Desert God

by Wilbur Smith

  I glanced quickly at Princess Tehuti where she was placed between Lord Kratas and Lord Madalek, who was Pharaoh’s treasurer. Now she was sitting forward on her stool with her face aglow and her expression rapt, staring at Zaras. She was not so blatant as to draw attention to herself by applauding or in any other manner signifying her approval of Aton’s choice; but I knew she had done it. Somehow she had forced Aton to make this ridiculous decision.

  I have never underestimated the diplomatic skills of my two princesses but this seemed to smack of witchcraft. I switched my attention to Bekatha and I saw instantly that she was part of the conspiracy.

  From the opposite end of the banquet table she was rolling her eyes and pulling inane faces, trying to catch her elder sister’s attention. Tehuti was studiously ignoring her.

  I was as angry as I have ever been. But also I was filled with compassion for Zaras. He was a fine young man and a good officer and I had come to love him as a father might love a son. Now he was standing up before all the world to make himself into a laughing stock. These two heartless royal vixens had contrived this terrible cruelty.

  I looked back at Zaras. He seemed to be oblivious to the disaster that was rushing down on him. He stood tall and handsome and composed in his uniform. I wished that there was something I could do to save him, but I was helpless. Perhaps he might be able to stumble his way through an awkward recitation like a schoolboy, but forever his efforts would be compared by these strict judges to those of Reza and Thoiak or even, the gods and goddesses forbid it, to the acclaimed masterpieces penned by my very own hand.

  Then I was aware of a soft susurration of female voices, a sound like bees on a bed of spring flowers in my garden as they sucked up the nectar. I looked back at the company and I saw that Tehuti was not the only woman who was appraising Zaras. Some of the older women were even more blatant in their interest. They were smiling and whispering behind their fans. Zaras had never been at court and thus they had never laid their lascivious eyes upon him before.

  Then Zaras made a commanding gesture and the tent went still and quiet so I could hear a distant jackal wailing out in the desert.

  Zaras started to speak. I had heard his voice giving orders to his men, commanding them in the din of battle or encouraging them when they faltered, but I had never realized the timbre and depth of it. His voice rang like a bell and soared like the khamsin over the dunes of the desert. It thundered like the storm sea on the reef, and soughed like wind in the high branches of the cedar.

  Within the first few stanzas he had captivated the entire company.

  His choice of words was exquisite. Even I could probably not have greatly improved upon them. His timing was almost hypnotic, and his narrative was irresistible. He swept them along like debris caught in the floodwaters of the Nile.

  When he described the flight of the three arrows with which I slew the Hyksos impostor Beon, all the lords of Egypt leaped to their feet and shouted their acclamation, while Pharaoh seized my upper arm in a grip so fierce that the bruises it left on my flesh persisted for many days thereafter.

  I found myself laughing and weeping along with the rest of the audience and in the end I stood up with them to applaud him.

  As Zaras uttered the final stanza he turned towards the entrance of the great tent and spread his arms.

  ‘Then cried aloud noble Taita to all the gods of Egypt and to his Pharaoh Tamose, This is but a token of the prize I have won for you. This is but a thousandth part of the treasure I lay before you. This is the proof and testimony of the love and duty I bear towards you, Pharaoh Tamose.’

  Out in the desert a solemn drum began to beat and through the entrance of the tent paced ten armoured and helmeted warriors. They bore between them a pallet on which was piled a glittering pyramid of silver bars.

  As one person, the entire audience came to its feet in a tumult of praise and exaltation.

  ‘All hail to royal Pharaoh!’ they cried, and then, ‘All honour to Lord Taita!’

  When he had finished speaking they would not let Zaras go. Pharaoh spoke with him for several minutes, the men shook his hands or pounded his back, while a few of those women who had taken wine giggled and rubbed themselves against him as a cat will do.

  When he came to me we embraced briefly and I commended him, ‘Well written and well spoken, Zaras. You are both a warrior and a poet.’

  ‘From a bard of your renown, Lord Taita, I rejoice to hear it said,’ he replied and I was touched to see that he meant it. He left me and moved on through the company. He did not make his ultimate destination obvious, but finally he bowed in front of Princess Tehuti.

