The Captive Soul

by Josepha Sherman

  “Thank you,” he murmured. “I—”

  “Walk warily,” she cut in, so suddenly that Methos nearly started. Her eyes wide and visionary, the queen told him, “You shall aid my grandsons, and aid them well. But… walk warily.”

  “Ah, might I ask for some specific details?”

  “No. I fear not. The vision has gone. But you have already walked warily for many years, haven’t you? So now. Continue to do so.

  “Now, off with you. I wish to be alone.”

  Methos stood with Kamose and Ahmose, looking out over the Red Cliff Oasis to where the warriors trained.

  “Now they look ready!” the pharaoh boasted with an expansive gesture over the practice field. “Now they look like an army.”

  Methos had to admit that they were much improved, bowmen protecting infantry, assault teams practicing with swift rushes and fierce attacks, and cavalrymen on their precious horses cutting down targets to left and right with sword and spear.

  But are they going to look so deadly against living foes?

  At least these weren’t all amateurs, not anymore. Methos and Ahmose had persuaded the pharaoh to hire a troop of mercenaries as well, the Medjai, deadly archers from the deserts on the eastern side of the Nile, fierce, dark-skinned, proud men (though not too proud to take a pharaoh’s gold) who hated the Hyksos—as, indeed, they would have hated any other invaders. Interspaced with the Egyptians, they gave Kamose’s young army some much-needed military experience.

  “Hear me, oh my troops!” Kamose shouted, his voice echoing off the cliffs. “The time has come! No longer will we need bend our knee to the Hyksos might. Now shall we sweep down the Nile like a blast of fire! Now shall We, your pharaoh, fight with the false one who names himself Apophis, now shall We rend him apart!

  “Now shall Egypt be delivered from the Hyksos yoke!

  “Now shall Egypt once again be free!”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Egypt, the Nile and Avaris: Reigns of Pharaoh

  Kamose and King Apophis, 1570 B.C.

  Kill and kill again, think of nothing but Nebet, this is for you, Nebet, I avenge you again and yet again—

  Methos, red-dripping sword in hand, wheeled his horse about, looking this way and that, hunting more foes, the wildness of battle blazing through him. All about him, the city of Nefrusy, treacherous Nefrusy that had dared to bow down to the Hyksos, lay in flaming ruins, smoke billowing up to darken the sky. The Hyksos garrison had been caught utterly, fatally, off its guard, and now its leader lay dead, the traitor Teti dead at his side, its soldiers and Nefrusy’s common folk cut down alike by the Egyptian army—har vested like the wheat, Methos thought wildly, before the reaper.

  And I am a reaper. I am a blade to take their lives—

  No. No, calm. Wariness. Too easy for someone lurking in the ruins to throw a knife, fell him, behead him before he could recover. He stood panting, glancing about, struggling for breath and composure amid the chaos of screams and smoke and crackling flames.

  Ah, but here came Kamose, proud and tall in his war chariot, sword as red as Methos’s own, eyes as fierce, and all Methos could think at the sight was, Fool, fool of a leader, to so expose yourself to danger!

  “Sire, get back to the ships!” he shouted. “There is noth ing more for you here.”

  “The first blow!” Kamose shouted back at him. “The first blow struck, the first step taken on the path to victory!”

  No place for niceties. “There will be no second step if you do not get yourself to safety!”

  He wasted no time insisting the pharaoh listen to reason, or seeing if Kamose had actually heeded him. Instead, Methos, reminding himself that he had work yet to be done, set about rounding up the men in his own division, those who had proven themselves skilled enough in the new art of horsemanship to risk the Egyptian force’s precious few mounts.

  “Leave the looting!” he shouted at them. “Leave it!” He slapped one man, hard, with the flat of his sword, leaving a bloody mark across the man’s arm. “There will be richer loot when Avaris is taken. But now we must ride! Do you hear me? Apophis must not learn of this attack!”

  That forced some ragged cheers from them. Weary though they must surely be by now, they leaped onto their horses with at least an attempt at grace. Methos in their lead, they rode out of the charred ruins of Nefrusy, on out over the desert, still fierce as flame, northwest toward the oasis town of Bahariya and the crucial road overland to Avaris.

