by Paul Doherty
‘They cannot escape,’ Sobeck gasped. ‘They must not return to camp. They will know we are spies, and the usurper mustn’t learn how close Horemheb truly is.’
The Hittite chariot wheeled and thundered out of the oasis, going back the way it had come. We followed in pursuit, Sobeck standing beside me, whip lashing the air. It was a deadly chase. The Hittite chariot was faster, the horses stronger, and the gap between us grew. Every so often the Hittite archer would turn; a master bowman, his shafts were directed at our horses, but we wheeled and shifted using the clouds of dust their chariot sent up. Sobeck moved our horses to their blind side so the archer had to lean across the driver to loose his shafts. We cleared the brow of the hill and continued our pursuit to the clatter of wheels and thundering hooves, the hot breeze breathing sand into our faces. The gap between us grew until the Hittites made a common mistake. Egyptian chariots at full charge require a special skill; wheels and horses must act as one while the driver keeps the chariot on a certain line behind the horses. On this occasion they were travelling too fast. The Hittite misjudged the speed. The chariot swayed to the left and its wheels hit a rock, trapping the horses in a tangle of harness, whilst the two Hittites were thrown out, their bodies bouncing along the ground as if they were already corpses. I reined in. One of the Hittites was sprawled in such a fashion we realised his neck was broken. The other, moaning, tried to drag himself to his feet. Sobeck jumped down and, bestriding his body, pulled his head back and slit his throat.
One of the Hittite horses had broken its leg and had to be destroyed, but we unhitched the other and led it back into the oasis. I told Sobeck to guard the horses; if they had broken loose they would have cantered back to the enemy camp. I climbed into our chariot and left the oasis, charging down towards the gleaming mass of weaponry moving ever closer. Of course scouts were sent out to intercept, lighter chariots, their horses small and fast, each chariot with its driver and infantryman. I slowed down, lifting my hand, shouting the words of peace. The scouts ringed me. One of them screamed at me to climb down. I did so and knelt at the back of the chariot. I heard the thunder of heavier war chariots and glimpsed their colours as they swirled about me. One in particular, with its red and gold electrum displaying the personal insignia of Horemheb, stopped before me. The Chief Scribe of the Army, General of Thebes, resplendent in his light blue and gold-scaled armour over a thin linen robe, climbed down, his square pugilist’s face gleaming with sweat and oil. Other chariots drew up even as I pulled myself to my feet.
‘My lord Mahu.’ Horemheb tossed his bow to his driver and clasped my hand. ‘One of our scouts was sure he had seen movement in the oasis. Well,’ he looked me over from head to foot, ‘your arrival proves the old proverb wrong. “Out in the Red Lands you only meet an enemy.”’
He shouted for wine and bread to be brought. I joined him in his own chariot. I lifted the wineskin and bit into the bread, then coughed.
‘I know,’ Horemheb grinned, ‘out here everything tastes of sand and dust.’
He then told me of what he had done. As the dust clouds settled, I looked behind and saw the massed might of Egypt, columns of infantry flanked by chariot squadrons, moving out of the desert haze. The pace of the army was determined by the foot; as the first units passed, I recognised their speed and urgency. The men looked exhausted, covered in dust. Officers strode up and down exhorting them on.
‘They were singing when we left Abydos,’ Horemheb murmured, raising his hand in salute as the first units passed. ‘Now they haven’t even got the strength to talk.’
The entire imperial army emerged from its dust haze, at least a mile across.
‘According to our maps and scouts,’ Horemheb took the wineskin from me, ‘we have at least three wells between here and the enemy camp. Now, Mahu?’
I didn’t tell him about what had happened at the oasis; only that his advance had taken the enemy by surprise. Horemheb lowered the wineskin, eyes rounded with astonishment.
‘You mean to say they were feasting last night and still haven’t left the fortress?’ He climbed down from his chariot, shouting at his trumpeter to summon his staff officers and urging his line commanders to continue their march. ‘Infantry gather at the oasis!’ he yelled. ‘Chariots further to the east. You’ll find fresh water there. The line mustn’t be broken. It will be the shortest respite.’
