Nun.”
The slave rose and walked after his master out of the slave mart. Thus it was that Moses came by a man and servant, whose name was Nun.
[6]
WHEN MOSES CAME to the parade ground with Nun the following day for the slave to receive his first instructions in the management of a chariot team, Seti-Keph, the Captain of Hosts, motioned for him to wait.
As before, Seti-Keph stood in a little crowd of his captains; now he left them and walked over to Moses, where he observed both the prince and the slave thoughtfully. Then he told Moses to send the slave to the stables, but to remain a moment himself, so that they might talk.
Nun went in silence. He had not spoken a dozen words since the day before. He had taken what was given to him, a hot bath, his hair freshly dressed in the same heavy braid—for Moses knew how sacred hair and beard were to the people of the desert-clean loincloth, kilt and sandals, salve for his bruises, and a heavy leather belt with loops for weapons; but he asked for nothing. He had been given a room to sleep in and the door was left unlocked; and Moses, his own room close by, had lain awake for hours; fearing he knew not what-that Nun might try to kill him, that he would run away; but when he finally rose and walked softly to Nun’s room, he saw the Bedouin sleeping soundly in the moonlight that streamed through the open casement, sleeping loosely and easily as a child sleeps.
In silence, he ate his breakfast; in silence, he went to the stables now; and there was a new expression on SetiKeph’s face as he watched the slave obey Moses’ command. When Nun had gone, Seti-Keph indicated that Moses follow him, and they walked over to the shade of an olive tree, far enough from the officers not to be overheard. The Captain of Hosts reached no higher than Moses’ shoulder, yet Moses did not think of him as a small man. In the shade, Seti-Keph squatted on his heels and motioned for Moses to do likewise.
“Well, Prince of Egypt,” he said, “you are one of the young gods of the Great House, if temporarily out of favour, and I am just a peasant who has butchered his way to success; but if you are to ride a chariot under me, you must acknowledge my command.”
“I know that, Seti-Keph.”
“Good. I see you are not one of those young bloods who chew a grudge and can only smooth it out with blood. Neither am I, so maybe we will get along. I am a plainspoken man, as your godly father knows only too well—”
“The God-King is not my father, Seti-Keph,” Moses interrupted.
“Be that as it may, I am still a blunt man and I say my piece, for better or worse. I was upset yesterday, and if ever in the future you should be unfortunate enough to be shouldered with the responsibility of assembling and provisioning and arming and marching two thousand chariot and ten thousand foot to the end of the earth, then you will know why I was upset.”
“Please don’t apologize, Seti-Keph,” Moses said uneasily.
“By all the gods, I am not apologizing! I am explaining. I spoke to you harshly, Prince of Egypt, but it was not because I bore you animosity or because you are out of favour with the God-King. I would have spoken that way to any of your brothers. I blow hot, but the heat cools quickly. That’s the sort of a man I am. Now you are with me, and perhaps you will be more of a soldier than a burden?” The last was half a question. Seti-Keph had been tracing lines in the powdery earth with a twig as he spoke; his keen black eyes peered at Moses from under his shaggy brows.
“I will try,” Moses said.
“I heard you won a slave.”
“I’ve had slaves before, Seti-Keph.”
“Not like this one. I don’t like brawlers, prince or peasant. War is something else. You don’t fight with your bare hands—”
Once again, he peered questioningly at Moses, who said nothing. “I spit at them,” he went on, “with their talk of your holy kilt. You can wipe your behind with your kilt, for all that it matters to me. The gods are holy, not a kilt that a prince sits on, and I revere the gods and worship them wherever I am. You were right to comfort your man when he was hurt, and if your kilt was all the cloth you had—well, you used it. You tamed a beast and now he’s your beast. But when your enemy is hurt and bleeding, I expect you to put a knife to his throat—”
Again the inquiring look from under the brows.
“—War is a butcher’s business, O Prince of Egypt. It is not like life in the Great House, nor is it as good as the warmth of the mud hut where I lived as a child. It stinks, O Prince of Egypt, but like other things that stink, it is necessary. There was never a time without war and there never will be such a time. I tell you that he who makes war well and wisely has power and wealth; and he who loses, vomits in the blood of his wife and child. So we will make war well and wisely, and you may believe me that there is a lot to learn about war. I know. War served me well and I serve the God-King well; both together. In our land today, there are two orders, the high and the low-and the low live like the beasts in the field, only worse. I know, for I have lived both ways. And among the high, unless you are born of the Great House, what else is there but to be a priest, a scribe or a soldier? Out trade is a hard one and it calls for hard men. Not now, but remember my words a year from today, O Prince of Egypt, and you will find their meaning. Meanwhile, I see that you have fallen in with Hetep-Re. He knows his trade, but he is a dirty snake, so watch him.”
“I have not fallen in with Hetep-Re. He helps me, and I pay him for his help.”
