Less than five hundred paces behind the crest of the hill lay the tents of the surgeons. Bloodied and mangled bodies were being carried in on stretchers or handcarts, or stumbled in with shuffling steps. The injured lay in lines under the merciless sun outside, awaiting their turn. Orderlies moved quickly between the lines of injured, pouring water, soothing brows and assessing the order in which the injured would be carried into the tents. Those with injuries beyond treatment, great rents in their bellies and guts hanging out or smashed heads with brains exposed, were given quick and merciful relief with a knife.
Kiya worked in the shade of one of the medical tents dealing with less serious injuries, sword slashes, spear stabs and limbs broken from the smashing blows of enemy maces. She cleaned and stitched wounds, pouring on herbal antiseptic and then anointing them with honey before binding the wounds. Some injured bore their treatment quietly, others screamed and thrashed about, having to be restrained to allow their treatment to occur. Two medical orderlies and Umtau assisted her, the huge Nubian amazingly gentle with the injured soldiers as he carefully applied antiseptic and anti-bacterial unguents and bound bandages around the wounds.
The men waiting for Kiya’s ministrations squatted or lay patiently in line outside the tent, most stoically bearing their injuries. Some fifteen paces away was the tent where the battlefield surgeons worked on the more seriously injured. There the waiting lines lay on the ground, moving feebly and moaning – or in some cases screaming with unbearable pain. Several of the ambulatory soldiers who’d had their broken limbs set and bound or cuts sewn and bandaged had been sent by Kiya to tend the other wounded still waiting their turn. Those waiting outside her tent were given water and words of encouragement.
Those outside the next tent could not be allowed to drink until after they had been treated, and so their attendants moistened their lips with a few drops of water, wiped their brows and brushed away the flies that swarmed around the open wounds. The air was redolent with the stench of blood, faeces, vomit and fear. Pepi lay on the ground at Kiya’s feet, whining gently and disturbed by the smells and terrible noise.
At the charnel-house that was the front line the Egyptian wounded and corpses had eventually been cleared from the fighting-line. The enemy wounded had been summarily dispatched and the bodies of the enemy troops who had pierced the line before they died had been thrown back onto the piles of corpses, in many places waist high, that marked where the Egyptian front line had stood. The sand and gravel underfoot was splattered with gore and drenched in blood, the ground turned into red mud by the blood that had been spilled.
At the instruction of their officers the Egyptian ranks then withdrew back up the hill, to allow themselves an unobstructed fighting-ground when the enemy came again and for the pile of dead to obstruct and disrupt the enemy advance. The spearmen in the front ranks had placed their large shields and their spears on the ground in front of them and were squatting on their heels as they relaxed briefly. A few hurriedly ate the stale flat bread and the jerked beef that had been distributed. All drank thirstily from the water-skins carried by the boys and youths who accompanied the army. The swordsmen and axe-men sat clustered behind, ready to move into line if needed. Many of the archers roamed ahead of the lines, recovering spent arrows and often small items from the enemy dead.
Ahead of them in the depression between the small hills the enemy troops were regrouping. After the butchery of the last hour the two armies were now nearly of equal size. But the remaining chariots, now perhaps eighty in number with running repairs and replacement horses and some scratch crewmen, gave Pharaoh’s army the advantage. The dust of the battle had largely settled, although the haze which hung around where the Nubian regiments were regrouping obscured a clear view of their preparations.
On the gently sloping incline leading to the Egyptian lines the dead lay in their hundreds, scattered individually where struck down by the arrows of the charioteers, in clusters where ridden down and crushed by the horses or in wind-rows where cut down by the arrows of the Egyptian archers. Here and there were wrecked chariots, most overturned when they had smashed against rocks or their horses had been brought down by enemy arrows, horses lying dead in the traces and crews butchered in retribution for the swift death that they had brought to the enemy.
“I do hope Zimmat will recover,” commented Nikolas, concerned about the injured horse.
“He is a superb animal,” replied Pamose as he gestured to Nikolas to stand so he could again check the bindings of his armour.
