The Oasis

by Pauline Gedge

  And that is a kind of truth, Ramose mused, as he glided slowly, too slowly, through that horror-filled landscape. They have provoked the desert itself. I did not do this to you! he spoke in his mind to the bewildered ghosts he felt drifting around him. Blame the ignorance and idiocy of your superiors and the callous brilliance of my Lord, not me! Walking, praying, and doing his best to quell the spurts of panic rising in him, he stumbled towards the dawn.

  Though the sun rose, Ramose did not pause until compelled by sheer exhaustion to do so. It was the beginning of his fourth day out from the oasis. If he had been fully victualled and moving fast, he might have seen the horizon broken into the blessed outline of palms heralding the verges of the Nile. As it was, he had no idea how far Het nefer Apu might be. In spite of his feverish desire to escape from the mute army surrounding him, he knew he must deliberately slow his pace. It was too much to hope that all sixty thousand of Kethuna’s troops would perish out here. He tried to estimate the number of sand-blown corpses spread out on either side of his way, but it was impossible. There seemed no end to them. Baking stiffly in the heat, swelling under an indifferent sun, they offered themselves as fodder for hyenas and vultures—and for Kamose. Their useless weapons, already half-buried, glinted impotently around them.

  To try and sleep in their midst was inconceivable. Ramose was even loath to take his eyes from them for fear they might rise and come creeping silently towards him. This terror he could not overcome. Draping his cloak over a rock, he sat with his back against the hot stone and his knees hunched up, the tattered garment drawn down to his eyebrows, and watched the cautious approach of the desert scavengers.

  Several times he dozed, only to be jerked awake with his heart pounding, to see the hyenas slinking between the bodies with full mouths and hear the vultures croaking from their perches on leather-clad scalps. He forced himself to stay where he was until just before sunset, knowing now that he would not walk out of the carnage until he left the desert behind. Still, it was with thankfulness that he at last got up and gave his own body something to do. He did not eat. Throwing the bread away, he drank the last of his water, emptied his pack of everything but his dagger and the skin from which he might manage to squeeze a few more drops, and forced himself forward. His head had begun to throb with every step and his sweat was cold. He knew the warning signs of extreme fatigue. If I die out here, the gods will not find me, he thought. Without beautification I will not reach the paradise of Osiris. I can only hope that Kamose remembers to have my name carved in some place where it cannot be defaced.

  He did not imagine that he could endure anything more, but in the deepest night, when he had paused and bent down to retie a loose sandal, someone whispered. For a moment Ramose was frozen, not daring to stand straight, not even daring to move his eyes. The sound was repeated faintly, the calling of a phantom, and there was a tiny movement to Ramose’s right. He turned his head. Living eyes met his. The man’s parched lips twitched. “Water,” he breathed. Ramose knelt beside him.

  “I have none,” he said clearly. “You must believe me. I am sorry. I drank the last of my own some hours ago.” He did not know why he felt the urge to justify his denial to the dying man. After all, he had spoken nothing but the truth. “Who is your god?” he asked. The mouth opened and closed but no sound emerged. The eyes begged with incomprehension. Ramose got up abruptly and left him.

  He was only the first. From then on Ramose heard the croaks and whispers of the dying and he knew that the survivors of Kethuna’s army were not far ahead. His suspicion was confirmed when yet another dawn began to fill the sky, for limned against the rising sun ahead of him was a cloud of red dust. In its midst he could discern crowds of black figures. The earth around him continued to be littered with the dead and near-dead, discarded weapons and rifled packs. He felt nothing as he plodded after the living and it was with mild surprise that he found his legs giving way before he had made a conscious decision to rest. Very well, he told them tenderly. We will try to sleep now. He stretched out where they had decreed, and covered his face with his hands. He could smell the dead but he no longer cared.