“You will find that whatever you pay him, you don’t pay him enough. As for driving horses and a chariot, you and your slave will learn that in time or break your necks. Now tell me, O Prince of Egypt, have you a mind for war and killing?”
“It is what the God-King wanted, so here I am, Seti-Keph. I will tell you what I have a mind for—to get away from the palace and the whole conniving stink of the City of Ramses.”
Now Seti-Keph slapped his thigh and laughed heartily. He was a peasant now; there was no gloss over the man, no manners, no veneer—and perhaps for this as well as other things, Moses found himself liking him. He was to learn later that no one becomes Captain of Hosts out of his own wit and skill without having the power to make other men like him.
“Fight like you brawl, and fight with sense and without fear,” grinned Seti-Keph, “and I will put you over a host before you are through with the black men of Kush.”
[7]
SINCE THE TEN thousand footsoldiers would come together at Karnak, on the upper Nile, they had been marshalled and dispatched from the various cities of Egypt for better than sixty days now. Each host and there could be a hundred to three hundred men in a host was the responsibility of its own captain in terms of leadership; but the manner of raising a host and equipping it varied. Karnak and Tanis were a long distance apart, and if the Kushites or the Libyans took a sudden notion to raid the rich and beautiful cities of Upper Egypt, it fell to the powerful lords of the border marches to meet their attack and thrust them back. For this reason, they traditionally built and fostered their own armed strength—and, traditionally, they were feared and watched suspiciously by the god-kings of the Delta.
Yet niggardly as these lords of the South were when it came to lending their men to Ramses for his marauding sorties into Hatti and Philistia and Canaan and Mesopotamia, they did not hold back when it came to war against Kush. They had no other enemies to compare with the dark menace of Kush; and other enemies could be defeated and broken, whereas Kush poured out of the eternal and endless forest and jungle and wasteland of Central Africa, where no man had even been and where the power of the gods of Egypt was as nothing.
So their hosts would assemble at Karnak, and also to Karnak would come levies from Giza and Memphis and Lisht and other cities of Middle Egypt. In the Delta itself, soldiers were and had been recruited from the once vigorous and numerous peasantry who tilled the thousands of acres of black and fertile soil; but of late the harvest had been thin indeed, for the peasants who came out of the army were of no disposition to go back to digging the muck, and without too much urging, they sold their land to the speculators and rich priests—who in turn set up broad plantations worked by slaves.
For this reason, Ramses had been forced increasingly to rely upon mercenaries for his footsoldiers, and was thus trapped in a vicious circle, mercenaries to make war and more war and more war to find the gold to pay the mercenaries. For this particular expedition, Seti-Keph had been forced to hire three
and a half thousand footsoldiers of foreign origin, a thousand spearmen from Hatti, five hundred from Philistia, some hundreds from Libya and some hundreds of the Sea Rovers, who had magic ears when it was on the wind that war and loot were in the offing. The King of Babylon, who had sent Ramses slave women and two of his plentiful stock of daughters as princely gifts, now sent him six hundred archers at a tidy price.
So it was that from here, there and everywhere, the army was recruited and put together. It was one thing for the God-King to lift his sacred sickle and say, “My patience with Kush is finished. Now, with sword and flame, we will teach him that the gods of Egypt are not to be despised in the South.” It was another thing entirely for Seti-Keph to carry out Ramses’ anger and lust for wealth in practical terms.
Full seven months before, three of the most trusted captains of Seti-Keph had been dispatched to Karnak, there to begin the organization of supply wagons, work horses and pack donkeys, and to begin to collect and store the tens of thousands of pounds of grain that would be required to feed the expedition in its march through the desert. Water was not a problem, for they would follow the course of the River Nile, but hundreds of boats had to be found or built. Nor was it possible to use any of the great fleet of river boats that plied the Nile between Karnak and the Delta, for only ten days’ journey above Karnak was the First Cataract, and from there on, the boats would have to be dragged upriver as well as overland. A thousand more details would go into the expedition before it was ready for war, and all of these Seti-Keph had to decide. If victory came out of his planning, it would be known far and wide that the mighty God-King of the holy Land of Egypt, Ramses II, beloved of Re, had smitten the pagans of Kush with his hard hand; but if defeat came, it would only be known that a peasant dog named Seti-Keph had betrayed his master.
So it was that the last of the footsoldiers had taken ship for Upper Egypt before the chariots were ready to march. Whatever else was necessary to an army, in the time of Ramses, the chariot had become the weapon of Egypt—and all else was conceived only as support for the chariots. Never before had the world seen such a weapon, and indeed when the Egyptian foot soldiers first encountered it, in the time when they tried to bar the way of the Hittites, they fled in screaming fear and disorder; for it took a hardened man to stand up to a line of these thundering wooden carts with their massive four-foot wheels and their spinning, flashing axle-knives. And when the power and the productivity of mighty Egypt was combined with the inventiveness of Hatti, then the individual chariots of the hero-warriors became masses of wheeled death that nothing on earth could resist.