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

by Wilbur Smith

‘By Horus, it’s Remrem!’ I whispered with delight. The old warrior had brought the first division of chariots through the bad ground of the hills quicker than I would have believed possible. It was only two days since we had parted.

  I watched with professional pride as the first division opened from columns of four into line abreast. Hui and I had trained them well. It was perfectly done, and Remrem had the Hyksos in enfilade. Half their vehicles were still on the causeway. It seemed to me that the enemy commander was not even aware of the massed squadrons bearing down upon his exposed flank. I think he must still have been looking back over his shoulder. At the very last moment he tried to swing into line abreast to meet Remrem’s charge, but it was far too late. He would have done better to have turned tail and run for it.

  Remrem’s chariots poured over him in a wave, and he was washed away like debris in the stream of the Nile. I watched until I was certain that Remrem had captured most of the Hyksos horses, and only then did I sigh with relief and turn to look down into the city.

  The populace had gone wild with the joy of liberation. They were dancing through the streets, waving any piece of blue cloth that came to hand. Blue was the colour of Pharaoh Tamose. The women tied blue ribbons in their hair, and the men wound blue sashes around their waists and tied on blue arm-bands.

  There was still some isolated fighting, but gradually the surviving Hyksos were cut down or dragged from the buildings they were trying to defend. One of the barracks with several hundred men still inside it was put to the torch. I heard the screams of the men as they burned, and soon the aroma of scorched flesh drifted up to me. It smelled like roasting pork.

  Of course there was looting, and some of our upstanding citizens broke into the taverns and the wine shops and carried the jars out into the street. When one of the jars broke, they went down on all fours and guzzled the wine out of the gutter like hogs.

  I saw three men chase a girl down the alley below where I stood. When they caught her they threw her down and ripped her skirt away. Two of them pinned her limbs and held her spread-eagled while the third man mounted her. I did not watch the rest of it.

  As soon as Memnon and Kratas had stamped out the last pockets of Hyksos resistance, they set about restoring order to the city. Squads of disciplined troops trotted through the streets, using the shafts of their war spears as clubs to beat sense into the drunken and delirious mob.

  Memnon ordered a handful of those taken in the act of rape and looting to be strangled on the spot, and their corpses were hung by the heels from the city gates. By nightfall the city was quiet, and decent men and women could once more safely walk her streets.

  Memnon set up his headquarters in Pharaoh Mamose’s palace, which had once been our home on Elephantine Island. The moment I stepped ashore I hurried to our old quarters in the harem.

  They were still luxuriously appointed and had escaped the looters. Whoever had occupied them had treated my murals with the respect they warranted. The water-garden was a profusion of lovely plants, and the ponds were filled with fish and lotus. The Egyptian gardener told me that the Hyksos garrison commander who had lived here had admired our Egyptian ways, and had tried to ape them. I was thankful for that.

  Within days I had restored the rooms and garden to a state in which they were once more fit to receive my mistress. Then I went to Memnon to ask permission to bring the queen home.

  Pharaoh was distracted by the burden of taking firm hold of his kingdom. There were ten thousand matters that demanded his attention, but he put them aside for the moment and embraced me.

  ‘It all goes well, Tata.’

  ‘A happy return, Your Majesty,’ I replied, ‘but there is still so much to do.’

  ‘It is my royal command that when you and I are alone like this, you continue to call me Mem.’ He smiled at me. ‘But you are right, there is much to do, and little time left to us before Salitis and all his host marches up from the Delta to oppose us. We have won the first little skirmish. The great battles lie ahead of us.’

  ‘There is one duty that will give me great pleasure, Mem. I have prepared quarters for the queen mother. May I go up-river and bring her home to Elephantine? She has waited too long already to set foot on Egyptian soil.’

  ‘Leave at once, Tata,’ he commanded, ‘and bring Queen Masara down with you.’

  The river was too high and the desert road too rough. One hundred slaves carried the litters of the two queens along the banks of the Nile, through the gorge and down into our green valley.

