by Wilbur Smith
'Can I at least send a message to Nefer Seti?' Mintaka pleaded.
'That also is too great a risk. Have patience. It will not be for long. Naja is poised on the heights of the Khatmia. Within days he will begin the march on Ismailiya. The battle will be decided before the full moon of Osiris begins to wane.' His voice dropped to a growl. 'And I will be forced to a decision.'
--
From a distance Meren watched the great host of Pharaoh Naja come down the escarpment from the Khatmia Pass into the arid lands, and he released a pair of the pigeons that Taita had given to him. Two birds, so that if one was taken by a falcon or another predator the other might still win through. Both birds had a single strand of red thread looped around a leg, the signal that the advance had begun.
Meren shadowed the stately progress of the enemy legions across the desert, and at night crept closer to the camps to watch them watering from the stored jars and to eavesdrop on any of the loud conversations around the campfires.
By the fifth night Naja's full army was committed to the crossing, and the leading elements had passed the halfway mark between Khatmia and Ismailiya. Meren was able to cut in behind the rearguard and examine the now deserted water stores they had left behind them. He discovered that they were almost entirely used up, or had been carried away. Naja was so confident of his victory that he had left no contingency reserves for a possible retreat. From the unused jars that he did find Meren replenished his own waterskins, which were almost exhausted, and he smashed the few jars that remained.
Now he rode back parallel to Naja's line of march, but well out to the south and beyond the range of vision of his scouts, and circled out in front of the heavily encumbered, slowly moving host. He came back to where he had left the bulk of his force concealed. They were fifty chariots manned by crack troops and drawn by some of the finest horses in all Nefer's army. He paused only to water, and to change the pennants his chariots flew from the blue to the red of Naja's army. He consoled himself that this was a legitimate ruse of war. Then, at the head of his squadron, he cut back in front of Naja's vanguard and drove furiously along his intended line of march.
The men who had been left to guard the water dumps saw the approaching chariots coming from where they expected their comrades to arrive. When they recognized the false colours flying above them they were lulled. Meren gave them no time for second thoughts, but raced in upon them, and cut down any who tried to resist. The survivors were given a choice: death or defection. Most came over to Nefer Seti. A single mallet blow was sufficient for each of the clay jars, and the precious fluid poured out into the sand. Meren's squadron mounted again and went on to the next dump.
When at last they came in sight of Ismailiya Nefer rode out to greet them, and embraced Meren when he heard that he had fulfilled the task he had been set: Naja was now waterless in the wilderness. 'You have just earned your first Gold of Valour,' he told Meren, 'and you are promoted to the rank of Best of Ten Thousand.' He was relieved to see that Meren seemed to have recovered from his wound, and was now lean, eager and burned dark by the desert sun. 'In the battle that lies ahead, I am giving you command of the right wing.'
'Pharaoh, if I have pleased you, I beg a boon.'
'Of course, old friend. If it is in my power, you shall have it.'
'My rightful place is at your side. We rode the Red Road together, let us see this battle out together. Let me ride with you once again as your lance-bearer. That is all the honour I seek.'
Nefer gripped his arm, and squeezed hard. 'You shall ride in my chariot one more time. And it is I who will be honoured.' He dropped his hand. 'But we have no more time to chatter. Naja will not be far behind you. As soon as he discovers what you have done to his water supplies, he will be forced to come on at all speed.'
Instinctively they both looked back into the wilderness whence the enemy must come, but the heat-haze was grey and turbid and there was little to be seen across that grisly plain. However, they had not long to wait.
--
Pharaoh Naja reined in his chariot and gazed out over the remains of his water dump. Although the scouts had warned him, he was still appalled by the extent of the destruction. Slowly he dismounted and strode out into the littered field. Shards of shattered pottery crunched under his sandals, and suddenly his usual icy control snapped. He kicked one of the broken jars in fury and frustration, then stood with his hands clenched into fists at his sides and glared towards the west. Slowly he regained control of himself and his breathing slowed. He turned and walked back to where his staff waited.
