The phalanges, divided into four centuries, set off on the march, heavily. With their carapaces of bucklers, inflamed by the reflection of swords, lances, axes, helmets and belts, they resembled four enormous beasts of flesh, leather, metal and fire. They occupied the granitic causeway without encountering any opposition. Nothing appeared on the melancholy marshes. Only a few shadowy beasts, glaucous serpents and lizards fled and dived.
That immobility troubled Setne; he ordered a hundred well-covered archers to march toward the bank in order to guard against a surprise. There was still no response. On the causeway, the columns marched faster.
They were no more than three hundred cubits from the peninsula when the attack was launched, sudden and formidable, from all directions. An innumerable host of arrows emerged from the water from the flanks and behind the phalanges, while a multitude of blue men sprang on to the peninsula and, hidden among the rocks and the brushwood, awaited the approach of the Egyptians.
The phalanges stopped. Between the crenellations of the bucklers, the skillful archers of Thebes, Abydos and Memphis, took aim at the pale bodies visible close to the surface of the water, or at the heads partly emerging among the reeds and the nympheas. The range of the Egyptian bows, keeping the aggressors at a distance, warded off the catastrophe. The losses of the phalanges were limited to a few wounded, whereas the waters of the aquatic foliage had been seen to turn red twenty times already. Immense cries, in which were mingled human voices and some unusual clamors, were prolonged over the vast liquid surfaces.
Meanwhile, Setne prepared for a further attack. He made the archers advance together toward the bank. They deployed rapidly toward a point on the causeway whether the scarcity of the nympheas and reeds did not permit any ambush. There, less than two hundred cubits from the rearguard of Habak and Bitiu, they prevented the first column from being completely surrounded. The Men of the Waters tried to dislodge them. A swarming mass agitated the marsh. Archers appeared and disappeared with a prodigious speed, harassing the Egyptian archers. The attack had little effect. The Egyptians responded with a volley so murderous that the enemy could not maintain themselves in the open water. The aquatic warriors withdrew beyond bowshot, and, almost at the same time, the attack against Habak and Bitiu was suspended.
Setne followed the phases of the singular battle anxiously. As long as the numerical superiority of the Men of the Waters was not excessive, the Egyptians, with better armaments, could force a passage. However, against ten thousand or fifteen thousand enemies, the struggle would become impossible. Even then, they would have had a chance in direct combat—but the adversaries, taking advantage of the admirable resources of their element, would slip away.
Habak and Bitiu had resumed their forward march. They had almost reached the peninsula when, from all directions, with an extreme impetuosity, the Men of the Waters launched a new attack. They were seen everywhere bounding on to the causeway or the peninsula, armed with lances of a sort with points of shell. There were a good five thousand. Within a few moments they had separated the phalanges of the advance guard from the reinforcement of the archers. The maneuver cost them dear; hundreds of blue bodies bloodied the waters or lay on the ground when the hand-to-hand combat began, initially favorable to the Egyptians. The lances and swords of iron or bronze, and clubs bristling with spikes, were formidable against the weapons of wood and shell; but the fury of the Men of the Waters increased with their losses, and the battle became terrible.
Setne launched reinforcements, of which he took command himself. He fell upon a host of enemies who were assailing the archers from the rear, and smashed through them. It was a massacre. Frenetic clamors spread all the way to the distant islands of the marsh; new swarms appeared among the nenuphars and the reeds.
Setne saw that a decisive action was about to be engaged. He tried to evaluate the number of the antagonists; he judged that there were at least seven thousand, three thousand of whom had completely surrounded the column of Habak and Bitiu. The Egyptian chief thought he had to make a decision. He had the Theban trumpets sound; he occupied the space that separated him from the archers and then, with seven hundred men, he awaited the assault.
A high-pitched, bizarre and melancholy music rose up over the waves. Long red flutes were seen to emerge two bowshots away. They surrounded the upper body of a woman, toward whom all the Men of the Waters turned momentarily, with an evident fervor. The woman drew a little nearer to the causeway and Setne, surprised considered her.
