by Andre Norton
More and more the Hyksos were being driven back into the open space. These men did not come running, some weaponless, as had the first wave. They backed in, their faces still to the enemy, contesting grimly for every foot of space they had to concede. The smoke was thicker also. As a tendril of it set Rahotep coughing, he at last captured the fugitive memory of a few moments earlier. Just so had the fire eaten out Haptke’s raider’s nest on the Kush border. Kush--He did not give the signal for the next volley; instead he caught at Kheti’s arm to deter him from shooting.
“Kheti--fire arrows!”
The Nubian lowered his bow and then raised it again at another angle so that his shaft was now aimed into the sky, rather than at that tangle below. He drew cord to the fullest extent and loosed, while all of them stood watching that arrow spiral up into the air. Up and up as if Kheti’s target had been the sun disc of Re! Up and now down--spinning--But could it reach? Was the angle right?
Down--behind the fortress walls! Only chance could make it a lethal weapon there without better aim. But fire arrows need not be aimed for killing, only for a safe landing. And if the roofs of the buildings within that circle of wall were like those in the rest of Neferusi, fire arrows would find tinder to eat upon!
Rahotep knew that such a feat of strength was beyond his own powers. But Kheti could do it, had just proved it could be done. And Mereruka, while he had not the exact eye for expert aim at such a distance, had in his wrestler’s arms and shoulders the ability to send a shaft the right distance. Kheti, Mereruka--perhaps Kakaw and Intef--
“Oil--” He turned to Kakaw. “Search out if any lies in the house below. And rags--or we can tear our kilts if need be--and live coals--”
The prince needed no more explanation, since he had seen that arrow land true behind the fortification walls. He was squatting on the roof, selecting from the pile of arrows those best suited to the new purpose, choosing with a critical eye. “To stampede game,” he observed, “it is sometimes necessary to fire the reed beds. Perhaps these reeds will also give up their lurkers. Do you as you can here. It shall be done the same elsewhere.” He got to his feet and went to the edge of the roof, jumping to the next without any word of farewell, making his way so to a small Egyptian detachment who had taken to the heights two houses away--though Rahotep doubted whether any Egyptian archer, no matter how skilled, could hope to put arrows over that wall.
Kakaw came back driving before him a wrinkled house slave. The latter was burdened with lengths of linen to supply half the army with either bandages or fire tow, and he was close to gibbering with fright as the Nubian, his own hands occupied with an oil jar and a basin containing coals, barked at him to start tearing the material smaller.
They worked together at fashioning the arrows until Mereruka and Kheti each had a supply at his feet--though their concentration was not so great that they did not keep a wary eye on their surroundings. The portion of the city that had been fired was sending up smoke trails, and the distant din of battle was swollen now and again by rumbles that might have signalized falling walls--perhaps destroyed deliberately to choke out flames with their enveloping rubble. Had a portion of the army been forced to fight the fire to escape?
It was not until later that Rahotep learned that the mob from the stews had finally been better organized under Icar, Huy, and Nebet and flogged back to fight against the fire. Their fear for their own forfeited lives turned them not only against the Hyksos they routed and harried, but against the flames as well.
Now removed from the inferno of fighting and fire, the Nubians made their arrows, to introduce the same foe they were fighting elsewhere into the enemy stronghold. Kheti sent the first arrow up and out. His effort was echoed from other points facing the fortress. The Nubian’s shot went in; the majority of the others fell short. One set a chariot ablaze and the driver lost his head, leaping free, while his horse, terrorized, tried to flee from the danger behind and only dragged the fire with it through the ranks of a spear company forming up after having been routed from a street. The Egyptians pursuing them were scattered in turn, opening lines to let the flaming vehicle through.
With the care of men shooting at a mark, those on Rahotep’s rooftop sent their arrows one by one over the walls. Rahotep’s hopes sank as there was no sign of any answering conflagration. At the best, it had been a slender chance, but it might have made all the difference in the world for his own side. Even a fire that did not flush the Hyksos out of hiding but that drew men from the walls to fight it would have had a small advantage.
