River God: A Novel of Ancient Egypt (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Even as the Mazes of Ammon-Ra have foretold.’

  ‘Ten strong men here!’ Tanus bellowed. They crowded around the makeshift litter, and lifted the king between them.

  ‘Form the tortoise! Close up on me, the Blues!’ With interlocking shields, the Blues formed a wall around the king.

  Tanus raced to the Blue Crocodile which still waved in our midst and tore it from its pole. He wound it around his waist and knotted the ends across his belly.

  ‘If the Hyksos want this rag, they had better come and take it from me,’ he shouted, and his men cheered this piece of foolish bravado.

  ‘All together now! Back to the ships! At the double!’

  The moment we left the shelter of our little rocky redoubt, the chariots came at us.

  ‘Leave the men!’ Tanus had found the key. ‘Kill their beasts!’ As the first chariot bore down upon us, Tanus flexed Lanata. His bowmen drew with him, and they all fired on his example.

  Half our arrows flew wide, for we were running over uneven ground and the archers were winded. Others struck the bodywork of the leading chariot, and the shafts snapped or pegged into the wood. Still other arrows rattled off the bronzed plates that covered the chests of the horses.

  Only one arrow flew hard and true. From the great bow Lanata it sang with the wind in its feathers, and struck the offside horse in the forehead. The creature went down like a rockslide, tangling the traces and dragging its team-mate down in a cloud of dust and kicking hooves. The charioteers were hurled from the cockpit as the carriage somersaulted, and the other chariots veered away to avoid the wreckage. A jubilant shout went up from our ranks, and our pace picked up. This was our first success in all that dreadful day, and it manned and encouraged our little band of Blues.

  ‘On me, the Blues!’ Tanus roared, and then, incredibly, he began to sing. Immediately the men around him shouted the opening chorus of the regimental battle hymn. Their voices were strained and rough with thirst and effort, and there was little tune or beauty to it, but it was a sound to lift the heart and thrill the blood. I threw back my head and sang with them, and my voice soared clear and sweet.

  ‘Horus bless you, my little canary,’ Tanus laughed at me, and we raced for the river. The chariots circled us with the first wariness to their manoeuvres that they had demonstrated all that day. They had seen the fate of their comrade. Then three of them swung across the front of our tortoise, and in vee-formation charged at us head-on.

  ‘Shoot at the heads of the beasts!’ Tanus shouted, and led them with an arrow that brought another horse crashing to its knees. The chariot overturned and was smashed to pieces on the stony ground, and the other vehicles in the formation veered away.

  As our formation passed the shattered chariot, some of our men ran out to stab the squealing horses that were trapped in the wreckage. Already they hated and feared these animals with an almost superstitious dread, which was reflected in this vindictive piece of cruelty. They killed the fallen charioteers also, but without the same rancour.

  With two of their chariots destroyed, the Hyksos seemed reluctant to attack our little formation again, and we were rapidly approaching the morass of muddy fields and flooded irrigation ditches that marked the river-bank. I think that at that stage I was the only one of us who realized that the wheeled enemy could not follow us into the swamp.

  Although I ran beside the king’s litter, I could see, through the gaps in our ranks, the dying acts of the battle that were being played out around us.

  Ours was the only surviving detachment that still showed any cohesion. The rest of the Egyptian army was a formless and terrified rabble streaming across the plain. Most of them had thrown aside their weapons. When one of the chariots drove at them, they dropped to their knees and held up their hands in supplication. The Hyksos showed them no quarter. They did not even waste arrows upon them but swung in close to chop them to tatters with the spinning wheel-knives, or to lean out of the cockpit with the lance and cut them down, or to smash in their skulls with the stone-headed maces. They dragged the victim behind them, still spiked on the lance, until the barbed spear-head disengaged, and only then did they leave the crumpled corpse lying in their dust.

  I had never seen such butchery. I had never read of anything like it in all the accounts of ancient battles. The Hyksos slaughtered our people in their thousands and their tens of thousands. The plain of Abnub was like a field of dhurra corn after the reapers had been through it with their scythes. Our dead were piled in drifts and windows.

