The Horus Road

by Pauline Gedge

  “This coming from you, my rashest of officers?” Ahmose interrupted him lightly, although he was disappointed at Abana’s assessment of the situation. “Perhaps the openings can be widened with the help of the flood and several hundred troops armed with picks.”

  “They would have to deal with a strong defence,” Abana replied promptly. “The Setiu have cut slits in the wall above, from which they can fire down upon anyone trying to hack at the breaches, and in spite of the diversion you ordered to draw off the majority of men, the archers stationed above the bricked-up canals did not leave their posts. The Setiu officers are perhaps not as dull-witted as we believed. Or like baboons they can be trained to a task without having to use what little intelligence they might possess.” He looked about. “Is there any more wine?” Ahmose ignored the question. He sat forward.

  “Do you mean to tell me that you and your men attempted to open the breaches under fire from above and from the slits in the wall itself?”

  Abana grinned happily. “Yes, we did,” he said. “My faithful sailors kept up a steady rain of arrows from the deck of the North while we worked on our hands and knees. But it was useless,” he finished regretfully. “We could hear troops massing in the gardens beyond, ready for us if by some chance we managed to chip our way to the water which,” he pointed out with relish, “would have come pouring out on us if we had succeeded, and forced the inhabitants of those doubtless beautiful houses beyond to abandon all hope of sampling the last of their fruits and vegetables.” He held out his hands. “I myself dug alongside my men,” he continued, “and was grazed on the leg by a poorly aimed arrow. The Setiu archers shoot in a panic and their aim is wild.”

  “Nevertheless, their weapons are admirable,” Ahmose reminded him. “The design of the bow they brought with them when they began to insinuate themselves into Egyptian life was superior to anything we had seen before, and what of their axes with the broader blades than ours, and the scimitars?”

  “A weapon is only as good as the man who wields it,” Kay said loftily. “Now that we have learned to make those bows and axes and knives ourselves, we have been turning their own knowledge against them. They are not competent warriors.” Ahmose regarded him with a mixture of mild irritation and affection.

  “Give me your final assessment,” he said. Kay sighed gustily.

  “To attempt entrance to the northern mound through the irrigation canals would be a waste of effort and valuable men’s lives, Majesty,” he said regretfully. “I am loath to tell you this, but in my opinion another way needs to be found.”

  “Thank you.” Ahmose nodded. “Go and sleep now, Kay. You have done well.” Kay scrambled to his feet at once and bowed.

  “I have left a gift for Your Majesty outside with the Follower on your door,” he said as he backed towards the tent flap. “Or rather, several gifts. One of them is from my cousin Zaa. I wish you a restful night. You also, Prince.” His wide smile flashed out again and then the flap closed behind him. Ahmose met Ramose’s eye.

  “You have been unusually silent,” he ventured. “What is on your mind?” Ramose stirred.

  “You have a brave and astute officer there, Ahmose,” he said quietly. “The barrage of arrows from both the top of the wall and those lethal slits was constant and deadly, but Kay and his men went on hewing at the blocked-up breaches regardless of the danger. I watched it all from the relative safety of the North. The gift he has brought you is a sack of Setiu hands, twenty-seven in all, taken from the bodies of the defendants who were shot by the sailors on the boat and who tumbled down on this side of the wall. Many more fell backwards, out of sight. One of the hands belonged to a soldier young Zaa pen Nekheb managed to slay. It was a lucky shot, I think, considering that the boy is still struggling to learn how to draw the bow, but it was boldly done all the same.” He rubbed at his forehead and looked across at Ahmose under weary lids. “Much of the enemy fire was understandably concentrated on the sailors. Thirty are wounded and another fifty were killed.”

  “Fifty!” Ahmose straightened in shock. “That is too many, Ramose. Far too many! Abana should have told me.”

  “He would have, if you had asked, but he is very proud of his ship and its men. He is ashamed that he could not protect them sufficiently. He had already summoned one of the army physicians to those injured before he came here.”

