by Wilbur Smith
They murmured in agreement, and suddenly Nefer knew now who they were. These were some of the survivors from the rebellion against Naja and Trok. Where Hilto had found them was a mystery, but these shattered remnants had once been fighting troopers, elite charioteers and warriors.
'This is where it begins,' Taita said softly at his side. 'Hilto has brought you the seeds of your future legions. Speak to them.'
Nefer surveyed them for a moment longer, standing proud and tall before them. He picked out a man in the ranks, who was older than the others, with the first snows in his hair. His eyes were sharp and his expression intelligent. Despite his rags and half-starved body he had the air of authority and command. 'Who are you, soldier? What is your rank and your regiment?'
The man lifted his head and squared his gaunt shoulders, 'I am Shabako. Best of Ten Thousand. Adept of the Red Road. Commander of the centre of the Mut regiment.'
A lion of a man! Nefer thought, but said only, 'I greet you, Shabako.' He lifted the skirt of his chiton and exposed the tattooed cartouche upon his thigh, 'I am Nefer Seti, the true Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt.'
A sigh and a hum went through the scarecrow ranks when they recognized the royal cartouche. As one man they threw themselves to earth in obeisance.
'Bak-her, Divine One, beloved of the gods!'
'We are your loyal subjects, Pharaoh. Intercede for us with the gods.'
Mintaka had come with Taita and now stood below him. Nefer reached down and took her hand. He lifted her on to the rock beside him. 'I give you the Princess Royal, Mintaka of the House of Apepi. Mintaka, who will be my queen and your sovereign lady.'
They greeted her with another shout of acclamation.
'Hilto and Shabako will command you,' Nefer decreed, 'For the time being Gallala will be our base, until we return victoriously to Thebes and Avaris.'
They rose to their feet, even the gravely wounded attempting to climb from their litters, and they cheered him. Their voices were thin and almost lost in the great silences of the desert, but the sound filled Nefer with pride and renewed his determination and resolve. He climbed up into the leading chariot, took the reins from Meren and led his little raggle-taggle army down into his ruined capital city.
--
When they had set up their barracks among the ruins, Nefer sent for Shabako and Hilto and the other officers among them. Late into that first night, and for many nights that followed, he sat with them and listened to their accounts of the rebel-lion, the fighting, and their ultimate defeat by the combined forces of the two pharaohs. They told him of the terrible retribution that Trok and Naja had visited on those rebels who had fallen into their clutches.
At Nefer's orders they detailed the order of battle of the new Egyptian army, the names of the commanders, the numbers and names of their regiments and the total of men, chariots and horses that Naja and Trok had at their disposal. There were three army scribes among the fugitives and Nefer set them to work, writing down all these details and the lists of the enemy garrisons and fortifications on clay tablets.
In the meantime Taita, with Mintaka assisting him, set up an infirmary where all the wounded and the sick were housed. Hilto had brought a dozen or so women with him, wives of some of the fugitives, or merely camp-followers. Taita brought them in to act as nurses and cooks. Taita worked during all the daylight hours, setting broken bones, drawing barbed arrowheads from the flesh with his golden spoons, stitching sword-cuts and in one case even trepanning a cracked, depressed skull that had received a blow from a hardwood war club.
When the light faded and he could no longer work with the sick, he joined Nefer and his commanders as they pored over the maps drawn on tanned lambskins, planning and scheming by the light of the oil lamps. Although Nefer was nominally their supreme commander, in reality he was a student of the art of war and these experienced old soldiers were his instructors, the lessons he learned from them invaluable.
It was after midnight usually before Nefer could adjourn these grave councils, and sneak away to join Mintaka on the sheepskin mat where she patiently waited for him. Then they made love and whispered together. Although they were both exhausted by their labours, the dawn was often creeping over the silent desert before they fell asleep in each other's arms.
In total there were less than a hundred and fifty souls and fifty horses in Gallala, but within the first few days it became evident that the bitter wells of the city could not support even these meagre numbers. Each day they emptied them and each night it took longer for them to refill. Even the quality of the water began to deteriorate: it became more bitter and brackish every day, until it was only barely potable unless mixed with mare's milk.
