Child of the morning

by Gedge, Pauline, 1945-

  ''Stay! Stay and fight!" she shouted at them. ''I order!" And they swung back once more.

  She lost sight of them in the dust and stench that rose from the sand.

  The chariot picked up speed as the ranks thinned. Then they were on the periphery, and Menkh slowed the horses.

  '*What are you doing?'' she screamed at him furiously.

  He shook his head, letting one hand go of the reins for a moment, to wipe the sweat from his brow. He grinned at the spectacle of his Queen, dirty gray dust sticking to her wet kilt, sweat running between her full breasts, her face streaked with kohl and blood, waving a white fist at him in nervous anger. Beyond them the cries and clashes of war went on, but he slacked the reins before he answered.

  ''Majesty, the General Nehesi told me that when your spear was gone and you could no longer use your bow, I was to drive you immediately from the field on pain of death, and so have I done." His voice was hoarse from shouting, and she looked at him for one astounded and angry moment before she attempted a smile. He smiled back.

  ''Wise Nehesi, to so guard the Flower of Egypt!" she said, and at the sight of his face as he tried to control himself, she burst into laughter. "I know!" she said. "Never have I looked less like a flower!"

  "You look like what you are. Majesty," he said. "Commander of the Braves of the King," and he saw her eyes light up.

  After a while they both suddenly realized that the sun was much higher and that the breath in their lungs was scorching.

  "We cannot sit here, idle, while men die," she said. "Drive me around the battle, Menkh, for I have many arrows left, and I intend to use them all. Thus you may obey both Nehesi and myself, for we shall stay well clear of the center of the conflict."

  He tightened the reins again and began to canter her in a wide circle, joining the other charioteers who were harrying the Nubians who tried to run.

  Nehesi saw her little silver Cobra bobbing above the heads of the struggling men. Sometimes she was cheered as she passed the little groups, but more often she was ignored, for now the Nubians were desperate men, seeing no mercy and no quarter in the eyes of the Egyptians. Gathering the last of their strength, they fought with great savagery, using teeth and bare hands when their weapons lay broken in the dust. Hatshepsut marked many men, and many men fell with her gold-tipped arrows in their throats, their backs. Once, when a Nubian broke and ran like a rabbit over the burning sand, she galloped after him, arrow to bow and eye to arrow. There was no quiver in her fingers now as she brought him, screaming and kicking, to the ground; and before Menkh could draw rein and turn, they had run over his body, the wheels of the chariot bumping as they churned him into the sand.

  At last, when the afternoon sun had passed its peak and was beginning

  to fall, the pace slowed, and Hatshepsut fired her last arrow and laid her bow on the floor of her chariot. She ordered Menkh to drive in search of Nclicsi. She was weary, tired to the bone, throbbing in every muscle. She wanted to sink to the floor and sit, her back blissfully set against the warm gold, but she forced herself to stand tall, gripping the sides of the chariot in the effort. Everywhere she saw death and ruin. The sand was littered with bodies, sometimes piled with them. Here and there little skirmishes went on; in other places knots of tired Egyptian troops gathered around their standards and their officers, dirty and caked with blood. Blood also soaked the sand, lying in little pools or covering the ground in long spurts. She passed one oflRcer and two of his soldiers who were going among the Nubian wounded, slitting their throats with quick, businesslike strokes. She turned her head away, hearing her own voice give the order that was now being carried out. She wished with a terrible vehemence that Thothmes was here now to see how war really was, and she rode through the stillness that followed the battle with her eyes flashing and her teeth bared, her revulsion against his soft body and womanly ways growing as she looked about her.

  She found Nehesi at last with pen-Nekheb and Hapuseneb and a dozen other officers. Lying at their feet were ten dark bodies of men she at first took to be dead. She got stiffly out of the chariot and walked toward them; behind her Menkh sank gratefully to the floor, the reins looped about his arm. The men bowed, not one of them wishing to meet her eye, overwhelmed by the new awe in which they held her, the avenging Daughter of Amun.