  “The irrigation breaches must be abandoned then,” Ahmose said firmly. “I will not sacrifice Egyptians for such a slim chance of success. What do you think?”

  He watched Ramose withdraw into himself for a time, his face entirely in shadow but the long, supple fingers of his right hand lying motionless on the table in the full play of the lamplight. Ahmose found himself remembering his sister at that moment, seeing that same hand, thinner and more youthful, bright with rings, curved protectively around Tani’s bare shoulder on a morning full of warm sunlight. He waited. Presently the fingers tapped the table once and were withdrawn.

  “I think you are right,” Ramose said slowly. “However, Your Majesty might consider this. Reverse your strategy. Rather than trying to open the irrigation courses, station part of the navy on the tributary opposite them and prevent them from being opened when the Inundation begins. In fact, make sure that no water of any kind flows into either the northern mound or the other one.” He leaned into the lamplight. “All the walled enclosures are crammed with people. You heard Sebek-nakht. Even the mortuary temples in Het-Uart are being razed for lack of living space. What do the people drink? There are no springs in the Setiu strongholds. Water must come from wells and be supplemented by the tributaries every winter when Isis cries. Cut them off. Stop the influx of fresh water. You have already decided to continue the siege and the Delta campaigns throughout the Inundation. Always before, we have retreated during the flood season and that is when Het-Uart augments its water supply. This year it will be different. Make them thirst!” Ahmose stared at him.

  “Truly this has been a day of mingled frustration and hope,” he murmured. He stood up and immediately Ramose rose also. “I will inspect Abana’s rather grisly gift, and then we will fall gratefully onto our cots,” he said. “Thank you for your advice.” Ramose bowed in response and together they stepped out into the mild night air.

  The sack lay at the feet of one of the Followers guarding the entrance to the tent. At Ahmose’s command he bent down and pulled the neck wide revealing a mass of bloodied, severed hands. Ahmose looked down on them thoughtfully. “Kamose did not take hands or penises for the tally in most of his battles,” he said. “It never occurred to me to wonder why. But seeing these brings home to me the legitimacy of our struggle. We are not bandits slaying and thieving before moving on. This is an honourable war.” His gaze rose to the Follower. “Have these taken to the Scribe of the Army so that he may note the number of the enemy killed by the ship North,” he ordered. He was about to voice the realization that Kamose did not always keep the tally of enemy dead in the traditional way because he knew that his struggle resembled too closely the actions of a brigand, at least in the beginning, but he kept that reflection to himself. Bidding Ramose good night and asking the Follower to send Khabekhnet to him when he returned, he went back into the tent.

  He waited quietly, listening to the sounds of his thousands of men gradually die away as they rolled themselves in their blankets until only the occasional protest of a donkey and the regular challenges of the sentries, some far, some near, broke the stillness.

  The city also seemed subdued, its usual confusion of noise reduced to a low mutter. To Ahmose, sitting with arms and legs folded while Akhtoy and his assistant cleared the table, the tone held a quality of melancholy. He knew that his imagination was imbuing Het-Uart with an intimation of its fate, but he allowed himself to indulge his fancy anyway. I would dearly love to know the tenor of the commoners within, he mused. Are they still complacent when they hear my soldiers marching below their walls? Does any quiver of apprehension give them pause in the middle of
their daily comings and goings? Akhtoy had finished wiping the table and folding it away. “Do you require anything else, Majesty?” he asked. Ahmose shook his head.

  “No,” he answered. “Wake me at dawn, Akhtoy, with food.”

  As Akhtoy left, he held the tent flap open for Khabekhnet. The Chief Herald came forward and bowed. “I want you to arrange shifts for all your heralds,” Ahmose told him. “Not including you, of course, Khabekhnet. You will remain at my summons. They are to make chariot circuits of the city from sunset until dawn, calling for Apepa’s surrender. Het-Uart believes itself inviolate, but we will do our best to disturb its dreams.” Khabekhnet’s black eyebrows rose.

  “What would Your Majesty have them shout?”

