The Horus Road

by Pauline Gedge

  As they rolled over the flood plain, as yet still dry and hard-packed, although bordered by a swamp full of dark green reeds and noisy with water birds on one side and a young orchard criss-crossed with irrigation ditches on the other, the officer from the Division of Ptah spoke of the battle for control of the eastern Delta. His words were terse, his descriptions unadorned, yet he gave Ahmose a vivid and chilling picture of hand-to-hand combat in knee-deep quagmires, of sudden ambushes among fields of grazing cattle, of massacres in the white dust of the Horus Road itself. “We no longer pitch tents, Majesty,” he said with an offhandedness that told Ahmose far more than his statements. “We have all become Shock Troops, free-wheeling, forced to adapt to any situation that may arise. That is why my General sent me out to greet you.”

  “Who is attempting to cut off the flow from Rethennu along the Road?” Ahmose wanted to know. The man smiled grimly.

  “General Neferseshemptah with the Anubis Division had intended to do so,” he answered. “But there are nests of Setiu everywhere. He has not yet managed to reach so far.” The chieftains of Rethennu are throwing every army they have at us, Ahmose concluded to himself as the officer fell silent. They are emptying their lands to keep Apepa safe in his stronghold, hoping that in the end we will become exhausted and demoralized and go home, leaving the north to him. Egypt will be won or lost right here. And I have been too stupid to see it.

  He had anticipated a dignified progression from one of his six divisions to another, an inspection of his eastern forces combined with leisurely consultations by lamplight in orderly camps. What he found were preoccupied, hard-pressed men sleeping on the ground in full battle attire with one ear open for the erratic reports of their scouts and one eye on the possibility of dawn attacks. The Setiu did not march in formation. They surged past the Wall of Princes and then broke up into small, compact units, moving quickly and easily among the Delta’s many pools and marshes, often lost but still able to hide and inflict damage on Egypt’s more disciplined forces by their sheer manœuvrability. And there are so many of them, Ahmose thought dismally, as he himself became part of the ebb and flow of the vicious, elusive shadowy war. The villages remember Kamose, the looting and burning and killing. They shelter the Setiu as their kinsmen, and the gods know that I do not want to rape the Delta again unless as a last resort.

  Other gods’ days came and went, the Uaga Feast on the eighteenth day of Thoth, the Feast of the Great Manifestation of Osiris on the twenty-second. But they belonged to a reality of peace and uniformity where families gathered in the outer court of their local temples before going home to mark the holiday with festive food and games. For Ahmose they were simply periods between dawn and dusk filled with the urgent words of dishevelled scouts, hurried and sketchy deliberations with officers who knew that in the end they could only adapt to the vicissitudes of the moment, and long, nerve-racking treks through a maze of pools whose thickly choked verges could hide any number of desperate Setiu.

  Sometimes scouts from Het-Uart found him with their news. Sometimes not. They were risking their lives to bring him word that nothing had changed around the city, and Ahmose considered ordering the link between himself and his western commanders temporarily broken, but decided against it. Circumstances could change very rapidly, or so he told himself. But he also admitted that the scouts returning to Turi, Sebekh-khu and Hor-Aha were taking his presence back with them. His unspoken fear of another rebellion was irrational, he knew. He was too tired to suppress it.

  Then it was Paophi, the second month of the year, and the flood plains began to narrow imperceptibly. Far away to the south, Isis was crying. Reluctantly Ahmose decided to turn back. The fighting around him had lessened in frequency if not in intensity. His soldiers were gaining the upper hand in the Delta and could now give their attention to sealing off the Horus Road. He dictated his orders to that effect, commanding four divisions to make a winter camp where the road veered to the north-east between two large bodies of water and the other two divisions to continue the hunt for any stray Setiu cut off by the rising waters.

  Few of the thousands of foreign troops headed for Het-Uart had been able to evade the Egyptians. Many were dead and the rest were hiding in scattered villages or wandering in the marshes. But the price had been high in both casualties and fatigue. I must begin a rotation of the men, Ahmose thought, as he at last faced west with his weary Followers and saw the Horus Road winding towards Het-Uart. I must allow them to go home and plant their crops if all goes well. It is time to summon the navy. He glanced across at Ramose. “We will pray for a good flood,” he said. Ramose smiled.