'Will you give the order to turn back?' asked one of his captains diffidently.
Naja turned on him coldly. The next coward who suggests such a thing I will have stripped naked and tied feet first behind my chariot. I will drag him back to Egypt.' They dropped their eyes and shuffled their feet in the sand.
Naja lifted the blue war crown from his head, and when his lance-bearer handed him a square of linen cloth, he wiped the sweat from his shaven head. With the crown tucked under his arm he gave new orders. 'Collect all the waterskins from the entire army. From now on the water supply is under my direct control. No man or animal drinks without my permission. There is no turning back, no retreat. All the fighting chariots will move to the front of the column, even those of Prenn from the rearguard. The other vehicles and the foot must take their chances, and follow as best they can. I will take the cavalry ahead and seize the wells at Ismailiya ...'
--
Heseret thrust her head out of the opening of her tent, and called to the captain of her bodyguard, 'What is the trouble, fellow? This is a royal and sacred enclosure, so what are those rogues doing in my stockade?' She pointed at the men who were taking the waterskins from one of her personal baggage carts parked alongside her tent. 'What do they think they are up to? How dare they remove our water? I have not yet bathed. Tell them to replace those skins at once.'
''Tis Pharaoh, your divine husband's order, Majesty,' the captain explained, although he was also agitated and alarmed at the prospect of being stranded waterless in this terrible desert. 'They say all the water is needed for the forward squadrons of cavalry.'
'Such orders cannot apply to me, the divine Queen of Egypt!' Heseret screamed. 'Put those waterskins back.'
The soldiers hesitated, but the sergeant touched the peak of his leather helmet with his sword. 'Forgive me, Your Majesty. My orders are to take all the water.'
'You dare defy me?" Heseret shouted in his face.
'Please forgive and understand my predicament, Your Majesty, but I have my orders.' The man stood his ground.
'By the sweet name of Isis, I shall have you strangled and your body burned, if you defy me.'
'My orders - '
'A plague on you and your orders. I shall go at once to General Prenn. I shall have new orders for you when I return.' Then she turned to the officer of her bodyguard. 'Ready my chariot and an escort of ten men.'
Across the flat and open plain, General Prenn's headquarters camp was in clear view of Heseret's tent. It took only minutes for her chariot to carry her there, but the guard at the gate of the stockade barred her way. 'Your Divine Majesty, General Prenn is not here,' he told her.
'I do not believe that,' Heseret flared at him. 'That is his standard flying there.' She pointed at the boar's head gonfalon.
'Your Majesty, the general left an hour ago with all his cavalry. He had orders from Pharaoh to join the vanguard.'
'I have to see him. It is a matter of extreme urgency. I know he would not have left without informing me. Stand aside and I will see for myself if he is here.' She drove the chariot straight at him and he jumped hurriedly out of her way. Her escort clattered after her.
Heseret went straight to the yellow- and green-striped command tent and tossed the reins to a groom. In her agitation she did not stand on ceremony, but jumped down and ran to the entrance of the tent. It was unguarded, and she began to believe that she had been told the tru
th, that Prenn had indeed left. Nevertheless, she stooped through the doorway, and stopped dead in the threshold.
Two boys were sitting on the piles of animal skins in the centre of the floor. They were eating with their fingers from wooden platters, but they looked up at her startled.
'Who are you?' Heseret demanded, though she knew from Prenn's reputation who and what they were. 'Where is the general?'
Neither replied, but they continued to stare wordlessly at her. Suddenly Heseret's eyes narrowed and she took a step towards them. 'You!' she screamed. 'You treacherous, poisonous bitches!' She pointed a quivering finger at the girls. 'Guards!' Heseret shrieked at the top of her voice. 'Guards, here, at once!'
Mintaka came to her senses, seized Merykara's hand and pulled her to her feet. The two darted across the tent and out through the rear opening.
'Guards!' Heseret yelled again. 'This way!' Her bodyguard burst in through the doorway behind her.