He grunted as he used a bronze knife to extract a flint arrow-head lodged between the bronze scales of the back Nikolas’ armour. “Shot in the back - not a very good example of bravery for the troops! Fortunately the enemy seem short of bronze arrow-heads!” he quipped as he tried to bend the bronze scales back into place, before raising his arms to allow Nikolas to check his own armour and tighten the bindings.
“Where’s Kahun? Is he safe? I can see the medical tents, so I know where Kiya and Umtau are,” asked Nikolas.
“He’s up on the hill with General Minnakht. He should be safe enough unless things really start to fall apart and he’s thrown into a breach with a company of reserve troops. The general’s staff have given up their chariots and can’t flee if things go against us, but that’s unlikely. Trust me, he’s safer than we are!”
Minnakht was content to allow the enemy to regroup rather than order a quick advance of his own men. The men of the Royal Army were tired from the initial attack and the enemy still had equality of numbers, although the latter would be even more exhausted from having run first towards and then away from the battle-line. Also Minnakht knew that the rebels had to win and rout Pharaoh’s forces from the field to be successful. They couldn’t afford to leave a loyal army in the field to hinder the rebels’ move north, so the pressure to force a result was on the enemy.
Minnakht walked along the front line, facing his men with the piles of enemy dead just behind him, exhorting the troops and meeting with the officers. The tactics would remain the same. “Let the enemy come and be ground into the dust!” roared Minnakht.
“We shall stand and fight here! Egyptian steadiness and discipline will prevail! Stand steady and follow your orders, in the name of Divine Ramesses! Montu, Sekhmet and the other gods of Egypt are with us, and we shall prevail!”
“Ramesses! Ramesses! Ramesses!” roared the ranks, standing to beat spear, sword and axe against shields in a thunderous clash.
As if in response to the challenge the front ranks of the enemy began to move forward at a trot. They were some five hundred paces distant and they also began drumming weapons on their shields as they advanced. They trampled the dead and wounded as they advanced, their ranks becoming disarrayed as they stumbled over the bodies heaped on the ground.
The officers amongst the ranks of Pharaoh’s arm gestured for silence, which slowly fell, and then the officers paced the small space between the shield-wall and the supporting axe-men and swordsmen. “Stand firm! Wait for them to come to us! We will meet them standing here, after the archers have had at them! For the honour of the Regiment and Divine Ramesses! Amun will protect us! Sekhmet will strengthen our arms! Steady lads! Steady! Archers! Loose!”
Again four hundred arrows sped like angry hornets overhead, falling amongst the advancing enemy. Men fell singly and in lines, arrows piercing their bodies. The archers concentrated on the mercenary regiments advancing in the centre and on the left of the enemy line, and these fell in their dozens despite the shields they carried and armour they wore. As the range shortened the archers ceased to loft their arrows and shot straight into the approaching mass. The front ranks of spearmen crouched, readying themselves to absorb the impact of the charge, and the swordsmen and axe-men moved close behind in support.
On the left flank, where the advancing rebel troops appeared to be Egyptian Army Regulars, the enemy troops slowed and stopped just out of bow-shot. Nikolas was standing in his chariot at the top of
the rise and could see a group of soldiers turn and use their swords to slash their way to the small regimental command-group just behind their ranks, and with flashing blows quickly dispatch them.
Several junior officers ran through the stationary front rank, swords now sheathed, towards Pharaoh’s army.
Minnakht saw what was happening and with two officers and ten men strode forward to meet them. After a brief parley the former rebel officers ran back towards their men, gesturing for them to move to their right to support the left flank of Pharaoh’s army.
Minnakht returned to his lines and ordered no action against the former rebels unless they showed treachery. It appeared that the rebel gold had only been distributed to the high-ranking officers and that the junior officers and troops had remained loyal.
