Desert God

by Wilbur Smith

  For Pharaoh and our very Egypt the situation was teetering on the brink of catastrophe. If Sumeria failed us then our entire eastern front would be exposed. Somehow I had to find a way to bail King Nimrod out of his predicament. Not for his sake, but for our own national survival.

  I had calculated that King Nimrod needed a minimum of thirty lakhs of silver for Sumeria to become once more a military force of any consequence.

  The crisis that I had to avert was double-pronged. Nimrod was the one prong and, although I hated to admit it, my own beloved Pharaoh was the second prong. Nimrod was destitute; while Memnon Tamose was wallowing in an ocean of silver. Nimrod had grown resigned to his state of penury, while Pharaoh was a newly rich skinflint. He was sitting on a fabulous treasure of almost six hundred lakhs of silver. It meant nothing that I alone and almost unaided had won that treasure for him. The treasure was his, but I knew my Mem so very well. I had raised him from early childhood and taught him everything he knew. I had taught him that silver is bitter hard to win and ridiculously easy to spend. Now somehow I had to make him unlearn my lesson. I had to get him to part with thirty lakhs of silver and give it to a man whom he did not know and did not trust. I was not at all certain that I trusted Nimrod myself. However, I knew that we had no choice. We had to trust him if our very Egypt was to survive.

  After a challenging day spent in the company of King Nimrod and his staff, I retired to my own quarters early that evening. I dined alone on a single ripe fig and a little cheese and hard bread, for I had no appetite. Of course, I poured myself a few drops of wine, but the first sip tasted like raw vinegar. I pushed the goblet away and concentrated my mind on composing a message to Mem; a message that I must fit on to a scrap of light parchment that a pigeon could carry back to Thebes for me, a message which must convince Pharaoh Tamose to commit an act which he would consider to be abysmal folly.

  Many hours later I had discarded my sixth draft of the message, and I was desperate. Bear in mind that I am a man who deals in words, but still I could not find the words which would convince Pharaoh. I knew that I had failed before I had even begun. I straightened my cramped legs and stood up from my writing table. I crossed to the doorway that led out on to the terrace. I looked up at the new moon and saw by its height that it was well past midnight.

  While I watched, a cloud no larger than my hand drifted across the moon and plunged the world around me into darkness. I thought that loss of the moonlight must surely intensify my distress. But miraculously it had completely the opposite effect on my mood. I felt a sense of deep calm come over me, displacing the despair which had gripped me the moment before.

  Then I heard a voice call my name. It was a quiet voice but clear as the piping of a thrush at the first light of dawn; so clear that I looked around me to find who had spoken. I was alone.

  Suddenly the solution to my predicament presented itself to me full-blown. I wondered how I could have hesitated.

  I held the hawk seal. I held all the powers of Pharaoh in my one hand. I knew that to rescue my country from disaster and my Pharaoh from ruin I must exert those powers. Even if my actions ran contrary to Pharaoh’s will; even if they invoked his fury.

  As I made the decision, I wondered from where and from whom guidance had come. The solution was so alien to my deeply ingrained loyalties and creed of behaviour that I realized, with a pious sense of awe, that the decision had not been mine alone.

  The little cloud that had shrouded the moon passed on and once again the soft lunar light burst forth to bathe the midnight world. It glowed on the marble walls of Ishtar’s temple.

  The hooded lady was there on the terrace opposite where I stood, exactly where I had last seen her. As before, the hood of her silver-grey robe covered her face. I knew then from whence my inspiration had come.

  I wanted desperately to see her face again. In some miraculous fashion she sensed my need. With a toss of her head she threw the hood back over her shoulders and her features were revealed. Her face was paler than the moonlight that played on it. She was lovelier than I remembered, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen or imagined.

  I reached out with both my hands towards her across the deep void that divided us. But her expression became remote and sad. She receded from me. She faded away gradually into the night until she was gone, and the moonlight faded with her.

  In the morning when Phat Tur came to my apartment I was fully dressed and waiting for him. My strength and determination had been bolstered, and I felt supremely confident. I walked through the halls and passages of the palace with such a light and eager step that Lord Remrem, Phat Tur and the rest of my entourage had to hurry to keep up with me.

