Desert God

by Smith, Wilbur

  Over the next few weeks I spent most of my waking hours in the yards with Zaras and the shipwrights. They were making the best of a bad job, but that was not enough to satisfy me. I always demand perfection.

  I inspected every plank and spar. I prised out nails from the hulls at random and inspected them for corrosion. I did the same with the bronze fittings. I dug with the point of my sword into the caulking of the hull to ascertain the quality of the workmanship. I had all the sails unfurled and laid out on the beach so I could go over them minutely, searching for and repairing tears and weak spots in the canvas.

  Then I ordered a series of modifications to the hulls. Zaras and I had discussed these in detail during the long journey down from Babylon. When I showed the superintendent of the shipyard my drawings he grumbled and groused and came up with a dozen objections, which I beat down relentlessly.

  I wanted to employ these galleys in close support to our land forces that would soon be operating against the Hyksos legions along the northern shores of Egypt. Despite my original misgivings I was now confident that these ships would be capable of moving large contingents of men swiftly from any point in the delta to where they were needed most. However, troops were ineffectual without their chariots and horses.

  The yard superintendent finally capitulated to my demands and built loading ramps into the sterns of my galleys. I made him reinforce the decking between the rowing benches so that this could carry twelve chariots with their horses even in heavy seas.

  We would be able to reverse these vessels up to any shelving beach or other suitable landing site and deliver a squadron of over seventy fighting chariots with their horse teams in the traces and their men in the cockpit ready to go into action immediately. Once they had achieved their objective they could be recovered from the beach just as expeditiously.

  While this work was being carried out Toran received orders from the Supreme Minos to delay his departure so that he could sail in convoy with us. He was to place his large and commodious galleys at my disposal to convey the royal princesses and their entourage in greater comfort than they would enjoy on my much smaller vessels.

  It was fortunate that the Cretan ruler had accorded me this courtesy; otherwise Toran would not have had the opportunity to witness the warlike capabilities of my small force.

  By the time that the modifications to the hulls of my ships were completed the season of storms came to an end. The gods blessed us with fair weather and moderate seas. But before we set sail for Crete I determined that we must put to the test the seaworthiness of the renovated hulls and the operation of the modifications which I had installed. At the same time I would be able to drill my charioteers in the operation of the stern loading ramps.

  We put to sea and sailed up and down the coast for several days landing our chariots on every feasible beach or headland and then recovering them again. I kept the men at it until they and their horses were thoroughly trained and skilled at these manoeuvres. When at last I was satisfied we sailed back to the port of Sidon.

  In the early morning, two days before our final departure for Crete, I was walking down from our campsite to the shipyard to supervise the day’s work when on the outskirts of the port I was accosted by a one-eyed beggar. I tried to brush him aside and continue my conversation with Zaras and Hui, who were accompanying me. The filthy rascal was importunate. Whining, he clutched at my sleeve. I turned back and raised my staff to beat him off, but he showed no fear and grinned at me impudently.

  ‘Lord Aton challenges you to a game of bao,’ he mouthed at me. I lowered my staff and gaped at him. The statement was so incongruous coming from that toothless and odorous maw that for once I was taken completely aback. Before I could recover my wits the fellow thrust a minute roll of papyrus into my hand and then darted away down a crowded alley. Zaras immediately charged after him, but I called him back.

  ‘Let him go, Zaras. He is a friend of a friend.’

  Zaras stopped reluctantly and looked back at me.‘Are you sure that he didn’t cut your purse? Don’t you want me to beat the truth out of him, just in case?’

  ‘Have done!’ I told him. ‘Let him go! Come back here, Zaras!’ He obeyed me, but looking back over his shoulder longingly.

  I returned immediately to the camp and sequestered myself in my tent before I unfolded the papyrus. I saw at a glance that it was indeed a message from Aton. His calligraphy is unmistakable. Like his manner, it is pretentious.

