Desert God

by Wilbur Smith

  Those animals which had been grievously or fatally wounded I had despatched at once to put an end to their suffering. First I placed a peace offering of crushed millet before each of them, and when they lowered their heads and took a good mouthful one of my men swung a heavy bronze-headed club down between their ears to shatter the poll of their skull. Their deaths were mercifully swift.

  Once this ghastly work was done I turned my attention to our Hyksos prisoners. My order of precedence was clear-cut. As much as I loved the horses, I hated their owners with a deep and bitter loathing. I moved quickly along the ranks of kneeling men examining each of them in a cursory manner. If they were unwounded or were only lightly injured I sent them down to the beach to await the return of my galleys.

  However, there were many prisoners who were too badly injured to be of further use to us, even as slaves. A man with a barbed arrowhead buried deeply in his chest cavity does not have much time left to wield an oar. I ordered these miserable creatures to be laid out in the shade, given a drink of water to keep them alive a little longer and left them to work out their own destinies with their vile god, who I was certain was hovering close by.

  I know that I should have alleviated their suffering as I had their wounded horses, with a blow of the club to their heads. But they were Hyksos and I owed them no special favours.

  At last I had a moment to think about myself and my two royal charges. I remounted my chariot and drove back to the river crossing, and parked on the high bank. I left the reins in the hands of my driver and I walked to the lip of the gorge. This section of the battlefield was now devoid of a living soul. Although I knew where to search for the body of the enemy commander, I could not pick him out immediately in the litter of wrecked chariots, strewn equipment and corpses on the opposite bank. Then I spotted a distinctive speck of indigo blue much further down the slope than I had expected to find him, almost at the river’s edge.

  I started down the steep slope, keeping my balance even with loose stones rolling under my feet. When I reached the bottom I jumped down into the water and waded across to the far bank.

  I found the Hyksos captain’s corpse deeply wedged between two large rocks. He had rolled down the slope almost to the water’s edge. Only a fold of his cloak had revealed his resting place to me.

  I reached down and grabbed one of his legs by the ankle and heaved him out of the crack in which his body had jammed. There was a copious splash of blood on the cloak, but my servant was an excellent launderer. I folded the cloak and set it aside. Then I searched for the dead man’s helmet. I had to work back up the slope to where he had first struck the rocks. There I found it; also providentially hidden under the wreckage of a chariot. The looters who had been here before me had overlooked both the helmet and the corpse.

  I sat down with the helmet in my lap and admired the engravings. These were marvellously rendered images of the Egyptian gods: Hathor and Osiris on the cheek-pieces and Horus on the forehead. The Hyksos captain must have taken it from the corpse of one of our high-ranking officers on another battlefield. It was a treasure almost beyond price. It made my own head-dress look shabby and common. It had been badly dented where the Hyksos arrow had struck.

  I discarded it without a pang; then almost reverentially I replaced it with the gold and silver masterpiece. The interior was padded with leather, and it fitted me as though it had been crafted especially for me. At that moment I would have given a great deal for a mirror.

  I scrambled back down to where I had left the captain’s corpse. It was adorned with three necklaces; like the helmet they were all three lovely creations. But one of them was decorated with a rock-crystal carving of the head of Seth. I hurled it into the river. The other two were marvellously carved ivory depictions of elephants and camels. The princesses would adore them, although they had never seen an elephant in their young lives.

  I climbed back to where I had left my chariot. And my driver ogled my helmet, struck dumb with awe. I drove back to the beach where most of the men paused in what they were doing to stare at me. I must have been a wondrous sight.

  The ships of my flotilla sailed back around the headland into the bay. They ran up on to the beach, stern first, and dropped their loading ramps.

  The prisoners I had selected were marched on board, led down to the lowest deck and shackled by both ankles to the rowing benches. They would remain down there with their bare feet in the bilge water until Seth sent his dark angel to free them from their durance.