  It was not pure coincidence that the first building we came to as we crossed the border was a small temple. I had planned our route to bring us here.

  ‘What shrine is this, Taita?’ my mistress drew aside the curtain of her litter to ask.

  ‘It is the temple of the god Akh-Horus, mistress. Do you wish to pray here?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. She knew what I had done. I helped her down from the litter, and she leaned heavily upon me as we entered the cool gloom of the stone building.

  We prayed together, and I felt certain that Tanus was listening to the voices of the two people in all the world who had loved him most. Before we went on, my mistress ordered me to hand over all the gold that we had with us to the priests, and promised to send more for the upkeep and the beautification of the temple.

  By the time we reached the Palace of Elephantine, she was exhausted. Each day the thing in her womb grew larger as it fed upon her wasting body. I laid her on a couch under the barrazza in the water-garden, and she closed her eyes and rested for a while. Then she opened them again and smiled at me softly. ‘We were happy here once, but will I ever see Thebes again before I die?’ I could not answer her. It was idle to make promises to her that were not mine to keep.

  ‘If I die before that, will you promise to take me back and build me a tomb in the hills from where I can look across and see my beautiful city?’

  ‘That I promise you with all my heart,’ I replied.

  * * *

  In the days that followed, Aton and I resuscitated our old spider’s web of spies and informers across the Upper Kingdom. Many of those who had once worked for us were long dead, but there were also many who were not. With the bait of gold and patriotism, they recruited other younger spies in every village and city.

  Soon we had spies in the palace of the Hyksos satrap in Thebes, and others as far north as the Delta of the Lower Kingdom. Through them we learned which Hyksos regiments were billeted in each town, and which of them were on the march. We learned their strength, and the names and foibles of their commanders. We had an exact count of the numbers of their ships and their chariots, and as the flood-waters of the Nile receded, we were able to follow the southward movement of this huge mass of men and fighting machines, as King Salitis marched on Thebes.

  I smuggled secret messages in the name of Pharaoh Tamose to those Egyptians in the regiments of the enemy, urging them to revolt. They started to trickle in through our lines, bringing more valuable intelligence with them. Soon the trickle of deserters from the Hyksos armies became a flood. Two full regiments of archers came marching in under arms, with the blue banner waving over them, and chanting, ‘Egypt and Tamose!’

  The crews of a hundred fighting galleys mutinied and slew their Hyksos officers. When they came sailing up-river to join us, they drove before them a fleet of barges that they had captured in the port of Thebes. These were laden with grain and oil and salt and flax and timber, all the sinews of war.

  By this time, all our own forces were down through the cataract and deployed around the city, except only the small herd of tame gnu. These I had left until the very last. From my lookout in the north tower, I could see the horse-lines extending for miles along both banks, and the smoke from the cooking-fires of the regimental encampments turned the air blue.

  Each day we were growing stronger, and the whole of Egypt was in a ferment of excitement and anticipation. The heady aroma of freedom perfumed each breath we d
rew. Kemit was a nation in the process of rebirth. They sang the patriotic anthems in the streets and the taverns, and the harlots and the wine merchants grew fat.

  Aton and I, poring over our maps and secret despatches, saw a different picture emerging. We saw the Hyksos giant shaking itself awake, and stretching out a mailed fist towards us. From Memphis and every city and town in the Delta, King Salitis’ regiments were on the march. Every road was crowded with his chariots, and the river ran with his shipping. All of this was moving south upon Thebes.

  I waited until I knew that Lord Apachan, the commander of the Hyksos chariots, had reached Thebes and was encamped outside the city walls with all his vehicles and all his horses. Then I went before the war council of Pharaoh Tamose.

  ‘Your Majesty, I have come to report that the enemy now have one hundred and twenty thousand horses and twelve thousand chariots massed at Thebes. Within two months, the Nile will have subsided to the level that will enable Apachan to begin his final advance.’

  Even Kratas looked grave. ‘We have known worse odds—’ he began, but the king cut him short.