  On the fifth day of Pachon the Vulture despatched a pack of two hundred jackals east from Zanat to intercept the wounded falcon at the hole in the wall and prevent his flight to the new island nest.

  The contents of the message itself confirmed unequivocally the identity of the author. In the private code that Aton and I employed the Vulture was King Gorrab. Two hundred jackals meant that number of Hyksos chariots. Zanat was our code name for the border town of Nello between northern Egypt and Sinai. The Hole in the Wall was Sidon. The new island nest was Crete. Of course, the wounded falcon was my personal hieroglyph.

  In plain language Aton was warning me that sixteen days previously Gorrab had despatched a detachment of two hundred chariots along the coastal road from Nello to Sidon to intercept me and prevent me setting sail for Crete.

  It was not a great shock or surprise to me that Gorrab and his minions had learned of my mission. In any company as large and diffuse as the one I had led from Thebes to Babylon, and now down to the port of Sidon, there would be somebody with a loud mouth and others with big ears. We had been long enough on the road for the news to have reached Gorrab’s lair in Memphis, and for him to react to it. Even though I had taken every precaution possible to cover my tracks I was resigned to the fact that Gorrab knew that I was in command of this mission. My reputation precedes me. He must know also just how formidable an opponent I am.

  I did not waste a moment longer pondering how Aton had garnered this information, if it were authentic and how he had delivered it to me. Aton has ways and means of doing things, just as I have. He did not make mistakes, again just like me.

  I stuck my head out of the flap of my tent and shouted for Zaras. He was waiting close at hand and he arrived almost immediately, with Hui on his heels.

  ‘Get the men and chariots loaded back on to the ships at once. I want to sail before noon,’ I told them.

  ‘Where to?’ Hui asked. ‘Is this another exercise?’

  ‘Don’t ask idiotic questions.’ Zaras rounded on him savagely. ‘Just do what Taita orders you, and do it quickly.’

  It was a full hour short of noon when I led my flotilla out of Sidon harbour. At my invitation Toran stood beside me in the stern of my flagship, which I had named the Outrage. Outrage had been my initial reaction when I first laid eyes on her.

  As soon as we cleared the breakwater I turned on to a southerly heading. The rest of my ships tacked in succession behind me and we ran parallel to the coast in line astern. I had made some rapid calculations based on the succinct information that Aton had given me.

  If, as Aton had warned me, the Hyksos raiders had indeed set out from Zanat on the fifth of Shemu, they would have faced a journey of over four hundred leagues to reach Sidon. Laden chariots could cover only about twenty leagues a day over such an extended distance without crippling the horses. Horses have to rest and graze. Thus the journey would take them almost twenty days in all. According to Aton’s intelligence they had already been on the road for sixteen days. Therefore they were probably only eighty leagues or so ahead. I anchored our ships as soon as the sun set.

  When Toran demanded why I was reluctant to sail on through the hours of darkness I explained to him, ‘I can’t take the chance of sailing clean past the enemy in darkness. But anchoring will not delay our meeting for too long. The Hyksos chariots will be closing with us at their best speed. We can expect to meet them at about noon on the day after tomorrow.’ When I gave Toran these calculations, he had another acute question for me.

  ‘How wi
ll we know when we do come level with them? Surely we will only have occasional glimpses of the coastal road from the deck of this ship.’

  ‘Dust and smoke,’ I told him.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Two hundred chariots will kick up a cloud of dust that we will be able to see from a great distance out at sea.’

  Toran nodded but then insisted, ‘What about the smoke?’

  ‘It is one of the Hyksos’ many appealing habits to burn every village they capture, preferably with the inhabitants barricaded in the buildings. You can be sure their progress will be marked by clouds of dust and pillars of smoke. They truly are an unlovable people.’

  As I had predicted, an hour past noon on the second day I spotted smoke rising from beyond a copse of trees not more than a few hundred paces inland of the curling line of low surf that was breaking on the shore.