  It was full night when he came out of a drugged insensibility. His body ached. Sharp pains shot down his legs and through his hips as he rose trembling. Give us water! his throat, his stomach, his bowels cried. His tongue was as dry as papyrus against his teeth. Not yet, he told them sternly. We must walk first. We must earn our drink. Swaying, grimacing, he battled to regain control of his mind and then his body. It was hard stepping into the fierce hatred of the stars, but he did it, haltingly at first but then with greater ease. Surely I have two more days in me, he thought. I remember calculating six days for the army to stagger to the river. Today, tonight, yes, tonight is my fifth night. I can do this. He made it a chant for his feet, I can do this, I can do this, and lowering his head, he ploughed on.

  He had no idea how long he had been walking before he came to himself with a shock and realized he had no memory of the hours since sunset. The scene looked no different. Have I been moving at all, he asked himself, or have I been standing dazed in the same place? Moving, of course, he said firmly, and indeed there were subtle signs that he had covered some ground. A light wind brought to his nostrils, sensitive now to the slightest hint of moisture, the faintest whiff of humidity out of the east where the track ran on monotonously. Something was missing, however, and with gladness he saw that the desert was clean again. No bodies corrupted the air or the ground. The soldiers who had been fortunate enough to be given the horses’ water or wise enough to refrain from drinking before entering the doomed oasis, had won through. So there will be a battle of sorts, Ramose thought, engaged in trying to coerce his foot to lift and set itself down in front of the other. Unless Kethuna surrenders at once. No use in that. Kamose will ignore. He will slaughter. The foot rose. Ramose smiled. The other foot followed. He walked on, not knowing that he was meandering like a drunken man.

  The sun rose but Ramose was aware of it only as an increased discomfort. Teeth clenched, his mind clinging tenuously to the merest thread of sanity, he struggled on, hardly knowing why any more. He did not look up. When it seemed to him that the glaring sand was closer to his face than it should have been, he realized that he had fallen. His legs did not want to get up, so he let them stay where they were. Groping for his cloak, he could not find it, nor his pack either. He did not remember losing them. He lay with his cheek pressed into the hot sand, listening to a dull roar coming to him from somewhere far ahead. Men’s shouts and screams pierced the din, all of it muffled by distance and the sound of his own frail breath. I hear Het nefer Apu, he thought dimly, incoherently. I hear the Nile flowing. I hear my Lord joining with the Setiu at last. You nearly saved yourself, Ramose son of Teti. You nearly did. You did everything you could but it was not quite enough.

  He fell into a stupor in which Kamose was offering him a bowl of sparkling water with both hands. He could not quite reach it and His Majesty was becoming impatient. “What is wrong with you, Ramose?” he was asking. “I thought you were thirsty.” No, Ramose thought. I am only sleepy. But Kamose would not let him sleep. “This one’s not dead,” Kamose said. “Finish him quickly and then let’s find some shade to sit out the rest of the day until the fighting stops. Listen to the noise!”

  “Wait,” another voice said. “I recognize him. He’s no Setiu. It’s the Noble Ramose. I’ve scouted with him. What is he doing half-dead out here? Hand me the water skin and then pitch the tent. If we let him die, the King will have strong words to say to us.”

  Drowsily Ramose opened his eyes. He was lying on his back. A man’s shadow was falling over him. Something bumped gently against his sore lips and he was forced to part them. Water gushed into his mouth. He swallowed frantically then turned his head to one side and vomited into the sand. “Careful!” the man warned. “Sip it, Ramose, or it will kill you.” Ramose did as he was told. He had not had his fill before the skin was taken away. Capable hands
lifted him by the shoulders and dragged him into the shelter of a tent. He wanted to ask for more water but he was too tired.

  11

  KAMOSE SAT on a small hillock of tufted grass in the sparse shade of a spindly tamarisk, his knees drawn up under his chin, his anxious gaze on the shimmering expanse of desert to his left. Before him his chariot gleamed hotly, the two horses standing patiently with heads down, the charioteer squatting beside them. To his right, where the track disappeared into the kinder depths of palm trunks and irrigated vegetation before reaching Het nefer Apu and the river, his brother and Hor-Aha also waited, the General cross-legged and motionless, Ahmose idly piling small twigs into a haphazard pattern and humming tunelessly under his breath.