  An hour before sunset we had taken all our own men and chariots back on board, and we were ready to set sail for Sidon. Toran was standing beside me on the quarterdeck. He looked back at the shore and nodded at the Hyksos wounded that I had left above the beach.

  ‘I see that you have spared the lives of the wounded enemy. I have never before heard of such clemency from a victorious general.’

  ‘I am sorry to have disappointed you. But I have left them for others to deal with. Here they come now.’

  The inhabitants of the village whom earlier I had sent to hide from the approaching Hyksos chariots had returned. The men were still armed with the wooden spades and hoes with which they had earlier attempted to threaten us.

  Now they ignored us completely. We watched as the man who appeared to be the leader of this sorry rabble stood over an injured Hyksos and hefted his spade. Then he swung it down with both hands from high above his head, as though he was chopping a log of firewood. Even from this distance we could hear the victim’s skull burst with a sound like an over-ripe melon dropped on a stone floor. Then the man with the spade moved on implacably, leaving the Hyksos warrior’s body jerking and twitching in his death throes.

  The next wounded man saw him coming and tried to drag himself away on his elbows. The shaft of the arrow that had divided the vertebrae of his spine was still protruding from his back. His paralysed legs slithered after him. He was screeching like a woman in labour. The peasant laughed as he stood over him, and with his spade prodded him into suitable position to receive the mercy stroke.

  The slovenly women and their grubby children followed their menfolk closely, swarming over the fresh Hyksos corpses like blow-flies, stripping them of every stitch of their bloodied clothing and any trinkets of possible value. The shrieks of their excited laughter carried clearly to us across the water.

  ‘My lord, it is now apparent that despite appearances you are not a man to be trifled with.’ Toran looked at me with renewed respect.

  When I steered the Outrage into Sidon harbour an hour before noon the next day both my girls were on the jetty, waving and dancing with excitement. It was always a competition between them as to who would be first to greet me whenever I returned from one of my periodic absences. Tehuti was usually the more demure and restrained, but on this occasion she took both me and her sister by surprise. With the training Zaras had given her recently she had developed into an exceptional athlete and swordswoman.

  Now she demonstrated some of these new skills. She kicked off her sandals, and flew barefooted over the stone slabs of the jetty and sprang out over the gap that still separated my ship from the shore. This was a distance of fully five yards. Had she fallen short she would have been crushed and drowned between the hull and the jetty before I would have been able to rescue her.

  I died a dozen agonizing deaths in the brief period that she was airborne. But when her feet hit the deck my terror turned instantly to the anger of relief. I rushed down the deck, determined to remonstrate with her for such unseemly behaviour.

  ‘You look so dashing in your new cloak and helmet, Taita darling. Where did you find them? They make you look as noble as any king! But have you brought us a present?’ All this was uttered in a single breath. My anger collapsed, and I hugged her to my bosom.

  ‘Of course I brought you a gift. But tell me first, have you behaved yourself while I was away?’

  ‘You gave me no option. You took all my temptations away with you.’ Her grin was imp
ish, and she looked across at the galley which followed mine into the harbour. Zaras stood on the steering deck, and even at the distance that separated them a look passed between the two of them like a strike of lightning.

  It took another four days for us to complete the preparations for the final voyage to Knossos in Crete. Toran invited us to travel on board his flagship. This magnificent trireme was at least twice the size of any of my Sumerian-built galleys.

  ‘You and your charges will be very much more comfortable aboard the Sacred Bull than on one of your little luggers.’ This was the name of his vessel: rather pretentious, I thought. Moreover I did not particularly like his dismissive reference to my own fighting galleys which had just proved themselves in their first significant victory over the Hyksos. I hesitated.