“Waaaah--” Kheti raised the shout, holding his bow at arm’s length above his head and shaking it in triumph at the sky while his feet shuffled in the warrior’s dance. “Dedun, smile upon your elephants! This army moves in victory! Aye, we fire the walls of the enemy!” He added to the song they had earlier voiced.
A pillar of smoke was rising. No, not a pillar, a veritable curtain! The captain could only guess that one or more of the fire arrows had made a lucky hit upon some depot of supplies, a guess that was very right he was later to discover. Bales of fodder brought for the horse lines and not yet properly stored were tinder to that flame. And the fire was fed in turn by supplies of oil as the heat cracked the earthen jars. The Hyksos’ assembling of supplies added to their own defeat.
The archers marveled at the swift spread of that smoke, its thickness testifying to the area that must be enveloped. And other fire arrows flashed through the now murky air--to stampede the horses in the open space or to land on the walls.
“It would seem that their god is annoyed with them,” Kheti remarked. “Do their shaven heads beat on the floor and call upon him now?”
Trumpets sounded along the walls of the fort, and Rahotep noted, not for the first time, the advantage of that form of military summons. It could blare forth across the din in which his own and other officers’ call sistrums were completely drowned. But beneath those brazen throated horns he could catch that other sound Kheti must have heard, the clang of a gong sounding from a temple enclosure.
“Amon-Re with us!” His fingers made the sacred sign, averting any power of evil now doubtless being summoned to aid loyal followers.
“The Great Ones favor those who raise strong arms in their own behalf,” observed Kheti. “Let the Hyksos’ shaven heads howl for their snake one to come. Doubtless he will--to eat them up! In the meantime, we tickle ribs here and there--to hasten that arrival.”
Bis, who had expressed his dislike of the whole situation by sitting at the far end of the roof, his tail switching now and then in feline anger, padded toward Rahotep as if he sensed the coming of some crisis. His head up, the cub squalled in furious rage at the inner fortress. The Nubians watched, their surprise deepening to awe.
“The Gift of Horus sings his battle cry, brother!” Kheti gave the cub wide room. “I think that we must be close to the end of this.”
Apparently the Hyksos crowded into the square below had that same feeling, and in their case it was colored by something close to desperation. Trumpets screamed defiance and attack, and their forces surged out, away from those gates behind which arose that growing cloud of smoke. But they had waited too long to make that last sally. From the roof tops, from the mouth of every street and lane, came a ready rain of arrows, sling-shot stones, well-flung spears. Those moments of confusion and doubt, the toll the archers had taken of the chariot horses, had given the Egyptians time to consolidate their stands and bring up reserves and ammunition.
As it had in those few frenzied minutes when they had fought to keep the gates open, so now did the battle come to be, for Rahotep, not a matter of strategy and pattern but a personal involvement in which he was only aware of what lay in an immediate circle about him. He knew--dimly--that Mereruka and Kheti continued to use the fire arrows. But the rest of his company drew bow at the embroilment below.
Three times the Hyksos charged outward from their stand about the fort walls, and three times that attack ebbed back, th
inned and battered, leaving tide marks of dead and wounded behind. The smoke at their backs was shot now and again by leaping torches of flame, and the breath of that furnace, which must be expanding in there, licked out at the men on the walls--even to the roofs where their enemies stood.
Rahotep’s own command was forced to retreat a roof’s width, and Kheti stood watching the fortress with concentration. The captain spoke first.
“That is an oven. They will have to issue forth--”
“Or be baked as are loaves of bread. Just so, brother. But perhaps they will choose baking in an oven in preference to meeting those whom they have sent to the slave yokes or tried to feed to that dark god of theirs. By the Spotted Goat, Lord, this is a proper war! Did I not once say that here in the north we might find us a master by whom we could rise--”
“Neither this fight nor this day is yet ended--” Rahotep warned.
“But both are close to ending. Ha--they do not like the oven. The loaves now issue out--”
He was right. Those who had huddled against the gate of the inner fortress were being swept aside. The portals were opening, and their trumpets set up such a clamor that Rahotep believed an attack in force was being signaled.