'Follow them!' She raced after the fleeing pair, with her bodyguard hard after her. When they ran out into the open, Mintaka and Merykara were halfway to the stockade gate.
'Stop them!' Heseret shouted. 'Don't let them escape. They are spies and traitors.'
Her bodyguard charged after them, shouting to the guards at the gate, 'Stop them. Seize them. Don't let them escape.' And the sentries drew their swords and ran to block the gate.
Mintaka stopped as soon as she saw that they were cut off. She looked around her wildly, then still pulling Merykara by the hand ran to the thorn fence of the stockade and tried to scale it. But the bodyguard came up under them, seized their ankles and pulled them down from the wall. The thorns had ripped their arms and legs, and they were both bleeding, but they fought desperately, kicking, scratching and biting. The soldiers overwhelmed them at last and dragged them back to the command tent to face Heseret. She was smiling vindictively. 'Bind them securely. I am sure that my husband, the sole ruler of this very Egypt, will devise a suitable punishment for their crimes when he returns. I shall delight in their screams as they are forced to pay the ultimate penalty. Until that time they are to be caged like wild animals, and kept at the door of my tent where I can keep them under my eye.'
The bodyguard lifted Mintaka and Merykara, bound at wrists and ankles, into a chariot and carried them back to Heseret's encampment. One of the carts of Heseret's baggage train carried her stock of livestock in cages, chickens, pigs and young goats for her kitchen. The cage that had contained the sucking pigs was now empty - they had been slaughtered and eaten. The cage was made from lengths of bamboo lashed together with rawhide strips, and stank of the pig dung that coated the floor. The guards shoved the two girls through the narrow door. The interior was not high enough to allow them to stand upright. They were forced to sit with their backs to the bamboo wall, and their wrists were lashed behind them with rawhide strips to one of the struts. There was no protection from the sun.
'There will be guards standing over your cage day and night,' Heseret warned them. 'Should you try to escape I will have one of your feet cut off, to discourage further attempts.'
From the look on her face they knew that Heseret meant every word of the threat. Merykara began to weep, but Mintaka whispered to her, 'No, my darling. Be brave. Do not give her the satisfaction of watching you break down.'
--
From the watchtower above the fort at Ismailiya the sentry shouted the warning, 'Pharaoh! The pickets are coming in!' Nefer sprang up from the table under the awning in the courtyard where he and Taita were eating the midday meal and going over the details of the defence yet again. He climbed swiftly up the ladder to the platform and shaded his eyes to look towards the east. Through the yellow glare he made out the chariots of his forward pickets coming in. As they drove down the bank of the wadi, the guards threw open the gates and allowed them to enter the fort.
'The enemy comes on apace!' the sergeant of the pickets shouted up to Nefer on the high platform.
'Well done, sergeant,' Nefer called back to him, and then to the trumpeter on the wall above the gate, 'Sound the call to arms!'
The ram's horn blared out across the plain, and the entire army that was encamped down the length of the broad wadi began to stir. The trumpet call was picked up and repeated, flung from legion to legion and from squadron to squadron. From the tents and sun-shelters men poured out, seized their arms and hurried to join their formations. Soon lines of marching men and columns of chariots were moving forward to their prepared positions.
Taita clambered up on to the high platform, and Nefer smiled at him. 'So, even deprived of his water, Naja has not turned back.'
'We never thought he would,' Taita said softly.
In the east the horizon started to darken, as though night had come on prematurely. On a wide front the dustcloud of the advancing enemy army boiled like a brewing thunderstorm.
'It still lacks many hours of noon.' Nefer looked up at the pitiless sun. There is time to decide this battle before the close of day.'
'Naja's horses have drunk little in three days, and they must have been driven hard to reach us so soon. He knows he must win and reach the wells this day, or for him there will not be another.'
'Will you ride out to meet him with me, Old Father?' Nefer asked, as he strapped on the sword-belt that his orderly handed to him.