  Nimrod’s throne was empty when we entered the council chamber. However the room was filled with his councillors and military commanders. They stood to welcome me to the long table, and shortly after we had taken our seats the trumpeters outside the main doors sounded a fanfare.

  King Nimrod paced into the room in solemn state. My first thought when I saw him this early in the day was that he had foregone his cream-skimming and cherry-picking in the Temple of Ishtar to be with us.

  I was conscious of the respect which he was according to me, and this reinforced my confidence in what I was about to do. We went through the observation of royal protocol and then I came to my feet and addressed the king directly.

  ‘Your Majesty, I have a proposal which is so sensitive and confidential that I would like to restrict it to your royal person and to that of your single most trusted confidant. I give you my assurance that my offer will be very much to our mutual benefit and will go a long way towards resolving the predicament in which we find ourselves at this moment.’

  Nimrod was clearly taken aback and for a while he tried to avoid making a decision, but I would not countenance an alternative and at last he yielded to my urgings.

  I kept Lord Remrem at my right hand and Phat Tur at my left to translate. Nimrod gestured at Admiral Alorus to remain at the table. Then he dismissed the rest of his staff.

  When only the five of us remained in the chamber I removed the hawk seal from the sleeve of my robe and placed it on the table between us.

  ‘I am sure that Your Majesty is aware of the significance of this token.’

  ‘Although this is the first time I have actually laid eyes upon it, I understand that this is the hawk seal which confirms that you speak with the voice and authority of Pharaoh Tamose of Egypt.’

  ‘That is correct, Majesty.’

  King Nimrod fastened his cold dark eyes upon me. He said nothing more but waited with the intensity of a leopard at the waterhole sensing the approach of its prey. I regarded him every bit as intently.

  ‘Your Majesty, you and I both are battle-tempered warriors, with the experience and wisdom to know that wars are won not only with a gallant spirit and a keen blade, but also with the weight of silver we are able to hurl against the foe.’

  ‘I have never heard it expressed in those terms before, but they are wise words you speak and infused with the truth.’ Nimrod spoke quietly.

  ‘In the name of Pharaoh Tamose of Egypt and by the authority of the hawk seal which I bear I offer you silver to the weight and value of thirty lakhs on the single condition that you enter into a military alliance with Egypt and that you employ this bounty exclusively on the destruction of King Gorrab and his Hyksos horde.’

  I heard Remrem draw breath sharply beside me. He knew that I did not have Pharaoh’s sanction for this offer; and he realized what a risk I was taking. But I did not deign to glance at him. Nimrod rocked back in his throne and he stared at me in silent disbelief. I saw a rash of tiny sweat drops ooze from the skin of his forehead beneath the rim of his crown.

  When at last he spoke his voice was hoarse with incredulity and avarice. ‘Does your Pharaoh indeed have a sum of that magnitude to dispose of?’

  ‘I give you my assurance that he does, Your Majesty. I have been commanded by Pharaoh to seal the accord
of our two nations by immediately delivering into Your Majesty’s hand the sum of three lakhs of silver. This is merely a pledge of what is to follow.’

  For a long while Nimrod stared at me in silence. Then suddenly he sprang to his feet and began pacing rapidly back and forth across the floor of the chamber. His face was creased into a murderous scowl and he chewed his lip until a drop of blood dripped from his chin on to his embroidered tunic. He exhibited no sign of pain.

  Suddenly he stopped in front of me and glared into my face. ‘Three lakhs immediately and twenty-seven more to follow within the year?’ he demanded. I waited for Phat Tur to make the translation before I agreed.

  ‘Even as Your Majesty says. However, you must send a regiment of your finest to take delivery of the balance of the treasure in Thebes. Pharaoh will not accept the risk of transporting it with his own men.’

  Nimrod spun around and resumed his pacing. His bronze-soled sandals rang on the paving slabs as he stamped up and down the chamber. He began to argue with himself in Sumerian.