They were forced to ration the water. The horses were distressed and the mares lost their milk. Still the trickle of underground water shrivelled.
At last Nefer called an emergency council of his commanders. At the end of an hour of solemn talk, Hilto summed up gloomily, 'Unless Horus works a miracle for us, the wells will dry completely, and we will be forced to abandon the city. Where then will we flee?'
They looked at Nefer, who turned expectantly to Taita. 'When the water dries up, where do we go, Magus?' he asked.
Taita opened his eyes. He had sat in silence through the long debate and they had thought he was dozing. Tomorrow, at first light, I want every man who can walk and wield a spade assembled before the gates of the city.'
'To what end?' Nefer asked, but Taita smiled enigmatically.
In the cool of the dawn fifty-six men were waiting before the ancient gates when Taita stepped through. He was wearing all his regalia, the Periapt and the gift of Bay, and his other necklaces, bracelets and amulets. He had washed his hair until it shone, and Mintaka had braided it for him. He carried his staff with the carved serpent's head. Nefer was beside him, a solemn expression covering his mystification. Taita looked over the assembled men. As he had ordered, they all carried digging tools - wooden spades and shovels, metal-tipped digging staves. He nodded with satisfaction then descended the steps and set off up the valley.
At a word from Nefer the men shouldered their tools and followed the old man, falling naturally into a military marching formation. However, they had not far to go, for Taita stopped at the foot of the hills and stared up at the heights.
Nefer recalled that this was the area where Taita had spent so much time over the last few months. Often he and Mintaka had seen him sitting here, drowsing in the sun with hooded eyes like a blue-headed lizard, or prodding and tapping among the rocks with his staff.
For the first time Nefer studied the rock formation of this section of the hills and realized that they were different. The rock was friable and veins of grey limestone had intruded into the schist. A profound fault ran diagonally through the face on the bare, burned hills, edged with strata of different colours. Then he noticed something else. Recently someone had placed marks on some of the stones, esoteric hieroglyphs painted with a white paste, probably made from crushed limestone mixed with well water. There were also cairns of stones placed in a pattern on the earth.
'Nefer, the men must be divided into the five teams,' Taita told him, and Nefer gave the orders. When they were ready, Taita ordered the first forward. 'Start driving an adit into the hillside here.' He pointed out the hieroglyphs that marked the opening to the horizontal shaft where he wanted them to begin digging.
The men looked at each other, puzzled and uncertain, but when Taita glared at them wordlessly, Shabako took over quite naturally. 'You heard the Magus. Get on with it, now, and handsomely!'
It was hard work, even though the underlying rock was shattered along the line Taita had chosen. They had to prise out each lump, then dig out the loose earth that lay behind it. Clouds of dust rose around them, and soon their bodies were powdered with it. Even though their hands were toughened by use of club and sword, their palms blistered, tore and bled. They wrapped them with linen strips and worked on without complaint. The heat came up swi
ftly with the rising sun, and Shabako pulled the first team out of the excavation and sent in the next.
They rested for an hour at noon when the heat was at its height. Taita went into the shallow cave and inspected the rock face intently. He emerged into the sunlight without comment, and Shabako ordered the work to continue. It went on until it was too dark to see what they were doing, then Shabako released them and sent them down the hill to their frugal dinner. The supplies of dhurra millet were dwindling almost as swiftly as the well waters.
Taking advantage of the coolness, they started again before dawn. By nightfall they had driven the adit only twenty cubits into the hillside. There they struck a solid stratum of blue, crystalline rock. The bronze-tipped staves made no mark upon it, and the men began to mutter.
'Are we warriors or miners?' mumbled one old veteran, as he inspected his bruised and blistered palms.
'What are we supposed to be digging? Our own tombs?' asked another, as he bound up the deep cut in his shin inflicted by a carelessly wielded stave.