'No!' Taita lifted his left hand. On the second finger he wore a gold ring, set with a huge pigeon's-blood ruby. When it caught the sunlight and sparkled, Nefer recognized it as the token Naja had taken from his own finger and given to Taita in Thebes all those years ago, when he believed that the Magus had murdered the young pharaoh for him. Nefer understood that it was a talisman almost as powerful as would have been a lock of Naja's hair, a pellet of his dried excrement or the clippings of his nails. 'I will overlook the battle from here. Perhaps in my own feeble way I might be of more help to you than if I wielded a javelin or drew a bow.'
Nefer smiled. 'Your weapons are sharper and fly more truly than any I have ever held in my hand. Horus love and protect you, Old Father.'
They watched as the battalions of archers and slingers marched out of the wadi to take up their positions behind the breastworks. The ranks moved with purpose and swiftly, for every man among them knew what was expected of him, and had rehearsed this manoeuvre many times. As the last of them disappeared into the ambuscade, the field seemed deserted.
The dustcloud of Naja's advance was less than a league off when at last Nefer embraced Taita, and climbed down the ladder. When he strode out through the gates of the fort a roar went up from the massed squadrons of chariots. As he went down their ranks he picked out his captains and centurions among them, and called to them, 'Courage, Hilto! One more time for me, Shabako! Tonight we will drink a victory cup together, Socco.'
Meren had Dov and Krus in hand as he leaped up on to the footplate. Nefer took the reins from him and Dov recognized his touch and nickered, looking back at him with her great luminous eyes, with their long dark lashes. Krus arched his neck, and pawed at the ground with one front hoof.
Nefer lifted his right fist high and gave the command: 'March! Forward!'
The ram's horn sounded the advance and he led the van out, rank upon rank. They moved in majestic progress, down between the low breastworks from behind which not a single archer showed himself, out on to the open plain.
Nefer gave another hand signal, and the formations opened. Wheel to wheel the front rank moved forward to meet the great dustcloud that rolled towards them. On the markers he had laid out weeks before, Nefer halted his leading squadron, and let the horses rest while he studied the enemy advance.
Now where the dun dustclouds made a tenuous contact with the grey desert he saw the line of dark spots, and myriad flashes of metal wavering in the heated air. On they came and in the mirage the outlines of the chariots in the front rank of Naja's advance wriggled and changed shape like tadpoles in the depths of a pond.
Then they hardened and took on firm shape,
and he could make out the horses and the armoured men on the vehicles behind them.
Meren murmured, 'Sweet Horus be praised. It seems he has committed all his vehicles. He holds no depth of chariots in reserve.'
'They must be desperate for water. His only chance of survival is to break our ranks with a frontal charge and win through to the wells.'
Closer and closer rolled the enemy, and now they could make out the features of the warriors in the front rank, and from their colours and pennants they identified each regiment, and recognized the captains who commanded them.
Two hundred paces away the mighty host rolled to a halt. A vast silence settled over the brooding landscape, broken only by the fretting susurration of the wind. The dust settled like a falling curtain and every detail of both armies was starkly revealed.
From the enemy centre a single chariot pulled forward. Even though dust coated the coachwork the gold leaf gleamed through, and the royal pennant flew above the driver's head. Naja halted less than a hundred paces to the front, so that Nefer recognized the cold, handsome face under the blue war crown.
'Hail, Nefer Seti, puppy of the dog I slew with my own hand!' Naja called in that sonorous voice. Nefer stiffened to hear him confess so openly to regicide. 'Upon my head I wear the crown I took from Tamose as he was dying. In my hand,' he raised the mighty blue sword, 'I carry the brand I took from his craven fist. Will you claim it from me, puppy?' Nefer felt his hands begin to shake upon the reins and anger rose in a red cloud that obscured his vision.
'Steady!' Meren whispered at his side. 'Do not let him provoke you.' With a huge effort Nefer forced aside the curtains of rage. He managed to keep his face expressionless, but his voice rang like metal on stone. 'Make ready!' and he lifted his own sword high.
Naja laughed soundlessly, wheeled his own chariot and drove back to his place in the centre of the opposing line.