Exodus

by Cliff Graham

  We pulled up, and the king dismounted. The other chariots behind us stopped as well, and all the drivers and archers jumped out and bowed low before him.

  He impatiently waved them up. “Out here we are brothers! Leave that for the court and in front of the population. Here we bleed together!”

  I knew immediately that he had just commanded their loyalty for life. Everything about the king they had been taught—his godhood, his aloofness—had made them think of him as a distant figurehead who had great power but ultimately had little to do with them. Now here he was, wanting to be one of them? Offering to bleed with them? But gods did not bleed. Even if it would be a long time before he was as skilled as us, it was his intent that mattered.

  “I will attempt the Ring of Horus,” he said.

  Smiles faded. They did not want harm to come to the king they had just grown to love moments before.

  “. . . but as a passenger!” he finished.

  They all laughed in relief.

  “I want all of you to ride as hard as you can and try to defeat my rider,” he said, gesturing to me. “And if you do, I will know who is the best charioteer in my armies. To him I will award ten lakhs of gold!”

  Silence. Then a roar of approval from all of us. Gold was the way to a soldier’s heart. Ten lakhs of it meant women and drink until the end of his life.

  He bounded back up into the chariot, and I scrambled to take my own place. I have said how bizarre the whole situation was, the great king and divine man acting thus. It was bizarre also to have everyone line up side by side for this road.

  We all should have known better. We should have spoken up, even at the risk of our positions. The Ring of Horus was supposed to be taken one at a time, not in a mass formation.

  I knew it as certainly as it could be known: men would die today. Risks would be taken to get to the front, and bodies would be flipped and crushed, chariots mangled. Horses would break legs and need to have their throats slit. But he was the king, and we dared not deny him.

  I had described everything about this course to the king during our ride over, so he knew right where to point when he said, “The time stone’s shadow must not reach the next notch before we return, or we will fail. And I do not like failure! Lashings if we fail. Gold if we win! Does that sound like a reasonable wager, my brothers?”

  We yelled and cheered, including me in spite of myself.

  We waited a few more moments while the shadow of the sun reached the next starting notch. As soon as it touched, we would unleash our horses in the most desperate ride of our lives.

  For all the glory. For all the honor. And for gold, of course.

  We were men who worshiped ourselves and only paid prayer service to the gods.

  Then we were off, all racing for the same place, the side of a barren cliff that had a ledge we called the Narrows—where the way through was only as wide as the chariot’s wheel base. No room for any error, or the punishment would be a fall of a hundred feet onto the wadi floor below.

  I cracked the reins hard and leaned in. His majesty gripped the rail and let out a whoop of excitement.

  “Defeat them! I command you, defeat them!” he shouted.

  I glanced right and left to gauge my distance. This electrum-coated chariot was noticeably slower than the others, so my only chance to win was to find the perfect angle of every turn, but more importantly, to be the first one through the Narrows.

  The ledge approached. We were going far too fast, yet no one seemed to care. The king was there, and gold awaited.

  I knew I had three rivals. Their names are unimportant because this is the only time they appear in my story.

  In truth, I have forgotten their names. I am old.

  Instead I will call them Red, Blue, and Green—for the colors lining their chariots. Every chariot master painted his rigging to reflect himself to others and display the number of enemy deaths.

  Red, Blue, and Green were gifted riders. Any of them could have been the one driving the king that day, but they did not have the benefactor that I did in Lord Akan.

  And yet I was the best. No sense in hiding it.

  They closed on me, knowing I was going to get there first. Wheels shrieking with the speed, the wind roaring in our ears, the line of us bore down on the cliff, and with an odd exhilaration I knew that several were about to die because there was no way they could slow down in time.

  “Come on, my beauties!” I cried to the horses. “You must win!”

  Their heads lowered and reached the gap first, and all at once came the clamor of men shouting in fright and wheels snapping as they struck the cliff directly, killing their horses, tossing men into the air and over the side of the wadi. I pulled forward faster and let out a bloodthirsty cry despite myself, for I wanted nothing more in life than to see my rivals vanquished, even if they were my battle brothers. The king yelled a war cry on his own, as he knew he had escaped death while others had not.

  I could not look behind me yet but had to concentrate all of my skill on guiding the horses, letting them slow just a bit so that we did not slide down the edge of the wadi but needing to keep the speed up. In my mind’s eye the shadow crept faster and faster to the notch that would end the trial.

  The Narrows narrowed even more. The heat of the midday started to turn that cursed electrum chariot into a furnace. Sweat poured down my face as the king cheered me on.

  Then we were past it and onto the open plain, where I was able to take a deep breath and finally turn and look behind us.

  At least five men and their chariots had been destroyed at the entrance of the Narrows. Yes, Othniel, we were that callous about the loss of life. I thought little of men dying in those days. There were always more who could replace them, and you must remember that we were obsessed with the afterlife and almost eagerly awaited death, where we believed we would see our comrades again and raise drinks and kill more enemies.