  No great force at Bahariya, if the royal spies were right. They’d best be right; I hardly have the men to take it else.

  An agreeable surprise waited there, though: Bahariya, a small cluster of mud brick houses around the central water, surrendered gleefully to the pharaoh’s suddenly arrived representatives without even a token struggle, greeting Methos and his men with Hyksos bodies laid out by local knives and cries of, “Freedom! Long live the pharaoh!”

  They had no idea which pharaoh it might be, nor did they much care. These desert folk were not Egyptians, but they far preferred the freedom they’d had under Egyptian rule to the dictates of the Hyksos. Kamose it was these days? Good enough! Someone snatched up a flute, someone else a drum, and dancing sprang into being so suddenly that the horses shied.

  “Come, warriors, dance with us! Water your horses, then yourselves!”

  It was palm wine being flourished in those earthen jugs.

  Yes, and sleep with our daughters, Methos thought, and bring some brave new blood into the tribe. I know how this type of celebration ends up. Not that they’ll sire any babies from me.

  But even as his warriors and the desert people were congratulating each other, the desert women already eyeing the warriors, and in particular Methos, with speculative glances, Methos saw one man steal away from the others, heading for the Hyksos messengers’ stable. Following, Methos saw him leap onto a horse with the ease of long familiarity.

  No, you don’t!

  He sprang back onto his own horse despite its protests, urging it forward. At the sound of pursuing hoofbeats, the Hyksos messenger turned in the saddle, face wild with sudden alarm.

  Yes, fear me, fear your death!

  The Hyksos rode now at a full gallop, bent low over his horse’s neck, but Methos rode his mount just as well, remembering breakneck gallops over the Asiatic steppes in the company of nomads as savage as their ponies. Methos felt his lips draw back from his teeth in a feral grin, and his sword glinted in his steady hand. He was gaining on the prey, gaining…

  Yes! A ferocious sideways slash took the man’s head, sent the messenger’s body tumbling to the ground. The messenger’s horse galloped on in terror, but Methos, fighting his own frantic horse, brought the animal to a sliding, trembling stop.

  He was trembling now himself. Easy enough to understand that reaction to the battle and to this last bit of violence was at last hitting home. Not so easy to block out memories: the sword dripping red, the dying men staring at him, the screams and the stench…

  There was no one to see this understandable but still demeaning loss of self-control, fortunately. Of course, Methos told himself, even if someone had seen, there was no true shame to it. Every warrior suffered some reaction sooner or later, some realization that those bodies he’d cut down had held life just a short while before, some realization that it might have been him lying dead on the field instead of them.

  But Methos thought with a renewed shudder that in his case there had been more to it. Gods, yes. It had been so simple to kill and kill and kill, here, back in Nefrusy, so simple and so… enjoyable. Had those he’d slain been all warriors? Had there, instead, been women, children, among them? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be quite sure; he couldn’t quite remember all the details of that savage, joyous madness.

  Someone was coming—a few of his men, leaving the celebration to see where he’d gone. Methos straightened in the saddle, forcing his face back to coldness. He reached down with his sword, stabbed the papyrus roll the mes
senger had let fall, and glanced at the contents.

  So now! Eyebrows raised, Methos gave a silent whistle as he read the hastily penned hieroglyphs. This was a far more dangerous message than anyone had expected—and it was very fortunate, indeed, that the messenger had been stopped.

  But the message was not for these men’s ears. Methos said only a curt, “There will be no advance message to Apophis,” indicating the fallen body. “Pharaoh Kamose’s ships are now as safe as we can make them.”

  “What now?” one of the men asked.

  “Now,” Methos told him dryly, “we rest our horses and ourselves. Tomorrow we ride on northeast across the land to join the pharaoh at Memphis. Then—on to Avaris.”

  “On to Avaris!” they echoed, as though he’d given them a war cry. “On to Avaris!”

  * * *

  They sped cross-country like fiery spirits in the next two days, cutting down whatever Hyksos made the mistake of trying to block their path, being cheered by Egyptians who realized the time of revolt was finally at hand. They came to the bank of the Nile on the morning of the third day, in time to rejoin Kamose’s warriors in the process of retaking Memphis.