'How can we dig through solid rock?' Yet another wiped the running sweat and mingled dust from his bloodshot eyes.
Taita sent them down the valley to where a thick grove of dead acacia trees stood as a silent monument to the water that had long ago dried. They cut cords of the dried branches and carried the bundles back to the diggings. Under Taita's instructions they stacked the firewood on the adamantine rock, and lit it. They let the fire burn through the night, stoking it at intervals, and the next morning, when the rock glowed with the heat, they quenched it with skins filled from the failing wells. In clouds of hissing steam, the rock crackled, burst and exploded.
One man was hit by a sharp flying fragment, and lost his right eye. Taita removed its remains, and stitched the lids closed.
'The gods gave us two eyes for just such a mishap,' he assured his patient. 'You will see just as well with one as you did with two.'
They let the shattered rock cool then prised out great blackened chunks of it. Behind these the rock was still solid and impenetrable. They stacked fresh cords of firewood upon it and repeated the arduous, dangerous process, with the same result. They had gained a few cubits for the expenditure of days of heartbreaking labour.
Even Nefer was discouraged, and told Mintaka so when they lay together in the darkness that night.
'There are many things that we do not understand, my heart,' she cradled his head and whispered.
'We don't even know why he is making us dig this hole, and when I ask him he gives me that infuriating look of his, like an ancient tortoise. The men have almost had enough of it, and so have I.'
She giggled. 'Ancient tortoise! You had better make sure he doesn't hear that. He might turn you into a toad, and I should not like that at all.'
Early the following morning, the teams of weary, disgruntled men traipsed up the valley and assembled around the mouth of the tunnel to await the arrival of the Magus.
With his usual sense of the dramatic, Taita came up the slope with the first rays of the rising sun behind him, suffusing his silver bush of hair with light. He carried a roll of linen cloth over one shoulder. Nefer and the other officers stood to welcome him, but he ignored their salutations and gave instructions to Shabako to hang the linen over the mouth of the shaft like a curtain. When it was in place he entered the screened shaft alone, and a silence fell over the men gathered outside.
It seemed like a long wait but was in reality less than an hour, for the sun had risen only a hand's breadth above the horizon, when the linen curtain was jerked aside and Taita stood in the entrance of the cave. Either by chance or the Magus' design, the sunlight shone directly into the shaft. The blank face of the adit was brilliantly lit, and the ranks of men crowded forward expectantly. They saw that now a representation of the wounded eye of the great god Horus was painted on the blue rock.
Taita's expression was rapt as he began to chant the invocation to the Horus of Gold. The waiting congregation fell to their knees and came in with the chorus:
'Horus of Gold, mighty butt!
Invincible in strength!
Master of his foes!
Holy in His rising!
Wounded eye of the universe!
Attend our endeavours.'
After the last verse Taita turned and, with every eye fixed avidly upon him, strode back down the adit until he stood before the blue-grey wall of newly exposed rock at the end. Tiny crystals of feldspar were embedded in it and sparkled as the sun played on them.
'Kydash!' Taita cried, and struck the wall with his staff. The men at the entrance shrank back, for this was one of the words of power.
'Mensoar!'
They gasped with awe, and he struck again.
'Ncube!' He struck for the third and last time, then stepped back.
Nothing happened, and Nefer felt a sinking disappointment and anticlimax. Taita stood unmoving, and slowly the sun climbed higher and the shadow spread across the rock wall.
Abruptly Nefer felt a tingle of excitement, and the men around him stirred and whispered. In the centre of the rock face, under the painted eye, a dark damp spot appeared. It spread gradually, and a single drop of moisture oozed out, sparkling like a tiny gem in the sunlight. Then it trickled slowly down the wall and balled in the dust of the floor.
Taita turned and walked out of the shaft. Behind him there was a sharp sound, like the breaking of a dry branch, and a fine crack split the rock from top to bottom. Water dripped to the floor, drop after drop, the tempo accelerating into a rapid patter. Another sound, like a shard of pottery snapping in flames, and a chunk of rock fell out of the wall. A sluggish trickle of yellow mud oozed out of the opening it left. Then, with a roar, the entire rock face collapsed, there was a rush of mud and a gushing fountain of crystal-bright water. Knee-deep, it swept the length of the shaft, burst from the mouth and spilled down the hillside, bounding and rippling over the rocks.