The foot soldiers continued, line after line passing us in billows of dust, clouds rising from the chariots on either flank. Horemheb gathered his corps commanders around him, talking bluntly, now and again asking me to describe the layout of the enemy camp. A scribe, coughing and spluttering, squatted and tried to make a rough map. I pointed out the positions – the moat, the mound, the palisade – and the quality of troops inside the fortress and the army of mercenaries outside. Horemheb’s suppressed excitement was shared by his commanders, one of whom was Nebamun. He clasped my hand but was unable to converse across Horemheb’s stream of questions and demands.
‘We have them.’ Horemheb was almost jumping from foot to foot. ‘My lords, we have them! They are drunk and sluggish. The real danger is the Hittite officer corps and their skilled soldiers. If we are fortunate they’ll demand the fortress be left and the entire army come out to meet us where we have little water or shade. They must know we are tired and thirsty.’
‘But still ready for battle!’ one of his colonels declared.
‘We must have victory,’ Horemheb replied. ‘If the enemy meet us out here and defeat us, Abydos and Memphis will be put to the torch. They will commandeer every barge and float down to Thebes, and take the City of the Sceptre.’
‘Meryre?’ I demanded.
‘He’s still locked up in Memphis,’ Nebamun retorted. ‘He’s allowed to take the air and nothing else. There’ve been rumours of unrest in the south.’
‘This usurper,’ Horemheb demanded, ‘this False Pharaoh. You have seen him, my lord Mahu? Him and his woman?’
‘They are both impostors,’ I replied flatly. ‘They no more have the right to rule Egypt,’ I gestured to a dung beetle crawling across the papyrus roll of the scribe, ‘than that. They are impostors, puppets.’ I gave a short description of the Hittite commanders, Prince Aziru and the two priests, Djoser and Khufu. Horemheb was only half listening. As the boy, so the man. In the House of Instruction, where we had been trained and educated together, Horemheb displayed one quality above all others: he would concentrate on a problem and would not be distracted until it had been solved.
‘We must move quickly.’ He kicked at the scribe to stand. ‘I want the army to be in three divisions. In the centre the foot, archers before them. On each flank the chariot squadrons, a thousand apiece. Skirmishers in front, war chariots behind. I intend to bring them to battle before this day is finished: if those Hittites have any sense they’ll know that. So, gentlemen,’ he climbed back into his chariot, ‘we reach that oasis and form a battle line. Mahu, clear your throat. You are going to do a lot of talking.’
Within the hour, Horemheb’s army was deploying its flanks on two oases: the left where Sobeck and I had killed the Hittites; the right about two miles distant, lost in the desert haze. Horemheb’s scouts had found Sobeck and brought him back. We were attached to Nebamun’s corps. The commissary wagons were brought up; the oxen wouldn’t move quickly enough, so chariots were used to share out bread and dried meat. At the same time the Neferu, the raw recruits, an entire legion of them, were given water skins and told to make sure that every soldier wetted his face and cleared his throat. Horemheb seemed impervious to the heat and dust, the host of flies brought in by the mounds of animal dung. Heat or shade, he was the same. Peering along his battle line, he issued a stream of orders. Officers were to check that every man had his weapons and his mouthful of meat, bread and water. The precious horses were also tended to, and the wheels, spokes and axles of the chariots carefully checked to ensure the animal grease still protected them against the harsh dust of the desert. Eventually Horem
heb could no longer curb his impatience.
He ordered his splendid war chariot to be brought: it was pulled by magnificent black stallions with white star bursts on their foreheads, the standards of Amun-Ra pushed into the niches on either side of the carriage. He advanced slowly along the battle line, preceded by a herald and trumpeter and followed by the chariots of his commanders, strong-arm boys running on either side. Every so often he would pause so I could deliver my message.
‘Men of Egypt, soldiers of the Ra! The man you are marching against is a Hittite puppet, an impostor! I swear by all that is holy, by my own Ka, by sky and earth. I have seen him with my own eyes. He is an impostor, a pretender, a usurper, supported by vile Asiatics, rebels and traitors who will soon be slaughtered by your arms and devoured by eternal fire.’