  For one thousand years our armies had been invincible and our swords had triumphed across the world. Here on the field of Abnub an age had come to an end. In the midst of this carnage the Blues sang, and I with them though my eyes burned with tears of shame.

  The first irrigation ditch was just ahead when another chariot formation swung out on our flank and came driving hard at us, three abreast. Our arrows fell all about them, but they came on with the horses blowing hard through gaping red mouths and with the drivers screaming encouragement at them. I saw Tanus shoot twice, but each time his arrows were deflected or were cheated by the erratic swerve and bounce of the chariots. The formation thundered into us and broke the tortoise of interlocking shields.

  Two of the men carrying Pharaoh’s litter were cut to shreds by the wheel-knives, and the wounded king was tumbled to the earth. I dropped to my knees beside him and covered him with my own body to protect him from the Hyksos lances, but the chariots did not linger. It was their concern never to allow themselves to become entangled or surrounded. They raced on and clear before our men could reach them with the sword. Only then did they wheel and regroup, and come back.

  Tanus reached down and hauled me to my feet. ‘If you get yourself killed, who will be left to compose a hero’s ode to us?’ he scolded me, then he shouted for men. Between them they picked up the king’s litter and ran with it for the nearest ditch.

  I could hear the squeal of the chariot wheels bearing down on us, but I never looked back. In ordinary circumstances I am a strong runner, but now I outdistanced the litter-bearers as though their feet were chained to the earth. I attempted to hurdle the ditch, but it was too wide for me to cross in a single leap, and I landed knee-deep in the black mud. The chariot that was following me struck the bank of the ditch and one of its wheels shattered. The body of the vehicle toppled into the ditch and almost crushed me, but I managed to throw myself aside.

  Swiftly the Blues stabbed and hacked the horses and men as they lay helplessly in the mud, but I took the moment to wade back to the chariot.

  The up-ended wheel was still spinning in the air. I placed my hand upon it as I studied it, and let it rotate beneath my fingers. I stood there only as long as it took me to draw three deep breaths, but at the end of that time I had learned as much about wheel construction as any Hyksos, and had the first inkling of the improvements I could make to it.

  ‘By Seth’s melodious farts, Taita, you’ll have us all killed, if you start daydreaming now!’ Kratas yelled at me.

  I shook myself and seized one of the recurved bows from the rack on the side of the chariot body and an arrow from the quiver. I wanted to examine these at my leisure. Then I waded across the ditch with them in my hand, just as the squadron of chariots came thundering back, running parallel to the ditch and firing their arrows down amongst us.

  The men carrying the king were a hundred paces ahead of me, and I was the last of our little band. Behind me the charioteers roared with frustration that they were unable to follow us, and they shot their arrows around me as I ran. One of them struck my shoulder, but the point failed to penetrate and the shaft glanced away. It left a purple bruise which I only discovered much later.

  Although I had started from so far behind them, I caught up with the litter-bearers by the time we reached the main bank of the Nile. The river-bank was crowded with the survivors of the battle. Nearly all of these were weaponless and very few were unwounded. They were all driven by a si
ngle desire, to return as swiftly as possible to the ships that had brought them down-river from Thebes.

  Tanus singled me out and called me to him as the litter-bearers came up. ‘I place Pharaoh in your hands now, Taita. Take him on board the royal barge and do all you can to save his life.’

  ‘When will you come aboard?’ I asked him.

  ‘My duty is here, with my men. I must save all of them that I can, and get them embarked.’ He turned from me and strode away, picking out the captains and commanders from amongst his beaten rabble, and shouting his orders.

  I went to the king and knelt beside the litter. He was still alive. I examined him briefly and found that he hovered on the edge of consciousness. His skin was as clammy-cold as that of a reptile, and his breathing was shallow. There was only a thin rime of blood around that arrow-shaft which had seeped up from the wound, but when I laid my ear to his chest I heard the blood bubbling in his lungs with each breath he drew, and a thin red snake of it crawled from his mouth down his chin. I knew that whatever I could do to save him, I must do quickly. I shouted for a boat to take him out to the barge.