  Eleven days after Ramose had left the oasis, word had come back that he had entered Het-Uart. That was a month and one week ago. Pharmuthi had come and gone and now it was Pakhons. The fields around Het nefer Apu, showing the first tender and tentative shoots of new crops when Kamose and his brother had driven through them on their way to Uah-ta-Meh, were now thickly lush with the tall green promise of a good harvest, but Kamose had paid them little heed on his return.

  Seventeen days after Ramose had vanished into the ant heap that was Apepa’s city, a weary scout had reported a host approaching Ta-she from the north. Apepa had taken the bait. Kamose, tense with worry and excitement, had questioned the scout brusquely outside his tent. “How great is the force?” he demanded.

  “I judge it to be approximately the size of Your Majesty’s army quartered here,” the man answered, his voice gravelled with fatigue. “It was difficult to make a more accurate assessment without risking capture.” Kamose nodded.

  “Had they moved off before you left?”

  “Yes.” The scout grinned, his face breaking into grit-streaked lines of pleasure. “I shadowed them for the day it took them to fill their waterskins and the barrels for the horses. As soon as they left Ta-she and struck out along the track south, I ran. That was a day and a half ago.” Kamose regarded him in silence for a moment. He had travelled a hundred miles on foot in thirty-six hours. Had he even stopped to sleep? “They will make good time, Majesty,” the man went on. “They will be here in another three days.” Panic shot through Kamose and was gone.

  “Who is commanding them?” he asked.

  “I am sorry, I was not able to discover what General is with them,” the scout apologized. He was swaying on his feet. Kamose dismissed him, telling him to rest for as long as he needed, and turned to Hor-Aha, who had come up behind him.

  “You heard?”

  “Yes, Majesty. We must move on at once.”

  “See to it then.” He had wanted to say more, to share the excitement rising in him, to indulge in the flood of conjecture filling his mind, but Hor-Aha was already striding away in a flurry of shouted orders. Kamose paused before sending one of the ever-present bodyguards to find Ahmose, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the hot, placid desert with its rows of tents stretching away beyond the pool and the sparse shrubs and the motley cluster of village huts.

  So Ramose had fulfilled his mission. Where was he now? Hiding with Tani in some anonymous place close to Egypt’s eastern border? Dead, perhaps? Or was he being forced to march with Apepa’s army? Already the sounds of an imminent departure had begun to fill the air. Kamose saw a chariot thunder south along the path linking the two villages of the oasis. The tents that a moment ago were sitting like a vast collection of tiny pyramids were now disgorging streams of men before trembling and collapsing in puffs of dust. Closer in, the area around the pool began to fill with men whose officers had shepherded them into obedient lines. Kneeling, they held their water skins below the surface of the water, and Kamose knew that everywhere, at every spring, well and pond, the same ritual would be carried out in the next few hours until every one of his fifty thousand men had enough water to reach the Nile. It was a pity, he thought, as he ordered his guard to search for his brother amid the increasing turmoil, that the Setiu troops would soon be doing exactly the same thing. How much more satisfying it would be if somehow they could be deprived of what they would need most when they arrived. Calling for a stool, he sat and watched.

  It was not long before Ahmose joined him, putting a hand on his shoulder as he lowered himself onto the ground beside Kamose. “I heard the news,” he said. “It will take the Princes the rest of the day to muster the troops, victual them, have all the supplies replenished and packed. We can march at dawn tomorrow. Why has Apepa only sent a contingent whose number matches our own, Kamose?”

  “I have been wondering the same thing,” Kamose confessed. “It appears to be an arrogant and very stupid move on his part. I don’t like the feel of it.”

  “Neither do I.” Ahmose shifted uneasily in the sand. “There is only one explanation. He has divided his army and sent the other half upriver to Het nefer Apu to engage Paheri and Baba Abana, defeat the navy before we can reinforce it with the infantry, and so catch us between a hostile force behind us and one in front, waiting for us to emerge from the desert.”

  “He is surely not capable of such subtle thinking,” Kamose said slowly.

  “No,” Ahmose cut in. “But Pezedkhu is. I am afraid of that man, Kamose.” Kamose looked down on his brother’s bent head.

