River God

by Wilbur Smith

  So it was that three days after our arrival at the valley, the wooden coffin was placed in the tomb that I had prepared for Tanus, and the tomb was consecrated by the priests of Horus, who was Tanus' patron, and then sealed.

  During this ritual, my mistress was able to restrain her grief and to show nothing more than the decent sorrow of a queen towards a faithful servant, although I knew that inside her something was dying that would never be reborn.

  All that night the valley resounded to the chant of the Shilluk regiment as they mourned for the man who had now become one of their gods. To this day they still shout his name in battle.

  Ten days after the first funeral, the golden coffin was placed on its wooden sledge and dragged into the vast royal tomb. It required the efforts of three hundred slaves to manoeuvre the coffin through the passageways. I had designed the tomb so precisely that there was only the breadth of a hand between the sides and the lid of the coffin and the stone walls and roof.

  To thwart all future grave-robbers and any others who would desecrate the royal tomb, I had built a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the mountain. From the entrance in the cliff-face, a wide passage led directly to an impressive burial vault that was decorated with marvellous murals. In the centre of this room stood an empty granite sarcophagus, with the lid removed and cast dramatically aside. The first grave-robber to enter here would believe that he was too late and that some other had plundered the tomb before him.

  In fact, there was another tunnel leading off at right-angles from the entrance passage. The mouth of this was disguised as a store-room for the funerary treasure. The coffin had to be turned and eased into this secondary passage. From there it entered a maze of false passages and dummy burial vaults, each'more serpentine and devious than the last.

  In all there were four burial chambers, but three of these would remain forever empty. There were three hidden doors and two vertical shafts. The coffin had to be lifted up one of these, and lowered down the other.

  It took fifteen days for the coffin to be inched through this maze, and installed at last in its final resting-place. The roof and walls of this tomb were painted with all the skill and genius with which the gods have gifted me. There was not a space the size of my thumbnail that was not blazing with colour and movement.

  Five store-rooms led off from the chamber. Into these were packed that treasure which Pharaoh Mamose had accumulated over his lifetime, and which had come close to beggaring bur very Egypt. I had argued with my mistress that, instead of being buried in the earth, this treasure should be used to pay for the army and the struggle that lay ahead of us in our efforts to expel the Hyksos tyrant and to liberate our people and our land.

  "The treasure belongs to Pharaoh,' she had replied. 'We have built up another treasure of gold and slaves and ivory here in Cush. That will suffice. Let the divine Mamose have what is his—I have given him my oath on it.'

  Thus on the fifteenth day, the golden coffin was placed within the stone sarcophagus that had been hewn out of the native rock. With a system of ropes and levers, the heavy lid was lifted over it and lowered into place.

  The royal family and the priests and the nobles entered the tomb to perform the last rites.

  My mistress and the prince stood at the head of the sarcophagus, and the priests droned on with their incantations and their readings from the Book of the Dead. The sooty smoke from the lamps and the breathing of the throng of people in the confined space soured the air, so it was soon difficult to breathe.

  In the dim yellow light I saw my mistress turn pale and the perspiration bead on her forehead. I worked my way through the tightly packed ranks, and I reached her side just as she swayed and collapsed. I was able to catch her before she struck her head on the granite edge of the sarcophagus.

  We carried her out of the tomb on a litter. In the fresh mountain air she recovered swiftly, but still I confined her to her bed in her tent for the rest of that day.

  That night as I prepared her tonic of herbs, she lay quietly and thoughtfully, and after she had drunk the infusion she whispered to me, 'I had the most extraordinary sensation. As I stood in Pharaoh's tomb, I felt suddenly that Tanus was very close to me. I felt his hand touch my face and his voice murmur in my ear. That was when I fainted away.'

  'He will always be close to you,' I told her.

  'I believe that,' she said simply.

  I can see now, though I could not see it then, that her decline began on the day that we laid Tanus in his grave. She had lost the joy of living and the will to go on.