  The two of them were on the far side of the tent from where I sat; however, I am able to read the meaning of words on the lips of others without having heard the sound, as readily as I can read the hieroglyphics on a roll of papyrus.

  ‘Shame on you, Captain Zaras! Your poetry made me weep!’ Those were her first words to him, and they brought him down on one knee before her. His face was turned away from me so I was unable to see his reply. However it made Tehuti laugh.

  ‘You are gallant, Captain. But I will only forgive you on one condition. That is if you will promise to sing for us again one day soon.’ Zaras must have acquiesced, for she went on, ‘I shall hold you to that promise.’ He came to his feet and backed away from her respectfully.

  Good! I thought. Come away from there, you silly boy. You are out-matched. You are in deeper danger right now than you will ever be on the field of battle. But Tehuti stopped him with a graceful gesture.

  ‘How clumsy of me!’ I read her lips again. ‘I seem to have dropped one of my rings. I had it on my finger but an instant ago. Will you find it for me, please, Captain Zaras?’

  He was as eager as a puppy. He went down at her feet again, searching the ground in front of her. Almost immediately he picked up something; and when he came upright he was facing half towards me so I was able to read his lips.

  ‘Is this the ring you lost, Your Highness?’

  ‘Yes indeed. That is it. It was given to me by a very special person; the man whom you eulogized so beautifully this very evening.’ She made no immediate move to take the trinket back from him.

  ‘You speak of Lord Taita?’

  ‘Indeed!’ She nodded. ‘But look at the stone in the ring you are holding. See how clear it is.’

  ‘It is as clear as water,’ he agreed, holding the ring to the light of the nearest lantern. She had forced him to examine it minutely, so now she was satisfied and she held out her hand to him.

  ‘Thank you, Captain.’ He placed the ring in her cupped hand, and she smiled up at him.

  I thought to myself, Even if there is no magic in the ring itself, there is sufficient magic in your smile, Princess Tehuti, to bring the walls of both Memphis and Thebes crashing down. How can a callow youth like Zaras possibly resist your wiles?

  The first and most urgent task that faced me was to make the three great Cretan triremes disappear without trace. I had to leave no doubt whatsoever in the mind of the Supreme Minos of Crete that Beon of the Hyksos was responsible for the theft of his treasure. His rage would be exacerbated by the knowledge that the culprit was a supposed ally of his.

  My first thought was to burn the three ships, and to throw the ashes into the Nile so that the mystery of their disappearance would be perpetuated for all time. But then I considered the huge amount of timber that I would have to destroy.

  Egypt is a land almost without substantial forests. For us timber is almost as valuable as gold and silver. I thought about the warships and chariots I could build from the three trireme hulls, and I could not bring myself to put a torch to such hard-won booty.

  I discussed this with Pharaoh and Lord Kratas as the supreme commanders of our army.

  ‘But where in all of Egypt would you hide that amount of timber, Taita, you old rapscallion?’ Kratas demanded. ‘You have not thought about that, have you?’

  Pharaoh rallied t
o my side. ‘One thing you can be absolutely certain of, my Lord Kratas, is that Taita has thought about it. Taita thinks of everything.’

  ‘Pharaoh is too kind to me. But I do try my humble best,’ I murmured, and Kratas roared with mirth at my protestations.

  ‘There is nothing humble about you, Taita. Even the smell of your farts is conceited and ostentatious.’ Lord Kratas is my favourite lout; in all of Egypt there is no one who can outdo him in sheer unmitigated boorishness. I ignored him and addressed myself to Pharaoh.

  ‘Pharaoh is right, as ever. I did have a few ideas on the subject. The fact of the matter is that we will have to station a full regiment at the tomb of your deified father, the god Mamose, to guard the silver bullion stored there. The regiment can be made to serve a dual purpose.’

  Even Kratas was listening with attention now.

  ‘Proceed, Taita!’ Pharaoh urged me.