  ‘If you travel with me we would have the time and opportunity to discuss in more detail what you should expect when we reach Knossos. The politics and protocol of the Court of the Supreme Minos are highly complicated, but they must be strictly observed.’ Still I hesitated and he continued persuasively, ‘My chef is celebrated as one of the best in the Hellenic world, and I should also mention that I have on board twenty large amphorae of the finest red wines of the Cyclades. I understand that this is but a poor incentive for you to spend two weeks in my company, but I am enamoured of your wit and in awe of your learning and erudition. I beg you to humour me, my lord, and accept my offer of hospitality.’ My remaining reservations evaporated in the face of such compelling argument.

  ‘You are extremely gracious, Ambassador,’ I accepted, but I did wonder how much it was my company he valued so highly, or was it more that of little Loxias, the Minoan handmaiden to my princesses.

  Both Tehuti and Bekatha objected strenuously to these travel arrangements that I had agreed upon with Toran. They came to my cabin in the Outrage and presented me with a long list of their objections, each one weaker and less convincing than the one preceding it.

  I turned on them my most forbidding expression and listened without interruption until their protestations tapered off, and they looked at me with such distress that I took pity on them.

  ‘So, am I to believe that both of you mistrust Ambassador Toran and believe he is plotting to lure you on board his ship to have you murdered in your sleep?’ They squirmed with embarrassment.

  ‘And when did the two of you conceive the notion that the Sacred Bull is such a large ship that it is not able to float, and that it will sink and drown all of us?’

  Their silence continued, until suddenly Bekatha’s tears overflowed her eyelids and streamed down her cheeks. I was appalled. If I had realized the extent of her distress, I would not have teased her so unkindly. I jumped up from my stool to comfort her. She pushed me away, and turned her face from me.

  ‘I will never see him again,’ she sobbed. I pretended to be mystified by this statement.

  ‘Whom will you never see again? Are you talking about Ambassador Toran?’

  She ignored my question and went on in a welter of words. ‘You promised Tehuti that we could all be together at least until we reached Crete. Only then would we have to be sequestered in the seraglio of the Supreme Minos. But you promised that as long as we were discreet, we could go on seeing them until we arrived in Crete. But now we will never be able to see them again. My life is ending.’

  ‘I need clarification, darling Bekatha,’ I interrupted her. ‘Whom are we discussing here?’

  Bekatha turned to face me again, but now her expression was furious. ‘You know very well whom we are talking about. We are talking about my Hui.’

  ‘And my Zaras.’ Tehuti spoke quietly but just as clearly as her little sister.

  It had indeed been my intention to gently and subtly wean the two of them off their perilous liaisons long before we arrived in Crete and took up residence in the palace of the Minos. Now my plan had struck the reef of their intransigence, and was sinking under me.

  I tried my best to jolly them along, but at every turn I was immediately rebuffed by the two of them. In the end I capitulated.

  Both Zaras and Hui were aboard the Sacred Bull when we finally sailed from the harbour of Sidon.

  We were a flotilla of seven ships. The Sacred Bull sailed in the centre of this formation. Two of the swiftest galleys, which should have been commanded by Zaras and myself, sailed as the vanguard. However Dilbar and Akemi were now the captains.

  My other four galleys acted as our flankers and rearguard for the flotilla. Each ship maintained visual contact with its immediate neighbours. In this way we could sweep the sea for sixty leagues in every direction. I had drawn up a system of simple flag signals so that on the flagship I would be warned of danger long before it actually materialized.

  All these precautions were essential, for this part of the Middle Sea was the hunting ground of the Sea Peoples. These were renegades and outcasts from all the civilized and law-abiding nations. In exile they had banded together into a loose affiliation of pirates. They gave allegiance to no one, called no man master. They were completely without morals, conscience or remorse. They were dangerous as ravening lions or as poisonous snakes and scorpions. They rendered the seas more perilous than any hidden reef or pack of man-eating sharks. In Egypt we referred to them as ‘the Sons of Yamm’. Yamm is the god of the sea when it is turbulent and raging. He is not one of the kindly gods.