Long hyacinth-colored hair flowed around her and could have enveloped he blue upper body. Her eyes were glinting like torches with green flames; her body had very pure forms and admirable movements. She made a grand gesture and uttered a loud cry. Immediately, the waters swarmed around her; bodies and heads emerged like salmon in the spawning season; an enormous multitude swam toward Setne’s soldiers.
To begin with, the young woman remained motionless, out of range of arrows. When she saw the carnage that the Egyptian archers had wrought among her own people, she summoned a few gigantic men and was borne toward the causeway. Her arrival frightened the assailants. They precipitated themselves against the Egyptians with terrible clamors; but Setne caused the phalanges to bristle. The forest of points, to which the soldiers imparted rapid movements, received all the blows and broke their impetus. Soon, the cadavers and the wounded were a thick barrier, which stopped the arrows of the Men of the Waters, while the Theban archers took aim at their leisure and struck with every shot.
But it was only a respite. Setne sensed defeat approaching. Already his advance guard was giving way; furious masses were penetrating the lines of iron and bronze. The attack was reaching its full force when the Queen of the Waters stood up on the promontory. She raised her arms in a cross and gave the signal for a supreme effort. Everything broke. The dislocation of the phalanges happened with cracking sounds, as if the bones of a colossal beast had been broken.
Meanwhile, the resistance had reached its limit. Arrows, stones from slings, clubs, lances and swords never ceased striking the naked bodies of the Men of the Waters, but in vain: the voids were immediately filled by new troops.
Thutmose will never see his phalanges again, Setne said to himself, bitterly.
The images of Gaila and Aoura floated through the tumult of the battle. The Tanite sensed the awful weight of death upon his breast. Full of determination to make a supreme effort, he darted a long glance at his soldiers. Thirty cubits away, the Queen of the Waters was advancing triumphantly. The guards, with great sinister cries, were driving the Egyptians back. Setne conceived the project of capturing her, He assembled a nucleus of men chosen from the iron phalanx, hid them behind a curtain of willows, and waited.
The battle flowed back toward him. Memphite archers fled toward the shore. Then, raising his sword Setne gave the signal for a desperate attack. His men launched forward. Their surge crossed fifteen cubits, irresistibly. The Queen of the Waters found herself surrounded. A gigantic Theban soldier armed with a spiked club felled an enemy with every gesture. He cleared a passage all the way to the Queen, seized her and carried her away. Weapons were raised against her; but Setne had bounded forward. He deflected the swords with murderous points and, seizing the young woman, he carried her away in the midst of his men.
Meanwhile, the Men of the Waters could no longer see their sovereign. Their sinister voices called out without receiving any response. At first their impetus seemed to increase further, but then a vast lamentation rose up, and the attack faltered on all sides.
The phalanges reformed, and regained the upper hand. After a few moments of hesitation, the Men of the Waters returned to the marsh. But the danger had not disappeared; the causeway and the peninsula were still surrounded by invisible enemies who would want to avenge their queen once the first discouragement had passed.
Time went by. The great waters remained mute and motionless, as if nothing inhabited them but the snakes, fish, lizards and turtles that appeared at int
ervals in their crystal turbulence. Long red steaks and motionless bodies, however, betrayed the struggle, and on the causeway, the Egyptians were piling up their dead and their wounded.
After a rapid roll call, Setne returned to the Queen. She was sprawled on the ground, indifferent to the soldiers who were guarding her. Among those brown men she seemed even more extraordinary, with her hyacinth hair, her blue skin and her immense eyes of smoky flame. When the chief arrived, she stood up and looked at him. Anger and despair quivered in her face. Her lips, tremulous over the opal teeth, displayed hatred for the victor.
Setne spoke to her in a soft voice. At first she did not listen. Her gaze was fixed on the lake, vague and terrible. At intervals, she had fits of violent fury, which caused her long hair to undulate. Then there was a sort of relaxation. The eyes brightened; they had the gleam of beautiful moist stars when a fine vapor rises into the firmament. The impetuous soul that they revealed appeared to undergo an abrupt revolution.