  ‘How can I trust this devious and ball-less freak? It is no secret that he is in league with Seth and all the dark devils. There are even those who believe that he himself is one of the darker spirits from beyond the void,’ he muttered and then when he realized what he had said he spun around and shouted at Phat Tur, ‘Translate my words at your peril! If you do I will throttle you with your own intestines, do you understand?’

  Phat Tur paled and dropped his gaze. ‘As Your Majesty commands,’ he acquiesced. Nimrod resumed his march up and down the chamber, and his argument with himself. Then he stopped in front of me again.

  ‘Tell him I trust him,’ he ordered Phat Tur. ‘But that I must have a binding covenant with Pharaoh Tamose of Egypt before I can agree to an alliance.’ As he stated this condition I saw the flare of lascivious guile in his eyes.

  ‘If it is at all possible, I know that Pharaoh will accede,’ I hedged cautiously.

  ‘I wish to unite my own family with the royal family of Egypt,’ Nimrod stated. ‘I wish to take Pharaoh’s two sisters, Tehuti and Bekatha, to be my wives. In that way Pharaoh and I will become brothers-in-law.’

  I was amazed at the extent of his greed, gall and randiness. This rogue wanted both the money and the meat. ‘It is a great honour you are offering to bestow on Egypt. In any other circumstances I know my Pharaoh would not hesitate a moment before agreeing with your suggestion.’ In a reasonable tone of voice I concealed my anger from this obnoxious creature who had heaped insults on me and who now was blatantly lusting after my beloved girls. ‘However, Pharaoh has already pledged both his sisters in marriage to the Supreme Minos of Crete to seal the military alliance between our two nations. He dare not renege on this promise. The Minoan would not accept the insult to his honour.’

  Nimrod shrugged and muttered something obscene. However, I could tell he was not too seriously irked by my refusal. Both of us knew that it had been an opportunistic attempt on his part to wring the last possible advantage from our agreement. No matter how much some men are offered they will always try for a little more.

  Nimrod took another turn around the chamber while he rallied his wits, and then he made the next attempt: ‘I would enjoy the sight of the three lakhs of silver you spoke of earlier; by no means because I do not trust you and your Pharaoh to honour your agreement, but merely because I am interested to see how you concealed them until now …’ Nimrod addressed me directly, hoping, I am sure, to trick me into betraying the fact that I understood Sumerian. I frustrated him once again by looking to Phat Tur for translation. I was beginning to enjoy circumventing Nimrod’s snares. It was not dissimilar to playing the bao stones against Lord Aton.

  I sent Zaras and Hui to fetch the silver from our regimental camp beyond the city walls. It took two wagons and fifty men to make the transfer. It was an impressive pile of bullion when it was finally heaped on the floor of the council chamber. Nimrod walked around the glittering pile, fondling every ingot, speaking endearments to them as though they were his beloved pets.

  That evening we feasted once more at Nimrod’s board. I found the wine to be eminently more drinkable than the gut-rot he had served us previously. However, its effect on the manners and behaviour of my host and his minions was less meritorious.

  King Nimrod had missed his morning exertions in the Temple of Ishtar. Agreeable or not, we were treated to an exhibition of the Mighty Hunter’s insatiability. Half the females in the banquet hall ended the evening in a state of prurient abandon.

  I was pleased that I had left my two princesses locked in their apartment with Zaras and a dozen of his men standing guard at their door.

  The six war galleys that I had purchased from Nimrod were undergoing a refit in Sidon harbour and would not be ready for me to take command of them until the end of the month of Phamenoth.

  I employed this hiatus to work with King Nimrod and his staff in planning and plotting our combined campaign against the Hyksos. I had selected Lord Remrem to remain in Babylon and act as Pharaoh’s military attaché.

  Reluctantly I had agreed that Colonel Hui would stay with Remrem as his assistant. Under my tutelage Hui had developed into one of the most skilled protagonists of the science of chariot warfare. I knew I would miss him and his expertise sorely when we opened hostilities with the Hyksos hordes in northern Egypt along the coast of the Middle Sea. But Bekatha had made her aversion for him manifest. I knew that she would cause a furore if I took Hui with us to Crete.