  But she confronted them, smiling faintly in spite of her weariness. ''So ours is the victory," she said. ''Wefl have you fought this day, and I will cause to be set here a stone telling of your valor."

  AH at once the body of one of the men on the sand twitched convulsively, and she stepped back.

  ''Who are they?" she asked.

  Hapuseneb answered her. He, too, was tired. He had fought with his men in the thick of the battle and had taken an arrow in the arm, but the eyes that at last sought hers were as steady and calming as ever.

  "If they were not naked, you would know, Majesty, that they are the Princes of Kush, chiefs of the Ten Tribes you see wasted around you."

  She looked down on the slippery, bare bodies and shaved skulls with renewed interest and mounting anger. "Get up!" she shouted at them, kicking the nearest one with her foot.

  They rose weakly, standing before her with downcast eyes.

  "Fools!" she hissed at them, stalking around them, all the pent-up relief

  and madness of the day breaking forth from her. 'Thrice fools! Your damnable fathers, and their fathers before them, died under the hands of the soldiers of Egypt. Do you never learn wisdom? What of your children, your wives? Will they spawn new enemies of my country, to be fed to the jackals in their turn? Egypt gives you security! Egypt gives you peace and defends you! And for what?'*

  She turned suddenly and spat in the face of one of the chiefs, but he did not stir, and the spittle dropped from his cheek onto the ground.

  **So that you can rend and burn and loot and rape. Filth!"

  She swung back to her generals. ''Assemble the army," she said shortly. "When the men are together, before we march from this place to seek a tenting place for the night, bring these men and remove their heads from their bodies. Set the heads on poles, with the bodies beneath, for my anger is kindled, and I wish the whole of Kush to know what it is to defy the might of Egypt. Save one, and we will bring him to Assuan, to the feet of Pharaoh, and then he will be sacrificed to Amun—a more fitting death than he deserves!" She snarled, shaking all over as if she had been struck with a fit.

  Hapuseneb went to her swiftly. "Come and rest. Majesty," he said gently. "You have fought as your ancestors today, and their glory shines on in you undiminished. Let Menkh take you to a place where you can sleep."

  As he spoke, she passed a trembling hand across her eyes, and her shoulders suddenly slumped. "I am weary," she admitted. "But I cannot rest yet. Tell me, Hapuseneb, how many of our men have fallen?"

  "We do not know until the count is taken," he replied, "but I think not many."

  "What of the traitors? Was there any sign of Egyptians among the rebels?"

  "That also we do not know, but we may soon find out."

  With a long stride he was beside one of the chiefs. "Now speak," he said softly, his cool voice full of menace and his gauntleted hand at the man's neck, "and by speaking you may extend your life by a few days and die a good death before the God. How did the garrison fall?"

  The man looked at him sullenly, mutinously, and with one sweep of his fist Hapuseneb knocked him to the ground, where he lay stunned, blood trickling from his mouth and gushing from his nose.

  "Lift him," Hapuseneb said quietly. Hands raised the prisoner to his feet, and he stood, swaying, wiping at his nose with a black, dirty finger. "I ask you again, what of the garrison?" As Hapuseneb stepped forward again, the man quailed.

  "I will tell you," he said, **and since I am to die, I say also that it gave me great pleasure to slit the throats of the soldiers. My people are tired of giving the wealth of their country to Egypt, year after year, and be assured that you beat us today and beat
us tomorrow and the next year and the next, but we will never stop fighting."

  Nehesi made a sound deep in his chest and swung forward. But Hat-shepsut put out a hand, and he was instantly very still, his eyes boring into the Nubian as if he could set him on fire with his gaze.

  'The garrison, fool!" Hapuseneb growled, and the man nodded.

  His companions had not moved. They seemed to be in the last stages of the apathy that impending death creates, and they stood with their limbs hanging loosely and their heads bowed.

  'The gates were opened to us by an officer, a man who had befriended us over the years and whose brother had been put to death by Pharaoh many years ago, and the rest was easy."

  ''His name!" Hatshepsut screamed at him, galvanized. "His name, his name, his name!"