  “Today is the Eve of the Amun-feast of Hapi,” he remarked, “and the rest of this month is also devoted to the god of the Nile. We ought to pause and make sacrifice, Ahmose.” Why, so it is, Ahmose remembered with a shock. Today is the seventeenth day of Paophi and I have been away from Het-Uart for only six weeks. It feels like six years. Nodding briefly at Ramose, he turned to Ankhmahor.

  “Drive on,” he said.

  It seemed to him that nothing had changed when he finally dismounted stiffly from his chariot beside the familiar campsite outside Het-Uart and his retainers scattered to their old duties. Akhtoy began to issue a flood of orders that would result in the erection of the royal tent, hot food, a cot with clean sheets, a replenished container of incense grains beside the Amun shrine. The mighty tributary was perhaps flowing a little faster but the city still squatted fortress-like upon its wide mound, its sloping walls towering to the sky, the air above it hazed from the smoke of its innumerable cooking fires, its mysterious life coming to him in a low susurration of constant noise. His soldiers were still coming and going, the Medjay’s ships still rocked gently on the water’s breast; it was as though he had never left. Except that I feel dazed and battered, he thought ruefully. Removing his sword belt and handing it to his body servant, he lowered himself into the chair Akhtoy had set in the shade of the trees and beckoned to Khabekhnet, waiting patiently for instructions. “Send to Paheri at Het nefer Apu,” he said. “I want the navy here as soon as possible. Enquire of your heralds whether or not there has been any response from the city to their challenges. Ask the three generals and Hor-Aha to present themselves to me after the evening meal. That is all, Khabekhnet.” The Chief Herald bowed and walked briskly away. Ramose had gone to see to his own living quarters. Ipi had also disappeared, but just as Ahmose’s tent was raised in a graceful unfolding of heavy linen, he returned, his arms full of scrolls.

  “There are letters from the Queens Tetisheri, Aahotep and your wife, Majesty,” he said as he came up. “Also one from Prince Sebek-nakht. One from Paheri. One from the mayor of Aabtu.” Ahmose sighed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Makhu go past, leading one of his chariot horses towards the water, a stable servant trailing behind with a brush in each hand. The flies of winter, always thickening as the river rose, were gathered in a black cloud around the beast’s head and Makhu was irritably waving them away as he went. His own servant was unrolling the carpet that covered the floor of his tent and another was unpacking his lamps.

  “What does the mayor of Aabtu want?” he asked. Ipi set his burden on the grass, selected the appropriate scroll, and broke its seal with practised efficiency. He scanned it quickly.

  “He wants to know if Your Majesty is able to be present at the sacred Osiris plays this year. Most of the month of Khoiak is devoted to the god. He has four feast days.”

  “Aabtu is in the Abetch nome and is under Prince Ankh-mahor’s jurisdiction,” Ahmose mused. “But the flood will have reached its apex during Khoiak and I cannot predict what that will mean for us here. We have never continued the siege through a winter before. Tell the mayor that due to circumstances here in the Delta, of which I am sure he is aware, I cannot commit myself to be present at the plays but that if possible I will send Prince Ankhmahor as my representative. Now Sebek-nakht.” Ipi bent and lifted another scroll.

  “The Prince wishes you t
o know that he has arrived in Weset and has assessed the work the Queen requires of him. He has been accorded the greatest courtesy, is occupying quarters within your house itself, and confers daily with the Queen whom he calls ‘Egypt’s most beautiful and illustrious lady.’” Ipi looked up. “He has no request, Majesty.” Jealousy shot through Ahmose but he forced it back. Sebek-nakht is both handsome and accomplished, he thought darkly. He is far from his home, as I am. He sees her every day. They hold intimate discussions. Amun have mercy, what is wrong with me? The scar behind his ear prickled and he scratched at it with annoyance.