  The cavalry’s presence, Methos thought, wasn’t really needed. As with Bahariya, this was almost a token fight: Memphis was still, even after near-destruction and a hundred years of occupation, very much an Egyptian city at its heart. The citizens swarmed into the streets, storming the estate of their Hyksos overlord, Yokanaan. Before Kamose’s forces could get to the man, the crowd had already beaten to death Yokanaan, his family, even his servants, then mobbed back out into the streets, killing any other Hyksos they happened to catch, hurling bricks and stones and whatever weapons came to hand, yelling, “Death to the overlords! Freedom! Freedom for Egypt!”

  Methos glanced at Kamose in alarm. Risky enough for even a pharaoh in this growing chaos! But Kamose, leaping up onto a mound of rubble, shouted with all his force, “Stop! In the name of Egypt, hear me! In the names of all the gods of Egypt, hear me!”

  The mob froze.

  “These are not the enemy!” Kamose continued fiercely. “Apophis is the foe! Apophis in Avaris! Apophis is all Egypt’s foe! Apophis in Avaris!”

  The mob froze. “Avaris!” went up the shout from a few throats, and then, “Avaris!” shouted the others. “To Avaris!”

  Even if Kamose had been so foolish, he could not have possibly taken the swarm of sudden volunteers on board the already-crowded ships. Instead, Methos saw undiscouraged throngs of untrained, badly armed men hastily kiss their wives and children good-bye and set out on foot for Avaris. They might arrive far too late to help, Methos thought with a touch of dour humor, but by all the gods, they were going to be part of the great event!

  I have no intention of walking.

  Instead, Methos, at the pharaoh’s request, took passage aboard Kamose’s own ship, the coincidentally named Rising in Memphis, along with the pharaoh’s most elite warriors, the Medjai archers, and a cadre of priest-physicians, shaven-headed men in plain linen robes and somber expressions.

  The horses had been left behind in the once-again-Egyptian city: From this point on, there would be no need for cavalry.

  With a curt bow, Methos handed the papyrus he’d taken from the slain messenger to Kamose. Frowning, the pharaoh scanned its contents, then glanced at him.

  “You read it?”

  “Of course.”

  Kamose snagged Ahmose by the arm. “Brother, listen to this, the sheer nerve of this: “ ‘I, Apophis, Son of Ra’—an arrogant title for a Hyksos!—‘I, Apophis, greet my son, the king of Nubia,’ and so on, and so on, claims against my father, God-King Sekenenre, against me… Ha, and look here! ‘Come, fare north and join me’—that Set-damned bastard was planning to catch Egypt in a vise between two armies!”

  “So it would seem,” Prince Ahmose murmured, and for a moment his worry for their mother, Queen Ahhotep, in the south, was very plain. But then the boy grinned. “Well intercepted, my lord Methos! Very well intercepted, indeed! No matter what other surprises may await us, at least that one has been neutralized.”

  Methos leaned on the rail of the Rising in Memphis, lost in thoughts of battles past and present. “Would you look at that?” a youthful voice asked suddenly, and he nearly started. “A whole fleet of fishing boats has joined us.”

  “Convenient,” Methos commented, and turned to see who was beside him.

  Ah yes. He’d thought he’d recognized that voice. Standing looking out over the Nile at the other ships was a young warrior, fierce as a falcon, a handful or so years older than Prince Ahmose and, just to be confusing, Methos thought, also named Ahmose. The others called him Ahmose, Son of Eben, to distinguish him from the prince, or even Ahmose-the-Soldier, and for all his youth and common birth, he already did have the hard edge to him that marked a born soldier, and the honesty of a good one.

  Ahmose-the-Soldier glanced sideways at Methos with a grin. “Gods willing, we’ll win glory for us and freedom for the land in this campaign—and maybe collect a mound of hands at the same time.”

  “I’ll settle for winning us our lives, thank you.” The Egyptians, Methos knew, were under orders to collect a hand from each enemy slain in the forthcoming battle of Avaris so that an accurate tally could be kept; less space-consuming than collecting heads, he thought wryly. “And if you are after a collection of hands,” Methos added, “and, for that matter, the Gold of Valor”—the golden medallions granted for bravery in the field—“have, ah, fun.”

