Qa'a (The First Dynasty Book 3)

by Lester Picker

  Utter confusion had taken over and, with no one in charge, I shouted out to all who stood in the tent. “Stop! I order you all to stop what you are doing!” The Captains and priests looked around to see who had barked that order. I held up my hands.

  “All who are in this tent, stay here until you are given permission to leave.”

  “By whose right do you take command?” one of the captains asked.

  “I do not take command. I speak for Merkha here, who is the highest Horus priest in the Two Lands, now that the kas of our dear Khenemet and Buikkhu walk in the Netherworld. Merkha will instruct you on what to do, while I go to inform Nomti of this horrible tragedy.” The men shuffled about uncomfortably.

  “We will find out what has happened here and all those responsible will pay,” Merkha said as he looked into the eyes of each man. “We are all in shock and mourning, but we are a people of laws and they will prevail here until this is sorted out.”

  “But who will lead us now?” a voice rang out. The others murmured their assent.

  “The law is clear that the highest ranking man who is not a priest will lead us until we return to the safety of Inabu-hedj and the Royal family. Nomti is the only man who wears the Gold Armband of the King of the Two Lands. He will lead us until then.” I could feel the relief in the crowd, for all decent men fear the chaos of Nun.

  By the time I rushed to Nomti’s tent, he was already informed of events. He paced back and forth in extreme agitation. “What have you done?” he said, grabbing me by both arms and shaking me. “You have thrown us into chaos!”

  I did as I was trained to do and looked him in the eyes and breathed in and out deeply. He slowly let me go, turned and held his hands to his head.

  “This is madness. This… we have angered Horus and…”

  “Nomti! Take control of yourself, for if ever there was a need for the gift the gods have bestowed upon you, the gift to lead men, now is that time.” I moved in front of him. “The deed is done. We cannot turn back.”

  “So you knew of this? All of this?” he said, sweeping his hand toward the tent opening.

  “Yes.” I waited until the full impact of my word sank in. “We acted because the gods placed them on a platter for our taking. This is not about Qa’a, who is already journeying to the Afterworld, or Khenemet, or Buikkhu. This is about Kem. You and I, Merkha and Irisi all know that. Kem is in ruins now. Horus needs your mortal intervention to help him help our people. Kem stands now on the knife’s edge.”

  Nomti slowly walked away from me, lost deep in thought. The commotion outside grew as more soldiers were told of events during the night. Yells for revenge could be heard.

  “You have an opportunity here, Nomti. The men require a leader, for no people can survive long without a strong leader who gives them hope and a vision of a better future for themselves and their children. They must also have a victory against the enemy, not our own people, but the Ta-Tjehenus.”

  “And how do I arrange that?” he said sarcastically.

  “It has already been arranged. If you take the army back to the embattled village, you will be met by little resistance. The Ta-Tjehenus will be drugged tonight in their victorious celebration by wine prepared by Apep priests, their leaders killed. If you can rally the men, you will achieve victory, sue for peace and march back to Inabu-hedj ready for the people to embrace you as their future King.”

  “Of war I know little. You above all others understand that.”

  “Wars are not won by Kings. They are won by trained warriors who will sacrifice their lives for a strong leader who gives them hope and a reason for dying.”

  Nomti walked to a chair and sat heavily. “Oh, Horus, I did not mean to offend you,” he intoned, looking to the heavens. “I mean only to save Kem, to unite the Two Lands and fulfill King Narmer’s vision, may he be blessed for all eternity. My only wish is for the Red and Black Lands to grow in peace and prosperity, together.”

  “And that is exactly what we have fought for, my dearest Nomti. Go. Go now and rally your men. Speak to them from your heart and they will follow you to Wadj-Wer and beyond. Give them hope and they will fight to the end. Show them a future for their grandchildren and they will embrace your rule forever. Go!”

  Nomti stood and I helped dress him in his leather belt and breastplate. His sword hung from his waist, his hand gripping it as he walked from the tent. As he lifted the flap, he turned to me.

  “You are right, but it does not change the fact that my heart is heavy. I care not a flea about Khenemet or Buikkhu, but my friend lies murdered in that tent there.”

  “Your friend would have surely been dead in a day or two anyway, for he fell to the spear of an enemy that he alone created.” Nomti thought for a moment, nodded and ducked under the tent flap. He turned toward the waiting soldiers, who desperately watched him as he walked, head held high, to Qa’a’s tent. It was as if they sized him up for the very first time as a leader, to determine if his ka was strong enough to follow.

  Throughout that morning and into the afternoon, Nomti used his abilities to organize details to his advantage. Khenemet’s tent was torn down and burned, his body brought to Qa’a’s tent, which was declared off limits to anyone but the Horus priests who began to prepare the bodies for their journeys.