Along the line we travelled. The heralds signalled the trumpeters to give a blast and I would repeat the message. My voice grew so hoarse one of the heralds had to repeat it. Each proclamation was greeted by a thunderous roar.
‘Lovely boys!’ Horemheb whispered. ‘They will march for me until we reach the Great Green. I have promised them all the plunder of the enemy camp, their gold, silver and women. I have told them to follow in the steps of the great Ahmose and their noble ancestors who drove the Hyksos out of Egypt. The one doubt they had was that they were marching against their own king. Yet they know you, Mahu.’ Horemheb had sent heralds ahead to proclaim my name and status. Now he grinned, ‘Why, they even consider you a hero!’
Eventually the other oasis came into sight. My message was completed. The salutation of the troops thundered to the sky, whilst Horemheb, like the great show-off he was, went charging up the line, horses thundering, chariot gleaming, to be greeted by the ecstatic cries of his troops.
‘They are the best,’ Horemheb whispered as he reined in, ‘and somewhere to the south, Rameses is bringing up more. The Hathor corps and whatever mercenaries we can find.’
For a while there was inaction, that ominous strengthening silence which precedes any battle. Our men rested in the shade of the chariots or sought more water. At last Horemheb was ready. The calls for the general advance brayed, cracking through the silence, sending the birds fluttering from the trees into a swirling arc against the sky. Sobeck and I were given a chariot as well as leather corselets and war kilts. We dressed, sweating under the strengthening sun. The battle line then moved until we reached a clump of greenery. Here a force of mercenaries waited to oppose us, but they were trampled down, pushed aside, sent scattering or transfixed with arrow, spear or sword. Scouts were sent out and came hastening back. The enemy were deploying from the fortress. By the time we reached the plain, the usurper’s forces, standards aloft in the centre, were waiting for us, rank after rank of foot, chariot squadrons on each wing. This was PerI, the Place of Battle, dominated by Heem Hen-T, the Cry of War. Horemheb did not give the enemy time to invoke the Gods. No heralds were sent forward, no proclamation issued, no makeshift altar built and offerings made to Seth the Announcer of Battles. Our opponents were traitors, pirates, bandits and outlaws, to be destroyed like any vermin.
The men of war prepared eagerly for battle under a blazing sun. Our left wing was based on the now deserted market town, our right on a small oasis, one of those dusty pools of green which bordered the coarse, open land fronting the desert. The enemy still manoeuvred before us. They had more infantry than us and stretched their battle front trying to outflank us on each wing. Sobeck and I clustered around the trumpeters and standard-bearers near Horemheb’s chariot. The Great General stood perched like a falcon, watching every manoeuvre, rapping out orders to a scribe. ‘Well, Mahu?’
I described our days of drilling raw recruits. Horemheb listened intently and ordered the front squadron of chariotry on the left wing to move backwards and forwards, creating a cloud of dust, whilst at the same time detaching squadrons, moving them behind our lines to bolster our right. Weakening our left flank was an unusual manoeuvre, which brought cries of protest from Horemheb’s staff, yet he was insistent. Once this stratagem was completed, Horemheb sent forward massed ranks of archers to loose volley after volley, scoring the enemy foot and their chariot squadrons on the left wing. The latter moved forward, eager to respond and engage, anything to stop that black rain of whistling death. As they did so, Horemheb gave the order to Nebamun, commander of our strengthened right flank and leader of an elite corps, to advance with all haste.