  However this was the most propitious period of the year for sailing on the Great Green, which is our Egyptian name for this part of the Middle Sea. The weather was mild, the winds fair and the sea calm. As passengers on the Sacred Bull we were enjoying ourselves.

  Zaras continued Tehuti’s weapons training. He improvised a floating wooden target for her arrows which he towed behind the ship on a line of variable length.

  He had also brought with him wooden practice swords, whose blades were padded with sheepskin, and wooden shields. He and Tehuti sparred on the open deck. Her triumphant cries registered the fact that she had scored another hit. She never held back on the ferocity of her thrusts and cuts. These were always full-blooded and Zaras, that consummate swordsman, seemed to have difficulty avoiding them. Strangely he never was able to lay his blade on her in retaliation.

  Bekatha joined in with the archery lessons, but she was not strong enough to draw the same weight bow as her big sister, so she could not shoot an arrow as far or as accurately. She sulked for a day, and then challenged Tehuti to a single bout with the wooden swords. The bruises she received from her sister took a week to fade.

  She retired gracefully from the contest, and diverted all energy into teaching Colonel Hui the game of bao. Hui made a lamentable student. She drubbed him mercilessly. When he at last rebelled at the torment she switched his lessons to singing and dancing and riddling.

  To the surprise of us all Hui had a good voice and a light step. He excelled in the first two disciplines, especially as the dancing gave him an excuse to embrace his teacher. However, his great strength was his riddling. Bekatha struggled to keep pace with his devious reasoning.

  ‘Two mothers and three daughters go out riding. How many horses do they need?’ He put the question to her.

  ‘Five, of course.’

  ‘Wrong,’ he gloated. ‘They need only three. They are grandmother, mother and daughter.’

  ‘Oh, you silly man!’ She threw the pomegranate she was eating at his head. Hui caught it and took a bite before he threw it back at her.

  Ambassador Toran’s chef lived up fully to his master’s promises of excellence. He served us with a succession of delicious meals which we ate under a canvas sun-awning on the poop deck to the music of a four-man band of flutes and other wind instruments.

  The Cyclades wines that Toran served were a glory on the tongue, and only the conversation sparkled brighter.

  They were happy days, and like carefree children we all laughed a great deal and were happy.

  Of course, nothing is ever perfect. It seemed that the Sacred Bull was infested with
rats or some other strange nocturnal creatures. When we had all retired to our bunks I heard them scampering surreptitiously up and down the passageway outside my cabin, or rustling and squeaking in the cabins on either side of mine, where I was sure my innocent girls were fast asleep.

  Even the master cabin of Ambassador Toran, across the aisle from mine, was not free from these mysterious disturbances. He did not seem to resent them for at intervals I heard him chuckling and whispering, and the replies he received sounded very much to me like feminine Minoan exhortations to greater endeavour.

  We had been fourteen days at sea, and Toran and I were sitting in the shade cast by the mainsail over the foredeck. We were deep in conversation over a flagon of his excellent wine when we were disturbed by sudden activity on the poop deck.

  I glanced up and saw that Captain Hypatos, the Minoan commander of the Sacred Bull, was flying signal flags at the masthead. I stood up abruptly, interrupting Toran in the middle of a sentence.

  ‘Something is happening that might be important. Come with me.’ We hurried back along the deck to the group of ship’s officers gathered on the poop deck. All of them were staring ahead.

  ‘What is it, Hypatos?’ Toran demanded of his captain, who pointed over our bows.

  ‘A signal from one of our scouting galleys, sir. But the distance is extreme. I’m sorry, but the message is unclear,’ Captain Hypatos apologized.

  I glanced at the ship which was hull down on the horizon. It was my own ship, the Outrage, now being commanded by Akemi. ‘They are reporting that their sister ship is under attack and being boarded by the crew of a strange vessel.’ I translated the flag signal to plain language for them. ‘Akemi signals that he is going to Dilbar’s assistance.’