  “The rest can wait until I can read them myself at my leisure,” he said. “Thank you, Ipi. Be ready to record my meeting with the generals this evening.” I cannot go home, let alone journey all the way to Aabtu for the sacred plays, he thought grimly as his Chief Scribe gathered up the scrolls and hurried away. If I begin to entertain these evil imaginings, I shall go mad. Aahmes-nefertari loves me and I trust her utterly. I must hold to those two beliefs alone and firmly reject all else. Yet the phantom pain continued to lurk at the back of his mind, its source grounded in nothing but his own sick fantasy, and he could not purge it away.

  The navy did not arrive until the end of the following month, and Ahmose spent the time until then in making sure that the irrigation canals into the city could not be opened. The mighty ditches around the mounds slowly filled with the life-giving water the citizens of Het-Uart so desperately needed and which Ahmose was determined to deny them. He stationed contingents of men protected by Medjay archers at every point along the walls where corrugations showed old breaches.

  At first men could be heard digging on the city side, loosening the stone-like mud, but where they broke through they were faced with a hail of well-placed arrows through the new apertures and soldiers who stood ready to struggle against the tug of the higher water in the ditches as it tried to flow into the lower canals and who quickly stopped its passage with boulders and earth. Ahmose knew that Apepa would order the digging of more wells and that water would be struck without much trouble, but he also knew that no matter how many wells were sunk the supply would never be enough.

  Space inside Het-Uart was distressingly limited. The city was a tightly packed warren of narrow streets and rows of tiny houses. Where was there room for delving, if the inhabitants were being forced to bury their dead, and even their pack animals, under their floors? And suppose enough water was found for drinking if the populace lined up to collect it? The docks were gone and the city surrounded by Egyptian troops. The rich fertility of the Delta was now denied to the people. No goods would be unloaded. No fruits of any harvest would find their way inside to fill hungry bellies. In the past hostilities were broken off during the Inundation and resumed in the summer when the Nile had returned to its normal level and the crops had been sown. That was tradition. But Ahmose, alert to any changes in the quality of sounds emanating from Het-Uart and hearing them become gradually more subdued, reflected that such a tradition was gravely flawed. He had rejected it and in doing so he knew in his bones that Het-Uart would fall.

  The navy’s arrival completed the city’s blockade. High water and ships surrounded it. Thousands of soldiers patrolled the narrow perimeter between its walls and the flood and kept watch over its stubbornly closed gates. The northern mound where the bulk of the Setiu army was quartered was faring no better. In the eastern Delta the fighting went on, but news from his divisions there was encouraging. The Horus Road was at last being held, although his troops were spread too thinly to attempt a recovery of the forts that constituted the Wall of Princes. That will come later, Ahmose thought on a tide of elation. For the first time since my father refused to bow to Apepa’s insulting demand to slay the hippopotamuses in the Weset marshes, I can smell victory, and the odour is very sweet.

  The memory of the hippopotamuses made him think of Tani. He had wondered, as winter dragged on, whether there would be a communication from her or from Apepa at last, if not a declaration of surrender then perhaps a plea for clemency on behalf of the citizens, a request for a meeting. But the palace within Het-Uart was dumb, either from misery or from stubbornness, and as day followed uneventful day its very silence prompted Ahmose’s recollections to multiply.

  He began to share them with Ramose in the long nights when nothing but the calling of the heralds and the sighing of the city disturbed the dark hours. The two men would sit in the glow of Ahmose’s lamps, wine in their hands, and speak of Tani and Kamose and the agony of the years behind them. It was a cleansing of a kind, a release for Ramose, and for Ahmose a time when he could forget that a God-King may not draw too near to another human being. He was a Prince again, with friends to fish and wrestle with, a sister to love and protect, a brother who both baffled him and inspired his admiration.

  “It is as though Tani has been turned to stone behind those walls,” Ramose remarked one night. “For weeks I have half-expected some message from her to be tossed down to us, even if it was just an appeal for water or food. She must know that we are here. She could mount the walls and shout down to us if she wanted.” He swirled the wine dregs slowly in his cup. “I suppose that she may be dead or ill but I do not think so. I fancy I would feel such things in my soul if they were so.” He glanced at Ahmose warily but Ahmose did not laugh at him. “There is a wailing from the city tonight,” he went on. “Did you hear it earlier, Ahmose?”

