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

by Wilbur Smith

  We were right on the bull now, but still he stood his ground. Perhaps these animals were every bit as dull-witted as they looked. This would be an easy kill, and I sensed Tanus’ disappointment at the prospect of such poor sport.

  ‘Come on, you old fool!’ he shouted contemptuously. ‘Don’t just stand there. Defend yourself!’

  It was as though the bull heard and understood the challenge. He threw up his trunk and loosed a blast of sound that stunned and deafened us. The horses shied wildly, so that I was thrown against the dashboard with a force that bruised my ribs. For a moment I lost control of the team, and we swerved away.

  Then the bull squealed again, and he ran.

  ‘By Horus, look at him come!’ Tanus roared with astonishment, for the beast was not running from us, but directly at us, in a furious charge. He was swifter than any horse, and nimble as an angry leopard set upon by the hounds. He kicked up bursts of dust with each long flying stride, and was on us before I could get the horses under control again.

  I looked up at him, for he towered directly over us, reaching out with his trunk to pluck us from the cockpit of the chariot, and I could not believe the size of him, nor the fury in those eyes. They were not the eyes of an animal, but those of an intelligent and alert human being. This was no porcine sloth, but a courageous and terrible adversary that we had challenged in our arrogance and ignorance.

  Tanus got off a single arrow. It struck the bull in the centre of his forehead, and I expected to see him collapse as the bronze point pierced the brain. We did not know then that the brain of the elephant is not situated where you would expect it to be, but is far back in the mountainous skull and protected by a mass of spongy bone that no arrow can penetrate.

  The bull did not even check or swerve. He merely reached up with his trunk and gripped the shaft of the arrow with the tip, as a man might do with his hand. He pulled the shaft from his own flesh and threw it aside and came on after us, reaching out towards us with the blood-smeared trunk.

  Hui in the second chariot of our line saved us, for we were defenceless against the old bull’s fury. Hui came in from the side, lashing his horses and yelling like a demon. His archer from the footplate behind him fired an arrow into the bull’s cheek a hand’s-span below the eye, and that pulled his attention from us.

  The elephant wheeled to chase after Hui, but he was at full gallop and raced clean away. The next chariot in line was not so fortunate. The driver lacked Hui’s skill, and his turn away was inept. The bull lifted his trunk high and then swung it down like an executioner’s axe.

  He struck the near-side horse across the back, just behind the withers, and broke its spine so cleanly that I heard the vertebrae shatter like a brittle potsherd. The maimed horse went down and dragged its teammate down with it. The chariot rolled over and the men were hurled from it. The elephant placed one forefoot on the body of the fallen charioteer and, with its trunk, plucked off his head and tossed it aloft like a child’s ball. It spun in the air spraying a bright feather of pink blood from the severed neck.

  Then the next chariot in line tore in, distracting the bull from his victim.

  I pulled up my horses at the edge of the grove, and we stared back aghast at the carnage of our shattered squadron. There were broken chariots scattered across the field, for Kratas out on the left had fared no better than we had.

  The two great bull elephants bristled with arrow-shafts, and the blood streamed down their bodies, leaving wet streaks on their dusty grey hide. However, the wounds had not weakened them, but seemed only to have aggravated their fury. They rampaged through the grove, smashing up the capsized chariots, stamping the carcasses of the horses under those massive padded feet, throwing the bodies of screaming men high in the air and trampling them as they fell back to earth.

  Kratas raced up alongside us, and shouted across at us, ‘By the itching crabs in Seth’s crotch, this is hot work! We have lost eight chariots in the first charge.’

  ‘Better sport than you expected, Captain Kratas,’ Prince Memnon yelled back at him. He would have done better to keep his opinion to himself, for up until that moment we had forgotten about the boy in the confusion. Now, however, both Tanus and I rounded on him together.

  ‘As for you, my lad, you have had enough sport for one day,’ I told him firmly.

  ‘It’s back to the fleet with you, and that right swiftly,’ agreed Tanus, and at that moment an empty chariot cantered by. I do not know what had happened to the crew, they had probably been thrown from the cockpit or been plucked out of it bodily by one of the infuriated beasts.