  I WENT BACK INTO THE ROYAL TOMB THE next day with the masons and the corps of slave labourers to seal the doorways and the shafts, and to arm the devices that would guard the burial chamber.

  As we retreated through the maze of passageways, we blocked the secret doorways with cunningly laid stone and plaster, and painted murals over them. We sealed the mouths of the vertical shafts so that they appeared to be smooth floor and roof.

  I set rockfalls that would be triggered by a footstep on a loose paving slab, and I packed the vertical shafts with balks of timber. As these decayed over the centuries and the fungus devoured them, they would emit noxious vapours that would suffocate any intruder who succeeded in finding his way through the secret doorways.

  But before we did all this, I went to the actual burial chamber to take leave of Tanus. I carried with me a long bundle wrapped in a linen sheet. When I stood for the last time beside the royal sarcophagus, I sent all the workmen away. I would be the very last to leave the tomb, and after me the entrance would be sealed.

  When I was alone I opened the bundle I carried. From it I took the long bow, Lanata. Tanus had named it after my mistress and I had made it for him. It was a last gift from the two of us. I placed it upon the sealed stone lid of his coffin.

  There was one other item in my bundle. It was the wooden ushabti figure that I had carved. I placed it at the foot of the sarcophagus. While I carved it, I had set up three copper mirrors so that I could study my own features from every angle and reproduce them faithfully. The doll was a miniature Taita.

  Upon the base I had inscribed the words: 'My name is Taita. I am a physician and a poet. I am an architect and a philosopher. I am your friend. I will answer for you.'

  As I left the tomb, I paused at the entrance and looked back for the last time.

  'Farewell, old friend,' I said. 'I am richer for having known you. Wait for us on the other side.'

  IT TOOK ME MANY MONTHS TO COMPLETE the work on the royal tomb. As we retreated through the labyrinth, I personally inspected every sealed doorway and every secret device that we left behind us.

  I was alone, for my mistress and the prince had gone up into the mountains to the fortress of Prester Beni-Jon. They had gone with all the court to prepare for the wedding of Memnon and Masara. Hui had accompanied them to select the horses from the Ethiopian herds that were part of our payment for the storming of Adbar Seged, and the recovery of Masara.

  When at last my work in the tomb was completed and my workmen had sealed the outer entrance in the cliff-face, I also set off into the mountains, over those cold and windy passes. I was anxious not to miss the wedding feast, but I had left it late. The completion of the tomb had taken longer than I had planned. I travelled as hard as the horses could stand.

  I reached Prester Beni-Jon's palace five days before the wedding, and I went directly to that part of the fortress where my mistress and her suite were lodged.

  'I have not smiled since last I saw you, Taita,' she greeted me. 'Sing for me. Tell me your stories. Make me laugh.'

  It was not an easy task she set me, for the melancholy had entered deeply into her soul, and the truth was that I was not myself cheerful or light-hearted. I sensed that more than sorrow alone was affecting her. Soon we abandoned our attempts at merriment, and fell to discussing affairs of state.

  It might have been a love match, and a meeting of twin souls blessed by the gods as far as the two lovers we
re concerned, but for the rest of us, the joining of Memnon and Masara was a royal wedding and a contract between nations. There were agreements and treaties to negotiate, dowries to be decided, trade agreements to draw up between the King of Kings and ruler of Aksum, and the regent of Egypt and the wearer of the double crown of the two kingdoms.

  As I had predicted, my mistress had been at first less than enchanted by the prospect of her only son marrying a woman of a different race.

  'In all things they are different, Taita. The gods they worship, the language they speak, the colour of their skins— oh! I wish he had chosen a girl of our own people.'

  'He will,' I reassured her. 'He will marry fifty, perhaps a hundred Egyptians. He will also marry Libyans and Hurrians and Hyksos. All the races and nations he conquers in the years to come will provide him with wives, Cushites and Hittites and Assyrians—'

  'Stop your teasing, Taita.' She stamped her foot with something of her old fire. 'You know full well what I mean. Those others will all be marriages of state. This, his first, is a marriage of two hearts.'