  I gave the horses their heads again, and we surged forward. The next landmark was a dark pile of rocks a few leagues ahead. There was no outline of a road out here, only the landmarks and whatever side you had to pass them. Cheating was not possible, because normally there were lookouts posted at the guide points to ensure the Ring of Horus had been fairly run. Today we did not need them; we would be keeping an eye on each other.

  My slower chariot soon began to lose ground to the fleeter, lighter rigs behind us. I saw Red, Blue, and Green flank me.

  Frustrated, I tried to angle us enough to cut them off. It was our only chance to prevent them from using their speed to beat us.

  It worked. Red backed away. I angled to Green, but he managed to speed up just enough to get his team out in front of mine and so I had to back away.

  The king seemed to sense we were being less aggressive on his behalf, and he shouted to our rivals, “Any man I catch taking it easy on me will get fifty lashes!”

  That did it. Motivated by gold and given the chance to let this be a full initiation ritual, complete with the danger, Red, Blue, and Green seemed to become maniacal in their lust for victory. Their archers held on desperately as the chariots lurched right and left, bumped over rocks and went flying, barely landing upright, and then we were onto Seth’s Flat—the field of deep sand we knew was coming but still always caught us off guard—and every horse stumbled to its knees, jerking the chariots to a stop. We all went flying through the air.

  I was ready for it and landed on my feet, looking quickly around for the king and finding him lying on his face. I was terrified that he was hurt, until I saw his sandy face look up at me with a devil of a grin. He was quickly on his feet and running back to the chariot with me.

  As we mounted, the others were clambering over their rigs, calling out to the horses, shouting angrily at each other, everyone furious that they had been tossed like a bunch of green troops. Several wheel spokes in the ranks of the contenders had broken, throwing them out of the race.

  I pleaded with the horses to get moving,
but they were spooked. I sang the Red Scorpions’ regimental song in a clear, loud voice. That seemed to work. They calmed down.

  “You must rock back and forth with me, your majesty!” I shouted to the king.

  Together we leaned left, then right, then left, right, back and forth like that until we had a rhythm of motion that allowed the wheels to raise up just enough as the horses strained against the deep sand to get us moving again. Progress was agonizingly slow, and there was nothing we could do about it but the hard work of rocking it side to side, side to side.

  Red, Green, and Blue had regained their mounts. They were the only ones to do so. I nodded. It was as it should be. Only the best remained, racing for victory.

  The horses wheezed and gasped as they fought the maddening sand. You have walked on it before, Othniel, and know how frustrating it can be to appear to make no progress, even though you are working twice as hard for your steps. Imagine the state of the horses by the time we made it.

  It felt like forever, but we finally reached the end of Seth’s Flat. The horses sensed the hard ground and responded to it, jerking us ahead. I whipped them furiously to gain as much ground as possible, chancing a look over my shoulder at Red, Green, and Blue as they struggled to get to the end of the sand pit.

  The rock pile ahead grew larger. I will not name it for you here, but you can know that the name was inappropriate. We rounded it on the far side. I started detecting the effect of the run on the horses. Their turns were more sluggish, and foam began pouring from their mouths.

  The Spring of the Duat was ahead, a marshy swamp that sprung up out of the desert on the other side of the rock mound, which could only have been placed there by the hand of a foul god as an evil prank, for the water was fetid and would have sickened the horses and killed any man who tasted it. This was the most difficult of all the obstacles yet, because I would have to keep them from stopping to satiate their natural urge to gorge themselves on water.

  The smell of the swamp assaulted our nostrils as we approached. Nothing grew but a green slime over the mud.

  “Brace yourself, your majesty!” I shouted, and then we struck the mud at full speed, sending clumps of it flying all over us, drenching the king’s new white linen kilt with muck, but he could not have been more delirious with happiness.

  “You are the best in my army! I shall make you commander of ten thousand!”

  Absurdly, in spite of the danger we were in, I looked at him and felt my face blushing with pride. Commander of ten thousand?

  I was not watching the horses, and they suddenly skidded to a stop and plunged their faces into the water, realizing at last what it was.

  “No! No!” I shouted, yanking on the reins as hard as I could. “Majesty, pull out the bow!”

  The other three chariots were behind us. I could hear them.

  The king took out the bow and waved it at me.

  “Break off the arrowhead!”

  He did not question me but simply executed the order and snapped an arrowhead away from the shaft, which he’d plucked from the quiver. I was impressed by his discipline.

  “Now shoot it into their hide! They are trained to run when they feel an arrow strike them!”

  The king raised the bow in one fluid motion and released it, and the blunted arrow struck the horse’s hide directly, startling it into a frightened whinny.

  I cracked the reins, shouted “Kah! Kah!” the sharp-edged command I knew they would heed, the command that ordered flight from battle, and the horses finally reared up and ran again.

  I looked back. Red, Green, and Blue were doing the same thing.

  “Kah! Kah!”

  The interior of the chariot no longer gleamed, and neither did the exterior. We were covered in the rancid dark mud. The king kept laughing, and I remembered the first time I knew I was going to finish the Ring of Horus, the thrill of it unmatched by anything else.