  “So am I,” he agreed. “Well, all we can do is keep to our plan. It is too late to formulate another. I wish that there was some way in which we could weaken the army coming after us. I have confidence in Hor-Aha’s training, and of course the Setiu will be tired, but will weariness be enough to tip the scales in our favour? If you are correct in your assumption, if we arrive at Het nefer Apu to find Paheri and Abana overcome, it will not. The odds will be two to one against us.”

  Ahmose did not reply and a gloomy silence fell between them, isolating them from the orderly chaos going on around the pool. Soldiers with skins at the ready pushed and jostled those already backing away from the water. Officers standing at the edge were shouting, donkeys tethered to the trees behind, infected with the confusion, had set up a raucous braying. Even as Kamose watched, an officer sporting the armbands of an Instructor of Retainers was accidentally elbowed by a man struggling away from the water. The officer teetered, grasped for one of the sturdy oleander bushes growing on the verge of the pool, and managed to regain his balance. Cursing, he began to examine his hand and forearm while others waded into the water and quickly retrieved the few spear-like leaves that had been pulled from the bush and now floated innocently on the surface.

  Kamose felt himself go cold, then hot, and at the same moment Ahmose gave an exclamation and clutched at his thigh. He looked up and their eyes met. Ahmose raised his eyebrows. Kamose nodded. His heart had begun to pound. Turning, he shouted, “Ankhmahor!” After a minute the Captain of his Followers appeared, emerging from the shadowed entrance of his tent. Kamose rose. He found himself trembling. “Choose senior officers, men who will understand the purpose of these instructions,” he said urgently. “Send them to every spring, well and pond in the oasis. Detail one to go into each village. As soon as every man has filled his water skin and the barrels for the horses are full as well, I want the oleanders cut down, ripped up, and tossed into the water. Do whatever is necessary to make sure that all sources are contaminated. All sources, Ankhmahor. Not one must be missed or we might as well not bother. Crush the bushes so that the sap oozes out. Make sure that the soldiers do not approach the water afterwards. And no one is to drink from their skins until the first halt tomorrow so that there is no waste tonight.” Ankhmahor had listened with barely concealed astonishment, but by the time Kamose had finished speaking his expression had become grim.

  “You are condemning them to almost certain death if they cannot quench their thirst here, Majesty,” he said. “It will be a cruel end.”

  “War is cruel,” Kamose replied curtly. “I know that you have considered the implications of the number sent against us here. We must increase our advantage by any means possibl
e.” The Prince bowed and strode away.

  “What of the villagers, Kamose?” Ahmose had come to stand beside him. “Without water they will die too.”

  “It is their misfortune to be caught in the centre of this brutality,” Kamose said roughly. “What would you have me do, Ahmose? Leave them a spring somewhere? That would be ridiculous. The Setiu would waste no time in sucking it dry and then crawling after us refreshed and ready to pound us into oblivion.”

  “I know. But if you abandon the peasants to such a terrible fate, you will incur the contempt of every common soldier in your army, let alone the Princes, who will begin to debate their decision to trust you. They strongly disapproved of the slaughter of last year. You will make more enemies than you already have. Please, Kamose!” Kamose found himself once again battling the rage that seemed to be always simmering just under the border of his control. I don’t care, Ahmose! he wanted to shout. Don’t make me care! I cannot afford such a gentle emotion! But as he had so often done, he swallowed the madness and faced his brother calmly.

  “Then what would you have me do?” he repeated.

  “Order a few men to see that the villagers pack up their belongings, gather up their animals, and march with us. They are hardy folk, these oasis dwellers. They will not hinder us. They are innocents, Kamose. They do not deserve such a fate.” And neither did the inhabitants of Dashlut or any of the other villages you ordered razed, his eyes said. Or am I imagining his accusation? Kamose thought. Does he even suspect the pain I endured last year and learned to dull with the opiate of necessity?

  “You are right,” he made himself say. “You can see to it, Ahmose.” Then he smiled. “Spiking the water supply with oleander was a inspiration sent directly from Amun to both of us, was it not?” Ahmose’s face broke into an answering grin.

  “It was indeed!” he said. “Now let us quit this arid place and give Apepa the thrashing he deserves!”