  ‘I can tell by his face that the Master of the Royal Horse has more to tell us. Am I right, Taita?’

  ‘Pharaoh is always right,’ I agreed. ‘I beg your permission to bring down my gnu from above the cataract.’

  Kratas laughed. ‘By Seth’s bald head, Taita, do you intend riding out against the Hyksos on one of those clownish brutes of yours?’ I laughed with him politely. His sense of humour has the same subtlety as that of the savage Shilluk he commands.

  The next morning Hui and I set off up-river to bring down the gnu. By this time there were only three hundred of these sorry creatures left alive out of the original six thousand, but they were quite tame and could be fed from the hand. We herded them down at a gentle pace, so as not to weaken them further.

  The horses that Remrem had captured in that first brief battle with the escaping Hyksos chariots had on my orders been kept separated from our own horses that we had brought down with us from Cush. Hui and I moved the gnu into the same pasture with them, and after the first uneasiness between the two species, they were all feeding peaceably together. That night we penned gnu and Hyksos horses in the same stockade. I left Hui to watch over them and returned to the palace on Elephantine Island.

  I will admit now to a great deal of uncertainty and worry over the days that followed. I had invested so much faith in the success of this ruse, which, after all, depended on a natural event that I did not fully understand. If it failed, we would be faced with the full fury of an enemy that outnumbered us by at least four to one.

  I had worked late with Aton and had fallen asleep over my scrolls in the palace library, when I was shaken awake by uncouth hands, and Hui was shouting in my ear. ‘Come on, you lazy old rascal! Wake up! I have something for you.’

  He had horses waiting at the landing. We hurried to them as soon as the ferry put us ashore, and mounted up. We galloped all the way along the river-bank in the moonlight, and rode into the horse-lines with our mounts in a lather. The grooms had lamps lit and were working in the stockade by their feeble yellow light.

  Seven of the Hyksos horses were down already with the thick yellow pus pouring from their mouths and nostrils. The grooms were cutting into their windpipes and placing the hollow reeds to save them from choking and suffocating.

  ‘It worked!’ Hui shouted, and seized me in a coarse embrace and danced me in a circle. ‘The Yellow Strangler! It worked! It worked!’

  ‘I thought of it, didn’t I?’ I told him with all the dignity that his antics allowed me. ‘Of course it worked.’

  The barges had been moored against the bank these weeks past, ready for this day. We loaded the horses immediately, all of those who could still stand upright. The gnu we left in the stockade. Their presence would be too difficult to explain where we were going.

  With one of the captured Hyksos galleys towing each of the barges, we rowed out into the current and turned northwards. With fifty oars a side and the wind and current behind us, we made good speed as we hurried down to Thebes to deliver our gift to Lord Apachan.

  * * *

  As soon as we passed Kom-Ombo we lowered the blue flag, and hoisted captured Hyksos banners. Most of the crew of the galleys that were towing the barges had been born under Hyksos rule, some of them were of mixed parentage and spoke the foreign language with colloquial fluency.

  Two nights north of Kom-Ombo, we were hailed by a Hyksos galley. They laid alongside and sent a boarding party over to inspect our cargo.

  ‘Horses for the chariots of Lord Apachan,’ our captain told them. His father was Hyksos but his mother was an Egyptian noblewoman. His deportment was natural and his credentials convincing. After a cursory inspection they passed us through. We were stopped and boarded twice more before we reached Thebes, but each time our captain was able to deceive the Hyksos officers who came aboard.

  My chief concern by this time was the state of the horses. Despite our best efforts, they were beginning to die, and half of those still alive were in a pitiful condition. We threw the carcasses overboard, and ran on northwards at our best speed.

  My original plan had been to sell the horses to the Hyksos quartermasters in the port of Thebes, but no man who knew horseflesh would look at this pitiful herd. Hui and I decided upon another course.

  We timed the last leg of our voyage to arrive at Thebes as the sun was setting. My heart ached as I recognized all the familiar landmarks. The walls of the citadel glowed pinkly in the last rays of the sun. Those three elegant towers that I had built for Lord Intef still pointed to the sky, they were aptly named the Fingers of Horus.