  The litter-bearers lifted him into the skiff, and I sat in the bilges beside him as we sculled out to where the great state barge lay anchored in the main flow of the current.

  * * *

  The king’s suite crowded the ship’s side to watch us approach. There was a gaggle of the royal women and all those courtiers and priests who had taken no part in the fighting. I recognized my mistress standing amongst them as we drew closer. Her face was very anxious and pale, and she held her young son by his hand.

  As soon as those on board the barge looked down into our skiff and saw the king on his litter, with the blood on his face that I had been unable to wipe away, a terrible cry of alarm and mourning went up from them. The women keened and wailed, and the men howled with despair, like dogs.

  Of all the women, my mistress stood closest at hand as the king was lifted up the ship’s side and his litter laid on the deck. As the senior wife, hers was the duty to attend him first. The others gave her space as she stooped over him and wiped the mud and the blood from his haggard face. He recognized her, for I heard him breathe her name and ask for his son. My mistress called the prince to him, and he smiled softly and tried to raise his hand to touch the boy, but he did not have the strength, and the hand dropped back to his side.

  I ordered the crew to carry Pharaoh to his quarters, and my mistress came to me quickly and asked low and urgently, ‘What of Tanus? Is he safe? Oh, Taita, tell me that he is not slain by this dreadful enemy!’

  ‘He is safe. Nothing can harm him. I have given you the vision of the Mazes. All this was foreseen. But now I must go to the king, and I will need your help. Leave Memnon with his nursemaids, and come with me.’

  I was still black and crusted with river mud, and so was Pharaoh, for he had fallen in the same ditch as I had. I asked Queen Lostris and two of the other royal women to strip and bathe him and lay him on fresh white linen sheets, while I returned to the deck to bathe in buckets of river water that the sailors hauled up over the side. I never operate in filth, for I have found by experience that for some reason it affects the patient adversely and favours the accumulation of the morbid humours.

  While I was thus occupied, I was watching the east bank where our broken army was huddled behind the protection of ditch and swamp. This sorry rabble had once been a proud and mighty force, and I was filled with shame and fear. Then I saw the tall figure of Tanus striding amongst them, and wherever he moved, the men stood up out of the mud, and reassembled into the semblance of military discipline. Once I even caught the sound of ragged and unconvincing cheers on the wind.

  If the enemy should send their infantry through the swamps now, the slaughter and the rout would be complete. Not a man of all our mighty army would survive, for even Tanus would be able to offer little resistance. However, although I peered anxiously into the east, I could make out no sign of infantry shields in phalanx or the sparkle of advancing spear-heads at the shoulder-slope.

  There was still that terrible dust-cloud hanging over the plain of Abnub, so the chariots were at work out there, but without enemy infantry falling upon him, Tanus could still salvage some little comfort out of this dreadful day. It was a lesson I was to remember, and which stood us in good stead in the years ahead. Chariots might win the battle, but only the foot-soldiers could consolidate it.

  The battle out there on the river-bank was now entirely Tanus’ affair, while I had another battle to fight with death in the cabin of the state barge.

  * * *

  ‘We are not entirely without hope,’ I whispered to my mistress, when I returned to the king’s side. ‘Tanus is rallying his troops, and if any man alive is capable of saving this very Egypt from the Hyksos, he is the one.’ Then I turned to the king, and for the moment all else was forgotten but my patient.

  As is often my way, I murmured my thoughts aloud as I examined the wound. It was less than an hour, measured by a water-clock, since the fateful arrow had struck, and yet the flesh around the broken-off stub of the shaft was swollen and empurpled.

  ‘The arrow must come out. If I leave the barb in there, he will be dead by tomorrow’s dawn.’ I had thought the king could no longer hear me, but as I spoke, he opened his eyes and looked directly into mine.

  ‘Is there a chance that I will live?’ he asked.

  ‘There is always a chance.’ I was glib and insincere. I heard it in my own voice, and the king heard it also.