  We were going to win if we could just be the first chariot back to the Narrows.

  We flew past the other broken-down chariots, whose riders paused a moment in their frustrating efforts to repair their rigs and harness their horses to let loose a war cry of respect for us. The king, muddy and bleeding from where he had collided with the ground, raised his arm in salute, and they erupted for him, their predicament forgotten.

  The Narrows approached. I could feel victory. Feel it. I had no way of knowing exactly where the shadow lay, but I knew we were going to beat it back.

  We rounded the first turn in the terrain where we would glimpse the finish.

  The cliffs were there. The Narrows path . . .

  The path was blocked. By at least twenty men.

  I was confused at first. They were not our men who had crashed earlier.

  Then it struck me.

  They’d seen the electrum chariot, knew who was in it, and bided their time until we were alone against them.

  “Majesty, we are going to be attacked,” I said as calmly as I could. “Did you learn the wedge formation with the infantry yet?”

  The king’s face fell. “Who are they?”

  “Amalekites, your majesty. They will capture you for ransom. We must fight them until help can arrive. I cannot turn this rig around. Did you learn the wedge yet?”

  “The wedge is for three people!”

  “You can fight it with two,” I said, now desperately. “I will cover the rear. You be the left flank!”

  The king nodded, his bravado gone. But his courage was still there, for he drew one of the bronze swords from its scabbard and held on to the railing with it raised, waiting for me to stop.

  “I am going to send the chariot at them, and then we must jump out the back. Do you understand? Then we run and try to get back to the men. If they catch us, we fight in the wedge.”

  I did not wait for his response; we were too close now. I pulled out my own sword, grabbed some arrows and the bow, and we both leaped out of the back of the chariot.

  The Amalekites looked stunned that we had not slowed down, thinking us unwilling to fight them. They dove out of the way of the careening chariot.

  The horses felt lighter and knew to turn back to look for their rider, and when they did so at too fast a speed, the chariot swung wide, broke from its fastenings and tumbled toward the bandits, its weight and momentum dragging the team with it. It had the effect of a broad cut from a scythe, sending the bandits scattering and crushing a few of them.

  “Run! Run!” I called to the king.

  We kicked off our muddy sandals and sprinted barefoot back to where the other members of the squadron were coming.

  Red, Green, and Blue had seen the whole encounter and raced past us to put themselves between the bandits and the king.

  We had been rivals moments before, willing to kill each other for gold, but now we were once more the Red Scorpions who must defend their pharaoh.

  As soon as they passed, I saw the archers in the chariots raise their bows and release a few arrows that made the bandits duck. But these were fearsome desert warriors and knew to avoid arrows when they saw them.

  Like a smothering horde of locusts, the Amalekites swarmed down on the charioteers we had been racing. I heard the sound of them being slaughtered as we ran, their sheer numbers overwhelming even the Scorpion troops.

  On my right came more, emerging out of the sand. They had circled us, and there were dozens of them who had hidden under cloaks covered with sand and now emerged, swords raised, their war cry shrieking from their lips.

  I called to the king, “Form the wedge! We have to fight our way through!”

  Thutmose, the king, fell in next to me. He had been a good student of the art.

  Three men rushed us from the front. I raised my sword to engage them while also searching quickly around for an escape route.

  There, through these men. A small pile of rocks we could climb, leading along a ridge.

  The three men were on us. My sword whirled and flashed in the sunlight. They were good fight
ers. My attacks were blocked and anticipated.

  Our only hope was to kill these three quickly before the others reached us, and they were closing fast.

  I concentrated on one of them and got my blade ready, and then I saw him lurch forward as an arrow hit him in the back, breaking his ribs and spine with its force. A heavy arrow, an arrow that could only be drawn by . . .

  My friends Amek and Senek appeared on the ridge above us. They must have followed our column without being allowed, desperate to be a part of the king’s ride. I had never been so happy to see their ugly faces.

  “Cover us, we are coming to you!” I shouted. Amek only nodded and raised his great war bow again. He drew back a thick bolt of an arrow, the arrows we used in massed skirmishes that could penetrate through thick hide armor and shields.

  “Majesty, this way!” I pulled the king with me, thinking wildly that I was touching his royal person and how that could have me killed under any other circumstance.

  We climbed the ridge under the cover of Amek’s and Senek’s arrows. I glanced back. The Amalekites on the open plain were cutting down my squadron.

  Reaching Amek and Senek, I gasped, “We need to get back to the main—” I was cut off by a burning pain in my thigh. An Amalekite arrow cut me as it passed and clattered on the rocks. Blood everywhere. But it was shallow. I sensed it.

  “We need to get him back,” I tried again.

  Amek loosed another arrow down the ridge toward the pursuing Amalekites and stood up. Senek stood as well, and after several quick arrows the initial band of Amalekites who had followed us retreated, deciding we were not worth the risk.

  “They believe the king is in the main body of our squadron,” I said. “Else they would not give up so easily.”

  “Don’t they see him with us? Didn’t they see his chariot?”

  “They believe it to be a decoy,” Thutmose himself offered.