  I climbed to the masthead, from which vantage point I saw that the fires had been very recently lit. I could tell this was so because the column of smoke grew denser and rose higher as I watched it. Then more smoke sprang up from three other separate locations beyond the first column.

  ‘There goes another village and every living creature in it,’ I muttered, and at that moment I saw two female figures emerge from the bush and scrub above the beach. Both of them were running with terrified abandon. One of the women was carrying a little child over her shoulder, and she was looking back as she ran. They raced down through the yellow beach sand to the water’s edge and then turned to run along the damp verge where the sand was firmer under their feet. They were looking out at our ships and waving frantically to us.

  Suddenly a chariot of Hyksos design came dashing down a rutted track through the scrub above the beach. There were three men in it. All of them were clad in distinctive Hyksos armour with bowl-shaped bronze helmets. The driver reined in his horse before they reached the treacherously soft sands at the edge of the sea. All three of them jumped down from the carriage and started out in pursuit of the running women. They paid very little attention to our vessels. We were too far offshore to offer them any obvious threat. It is strange how landsmen understand so little about ships, and what they are capable of. All their attention was fixed on the women they were pursuing. I knew from bitter experience that, when they had finished with the mother, they would use her infant every bit as brutally.

  ‘Are you going in to rescue those women?’ Toran cupped his hands around his mouth to shout up at me from the quarterdeck.

  ‘There is no place to land safely. Better to let those Hyksos swine live now if we can slaughter them and two hundred of their brethren later,’ I called down to him, and then gave the order to the helm to lay the ship on an offshore course. Toran remained at the ship’s stern rail staring back at the beach, watching how the charioteers treated the women they had captured. I ignored his outraged shouts of horror and fury.

  I did not even glance back at what was taking place on the beach. I had seen it all a hundred or more times before, but that in no way made it any easier to watch. Instead I concentrated all my attention on taking my little flotilla well clear of the land and then heading back parallel to the shore, the same way we had come.

  A few hours previously we had sailed past a small bay guarded by rocky headlands. This had been gouged out of the mainland by a sizeable river. In this dry season the river itself had been reduced to a trickle. The coastal road crossed it at a ford guarded by steep and rocky banks on each side. These would offer a serious obstacle to the column of chariots coming up along the road towards the port of Sidon. The Hyksos would be forced to manhandle each individual chariot across the ford. Deprived of their manoeuvrability, they would be vulnerable while this was happening.

  Earlier in the day as we sailed past this bay I had taken note of a narrow beach of yellow sand, tucked in behind the northernmost headland. This was protected from the main thrust of the sea by the headland itself. The slope was gradual and the sands looked to be firm enough to allow our chariots to pass over them and reach the hard ground beyond.

  I headed back along the coast towards this natural site for an ambuscade. As I passed each of my other galleys I steered close enough to shout my orders across to the men on board. One after the other they went about and followed the Outrage back to the landing I had chosen. We had all canvas set and the oarsmen had increased the stroke from cruise speed to attack speed. Cruise is the stroke that the men on the oars can maintain for three hours without respite, while attack speed will exhaust them completely in an hour.

  The wakes churned white and curling under our sterns as we raced for the landing ground. We were moving so fast that I doubted the oarsmen could keep up the stroke rate. However, their blood was up and they never faltered until we saw the bay open up ahead of our bows.

  I studied it eagerly and realized that it was even better suited to my purpose than I had at first imagined. The beach was wide enough to accommodate two of my galleys simultaneously. This would speed up the task of getting my force ashore.

  In addition to this benefit, I saw now that the road along which the Hyksos chariot column would be forced to approach the ford was lined with thick and almost impenetrable bush and trees. This would severely hamper the deployment of the rear echelon of their chariots. They would be unable to advance because the ford would be blocked by the leading vehicles being dragged through it. They could not retreat swiftly because the track was too narrow to allow the chariots to manoeuvre handily. If I concealed my archers in the bushes on each side of the track they would be able to shoot their arrows from murderously close range into these stranded vehicles.