  The Palace of Memnon on the west bank, which I had left uncompleted, had been rebuilt by the Hyksos. Even I had to admit that the Asiatic influence was pleasing. In this light the spires and watch-towers were endowed with a mysterious and exotic quality. I wished that my mistress was there to share this moment of homecoming with me. We had both longed for it over half her lifetime.

  In the fading light we were still able to make out the vast concourse of men and horses and chariots and wagons that lay outside the city walls. Although I had received accurate reports, it had not been possible to visualize such multitudes. My spirits quailed as I looked upon them, and remembered the gallant little army I had left at Elephantine.

  We would need every favour of the gods, and more than a little good fortune to triumph against such a host. As the last light faded into night, the fires of the Hyksos bloomed and twinkled upon the plain, like a field of stars. There was no end to them—they stretched away to the limit of the eye.

  As we sailed closer, we smelled them. There is a peculiar odour that a standing army exudes. It is a blend of many smells, of dung-fires and of cooking food, the sweet smell of new-cut hay and the ammoniacal smell of the horses, and the stench of human sewage in open pits, of leather and pitch and horse-sweat and woodshavings and sour beer. Most of all it is the smell of men, tens of thousands of men, living close to each other in tents and huts and hovels.

  We sailed on, and the sounds floated across the star-lit waters to our silent ship; the snort and the whinny of horses, the sound of the coppersmiths’ hammers on the anvil beating our spear-heads and blades, the challenges of the sentries, and the voices of men singing and arguing and laughing.

  I stood beside the captain on the deck of the leading galley and guided him in towards the east bank. I remembered the wharf of the timber merchants outside the city walls. If it still stood, it would be the best point at which to disembark our herd.

  I picked out the entrance to the dock, and we pushed in under oars. The wharf was exactly as I remembered it. As we came alongside, the harbour-master came fussing on board, demanding our papers and our licence to trade.

  I fawned upon him, bowing and grinning obsequiously. ‘Excellency, there has been a terrible accident. My licences were blown from my hand by the wind, a trick of Seth, no doubt.’
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  He blew himself up like an angry bullfrog, and then subsided again as I pressed a heavy gold ring into his fat paw. He tested the metal between his teeth, and went away smiling.

  I sent one of the grooms ashore to douse the torches that illuminated the wharf. I did not want curious eyes to see the condition of the horses that we brought ashore. Some of our animals were too weak to rise, others staggered and wheezed, they drooled the stinking mucus from mouth and nostrils. We were forced to place head-halters on them and coax them out of the barge on to the wharf. In the end there were only a hundred horses strong enough to walk.

  We led them down the wagon-track to the high ground where our spies had told us the main horse-lines were laid out. Our spies had also provided us with the password of the Hyksos first division of chariots, and the linguists among us replied to the challenges of the sentries.

  We walked our horses the entire length of the enemy encampment. As we went, we began to turn our stricken animals loose, leaving a few of them to wander through the lines of every one of the Hyksos’ twenty chariot divisions. We moved so casually and naturally that no alarm was raised, we even chatted and joked with the enemy grooms and horse-handlers we met along the way.

  As the first streaks of dawn showed in the eastern sky, we trudged back to the timber wharf on which we had disembarked. Only one of the galleys had waited to take us off, the rest of the flotilla had cast off and turned back southwards as soon as they had discharged their cargo of diseased horses.

  We went aboard the remaining ship, and although Hui and the other grooms threw themselves exhausted upon the deck, I stood at the stern-rail and watched the walls of my beautiful Thebes, washed by the pure early light, sink from view behind us.

  Ten days later, we sailed into the port of Elephantine, and after I had reported to Pharaoh Tamose, I hurried to the water-garden in the harem. My mistress lay in the shade of the barrazza. She was pale and so thin that I could not keep my hands from trembling as I stretched out to her in obeisance. She wept when she saw me.