A few moments later Minnakht ordered the chariots on the right wing to charge, just as the Nubians who formed the rebel line at that point hit the royalist shield-wall. At the same time a runner from Minnakht arrived with instructions for Pamose and the chariots on the left flank, ordering a charge by half of the chariots with the other half to be held in reserve. Nikolas and Pamose stood still with their fidgeting mounts as two squadrons rolled forwards.
Thirty chariots advanced from each flank and smashed into the enemy ranks, knocking them over like skittles. Three chariots were taken down by enemy spear thrusts to the horses and the crews were butchered, but the rest punched their way through, horses trampling the enemy and the chariot-archers shooting as fast as they could draw their bows. The enemy second line, composed of the Nubian regiments that had been decimated and pushed back earlier in the day, were again savaged by the chariot-archers, while the rebel advance troops hacked and heaved in their struggle against the shield-wall of Pharaoh’s army.
On the enemy’s right flank, opposite Nikolas and Pamose, the mass of Nubians now deprived of the lead-in of the defecting Egyptian regiment and now outnumbered, came to a halt and began to stream back. The chariots of Pamose’s half-squadron, now only fifteen strong, advanced carefully to provide a screen as Minnakht ordered the left wing of his army, led by their newly gained allies, to fold in and envelope the centre of the enemy line.
The chariots that had charged from each flank had largely held off the rebel Nubian regiments that had been advancing as reinforcements behind the front ranks of their army, although at great cost. Perhaps only half the chariots still remained, moving backwards and forwards, loosing arrows as they went.
Screened by the chariots of Pamose’s squadron, the soldiers on Minnakht’s left flank slashed into the mercenaries in the rebels’ centre like lions into a flock of goats. Their right flank overwhelmed, the mercenaries’ centre buckled and they turned and fled, followed by arrows as archers shot into their unprotected backs.
Pamose’s squadron exchanged places with the exhausted remnants of the squadrons that had charged before, and then pursued and harried the broken enemy mercenaries, killing as many as they could. The Nubians were allowed to flee largely unmolested.
Thousands of bodies lay on the battlefield. A dense line of corpses, in places piled nearly chest high, marked where Pharaoh’s army had fought and where many of its men had died. Beyond that was a carpet of bodies riddled with arrows fired by the archers and beyond again were many hundreds of scattered corpses where the chariots had wreaked their destruction. Several dozen shattered chariots stood like beacons, dotted around the battlefield.
The relatively fresh troops of the Egyptian reserve regiment and the former rebel Egyptian troops followed the enemy, moving quickly and unopposed towards the hill where the enemy officers and archers had stood. These were now nowhere in sight, having joined the general flight from the battlefield.
Nikolas, Pamose and their men halted just beyond the deserted enemy baggage-camp on the other side of the hill, pausing only at a captured watering-point to water their horses and place a few waterskins in the chariots. It was late afternoon, and the rest of the day would be busy for the mobile arm of the army.
The former rebel regiment of Egyptian soldiers came over the hill and were forced past the baggage camp and down the road towards the village of Karanog not far beyond. Any who paused to loot the baggage-camp were shot down by Pamose without compunction. He was glad that the former rebels had regained their loyalty, but all was not forgiven. After about half an hour, with the sun sinking low over the desert sky, the remaining chariots, now with fresh horses, came over the hill. Even with some damaged chariots reclaimed from the battlefield, repaired and given new horses and crews, less than sixty chariots remained. The reduced chariot numbers meant there were now ample fresh horses from the reserve teams that had been left in the horse-lines.
The village of Karanog lay a mile south, near the river. The former rebel regiment of Egyptians, now completely under control, had pushed beyond the village as the chariots finished regrouping and moved forwards. As they did so the first of the loyalist army regiments, who had now also regrouped and watered, were breasting the hill and moving south.
The chariots had been regrouped into three squadrons each of about twenty, a third manned by scratch crews; only about forty of the original sixty chariot crews remained. They quickly reached the village and Nikolas was sickened by what he saw. Although the village still stood, its inhabitants had been butchered by the retreating enemy and the town looted of its few miserable possessions. Men, women and children lay scattered in the dust and huddled in death in their hovels. Babies had been taken from their cradles, their brains smashed against walls and the pathetic bodies dropped where they lay. Men had been slaughtered as they had sought to protect their families, and women had been violated and then slaughtered.