  “And the same good wish to you, my lord,” the unflappable Ahmose-the-Soldier replied, “the same good wish to you.”

  Save me from the eagerness of youth!

  It wasn’t quite as easy as it should have been to shed the memories of his role in the sacking, no, the near-destruction, of Nefrusy.

  Damn it, no. I cannot feel guilt over what happens in war, no more than would that eager young warrior out to gather himself a mound of severed hands.

  Besides, if he hadn’t slain that messenger, they might, indeed, as Kamose put it, be caught in a vise, having to fight on two fronts at once. Instead, they were now headed into a confrontation with the Hyksos fleet. Or, with any luck, a lack of confrontation.

  Ahead, the Nile split in two, the first of the many branchings that formed the delta and ran into the sea. Apophis, since Avaris had no safe port other than the one dock, kept his ships berthed in the less-used western division of the Nile, while Avaris lay on the eastern branch—on the northeastern side of that branch, no less, farther north than the fleet.

  What a stupid thing for him to do, putting all his ships in one place, and keeping them so far from his fortress. But then, there never has been a naval battle in either culture’s history; they probably never even considered the possibility of one. Till now, of course.

  With that, Methos went in search of the leader of the Medjai mercenaries, a tall, lean man known only as Knife, prominent of nose and cheekbones and so dark of skin that his teeth flashed dazzlingly white when he smiled.

  As he smiled now, sharp as the edge of a blade, as Methos approached. “ ‘Man sent by the gods.’”

  The Medjai had all taken to calling him that, much to Methos’s discontent; he knew the title grated on Prince Ahmose’s nerves. “Are you ready?”

  “Oh, indeed, yes.” Knife spoke the Egyptian tongue fluently, though with a clipped accent. “You have truly seen this technique done elsewhere? Successfully?”

  “Once, yes, far to the east. There, against a wooden fortress.”

  “Fortress, boat, wood is wood. It does seem the loss of good arrows. Still”—a sharp shrug—”we shall do it.”

  The Medjai had kindled a fire—carefully screened, since they hardly wished to set the Rising in Memphis ablaze—and were dipping arrowheads wrapped in cloth into the flames till the cloth caught.

  “Draw,” Knife commanded, and a dozen bows were drawn, arrowheads blazing. “Aim. Release.”

  A dozen arrow
s flew straight to their target, the nearest ship, hitting in a dozen places. Most were extinguished on impact, but some took fire.

  “Again,” Knife repeated in that calm, clipped voice. “Draw. Aim. Release. Ah,” he added to Methos, “this is too easy.”

  “Enjoy the ease,” Methos snapped back, staring at the Hyksos fleet. This was his idea; if it failed, the weight of that failure would be on his head.

  Ha, but it was working! The targeted ship was fully ablaze, and of course the Hyksos ships were undermanned; no need to tie up whole crews in peacetime.

  Another bad mistake.

  By the time what sailors were aboard had started to cut the flaming ship free, the fire had jumped to the next ship, and the next. Methos could see frantic figures, dark against the flames, scurrying about, then giving up and diving overboard. The flames might keep the crocodiles at bay; the men might survive.

  Kamose, laughing, unbent enough to slap Methos on the back in wild congratulation. “Clever, oh clever! No fleet for Apophis!”

  “Clever, indeed,” Prince Ahmose agreed, and seemed to almost mean it.

  By now, alarm trumpets were sounding all over Avaris, the harsh calls echoing out over the Nile, frightening waterfowl into a storm of flapping wings.

  And so, Methos thought, with nothing more dramatic than this, the flight of a few ducks, the Battle of Avaris has begun.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Egypt, Avaris: Reigns of Pharaoh Kamose and

  King Apophis, 1570 B.C.

  As the Egyptian ships neared the shore, the hastily assembled Hyksos warriors stood waiting in row after row for the enemy, looking grimly confident.

  “They won’t be expecting this,” Kamose gloated. “They think us an untrained mob armed only with inferior weapons and no armor.”

  Methos raised an eyebrow. “The element of surprise doesn’t last very long.”