The Queen of the Waters put both hands over her breast. Designating Setne, she pronounced a few incomprehensible words in a voice that was a trifle hoarse, but as gentle as the voice of fountains. Then she made a sign that all the others should draw back.
“I think she wants to make an alliance with you,” said Intar. “And it’s necessary to erect a tent, Lord, for she doubtless desires to be hidden.
Setne had his tent brought and erected in the middle of the peninsula. A sudden lightness on the part of the young woman testified that she had been understood correctly. When the tent was set up, she went into it first. Setne accompanied her, curious as to what would follow. He had heard mention of strange peoples who drank blood to cement amity, and he expected some ceremony of that nature, resolved to submit to it.
When the flap of the tent had closed, they stood still for a moment, considering one another. A strange mildness animated the Queen’s face. Alone with her, Setne saw more clearly that the strange blue body had a seductive form and that no woman could have more beautiful eyes. Even the opal teeth, glinting in the penumbra like changing clouds at sunrise, were not without charm.
She approached him and took his hand. In that gesture, a long hank of hyacinth hair streamed over the soldier’s forearm. It was cool, light, and quivering with a personal life. The hand was also cool, melting, smoother than the nascent petals of a nelumbo. A slight disturbance caused a frisson to run along the chief’s spine.
The young woman spoke in a voice as musical as a fountain; the emerald gaze never ceased to contemplate Setne. Then, still uncertain as to what she wanted, he advanced his free hand and placed it on the Queen’s shoulder. She made a rapid movement; their breasts touched. He knew what the pledge of union demanded of him was...
He forgot the combats, the fatigues, the rude and precarious life, and, drawing the young woman against him, the strangest of those he had encountered, he made an alliance with her...
Outside, the wounded were moaning; the phalanges were completing their preparations for new battles; the cries of subaltern commanders could be heard, the clash of weapons. Then the extraordinary clamor of the Men of the Waters announced an imminent attack. Heads and blue bodies were seen emerging en masse from the marsh.
But the flap of the tent was suddenly raised. The Queen appeared, her face softened by a charming lassitude. Her emerald eyes blinked in the light. She raised her hands, pronounced slow words, and the war between the Egyptians and the Men of the Waters was over.
VI
It was the seventh day of the journey. The previous day, Setne had reached the gorge to the Hennar where he wanted to take the Ninevite caravan by surprise. He chose the location of the ambush in the morning.
The route narrowed at first between two lines of red rocks, then widened into a semicircle, and then narrowed again. An insipid breath blew over the plants; meager beasts ran over the warm stone; reptiles paraded their long bodies and vitreous eyes, and carrion birds rise up on trenchant wings.
Setne examined the sad place. There was none better for the ambush. As soon as the caravan came into the semi-circle, its forward progress and its retreat could both be cut off, while, launching their arrows from the height of the rocks of charging unexpectedly, the Egyptians could sow panic among the men of the escort.
The young chief meditated for some time. He was approaching the outcome that ought to give him the favor or attract the scorn of Thutmose, and he did not want to leave anything to chance. Full of anxiety and hope, he gave his orders. Six hundred men were hidden in coverts in the rock or the brushwood, two hundred were ready to cut off the retreat and two hundred more to bar the route to the Hennar. No one was to budge before the trumpets had sounded the attack.
Thus, the pass was ready to welcome the caravan, and Setne, sitting in the shadow of a rock, was eating smoked meat and lotus beans. His emotion had passed. He was entirely focused on the action. He saw his centurions coming, gave them precise orders, and only kept Habak and Intar beside him. Then he sent new scouts along the route.
The day advanced and the sun was a quarter of the way through its route when scouts arrived, out of breath.
“The Assyrians are coming. There are many beasts of burden: donkeys, mules, horses and dromedaries...”
“And warriors?”
“There are several hundred...”
“As many as us?”
“No, a little more than half.”
“Are they marching rapidly?”
“They were five thousand cubits away. We’ve marched three times faster than them.”
Setne made a last inspection of his men. He saw that all was well, and stationed himself, with Habak and Intar, at an intermediate height, behind a clump of bushes. The landscape seemed solitary: the meager animals, the reptiles, the vultures and the scrub gave no indication of the presence of humans.