  ‘Catch those horses!’ Tanus ordered, and when the empty chariot was brought back to us, he told the prince, ‘Out you get. Take that chariot back to the beach and wait there for our return.’

  ‘My Lord Tanus,’ Prince Memnon drew himself to his full height, reaching as high as his father’s shoulder, ‘I protest—’

  ‘None of your royal airs with me, young man. Go back and protest to your mother, if you must.’ He lifted the prince with one hand and dropped him into the vacant cockpit of the other vehicle.

  ‘Lord Tanus, it is my right—’ Memnon made one last despairing attempt to remain in the hunt.

  ‘And it is my right to wrap the scabbard of my sword around your royal backside, if you are still here when I look around again,’ said Tanus, and turned his back on him. Both of us put the boy out of our minds.

  ‘Gathering ivory is not quite as easy as picking up mushrooms,’ I remarked. ‘We will have to think up a better plan than this.’

  ‘You cannot kill these creatures by shooting them in the head,’ Tanus growled. ‘We will go in again and try an arrow through the ribs. If they have no brain in their skull, then surely they have lungs and a heart.’

  I gathered up the reins, and lifted the heads of the team, but I could feel that Patience and Blade were as nervous as I was at the prospect of returning to the field. None of us had enjoyed our first taste of elephant hunting.

  ‘I’ll go at him head-on,’ I told Tanus, ‘and then turn out to give you a broadside shot into his ribs.’

  I put the horses into a trot, and then gradually pushed up their speed as we entered the acacia grove. Dead ahead of us our bull rampaged over the ground that was littered with the wreckage of overturned chariots and the bodies of dead men and broken horses. He saw us coming and let out another of those terrible squeals that chilled my blood, and the horses flicked their ears and shied again. I gathered them up with the reins and drove them on.

  The bull charged to meet us, like a landslide of rock down a steep hillside. He was a terrible sight in his rage and his agony, but I held my team steady, not yet pushing them to the top of their speed. Then, as we came together, I lashed them up and yelled them into a full, mad gallop. At the same moment I swung out hard left, opening the bull’s flank.

  At a range of less than twenty paces, Tanus fired three arrows in quick succession into his chest. All of them went in behind the shoulder, finding the gaps between the ribs, and burying themselves full-length in the seared grey skin.

  The bull squealed again, but this time in mortal agony. Though he reached out for us, we raced clear of the stretch of his trunk. I looked back and saw him standing in our dust, but when he bellowed again, the blood spurted from the end of his trunk, like steam from a kettle.

  ‘The lungs,’ I shouted. ‘Good work, Tanus. You have hit him through the lungs.’

  ‘We have found the trick of it now,’ Tanus exulted. ‘Take us back. I will give him another one through the heart.’

  I wheeled about and the horses were still strong and willing.

  ‘Come on, my beauties,’ I called to them. ‘One more time. Hi up!’

  Though he was mortally struck, the old bull was still far from death. I would learn just how tenacious of life these magnificent beasts were, but now he charged to meet us once again with a courage and splendour that filled me with reverence. Even in the heat of the hunt and terror
for my own safety, I felt shame at the torture we were inflicting on him.

  Perhaps it was because of this that I let the horses go in very close. Out of respect for him, I wanted to match his courage with my own. When it was almost too late, I swung my horses out of the charge, meaning to pass him just out of reach of that wicked trunk.

  Just then the off-side wheel of the chariot burst under us. There was that giddy moment as I somersaulted through the air like an acrobat, but this was not the first time I had been thrown, and I had learned to fall like a cat. I rode the shock and let myself roll twice. The earth was soft and the grass as thick as a mattress. I came up on my feet unhurt and with my wits still all about me. I saw at a glance that Tanus had not come through as well as I had. He was sprawled flat out and unmoving.

  The horses were up, but anchored by the dead weight of the broken chariot. The bull elephant attacked them. Blade was nearest to him and he broke my darling mare’s back with a single blow of the trunk. Blade went down on her knees screaming, and Patience was still linked to her. The bull thrust one thick tusk through Blade’s chest and jerked his head up, lifting the kicking and struggling animal high in the air.