  The War Council was called together hurriedly. Nomti listened to their concerns and then formulated a plan of action. He then called a meeting of the Captains of the various army divisions to review a battle plan.

  The next morning battle horns woke all in the camp before Ra rose. The air in the marshes had already begun to warm, the odors of rotted marsh soil, rotting food, and human feces assaulting our senses. The men, I knew, were ready to force an end to this war. Thankfully, as the men attended to their chores, the mut mosquitoes and biting flies had already had their nighttime fill and the men worked free of their merciless attentions.

  The pages had loaded the boats with weapons and food the night before, so the captains assembled the men at the shoreline as Nomti had instructed. When all were ready, Nomti stood on a provisioning cart and in booming voice called out to his men.

  “Soldiers of Kem, protectors of our women and children, descendants of the gods who walked these lands before us, I make no pretenses standing before you today. I wear the Gold Armband of the King, but I am no warrior. You all know that.” With that he jiggled his sword as if he could not remove it from its sheath and all the men laughed as they passed his words to those in the back.

  “War is not pretty. It is brutal and nasty and unworthy of Horus’ majesty or Mother Nile’s precious gifts. It is a mark against us that we fight our brothers in the Black Lands, the Land of the Papyrus,” he continued, holding out his hands to encompass the land we now stood on. Men looked at each other wondering where Nomti’s talk was headed.

  “We know that our brothers here have been influenced by our real enemies, the Ta-Tjehenus. Their barren land has driven them to our green shores, where they steal our cattle and grain, take children as slaves and defile our women. I say to you now, that this will be the last day the Ta-Tjehenus will ever plague us!” Cheers broke out as the infantrymen pounded their spears on the ground and the swordsmen held their swords high.

  “With the Ta-Tjehenus swept from our lands, we take a first step today. All of you will remember this day, whether here or in the Afterlife. Beginning tomorrow we become one nation. Two lands, but one nation.” Men stood silent and what possessed me to do it I will never know, but I started at that very moment to call out.

  “One nation! One nation!”

  The chant spread amongst the men and soon spears beat in unison upon the Black Land, swords raised to the heavens, five thousand men yelling the chant ever louder. Finally, Nomti held his hands up for silence.

  “I stand before you today, not as a warrior, but as a man of his word. I promise you today that if you fight with honor, we will be victorious. I promise you that victory will bind the Two Lands together
and mortar King Narmer’s vision, may he be praised for all eternity. I promise you that because of our victory today there will be no more wars in our lifetime, nor in your children’s or grandchildren’s.” Men now looked at each other in amazement, their eyes wide. Jaws hung down, men smiled, some jumped up and down with the fervor of the moment.

  “And with our victory today, peace and prosperity will reign throughout the land, not just for those of noble birth, but even extending to the lowliest of rekhi. This I promise you, for I am Nomti of Nekhen, wearer of the Gold Armband, Minister of Relationships with Foreigners, and a man of his word!”

  From the middle of the soldiers someone held up his sword and yelled Nomti’s name. Immediately others took up the chant and soon the entire army chanted: “Nomti! Nomti! Nomti!” As they continued, Nomti nodded to the captains and they urged their units forward. They soon began their trip downstream.

  I stood in Nomti’s boat as the fleet moved past, the soldiers putting their arms to their chests in tribute as they passed. Merkha stood on the bow, his hands raised in the traditional blessing of the troops. In an hour the men reached the village.

  With Nomti now standing on the bow of our boat, he withdrew his sword from his sheath. No man spoke a word, but all eyes watched the tip of that sword. Nomti took his time, surveying his troops and in the moment he dropped the sword, he shouted the simple words that all who were present would carry with them to the Afterlife.

  “One Kem!” he shouted. With that our men began their assault and the once fearsome Ta-Tjehenu warriors, now disoriented from the herbs they were given, their leaders dead, ran around in a panic, like goats to slaughter.

  SCROLL THIRTY-TWO

  Beginning of the End

  Merkha

  I blessed them that fateful day, when our forces finally vanquished the Ta-Tjehenus. I spread my hands wide over them, hands and blessings both tainted by blood. As I write these holy words, I feel not their holiness, for the ink I use has been diluted with the tears of my betrayal.

  Urshte, of course, feels quite differently, for his ba was formed as a baby watching his mother gather papyrus stalks from the black Delta marshes. To him there was never a choice. Once the gods put him together with Nomti, the future of Kem was cast anew.

  Or, as Urshte reminds me, perhaps not anew. Perhaps it is no more than a ripple in a pond, one that King Narmer long ago saw, for water always seeks to mix itself into one uniform substance. I have found great comfort in Urshte’s perception. Even more I have found comfort in Nomti’s vision; two lands, one nation. One Kem.