  ‘Thank you, Taita. I know you will strive for me, and I absolve you now from all blame, if you should fail.’ This was generous of him, for many physicians before me have felt the strangling-rope as punishment for letting the life of a king slip through their fingers.

  ‘The head of the arrow is deeply lodged. There will be a great deal of pain, but I will give you the powder of the Red Shepenn, the sleeping-flower, to still it.’

  ‘Where is my senior wife, Queen Lostris?’ he asked, and my mistress replied immediately, ‘I am here, my lord.’

  ‘There is aught that I would say. Summon all my ministers and my scribes, that my proclamation may be witnessed and recorded.’ They crowded into the hot little cabin and stood in silence.

  Then Pharaoh reached out to my mistress. ‘Take my hand, and listen to my words,’ he ordered, and she sank down beside him and did as she was ordered, while the king went on speaking in a soft and breathless whisper.

  ‘If I should die, Queen Lostris will stand as regent for my son. I have learned in the time that I have known her that she is a person of strength and good sense. If she were not, I would not have laid this charge upon her.’

  ‘Thank you, Great Egypt, for your trust,’ Queen Lostris murmured low, and now Pharaoh spoke directly to her, although every person in the cabin could hear him.

  ‘Surround yourself with wise and honest men. Instruct my son in all the virtues of kingship that you and I have discussed. You know my mind on all these matters.’

  ‘I will, Majesty.’

  ‘When he is old enough to take up the flail and the crook, do not attempt to withhold it from him. He is my lineage and my dynasty.’

  ‘Willingly I shall do what you order, for he is not only the son of his father, but my son also.’

  ‘While you rule, rule wisely and care for my people. There will be many who seek to wrest the emblems of kingship from your grasp—not only this new and cruel enemy, this Hyksos, but others who stand even closer to your throne. But you must oppose them all. Keep the double crown intact for my son.’

  ‘Even as you say, divine Pharaoh.’

  The king fell silent for a while and I thought that he had slipped over the edge into unconsciousness, but suddenly he groped for the hand of my mistress again.

  ‘There is one last charge I have for you. My tomb and my temple are incomplete. Now they are threatened, as is all my realm, by this terrible defeat that we have suffered. Unless my generals c
an stop them, these Hyksos will sweep on to Thebes.’

  ‘Let us petition the gods that it does not come to pass,’ my mistress murmured.

  ‘I charge you most strictly that you will see me embalmed and interred with all my treasure in accordance with the strictest protocols of the Book of the Dead.’

  My mistress was silent. I think that she realized even then just what an onerous charge this was that Pharaoh had laid upon her.

  His grip upon her hand tightened until his knuckles turned white, and she winced. ‘Swear this to me on your own life and hope for immortality. Swear it before my ministers of state and all my royal suite. Swear it to me in the name of Hapi, your patron god, and on the names of the blessed trinity, Osiris and Isis and Horus.’

  Queen Lostris looked across at me with a piteous appeal in her eyes. I knew that once she had given it, she would honour her word at all and any cost to herself. In this, she was like her lover. She and Tanus were bound by the same code of chivalry. I knew also that those close to her must expect to pay the same price. An oath to the king now might one day return to burden us all, Prince Memnon and the slave Taita included. And yet there was no manner in which she could gainsay the king as he lay upon his death-bed. I nodded to her almost imperceptibly. Later I would examine the finer points of this oath, and like a law scribe I would mould it a little closer to reasonable interpretation.

  ‘I swear on Hapi, and on all the gods,’ Queen Lostris said, softly but clearly, and there would be a hundred times in the years ahead when I would wish she had not done so.

  The king sighed with satisfaction and let her hand slip from his. ‘Then I am ready for you, Taita. And for whatever fate the gods have decreed. Only let me kiss my son once more.’

  While they brought our fine young prince to him, I drove the crowd of nobles from the cabin with little ceremony. Then I prepared a draught of the Red Shepenn for him and made it as strong as I dared, for I knew that pain could undo all my best efforts and destroy my patient as swiftly as a slip of my scalpel.