  I should have run then, while the bull was so distracted, but Patience was still unhurt. I could not leave her. The elephant was turned half-away from me, his own ears, spread like a ship’s sail, blanketed me from his view, and he did not see me run in. I snatched Tanus’ sword from the scabbard on the rack of the capsized chariot, and darted to Patience’s side.

  Although the great bull was dragging her along by the leather harness that attached her to Blade, and although the blood from the other horse splashed over her neck and shoulders, she was still unhurt. Of course, she was wild with terror, squealing and kicking out with both back legs, so that she almost cracked my skull as I darted up behind her. I ducked as her hooves flew past my head and grazed my cheek.

  I hacked at the rawhide tackle that pinned her to the drive-shaft of the chariot. The sword was sharp enough to shave the hair from my head, and the leather split under that bright edge. Three hard strokes, and Patience was free to run. I snatched at her mane to pull myself up on to her back, but she was so terror-struck that she bounded away before I could find a grip. Her shoulder crashed into me and sent me spinning away. I was thrown heavily to the ground, under the side of the wrecked chariot.

  I struggled up to see Patience dashing off through the grove; she ran with a free and light stride, so I knew she was unhurt. I looked for Tanus next. He lay ten paces away from the chariot, face down against the earth, and I thought he was dead, but at that moment he raised his head and looked around at me with a bewildered and groggy expression. I knew that any sudden movement might draw the bull elephant’s attention to him, and I willed him to lie still. I dared not utter a sound, for the enraged animal was still standing over me.

  I looked up at the bull. Poor Blade was impaled upon his tusk, and the rawhide traces were entangled with his trunk. The bull started to move off, dragging the battered chariot with him. He was attempting to dislodge the weight of Blade’s dangling carcass from his tusk. The point of the tusk had ripped open the horse’s belly, and the stink of the stomach contents mingled with the reek of blood and the elephant’s peculiar rank and gamey odour. Stronger than all that, the stench of the sweat of my own fear filled my nostrils.

  I made sure that the bull’s head was still turned away from me, before I pushed myself up and ran doubled-over to where Tanus lay. ‘Up! Get up!’ I croaked in a hoarse whisper, and I tried to lift him to his feet, but he was a heavy man and still only half-conscious. Desperately I looked back at the bull. He was moving away from us, still dragging the whole tangle of broken equipment and the dead horse with him.

  I draped Tanus’ arm around my neck and put my shoulder into his armpit. With all my strength I managed to lever him to his feet, and he hung against me unsteadily. I swayed under his weight. ‘Brace up!’ I whispered urgently. ‘The bull will spot us at any moment.’

  I tried to drag Tanus along with me, but he took only one pace before he gave a groan and fell back against me. ‘My leg,’ he grunted. ‘Can’t move. Knee gone. Twisted the cursed thing.’

  The full realization of our predicament struck me then, as it had not before. My old sin of cowardice overwhelmed me once more, and the strength went out of my own legs.

  ‘Get out of it, you old fool,’ Tanus grated in my ear. ‘Leave me. Run for it!’

  The elephant lifted his head and shook it in the same way that a dog shakes the water from its ears after it has swum back to the shore. Those vast leathery ears slapped and rattled against his own shoulders, and Blade’s crushed carcass slid off the tusk and was hurled aside as if it were no heavier than a dead rabbit. The strength of the elephant bull was past all belief. If he could toss the weight of horse and chariot so easily, what might he do with my own frail body?

  ‘Run, for the love of Horus, run, you fool!’ Tanus urged me, and tried to push me away, but some strange obstinacy prevented me from leaving him, and I hung on to his shoulder. Afraid as I was, I could not leave him.

  The bull had heard the sound of Tanus’ voice and he swung around with those ears flaring wide open like the mainsail of a fighting galley. He stared full at us, and we were less than fifty paces from him.

  I did not know then, as I would learn later, that the eyesight of the elephant is so poor that he is almost blind. He relies almost entirely on his hearing and his sense of smell. Only movement attracts him, and if we had stood still he would not have seen us.