We hurried back to our chariots even as the trumpets shrilled and Nebamun’s standard-bearer, appraised of what was happening, shouted and called. Again the trumpet rang out. Sobeck and I were hardly ready as Nebamun’s chariot moved forward, standards aloft, displaying the God Ptah in human form, a small statue at the end of a gold-plated pole. We followed. Our chariot line rattled forward, drivers slightly crouched, their companions already notching arrow to bow. At first there was confusion, one chariot slamming into another, horses becoming too excited, but the faster we advanced the more our squadron began to break up into line. Order was restored, horses and charioteers grew settled, trumpets sounded. Our world became one of rumbling wheels, wind whipping the dust by our faces. More shouts, further blasts of trumpets, and our horses moved into a trot then a gallop, followed by the most glorious sights, a whole corps, squadron after squadron, line after line of charging chariots, carriages of electrum gleaming in the sun. The plumes between our horses’ ears rose and fell to the ominous rattle of the wheels; the embroidered javelin pouches and quivers slapped against the sides to be lost under the thunderous sound of thousands of charging hoofs.
Horemheb’s plan was brutal and simple: to shatter the enemy’s left flank and roll the remnants up on its centre, drive the enemy forces away from the fortress and trap them against the tributary of the Nile. Old men discuss such tactics. Veterans bore their grand-children with stories of such a charge. They dab their fingers into their wine or beer and sketch drawings on the table to show how it was or how it should have been. Yet if you were there, you felt the shock of battle, the thrill of the clash, the heart-stopping excitement of the charge. Sometimes I curse Horemheb’s name, for we have fought each other, yet one thing I will concede: he was blessed by the genius of the God of War. He had moved so swiftly, so fiercely to trap his enemy that the usurper had been caught unprepared, and whatever the Hittites were thinking, they failed to act. Instead of swinging their right flank to smash into our left, they did nothing except draw chariots and men from elsewhere to bolster that part of their battle line now under attack. Such fumbling lost them the battle: their own chariot squadrons were hardly moving when we smashed into them, sending soldiers, their mounts and chariots crashing over into the dust. Even the huge Hittite carriages tumbled over, their crews spilling out, bodies being ripped apart under hoofs and wheels. Those who were lucky to survive staggered to their feet only to be sent sprawling again with hideous blows from sword, axe, club or feathered shafts loosed at very close range. Sobeck and I were in the front of the advance, yet we broke right through, turning left to charge back into the rear of the enemy foot, who were so disconcerted they did not know which way to turn.
Even I, inexperienced in war, recognised that the usurper faced disaster. No greater force exists than massed Egyptian chariots at loose amongst enemy foot. Horses and wheels alone wreak hideous damage. If a man jumped aside, he would usually fall into the path of another chariot, and even if he escaped, there was the constant rain of javelins and arrows to face!
The enemy foot were paid mercenaries, more used to pillaging villages than battling against the elite corps of Egypt. They fell back, their left wing seeking protection in the centre. Horemheb then committed his whole battle line. The enemy were pushed back, away from the fortress, across the plain into the green shrubbery which divided the market town from the ancient city of Avaris. The noise and screams were blood-curdling. Men staggered around, holding gruesome wounds to head or body. Horemheb had ordered the imperial colours to be clearly displayed, a
sign that no prisoners were to be taken. The battle turned into a rout, which slipped into a massacre. Sobeck and I faced no danger. Occasionally a mercenary would try to board our chariot or bring our horses down, only to be easily dispatched by an arrow or, if he came too close, javelin or club. The ground grew streaked with blood, and littered with corpses. We came up against the Hittite corps, professional fighters who, for a while, stopped our advance. Nevertheless, our chariots milled around them whilst our archers and foot danced in between seeking a gap in their line, a chance to hamstring horses or loose arrows at the chariot crew. Eventually they broke, leaping down from their chariots to join the fleeing mercenaries.
By now we were in front of the fortress. All the guards had disappeared. I drew my chariot alongside Nebamun’s, screaming my request at him. The heat of the battle had rejuvenated the old colonel. Lines and furrows had disappeared, eyes gleamed bright in his dusty, blood-streaked face. He listened to my request and turned, shouting at a staff officer. We guided our chariot out of the mêlée, followed by a dozen others. Accompanied by archers and a unit of Nakhtu-aa, we thundered towards the main gate of the fortress. We met no opposition. The gates hung half open, and the Nakhtu-aa pulled them aside and charged in. Other units of Horemheb’s battle line, realising the battle was over, followed us, eager for plunder. The camp was now given over to pillage and the rape of women left behind.