Nikolas vomited against a wall, tears streaming down his face as he viewed the devastation that remained. Little was said amongst the troops but their facial expressions hardened and they marched with renewed vigour. They moved forwards in the gathering darkness, quickly passing the foot-soldiers and visiting retribution on the stragglers of the enemy army as they caught them. They paused outside the town of Aniba as night fell, taking turns to go to the river to water the horses.
The horses had been unhitched from the chariot. Pamose led one to the edge of the water to drink and Nikolas led the other. “I’ve been involved in a few skirmishes before, but that was my first real battle,” commented Pamose. “The battle was bad enough, but we’re trained for that. But the butchery in the village… that will live in my nightmares forever.”
Nikolas nodded his agreement. “Who do you think was responsible?”
“Since the slaughter in the village has meant that we’re now killing every rebel or invader we find, instead of allowing them to flee southwards, it probably doesn’t matter all that much. Whichever group of men who did it are either lying dead in the sand, or will be shortly. I’ve never seen my troops so angry and determined to exterminate the enemy.”
T T T T
In the tent behind the battlefield Kiya and Umtau continued to work doggedly by the light of an oil lamp hung from the tent centre-support, cleaning, stitching and dressing wounds. Kiya had stripped off her shift-dress and now worked in a brief loincloth, her bare chest and arms wet and sticky with blood, dried blood in her hair where she had wiped the sweat from her brow with bloody hands. Spilled blood made the instruments slippery and turned the sand underfoot into a gory mud. In the sixth hour of the night, having worked in the tent non-stop for nearly fifteen hours, Kiya staggered out into the cool darkness of the night and washed in a bucket of water provided for her by a medical orderly, before she and Umtau collapsed in exhausted slumber in the back of a medical supply cart.
By dawn three regiments of foot had joined the forces outside Aniba, marching through the darkness. The gates of Aniba stood open and in the town several houses burned. The chariots by-passed the town and pressed quickly on. Each chariot now also carried two foot-soldiers, sitting on the back-plate. When they caught up with groups of rebels who surrendered prompt
ly the rebels would be disarmed and marched back by a few foot-soldiers. Any who showed resistance were killed where they stood.
Shortly after dawn Kiya and Umtau stirred and rose before seeking out the kitchen wagon to snatch a bite to eat. Lines of injured were still before the medical tents. Bodies of those who had died under the knife or while waiting for treatment lay in a long line placed on one side - several hundred corpses. Carts creaked and rattled as they were drawn to the river a short distance away, full of wounded who gasped with pain at each stone and rut hit by the wheels. There they were carefully loaded onto ships and carried north to Afia and Amata.
Kiya and Umtau walked the few hundred paces to the top of the rise on which the battle had been fought. On the far slope they stopped and stared in amazement. Thousands lay dead where they had fallen. Where the shield-wall had stood the dead were piled waist-high. Beyond bodies lay in rows like grass cut down by a scythe.
Further out still, where the chariots had done their work, they lay in patches of half a dozen or so, with the occasional body of a horse dotted here and there. The downed chariots had been recovered for repair and reuse, and the charioteers removed to recover their valuable scale-armour and for the bodies to be prepared for burial.
Men walked amongst the bodies, occasionally stooping to snatch something valuable as they looted the dead. Teams of captured enemy soldiers worked under guard, digging large open pits and collecting the Egyptian dead for burial. “Come on, you misbegotten sons of jackals! btnw Sa pigs! Dig! Or by Seth’s foul breath I’ll plant you in the hole!” roared the supervisor.
Despite being drained by fatigue and almost numbed by her experiences of the past few hours, tears streamed down Kiya’s face, making tracks through the mask of dust and blood on her face.
Murder in the Palace: A Nikolas of Kydonia Mystery Page 37