  What she said was true. The promise of love that Mem-non and Masara had exchanged in those fleeting moments beside the river was now blossoming.

  I was especially privileged to be close to them in these heady days. They both acknowledged and were grateful for my part in bringing them together. I was for both of them a friend of long standing, somebody that they trusted without question.

  I did not share my mistress's misgivings. Though they were different in every way that she had listed, their hearts were turned from the same mould. They both possessed a sense of dedication, a fierceness of the spirit, a touch of the ruthlessness and the cruelty that a ruler must have. They were a matched pair, he the tiercel and she the falcon. I knew that she would not distract him from his destiny, but rather that she would encourage and incite him to greater endeavour. I was content with my efforts as a matchmaker.

  One bright mountain day, watched by twenty thousand men and women of Ethiopia and of Egypt who crowded the slopes of the hills around them, Memnon and Masara stood together on the river-bank and broke the jar of water that the high priest of Osiris had scooped from the infant Nile.

  The bride and the groom led our caravan down from the mountains, -laden with the dowry of a princess and the treaties and the protocols of kinship sealed between our two nations.

  Hui and his grooms drove a herd of five thousand horses behind us. Some of these were in payment for our mercenary services, and the rest made up Masara's dowry. However, before we reached the junction of the two rivers at Qebui, we saw the dark stain on the plains ahead as though a cloud had cast its shadow over the savannah—but the sun shone out of a cloudless sky.

  The gnu herds had returned on their annual migration.

  Within weeks of this contact with the gnu, the Yellow Strangler disease fell upon our herd of Ethiopian horses, and it swept through them like a flash-flood in one of the valleys of the high mountains.

  Naturally, Hui and I had been expecting the plague to strike when the gnu returned, and we had made our preparations. We had trained every groom and charioteer to perform the tracheotomy, and to treat the wound with hot pitch to prevent mortification until the animal had a chance to recover from the Strangler.

  For many weeks none of us enjoyed much sleep, but in the end, fewer than two thousand of our new horses died of the disease, and before the next flooding of the Nile, those that survived were strong enough to begin training in the chariot traces.

  WHEN THE FLOODS CAME, THE PRIESTS sacrificed on the banks of the river, each to his own god, and they consulted the auguries for the year ahead. Some consulted the entrails of the sacrificial sheep, others watched the flight of the wild birds, still others stared into vessels filled with water from the Nile. They divined in their separate ways.

  Queen Lostris sacrificed to Hapi. Although I attended the service with her and joined in the liturgy and the responses of the congregation, my heart was elsewhere. I am a Horus man, and so are Lord Kratas and Prince Memnon. We made a sacrifice of gold and ivory to our god and prayed for guidance.

  It is not usual for the gods to agree with each other, any more than it is for men to do so. However, this year was different from any other that I had known. With the exception of the gods Anubis and Thoth and the goddess Nut, the heavenly host spoke with one voice. Those three, Anubis and Thoth and Nut, are all lesser deities. Their counsel could be safely discounted. All the great gods, Ammon-Ra and Osiris and Horus and Hapi and Isis and two hundred others, both great and small, gave the same counsel: 'The time has come for the return to the holy black earth of Kemit.'

  Lord Kratas, who is a pagan at heart and a cynic by nature, suggested that the entire priesthood had conspired to place these words in the mouths of their patron gods. Although I expressed shocked indignation at this blasphemy, I was secretly inclined to agree with Kratas' opinion.

  The priests are soft and luxurious men, and for almost two decades we had lived the hard lives of wanderers and warriors in the wild land of Cush. I think they hungered for fair Thebes even more than did my mistress. Perhaps it was not gods, but men who had given this advice to return northwards.

  Queen Lostris summoned the high council of state, and when she made the proclamation that endorsed the dictates of the gods, the nobles and the priests stood and cheered her to a man. I cheered as loud and as long as any of them, and that night my dreams were filled with visions of Thebes, and images of those far-off days when Tanus and Lostris and I had been young and happy.