  The Nubian just looked at her with dull eyes. "I do not know his name. None of us knew it. The commander slew him as he stood outside the door."

  "And the commander? What of Wadjmose?" Hapuseneb asked, but it was Hatshepsut who stepped nearer, her hands clasped in an agony of apprehension.

  "He also fell. He lies somewhere within the fort."

  They stood in silence, and at last Hatshepsut turned away.

  "Well it is that my father did not live to see this day," she said, and she slowly got into the chariot to stand behind Menkh. "Nehesi, take your men and journey farther, to the garrison, and bring back the body of my brother if you can find it. He shall have the greatest tomb and the funeral of the Prince that he was. Hapuseneb, bring me the lists of the wounded and the dead. Menkh can pitch a tent for me away from this stinking place."

  She sat down on the floor of the chariot, her head lolling back, while Menkh walked the horses away. Before he had raised her tent beside the baggage train, two miles out in the desert, the sun had sunk below the horizon.

  Nehesi and half the Braves of the King left the next morning on the grim quest. While the rest of the company waited for their return, the Nubian dead were piled together and burned, and the Egyptians hurriedly embalmed and buried in the sand. Hatshepsut ordered the raising of a

  stone that was to be brought from beyond the desert as quickly as possible and set over the Egyptian grave. She went to the tent that held the wounded, walking from man to man with whatever comfort she could give. She found Sen-nefer, delirious from a wound in his thigh that was already festering, and she ordered his removal, placing him upon her own couch and calling her own physician to tend him. The man told her that the wound was not serious and that Sen-nefer would undoubtedly recover, but Sen-nefer's groans and constant senseless babbling upset her. She took over Nehesi's tent, sitting before it and nursing her own aching muscles while she watched the army restore order quietly and efficiently. She felt a deep sense of anticlimax, sitting idly beside her standard, seeing weapons cleaned and uniforms washed. The events of the campaign were already blurred in her mind, pushed deep into the dark places of her brain by reaction and nervous exhaustion. She felt that she had done her duty and would never again go to war with the army. She no longer needed to prove by her deeds as well as by her words that she was worthy of the Double Crown. She pondered her future darkly, in a mood of fatalism, wondering whether this was to be the last adventure in her life. The mood stayed with her through the execution of the Nubian chiefs who went to their deaths as stonily silent as they had been the day before.

  Nehesi returned in the evening of the third day, bearing with him the charred and almost unrecognizable body of her brother.

  Hatshepsut took one horrified, unbelieving look and ordered that he also be buried in the sand. There was nothing much left of him to preserve, but she found it hard to believe that so valiant a man had no place with the gods because of it. She would cause his name to be chiseled many times over in stones and rocks and on the faces of cliffs to give him a chance, for as long as a name remained, the gods could find a man.

  She sent Zeserkerasonb's troops back to him, promising gifts to him and to them all.

  In the morning they would begin the trek home, but she was not eager to go. In many ways the life of a soldier suited her very well: the freedoms, the travel, the satisfactions of the campfire and the tent. But she was careful to admit to herself that it was the prospect of Thothmes that daunted her. Sen-nefer had regained consciousness and slept with Menkh, and she found the solitude of her tent and the desert night pleasing; but her mind was racing, and she could not sleep. She was restless until she heard the horns sound. As the camp stirred and shook itself like a whistled dog, she rose reluctantly, wishing for a bath in the river and feeling nauseated by the cooking smells and the taste of her morning wine. She sat in her chair while she waited for her tent to be dismantled, watching

  the tassels of licr standard spark in the morning sun and wishing that she coiikl vomit.

  There were not many wounded to carry, but there were enough to slow them down, and they marched at a leisurely pace, favoring pulled muscles and relaxing. Their mood was one of holiday. There was a lot of singing and laughter, and in the evenings they were entertained by the antics of Menkh and other young nobles. Yamu-nefru spent the time protesting that the desert sun had utterly dried out his skin, and he moaned for his perfumed oils. Djehuty raged at a spot on his white kilt that would not come out. Hatshepsut listened with a deep thankfulness in her heart for them all, the ones who loved her. Hapuseneb and pen-Nekheb were closeted together each night, dictating to the scribe the events of the campaign, requests for new weapons to replace those splintered and lost in the battle, and lists of men for promotion and awards.