  ‘Well, Pharaoh, I have remeasured the ante-chambers to the tomb. If we were to strip the hulls of the triremes down to individual planks, there is space to repack them in those underground chambers where they would be hidden until we had call to use them in some other warlike endeavour.’ I turned to challenge Kratas. ‘No doubt Lord Kratas has a better plan. Perhaps we could take the hulls out into the deep waters of the Red Sea and my Lord Kratas could sink them for us under the sheer weight of the excrement that issues so profusely from between his noble lips?’

  ‘By the nits in Seth’s matted pubic hairs, Taita, that’s one of your best quips yet. I must remember it!’ Kratas bellowed with laughter. He can take a joke against himself. That’s one of the many things about him that I admire.

  It took many weeks and half a regiment of men to break the triremes down into their individual planks and then to number each plank and stack them away in the subterranean ante-chambers. But at last I had completed my disappearing trick and the great ships had vanished completely.

  For myself there was an extra benefit in the subterfuge. I was able to manoeuvre Pharaoh into placing Zaras in charge of the task of dismantling and storing the ships, with strict orders to remain within the precincts of the tomb until the task was completed. So when both the princesses, Tehuti and Bekatha separately and in concert, enquired after his whereabouts I was able in all honesty to inform them that Pharaoh had sent him on a very secret military mission from which he was unlikely to return for some considerable time.

  The palace of Thebes was for Zaras a far more dangerous place than any Hyksos battlefield. I lay at night sweating in terror for my protégé. Quite apart from the fact that I looked upon him as a loyal friend who had risked his life for me, he was an intrepid soldier, a scholar and now he had revealed himself to be a poet. We had much in common. However, like all men of his age he had an overriding weakness which was in no way mitigated by the fact that most of the time he kept it out of sight, tucked up under his kilt.

  I also know just how ruthless and reckless young women can be when their ovaries overheat. My darling little Tehuti’s gonads had caught fire at the first sight of him. I could think of no feasible way to quench the flames.

  In the days that followed my return to Thebes I found myself overwhelmed by circumstances that assailed me from every direction I turned.

  Pharaoh demanded my attendance at all hours to discuss the political storm that was boiling up between the Hyksos and the Supreme Minos.

  Aton and I had agreed that in view of the urgency and danger of the situation we should declare a truce between our rival intelligence operations and that for the time being we should pool our resources and cooperate with each other for the safety and perhaps the ultimate survival of our very Egypt.

  Strange and nameless men and women appeared and disappeared at our separate doors at all hours of the night, bearing messages and information from the north. Their numbers were only exceeded by those of the carrier pigeons making the same journey. I sometimes fancied that there were so many of our birds aloft at the same time that the sky might actually turn as purple as the colour of their plumage.

  Aton and I had to examine and discuss every word we received, evaluating it carefully before we relayed it on to Pharaoh and his general staff.

  One critical piece of intelligence was a report of the cremation of King Beon whom I had arrowed to death in the Nile before Memphis. The Hyksos have the barbaric custom of burning the bodies of their slain heroes to ashes rather than embalming them as we more advanced and civilized peoples do.

  At the same time they also make human sacrifices to placate their monstrous gods, of which Seth is the chief. Aton and I learned that one hundred of our own Egyptian warriors who had been captured by the Hyksos were thrown into the flames of Beon’s funeral pyre while they still lived, and that these had been followed by one hundred virgins to serve Beon’s pleasure in the other world. Some of these virgins were as young as five years of age, just old enough to know what was happening to them as they entered the flames. After hearing this account how can any sensible person try to argue that the Hyksos are not the basest form of animal life?

  I was the first person in Thebes to learn that after the cremation of Beon his younger brother Gorrab was crowned as the new King of the Hyksos.

  Gorrab’s first concern seemed to have been to avenge the death of his elder brother. He pulled ten thousand of his first-line troops out of the line of battle that faced our Egyptian forces on the border between Sheik Abada and Asyut. Gorrab’s decision was a happy one for Egypt. Pharaoh was being bitterly engaged along this entire front. The Hyksos are never parsimonious with the lives of their own troops, and are always prepared to engage in a battle of attrition if the opportunity presents itself. Up until that point Pharaoh was inflicting heavy losses on Beon’s army, but his own men were taking bitter punishment in return.