  Within weeks of Nimrod receiving the silver incentive the workshops of his army were fully employed with the manufacture of new armour and weapons, repairing old chariots and building hundreds more to my own superior design and specifications. The streets of Babylon became crowded with marching columns of recruits, and the souks were tumultuous with haggling buyers and sellers.

  Through Phat Tur and his agents I learned that every other city in Sumeria was enjoying this same martial resuscitation. By the thousands the formerly unemployed warriors of Sumeria were flocking back to the royal standard – and the king’s silver coin.

  The work I had set myself was difficult and complicated enough without me making it worse by pretending not to be fluent in the Sumerian language. I began to speak a halting and childlike Sumerian to my hosts, which daily became more fluent and grammatically correct. Even His Majesty King Nimrod was forced in my presence to cease his insulting remarks about me to his sycophants. Soon I was able to baffle our hosts with my quick banter and my clever puns and play on their own language.

  One morning I watched Admiral Alorus on the far side of the chariot drilling ground remark to Nimrod that my rapid acquisition of the Sumerian language was nothing short of miraculous. When I crossed the wide ground to thank him for the compliment Alorus shrank away from me in superstitious awe, and he made the sign against the evil eye. I don’t think he had ever heard of lip-reading. But of course he believed in witchcraft, as does every educated and sensible person.

  In the cool of the afternoons I took the opportunity to swim in the Euphrates or ride through the southern hills beyond the city limits with my princesses for company. It amused me how often we encountered Zaras on our forays to even the most remote locations. It was almost as though somebody had alerted him to our coming. Of course it could not have been Tehuti. Her astonishment at finding him loitering beside the trail almost superseded my own.

  In the evenings there were always invitations to dine with our Sumerian hosts or with my own officers. If King Nimrod were present I insisted that my princesses sat close to me where I could watch over them.

  When most of the others had retired I sat alone on the terrace outside my apartment, waiting until long after midnight for the return of the hooded lady. Night after night she disappointed me.

  With all this bustling employment the days rolled by swiftly. Then a messenger arrived from the naval base at Sidon with news that the six war galleys I had purchased from Nimrod would be ready for launchi
ng twenty days earlier than anticipated. It would take our cumbersome caravan almost half that long to reach Sidon on the coast of the Middle Sea. I ordered Zaras and Hui to make the final preparations for departure from Babylon to the coast.

  That evening, after I had escorted my princesses to their royal quarters in the eastern wing of the palace, I returned to my own apartment before the moon had set. My slaves had left oil lamps burning in my chamber and on the terrace beside my cot. According to my instructions they had mixed the oil in the lamps with herbs whose fumes drove off the mosquitoes and other nocturnal insects, but at the same time induced restful sleep and agreeable dreams.

  Rustie was waiting up to see me to bed. He came to take away my worn garments and place a silver chalice of wine beside my cot.

  ‘It’s long after midnight, master,’ he reprimanded me. ‘You have not slept more than a few hours since the beginning of the week.’ Rustie has been my slave for so many years that both of us have lost count. Long ago he granted himself licence to treat me as though he were my nursemaid.

  With his help I divested myself of my clothing and then went out on to the terrace, and took up the wine chalice. I wet my lips and sighed with contentment. It was a ten-year-old vintage from my own vineyards on the Mechir estate. Then I turned to look across at the terrace of the temple of the goddess. I was disappointed but resigned to find that it was deserted. It was weeks since I last had a glimpse of the hooded lady.

  I dismissed Rustie and sent him still grumbling on his way, and then I paced the marble slabs, going over in my mind the salient points of the negotiations that I had held with the king that evening.

  Abruptly I paused in mid-stride. The quality of the moonlight had changed, taking on a subtle golden luminosity. I looked up at the moon. I knew at once that there were preternatural forces at play, but I could not immediately ascertain whether they were benign or malignant. I made the sign of Horus with two fingers to avert evil and I waited quietly for the mystic forces to declare themselves.