  SINCE THE DEATH OF TANUS, THERE HAD been no supreme commander of our armies, and the war council met in secret conclave. Of course, I was excluded from this assembly, but my mistress repeated to me every word that was spoken.

  After long argument and debate, the command was offered to Kratas. He stood before them, grizzled and scarred like an old lion, and he laughed that great laugh of his and he said, 'I am a soldier. I follow. I do not lead. Give me the command of the Shilluk, and I will follow one man to the borders of death and beyond.' He drew his sword then and pointed with it at the prince. 'That is the man I will follow. Hail, Memnon! May he live for ever.'

  'May he live for ever!' they shouted, and my mistress smiled. She and I had arranged exactly this outcome.

  At the age of twenty-two years Prince Memnon was elevated to the rank of Great Lion of Egypt and commander of all her armies. Immediately he began to plan the Return.

  Though my rank was only that of Master of the Royal Horse, I was on Prince Memnon's staff. Often he appealed to me to solve the logistical problems that we encountered. During the day I drove his chariot with the blue pennant fluttering over our heads as he reviewed the regiments, and led them in exercises of war.

  Many nights the three of us, the prince and Kratas and I, sat up late over a jar of wine as we discussed the Return. On those nights Princess Masara waited upon us, filling the cups with her own graceful brown hand. Then she sat on a sheep-skin cushion at Memnon's feet and listened to every word. When our eyes met, she smiled at me.

  Our main concern was to avoid the hazardous and onerous transit of all the cataracts on the way down-river. These could only be navigated in flood season, and would thus limit the periods in which we could travel.

  I proposed that we build another fleet of barges below the fifth cataract; with these we could transport our army down to the departure-point for the desert crossing of the great bight. When we regained the river above the first cataract, we would rebuild another squadron of fast fighting galleys and barges to carry us down to Elephantine.

  I was sure that if we timed it correctly, and if we could shoot the rapids and surprise the Hyksos fleet anchored in the roads of Elephantine, we would be able to deal the enemy a painful blow and capture the galleys we needed to augment our force of fighting ships. Once we had secured a foothold, we would then be able to bring down our infantry and our chariots through the gorge of the first cataract, and engage the
Hyksos on the flood-plains of Egypt,

  We began the first stage of the Return the following flood season. At Qebui, which had been our capital seat for so many years, we left only a garrison force. Qebui would become merely a trading outpost of the empire. The riches of Cush and Ethiopia would flow northwards to Thebes through this entrepot.

  When the main fleet sailed back into the north, Hui and I, with five hundred grooms and a squadron of chariots, remained behind to await the return of the gnu migration. They came as suddenly as they always did, a vast black stain spreading over the golden savannah grasslands. We went out to meet them in the chariots.

  It was a simple matter to capture these ungainly brutes. We ran them down with the chariots, and dropped a noose of rope over their ugly heads as we ran alongside them. The gnu lacked the speed and the spirit of our horses. They fought the ropes only briefly and then resigned themselves to capture. Within ten days, we had penned over six thousand of them in the stockades on the bank of the Nile which we had built for this purpose.

  It was here in the stockades that their lack of stamina and strength was most apparent. Without cause or reason, they died in their hundreds. We treated them kindly and gently. We fed them and watered them as we would our horses. It was as though their wild wandering spirits would not be fettered, and they pined away.

  In the end we lost over half of those that we had captured, and many more died on the long voyage to the north.

  TWO FULL YEARS AFTER QUEEN LOSTRIS had commanded the Return, our people assembled on the east bank of the Nile above the fourth cataract. Before us lay the desert road across the great bight of the river.

  For the whole of the previous year the caravans of wagons had set out from here. Each of them had been laden with clay jars filled to the brim with Nile water, and sealed with wooden plugs and hot pitch. Every ten miles along the dusty road we had set up watering stations. At each of these, thirty thousand water jars had been buried to prevent them cracking and bursting in the rays of that furious sun.