  When the battle was won, when the last of the Ta-Tjehenus was wiped from the Black Land, the first thing Nomti did was meet with the leaders of Lower Kem after he marched triumphantly into Dep. As I only later learned, Urshte had negotiated with both sides well in advance and Nomti’s first face-to-face meetings with the Delta leadership, while hesitant, were also cordial.

  By time we left to return to Inabu-hedj, the mortician priests had finished their preparation of the bodies of Qa’a, Khenemet and Buikkhu for burial. It was during our final encampment before marching into the city that we all learned of the tragic deaths of Nafre and Mume, the last possible blood heirs to the throne. It was told that they died in a fall, first Nafre and then Mume as he reached out to save his mother. I noted that neither Nomti nor Urshte were surprised and, truth be recorded, neither was I. If Nomti was ever to ascend to the throne their deaths were never in doubt. Two lands, one Kem I repeated to myself so as not to feel the pain in my heart over their deaths.

  With Khenemet and Buikkhu now venturing into the Afterlife, a meeting of the High Priests of Nekhen was called, for as the birthplace of King Narmer and the oldest Horus temple in the land, only they were able to decide on the next Chief Priest. It was thus that I was met by a delegation the day before entering Inabu-hedj and offered this exalted position.

  I first refused the honor, for it was never my desire to lead others. And when that night I retreated to my tent and thought of the many problems that now confronted the Two Lands, I experienced a strong childlike desire to run back to the comfort of my parents’ home. And for the first time in all the years I had been a priest I understood what it was like to be Khenemet. That thought caused goose flesh to fan along my skin.

  In the light of morning I met with Urshte and it was only through his and Nomti’s insistence that I accepted the honor, so that the proper intersessions with the gods could be made at the funeral of the King. I also told them I would recruit Mhotep to be my assistant.

  I thought it fitting that my first religious act would be to officiate at a funeral. But the fact that it was Horus’ brother who I was to bury, and in whose death I had a hand, made me sick with despair. Now, more than ever, I doubted whether I had taken the right path.

  Inabu-hedj was already in mourning. Black burlap hung everywhere in town. People in the streets wore rent garments and merchants did not trade their wares. The city looked deserted, like mut spirits inhabited it, for most people stayed indoors while the King’s ka roamed restlessly between the worlds.

  As the King’s body was carried back to the palace, enormous crowds gathered to watch the procession. As the day progressed, I noted that my head hurt and when I asked Urshte if he had any herbals to treat it, he mentioned that he, too, had a headache. Nomti said the same. An uneasy feeling overcame me, yet it was Urshte who noticed it first.

  Just as we were a few hundred cubits from the palace, one of the priests standing high on the palace parapet screamed as loud as he could.

  “Mut winds!”

  I looked toward the west. A frightening, billowing black and brown cloud of unimaginable height crested the mountain and raced down its slopes toward us. Within the space of a few breaths the crowds scattered, wrapping whatever they could grab around their faces, knowing what would soon batter us. Nomti shouted for the priest pallbearers to race to the palace, where a fresh group of priests took the stretchers the rest of the way. The biting sand clouds descended upon us in the blink of an eye.

  As we huddled in the palace, choking, the winds howled in our ears as if possessed, sucking the very air around us of sustenance. All I could think of was that we witnessed the fury of Horus’ mighty wings beating down upon us. Even with a cloth over my face, I could hardly breathe, the dust was so thick, and I dared not open my eyes. Sand beat furiously against the walls of the palace and quickly filled the rooms with ankle-deep grit. My face was plastered with sand dust. Then, in but a few moments more it was over.

  Servants rose and dusted themselves off. Everyone coughed and wheezed. Someone thought to order the servants to get water for the parched throats of all the newly arrived and we drank as if we had never tasted the sweetness of Mother Nile before. Servants poured water onto the faces and into the dust-filled eyes of the Royal family.

  I saw Urshte in the distance, ministering to a woman who shook in the corner of one of the outer rooms. He saw me coming and rose. “We have been warned,” he said softly. “The gods keep a careful eye on us.” Indeed, we had been warned.

  In the ten-day before the funeral, Nomti, Urshte and I organized the affairs in the palace. The first, and most unpleasant, was to arrange for the subsidiary burials that had become the custom since Narmer’s time. Most of Qa’a’s immediate servants chose to be buried with their King to serve him in the Afterlife. The priests of Nekhen would make sure that their herbs would make the deaths of all who accompanied their King as painless as possible. Twenty-two servants in all asked to accompany Qa’a.

  It was in the midst of these preparations that Irisi came to visit me. From the instant she came into my room, now the main living area in the Temple of Horus, I could see she was distressed.

  “And what brings you here, my sister?”

  “I have made a decision,” she said, in her usual direct manner.

  “Go on.”

  “I will accompany the King to the Afterworld.”

  In my shock I tried
getting up and stumbled instead over my staff. Irisi caught me and steadied me while I regained my balance. It was difficult for me to speak.