Meanwhile, in the distance, men became visible, and then donkeys, horses and dromedaries. Weapons glittered in the sunlight. That advance guard moved forward slowly and cautiously. The scouts stopped in order to observe the circle of red rocks; but their suspicion did not last long. Well-armed and numerous, they had no fear of the small bandit hordes that sometimes lay in wait for caravans on the route, and did not even think that the Egyptians could have reached the place. The entire company resumed its march. Other animals appeared, slaves, merchants and stewards attached to the Ninevite army, and then women, some carried by donkeys and camels, others on foot, enveloped in white wool.
Soon the area was invaded. It was like a population, a tribe in search of new pastures. The footfalls of the animals and the cries and murmurs of the men reverberated from the rocks; a donkey began braying; men agitated in the midst of nervous horses; jewels and weapons glinted as the caravan moved. Brown men of the desert were most frequently recognizable, along with merchants from Assyria and Persians with bright faces, red-haired barbarians brandishing large bows the color of blood, and negroes with an oscillating gait.
Eventually, the advance guard approached the exit from the circus. Setne gave the signal. The Egyptian trumpets resounded on the rocks. With a ferocious clamor, the archers unleashed their arrows. A homicidal rain fell. The slaves, the women and the merchants tried to flee, at hazard, bewildered. The soldiers spun around, waving their weapons, while those at the front and the rear attempted to reach the passes. But the clamor of the Egyptians resounded more loudly; the trumpets vibrated relentlessly; the arrows felled men and women.
It was evident that retreat was cut off in all directions. The crowd began milling madly, a melee of the soldiers that prevented them from mounting any defense. Only one group of Ninevite veterans was able to assume battle order. They were about two hundred men, tempered by a hundred battles, hard, cold and grim, about half of whom were armed with bows. They responded to the attack. Rapid arrows collided with rocks, ineffectively.
Setne saw that if that elite force was vanquished, the caravan was captured. He shouted loudly, ordering half his archers only to ai
m at the veterans. The storm of arrows swelled, and the Ninevite soldiers, with cries of rage, fell upon one another in a red, greasy, seething pool. When their ranks had thinned and their quivers were almost empty, Setne decided to charge them; he got his reserves ready.
The trumpets fell silent. With two hundred of his best men, Setne turned around the foot of the rocks and the phalange suddenly raced forward, lances bristling, large bucklers extended before every rank, like a fortress of leather and bronze. For ten minutes the Ninevites were seen to fight with all their courage, trying their swords and axes against the forest of sharp lances, but with an irresistible movement, the phalanx felled or drove back the men. Soon, the Ninevites were backed up against the rock, and collapsing on top of one another. Wading in bloody mud, out of breath, they asked to surrender.
It was the end; the caravan was taken.
The massacre continued for some time. Egyptian soldiers were seen nailing Ninevites to the ground, cutting off heads, opening bellies or smashing fugitives against the rocks. Cries of agony filled the air; the wounded were crawling under the feet of beasts of terrified beasts of burden, which trampled their plaintive bodies. Prostrate merchants were still begging for mercy when blades or javelins entered their throats. A negro, his woolly hair red with blood, with two darts lodged in his torso and a gaping wound in his back was still trying to climb the rocks.
Setne was finally able to recall his troops; the slaughter ceased, but not the screams, prayers and moans.
In the final count, only a hundred Ninevite soldiers, a few merchants, a few women and a few slaves were killed. Three hundred soldiers were prisoners and there was an enormous booty: wheat and barley for an army, countless beasts of burden, cartloads of weapons, crates of jewels and precious fabrics, leather, garments ad fermented beverages.
Setne contemplated his work with pride. Thinking about the important figure of Thutmose, he felt that he was in an atmosphere of glory. His breast swelled; a keen and strong blood surged in his heart. He believed in the future and saw the divine face of Princess Aoura closer to him than when he had spoken to her in the enclosure of the temple of Amenemhat.
Pan's Flute Page 20