  “Let us make it a threat.” Ahmose stood and stretched. “They must say this. ‘Uatch-Kheperu Ahmose, Son of the Sun, Horus, the Horus of Gold, demands the surrender of the foreign usurper Apepa, unless he wishes to see the city of Het-Uart burned to the ground.’ Every night, Khabekhnet. You are dismissed.”

  “Very good, Majesty.”

  When he had gone, Ahmose climbed onto his cot, and snuffing the lamp he closed his eyes. There should be reports soon from the divisions warring free in the Delta, he thought as his body began to relax, and perhaps some word from Weset. I must have Ipi make a note regarding the Gold of Valour for the crew of the North. I can do little more with the city until the Inundation and then I must send for the navy. Ramose is right. Keep fresh water out of Het-Uart. With that he fell asleep, half-waking several times before morning to hear, far off but very clearly, the voices of his heralds as they circled the flood plain, crying his warning.

  But it was the Scribe of the Army who came to him with the first light of Ra, brandishing the lists of hands taken from the enemy dead who had been shot by the Medjay and fallen outside the walls and who had perished in the battle before the open gates.

  Ahmose was more concerned with the numbers of his own men who had died and with any soldiers qualifying for an award due to bravery. There were several. The fighting in front of that tantalizingly open gate had been fierce and sustained. Greasy black smoke was already hazing the bright morning from the piles of burning Setiu bodies, but the Scribe of the Army assured Ahmose that the Egyptian dead were being washed and wrapped in clean linen before being buried. There were not many of them, for the Setiu had been grossly outnumbered. Their names had been meticulously recorded so that later they might be carved into stone; otherwise the gods would not be able to find them and give them life in the next world. It was the greatest hazard in war, Ahmose reflected as the scribe gathered up his papyrus and bowed himself away from the table under the willows where Ahmose had eaten his first meal of the day. A soldier risked dying twice, the second death being the more appalling.

  The rumble of the city seemed louder this morning, the sound of its activity somehow more frantic. Ahmose, sipping his beer and watching his officers moving among the thousands of men squatting in the dirt with their rations in their hands, wondered if the heralds’ stern message had done more than he had hoped. He did not underestimate the way in which the mood of the population could influence the ultimate decisions of those in authority, and it could be that the vermin of Het-Uart, waking to lie half-conscious and vulnerable in the darkness, had heard words that troubled the remainder of their sleep. No archers had appeared atop the wall. The city was ignoring the teeming host outside, as it had done when Kamose had surrounded it. Yet Ahmose sensed, very faintly, a change.

  Hor-Aha and General Khety had both sent to him for orders and he had told them to simply hold their positions, firing upon anyone foolish enough to raise his head above the level of the wall but otherwise maintaining a watchful inactivity. No word had yet come from the six divisions ranging to the east, and Ahmose expected none for some time. Mesore was almost over. Thoth would mark the beginning of winter and the flood, and until the Inundation filled the tributaries of the Delta he could do little but drill his men and wait.

  Mounting his chariot with Ankhmahor, he spent several hours inspecting the troops, talking with General Turi and General Sebekh-khu, and boarding the Medjay’s vessels. He would have liked to invite Hor-Aha to keep him company through the day but purposely he refrained from showing the man any particular favour.

  He sought out those officers of the Medjay who had been given command over Egyptian soldiers by Kamose and who had since been returned to the company of their own kind, and in talking to them he found no evidence of rancour. They responded to his carefully worded questions simply and respectfully but absently, and when he sent them away, they went back happily to the tasks he had interrupted. It is not that they lack intelligence, he mused, as he swung down one ramp and walked towards another. They are quick to grasp a practical idea or solve a functional problem. But most of them seem to live entirely in the present, discarding both the disappointments and the triumphs of the past. Such an innate ability must give them a primitive contentment. Hor-Aha isa glaring exception, perhaps because his mother is Egyptian.