The breathing space had been of the shortest. Hyksos, with the grime of fire-fighting tarnishing their shields and body armor, came out to challenge the Egyptians ringing them about. And to Rahotep the rest was wild confusion of which he could not make any connected tale to tell in the after years.
There were small vivid pictures to hold in memory--some of which troubled his sleep at night, most of which he did not care to dwell upon. Kheti was right, as he was so often. The unleashed fury of the Egyptians was a flail laid upon the Hyksos with crushing force. Men with old wrongs eating at them are not kind in the vengeance they take.
When he came wholly to himself again, the captain was leaning against a wall gagging at the stench of things burning and at something he had just seen in the temple where the Hyksos had worshiped. How Rahotep had come there, or why, he could not have answered coherently, but he regained a measure of sanity when he saw a familiar figure stride up to the altar.
Ahmose, with Nereb as his shield bearer, a party of limping, tattered guards at their back, gave one glance at the scene before him and barked orders. Those who had been busy there slunk away, as if they too had been suddenly awakened out of some nightmare, not able to understand why their hands were red or what they had been doing to those things whimpering away their lives at the feet of an unanswering god.
There was one body on the altar itself that had been left there by the priests of Set. Ahmose surveyed the poor, mutilated thing dispassionately, though Rahotep saw a small muscle along the prince’s jaw jerk once.
“So, Sebni--when we found you gone in the dawn, we suspected you had fled to those you deemed the better men. An ill choice for you. Pharaoh has been at last fully avenged--but it would not have been to his liking to have the punishment this.”
But the traitor on the stone of sacrifice was long past answering to any judgment save that of Osiris behind the Gate of the Horizon. The prince spoke over his shoulder as if giving orders to some scribe of the records. “Let this matter be marked.” He caught sight of Rahotep and beckoned the Scout captain forward.
“So you survive, kinsman. And your men?”
Half bewildered still, Rahotep looked around. If he had led his whittled command here, he was not aware of it. But it appeared that he had. At least that was Mereruka’s stout form at the side wall, and the archer was supporting Kheti who came up limping, a sodden rag about his thigh, though he was still able to grin and raise his ax in salute to the prince. Kheti and Mereruka--there, too, were Ikui and Kakaw, smoke grimed so that their brown skins were charcoal black--four. They had lost Mahu and Hori on the city wall. Sahare--Intef--Anhor--Baku--no, there was no Baku, no Heti, to answer his unspoken roll call. Ten archers and two officers had jogged out of Kah-hi. Six archers and two officers, wearied and wounded, stood here in Neferusi. And Bis--for the leopard cub crouched at his feet licking a gash in his shoulder, but still alert for battle.
“You see us, Royal Son--” He spoke the formal words of reporting for duty with an effort.
Ahmose raised the ax he had won from the Hyksos commander at the storehouse fight in the salute he would return to a leader of a thousand. “I see you, Captain, I see you, archers. This day you have done well--for into Pharaoh’s hands have you helped to deliver a city!”
Indeed Neferusi--or what was left of that battered city--was delivered into the hands of the royal army. And battle weary as they were, there was much to be done before any man could rest. Through the hours of the night, as he stumbled about posting guards, seeing to the fighting of fires, generally making himself useful, Rahotep was to come upon Egyptian warriors so sunk in fatigue that they were curled up among the dead in exhausted slumber.
He was relieved of duty sometime later, and then he was in a room where lamplight, limited as it was, picked out such luxury as he had seen only in the royal apartments of Thebes. Blinking at the surroundings stupidly, he let Intef steer him to a couch and strip off his grimed rags. He fell asleep while the archer was still rubbing him down with the oil, which relaxed muscles and eased all hurts.
“Lord!”
Rahotep climbed a slope out of a soft, dark pit, dimly aware that someone was shaking him gently. He opened his eyes foggily and then shut them against the brightness of sunlight.
“Lord!” The summons was imperative and that hand on his shoulder relentless. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, he turned over and looked up blearily at a brown face, which was upside down over him. Then he recognized Ikui.