  Nehesi came to Hatshepsut and squatted at her side, his handsome black face as smooth and bland as ever, his gaze sweeping the camp with a calm superiority. He seemed to enjoy her company, though they would often sit for an hour and say nothing. She once asked him if he had a wife at home in Thebes.

  He grinned swiftly, caught by surprise. '*No wife. Majesty, and no concubines. I do not need women, nor do I need the love of men. Egypt and the army are my loves, and fighting is my leisure. I prefer my own company above all others—save your own. I think, and I read a great deal."

  Now it was she who was surprised. ''It is odd for a soldier to be able to read!"

  'Tes. My mother taught me, but how she learned the characters, I shall never know. I read of the wars of your father and your ancestors and their struggles with the Hyksos, but I do not think that I shall have much more time for reading."

  ''Why not? Do you think that I now have a taste for war and shall keep you ever on the march?" She was laughing at him, and he smiled back.

  "Perhaps. You are a soldier after the heart of your noble ancestor the great Queen Tetisheri, who plotted the downfall of the invader Hyksos, and I am proud to be a general under you."

  She shook her head decisively. "War is wasteful, unless it be a war of defense or a border dispute such as this was. I want peace for my people and secure growth. But you are right when you say that from now on little of your time will be your own. I have a mind to make you Guardian of the Royal Seal."

  He sat very still, and presently he looked up at her. "It is enough that you made me a General, Majesty," he began.

  But she cut him short. *'It is not enough! I want a strong man always at my elbow, a man from whom the Royal Seal can be wrested only through force. Pharaoh does not need the Seal, but I do. Will you wear it on your belt, Nehesi, and be with me at all times? It will still be possible for you to discharge your duties as General, and I think I will put you in charge of the Followers of His Majesty also. You are an ideal bodyguard.''

  "I am a rough man, unused to moving in court circles, uncouth," he replied, but a faint, sardonic smile played about his mouth. *Tet I can ask nothing more than to serve you—and Pharaoh. Truly you are the God, for only the God could assume the body of a woman and yet fight as you have fought, and all the men know it. You have put on me a great privilege."

  ''Such words may be lightly and easily spoken," she said, ''but remember
them, Nehesi, in the years that follow. I do not believe that I was born to be a Queen, and yet the future is not known to me. I may need your mighty arm raised again in my defense."

  He nodded briefly, accepting her faith in him without further question. When he left she felt satisfied, sure of having made a good decision.

  When they reached the river, she could bathe at last. But they did not tarry long, for Assuan lay only another day's march away and the heralds had gone ahead with the news of their victory. Hatshepsut opened her ivory traveling box and got out her wig and her crown and her golden bracelets, and when the triumphal procession formed, she took her place in the forefront, her chariot gleaming clean behind the Standard-Bearers.

  They passed slowly into Assuan through a laughing, crying mob of city dwellers who pelted them with flowers and ran out to offer them wine and sweetmeats. Thothmes was waiting for them in front of the gates, sitting on his throne in full regalia. She greeted him and went and sat beside him as the generals filed past, laying their staffs of oflBce before him and kissing his painted feet before receiving their rewards.

  The Nubian chief came last, bound tightly with reins from a dead horse and stumbling with utter weariness, for throughout the march the soldiers behind him had flicked him with their whips, and his back was scored and bloody and covered with flies. Nehesi led him before Pharaoh, pushing him roughly to the ground, and he fell on his face, unable to save himself. Thothmes put out a jeweled foot and placed it on his neck, and the populace roared its approval, scenting blood.

  Pen-Nekheb related the events of the past weeks, and they all listened, Thothmes smiling and nodding enthusiastically; and when the old warrior had finished, Thothmes rose, raising the glittering golden Flail and Grook in the air in a gesture of victory.

  "So perish all enemies of Egypt!" he shouted, and the army saluted