  I signalled to Hui to bring his galley up alongside me as we approached the bay. I shouted my orders across the narrow gap between our ships. He understood at once what I was asking for and as we came behind the protection of the headland we dropped our sails in unison and used opposing thrust on our banks of oars to spin our ships through a half-circle so that we were stern on to the beach. Our chariots were now facing the stern loading ramp. The horses were in the traces, and the crews were in the cockpits of the chariots, fully armed and armoured.

  At the last moment Toran rushed down from the upper deck and demanded to be allowed to ride with me in the leading vehicle. I admired his courage, but he was no warrior. Ashore he would only be a hindrance. He was my contact with the Supreme Minos and I dare not risk having him killed in the impending battle.

  ‘Stay on board, and observe the action so that later you can report to the Supreme Minos!’ I dismissed him brusquely. At that moment the ship’s stern came up so hard on the hard wet sand that Toran was thrown off his feet, and he rolled into the scuppers. This solved my problem and I left him to fend for himself.

  ‘Go! Go! Go!’ I shouted as the stern ramp dropped open with a crash. I whipped up my team and steered them down the ramp. The horses splashed through the water that reached no higher than their hocks. As soon as they lunged up on to the dry sand, my crew and I jumped down from the cockpit and put our combined weight to the frame, helping the horses to drag the chariot up the beach on to hard dry land. Then we immediately jumped back into the cockpit and headed inland at a canter. Chariot after chariot rolled down the ramp and followed mine in quick succession.

  Before we reached the coastal road we came suddenly upon a shabby little village that up to this moment had been hidden from my view by a fold in the ground. It consisted of no more than a dozen squalid hovels. As we galloped between them the occupants came rushing out. The women and their brats were squealing with terror. There were ten men with them. All of them were dressed in rags and they were so filthy that their features were barely recognizable as human. But the men had armed themselves with wooden clubs, and they faced us in a pathetic show of defiance.

  Without stopping I bellowed at them in Sumerian, ‘Take your women and children and run for a safe place in the forest! An army of rapists and killers is coming up the road from the south. They will be here
before noon. Run! Get out of here quickly as you can.’ I knew that they would have a hideout in the forest not too far away. They would not have survived this long without one. I looked back and saw them already acting on my warning. Carrying the children and a few meagre bundles of their possessions, they had abandoned their huts and were scurrying into the scrub like a pack of terrified wild animals. I paid them no further heed, but headed for the coastal road which I could now see ahead of me.

  When I reached it I halted without crossing over. All seventy of my chariots had come ashore safely and were bunched up behind me in close order. I looked out to sea and saw that my flotilla of ships was already half a league down the coast and aiming to round the next headland behind which they would anchor. Of course their oars were shipped, for they had insufficient men to row them. Every man who was not needed to work the sails had taken up arms and come ashore under Zaras’ command. They were following my squadron of chariots at the double.

  I could only guess at how long it would take the Hyksos column to arrive at the ford, but unless they were delayed by the pleasures of pillage and rape my guess was that it would not be much more than two or three hours, only just sufficient time to make my dispositions to meet them. While I waited impatiently for Zaras to come up with his foot-soldiers, I studied the terrain on both sides of the river carefully.

  Beyond the ford the forest was too dense for my chariots. I would send Zaras and his infantry across the river to take advantage of the thick cover there. However, on this side of the river there was open ground from the beach where we had landed right up to the edge of the forest two hundred yards beyond the road along which we were now parked. Here I would have space to deploy my chariots to the greatest advantage.

  Once I had decided on my plan of action, I ordered Hui to take his squadron across the dusty road and conceal them along the verge of the forest, there to await my further orders. Hui was a grand master of chariots. I knew I could place my trust in him. I watched as he ordered his drivers to dismount from their vehicles and walk the horses slowly across the road, so as not to raise a dust cloud to alert the Hyksos to our presence.