  The sun was high overhead when he retraced the steps to his tent and the drooping willow beneath which he lowered himself again. Akhtoy at once emerged from his own shelter, sending for hot water and the noon meal, and Ahmose found himself approached by a herald who saluted and presented him with a scroll bearing Aahmes-nefertari’s seal. Delighted, he broke the seal and began to read. “To my dear husband and King, greetings,” she had dictated. “It seems as though you have been gone for many hentis and I and the children miss you very much, but there is plenty to keep me occupied on the estate and in Weset. I received your letter regarding the architect Prince Sebek-nakht of Mennofer. You have obviously decided to trust him and I suppose that while he is here in Weset he cannot be fomenting sedition farther north. Several days after your scroll arrived, he himself wrote to me explaining your invitation and expressing his regret that he has work to do for Apepa in Het-Uart before he can comply with your request for his services, but since you are now sieging that city and no one can enter or leave it, he must wait for the Inundation to complete the assignment his master had given him. I wrote back to him explaining that you were not withdrawing your armies this year, therefore he should travel to Weset as soon as possible. I thought it could do no harm, as the flood is little more than a month away.”

  Here Ahmose paused and smiled to himself. Clever Aahmes-nefertari, he thought, pleased. Once she has Sebek-nakht in her grasp, she will treat him like a brother and give him such satisfying work that he will never want to leave the pleasures of the estate or the challenge of the tasks. And if Amun wills it, there will be no mortuary temples left to be razed in Het-Uart. There will be no Het-Uart left at all. He lowered his gaze once more.

  “Work has begun on raising the height of the wall surrounding the entire estate,” the letter went on, “and I have taken it upon myself to order the one dividing our house from the old palace torn down. I have commissioned gates to be hung above the watersteps as you desired. Ahmose-onkh is much occupied in watching all this activity. I have been forced to detail a guard to accompany him so that he does not wander into danger. I have dictated an official letter in my capacity as your Queen to the ruler of the Keftiu, requesting the opening of trade negotiations that will entirely omit any dealings through the Setiu. I have also received a shipment of gold from Wawat which has been stored in the temple. I do not think that we can expect regular consignments from the mines there until you are able to turn your attention to the southern forts that used to guard the gold routes, and I have insufficient men and officers under me to send out such an expedition.”

  “Gods, I should hope so!” Ahmose exclaimed aloud with mingled shock and amusement. “Does the Commander of the Household Guard yearn to be created a General? General Aahmes-nefertari!” He shook his head, still chuckling. “What next, my beautiful warrior?”

  “The children are well,” he read on. “Your mother is overseeing the tallying of the harvest and the winem
aking and she and I have been assessing the taxes to be levied this year. My duties in the temple are not onerous. Amunmose begs me to convey to you his greatest respect. He tells me that the omens for a successful conclusion to our long struggle are excellent.

  “The scrolls I call for at night and read on my couch before I sleep are no longer love poems or the tales of our ancestors. They contain the lists of men you have drawn up for my investigation and judgement. My scribe, Khunes, sits on the floor beside me and records my thoughts regarding each one. He is, incidentally, a very talented and efficient young man. I found him among Amun’s scribes in the temple where I go to perform the duties of a Second Prophet with which you charged me.”

  Once more Ahmose’s eyes left the papyrus and strayed blankly to the delicately stirring tracery of thin branches. A moment of jealousy moved within him, echoing the fitful motion of the willow’s fingers. Khunes, his mind whispered. A very talented and efficient young man, sitting on the floor of her bedchamber in the night with his undoubtedly handsome head bent obediently over his palette. I asked you to be my eyes and ears in the temple, Aahmes-nefertari. Is this man another link you have forged with those you must watch, or a little diversion for you? A pleasant titillation? He grunted and slapped the scroll against his knee, pushing the unworthy emotion away. Take care that you do not become unbalanced in your suspicions, Ahmose Tao, he reprimanded himself. The pit of madness waits for you as it did for Kamose, and the first step down into that darkness has “lack of trust” rendered large upon it. Swallowing, he bent over his wife’s words.