“Lord--” For the third time the other called. “Pharaoh has sent for you. Rise! Anhor”--the archer turned to call to someone still beyond eye range--”the captain wakes--make ready for him.”
Rahotep sat up. There were improvised pallets about the floor of the chamber. On one Kheti lay snoring, his bandaged leg bound to a spear shaft to keep it straight. On another sat Nesamun nursing his broken arm across his chest. It, too, had been expertly tended. And the other Nubians, lounging at ease or fast asleep, had the outward appearance of well-satisfied men.
When the captain stood in the washing place with Anhor ladling the water over him, he came fully awake and fired a volley of questions at his attendants, which they answered to the best of their ability.
Aye, Neferusi was completely under Egyptian control. The remaining Hyksos were now imprisoned in the slave warehouses.
“But there are few of them,” Ikui supplied, “for, Lord, these men are mighty fighters, and it was to their mind to go and greet their god with the blood of many enemies hot on their hands. So only a few threw down their arms before us. Rather did they choose to fight to the death. And in the inner courts there is still a tower where their lords hold the door and will not come forth, so that Pharaoh has ordered that there be no more useless killing of our men, but that a guard shall sit down there and watch until lack of food and water brings them out. And the people of this town who were slaves unto the Hyksos have come forth to ‘kiss earth’ before Pharaoh, rejoicing. Now they labor with us to hunt down those who hide from capture, for they hold a high hate against these horse lovers! And if the tales they tell all comers be true, then rightfully do they nurse that anger.”
“Lord”--Anhor came back into the small bathing place, clean clothing across his arm--”they have not yet brought up our baggage from the camp. But the women of this house, who had no cause to love their master, have fashioned this for your wearing before the Pharaoh. And the hour grows late--”
The captain found his new kilt to be of the finest linen, and the belt that held it was set with garnets and gold in the form of a bull’s head with gemmed eyes. There had been no striped cloth to fashion the proper headdress, so the one he wore was of a dull red. The silver bracer must serve in place of his noble’s bracelets and gold-of-valor armlet for formal ad
ornment. Somehow he had clung to his baton throughout the melee--they had found it on him when they rolled him into bed hours before.
As he returned to the improvised barracks room, Rahotep found the archers alert and smartened up, with Kheti criticizing and scolding from his pallet, in high dudgeon because he was forbidden by the healer priest to set foot to the floor without permission.
“You--Kakaw--” he was saying as the captain came in, “must serve as the Lord Rahotep’s shield man in my place. Pull that belt tighter, goat with a sheep’s wits! Let me see a line of warriors worthy to wear valor gold and not a gathering of boys not yet bearing their man scars! Intef--you stand like a shy maiden about to see her chosen lord at the paying of the marriage price. Put those shoulders back, stupid one, and that chin up. Aaah--doubtless you will march before the Son of Re as oxen ambling into the threshing floor. Lord”--he appealed to Rahotep--”speak you to that shaven skull who says that I must be bound by one leg like a gander in the field and have me cut loose so that this rabble will not altogether shame Nubia before all eyes!”
Rahotep, with some difficulty, swallowed a smile as he inspected the line standing at attention under the tongue lashing of their invalided leader. As his own, their uniforms were improvised, but with method so that all wore kilts of the same red as his own headdress. Their headbands were proudly set with the feathers accorded a victorious warrior; even if those feathers had plainly been looted from different sources and did not match in kind or color. But each man’s ax was polished and gleaming at his belt, his bow pointed skyward behind his shoulder, and he carried a filled quiver. The captain turned to Kheti.
“This guard does you credit, Leader of Ten. They will stand proud in the presence of the Son of Re, as is their right, since they have won their plumes! Even as you, Kheti, son of Ahati, the Strong Lion, son of Forge, the Warrior of Many Shields, the son of Khorfu of the Stone Ax”--he had lapsed into the Nubian tongue of the border army, and those names and titles rolled sonorously through the room--”even as you, Kheti, who shall henceforth be known as Kheti of the Great Bow!” He raised his baton flail in salute, and behind him the archers’ fists went up in the homage of their own race.