  “Yes, I did,” Ahmose replied gravely. “It is possible that disease has broken out. If that is so, then we may indeed receive a message from Apepa. But I do not believe he will make it that easy for us.” He sat forward. “I judge that he has been commanded by his fellow Princes in Rethennu to hold out against us at any cost. They know that if Het-Uart falls, they will never be able to gain a foothold in Egypt again. All its wealth will be lost to them. Gold, grain, papyrus, everything. They are spending their own armies in this conflict with alarming abandon. They expect nothing less from their brother here.” There was a silence during which he sipped his wine, pursed his lips, and set his cup back carefully on the table. I am a little drunk, he thought with surprise. But it is good, this slight removal from myself.

  “And you expect nothing less from your divisions,” Ramose countered. “But you will have to send some of your men home to the sowing when Mekhir comes, Ahmose. There is grumbling already in the ranks.”

  “I know.” Ahmose said tersely. “I intend to. And I long to go home myself, Ramose. I dream that I am already there, but the garden is dim and the outline of the house is hazy and although I can hear Aahmes-nefertari’s voice calling to me I cannot see her in the mist. I want this war of reclamation to be over.” He spoke with a sudden and uncharacteristic bitterness and Ramose glanced at him, startled by the intensity of his words.

  “You have done more towards seeing that goal accomplished than your brother ever could,” he said simply. Ahmose did not reply. The lamp was guttering, and as he reached out to snuff it, the flame died of its own accord.

  Khoiak began with a light sprinkling of rain, not unknown in the Delta, and a sky cluttered with streamers of long, grey-tinged clouds driven by a brisk wind. The Medjay took shelter where they could, shaking the drops of moisture from their hair and crouching disgruntled together like flocks of bedraggled birds, but the Egyptians stood with faces raised and eyes closed, enjoying the unexpected drizzle. Afterwards the ground steamed. Hungry mosquitoes joined the phalanx of flies already tormenting naked skin in the rising humidity. The flood was at its highest, turning Egypt into a vast, placid lake beneath which new silt was settling onto the used-up soil. Het-Uart itself was an island girt about by water and the equally obdurate Egyptian army.

  Yet to Ahmose, who had taken to standing on the verge of the swollen tributary and staring at the city when the routine of his daily duties was over, the atmosphere was charged with suspense. It was as though a storm was brewing far out in the desert, the slowly multiplying power of its birth generating the heavy expectan
cy he felt. Flicking his fly whisk absently he brooded, scarcely aware of the ordered activity constantly going on around him, his eyes travelling Het-Uart’s awesome defences. He was becoming increasingly frustrated, at times even disheartened, by the inertia of his situation but overlying this was a breathless certainty that the impasse was about to be broken. It was in the stultifying air, in the lapping of the flood at his feet, filtering through men’s actions and infusing their voices.

  Soon he must begin to rotate his troops, he knew. By the end of the following month the Nile would have regained its banks and the earth would be waiting for the seed. Ankhmahor had already gone home to Aabtu to be present at Osiris’s feasts, leaving his son to command the King’s personal bodyguard. Ahmose wondered if Apepa was possessed by this same strong sense of anticipation. He pondered his enemy’s state of mind, seeing him pacing out the boundary of his citadel, captured by a premonition he did not know they shared.

  He was woken one morning just before dawn by a tide of anguish he had not felt since Kamose had ravaged Dashlut. Sitting up in the darkness, his heart fluttering, he was about to call for Akhtoy when a light wavered outside the tent and he heard Ramose’s voice addressing the soldier standing watch. He swung his feet to the carpet and groped for a kilt, but then he stood still sniffing the air around him. It was filled with a sweetish stench that seemed to feed the grief by which he had been roused and he recognized it at once. I have paid it no attention when it has invaded my nostrils during the day, he thought as he wrapped the linen around his waist. But this time it must have begun while I dreamed. Dashlut. I will never forget my first whiff of burning human flesh. Pushing on a pair of sandals, he strode to the tent flap and lifted it cautiously.

  His guard saluted and Ramose bowed, his face pale and shadowy. “I can smell it,” Ahmose said. “It is very strong out here. Where is it coming from?”