  Now at a stroke the pressure was lifted and Pharaoh was given the opportunity to reconsolidate and make good his position as Gorrab ordered almost a quarter of his army northwards to attack the Cretan force which I had left intact at Tamiat.

  Gorrab had been a witness to his brother’s death. He had been the commander of the guards on board the royal barge. He had watched the three Cretan triremes bearing down upon them and he had seen the Minoan uniforms of the officers and crew as they launched that unprovoked and treacherous attack.

  Gorrab had seen one of the Cretan archers deliberately shoot three arrows at his unarmed brother as he struggled in the water. Later he had retrieved King Beon’s arrow-riddled corpse from the river, and wept for him as he set the lighted torch to his cremation pyre. Then he had placed the Hyksos crown on his head with his own hands, and declared a full-scale war on Crete.

  Aton and I followed Gorrab’s campaign against the Minoans with glee. We learned from our spies that the senior Minoan commanders had sailed back to Crete from Tamiat in the galley that I had left for them. The small galley could accommodate only forty men, the others were left at the fort. When the galley reached Crete the commander reported to the Supreme Minos the shameful and dastardly attack by the Hyksos on the fort, and the capture of the Cretan treasure ships. He informed the Minos that the pirates had made no attempt to disguise their identity, but that they had worn full Hyksos uniforms and he had heard them conversing in that language.

  The Supreme Minos immediately despatched a squadron of his war galleys to Tamiat to rescue the two thousand Cretan troops that were stranded there. However, his ships arrived too late.

  King Gorrab had been there before them with his ten thousand. The Cretans put up a gallant resistance, but Gorrab slaughtered most of them. The survivors surrendered. Gorrab beheaded all of these and made a pyramid of their heads on the wharf below the fort. The relieving squadron arrived from Crete only after King Gorrab had returned to Memphis, leaving the pile of human heads rotting in the sun and the vultures devouring what was left of the Minos’ men. The relieving squadron sailed back to Crete to inform the Minos of the massacre.

  The Supreme Minos swore an oath of v
engeance at the altar of his bizarre gods and sent his fleet to ravage the Hyksos ports and bases along the entire northern African coastline.

  King Gorrab retaliated by conducting a pogrom on all those Minoans living under his sway in northern Egypt. The Minoans are a clever and industrious people. They are highly skilled in all the crafts and trades. However, they are above all traders and entrepreneurs. Wherever there is the sweet smell of silver and profit, there you will find the Minoans.

  How else could the inhabitants of such a small island as Crete have become the dominant power in all the lands surrounding the Middle Sea?

  There were several thousands of these Minoans living in northern Egypt. King Gorrab fell upon this local population with all the cruelty and animal ferocity for which the Hyksos are notorious. They dragged the Minoans from their homes and raped the women and children of even the most tender age. Then they herded them, men women and infants, into the temples which the Minoans had erected to their Gods and burned the roofs down over their heads.

  Although they tried to flee the country, very few of the Minoans were able to escape. The ships of the Supreme Minos rescued some of the more fortunate ones who lived in the towns and ports along the coast of the Middle Sea. Others who lived further inland escaped into the deserts that enclose our very Egypt. There they died from thirst and from the attentions of the Bedouin, who are also a cruel and rapacious people.

  However, a few hundred Minoans fled with their families southwards from Memphis and Asyut and some of these were able to evade the pursuing Hyksos chariots and reach our battle lines. Lord Kratas ordered our men to give the refugees shelter and protection and to treat them kindly.

  As soon as I heard of this I mounted up and rode as swiftly as I was able to the front lines of our legions facing the Hyksos.

  There were some of our senior commanders in these legions whom I had known as striplings. I had tutored them in the science and art of war, and my influence had helped to lift them to their present exalted military ranks.

  Lord Remrem had been ennobled by Pharaoh on the battlefield at Thebes and now he commanded a regiment under General Kratas, the supreme commander.