  ‘He has seen us,’ I gasped, and I dragged Tanus with me, forcing him to hop on his good leg beside me. The bull saw the movement and he squealed. I shall never forget that sound. It deafened and stunned me, sending us both reeling so that we staggered together and almost fell.

  Then the bull charged straight at us.

  He came with long, driving strides, and his ears flapped about his head. Arrows bristled from the great weathered forehead, and blood streamed down his face like tears. Each time he squealed, the lung blood spurted in a cloud from his trunk. As tall as a cliff, and as black as death, he came at us in full charge. I could see every seam and crease in the folded skin around his eyes. The lashes of his eyes were thick as those of a beautiful girl, but such a glare of rage shone through them that my heart turned to a stone in my chest, and weighed down my legs so I could not move.

  The passage of time seemed to slow down, and I was overcome with a sense of dreamlike unreality. I stood and watched death bear down upon us with a slow and stately deliberation, and could make no move to avoid it.

  ‘Tata!’ A child’s voice rang in my head, and I knew that it was a delusion of my terror. ‘Tata, I am coming!’

  In total disbelief I swung my head away from the vision of death before me. Across the open ground of the grove a chariot was tearing towards us at full gallop. The horses were stretched out and their heads were going like the hammers on a coppersmith’s anvil. Their ears were laid back, and their nostrils flared wide open, pink and wet. I could see no driver at the reins.

  ‘Get ready, Tata!’ Only then did I see the neat little head, barely showing above the dashboard. The reins were gripped in two small fists, the knuckles white with tension.

  ‘Mem,’ I cried, ‘go back! Turn back!’

  The wind blew his hair out in a cloud behind his head, and the sunlight struck ruby sparks from the thick dark curls. He came on without a pause or check.

  ‘I’ll thrash the little ruffian for disobeying me,’ growled Tanus, as he teetered on one leg. We had both of us forgotten our own danger.

  ‘Whoa!’ Memnon cried, and brought the team down from a full gallop. He wheeled the carriage into such a sharp turn that the inside wheel stopped dead and swivelled on its rim. He had cut in front of the two of us, shielding us for an instant from the charging bull, and as the chariot spun about there was a moment when it was standing still. It was beautifully done.

  I
heaved my shoulder up under Tanus’ armpit and threw him sprawling on the footplate. The very next instant I hurled myself headlong on top of him. As I landed, Memnon gave the horses their heads, and we bounded forward so sharply that I was almost jerked backwards off the platform, but I grabbed at the side-panel and steadied myself.

  ‘Go, Mem,’ I screamed, ‘for all you’re worth!’

  ‘Hi-up!’ Memnon screamed. ‘Yah hah!’ The chariot careered away with the frightened horses driven to full flight by the enraged squeals of the charging bull close behind.

  All three of us stared back over the tail-board. The head of the bull hung over us, seeming to fill all my vision. The trunk reached out for us, so close that each time the bull squealed, the bloody cloud sprayed over us and speckled our upturned faces, so that we looked like the victims of some horrible plague.

  We could not draw clear of his rush, and he was unable to overtake us. Matched in speed, we went racing through the glade with the great bloody head hanging over us as we cowered on the floorboards of the bouncing chariot. It needed only one small mistake from our driver to send us into a hole or rip our wheels off against a stump of a fallen tree, and the bull would have been upon us in an instant. But the prince handled the traces like a veteran, picking his route through the grove with a cool hand and practised eye. He sent the chariot careening through the turns on one wheel, within an ace of capsizing, holding off the bull’s mad charge. He never faltered once, and then suddenly it was all over.

  One of the arrows buried in the bull’s chest had worked itself in deeper and sliced open the heart. The elephant opened his mouth wide, and a flood of bright blood shot up his throat and he died in his tracks. His legs went out from under him and he came down with a crash that jarred the earth under us, and lay upon his side with one long curved tusk thrust up in the air as if in a last defiant and regal gesture.

  Memnon pulled in the horses, and Tanus and I stumbled down out of the carriage and stood together staring back at that mountainous carcass. Tanus clung to the side of the chariot to favour his damaged leg, and slowly turned back to look at the boy who did not know he was his father.