There were shouts of amazement, praise and disbelief from the dusty ranks. Suddenly Meren ran forward and plunged headlong into the rushing torrent. He came up spluttering with his wet hair slicked down over his face. He scooped up a double handful and gulped it down. 'Sweet!' he shouted. 'It tastes sweet as honey.'
Men threw off their clothing and rushed naked into the stream, splashing sheets of spray, throwing handfuls of mud, ducking each other and shouting with laughter. Nefer could not long resist the temptation before he shed all dignity and jumped in on top of Meren and wrestled him beneath the surface.
Taita stood on the bank of the stream and looked down on the mayhem with a benign expression. Then he turned to Mintaka. 'Put the thought out of your mind,' he said.
'What thought?' She feigned innocence.
'It would be an outrage to have a princess of Egypt cavorting with a rabble of rough, naked soldiers.' He took her hand and led her away down the hill, but she looked back wistfully at the revels.
'How did you do it, Taita?' she asked. 'How did you make the fountain appear? What kind of magic was it?'
'The magic of common sense and observation. The water has been there for centuries, just waiting for us to dig down to it.'
'But what about the prayers and the words of power? Were those of no effect?'
'Sometimes men need encouragement.' He smiled and touched the side of his nose. 'A little magic is a sovereign tonic for flagging spirits.'
--
For months thereafter every man was employed in the digging of a channel to lead the sweet flood of water down the hillside and into the old wells. These now became storage cisterns for the settlement. When they brimmed over, Taita surveyed the old fields at the lower end of the valley that were now a stony desolation. However, the outlines of ancient irrigation ditches were still visible. Their levels had been set out by the old inhabitants, and it took small effort to clean out the contour lines and divert the overflowing waters into them.
The desert earth was fertile; the goodness had not been leached out of it by
heavy rainfall. The continuous sunshine, and abundant water had a miraculous effect. They planted the millet seed smuggled in from Egypt. All Egyptians were farmers and gardeners by nature and tradition, and they lavished their skills upon the land and the crops. Within months they had reaped their first harvest of dhurra. Then they planted grass fields for grazing, which flourished and provided far beyond their present needs. The women joined in the cutting, drying and stacking of fodder, and within the year they had sufficient to sustain an army of cavalry, though yet they lacked the horses.
Almost every day fugitives drifted into the city, having braved the desert crossing to escape the tyranny of the false pharaohs. They came singly or in small parties, weary and almost dying of thirst and starvation. The guards posted along the hills intercepted them, and sent them in to Hilto. He made them swear the oath of fealty to Pharaoh Nefer Seti, then issued them with rations and, depending on their suitability, sent them to the training regiments or put them to work in the fields or on restoring the dilapidated buildings of the old city. These waifs and foundlings were not the only recruits, however. A cohort of deserters from the armies of the false pharaohs marched in smartly with their javelins, shouting the praises of Nefer Seti as soon as they were in sight of the walls. Then a squadron of twenty chariots, driven by crack troopers of the Ankh regiment with a colonel named Timus at their head, came in under arms and joyously swore themselves in as the liegemen of Pharaoh Nefer Seti. Timus brought the momentous news that Naja and Trok were prepared at last to march on their combined offensive against King Sargon of Babylon and Assyria.
Over the last few months the two pharaohs had mustered their expeditionary force of three thousand chariots at Avaris, and now they had almost finished their preparations to cross the land bridge that linked Egypt with the eastern lands to the north of the Great Bitter Lake and Lake Timsah. First they had sent a column to drive in the Babylonian pickets along the border then, once the road was cleared, they had shipped in tens of thousands of water jars in carts and wagons and placed them at strategically located storage stations across the dry lands. The country beyond was fertile and well watered.